Meanwhile, Away From Air Force One...

Obama continues to cement his bond with the American people: the same Administration that can't quite decide whether the 9/11 mastermind deserves a full civilian trial with the attendant legal rights remains intent on groping granny and her grandkids at airport security.

MORE BONDING:  A detailed account of an airport security check after a traveler got balky and the TSA clown car arrived.  Kafkaesque highlight - if a passenger refuses to be searched they still can't leave the security area and go home.  That is not logic-free, of course, since we don't want terrorists just going home to try again later.  Still.

Comments

[sbw]

Okay. I have a confession to make.

I just read her daddy's summary of events to help her understand how eclectic the regulars on JOM are.

She asked if I told JOM that yesterday was my birthday. I said that I had never mentioned it, although I give others best wishes on theirs.

My wife just told me to get with the program. She admonished me for not mentioning that yesterday was my birthday.

I apologize. Consider me with the program, llama breath and all.

[Old Lurker]

Well Happy Birthday +1 SBW! I am sure the Grand Keeper of Dates will not forget you next year.

[Extraneus]

HB SB!

[Janet]

Happy Birthday sbw!!!!

[Melinda Romanoff]

Happy (late) Birthday, SBW!

[Captain Hate]

Happy birthday sbw.

Axelrod being completely incoherent on FNS including saying Jugears McFly wants a line item veto. Leaving aside that it was declared unconstitutional previously (at least I think it was) he isn't making any sense. I just don't know if that's his standard MO or a direct result of having to deal with President Present.

[centralcal]

Happy birthday, sbw and always listen to your wife!!!! lol.

[hit and run]

Happy Birthday indeed sbw!

Thank your wife for us for getting you with the program.

[Melinda Romanoff]

The Chicago style, big print edition of three card monte.

Standard MO, once you learn how to read his Adolph hair tonic and rat-like moustache.

Not to give the impression that he's a weasel or anything.

[hrtshpdbox]

"American Narcissus", LUN, a handy catalog of our President's preening and entirely unjustified self-regard.

[Pagar]

Happy Belated Birthday, sbw.

[MaryD]

Melinda, I look at Axelrod and see Snidely Whiplash.

[Specter]

Happy Belated Birthday sbw!

Here's kind of a fun article on vanity of Barack.

[Specter]

Geez...bet me to it by a minute hrtshpbox...

[Danube of Thought]

Clarice! You're the lead "must read" at Lucianne.com! And we knew you when...

[MaryD]

Best Pieces EVAH, CLarice! Eyepopping pickup on Michelle and the carpet.

[Clarice]

Thanks

HB, SBW. Many. many more.

[centralcal]

Captain Hate and Melinda, I thought you two might appreciate this description from Althouse:

Axelrod seemed robotic and anesthetized. His mustache was cut shorter on one side than the other. Asked whether Obama would accept any of what the deficit commission came up with, Axelrod droned emptiness until he latched onto the topic of Nancy Pelosi, which he blathered about until Chris Wallace cut him off.

[DebinNC]

Happy birthday, sbw. Wish I knew how to add those musical notes like Ex often does.

[hrtshpdbox]

"Geez...bet me to it by a minute hrtshpbox..."

It's a great article, innit?

Oh, and Happy Birthday, sbw - can't say I know you as other than a JOM regular, but that's criteria enough to wish you the best!

[Extraneus]

♪ = ♪

♫ = ♫

(Doo dah, doo dah)

[DebinNC]

Thanks, Ex!

Axelrod's odd mustache makes me think he's courting Hitler analogies.

[MayBee]

Happy birthday, sbw! I came back just for you.

[peter]

Happy Birthday, sbw. You share a birthday with the great Mel Stottlemyre.

[Thomas Collins]

Happy Birthday plus one, sbw!

By the way, under the Laws of JOM, withholding birthday information results in the following sanction: the withholder must share his or her most embarrassing moment during a birthday party.

[Frau Hochzeitstag]

Hapy, happy, sbw. Good for your wife!
We celebrate *two* days in our house. The first day goes by so fast and at the end of Day Two, you are really ready to let go of it all.

[Clarice]

Isn't that Last article in the Weekly Standard a classic? Beautifully written.

[MayBee]

I'm pretty appalled by the new groping standards. The TSA obviously adopted them to coerce people into accepting the body scan. It's really using sexual humiliation to try to get us to succumb to the technolgy (procedures for which they refuse to monitor properly to make sure that won't be used to humiliate us sexually).

[Thomas Collins]

Clarice, your Clarice's Pieces now has the candy photo so that it doesn't block the text (at least on my screen). It was never a problem for me; I just went to the Comments mode and could read the first few sentences without the photo blocking the text, and then went back to regular mode for the rest of your column. But kudos to whichever AT IT individual fixed this.

[MayBee]

Great pieces, Clarice. Great observation (and from daddy in the comments).

