Like lions pacing back and forth in a cage, the city police in Cincinnati were prowling up one street and down another on Sunday. In my short trip up to the University yesterday, I saw about a dozen. Later, one zipped up to follow my car, with it’s bumper sticker asking “What else did you lie to us about?”. Becoming bored quickly, the policeman suddenly turned down a side street and zipped down and then up the hill opposite, without pause.
Well, this looks like preparation for a Presidential visit, I thought to myself all unawares. Not again, no he couldn’t be coming back to the city where he disgraced himself with that lying speech nearly four years ago.
Sadly. This morning I discovered that he’s going to be here all right, small as life. Whatever for, you might just wonder. To attend a baseball game. Nay, to throw a ceremonial throw before the game. I’d have thought that attending baseball games was fairly peripheral to his duties as President. Nothing actually follows from baseball games, except further baseball games. They’re not consequential.
And neither are ceremonial throws before games. The games themselves don’t depend upon their being performed.
So the President is travelling to Cincinnati to attend something inconsequential, or more specifically to do something that is inconsequential to the inconsequential thing he’s attending. At what cost?
My abacus is broken. I’m sure that the city’s tax people are keeping track of the hundreds or thousands of hours of overtime pay that will go into making this trivial spectacle a smashing success, however. No doubt they’ll be getting back to me with some thoughts about how I can contribute.
What about the cost to the nation? Couldn’t this money have been better spent on body armor for troops in Iraq?
I just wonder whether this expense might have been avoidable. When I was last in Washington, there was a lawn at the White House where, if one were careful, it would be possible to throw a baseball around safely. Then one could pop back into the Oval Office to work on fixing all the problems one has created during the last five years.
Crossposted at My Left Wing