Well, good morning from sunny Southern Florida.


I find myself just a few miles from the luxurious isle of Palm Beach. Of course I have family connections here. My aunt nearing 80, still in reasonable health. Music connections, too. Nearly 70 years ago, both my father and grandfather were a part of the Ruby Newman Orchestra at the Whitehall Hotel, or Flagler Mansion, which is now a museum.

Palm Beach has long been a playground of the rich and famous. Frank Sinatra wintered here. The more famous Winter White House was once Home to the Kennedys. Marjorie Post, of Post Cereal fame, built an elaborate Mansion on 17 acres in the 1920s.

Of course you know the rest of the story. Now the Winter Whore House, the renamed Mar-a-Lago is the most debased house of debauchery in the United States.

But of course - the Head Pimp is not here this weekend. It's actually season change, and I learned yesterday that he summers in a little shack (by comparison) on his golf course in Bedminster, NJ.

Today he'll be giving the commencement address at the USMA in New York.

But alas - I was actually hoping he'd be here. "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on?" Ah, not in this case. You all know Boeing is a shell of its former self these days. They no longer build "The Queen of the Skies", and many are being retired by the airlines.

SAM 28000 and SAM 29000 are both 30-year-old 747-200s. These aircraft remain in service as the Presidential fleet. Both or either of them carry the President at any time, going by 'Air Force One' only when he is actually on board.

I was hoping I'd be able to see it this weekend. Oh, well.