If you thought sending a letter to the Iranian Mullahs was bad, this could be worse

[bendog]

Damn, Bibi hasn't even lost .... yet, TK. LOL

 

[Coyote]

Obama is guilty for doing what every other president does: go on vacation.

Compare the number of O's holidays with Bush or Clinton or Bush the Elder.

Compare the cost of them.

Does the cost go down with frequent flyer miles?

Not when it costs $200,000.00 an hour to fly AF1 and support.

Obubba flew to California the other day for a fund raiser...in AF1. Michelle flew to California the same day to be on the Oprah...in another identical plane.

Bush would vacation at his own ranch. The Obamas take large parties on vacation to Hawaii and Africa. Guess which costs the least.

Bush s vacations costly

The problem is that Bush wasn’t thrifty. He was the most expensive vacation president in U.S. history. Not only did Bush spend more days on vacation than any other president, but he used Air Force One more often while on vacation than any other president.​

Citing an opinion which in itself cites Media Matters. Dubious source at best. Even still

Lets do the math:

1) According to the opinion you cited, Bush spent $43,995,899 during his entire term on trips to his vacations

2) Obama as of July 2014 spent $44,351,777 (and counting). He spent 119 days abroad, which is more than any other president at that point in their terms. Bush spent 116.

3) In 2013 alone, Obama's family trip to Sub-Saharan Africa cost American taxpayers anywhere between $60 and $100 million.

You should avoid cherrypicking Coyote. You really should.

True, that was an opinion piece.

Let's talk about cherry picking.
Presidential Vacations

Q: Is it true that George W. Bush took more vacation days than Barack Obama?

A: Yes. Before his two-week trip to Martha’s Vineyard in August, Obama’s count was 125 full or partial days and Bush’s total at the same point in his presidency was 407.​

Now, that's just days as of August 2014 with Bush having more than 3 times the number of days. Bush's domestic trips used Air Force One, I might add.

Now, you make a point about "days abroad" - 119 vs 116. That is statistically negligable at this point. A 3 day difference.

I also found the source where you "did your math" but neglected to note - The Obamas Have Spent Over 44 351 777.12 On Travel The Daily Caller which makes some interesting points. (note - the Daily Caller is as biased a source as Media Matters).

In 2010, Obama flew aboard Air Force One 172 times, nearly every other day. Just the cost of flying aboard Air Force One to Obama’s hometown of Chicago reportedly hovers around $180,000 per hour.

The implication of the above, is that these were vacation days. Were they figured into your costs? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that for security reasons - the President has to use Air Force One. Can you imagine the scheduling upset, not to mention political hay making if he used commercial airlines?

A lot of blatently false rumors fly around concerning Presidential vacations. The fact is - most presidential vacations are working vacations. Bush outfitted (at taxpayer expense) his ranch for this purpose. Obama is criticized for spending vacations at "exclusive resorts" or Hawaii. Yet Bush spent a considerable amount of time at Kennebunkport (pretty exclusive). Hawaii is Obama's childhood home and part of the US and going there or too Chicago is no different than Bush's Crawford vacations.


Factcheck, not an opinion piece, has the following to say just on the use of Airforce One:

Obama's Air Force One Travel

Contrary to what the e-mail about Obama's use of Air Force One suggests, Mark Knoller of CBS News is not the author of this e-mail. The portion of the e-mail beginning with the line, "Last year Obama flew in Air Force One 172 times, almost every other day," through the line, "Aides indicate the 'Real Good Talker' believes we need more," was written by Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times. Malcolm plucked several figures from Knoller's piece, which was titled "Obama's 2010: By the Numbers," for his own blog post titled "Obama and Air Force One: It's good to have a 747." Everything else about the Atlas Air training crew and the costs to taxpayers, which we'll get to later, was added by the anonymous author of this e-mail, who lifted Malcolm's piece.

It is true that Knoller originally reported in his 2010 year-end article that Obama took 172 flights on Air Force One in the second year of his presidency. And that does work out to be almost one flight every other day, as Malcolm wrote in his own blog post.

We checked with the U.S. Air Force's 89th Airlift Wing, which oversees the president's travel on Air Force One, to see what it had for the number of flights taken by Obama last year. The statistics the 89th Airlift Wing provided to us show that the president took 72 total "missions" and 177 total "sorties" in 2010. Missions are the number of trips the president took from Andrews Air Force Base and back, whereas sorties represent the number of individual flights in a mission.

For example, a log of the president's travel from June 23-24, 2011, shows him departing from Andrews Air Force Base at 1:00 pm on June 23 and arriving back at the base at 1:40 pm on June 24, with multiple stops in between:

Obama Travel Schedule

1:00 PM: The President departs Joint Base Andrews en route Fort Drum, New York

2:15 PM: The President arrives Fort Drum, New York

3:10 PM: The President meets with Gold Star Families

4:15 PM: The President departs Fort Drum en route New York City, New York

5:10 PM: The President arrives New York City, New York

7:05 PM: The President delivers remarks at a DNC event

8:00 PM: The President delivers remarks at a DNC event

9:50 PM: The President delivers remarks at a DNC event

11:05 PM: The President departs New York City, New York en route Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

12:15 AM: The President arrives Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

10:45 AM: The President tours Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC)

11:00 AM: The President delivers remarks on the need to focus on cross-cutting technologies that will enhance the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing and speed up ideas from the drawing board to the manufacturing floor

12:45 PM: The President departs Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1:40 PM: The President arrives at Andrews Air Force Base

Source: 89th Airlift Wing

This would be counted as one mission and four sorties, according to the airlift group.

