Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s one day visit to his ancestral homeland of Moneygall in Ireland cost the taxpayer $16.5million – much of it in overtime. Irish Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has revealed the full breakdown of the $36million security costs for the recent visits by Obama and the Queen. Shatter has confirmed to the Irish parliament that travel and subsistence allowances worth close to $5million were paid to police on duty in May. Other unspecified ‘other costs’ for police work around the visits amounted to almost $6million, according to the final figures. The Queen’s four-day visit resulted in a security...

South Africa President Jacob Zuma has snubbed the visiting Michelle Obama by sending his prisons minister to meet the first lady at the airport and failing to see her during her three-day stay. Mr Zuma was out of the country for the first day of Mrs Obama's second solo trip abroad on Tuesday and although he returned on Monday night, aides said he was "not available" to meet her. Instead, he arranged for Corrective Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to greet her on her arrival in Pretoria on Monday night, and one of his three wives, Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma, to meet her...

India is preparing for Barack Obama's first visit to the country by removing coconuts from palm trees in Mumbai to protect the US president. Mr Obama will visit India, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan and China on the 10-day tour. Photo: WHITE HOUSE Mr Obama will arrive in India on Saturday for the first leg of an Asian tour. But as well as the usual security measures that come with welcoming a a visiting dignitary, Indian authorities have decided to go one step further, by removing all natural threats to the president as well. Mani Bhavan, where Mahatma Gandhi stayed during...

The White House will, of course, stay in Washington but the heart of the famous building will move to India when President Barack Obama lands in Mumbai on Saturday. Communications set-up, nuclear button, a fleet of limousines and majority of the White House staff will be in India accompanying the President on this three-day visit that will cover Mumbai and Delhi. He will also be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast during his two-day stay there beginning Saturday. The measure has been taken as Mumbai...

Why’s he coming at Diwali? He wouldn’t host an official visit the White House on Christmas Day. So why’s he coming to India during our biggest festival? So say many residents of Mumbai, where US president Barack Obama arrives late on Friday for a three-day trip to India. The privileged few who will meet the great man might be excited by the prospect. But for many Mumbaikers, Obama will get in the way of what they like best - a good party. Fireworks, a highlight of any Diwali - after all, it is the festival of lights - will be...

The First Family's weekend getaway in Bar Harbor ended on Sunday as Air Force One took off a little after 10:00 in the morning. For the folks around the Bar Harbor area things have started to return to normal. Matthew Schneider, the General Manager at the Qarterdeck restaurant, says he's already looking ahead to the rest of the summer. "It's gonna be business as usual," he says. "We have a big cruise ship coming in tomorrow. 2200 people coming off that boat. Our normal everyday tourists are here, yeah it's back to business as usual." But for some of the...

Obama to visit Columbus on Friday President will deliver opening words at a ceremony Updated: Wednesday, 16 Jun 2010, 1:10 PM EDT COLUMBUS, Ohio (WDTN) - Air Force One will touch down in Ohio's capital city when President Obama visits on June 18. Obama will visit Columbus to meet with workers and deliver remarks at the groundbreaking of a road project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. U.S. Route 40 is set to be resurfaced along with bridge work on Interstate 71, among other projects made possible by the recovery and reinvestment act.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is canceling a scheduled meeting with Barack Obama at the White House tomorrow to return to Israel to deal with the fallout of the raid by Israeli forces to enforce the Gaza blockade on a flotilla of ships trying to run the blockade, MSNBC reports.Netanyahu is in Canada today. YNET News reports he is cutting his trip short in Canada to leave for Israel.

WASHINGTON -- During his whirlwind visit to Las Vegas two weeks ago, President Barack Obama mentioned U.S. Sen. Harry Reid by name four dozen times, gave him a big hug and talked him up as if he was a long-lost brother. In remarks that could not have been more laudatory, Obama repeatedly characterized the veteran Democratic leader as a man "made of very strong stuff" who was making the right decisions for the state back in the nation's capital.

On her first visit to Britain since husband Barack became US president, Michelle Obama dazzled London with her signature classic style Wednesday, leading one newspaper to dub her "Mighty Michelle". The First Lady accompanied her husband to Downing Street first thing for breakfast with British premier Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah before the men discussed Thursday's G20 summit and the women visited a cancer care centre. Later, she was to meet "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling when she sits next to her at a pre-summit dinner. Michelle Obama's understated chic has injected a welcome dash of class into the...

