With President Obama out of the country tweaking things in Asia, carefully not bowing this time, and packing away some pista murg and balak papri chat, his trusty sidekick Joe Biden is left to find things to do back home.

There's a big Diwali party tonight at the White House. The vice president will be there.

But first, JB has a breakfast meeting with Sen. Chuck Hagel and then another one of those Middle Class Task Force events to try to find some of those thousands of missing green energy jobs that have been promised so often.

Joe's had some problems with promises recently. He assured everyone that last summer would be full of economic recovery. Which it wasn't. And Joe guaranteed that his Democratic Party would maintain majorities in both houses of Congress in last week's midterm election. Which it didn't.

Possibly the most important event of the vice president's day Tuesday is to meet at 2:15 with Earl Devaney. Everyone knows him as chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board -- the top guy monitoring the gazillion-dollar stimulus and the overdue economic recovery, and ensuring that the taxpayers financing same know all about it.

However, no one outside the room will know what goes on in that Biden-Devaney meeting. That's because the government meeting on government transparency has been closed.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Associated Press (file).