Obama's living it up while millions jobless and struggling.

[MohdSalleh]

The Obama family, first family of the USA.

 

[TrueRange]

Quote from Trader666:



Incredibly, the Obamas have long portrayed themselves as precisely such commoners. Just this month, Obama told ABC the First Couple is "not that far removed from what most Americans are going through." And that "it was just a few years ago that we had high credit card balances, we had two kids, thinking about college. We had our own retirement accounts, wondering if we were going to be able to get enough assets in there."

Where I come from we have a name for this. It rhymes with Bigger-ditch.

 

[omegapoint]

Right, and republicans care about working people ...when? When
they see the opportunity to use it to siphon more money to
their real constiutuency. shameless.

 

[Mercor]

Quote from Trader666:

All? What about the democrap majority in the House and the Senate since Jan 07 (almost 4 years)?

Anyway... here's what Obama said HIS policies would do versus reality:

<img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2905320>

The authors chart is very accurate.
The stimulus was not about helping the economy. It was a special interests payoff.
Her chart is uncanny showing what will happen to unemployment with no stimulus, and there was no stimulus program.

BTW, Romer, the author, just resigned to go back to the University where she will corrupt thousands of students with her ideas.

 

[bugscoe]

Obama Earmarks $1 Billion in Stimulus Money for Company in Illinois
By Brian Darling
Friday, August 6th at 10:15AM EDT

The biggest earmark in American history has been doled out to a company in Illinois, the President’s home state, in the name of green jobs. The President’s $862 billion Stimulus plan has been an abysmal failure. It provided states and localities with billions in bailout moneys, funded wasteful projects like the Monkey cocaine study at Wake Forest and given false hope to Americans that the President has ideas to turn around the economy. This earmark is an outrage and the signature project of the President’s Stimulus plan. Thankfully, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is sounding the alarm bells and educating the American people to this new Obama outrage.

President Obama is earmarking $1 billion in Stimulus money “to build FutureGen 2.0, a clean coal repowering program and carbon dioxide (CO2) storage network” in his home state of Illinois. According to a Department of Energy press release, this billion is being provided to ”FutureGen Alliance, Ameren Energy Resources, Babcock & Wilcox, and Air Liquide Process & Costruction, Inc. to build FutureGen 2.0, a clean coal repowering program and carbon dioxide (CO2) storage network.” That is right — $1 billion. This is the largest earmark of money in U.S. history and they are taking money right out of your pocket to pay for it.

The Department of Energy projects 1,900 jobs as a result of $1,000,000,000 in new spending. This works out to $526,315.79 of your tax dollars spent per job. A half million dollars per job seems to be a bad deal for the taxpayer. Of more concern to the taxpayer, Senator Tom Coburn believes this project to be more about bringing home pork to Illinois than providing stimulus to average Americans.

According to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu yesterday:

Today’s announcement will help ensure the US remains competitive in a carbon constrained economy, creating jobs while reducing greenhouse gas pollution. This investment in the world’s first, commercial-scale, oxy-combustion power plant will help to open up the over $300 billion market for coal unit repowering and position the country as a leader in an important part of the global clean energy economy

Although the President promised to keep the $862 billion stimulus plan free from earmarks, this project was an earmark in the Stimulus, yet the Washington Post reported on March 6, 2009:

Deep inside the economic stimulus package is a $1 billion prize that, in five short words, shows the benefits of being in power in Washington. The funding, for “fossil energy research and development,” is likely to go to a power plant in a small Illinois town, a project whose longtime backers include a group of powerful lawmakers from the state, among them President Obama.

Now, the Department of Energy has announced the $1 billion in funding for the earmark in President Obama’s home state. This earmark funnels tax dollars from Americans to Illinois. Senator Tom Coburn criticized the first version of this project, FutureGen 1.0, and an argues that this project calls in to question President Obama’s Stimulus plan.

Senator Coburn said of the $1 billion earmark:

This costly and gratuitous earmark further calls into question the integrity of the Recovery Act. This decision appears to have more to do with politics and geography than science. FutureGen 1.0 was called ‘YesterGen’ because it had little scientific value. Now, taxpayers are being forced to finance the largest pork-barrel project in our nation’s history with borrowed money. Adding another $1 billion to our debt for a dubious project will only delay our recovery.

Coburn isn’t the only one concerned. Some greenies on left argue that this project is not efficient and will not do enough to protect the environment. The original FutureGen plan was scaled back and the promises of capturing 90% of carbon emissions became a promise FutureGen could not keep.

The environmental group, the Clean Air Taskforce, was quoted in the Wyoming Business Report:

The reinstatement of FutureGen should be an important milestone and a day for celebration. Unfortunately, it is not. In scaling back the amount of carbon the plant will capture from 90 percent to 60 percent in order to cut costs, the Obama Administration has turned FutureGen to YesterGen.

For months, the Obama Administration and Congress said that the Stimulus language was not an earmark for this company in Illinois. We now know that assertion to be false. The actions yesterday from Secretary of Energy Steven Chu confirm suspicions that this is the biggest earmark in American history. FutureGen in Matoon, Illinois gets $1 billion and average Americans are provided with the bill.

