PRESIDENTIAL FUN ON THE 405

It's a little after 3PM and I am leaving Westwood  headed home to San Diego.  Ordinarily it's a miserable commute until you're south of LAX and some of the freeway merges in Orange County. Today, Thursday, the president is in town raising money for his re-election and the drive is becoming a bit of a challenge.  Surface streets like Santa Monica  and Wilshire Boulevard are being sporadically closed and the San Diego Freeway, the famous 405, is just about in gridlock.  I envision Easter and possibly Christmas passing before my car eats up the hundred miles of freeway needed to reach my home in San Elijo Hills.

With some of those patented Dirty Harry driving moves, I beat any closure of Santa Monica Boulevard and hit the southbound ramp of the 405 just in time...to sit.  And sit some more.  Then, very slowly, I merge with the tide of rubber and iron rolling South.  Luckily I always have audio entertainment with me and today is no exception.  Satellite radio, trusty Ipod and audio books are all sanity savers for situations like this.  Today, however, even these distractions aren't enough to take my mind off the fact that thousands of us are being inconvenienced by a feckless commander-in-chief who is in Los Angeles for only one reason.  He is here to shake down his Hollywood pals for campaign money.  He needs to raise a BILLION dollars to get himself re-elected, more than a year hence, to a job he shows no interest in doing.  He is in full campaign mode and will remain so until November of 2012.  Apparently it matters not that the country is now involved in multiple wars we can't afford, has millions of citizens out of work and enough debt to insure that a baby born today already owes over $46,000 to the treasury before filling his or her first diaper.

I don't think I want to know  the total cost for a presidential road trip like this.  I do know that the aviation fuel for Air Force One was nearly $200,000.  The secret service detail, helicopters, local police and fire personnel expenses have to run to the millions.  The founding fathers, I feel safe in assuming, NEVER had this in mind.

And it's not just this guy.  It's all of our elected officials.  Congress should be IN SESSION right NOW!  We need to get this out of control spending stopped.  It is a national emergency.  We need to get it handled or we all lose.  

I don't know about you, but I would happily vote for the first guy who makes a sincere promise to devote his every waking moment to straightening out the fiscal quicksand we've stepped into.

As I sit here in L.A. smog on the 405 I am willing to bet I could take up a collection from my fellow automotive captives that would top any amount of money the campaigner-in-chief will get from his show biz pals at tonight's Brentwood fund raiser.  At least there is a better chance of that than there is of getting  $46k out of my eighteen month-old grandson.  Maybe he'd take a Cheerios contribution?

Later...

I made it home in three and a half hours.  Math has never been my long suit, but I believe that works out to about a thirty mile-per-hour clip.  If I have cooled down tomorrow I'll delete this.

FAT CHANCE!