Obama’s LOL sequester cuts: White House tours, then 60,000 border security agents
It’s been a very strange, unsettling political news week:
Tours off
President Obama’s sequester idea of forced budget cuts kicked in. Mr. Spend Somemore doesn’t like the idea any longer. So, in true petulant Chicago style the first thing the Obama administration cut was White House tours.
These tours of the people’s house that Obama and his mother-in-law occupy at taxpayer expense largely involve volunteer guides. So, the savings don’t equal the cost of one minute of one engine on Air Force One.
The real reason: Tour tickets are handed to visiting constituents as free gifts by members of Congress, the ones who voted for the sequester that Obama suggested but doesn’t favor today. How do you like your sequester now, guys?
Tours on
House Speaker John Boehner announced that unlike the White House, congressional leadership had planned for the required sequester cuts by reallocating money.
So, the U.S. Capitol — the symbol of U.S. democracy that President Lincoln ordered built even during the Civil War — will remain open for thousands of American tourist pilgrims on spring break.
What border security?
Late this week as a clever PR warning of how awful sequester is, Obama administration officials ostentatiously sent out notices of possible April furloughs, not for the White House’s extra chefs, groundskeepers, the guy who walks Bo the dog or other federal non-essentials. They sent them out to 60,000 border security personnel.
But even that skewed layoff priority is not the real news.
The real news is we’ve had 60,000 border security personnel on duty all this time? Seriously? That’s roughly 100 battalions. What in Scranton’s name have they been doing? We’ve got 11,000,000 illegals in-country. These “security personnel” can’t even find and deport Obama’s uncle, who’s over-stayed his visa by a quarter-century.
Longer than an Obama speech
The Senate — and millions of Americans watching on TV and online — witnessed an old-fashioned filibuster Wednesday. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul briefly blocked the nomination of John Brennan for CIA director over foggy administration statements about its legal right to drone-kill Americans at home, as Obama has been doing to his kill-list of terrorist suspects abroad.
While Paul was speaking, fellow Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham enjoyed a delicious dinner with the president, who wouldn’t mind fueling some Republican feuds. Next day McCain strongly criticized Paul in a Senate speech. Probably coincidence.
Paul dropped his objection to Brennan when Atty. Gen. Eric Holder wrote a letter saying Obama wouldn’t drone a law-abiding American to death. The need to promise that a U.S. president wouldn’t vaporize a citizen from above is an amazing measure of the distrust ablaze in Obama’s Washington today.
AP (A happy N.J. Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez)
As Homeland Security inexplicably buys enough ammo to shoot every American five times and 2,700 street tanks for some unspecified domestic use.
Steve Hogan says:
Okay, so Obama is incompetent and corrupt. We should expect that from our politicians. But juvenile? Adolescent? Petulant?
His behavior is nothing short of shameful.
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9th March 2013 at 2:08 pm
T4C says:
“Dear Senator Paul: It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: “Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?” The answer to that question is no.” Hugs and Kisses, Eric.
(1) com·bat as a NOUN \ˈkäm-ˌbat\
1
: a fight or contest between individuals or groups
2
: conflict, controversy
3
: active fighting in a war :
Anglo-French, from combatre to attack, fight, from Vulgar Latin *combattere, from Latin com- + battuere to beat
First Known Use: 1546
Synonyms
action, battle, field fight, tackle, attack, counter, resist, withstand; impede, block, thwart, inhibit; stop, halt, prevent, check, curb.
_______________________________________________________________
(2) com·bat as a VERB \kəm-ˈbat, ˈkäm-ˌ\
com·bat·ed or com·bat·tedcom·bat·ing or com·bat·ting
intransitive verb
: to engage in combat : fight
transitive verb
1
: to fight with : battle
2
: to struggle against; especially : to strive to reduce or eliminate
Synonyms
battle, clash (with), fight, scrimmage (with), skirmish (with), war (against)
Related Words
duel, joust; bang, bash, bat, batter, beat, belt, bludgeon, bop, buffet, clobber, hammer, hit, knock, paste, pound, punch, slam, slap, slog, slug, smack, smite, sock, strike, swat, swipe, thump, thwack, wallop, whack, whale; box, spar; brawl; grapple, scuffle, tussle, wrestle; bump, collide
_________________________________________________________________
(3) com·bat as an ADJECTIVE \ˈkäm-ˌbat\
1
: relating to combat
2
: designed or destined for combat
First Known Use of COMBAT as an adj.: 1825
_________________________________________________________________
WORDS MATTER. WORDS ARE IMPORTANT. HOW A WORD IS USED MATTERS. HOW A WORD IS INTERPRETED IS IMPORTANT. HOW THE GOVERNMENT USES AND INTERPRETS THE WORD “COMBAT”, …..AND THE WORDS “NOT ENGAGED IN COMBAT” IS PARAMOUNT!!!
