Obama begins Hawaiian Christmas vacation by playing golf with friend arrested for soliciting prostitute (and leaves fiscal cliff negotiations hanging)

by James Nye, dailymail.co.uk
December 22nd 2012

As the nation peers over the edge of the fiscal cliff, President Obama kicked off his Christmas vacation in Hawaii today by playing a round of golf with friends - including his longtime pal Bobby Titcomb, who was arrested last year on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute.

Arriving in Hawaii aboard Air Force One late last night, the president enjoyed a morning at his family's vacation residence which lies along the shores of Kailua, which is on the island of Oahu.

Then, gathering White House chef Sam Kass, staffer Marvin Nicholson, and friends Mike Ramos and Bobby Titcomb, Mr. Obama traveled to the Kailua Marine Corps Base, where he started his round at the Kaneohe Clipper Course.

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President Obama has known Titcomb since they attended Honolulu's Punahou School together in the 1970s - the president graduated in 1979, a year before Titcomb.

Titcomb was arrested in April 2011 in an undercover prostitution sting operation after allegedly approaching an undercover police officer for sex in downtown Hawaii.

The close friend of the President pleaded no contest to the charges and was fined $500 and the judge accepted his request for a deferral, which meant that the charge was struck from his record if he stayed out of trouble with the law for six months.

At the time the 49-year-old said he did not fully agree with the facts of the case but wanted to take responsibility, according to his lawyer.

He was one of four men arrested in a police sting on April 4 after officers received reports the area was a hotbed for prostitution.

According to the spring 2007 edition of the Punahou Bulletin, he worked as a commercial fisherman and Northwest Airlines flight attendant.

The pair often get together to golf and dine when the president visits the state, and he was one of a few close friends to accompany him when he scattered the ashes of his grandmother Madelyn Dunham, who died of cancer in 2008.

Titcomb was pictured alongside Mr Obama and his half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng as they paid their last respects at the Lanai Lookout, a scenic area of coastline on the south-east corner of Oahu, Hawaii.

Titcomb has visited the White House on numerous occasions to visit the president, the most recent of these visits was during Mr. Obama's August birthday when he was included in a round of golf with the commander in chief's closest friends at the golf course of Andrews Air Force Base.

According to White House visitation records after the round of golf, President Obama invited the golfing party over to the White House for a barbecue.

Before being arrested for soliciting a prostitute in April, Titcomb was convicted of a speeding offence in March 2011.

In June 1987, he was arrested for driving under the influence, for crashing into an unattended vehicle and criminal contempt of court.

He pleaded to those charges in August 1989, when a judge fined him $290 and suspended his licence for 90 days.

He has spoken to the press about the president on several occasions.

In 2004, just before Mr Obama successfully ran to become senator for Illinois, Titcomb spoke to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

He said: 'I could see he [Obama] was bound for bigger things. He looked at the world more globally than the rest of us. There was something driven about him.

'But he also played basketball, tennis and hung out at the beach with the rest of us.

'He's honest, he's truthful and he's always encouraged the better things in you. And you always go back to those people who water your plant, who water your garden.'

The Obamas touched down in Hawaii early on Saturday, kicking off the first family's tropical holiday celebration in the president's homeland.

United States President Barack Obama and Sasha Obama head down the jetway after arriving on Air Force One in Hawaii

President Obama and his wife, Michelle, and two daughters Malia and Sasha emerged from Air Force One at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu, looking at ease and ready to enjoy a laid back holiday as they ditched their cold weather gear for warm weather wear.

The president traveled to his native state after an emotional week of mourning the Sandy Hook elementary tragedy, paying his respects to Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, who passed away this week, and the ongoing back-and-forth with Congress over the looming fiscal cliff.

With Mr Obama away from Washington, the White House released his pre-recorded Weekly Address, starring the first lady, in which they wished Americans a happy holiday and made special note of the many members of the military who were finding their way home 'to join the family and share in the holiday spirit.'

'After a decade of war, our heroes are coming home and all across America, military families are reuniting.'

'So this week, let's give thanks for our veterans and their families. And let's say a prayer for all our troops - especially those in Afghanistan - who are spending this holiday overseas, risking their lives to defend the freedoms we hold dear.'

'Our military families sacrifice so much on our behalf, and Barack and I believe that we should serve them as well as they serve this country,' the first lady added.

