Penn Avenue Amateur Hour! with Host Barack Obama

Act I.  This must have seemed like such a great idea!  Send Air Force One (2) to buzz lower Manhattan, with an F-16 chasing it.  Inform the FAA and the NYPD that you're going to do this, but give them strict orders not to tell anyone.  Pssst!  Don't tell the Mayor!  Let's make sure it's a big surprise!  That way, in addition to a picture of the plane with the Statue of Liberty in the background (almost as good as the photo the White House already has), we can also get live footage of New Yorkers scattering in panic.  From the WaPo:

A plane used as a backup for Air Force One and a fighter-jet escort swooped low in the sky over New York on Monday as part of a government photo op, panicking workers, forcing evacuations and prompting an outcry from lawmakers.

Here's the story from MSNBC:

 

So what was their second best idea?  Sending a fully armed SWAT team unannounced into Columbine High School?  Parking a Rider truck in front of a Federal Building and yelling "run for your lives!"  The guy who is taking the heat for this one is Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office.  It's all his idea, he is saying, and let's hope that this is true.  Then at least we diagnose the problem.  The White House Military Office

provides military support for White House functions, including food service, Presidential transportation, medical support and emergency medical services, and hospitality services.

This is not an insignificant business, including as it does the transportation of the President.  In the past it has always been run by a military officer.  President Obama broke precedent and made a political appointment.  Caldera was a career bureaucrat and Secretary of the Army under Bill Clinton.  He is also, apparently, an idiot.  How could one not see how this would play out?  How can it be that, when they were planning this thing, no one raised his or her hand and said:  "ah, boss, maybe this isn't such a good idea"?  Caldera should be fired.  If he isn't, that tells us something about the White House.

Act II.  Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, had no sooner apologized for her agency's Report on Rightwing Extremism in the United States, which offended the nation's veterans while managing to be empty of any useful information, than she offended the entire nation of Canada.  From the Canadian National Post:

Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job? She appears to be about as knowledgeable about border issues as a late-night radio call-in yahoo.

Good question.  In an interview broadcast Monday on the CBC, Ms. Napolitano attempted to justify her call for stricter border security on the premise that "suspected or known terrorists" have entered the U. S. across the Canadian border, including the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack.

That's the part that got her in trouble.  It is a simple matter of fact that none of the known 9/11 perpetrators entered the country from Canada.  You might expect a Secretary of Homeland Security to know this.  Of course, anyone can make that kind of mistake at a bad moment, even if she knows the real facts.  Better is this, brought to us by Jack Kelly at Real Clear Politics:

A few weeks earlier, in a speech to the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., Ms. Napolitano said: "One of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feelings among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border."

This is not a simple mistake about facts.  It is garden variety stupid, as Kelly points out.  How many millions of Canadians are pouring across the U.S. border and remaining here illegally?  How many Canadian drug gangs are shooting it out in Winnipeg, killing mounties, and sneaking across the border to kidknap U.S. citizens?  I doubt very much that people living along the southern border, on either side, are worried that the Canadians are being favored.  I think that this is all Secretary Napolitano's idea, and it shows that the person in charge of securing the U.S. against attacks from abroad is innocent of the simplest distinctions. 

This is all amateur hour follies.  But these are important offices.  It is significant that President Obama is content to fill them with clowns. 

Comments

[A.I.]

(1) Apparently Obama can't trust the children with the keys to Air Force One. Caldera ok'd the flight but someone at the FAA nixed notifying the public. If I were a suspicious type, I might think someone might have been out to embarrass the administration--but I'm not.

(2) Within days after Napolitano'a hijacker/Canadian border gaff, John McCain chimed in saying some of the hijackers had entered the U.S. through Canada. Bipartisan yahooery?

(3) My understanding is the Bush Administration commissioned the Report on Rightwing Extremism as well as the Report on Leftwing Extremism that preceded it and that the reports were prepared under the supervision of a Bush appointee still at Homeland Security. How dare he report on the Left first!

[Dave]

You should just change your name to Rush Limbaugh Jr. Can't you come up with anything else to bash besides Obama. Get a life.

[KB]

A.I.: 1) Obama's in charge. It's his responsibility. 2) McCain's gaff was a gaff and he deserves some grilling for it; but as I said, it was Napolitano's other bit that suggests practiced stupidity. 3) Bush isn't President any more. See item one above. The report on the left had some substance because there are more or less organized groups on the Left that represent real problems of law enforcement (Earth First!, PETA, etc. Judging from the Report on Rightwing Extremism, there is no evidence of a similar threat on the right. That is not to say that there aren't nuts on the right. There are. And there is the occasional really dangerous nut like Timothy McVeigh. But these guys just don't seem to be remotely organized. I think that Napolitano was treated a bit unfairly over the charge that the report badmouthed the military. What it did was to raise completely groundless speculations about organized extremism among veterans. I am not a veteran, so I will let them decide whether this was an insult or not.

[KB]

Dave:

This blog is designed for adults like A.I. and myself who respect differences of opinion and are willing to discuss them in a reasonable way. Perhaps you should Google Disney or Nickelodeon, where you might find a website on your emotional level.

[Dave]

Nice post KB. Something I expected from followers of this blog.

[Miranda]

What? Who cares about the security of Air Force One? It's threats like Rush Limbaugh expressing his opinions that we need to worry about!

[KB]

Dave:

You are welcome to post such comments on SDP, but have you considered actually stating and defending your opinions? Those would be welcome also.