The things your librul media gets worked up about? Golf. Via Kevin Drum:
Over at Politico, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen have a long piece today about press corps unhappiness with their access to President Obama. Their timing is unfortunate, coming just a day after the press corps embarrassed itself by coming completely unglued over…..
…..their lack of access to Obama’s golf date this weekend with Tiger Woods. Seriously:
The frustrated Obama press corps neared rebellion this past holiday weekend when reporters and photographers were not even allowed onto the Floridian National Golf Club, where Obama was golfing. That breached the tradition of the pool “holding” in the clubhouse and often covering — and even questioning — the president on the first and last holes.
Yep. They “neared rebellion” not over OLC memos or drone strikes or FOIA tardiness or leak prosecutions, but over their inability to ask Obama questions—tough ones! penetrating ones!—before and after he hit the links. Sheesh.
Somewhere, several villages are missing their retards.
Also, the WH press corpse showed little to no interest in what Obama might have been discussing with Milton Carroll, chairman of Centerpoint Energy Inc., another of the people he played golf with along with Tiger.*
“CenterPoint Energy, Inc. is a public utility holding company. The Company, through its subsidiaries, conducts activities in electricity transmission and distribution, natural gas distribution and sales, interstate pipeline and gathering operations, and power generation.”
Too bad our MCM undaunted reporters don’t inform of whether/how Mr. Carroll supported Obama. And how Obama’s administration supports Mr. Carroll and his company….
*I’m aware of the ambibuity of my sentence structure, but it seems appropriate given the SCOTUS decision that corporations are people, too, to political speech at least.
Eisenhower played golf, of course. Looks like he played golf for the sake of exercise and getting away from it all for a while, not for the sake of holding a press conference on the first tee or the 18th green because the press thought he should.
Link and excerpt –
http://www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/eise/print.html
“…Eisenhower always enjoyed sports and the outdoors. At a 1958 press conference he said, “…there are three that I like all for the same reason, golf, fishing, and shooting, and I do because first, they take you into the fields. There is mild exercise, the kind that an older individual probably should have. And on top of it, it induces you to take at any one time 2 or 3 hours…where you are thinking of the bird or that ball or the wily trout.”…
…As President, Eisenhower popularized the game of golf. Whether practicing his skills on the putting greens at his farm or the White House, or playing a round at the Gettysburg Country Club, Burning Tree or Augusta National, Eisenhower thoroughly enjoyed the game. He played golf several times a week if his schedule permitted it. Like so many of Eisenhower’s leisure pursuits, golf gave him a chance to relax, even as he considered pressing problems…”
One thing this site notes about Eisenhower which I had not known before: his sense of wanting to care for the soil. I have to admit, I am favorably impressed.
“…“I shall leave the place better than I found it.”
One of the things that attracted General Eisenhower to the farm [i.e., in Gettysburg] was the poor, worn-out condition of the soil. It was a perfect place for Ike to practice his life-long interest in soil conservation.
Growing up in turn of the century Kansas, Eisenhower had witnessed first hand the plight of farmers scraping out a living from depleted soil. Milton, Eisenhower’s youngest brother, had been a high ranking official in the federal Department of Agriculture in the 1930’s. Over many dinners, the two discussed the horrid conditions of the depression era “dustbowl”…”
Well, I missed the Big Kahuna of an oil biz guest: Jim Crane, the host, the owner of the golf (and yacht) club and owner of the Houston Astros baseball team, is also a chief honcho of an oil bidness.
Oh, my. Not one article I looked through for the others in the party id’d him clearly as having such a role. Thanks a lot, MCMers (NOT).
Joannelson wrote a long and seriously deeply researched piece on Crane. I can just imagine what he had to say to Obama…. I can also imagine how impressed Obama would by by another Savvy Businessman.