Free Republic

The Car That Thinks It's A Tank: Inside Obama's 'Beast' Cadillac that is being flown from the U.S. to drive down the Mall By CHRIS GREENWOOD and REBECCA ENGLISH 23rd May 2011 An extraordinary entourage will accompany President Obama and his wife Michelle when they sweep into London tomorrow. The team of at least 500 will include White House aides, a six-doctor medical team and a squad of personal chefs. There will be more than 200 secret service agents, many of them armed. The President will travel in ‘The Beast’, his gigantic bomb-proof General Motors Cadillac with eight-inch thick armour-plating...

Newsmax Watch Out! Feds Could Seize Your Private Retirement Savings Saturday, May 21, 2011 04:58 PM By: Greg Brown How long before Uncle Sam hits private pensions to balance the public budget? It’s quickly becoming a reasonable question to ask. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is ringing alarm bells across Washington, D.C., warning of a disastrous outcome if an agreement to raise the debt ceiling is not made soon. “A default would call into question, for the first time, the full faith and credit of the U.S. Pensions, Federal Government, Debt Ceiling, Retirementgovernment,” Geithner wrote in a letter Friday to Sen....

Obama started 44 minutes late, as usual. Praises Hillary, intros with talk of winding down war in Iraq and brags about killing Osama....

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.” “I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.

A big portion of President Obama's wealth is invested in federal debt, according to a financial disclosure form released Monday. The president and First Lady Michelle Obama had assets valued between $2.8 million and $11.8 million in 2010. And between $2 million and $10 million of their assets are invested in super-safe U.S. Treasury securities, according to the disclosure form. That's up from $1.5 million to $6 million reported invested in Treasury notes and bills in 2009. They also have between $350,000 and $800,000 invested in IRAs and other retirement funds, according to the form. And the couple has between...

Soon the government will be able to send you text messages and amber alerts. Liberals always try to paper over government intrusion into our lives with noise about how it will be good for us (it’ll make us all safer!). We’ll be able to opt out of these invasions, except for messages from the president. Messages from the king cannot be turned off. So we can ignore directions from Michelle about what to have for lunch, but not Obama’s incessant campaigning. Our Founding Fathers didn’t presage cellular technology but they were pretty clear about our rights to be free from...

Obama floats plan to tax cars by the mile By Pete Kasperowicz - 05/05/11 07:45 AM ET The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive. The plan is a part of the administration's "Transportation Opportunities Act," an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly. This follows a March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven. Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT)...

~ EXCERPT ~ The U.S. government plans to sell a significant share of its remaining stake in General Motors Co. this summer despite the disappointing performance of the auto maker's stock, people familiar with the matter said. A sale within the next several months would almost certainly mean U.S. taxpayers will take a loss on their $50 billion rescue of the Detroit auto maker in 2009. To break even, the U.S. Treasury would need to sell its remaining stake—about 500 million shares—at $53 apiece. GM closed off 27 cents a share at $29.97 in 4 p.m. trading Monday on the...

In an effort to allay fears that S&P’s judgment — one the White House has called “political” — will weaken global confidence in the U.S. economy, press secretary Jay Carney flatly dismissed the pessimistic assessment of how realistic a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement really is. When it comes to politics, Carney said, the White House knows better than S&P or the financial markets about what is possible in Washington. “We simply believe that that process is better,” Carney told reporters on Monday. “We believe that the political process will outperform the S&P’s expectations.”

Senior Advisor to the President David Plouffe conceded this morning that some of the cuts the White House agreed to in order to avoid a government shutdown were draconian. In an interview on "This Week" with anchor Christiane Amanpour, he called the cuts both "draconian" and "historic." "The Senate majority called what the Speaker was asking for, just in February," Amanpour said, "he called it 'draconian.'" She pointed out the cuts were now being called historic. "I mean, which is it? Is it draconian yesterday and historic today?" Amanpour pressed. "Well," Plouffe replied, "some of the cuts were draconian. Because...

While eating at an "official dinner" with Chile's president Monday night, President Obama was updated throughout the meal on the downed American plane in Libya, the White House says. The national security adviser Tom Donilon told Obama of the plane at 7:45 p.m., before the dinner, and kept Obama updated during the ride, telling him that the United States was "in touch with the pilots on the ground," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Tuesday.

Hours before boarding Air Force One for Brazil, President Obama defended his three-country visit to Latin America with a reminder that the region will play a critical role in helping the United States meet his goal of doubling exports. In an opinion piece in USA Today on Friday, Obama acknowledged some of the criticism that had been levied in his direction about the trip's timing. He opened by saying the United States will continue to "do everything we can" to address the crises in the Middle East and in Japan, even as he departs for Brazil, Chile and El Salvador....

Mr Obama has refused to scrap a five-day trip to Latin America that will take him to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador. Resisting demands that he should remain at home in the White House to deal with the international response to Japan’s nuclear crisis and Colonel Gaddafi’s crackdown on anti-government rebels, the president insists he can stay on top of the fast-moving developments while on the road. Some Republican critics have complained the sunshine trip symbolises Mr Obama’s lack of leadership at a time of international chaos. But White House press secretary Jay Carney said Mr Obama felt the visit...

What’s in your wallet? Not much — especially after a trip to the supermarket. At the checkout counter at the D’Agostino in Hell’s Kitchen, retired ballerina Carol Sumner shook her head over the increasingly steep price of her weekly grocery bill. “It’s outrageous,” said Sumner, a senior citizen who was making a pit stop to buy soda, ice cream and cake for a party she was throwing. “I feel like I am getting fleeced and taken advantage of. I don’t buy meat anymore. I can’t. It’s too expensive.” The price index for groceries is expected to surge 3 to 4...

In his Friday press conference to discuss gas prices, President Obama was rather defensive, straining to counter the notion that his administration has been unfriendly to oil drilling, something most people would like to see a lot more of these days. Where do people get that notion? Perhaps his Interior Department appealing a judge’s ruling that it act on several pending deepwater permits had something to with it. Obama claimed repeatedly that he is not against drilling, then made the following comments:

US is broke and Obama/Clinton are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to refurbish radical mosques in Middle East! Incredible news story from in Atlanta. Watch it at link, or here http://www.wsbtv.com/video/25764282/index..html

The gall of this man: After he signed the short-term bill yesterday, President Obama said in a statement, “I’m calling on Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress to begin meeting immediately with the Vice President, my Chief of Staff, and Budget Director so we can find common ground on a budget that makes sure we are living within our means.” Saying that this country must live within its means is an audacious statement coming from a president who championed an $814 billion failed stimulus bill, all of which was paid for with deficit spending. It’s audacious coming from an...

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was in Houston this weekend talking with oil executives who are eager to start drilling again in the Gulf of Mexico. That may sound like progress, but after the meeting Salazar said that nothing had changed. He was not ready to approve any new drilling. Despite everything that energy companies have done to devise advanced containment systems, Salazar is unwilling to issue a single new permit. Systems constructed by the nonprofit Marine Well Containment Company and other entities are now able to handle a flow equal or greater than that experienced during the Deepwater Horizon accident...

Vacation, what's a vacation?

Over at NRO, Jay Nordlinger makes an incredibly good point: Barack Obama should be urging calm in Wisconsin, no matter WHAT side of the underlying issue he is on. It is not just unpresidential of him, but despicable, for him in effect to be urging on the mass demonstrations. But as J. Christian Adams, Justice Department whistle-blower extraordinaire, reminded me in an email accompanying this post of his, these are not only the tactics always favored by the left in general, but specifically the sorts of tactics Obama himself was trained in -- AND exactly what I myself warned about...