President Obama, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Secretary Chu need to explain to the American people how this happened. How did this earmark get into the Stimulus? Why is the Obama Administration funnelling $1 billion into Illinois for a project of dubious effectiveness. Unemployment today stands at 9.5% and the Stimulus has proven to have had no effect on unemployment rates.

Ths President’s Stimulus is a failure and many on the Hill are concerned about this project as evidence of special treatment for some companies in the President’s home state. This is exactly the type of waste, fraud and abuse that motivate average Americans to join the Tea Party movement to continue to distrust the federal government.

 

[Larson]

Quote from Trader666:

Material girl Michelle Obama is a modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation

Andrea Tantaros
Thursday, August 5th 2010, 1:53 AM

<img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2917132>

Sacrifice is something that many Americans are becoming all too familiar with during this economic downturn. It was a key theme in President Obama's inaugural address to the nation, and he's referenced it numerous times when lecturing the country on how to get back on its feet.

But while most of the country is pinching pennies and downsizing summer sojourns - or forgoing them altogether - the Obamas don't seem to be heeding their own advice. While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her "closest friends." According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.

Reports are calling the lodgings of Obama's Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, "luxurious," "posh" and "a millionaires' playground." Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two.

To be clear, what the Obamas do with their money is one thing; what they do with ours is another. Transporting and housing the estimated 70 Secret Service agents who will flank the material girl will cost the taxpayers a pretty penny.

Perhaps it could be that the Obamas, who seem to fancy themselves more along the lines of international celebrities than actual leaders, espouse a different view of sacrifice. When Michelle Obama accompanied her husband to Copenhagen along with best buddy Oprah Winfrey, she billed the trip - an ultimately unsuccessful bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago - as follows: "As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the President to come for these few days, so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home."

A quick jaunt to Denmark is a sacrifice? What portraits in courage!

The Obama modus operandi is becoming clear. From lavish trips to Spain to reportedly flying Bo, the President's Portuguese water dog, on a separate aircraft to vacation with them in Maine, to a date night in New York City that perhaps cost nearly $100,000, their idea of austerity is really just the lap of luxury, at least for ordinary folks.

Incredibly, the Obamas have long portrayed themselves as precisely such commoners. Just this month, Obama told ABC the First Couple is "not that far removed from what most Americans are going through." And that "it was just a few years ago that we had high credit card balances, we had two kids, thinking about college. We had our own retirement accounts, wondering if we were going to be able to get enough assets in there."

If that's true, why not select a more appropriate destination like the California coast? The scenery is just as gorgeous as that of Spain, and instead of patronizing a foreign country they would be pumping money into an American economy that desperately needs it. Camp David wouldn't exactly be slumming it, either. A long weekend there would really send a message of responsibility, leadership and compassion. For a couple that has sharply criticized former President George W. Bush so widely, they could stand to follow his example for once and select a more low-key locale, as Bush regularly did in his Texas vacations.

Instead, Michelle Obama seems more like a modern-day Marie Antoinette - the French queen who spent extravagantly on clothes and jewels without a thought for her subjects' plight - than an average mother of two. While she's spent her time in the White House telling parents they should relieve their chubby kids' dependency on sugar and stressing the importance of an organic veggie garden, hopping a jet to Europe to meet with Spanish royalty isn't the visual the White House probably wants to project. Perhaps they've forgotten the damning image of John Kerry, on the eve of the 2004 election, windsurfing off the coast of Nantucket?

I don't begrudge anyone rest and relaxation when they work hard. We all need downtime - the First Family included. It's the extravagance of Michelle Obama's trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President Obama's demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy and perpetuates a disconnect between the country and its leaders. Toning down the flash would humanize the Obamas and signify that they sympathize with the setbacks of the people they were elected to serve.

In January, President Obama insisted that "everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good. Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game."

If sacrifice is the precursor to change, what will the family that ran on change offer up? Elitist doublespeak won't cut it.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions...inette_on_a_glitzy_spanish.html#ixzz0vka65lxZ

I predict this lecturing windbag will wind up like Carter. Out of office.

 

[shortie]

LOL at "Impeach"

Re-elect 5 29.41%
Vote out 4 23.53%
Impeach 8 47.06%
Total: 17 votes 100%

 

[Hello]

Nothing to see here folks, Didnt you guys get the memo? Nancy Pelosi has already drained the swamp of corruption.....Now apparently all the libtards are hanging out doing cocaine with monkeys.....

 

[Ricter]

So the "special interests" ie. the black tie and ballgown set got most of the stimulus money. Yet, in other threads you argue that we cannot increase the tax rate (by letting the Bush tax cuts expire) on this group because they create businesses and jobs with their money... lol.

 

[rew]

Quote from Range Rover:

Agree or not with his polices he has done more in 2 years then almost any other president so obviously the golf and dinners aren't getting in the way of his way of his presidential duties

I wish Obama would just head to the beach and smoke dope all day. Anything but push through more of his legislation.