Our jet-set president!
This is from Mark Knoller of CBS.
The pilots and crew of Air Force One are flying more hours than a rookie on a beer run. They are tired of it too, and are adding more crew to Air Force-1, – I know this for a fact because I’m one of the instructors that trains the crews. Our company (Atlas Air) has had the Air Force-1 and E-4 contract for over two years and I’ve been doing it for about 8 months now.
Last year (2010) Obama flew in Air Force One 172 times, almost every other day.
White House officials have been telling reporters in recent days that the Democrat doesn’t intend to hang around the White House quite so much in 2011. They explain he wants to get out more around the country because, as everyone knows, that midterm election shellacking on Nov. 2 had nothing to do with his health care bill, over-spending or other policies, and everything to do with Obama’s not adequately explaining himself to his countrymen and women.
And with only 673 days remaining in Obama’s never ending presidential campaign, the incumbent’s travel pace will not likely slacken.
At an Air Force-estimated cost of $181,757 per flight HOUR (not to mention the additional travel costs of Marine One, Secret Service, logistics and local police overtime), that’s a lot of frequent flier dollars going into Obama’s carbon footprint.
We are privy to some of these numbers thanks to CBS’ Mark Knoller, a bearded national treasure trove of presidential stats. According to Knoller’s copious notes, during the last year, Obama made 65 domestic trips over 104 days, and six trips to eight countries over 22 days. Not counting six vacation trips over 32 days.
He took 196 helicopter trips, signed 203 pieces of legislation and squeezed in 29 rounds of left-handed golf.
Obama last year gave 491 speeches, remarks or statements. That’s more talking than goes on in some entire families, at least from fatherly mouths.
In fact, even including the 24 days of 2010 that we never saw Obama in public, his speaking works out to about one official utterance every 11 waking hours. Aides indicate the “Real Good Talker” believes we need more.
Related: Obama spends nearly half his presidency outside Washington , plans to travel more
Related: Vacationer-in-Chief Spends $1.75 Million to Visit Hawaiian Chums
Obama has spent over $100 million taxpayer dollars flying around in Air Force One, and probably another $100 million on his entourage. Obama is just another tin-pot dictator living lavishly at the expense of his subjects.
And we seniors have to “tighten our belts” because we aren’t getting a COLA again this year… and none last year!
THANKS TO ALL WHO HELPED PUT THIS GREEDY WINDBAG IN OFFICE!!
BE MORE CAREFUL NEXT TIME!!
Golfing While the Constitution Burns
June 21, 2011 — budsimmonsGolfing While the Constitution Burns
Ben Johnson, The White House Watch
When Barack Obama and John Boehner played golf this weekend, they played
on the same team. How appropriate.
Barack Obama has violated the Constitution’s war-making power – reserved by
Article I, Section 8,
to Congress – from the moment he sent American troops into harm’s way without
Congressional approval. He has been violating the War Powers Resolution since at
least the 60th day of that campaign. And he has violated the most
liberal reading of that act – the one Boehner has adopted as his own – since
this weekend. Yet despite the letter
Boehner authored last week, which the media presented as an “ultimatum,”
Obama has neither obtained Congressional authorization nor removed our troops.
Boehner’s
letter weakly supplicated “I sincerely hope the Administration will
faithfully comply with the War Powers Resolution,” but at least it seemed to set
this weekend as a definitive cut-off point.
The “deadline” has come and gone, and Obama has not answered the most burning
questions of the mission’s legality to anyone’s satisfaction. Instead, the
president has thumbed his nose at Congress in general, Boehner in particular,
and the American people at large, and the Speaker-cum-caddy has made no
meaningful response whatsoever.
Obama insists the American role in Libya is too diminutive to constitute
“hostilities,” so his action is perfectly legal. White House spokesman Jay
Carney repeated
his boss’s party line at Monday’s press conference, stating, “the War Powers
Resolution does not need to be involved because the ‘hostilities’ clause of that
resolution is not met.” However, soldiers in Libya are receiving an additional
$25
a month in “imminent danger pay.” American drones still rain missiles down
upon military targets. NATO is alternately
bombing
Muammar Qaddafi’s home and killing the innocent Libyan civilians they are
purportedly protecting. (We had to kill the civilians in order to save them?)
NATO admitted (at
least) one of its bombs went off target on Sunday, killing
nine civilians in Tripoli, while allied bombs allegedly killed
15 civilians in Sorman on Monday.
Not to worry, though; Defense Secretary Robert Gates said over the weekend,
in a confidence-builder worthy of Churchill, “I think this is
going to end OK.” Gates, who once
opposed the Libyan adventure, has pulled
a 180 on the matter.
Even Obama’s short-term fellow Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, agrees
Libya more than rises to the level of hostilities.
So, too, we have learned, do the best legal minds of Obama’s administration
(not a coveted nor much-contested title, I assure you). In overruling
his own lawyers, Obama rejected the
considered conclusions of Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon’s general counsel,
and Caroline Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal
Counsel (OLC). The New York Times reported
it is “extraordinarily rare” for any president to overrule the OLC. “Under
normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding
on the executive branch.”
But then, nothing in the Obama administration transpires under “normal
circumstances.”
Two former OLC lawyers outlined precisely how unusual the dismissal was….
Read
more.