Obama’s “crew” approved this. NY’s Mayor Bloomberg was not amused.

President Obama’s White House was forced to issue an apology Monday after a photo opportunity gone badly wrong — an Air Force 747 plane did a low flyover over Lower Manhattan, prompting terrified citizens to flee from their offices and high-profile accusations of government insensitivity in the post 9/11 era.

White House Military Office Director Louis Caldera issued a brief statement saying he was too blame.

“Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision,” he said. “While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, its clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.”

Probably won’t be seein’ it much on ABC, CBS & NBC — FOX will run it non-stop! At least ol’ Barry was a bit peeved off.

Heh!

The rumors had been flying all weekend but this AM it is official. GM announced that the Pontiac brand will be no more, along with the Saturn, Hummer and Saab brands as well as shedding of 42% of its selling dealers and 28% of its manufacturing plants — and the elimination of 21,000 jobs — all by this year’s end. Is this a death spiral for GM or the start of real survival? The LA Times writes:

The automaker announced the sweeping moves as part of a revised business plan it is submitting to the Treasury Department.

“The objective here is not to survive, the objective is to develop an operating plan that helps us win,” said Fritz Henderson, GM’s president and chief executive in a morning conference call. “It’s a difficult period, it’s a challenging period, it’s a very painful period.”

Henderson conceded, however, that a bankruptcy filing would still be a possibility if the company is unable to reach accords with stakeholders.

“What’s good for General Motors is good for the USA” — boy, that’s sure dated now, isn’t it? Or, maybe not — I know that I need to go on a diet! But Okie, why all the fuss about a low-performing division of a car company in dire straights? History — personal history that is. Pontiac has some special meaning for me, let me explain . . .

       Classic Pontiac “Wide-Track” advertising illustrations.The year was 1967, and for some reason I had waited several months after my 16th birthday to even attempt to get my driver’s license. Anyone who has known me since then would not have believed that, as I’ve been auto-addicted ever since. Many a forest has been felled to satisfy my auto mag hungers over the years, and if my current subscriptions are any indication, many more trees will have to die in the future!

I had been taking private driving lessons in a ’67 Mustang coupe, but the dude from the driving school didn’t show up at the DMV on my test day. Arrrrrrgh! Not wanting to wait another week for a reschedule I decided to take the test in the car that my mom drove us there in — her ’66 Pontiac Bonneville 4-door sedan. That was like going from a tidy ski boat to a 40 foot Chris-Craft. I made a few practice attempts at parallel parking the beast and then promptly aced the sucker. My eyes and reflexes were so much better four decades ago — I just hope that my judgment and experience level makes up for the deterioration I notice now.

My first car that I bought with my own coin was a 1966 Pontiac LeMans “Sprint”, which had GM’s then brand new OHC six, with a humongous Rochester Quadrajet 4-barrel carb and four-on-the-floor. Man, did that little six moan when the peddle was buried in the carpet, or mat — I can’t remember now which it was. $450 bought a lot of show, but the go part came with some caveats — I didn’t exactly pick the most reputable used car lot and was smitten by the looks — has happened a few times since, too (wish that I was only talkin’ about cars!)

The magnificent six was a sludge monkey — the previous owner evidently never changed the oil — and after a hard run it would belch up about 3 quarts of hot, smelly oil and sludge up and over the fill pipe onto the ground. Lots o’ fun, that. A totally plugged line from the crankcase to the blowback valve was the culprit, and when that was cleared the toxic-oil-spills were defeated. However, the hydraulic lifters that made this OHV engine so quiet and maintenance free compared to the European’s with their solid lifters and constant need for valve clearance adjustment were plugged with the sludge and the cam lobes were getting flattened at an alarming rate. My friend with super mechanic skills helped me through an upper tear-down and a flushing of the oil pan and circulation system with gasoline and an electric drill spinning the oil pump — don’t try that at home kiddies! Yikes! Also, don’t fire up the motor at 4 AM with no mufflers attached in the garage attached to the house, with your parents’ bedroom window just off the garage door! “Uh, no dad, we didn’t know what time it is — sorry?”