[centralcal]

Every now and then I go to the PuffHo Style section too read the slobbering adoration of FLOTUS's inimitable fashion sense.

The comments are becoming more critical - albeit couched in sycophantic praise of her other attributes. One by one, though I think the scales are starting to fall from their eyes.

An example is this comment:

Is Michelle a particularly stubborn woman? She really sticks to certain manners of dressing that just don't flatter her. She is a noble, beautiful and terribly smart woman that we can all be proud of....except for most of her clothes.

[glasater]

Happy belated birthday wishes SBW! Hope you're taking Frau's advice and celebrating a second day:)

[MarkO]

It is now official. The decision regard the trials of terrorists in the Obama administration has nothing to do with a speedy trial or with fairness in the process. It is nothing but political theatre.

“The administration has concluded that it cannot put Mohammed on trial in federal court because of the opposition of lawmakers in Congress and in New York. There is also little internal support for resurrecting a military prosecution at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The latter option would alienate liberal supporters."

[Thomas Collins]

What's the title of the Weekly Standard column to which you are referring, clarice?

[MarkO]

"regardomg"

[MarkO]

OK. So I put my hands on the keyboard and, well, "regarding"

[DebinNC]

Speaking of candy and the Obamas' hubris, The Guardian's Mumbai report featuring MO and BO dancing with the poor, parentless urchins from "orphanages and street shelters" ended with this shocker:

"Before leaving she gave each child a bag of stationery and White House M&M sweets."

It's hard to imagine gifts with less long-term benefit or appropriateness. I wonder if a B replaces the M on the "WH M&M sweets"?

[centralcal]

TC: I am pretty sure Clarice is referring to "American Narcissus" by Jonathan Last.

[centralcal]

DebinNC: Here is a photo of the "White House M&M's."

[DebinNC]

Thanks, cc. I'm sure they'll treasure that flimsy cardboard box in their street shelters for years.

[Strawman Cometh]

Yes, another great pieces, Clarice. Excellent point regarding the lack of attention to detail on the part of 0 and his staff. In that spirit, I took note of a particular detail - the file name of the picture illustrating MOo's distress.

[DebinNC]

Loved Last's piece, and Bill Kristol at WS added a recent example:
............................................
"At his November 12 press conference in Seoul, President Obama was asked the following question by CBS’s Chip Reid: “What was the number-one complaint, concern, or piece of advice that you got from foreign leaders about the U.S. economy and your stewardship of the economy?”

Whereupon the president began his response with a complaint: “What about compliments?” he asked. “You didn’t put that in the list.”
..............................................

[Jack is Back!]

New thread is up.

Also, new movie "Mr. daddy Goes To Washington" is available at LUN or on the new thread.

[MarkO]

I thought it was Marshall Mathers.

[Rick Ballard]

It's great to start Sunday morning with another fine Pieces. The American Narcissus (AKA Daffodil) added to the enjoyment.

HB, SBW.

[Specter]

snipped from above:

She is a noble, beautiful and terribly smart woman that we can all be proud of....

(emphasis mine)

Well...according to her, "Me and the prez likes the way I dress."

[sbw]

Maybee... Blush!

TC: "withholding birthday information results in the following sanction: the withholder must share his or her most embarrassing moment during a birthday party."

Sigh. Okay. It was when I wanted a firetruck and was delivered a little sister on my birthday. Same day. Different year. Twins of a sort. I had to share a birthday cake with her. So I changed my birthday to the oneth.

That embarrassing enough?

[Thomas Collins]

OK, CC. I read it. Sounds as if his Harvard Law School classmates, with their Obamanometer, had figured out that Obama is a pretentious blowhard.

[sbw]

Thanks to all for the good wishes -- A delightful second day, Frau, thanks to the JOM community.

The first day included a fine Chinese dinner with my wife and son, my 90-year-old parents, a sister, and a surprise appearance by my daughter and her beau from college two hours away.

[Porchlight]

Happy Birthday, sbw! Your wife did the right thing.

Fabulous slicing and dicing in your Pieces, Clarice.

[narciso]

Happy birthday, sbw

[matt]

felicitations, sbw!!!

Sounds like Princess Shopping Cart visited the WH Gift Shop and Stationary Store again. Models of Marine 1 for Gordon Brown's kids and iPod's with Bammy's speechs for the Queen bring back fond memories of self-involved Hyde Park yuppies with not a whit of class or common sense between them.

As to fashion sense, clothes maketh the man (or woman). Maybe there is some hobo logic to PSC's dowdy dress. Bammer's always looks swave and deboner, while she is clearly the frumpiest first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt.

The bag lady chic doesn't work. It never worked. Find your groove, Stella. You're embarrassing the hell out of the entire country at this point.

[Porchlight]

I hadn't realized until reading Clarice's article that the pantsuit at the mosque concealed a dress underneath. Why not wear the trousers under the skirt, as Indian and other Asian women do? Of course the trousers they wear are typically trimmer, not wide and puddly like Michelle's.