As challenges mount, ardor for Obama cools abroad By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer Barack Obama got a global standing ovation long before he was elected president. But in a fickle and fast-moving world, the overseas reviews are already turning mixed. Though much of the world will party through the night Tuesday after Obama is sworn in as America's 44th president — just as it did when he was elected — there are signs the ardor is cooling as the sheer weight of his challenges sinks in. A deepening global recession, new hostilities in the Middle East, complications in...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama paid a German company nearly $700,000 for staging, sound and lighting services at the time [Note] CQ [/NOTE] he delivered a speech this summer in Berlin and declared himself a citizen of both the U.S. and the world. Billed as a highlight of Mr. Obama's July trip to Europe, the speech [-] delivered before hundreds of thousands of people in front of the historic Victory Column in Tiergarten [-] was organized by the Berlin-based company Mediapool, opening much like a rock concert, with warm-up performances from the band Reamonn and reggae singer Patrice. The...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama paid a German company nearly $700,000 for staging, sound and lighting services at a time he delivered a speech this summer in which he declared himself a “citizen” of both the U.S. and the world. Billed as a highlight of Mr. Obama's July trip to Europe, the speech - to hundreds of thousands of people in front of the historic Victory Column in Tiergarten - was organized by the Berlin-based company Mediapool, opening much like a rock concert, with warm-up performances from the band Reamonn and reggae singer Patrice. The German company, whose Web...

Iraqis want victory in the war; Obama wants victory in the election.The status of forces agreement (SOFA) can be regarded as the crown jewel of the U.S.-led change in Iraq. ItÂ’s not an overstatement to say that it represents an aspect of victory in this war. By victory I mean that it will mark the beginning of a time in which Iraq is officially a partner of the U.S., as it will join Iraq and the U.S. in a new relationship that serves the national interests of both countries. Above all, it will be a major boost for the effort...

The Statement: Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said at a campaign stop near Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 10 that "Senator Obama tried to make a secret deal with the Iraqi government" to delay an agreement that would spell out the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Referring to an October 10 Washington Times article, Palin said Obama "tried to influence negotiations with Iraqi leaders in a way that would set back America's cause there."

[quote]EXCLUSIVE: At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn't be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval.[/quote]

At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn't be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval.

Hope this isn't duplicate - I did search first.

FLINT, Mich. -- Obama reiterated his commitment to withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq during a telephone conversation this morning with the country's foreign minister, he told reporters in a 10-minute press conference on the tarmac here. ... He said he told Zebari that negotiations for a Status of Forces agreement or strategic framework agreement between the two countries should be done in the open and with Congress's authorization and that it was important that that there be strong bipartisan support for any agreement so that it can be sustained through a future administration. He argued it would make sense to...

WASH TIMES Friday: Obama secretly tried to sway Iraqi government to ignore Bush deal on keeping troops in Iraq... Developing...

Obama Violated The Logan Act: Why Hasn't He Been Charged? The Logan Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 953 [1948]) is a single federal statute making it a crime for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States. Specifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the United States without authorization (http://law.jrank.org/pages/8357/Logan-Act.html. The Logan Act reads as follows: Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any...

Earlier this week, the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., seized upon a column in the New York Post that described Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as having urged Iraqi leaders in a private meeting to delay coming to an agreement with the Bush administration on the status of U.S. troops. "Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a drawdown of the American military presence," Post columnist Amir Taheri wrote, quoting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who told the Post that Obama, during his meeting with Iraqi leaders in July, "asked why we were...

"...Two officials of the Bush administration say that if Obama had done what the Post story asserted – which they believe to be untrue – U.S. Ambassador Crocker and embassy officials attending the meeting would have ensured that the Bush administration heard about it immediately. If such an incident occurred in front of officials of the Bush administration, it would have constituted a foreign policy breach and would have been front-page huge news; it would not have leaked out two months later in an op-ed column..."

Write your congress critters!!!!!

Obama Objects By Amir Taheri New York Post | Thursday, September 18, 2008 IN Monday's Post, I discussed how Barack Obama, during his July trip, had asked Iraqi leaders not to finalize an agreement vital to the future of US forces in Iraq - and how the effect of such a delay would be to postpone the departure of the US from Iraq beyond the time Obama himself calls for. The Obama campaign has objected. While its statement says my article was "filled with distortions," the rebuttal actually centers on a technical point: the differences between two Iraqi-US accords under...

From “Move America Forward” PAC, this TV commercial hits Obama hard on playing politics with the lives of American troops. I agree with Hot Air that Obama’s interference with the Executive Branch on war-time negotiations is the most egregious offense (the Logan Act felony). But I believe that this ad hits exactly the right note for most Americans. I predict that it will be very effective. The ad is due to air this week. (click to see ad)

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January. The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari...

