I wonder if he believes he is President of the United States, or if he actually thinks of himself as King of the United States. After all, he and his party were the losers in this years elections, but he is still trying to say it is the victors that have to work with him and not vice versa. The money that he is spending on this trip, especially given the debt this nation has coupled with the deficit is wrong!
Maybe we could send Mr. Obama a card telling him to stay on vacation through January and sneak the funding kill in on him while he's gone!
Well, it's all well and good that we are being humanitarian and all but part of me is reminded of one of Sam Kinison's rants about a sandwhich. The other more common sense side notes that this is only a portion of what he is trying to accomplish. From my understanding of it his intent is to stimulate trade but I am at a loss at how this is supposed to play out in their plans. Garnering world support is Ok but when we've been treated as a dormat, and truthfully the reverse is true as well, one's scepticisim meter takes a hard hit. He should instead have these meetings here in the states. If the world bodies he is trying to reach have something to sell then let them come here and sell it saving all of the monies spent for this bit of what appears to be showboating on our dime. I wish him well as I do the people forced into the wake of this juggernaught.
Indeed. Anyone dumb enough to believe this story makes birthers look smart in comparison. The numbers are impossibly ridiculous and anonymously sourced. If there's any truth at all to this story--as opposed to the whole thing being simply made up--it's almost certainly that the 200,000,000/day figure, which supposedly came from an anonymous Indian official, was given in rupees and some numbnuts right-wing yahoo failed to make the currency conversion and just stuck a dollar sign in there. There are about 44 rupees to the dollar. $4.5 million a day for housing and presidential security for a 3000 person contingent, however, doesn't make much of a story.
As I suspected: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-post/2010/11/obamas_india_trip_clouded_by_r.html http://content.usatoday.com/communi...p----not-as-expensive-as-you-may-have-heard/1 http://factcheck.org/2010/11/ask-factcheck-trip-to-mumbai/ http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/india.asp
It costs $190 million dollars to run the War in Afghanistan per day. Somehow I doubt it will cost that much to take 3,000 people to India.
apparently the report is being denied, although it would be more clear if they would at least ballpark a true number http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/11/04/fuzzy-math-dogs-obamas-asia-trip/ Also - I'd be interested in what credible reason there was for going into such a dangerous area. Still, when the report is corrected i have to take note of it. EDIT: Also, i point everyone's attention to the "?" in the thread title.
The "?" in the thread title didn't stop anyone from buying the story wholesale without the slightest bit of research or reasoning. And I'm pretty sure the reason the White House hasn't "ballparked" a true number for the trip is because they don't discuss details of the president's security. Or should we just go ahead and tell our enemies everything?
Isn't that what the members of Congress who happened to be members of the Democratic Party demanded President George W. Bush to do when they demanded an "exit strategy" from Iraq?
I'm sorry, "Priscella." Do you have something to add regarding the topic at hand? Because what you just said is barely coherent.
By all means, explain to me how saying "the actual cost is about $7 million a day" rolls out the red carpet for an attacker.
Because the White House doesn't discuss any aspect of the President's protection. Nor should they. Frankly, conservatives should be embarrassed the way they bought this unsourced, anonymous gossip that in no way passed the smell test. It's like they hate Obama so much that it's turned off the parts of their brains that allow them to think critically. If they were ever there at all.
Nova, don't you want to be better than this? Don't you want to not discredit everything you ever say by buying into a lie more obvious than the fact that Baba has spelling problems? Seriously, what are you trying to do here? This story is too embarrassingly obviously bullshit for even the Weekly World News to publish it. You have to be dumber than a six days dead retard to believe that there's any truth to it. Don't you have any pride at all? Are you really willing to make yourself look like Baba's defective clone just in order to post a cheap shot at someone you dislike?
Well, gosh. I don't work for the White House, so I can't give you a "real answer." But I would imagine that they don't want to disclose the cost of the trip because the vast majority of the expense is related to protecting the president. And the White House has always had a policy of not discussing anything that concerns protecting the president. I think it's an answer that makes a hell of a lot more sense than "OMG! DA PRESIDENT IS SPENTING 509305 TRIZZILLON DOLLARS OF MY MONEY ON NEW SHOES FOR MICHELLE!!!1!!!" Is that the answer you want? Perhaps you'd believe it if you read it on a blog, but only if it were unsourced and anonymous, right? Just admit it: you got snookered. It happens.
Can I point out that sending the POTUS (whomever he might be) to any place on the globe is going to be expensive, and that the costs are going to be roughly the same no matter which POTUS is going, and that the determining factor in the final total is going to be how risky an environment he's headed towards? Anyone know how much it cost to fly Bush into Iraq? Certainly couldn't have been cheap, but whatever the price was, it's a helluvalot cheaper than if the fuck nugget had flown "coach."
sometimes i believe something and express outrage over it - ocassionally it turns out to be wrong and I eat crow. Happens to anyone with any self awareness. sometimes I just hear some shit on a blog or twitter or something and don't really know what to make of it so i throw it out with little or not comment and see how it plays out. Usually without really trying to go into any deep analysis of it. (This is not, after all, an academic journal we're contributing to here) This is one of those latter cases.
The answer i wanted from you, is an explanation of how saying "the trip costs X" exposes the president to ANY security risk at all. Hell, even how saying "security for the trip costs about X" even - how does knowing the approximate cost of the trip give the potential hostile ANY useful information about the security situation? don't give me "the White House said..." and don't say "that's the way it's always done" - YOU challenged ME to think this through, so follow your own advice - HOW does knowing the cost of the trip, in total or per day, create a security risk?
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...r-made-up-cost-of-obamas-india-trip-video.php Yep, completely made up.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf That's the Congressional Research Service on the cost of the GWoT operations. The $190 million number comes from dividing the $5.7 billion dollar figure for June 2010 operations by the number of days in June. So 5.7 billion / 30 days = 190 million.
Thanks. I guess I should've said why your number sparked my interest. I didn't have any doubt on a per-day basis that the number was right I was just wondering if you'd done the math yourself or were taking someone else's figures for it. To me, there's no real comparing the cost/day figures of combat operations versus a presidential junket, no matter how outrageous the trip. Some days in Afghanistan are going to be far, far more expensive, I imagine, and some days much less so.