Eric Holder’s letter was NOT a definitive NO……IMHO.
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9th March 2013 at 3:21 pm
IndenturedServant says:
T4C said:
“Eric Holder’s letter was NOT a definitive NO……IMHO.”
Of course not. It was a “lawyers” no. Everything is possible with the right lawyer and judge.
I don’t know shit about lawyers or even our laws except to say that they are never designed to work in our favor.
I’ve recently had some email exchanges with my local PFD and I’m discovering that the written State law doesn’t mean jack shit. Case law seems to trump any other law you might encounter. Case law is a fucking joke because it makes “everything possible with the right lawyer and judge”.
I_S
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9th March 2013 at 4:48 pm
Stucky says:
If I took the tour — when it was available — and asked, “Where does a guy take a shit around here?” …. would they direct me to the Oval Office?
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9th March 2013 at 4:57 pm
Administrator says:
On Closing the White House
Submitted by Bruce Krasting on 03/09/2013 10:10 -0500
So the White House is closing its doors to the public today. Budget cuts related to the sequester are the blame.
The WH tours are closed after a decision by the Secret Service that it could not afford to maintain security. The savings for shuttering the WH comes to a measly $2m over the next seven months. I’m thinking this is a bullshit move by Obama; he’s trying to get the public hostile toward Republicans. If the visitors to D.C. who are disappointed in not being able to visit the WH actually knew the facts, they would be mad at Obama, not the Republicans.
The Secret Service budget for 2013 is $1.67b. The $2m savings from closing the WH comes to 0.12% of the budget for the Secret Service, it’s equal to 0.00005% of total spending. Closing the WH is a dumb way to save some money. Some other places where the $2m could have been absorbed:
Information Technology Portfolio – $200m
Transformation Initiative – $50m
Oregon and California Grant Lands – $113m
Payments to States in Lieu of Coal Fee Receipts – $128m
Lower Colorado River Basin Development Fund – $254m
Upper Colorado River Basin Fund – $92m
Surveys, Investigations, and Research – $1,075m
Operation of the National Park System – $3,000m
Mineral Leasing and Associated Payments – $2,144m
Salaries and Expenses, United States Attorneys – $1,972m
Capital and Debt Service Grants to the National Railroad Passenger Corporation – $958m
Grants for Specified Energy Property in Lieu of Tax Credits, Recovery Act – $3,671m
Foreign Military Financing Program – $6,344m
Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund – $850m
Assistance for Europe, Eurasia and Central Asia – $631m
Commodity Futures Trading Commission – $206m
Corporation for Public Broadcasting – $445m
Tennessee Valley Authority Fund – $445m
If you don’t find anything on that list (there are thousands of other line items to choose from) consider saving the money to keep the WH open from these big accounts:
Military Procurement – $100B (50,000 Xs the cost of keeping the WH open
Military R&D – $87B (43,500 Xs the cost of keeping the WH open
The problem with the sequester is that it is a meataxe approach to cutting. It’s a dumb way to go about the process. The Secret Service is facing cut backs, it will be forced to pare back $84m of expenses. But to have those cuts centered around the public access to the White House is just for show.
All of D.C. is going to look dumb before this is over. Obama might get the award for deliberately mismanaging the process. Let’s hope so.
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9th March 2013 at 6:32 pm
IndenturedServant says:
From the article posted by admin:
” I’m thinking this is a bullshit move by Obama; he’s trying to get the public hostile toward Republicans.”
Well no shit Sherlock! See here:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/14695-leaked-e-mail-reveals-white-house-efforts-to-make-sequestration-hurt
I_S
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9th March 2013 at 6:38 pm
Eddie says:
Wait Bruce!
“Lower Colorado River Basin Development Fund – $254m”
We NEED the reservoirs that the LCRA is building. Turn the fucking White House into a museum funded by private donations and make Obama buy his own condo.
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9th March 2013 at 7:02 pm