Matthew Daneman writes: "President Bush's town hall meeting in Greece was the local news story of the day. And some national media reporters accompanied the president, as they do to most public events.
"But the nightly network newscasts were dominated by stem cells, filibusters and Iraq. No Rochester. No Greece.
"'In some sense, there was no news made here today,' said David Primo, assistant professor of political science at the University of Rochester."
The paper also reported : "Shortly after President Bush finished his talk about Social Security, he took the time to meet with the families of two area servicemen killed in Iraq."
The obligatory protest story, by Patrick Flanigan and Jeffrey Blackwell , noted: "Sister Grace Miller, director of the House of Mercy homeless shelter, and Harry Murray, a Nazareth College professor, lay down in the road at the entrance to the high school and were taken away by police."
It also quoted a protester named Jim Thompson, who "worried that the protest's message would get lost in the glow of the visit.
"'Bush seems to have a hypnotic allure,' he said."
Advance Team Watch
The White House advance team has done a bang-up job stocking the stage with human props for Bush's "conversations" on Social Security.
But there were a few hiccups yesterday.
Consider Debbie Brown, who the White House informed the press corps "believes Social Security reform should take place as soon as possible, and that we should not leave a broken system to be fixed by future generations."
Here's what Brown told Bush yesterday: "Well, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I was an at-home mom. I was privileged that my husband, who is here today, was willing to let me stay home and raise the kids, work part-time. But when you do that, you don't get to pay into a retirement system anywhere. So I went, got my masters degree. I have a job I'm very happy with now. But I will never be able to build a good retirement in the amount of time I have until I retire. So it's very appealing, the plans that you're talking about, because I'll be quite dependent on Social Security."
Bush replied: "Yes, set aside a little money, watch it grow at a better rate than the current Social Security system."
But Brown is in fact a perfect example of someone who could get hammered if the rules changed the way Bush seems to advocate. Right now, stay-at-home mothers are hugely subsidized by Social Security. Even if they never pay a penny in payroll taxes, they get benefits based on what their husbands earned. By contrast, in the Bush scenario, there would be little or nothing in their private accounts when they retired.
The advance team did better with Brown's 18-year-old son, Jeremy, who dutifully voiced the White House's favorite misconception (see Friday's column .)
"I like the fact that I'll have something to show for it, because people go and pay decades and decades into Social Security and when it comes time for me to retire, if we don't change, I'll have nothing to show for it," the younger Brown said.
But then there was a hiccup with the Weitzel twins.
Bush: "Now, you're contributing in to the -- both of you -- payroll tax, aren't you?
"MS. McKENNA WEITZEL: Yes, we both currently are.
"THE PRESIDENT: Pretty good-size chunk.
"MS. RILEY WEITZEL: No, not really.
"THE PRESIDENT: No, a pretty good-size chunk of your payroll tax.
"MS. RILEY WEITZEL: Oh, of course.
"MS. McKENNA WEITZEL: Yes, yes."
First Lady Watch
Jim VandeHei writes in The Washington Post: "First lady Laura Bush, reflecting on her five-day tour of the Middle East, said Tuesday that Americans should be prepared for democracy to spread slowly in the region and resist trying to impose U.S. values on other governments.
Nedra Pickler writes for the Associated Press: "She's not the shy librarian that some might think she is. Normally reserved Laura Bush showed a new outspoken side on her trip to the Middle East."
Here's the transcript of her remarks to the press en route back from Egypt.
Jefferson Morley writes in his washingtonpost.com World Opinion Roundup column: "The world says 'Guantanamo,' and the Bush administration replies 'Sesame Street.'
"Laura Bush's photo opportunity Monday with a puppet from the Egyptian version of the children's television program was a snapshot from the island of American innocence in a sea of Muslim hostility."
Pool Wars
Joseph Curl blogs for the Washington Times: "The office of first lady Laura Bush handpicked The Washington Post as the only newspaper to cover her trip to the Middle East. While the White House has a long-established travel-pool rotation system to determine which newspaper travels on Air Force One -- alphabetical, based on reporters that travel -- the FLOTUS office has no such system. . . .
"One New York Times reporter is 'infuriated' over being excluded from what has turned out to be a very newsy trip. . . .
"But this latest development has prompted several reporters to call for a formal rotation system to govern the first lady's trips. And as the New York Times reporter said: 'That's the only way we'll ever get to go.' "
Torture Watch
Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post that Timothy E. Flanigan's role in setting interrogation and detention policies while he was a White House lawyer will likely be an issue again now that Flanigan has been nominated to take over as second-in-command at the Justice Department.
"Officials have said Flanigan was involved in some of the most controversial decisions to come out of that office after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including the finding that the Geneva Conventions' protections did not apply to suspected terrorists captured on the battlefield.
"He was also involved in discussions that led to a Justice Department memo, since withdrawn, dramatically narrowing the definition of what constitutes torture, officials have said."
Chef!
Candy Sagon writes in The Washington Post: "It's been three months since the White House told executive chef Walter Scheib to pack his whisk and go, and still no replacement has been named. So what's taking so long?
"Despite some wishful thinking among Texans that first lady Laura Bush might be ready to name a Dallas chef, that doesn't appear to be the case yet. Mrs. Bush's press secretary, Susan Whitson, says they're still 'in search mode.' "
What got the last guy fired? "Scheib told Nation's Restaurant News in March that he thinks the first lady wants her own person in the kitchen. 'For better or worse, I'll always be identified as Mrs. Clinton's chef,' he said."
Here's some more background on the Texas candidates, from the Austin American-Statesman .
Today's Calendar
President Bush today toured a hydrogen fueling station at a Shell service station on Benning Road, N.E.
From the transcript : "The key is, is that we're now putting things in place today, making investments today, encouraging development of alternative sources of energy today, that will help transform our energy mix for tomorrow so that ten years from now, hopefully, we can look back and say, thankfully, Congress finally acted, and President Bush led, so that we're able to diversify away from oil and gas."
Greg Schneider wrote about the mostly symbolic $2 million pump in The Washington Post last year.
In the afternoon, Bush meets with the President of Indonesia and speaks at an Asian Pacific American Heritage Month event.
Froomkin Watch
I'm taking a looong Memorial Day weekend. No column until Tuesday.
