Air Force 1, New York 0

In the months and years after Hurricane Katrina, Americans weary of the media’s unrelenting disparagement of President Bush would greet any unsettling news development by forecasting the obvious. “Of course, they’ll blame Bush.”

It all began when the Bush White House was blamed for decades of negligence by Louisiana and New Orleans officials, negligence exposed by the aftermath of the deadly hurricane in 2005. And the chorus never stopped.

Gas prices up? Bush did it.

Drought in the southeastern U.S.? Bush strikes again.

Town square bombing in Baghdad. Blood on Bush’s hands, of course.

American Idol ratings slide. Has to be Bush!

Now, in these heady 100 days under Dear Leader Maobama, or as writer Michelle Malkin rails, the Obamessiah, the list of items to which Obama legitimately could be held to account is spreading faster than germs in Mexico.

Of course, the growing list is dismissed as extreme right wing racist hate speech.

Let’s see: The blown attempt to recite the Oath of Office on January 20. The white tie for the Inaugural balls, when only black tie was appropriate. The Special Olympics quip on The Tonight Show. Naming a tax-evading Treasury Secretary. The DVD gift set for the British Prime Minister. The “Obama’s Greatest Hits” iPod presented to the Queen of England. Bowing to the Saudi King. Backslapping with the openly racist President of Brazil. Appointing a Homeland Security chief who thought the 9/11 terrorists entered the U.S. through Canada.

I mean, ladies and gentlemen, these are just off the top of the head. No research team needed. It’s too easy. All little things, Obamatrons will argue. Just nit-picking by angry, rich, under-taxed white people.

But, I ask you, when do the little things add up to an enormous problem, a building threat to the dignity, perhaps even the security, of these United States?

We saw one example today in the blue skies above New York City. Read the news item to follow and think, for just a moment, what would have been said about George W. Bush had this incident happened, say, on April 27, 2008? Can you imagine the mass media outrage, the certainty that this, once and for all, proved the utter incompetence of the Bush White House?

“A jumbo jetliner that serves as Air Force One, escorted by a military jet, flew over Lower Manhattan Monday morning, frightening office workers and causing evacuations in what turned out to be a publicity operation approved by a unit of the U.S. Air Force.”

Seems the mid-air photo-op involving the “United States of America” 747 and a trailing military fighter jet was approved by one Louis Caldera, director of something called the White House military office.

This startling episode, heralded by one headline as evidence that “New York is Obama’s World, You’re Just Living in It”, is alarming on so many levels. (In a New York Daily News online poll, 89% said it was a big mistake).

I thought liberals were obsessed with this carbon footprint thing? How do you for one instant justify firing up Air Force One for a Manhattan fly-around to capture publicity photos? We’re assuming the jumbo was occupied by a cockpit crew only.

I thought B. Hussein Obama was all about transparency. Yet the Mayor of New York City didn’t know the big bird was coming to town. The White House tipped off the NYPD but ordered the force to keep the planned operation under wraps. After all, why would New Yorkers be rattled by a low-flying jumbo jet streaking across a tranquil morning skyline? Gee, why would a disabled person cringe upon hearing the Leader of the Free World using “Special Olympics” to describe his lack of bowling prowess?

Did it not occur to The Great One, or some of his Lesser Greats (or the Teleprompter), that the scene just might conjure images of 9/11? Does it not threaten to make the U.S. Air Force vulnerable to baseless criticism for seeking to engage in a photo shoot that felt more like a reenactment of a tragic day than a reaffirmation of the majesty of Air Force One in flight?

Or, if the conspiratorial mind is set loose, maybe that’s the whole point. Obama’s unrelenting quest to re-visit post-9/11 interrogation of savage murderers and “apologize” to the world for stopping inevitable future attacks, in a sickening sense, seems to go hand and hand with his indifference toward Americans, at work in office towers on a sunny Manhattan morning, who do not want history to repeat.

Forget about blame. Just think about this: a President of the U.S. who dishonors the sacrifice of citizens who died on 9/11, some 3,000 of them (by insisting we should have taken it easy on the perpetrators), and who now is, apparently, dismissive of the fears of those who lived through that awful day and went to work on Monday morning.

There are days when I am convinced the Obama White House is sinister. There are days when I believe it is destructive. And there are days, like today, when the logical conclusion is that they’re all stuck on stupid. It is one thing to be cast as stupid by a liberal media (W), quite another to demonstrate, with cameras rolling, said intelligence gaps every few days (O).