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This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.
"If I don't run for presidnet, we'll all be OK." -Joe Biden (2015)
"I don't want to be president." -Donald Trump (1987)
Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),
Quick! 50 years from now, what will professors, pundits, and scholars...
{Oh my!}
...Say were the major accomplishments of the Obama presidency?
{The fact he and the little woman were worth about a million and a half in January of 2008 and are now worth about $70,000,000 and own four houses comes to mind. I'll bet his daughters aren't dealing with college loan payments.}
I haven't given the infamous Choom Gang's most famous alumnus much thought lately, however...
{Choom Gang?}
Well, as far as I know (I haven't read any of his books) although Mr. Obama has freely admitted that, unlike Slick Willie, he did inhale, and he did do a little blow, he hasn't gone into great detail about the Choom Gang, which is what he and the dudes he got stoned with in high school called themselves.
However, some of them did, and in case you missed it, google Choom Gang, and all sorts of different tokes takes on the story pop up. But who knows which details are true, which are exaggerated, and which are made up? Or, more importantly in my semi-humble opinion, why did his friends feel compelled to snitch and not avail themselves of a "no comment."
{Right? With friends like those etc., hey you're not gonna claim that... Wait-wait-wait. Choom?}
Hawaiian slang for smoking weed (pakalolo), Dana, to choom is to smoke weed (at least when Mr. Obama was in high school, I don't know about now). It has other meanings in other contexts. The "gang" traveled around town in a VW Microbus owned by one of its members they called the Choomwagon.
Big BUT, Mr. Obama it seems, has no shortage of friends in the news media willing to mind their own business these days when it comes to what The Swamp's most famous resident gets up to when he has friends over.
{He still lives in D.C., full-time?}
Looks that way, but honestly, I don't know. I googled my brains out but that information is hard to come by.
{Probably a Secret Service thing.}
Perhaps.
Not long ago, I was in the process of pursuing input via my daily morning routine of carefully constructed input inputting...
{You were sucking on your first cup of Cafe Bustelo while treading water in the Dizzinformation Ocean, yes?}
That's what I said. Anyway, I was reading a Holman W. Jenkins Jr. column in the Wall Street Journal about...
{Holman who?}
A columnist I follow who writes a column, twice a week, for the WSJ. I'm a fanboy.
The column was primarily about Mr. Jenkins's opinion that President Biden needs to find a way to push Kamala Harris aside and add a strong VP candidate to the ticket to solve some of the problems standing between Biden and a second term.
{I see where you're going but I don't see Obama agreeing to be Uncle Joe's VP candidate.}
I don't think so either, although it would be interesting. But my buddy Holman happened to remark in passing on the fact that Obama declined to follow tradition and get out of Dodge, and out of the way, of his successor.
Instead, the tribune of the downtrodden residents of the Southside of Chicago bought himself an $8,100,000 mansion in D.C., two miles from the White House, one (last time I checked) of four high-end houses he owns.
{To be fair it's a relatively small mansion. It only has 9 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms... your buddy Holman?}
Yeah... if not for some obviously very bad karma. Holie's point, although it wasn't the point of his column, was that it's strange, that given there are hungry herds of reporters roaming the streets of Washington in search of prey, apparently none of them stake out the Obama House.
Rather curious given that it seems to be the favorite domicile of our former commander and chief... but I can't say for sure because of the paucity of information referred to above. You can go a-googlin' if you don't believe me.
Allegedly, there are frequent gatherings of former Obama minions (and others) who are now Biden minions who work at a different but much better-known, D.C. house.
{Well, perhaps they're just being nice and giving him some space.}
Nice national reporters? In America? In 2023? There's no feckin' way that...
Wait a second!
Your dimwitted columnist has an aha! moment.
Given that the WSJ is a national newspaper that's so committed to old-school, traditional, objective journalism they print the real names of people (subscribers only) who comment on articles and op-eds, with millions of readers, and 1,800 or so reporters in 45 countries...
Why aren't they staking out the Obama's D.C. digs?
{I hear Secret Service agents carry weapons.}
As it turns out, the street in front of Mr. Obama's house is blocked off, and only approved (and I assume carefully vetted) visitors and approved (and I assume vetted, at least I hope so) delivery drivers are given access.
But why aren't any lean and hungry reporters monitoring who attends what are supposed to be regular gatherings at the Obama House just by staking out both ends of both streets and keeping track of who is coming and going?
{What if they do but they're being chased off?}
That would be a story unto itself.
{What if they're aren't any regular meetings/gatherings/whateverings at the Obama House?}
I thought of that but according to Mr. Jenkins, who's in a position to know, this is common knowledge in Washington. Perhaps he was nudging his bosses at the WSJ.
{Whatever. Why should I/we care?}
Well, let's review. A former POTUS, despite multiple decades of tradition, lives a couple of miles from the White House in a home that's apparently his primary residence and hangs out with former staffers who are now current White House staffers (and who knows who else) and the rabid press isn't interested?
Never mind, I'm probably just paranoid. I gotta go, someone's knocking and holding up a Secret Service badge in front of the Ring camera on my front door.
Poppa loves you,