Why isn't Obama denying Amir Taheri's charges? He admited to it in June to MSNBC! [NOTE: The New York Post's Amir Taheri, in "OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL", "discussed how Barack Obama, during his July trip, had asked Iraqi leaders not to finalize an agreement vital to the future of US forces in Iraq - and how the effect of such a delay would be to postpone the departure of the US from Iraq beyond the time Obama himself calls for."] We've discovered an MSNBC article which directly contradicts Obama's defense of his negotiations with the Iraq government....

IN Monday's Post, I discussed how Barack Obama, during his July trip, had asked Iraqi leaders not to finalize an agreement vital to the future of US forces in Iraq - and how the effect of such a delay would be to postpone the departure of the US from Iraq beyond the time Obama himself calls for. The Obama campaign has objected. While its statement says my article was "filled with distortions," the rebuttal actually centers on a technical point: the differences between two Iraqi-US accords under negotiation - the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA, to set rules governing US...

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January. The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yesterday Amir Taheri in the New York Post quoted the Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Obama made the demand when he visited Baghdad in July that (paraphrasing) "You guys shouldn't start talking about troop withdrawal now, you should wait 'til the next president's elected." The quote here from the Iraqi foreign minister, "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement on US troop withdrawal until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington. However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates...

Stick a fork in Obama: he's doneThe following is in today's New York Post,. The bottom line is that Barack Obama allegedly attempted to undermine official U.S. policy in Iraq, an action that could have endangered thousands of lives as well as regional peace and security, for his own political benefit. We encourage our readers to circulate this story as widely as possible, because it alone should mean the end of Obama's candidacy. OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL by Amir Taheri WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has...

<p>FLINT, Mich. – Senator Barack Obama said today he intends to visit Iraq and Afghanistan before the November election.</p> <p>Mr. Obama, who spoke to the Iraqi foreign minister by telephone this morning, said he was “encouraged” by the reductions in violence in Iraq. But he said the United States still must begin gradually withdrawing troops, at a pace of one to two brigades a month, with a goal of removing most combat troops in 16 months.</p>

The New York Post is no friend of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Any knock of Obama by its editorial writers and op-ed columnists should be taken with the whole bag of salt. That´s likely the case with this stunning allegation that´s making its way around the internet courtesy of Post Columnist Amir Taheri. He alleges that in a private talk with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari during his visit to Iraq in July, Obama allegedly tried to talk Zebari and other Iraqi leaders into stalling the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country. The alleged reason for the...

Barack Obama’s campaign denied a New York Post report Monday that said the Democratic presidential candidate privately tried to persuade Iraqi political leaders to stall an agreement on scaling back American troops in Iraq while publicly campaigning for a speedy withdrawal.Obama’s request for a delay was a major theme of his talks with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in an interview with the Post.Obama also tried to persuade the U.S. commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to offer a “realistic withdrawal date,” the Post reported. The commanders declined, the newspaper said.A top foreign policy...

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July. "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview. Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in...

Andrea Mitchell's floating of the Obama-camp accusation that John McCain cheated by overhearing Obama's responses at the Saddleback forum, as NewsBuster D.S. Hube reported, isn't the first time the NBC correspondent has made herself the propagator-in-chief of Obama's conspiracy theories. As NewsBuster Noel Sheppard has noted, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has now written NBC to protest Mitchell's behavior. Here's an excerpt from his letter to NBC News president Steve Capus [emphasis added]: "[I]nstead of taking a critical journalistic approach to this spin, Andrea Mitchell did what has become a pattern for her of simply repeating Obama campaign talking points."...

Senator Obama went to Berlin and told a crowd of 200,000 Europeans that he was speaking to them not as a candidate for President of the United States, but as “a fellow citizen of the world.” He then proceeded to insult the memories of any German over age 30 and the intelligence of every American who remembers what the Berlin Wall was all about. In Berlin, Obama credited the “people of the world” for bringing down the Berlin Wall. That will be surprising news to the people of Mexico, Switzerland and dozens of other nations who not only sat out...

George Clooney once famously declared he could never run for public office because he'd 'slept with too many women, done too many drugs and been to too many parties'. But now the Hollywood heart-throb has entered the political arena at the highest level - by becoming an unofficial advisor to US Presidential front-runner Barack Obama. Oscar-winner Clooney, 47, is said to be helping the Democratic candidate to polish his image at home and abroad.

It is clear that this US presidential election has brought to the surface a bunch of lingering issues inside the country: racial, class and gender stresses. Even more starkly it has rekindled emotions outside the US, affecting how the world views America, from presumably allied countries in Europe to the developing world and, especially the Muslim world. It is amazing how quickly the mind gets cleared of American TV and internet chatter after a business trip to Europe with an added leg in the Middle East. For starters, we may be complaining about the cost of everything in the US,...