The president is starting his vacation after a busy week of political maneuvering and negotiation in the beltway.

On Friday, he nominated Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as his new Secretary of State and he still needs to name a permanent head to the Central Intelligence Agency and new Department of Defense head, as part of his expected cabinet shake-up in his second term.

He had also delivered a statement on extending the last Bush administration's tax cuts, urging lawmakers to reach agreement on averting tax hikes on the middle class and saying he was ready committed to reaching a deal by January 1st.

Obama said he had spoken with Republican House Speaker John Boehner and met with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid about the fiscal cliff. The president said he was an optimist and believed a deal could be hammered out.

Festive Spirit: U.S. President Barack Obama and his daughter Malia depart the White House for a Christmas vacation in Hawaii

One day after House anti-tax rebels torpedoed Republican legislation because it would raise rates on million-dollar-earners, Obama said he still wants a bill that requires the well-to-do to pay more.

'Everybody's got to give a little bit in a sensible way' to prevent the economy from pitching over a recession-threatening fiscal cliff, he said.

He spoke after talking by phone with House Speaker John Boehner - architect of the failed House bill - and meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

'I still think we can get it done,' Obama said as he struggled to pick up the pieces of weeks of failed negotiations and political maneuvering.

U.S. first lady Michelle Obama walks with her daughter Sasha on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington before the first family departure to Honolulu, Hawaii

The president spoke at the end of a day in which stocks tumbled and congressional leaders squabbled as the fiscal cliff drew implacably closer.

'How we get there, God only knows,' said Boehner at a morning news conference, referring to the increasingly tangled attempts to beat the January 1st deadline and head off the perilous combination of across-the-board tax hikes and deep spending cuts that threaten to send the economy into recession.

There was no immediate response from his office to the president's remarks.

Obama spoke shortly before a scheduled departure to join his family in Hawaii for Christmas, but in an indication of the importance of the issue, he told reporters he would be returning to the White House next week.

He said that in his negotiations with Boehner, he had offered to meet Republicans halfway when it came to taxes, and 'more than halfway' toward their target for spending cuts.

He said he remains committed to working toward a goal of longer-term deficit reduction, but in the meantime he said politics should not prevent action on legislation to keep taxes from rising for tens of millions.

'Averting this middle class tax hike is not a Democratic responsibility or a Republican responsibility. With their votes, the American people have decided that government is a shared responsibility,' he said, referring to a Congress where power is divided between the two parties.

'Everybody's got to live a little bit in a sensible way. We move forward together or we don't move forward at all,' he added.

Adding to the sense of a busy day for the president, he nominated Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, one of Washington's most respected voices on foreign policy, as his next secretary of state.

The move is the first in an expected overhaul of Obama's national security team heading into his second term.

As the nation's top diplomat, Kerry will not only be tasked with executing the president's foreign policy objectives, but will also have a hand in shaping them.

The longtime lawmaker has been in lockstep with Obama on issues like nuclear non-proliferation, but ahead of the White House in advocating aggressive policies in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere that the president later embraced.

'He is not going to need a lot of on-the-job training,' Obama said, standing alongside Kerry in a Roosevelt Room ceremony.

'Few individuals know as many presidents and prime ministers or grasp our foreign policies as firmly as John Kerry.'

He is expected to win confirmation easily in the Senate, where he has served since 1985, the last six years as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Earlier on Friday, with reverential words and warm memories, President Barack Obama led the admirers paying tribute to the late Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a war hero and senator for 50 years who was hailed for his leadership and modesty. Obama said Inouye was the one who 'hinted to me what might be possible in my own life.'

'For him freedom and dignity were not abstractions,' Obama said at the National Cathedral Service. 'They were values that he had bled for.'

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Inouye died Monday of respiratory complications. He was 88.

The tributes from the nation's political leaders were deeply personal. Vice President Joe Biden said he remembered thinking of Inouye: 'I wish I could be more like that man. He's a better man than I am.'

Former President Bill Clinton described Inouye as 'one of the most remarkable Americans I have ever known.'

Inouye was the first Japanese-American elected to both houses of Congress and the second-longest serving senator in U.S. history. He was awarded a Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor, for bravery during World War II, including a heroic effort that cost him his right arm.

'They blew his arm off in World War II, but they never, never laid a finger on his heart or his mind,' Clinton said.

On Sunday, the President and First Lady will attend a memorial service for the late Senator Daniel Inouye at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.

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