President Obama's trip to Copenhagen, Denmark for the International Olympics Committee meeting just happens to take him out of the country the day the unemployment numbers for September are announced.
UPDATE: Just FYI, the flight to Copenhagen takes about eight hours, so at a cost of $56,518 per hour (according to a 2006 report) to fly Air Force One, the cost to taxpayers for this trip is roughly $904,288.
Since Michelle Obama is traveling separately, she has separate costs...
Remember Obama's speech in Prague? Here is what he said to Eastern Europeans:
So let me be clear: Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbors and our allies. The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven.
All statements from Barack Obama come with an expiration date. We are sure you have read this headline already:
Obama’s savings’ won’t pay for health plan, experts say.
“Despite President Barack Obama’s insistence that his $900 billion health care plan won’t increase already-huge federal budget deficits, experts say that it would – unless he raised more taxes than he’s suggesting he would.”
Obama's last night speech was full of lies, exaggerations and half-truths and yet he talked for 45 minutes trying hard to fool the public. Here is a great article by Matt Welch on ReasonOnline factchecking the speech:The lies last night began in Obama's opening paragraph. "When I spoke here last winter," he began, "credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse." In fact, Obama spoke on Feb. 24, at least six weeks after credit markets began to thaw, and one week after heproclaimed that the passage of his $787 billion stimulus marked "the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans." Obama's speech that day wasn't about staving off a collapse, it was about cleaning up the mess and tackling long-ignored issues. Such as health care.
It's never encouraging when a politician who desperately needs to convince skeptical Americans of his fiscal sobriety starts off by slurring his words. As you might then infer, Obama was just warming up. "Insurance companies," the president announced, "will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies," in part because such prevention "saves money." Looks like someone forgot to tell the Congressional Budget Office, or other non-White House sources that have analyzed the cost-benefit of prevention.
The waivers will allow the officials to participate with persons with whom and entities with which "the appointees formerly had a professional relationship," Eisen wrote, "because there was a compelling public interest in allowing it."It will be interesting to see when Obama runs for re-election, if he will have the "audacity" to claim that he had "the strongest ethics standard in U.S. government history"???
No elaboration necessary, except to say (a) The One has always relied on surrogates to do his political dirty work lest his immaculate Hopenchange-y hands seem unclean, and (b) I think this is my very favorite Naked Emperor News clip ever.
Below that, for dessert, a brief meditation on the dangers of a private public option. Or is it public private?
Please click here to hear dircetly from the ONE.
"A prominent Democratic party fund-raiser for Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton was arrested in Manhattan on Tuesday on charges that he lied about his assets to obtain a $74 million loan from Citibank, the United States Attorney’s office said.The fund-raiser, Hassan Nemazee, 59, had been a national finance chairman for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential c last August."
Also, yesterday we learned that Obama was playing golf with his good buddy, Robert Wolf, president of UBS Investment bank. UBS is famous for it's banking secrecy laws, allowing people to squirrel money away in untraceable “numbered accounts.” Secret Swiss bank accounts have become a favorite way for wealthy people in the U.S. to dodge taxes!!! Obama spent five hours golfing with this guy who happens to be his early financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign, raised $250,000 for him back in 2006, and in February was appointed by the president to the White House’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board!!HOPE & CHANGE baby!!
UPDATE: More on Hassan Nemazee here.
The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to approximately $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
The higher deficit figure, based on updated economic data, brings the White House budget office into line with outside estimates and gives further fuel to President Barack Obama's opponents, who say his spending plans are too expensive in light of budget shortfalls.
"In a campaign to dispel alleged myths about health reform, the White House has posted a “Reality Check” on its Web site. “You can keep your own insurance,” it declares. Obama’s promise is not just at odds with legislative proposals — it is also at odds with reality"So if he is knowingly saying these things, then is intentionally fooling American people, and if he really does not know the facts than he should not shove this bill down our throats ....He can wait a little, so we know exactly what we are getting.
It's been only 8 months and already the love affair is ending. Some on the left are questioning, "who is Obama"? Isn't it too late? They are going so far as to comparing Obama to Cheney !!! Can you imagine that?"What else went down in Obama's drug deal? To find out, I called C-SPAN to get a copy of the videotape of the meeting with the drug companies. I was surprised to find they didn't have such a tape despite the President's campaign promise, right there on CNN in January 2008, "These negotiations will be on C-SPAN."
This puzzled me. When Dick Cheney was caught having secret meetings with oil companies to discuss Bush's Energy Bill, we denounced the hugger-muggers as a case of foxes in the henhouse.
Cheney's secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were creepy and nasty and evil.
But the Obama crew's secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were, the President assures us, in the public interest.
We know Cheney's secret confabs were shady and corrupt because Cheney scowled out the side of his mouth. Obama grins in your face"
"He deceived the country by pursuing secret talks with the very lobbies who are the heart of disgraceful national health care situation. He entered into deals that were weighted heavily in their selfish interest rather than the national interest. In short, we have gotten from him the antithesis of what we were promised and expected -- in the substance and process of policy both. We have instead a conventionally minded politician overly respectful of the status quo and deferential to those who control and profit from it, A man with no apparent fixed convictions."
Some questions are being asked here...
“The Obama administration is refusing to quickly release government records on its ‘cash-for-clunkers’ rebate program that would substantiate — or undercut — White House claims of the program’s success, even as the president presses the Senate for a quick vote for $2 billion to boost car sales.”
Remember this: "The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm president of the United States."-- Sen. Barack Obama, March 31, 2008
"The point here is not that President Obama's reliance on czars is illegal (although it does raise significant, unresolved constitutional issues). Nor is it that these czars are bad people. It's that we have not been able to vet them, and that we have no idea what they're doing. It's that candidate Obama made a pledge to keep Congress in the light. Yet less than six months after his inauguration, the president appears intent to keep Congress more and more in the dark. Dozens of czars at a time."
