Presidents and their recreation

So the buzz on the net this weekend concerned 44 taking his wife to NYC to see a Broadway show. See, he had promised her during the campaign that if he won he would take her. Just like he promised the people who voted for him that if he won he would close Guantanamo Bay and do something with the detainees other than military tribunals and he would bring our boys home from Iraq and vigorously pursue our real enemy, Osama bin laden. Well, he had to keep one campaign promise, didn't he?

Air Force One

Reports are surfacing that a 747 and an F-16 flew around the air space of lower Manhattan this morning. No advance warning of the flyby was given, but afterwards the FAA announced that it was an "approved military photo op" using one of the airliners used as Air Force One. On this occasion 44 was not on board. The White House declined to comment and reaction in the press is sketchy at this time. Needless to say, many NYC residents became apprehensive at the sight of a large commercial airliner flying low near Manhattan. If 44 was aware of the mission, a fair question would be: What was he thinking?
More updates are sure to follow.
Update: last night on the CBS Evening News a very serious looking Katie Couric assured us that 44 was "furious" about the incident. Well, that should settle things. No hard hitting investigations about why the executive branch was caught flat footed by a stupid stunt. And in case you were concerned, the major networks spent half of their programs covering the ongoing swine flu epidemic; 44 announced at a speech he gave at the National Academy of Science that there was "no cause for alarm."
This piece at the NY Times gives a surprising amount of credit to 43 for laying the groundwork for a federal response to infectious diseases like the swine flu. So far, 44 has refrained from given credit to 43, although he has been free to blame 43 from economic and diplomatic problems he faces.

Another one bites the dust

44 made many campaign pledges. Somewhere, someone is keeping score of how many he has abandoned now that he is in office. Let's go over three examples. First, he pledged to close the prison for detainees at Guantanamo Bay. He has ordered it closed, but after a study is carried out. In the meantime, the US has a number of detainees it holds at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan, and they aren't going anywhere soon. This observer has tried to perceive a difference between holding war on terror detainees in Afghanistan versus Gitmo and can only see that its easier for journalists and other anti-American activists to travel to Gitmo. They certainly aren't at risk of being killed by terrorists on their way there. This suggests that the Gitmo detainees will eventually be taking a long trip to Afghanistan for the duration.
Second and third, he promised to name China as a manipulator of currency and to re-negotiate NAFTA. This article documents what happened to that promise once 44 was in the White House. Bear in mind, he has done the right thing in flipping on the issue, but does it give people confidence they can believe anything he says?

To the Shores of Tripoli

Drama on the waters off the coast of Africa continued into the weekend as Somali pirates, defeated in their attempt to hijack a US commercial ship, kidnapped the captain and drifted a few hundred yards from US Navy vessels. US Navy and FBI hostage negotiators attempted to talk the pirates into giving up without success. The captain jumped out of the life boat but was hauled back in after shots were fired. There is no word on whether he was hit by gunfire.
Now there is news that a US tugboat towing a barge has been hijacked by another group of pirates.
Meanwhile, 44 gave his weekly radio and internet address. No mention of the hijackings and hostage taking was made. Instead, 44 shilled his recent European trip, during which the leaders of Europe turned their backs on his request for boots on the ground in Afghanistan. To 44, the trip was a success.

I Want to Hold Your Hand

When 43 grabbed the hand of Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2005 you would have thought that he had been caught in the stall of the men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport with him. Here is the response from CBS News at the time. Now fast forward to the 2009 G-20 summit in London and watch as 44 does a 90 degree bow in front of the King of Saudi Arabia. Watch the videos where he does a short head bob to Queen Elizabeth and her consort Prince Philip. Notice any difference? Search CBS News for salacious chuckling over the Stepinfetch routine performed by 44. There is none. Just Old Man Double Standard, he just keep rolling along.

Schadenfreude

Here, here and here.

Special Olympics

44 went to California the other day to attend some town meetings that were being staged to help him promote his response to the recession and to pushing his budget proposals. He also found time to appear on the Tonight School with Jay Leno, something he (and other candidates) had done during the campaign. Mr. Leno provided a friendly forum for 44 to discuss his life in the White House and touch on a few topics of interest, like his work to restore calm to the financial markets. The audience was raucously pro-44 from the get-go, paralleling his rock star status seen during the last year. 44 worked without his familiar teleprompter and things seemed to be going well for him. Mr. Leno was a gracious host and didn't ask the kind of tough question one might hear on Face the Nation or Meet the Press, nor was anyone expecting him too.
When the topic turned to life in the White House and 44's love for basketball, Mr. Leno asked if the White House bowling alley might be sacrificed to put in a basketball court. 44 then offered the news that he had been practicing and bowled a 129, "sort of like Special Olympics or something." Mr. Leno laughed, the audience laughed and the conversation went elsewhere.
There was not the hush that occurs when a speaker commits a verbal sin, and in the case of the unrestrained public, a loud scolding voice from an outraged listener. Imagine, if you will, the kind of response had the guest been 43 and he had referred to his successor as a "colored man." Bear in mind that the term "people of color" is perfectly acceptable to audiences where there is a high proportion of leftward leaning listeners. However by substituting a prepositional phrase for an adjective, the first rendition becomes hate language at worst, a sign of unspeakable offensiveness at best.
One can only guess at the kind of reaction taking place backstage, where 44's staff was no doubt watching on a monitor. They are not employed by 44 to be unmindful of errors and one has to believe they were looking for a way to edit out 44's last remark. If there was any attempt to strong arm the Tonight Show staff into removing the Special Olympics reference, it hasn't been made public. Neither 44 nor Leno seemed to think it worthy of corrective action during the show. However, as recounted by the New York Times, during the return trip to Washington on Air Force One, calls were made. The Times' story appeared on page A10 of the March 20 edition and editorial comments were noticeable by their absence.
Nothing more is likely to happen now that apologies to the Kennedy family (the patron saints of the Special Olympics). After all, if Senator Ted can survive the plunge of his car into the waters of Martha's Vineyard from the Chappaquidick Bridge in 1969, leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown and go on to receive a Knighthood of the British Empire, what difficulty is there in forgiving 44 for mocking the abilities of the disabled? It was the kind of WASP country club humor that powerful men share when they think they are alone and unobserved by the prying eyes of community watchdogs. The same watchdogs who would grab onto any verbal miscue by a member of the ruling class and shake like a dead rat until it fell apart in their mouths. 44 had merely to order one of his minions to issue the apology and the matter lay as silent as a mummified Egyptian prince.
On one hand it is refreshing to see 44 show that he is, after all, just a human being. On the other, the outrage of the defenders of the public trust has been revealed again to be relative to the political orientation of the speaker, producing a double standard for conduct that is disturbing.