It's funny. Just yesterday I was wondering...

Sometimes the smart thing to say is nothing. Just shut up. It's none of your business, you can't change it and wouldn't if you could. Speaking up won't help, and could do great harm. Just. Shut. Up.

Whatever his other talents, shutting up isn't one of Obama's big strengths. So I wondered whether - particularly in light of how well his involvement in last summer's oil spill kerfuffle worked out for him - he'd listen to his handlers this time and obey that simple, three-word law.

Heh. Nope.

"One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us," he said.

"Inconvenience for all of us." Get a load of that.

He spake unto us these words of wisdom and fellow-feeling in Lisbon, Portugal, which he reached after a harrowing, TSA-ridden trip shoehorned into the tiny seat of an overloaded airliner, fearful of getting up and going to the john lest he break some new "security" law after a brief flight in his insanely luxurious custom 747, with all the skies and runways cleared for his convenience and personal safety. Neither he, nor Michelle nor any of the kiddies have ever seen a whole-body scanner or a TSA groper, and if one of those simpletons were to so forget himself as to snap on some blue gloves and approach a member of the Royal Family he'd be looking down the barrel of an SS MP5 before you could say "please remove your belt and place it on the table."

'All of us.' Bullshit. If he ever even met one of "us" outside his security cordon, it'd scare him to death.

As so often happens, Tam put it better than I could if I sat here and smithed words for the whole rest of the day:

The day you're standing there watching while some anonymous McDonald's washout of a rent-a-cop is giving Michelle and the girls a full probulation at Andrews AFB before y'all jet off to Martha's Vineyard or Madrid is the day you will show a shred of leadership on this issue.

Until then, you can put a sock in it.