Only this time, Barack Obama will be a little less subtle about his purposes. On the second day of the Republican Convention, Obama will do some low-key fundraising … among Hollywood heavyweights … in Geneva, Switzerland. George Clooney will arrange for a $1,000 a plate reception, but that’s just the appetizer: Academy award winning actor George Clooney is set to host a fundraiser for Barack Obama in Switzerland next month. The event, taking place on the evening of September 2 in Geneva, Switzerland will be split into two parts: a reception and a dinner. According to Obama’s National Finance Committee,...

Sen. Barack Obama's recent speech in Berlin may have been a hit with American journalists. That, however, is due to most journalists' politics, not to the profundity of Obama's remarks. They were neither profound nor stirring. Indeed, a careful study of the speech should lead an impartial observer to be concerned about Obama's grasp of the world. I started my analysis last week; I conclude this week. Let me begin with that which was praiseworthy. Obama: "This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and...

AS the presidential candidates enter the three-month sprint to November, Barack Obama must be wondering: If that didn't do it, what will? "That" is his Berlin speech. "It" is assuage anxieties about his understanding of the need to supplement diplomacy with military force. Obama exhorted Germans to be more willing to wage war, in Afghanistan. He was right to do so. But polls taken since his trip abroad don't indicate that Obama succeeded in altering the oddest aspect of this campaign: Measured against his party's surging strength, he's dramatically underperforming. Surely this is related to anxieties about his thin resume...

Most have now heard about the emails from soldiers in the field who were less than impressed by the fact that the Obamessiah failed to grace them with his holy presence. We posted on it yesterday.Well, one of the first emails to travel around the net has now been "recanted" by the sender. The email itself was genuine, but now he is asking that people stop sending it around and posting it. He said it was meant only for his family. The odds are good that what happened was that it got around, and since his name was attached, he...

August 02, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Was Obama’s Bounce a Bubble?Polls continue to show an unstable presidential campaign. By Michael Barone Just when you think you’ve got the presidential race figured out, something comes along to upend your carefully wrought conclusions. Mainstream media provided lavish coverage of Barack Obama’s trip abroad the week of July 21–25 and predicted he would get a bounce in the polls. Some of his supporters believe he has put the election away. Other observers employ the hackneyed and meaningless phrase, “It’s his to lose.� The poll numbers tell a different and more nuanced story. The...

The blast-off didn't materialize, and the Dalibama found his numbers falling in Ohio, Pennsylvania an Florida. Even worse, the late night comics were having a field day with his "inflate your tires, end the energy crisis" pronouncement. Michelle Obama returned to the political lists, and is her habit, she portrayed a grim America the outlines of which just don't register with most voters, even among many of the single moms and working mothers she was appealing to. Mrs. Obama told a crowd she didn't want Obama to run, but then changed her mind: But then I had to take a...

LAST weekend, Barack Obama dazzled crowds in Europe. Discussing international security, he spoke eloquently about needing an American-European partnership to defeat terrorism. In Paris, he said that “terrorism cannot be solved by any one country alone,” and that we should establish partnerships. In Berlin, he expressed hope that Europeans and Americans “can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks” of terrorists worldwide. But there’s one problem. We already have a counterterrorism partnership with the European Union. And it works. Indeed, despite news media caricatures of aggressive Americans feuding with pacifist Europeans, both groups are quite serious...

Barack Obama's claims that he was not going to use a planned visit to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center as a photo-op were blown out of the water tonight by a spokesman for Landstuhl who told Stars and Stripes that plans had been made for Obama's campaign press contingent to film the candidate as he entered and left the hospital.U.S. European Command spokesman Lt. Col. John Dorrian said that local and traveling press would have been brought to the entrance of Landstuhl to film Obama entering and leaving the hospital.The article also noted that it would have been permissible for Obama...

His endorsement of the Democratic candidate, against John McCain, his Republican rival, would usually be considered unusual for a Conservative. But during his recent European tour, Mr Obama proved successful at winning over politicians of all persuasions, charming David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who he met for talks in his House of Commons office. A survey carried out last month found that a third of Tory MPs want the Democrat to emerge triumphant. But the Mayor of London is the most high profile Conservative publicly to throw his weight behind Mr Obama. He told this month's Square Mile magazine: "I...

The Washington Post published a smart, thorough takedown Wednesday of the baseless charge that Barack Obama spurned a visit with wounded troops because he couldn't turn the trip into a public relations coup. SNIP After reading the Post story online, I ventured to the adjoining public comment board to see how the public was receiving news about the bogus McCain attack. I shouldn't have bothered. By mid-afternoon Wednesday, the washingtonpost.com forum had been flooded with nearly 1,400 messages. A few ventured toward rational discussion of Obama and his overseas travels, but the forum also overflowed with ignorance, profanity, impertinence and...