I hit a horse with that car. Don’t tow a white car home at 2 AM with the driver’s side covered with thick-dark-red blood, the roof crushed and the windshield caved in without calling first — “Un, no mom, dad. I’m OK. The horse isn’t so good though. You guys look a little pale — you all right?”

Amazing how a car only two model years old could have been such a piece of junk! It also had a few electrical problems, something to do with fuses covered with gum wrapper foil. Gotta LUV that used car dealer! After a couple of hours of my dad and I lying under the dash replacing burnt wiring so that we could get home from his drug store where I worked after school, instead of going home we went to the American Motors lot where I got a brand-spankin’ new 1969 Javelin — Big Bad Blue edition, with a 290, Carter AFB, 4-speed and reclining seats! (That’s a different story altogether.) Thank the fates for a college scholarship — which left me with money for that ride — which I kept for over 5 years.

My next Pontiac was 34 years later — a 2001 Bonneville SSEI which you can see featured in this blog’s footer. Amazing what three and a half decades of engineering advancement does: solid unibody construction, 4-wheel independent suspension and disc brakes, power almost everything, dual-zone climate control, satellite radio with Bose sound, and not to forget, an Eaton supercharger that made puttin’ pedal to carpet way too much fun!

Good bye, Pontiac — it was good to know ya!

. . . Is our President payin’ attention or is he too occupied with his handicap?

JANET: EVENTS DO NOT WARRANT TESTING OF PLANE PASSENGERS FROM MEXICO…
‘NO EVIDENCE’ OF BIO-TERROR…
CALDERON TELLS MEXICANS TO STAY CALM, COOPERATE WITH AUTHORITIES…
CDC RECOMMENDS PLANNING FOR SCHOOL CLOSURES…
Positive: NYC students…
WHO: Swine flu could mutate to ‘more dangerous’ strain…
Flu fears prompt quarantine plans…

Mexico flu scare empties streets, churches, bars…
CLOSE TO 1,400 SUSPECTED CASES…
Russia Suspends Imports of Meat From Mexico, Some U.S. States…
New swine flu likely widespread…
Asia on alert…
10 New Zealand students in scare…
Mideast First: Israeli man hospitalized on suspicions…
6 CASES CONFIRMED IN CANADA…
Spain announces 3 suspected cases…

Check those out — it’s about a quarter after 5pm, PST, and those are the top highlights on Drudge at the moment. Anyone who has read Stephen King’s The Stand can’t help but have a little bit o’ hair standing up at the nape of their necks. Still, before everyone goes apeshit paranoid one could worse than read Okie Gabriel Malor’s guide to infectious preparedness over at Ace.

Allahpundit at Hot Air sees terrible potential, at least in less developed parts of the world:

If it’s susceptible to OTC drugs, presumably we’re okay; developing countries, not so much. {…} All we need now is for the virus to migrate to Pakistan, where the country’s already teetering, and we’ll have a true apocalyptic clusterfark to end all clusterfarks.

{…}
How’s it spreading to so many far-flung places? There should be a chain of infection via visitors to or from Mexico, no?

Michelle Malkin wonders if this will finally get someone to pay attention to our border security.

So Okie, what’s up with the pic? Well, earlier today the White House said that the President was going to play golf, but he’d stay in touch with the Swine flue developments. Via his new Super Blackberry no doubt.

Still, at least they aren’t completely out of touch.

The U.S. declared a public health emergency Sunday to deal with the emerging new swine flu, much like the government does to prepare for approaching hurricanes.

Officials reported 20 U.S. cases of swine flu in five states so far, with the latest in Ohio and New York. Unlike in Mexico where the same strain appears to be killing dozens of people, cases in the United State have been mild — and U.S. health authorities can’t yet explain why.

