JUMPING OVER THE FENCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE AND OTHER POTPOURRI

Of all the federal buildings in this country, you might think that the White House would be the most secure. If you’ve ever been to the White House, or even if you’ve only seen it through the fence on Pennsylvania Avenue, or even if you’ve just seen it on TV, you may have noticed the snipers on top of the building. And you probably assumed that there were dozens of Secret Service agents all over the grounds, as well as specially-trained attack dogs. And even more Secret Service agents inside the building.

But security at the White House is being questioned at every level after a guy climbed over the fence a couple of weeks ago and started running across the lawn. Okay, you might be saying, the snipers gunned him down, right? Nope. Apparently they were too busy texting or something other than doing their jobs. Well, then, the dogs got him, right? No, that didn’t happen, either. Nobody seems to know where the dogs were or what they were doing. Subsequent press reports said that the man was “armed with a knife.” The truth is that he had a folded-up pocket knife in his pocket. But he could have been wearing a dynamite-loaded suicide vest.

But even so, he could have never been able to get into the building, right? Surely, all of the White House doors are locked all the time, right? Wrong! The front door was unlocked– and the intruder was able to just open the door and run right in!. Okay, so now the guy is inside the White House. Surely, he is going to be immediately confronted with one of more Secret Agents who will arrest him. Well, sort of. He was immediately confronted by an agent– a woman. And he knocked her aside like she wasn’t even there. So much for political correctness when it comes to assigning agents to provide security at the White House.

As the intruder continued to run through the first floor of the White House, he ran right by the stairway leading up the residence of the President and his family. The man did not run up those stairs, but he could have. Finally, an off-duty agent confronted the intruder and brought him down. The next day, President Obama said that he had complete faith in the Secret Service. But you gotta know that, behind the scenes, Michelle was kicking ass. A couple of days later, the director of the Secret Service resigned from her job.

ISIS GETS BOMBED BY A GIRL

The inequality of women in much of the Arab world, such as Syria and Iraq, is well known. That’s why it was big news last month when it was learned that the commander of a squadron of F-16 jet fighters from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that participated in air strikes against the Islamic State (ISIS) is a woman. Major Mariam Al Mansouri is the first female fighter pilot in the UAE air force. The UAE is a leader in women’s rights in the Arab world. Imagine the shock to the collective systems of the misogynist ISIS thugs when they realized that they had been bombed by a woman!

A REAL COMMITMENT

Corporate management of the giant CVS chain recently decided to change the image of the company from “drug store” to “health care destination”– even adding mini-clinics in 1700 stores and changing the name of the corporation to “CVS Health.” Probably not much of a risky strategy as the health care industry continues ot grow as a major piece of our economy. But then somebody in a CVS board room somewhere said something like,” Well, if we’re going to promote our company as a health care destination, how can we justify continuing to sell cigarettes?” There was probably a long moment of silence in the room before one of the bean counters at the other end of the table said something like, “Let me get this straight. You are suggesting that we give up $2 billion in tobacco sales to support an image change?”

That corporate conversation probably continued for weeks or months– but in the end, CVS last month discontinued all sales of tobacco products. It would be fair to call that a real commitment.

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Dennis Reeves Cooper founded Key West The Newspaper (The Blue Paper) in 1994 and was editor and publisher until he retired in 2012.