I eagerly await the time when the media stops praising and starts making fun of Michelle's clothing choices. I wonder if she'll end up going back to the buttoned-up, more conservative suit-and-pearls look she had earlier in the 2008 campaign. If she does, it will not be her own choice, I'm sure.

[Frau Hochzeitstag]

DebinNC - close but no cigar. Axelturf resembles bland Adolphe Menjou, not Onkel Adolf.
LUN

[Rick Ballard]

I'm just happy that the First Lady was able to fight off the vicious attack of the Indonesian saber toothed crotch cricket with such style and grace.

[centralcal]

Frau!!!!! I loved Adolphe Menjou watching old movies as a child. Not fair to compare him to icky, sickly Axelrod.

[Thomas Collins]

That will do just fine, sbw. Of course, another of the Laws of JOM is that the enforcer of the embarrassing birthday moment rule must share his or her own embarrassing birthday moment. It happened when I was an undergrad. After a libation filled birthday party, I went to Jimmy's Pizzeria, a mob hangout on the East Side of Providence (surprisingly so, since most mob hangouts in the 70s in Providence were on Federal Hill, not the the East Side). In any event, my eyes set upon a young woman whom I though was taking a poly sci. class with me. She was sitting alone. I sat with her and asked her what she thought about the lecture on the isolationist movement in US foreign policy. She looked at me as if I was from outer space. In any event, it turned out that she wasn't that comely coed in poly sci. class, but a mob girl waiting for her mob boyfriend. She was insulted that I had mistaken her for one of those "friggin Brownie b_____s" (her words). I excused myself, paid for my pizza (which I had now decided to do takeout, lest her boyfriend walk in and she tell him that I had paid the ultimate insult to a Silver Lake townie gal), and left. I never told my classmate about this, because I never wanted to find out how insulted she would be that I had mistaken a mob gal for her. I never thought a few Narragansett Lager Beers could so impair my powers of recognition!

[Buford Gooch]

Please watch the "Hitler in the Bunker" video (with whatever captions)and tell me that isn't Axelturf himself playing the main part.

[Danube of Thought]

Happy birthday, sbw.

And keep 'em coming, Clarice--you're doing a great service to the country.

[Clarice]

Thanks,DoT.

Porch, I am not certain she was but in that series there's back view it appears stuff is bunched up around her waist and something is hanging down behind the hem of the jacket which looks an awful lot like the sleeveless dress she wore at an Embassy event that same day.

My guess is that because of poor planning she didn't know or wasn't properly dressed for the mosque outing ==the dress was sleeveless (a no no) and as usual too short (another no no)--ergo she shoved it all into that voluminous pantsuit which has always been too big and too long even when she's wearing heels.

[daddy]

Happy National Indian Pudding Day sbw!

[MaryD]

daddy, Indian Pudding at the Union Oyster House in Boston is one of my favorite treats, but I must confess that what utterly makes it is the glorious blob of high octane vanilla ice cream on top of the warm pudding. P.S. My husband is a yankee and he hates it.

[PD]

"Before leaving she gave each child a bag of stationery and White House M&M sweets."

Is she the official White House Promoter of Childhood Obesity?

[Ignatz]

--Frau!!!!! I loved Adolphe Menjou watching old movies as a child. Not fair to compare him to icky, sickly Axelrod.--

Not only was he a great actor but he was a good anti-communist Republican.
Try "You Were Never Lovelier" with Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth and a cracking good script to see just how unlike Axetlturf he was.

Oh and Happy b-day SBW!

[flodigarry]

I travel on business every week, and in all but once case I have been able to avoid (dodge)the dreaded backscatter screening. The one time I had to submit was in Richmond VA. You know how the screener is supposed to be in some remote back room viewing the images? The guy was actually located right after the security screening sitting at a little desk surrounded by flimsy canvas screens on two sides. I could clearly see him looking at at a video screen and images were visible to anyone walking by on the concourse. Nice.

[Neo]

If we executed these "mad bombers" by pumping "pig's blood" into their bodies, this sort of thing would stop immediately.
You can't just kill these folks, you have to humiliate them while you are doing it.

[Porchlight]

Try "You Were Never Lovelier" with Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth and a cracking good script to see just how unlike Axetlturf he was.

That is a great one. It was on TCM a few months ago and I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Axelrod reminds me of Lester Bangs:

[Porchlight]

Sorry, that looks to be an offensive shirt Bangs has on there. I apologize for not realizing that before posting. Of course he was a major lefty in case anyone was wondering.

[boris]

What's so bad about "LAST OF THE SHITE BLOGGERS"?

[narciso]

Speaking of delusional thinking, that reigns in government, and media, in the LUN

[Porchlight]

LOL boris...

[JorgXMcKie]

Happy even more belated birthday, sbw. And my baby sister was born on my 13 birthday and was pretty much the best gift I ever got. Later a nephew was born on my birthday, and that's pretty neat, too.