“As we continue to look for cases, we are going to see a broader spectrum of disease,” predicted Dr. Richard Besser, acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We’re going to see more severe disease in this country.”

At a White House news conference, Besser and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sought to assure Americans that health officials are taking all appropriate steps to minimize the impact of the outbreak.

Damn good thing. As Hugh Hewitt comments:

Thousands of students travel to Mexico on spring break, either to party or to do service projects, so the flu’s rapid criss-crossing of the U.S. is almost guaranteed. Time to open the Tamiflu stcokpile.

Oh, ya betcha!

Uh Oh! Killer robots and a revolution in warfare:Bernd Debusmann

They have no fear, they never tire, they are not upset when the soldier next to them gets blown to pieces. Their morale doesn’t suffer by having to do, again and again, the jobs known in the military as the Three Ds – dull, dirty and dangerous.

They are military robots and their rapidly increasing numbers and growing sophistication may herald the end of thousands of years of human monopoly on fighting war. “Science fiction is moving to the battlefield. The future is upon us,” as Brookings scholar Peter Singer put it to a conference of experts at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania this month.

Singer just published Wired For War – the Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, a book that traces the rise of the machines and predicts that in future wars they will not only play greater roles in executing missions but also in planning them.

{…}

A recent study prepared for the Office of Naval Research by a team from the California Polytechnic State University said that robot ethics had not received the attention it deserved because of a “rush to market” mentality and the “common misconception” that robots will do only what they have been programmed to do.

“Unfortunately, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to the time when computers were simpler and their programs could be written and understood by a single person,” the study says. “Now programs with millions of lines of code are written by teams of programmers, none of whom knows the entire program; hence, no individual can predict the effect of a given command with absolute certainty since portions of programs may interact in unexpected, untested ways.”

{…}

You need to be an optimist to think that political leaders will opt for negotiation over war once combat casualties come home not in flag-decked coffins but in packing crates destined for the robot repair shop.

In Monday’s Jerusalem Post the following question was asked and answered — No Holds Barred: Why does Obama smile at dictators?

The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but.

The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the US Senate, the South American project director for the Center for Strategic International Studies said that Chavez’s government engages in “arresting opposition leaders, torturing some members of the opposition (according to human rights organizations) and encouraging, if not directing, its squads of Bolivarian Circles to beat up members of Congress and intimidate voters-all with impunity.”

In spite of a presidential term limit of six years, Chávez has suggested that he would like to remain in power for 25 years. Hmmm. An autocratic dictator who abuses human rights and undermines democracy being warmly embraced by the American president. There’s something wrong with that picture.

{…}

WATCHING ALL THIS, I was wondering what the new standards were. How oppressive must a leader be before we determine that he has not merited a hug by the democratic standard-bearer of the free world, the president of the United States?

{…}

ALL THIS LEADS to one important question. Suppose Obama succeeds in building friendships with Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad and the Taliban. What then? Does America still get to feel that it stands for something? Will we still be the beacon of liberty and freedom to the rest of the world, or will we have sold out in the name of political expediency?

That’s a “Sell Out” grin if I ever saw one!

Technorati Tags: Obama, President Hugo Chavez, Chávez

Visit The Anchoress’ blog to catch up on Heather, Kim and Little Faith. Then you will comprehend the significance of this excerpt:

I am absolutely astounded, instructed, edified and in all ways humbled in the face of faith this open, courageous and hearty. In a world where society encourages us to avoid the painful realities of life (and all the terrible beauty found therein) to shut ourselves off and remain comfortably anesthetized throughout our lives, these young women and their husbands – with the help of family, friends and faith – say “yes” to the difficult, “yes to the pain, “yes” to what comes their way.

What I see, over and over again in their stories is a peace the world cannot fathom, the “peace beyond all understanding.” As with the Gospels, where a rich young man was attracted to Christ but unwilling to give up his material things, we see here a peace many want, but few have the courage to pursue.