So, the Air Force has a slightly higher count for flights than Knoller — 177 versus 172. But Maj. Shelly Lai, public affairs director of the 89th Airlift Wing, said that just reporting the number of sorties could also potentially give readers the wrong impression about the number of times Obama has actually left Washington on Air Force One.

Maj. Lai, July 5: There is just a difference between how the information is being represented. Most people consider the time you leave your home to the time you return to be one trip. Even if they made multiple stops while they were out. It's the same in this instance. When people hear a 177 trips, they believe that means the President left DC a 177 times. As you can see, that isn't the case.

To put Obama's use of Air Force One into context, we also asked for travel data for his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Bush took 89 missions and 259 sorties in 2002, his second year as president, according to the airlift group. And in his first two years, Bush took 148 missions with 416 sorties, compared with 126 missions with 324 sorties for Obama over two years.

As for the e-mail's other claims: It is true that Atlas Air was awarded a government contract to train Air Force One pilots and engineers. But we don't know if the anonymous author of this e-mail — who claims to be one of the company's training instructors — is relaying an honest account of the way the crew feels about the president's travel. We also don't know if Obama "spent over $100 million taxpayer dollars flying around in Air Force One" last year, or during his entire presidency. The 89th Airlift Wing didn't have many of the figures we would need to calculate this — such as total flight hours for each year, and a breakdown of each jet used by the president to travel and its operating cost.

This addresses a lot of rumors that people seem to depend on in calculating the costs associated with presidential vacations and also makes one important point - we don't have sufficient data to really calculate. In fact, I kept trying to google "which president spent the most in vacations" and variations there of but couldn't really find anything definitive.

For trips abroad - it's part of the job and as you pointed out, there is only a 3-day difference.

So let's look at how often their families or spouses traveled with them: National Taxpayers Union - Which First Lady Flies Highest Michelle vs. Laura

Is the Obama family really so outrageous is this a selective picking at the data and unsubstantiated claims?

 

[bendog]

The speaker of the house invites the PM to give a speech before congress, and Faux accuses dems of influencing elections. You cannot make the shite up ..... wait Faux just did! LOL

 

[Coyote]

The speaker of the house invites the PM to give a speech before congress, and Faux accuses dems of influencing elections. You cannot make the shite up ..... wait Faux just did! LOL

And, just to make it even more special - the PM states it is NOT a political stunt and then uses it for a campaign add

 

[JakeStarkey]

Bibi and too many of our GOP senators should not be in office.

 

[asaratis]

Bibi and too many of our GOP senators should not be in office.

Obama the Appeasing Marxist should not be in office....nor should any of his non-elected 'Czars'.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Asaritis, give us the traditional defintion of Marxism, and then give us yours.

 

[Misty]

Unnamed sources and no evidence.

Bibi and the Republicans are in bed together. Pathetic.

Did you dislike Gold Meir 4th prime minister to Israel? Cuz she was awesome a liberal and she kicked fucking ass to protect her country.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Asaritis, I am waiting for you to give the traditional definition of Marxism then yours.

 

[Coyote]

Unnamed sources and no evidence.

Bibi and the Republicans are in bed together. Pathetic.

Did you dislike Gold Meir 4th prime minister to Israel? Cuz she was awesome a liberal and she kicked fucking ass to protect her country.

Nope...I didn't have feelings one way or the other about her.

 

[asaratis]

Asaritis, I am waiting for you to give the traditional definition of Marxism then yours.

Please do hold your breath.

There's no need for a sidebar discussion of definitions. To think that I am a loner in believing that Obama is Marxist would imply that one has never searched the web on the possibility of it or listened to others speak of it. Obama once stated that he chose his friends wisely...including "my Marxist professors". I believe he did that in one of his mediocre books. His daddy was Marxist. He wrote another mediocre book about his father's dreams. His preacher is Marxist. He sat in Jeremiah's church house for decades.

The Constitution is all that keeps Obama from being a Marxist dictator.

Google Obama and Marxism....see what you get. I don't have time to parse definitions and which aspects of any fit Obama.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Asaritis admits he has not a clue. He throws around definitions without understanding the meanings. It all comes down to this: he hates Obama. OK.

 

[asaratis]

Asaritis admits he has not a clue. He throws around definitions without understanding the meanings. It all comes down to this: he hates Obama. OK.

Close on the conclusion...but your preface is bullshit. I've admitted nothing. I totally understand what the words mean. You are simply too lazy to search the topic and see how multitudes of interested people have researched Obama's history from childhood and found evidence of Marxist and communist influences of the boy's mind.

Don't expect me to do your research.


Here's the real logic behind your almost correct conclusion:

I despise Marxism.

Obama is a Marxist.

Therefore:
I despise Obama.

Hate and despise are not the same. Look it up! Learn something today. Learn something every day. Otherwise you will remain a ninnyhammer forever.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Asaritis continues to toss around words the definitions of which he can't even comprehend. He is a concrete learner, you see.