http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//090709/ids_photos_wl/r3356552547.jpg/
Maybe the American public misunderstood what Obama meant when he said he would stimulate the economy. From this picture in this article, it appears that he is stimulating more than the economy!
Real change huh?
Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper
Study: 19 Ambassador Nominees Bundled $4.8 Million for President’s Campaign, Inauguration
If all goes according to plan, Colorado businessman Vinai Thummalapally will soon be moving to a Central American tourist paradise to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Belize.
Thummalapally was President Obama’s roommate at Occidental College in 1979. As Barbara and Vinai Thummalapally described it to the Colorado Springs Gazette, they “used to party with (the president) in college. He was the guy who’d drink a few beers, maybe take a toke, stay up until 4 a.m. then excuse himself to crank out an ‘A’ paper due that morning. … He was Barry, the mellow guy in the leather jacket, dragging on a cigarette.”
Of course, friendship only goes so far in the world of ambassadorships. It’s Thummalapally’s fundraising for — not partying with — President Obama that is more characteristic of his fellow ambassador nominees. The Coloradan bundled between $100,000 and $200,000 for the Obama campaign and has personally contributed $13,375 to Mr. Obama’s various campaigns since 1999. And according to Federal Election Commission records, Thummalapally’s “not employed/student” children Vishal and Sharanya donated $2,300 and $2,275 to the president.
The information comes from the Center for Responsive Politics, which in a recent study concluded that the president’s new nominees for ambassadorships to Belize, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Romania and Switzerland “brought in at least $1.1 million for Obama’s presidential bid as bundlers, and at least another half-a-million as bundlers for his inauguration. To date, this brings the contribution histories of Obama’s ambassador nominees to roughly $1.8 million in donations since 1989. The 19 ambassadors that CRP has found in our campaign contribution database, along with their spouses and children, have given more than $98,200 to Obama personally, bundled at least $3.4 million for his 2008 presidential run and bundled another $1.4 million for his inauguration.”
As we reported last month, President Obama is hardly the first president to appoint pals and big donors to ambassadorships nor, according to the American Foreign Service Association, is he the worst offender in recent history.
In addition to his former Occidental party pal, President Obama nominated:
Former Virginia lieutenant governor and businessman Donald Beyer for ambassador to both Switzerland and Liechtenstein; he and his wife Megan bundled at least $500,000 for then-Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign, with Megan bundling at least $245,000 for the inauguration;
Lawyer Howard W. Gutman to be ambassador to Belgium; he bundled at least $500,000 for the campaign and another $275,000 for his inauguration;
Entertainment executive Charles Rivkin to be ambassador to France; Rivkin, head of the entertainment company W!LDBRAIN who produces Yo Gabba Gabba!, bundled at least $500,000 for the campaign and $300,000 for the inauguration;
Lawyer John Roos to be ambassador to Japan; he bundled at least $500,000 for the campaign; and
Lawyer and investment banker Louis Susman to be ambassador to the United Kingdom. Nicknamed the “Vacuum Cleaner” because of his skill sucking up checks for Democratic candidates, Susman and his wife bundled at least $100,000 for the Obama for America campaign and at least $300,000 for the inauguration.
The list goes on and on, but you get the picture.
He ran campaign ads against McCain stating that he wouldn’t raise them, then this? Why am I not surprised?
– Mr. Knowledge
Why does our President always choose to support anything that promotes Muslims?
Although President Obama and his followers fervently deny his obeisance to anything remotely associated with Islam, it is obvious that he venerates that tradition…even at the cost of America’s reputation and safety. Almost everything he does or says is based on this devotion. Obama bowed to the sheik…a muslim. He has tried to make Israel accept untenable terms that satisfy only the Palestinians…again mostly muslims. He insists that Guantanamo be closed, despite the majority of Americans wanting it to remain as it is — a prison for the extremely violent, mostly muslim terrorists. Obama has said that Iran, the most rigid Islamic country in the world, can have nuclear technology, so long as it’s peaceful………….and, what fool believes that technology will be peaceful or stay in-country? In every instance, his choice has been pro-Islam. Unfortunately, Obama does not show any tolerance or ability to recognize that the majority of Americans are NOT Islamic. While those of that religion are just as worthy of being Americans as any other group, they shold NOT have special privileges!
Unfortunately, our President can’t seem to understand that he is the President of all of us — liberals, conservatives, independents, Christians, muslims, and any other way you slice and dice the American public. He chooses to side with the killer of an American soldier because the killer was a convert to Islam. He sided with the deceased doctor who performed partial birth abortions because the doctor was an abortionist. Whether countless babies, or countless soldiers, die is of no consequence to Obama. His first allegiance is to Islam and his statements and actions as President demonstrate that!
Even though former Vice President Dick Cheney was intimately involved in suppressing terrorism while President Bush was in office, he is villified for his opinion that President Obama’s decisions are making America less safe.
Even though Flaherty is a golf announcer and a guy just making a joke, he is forced to apologize for making a joke about speaker Pelosi.
Even though Wanda Sykes made a vicious joke at the correspondents’ dinner about someone she knows only anecdotally–she wished Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys would fail and that he was the 20th hijacker– President Obama lauged!
What do all these events have in common? Well, in the first, a Republican is stating his honest belief and yet Democrats loudly bray that he is fear-mongering. In the second, a Democrat is the butt of a joke, and the Democrats don’t like that either! In the third, a Democrat is making fun of a known Republican. Oh, my! That is just so funny.
The President of the United States laughed uproariously at the joke. Understandably, he felt comfortable in the company of journalists who fawn over him. In fact, from his facial expression, he appeared to find Wanda’s joke hilarious. Only when it was pointed out that 9/11 was NOT a funny topic, did he back up and have his spokesperson say that was not funny!
It appears that the media is willing to give President Obama yet another pass on this latest gaffe. That is not surprising when they supported his election with slanted news coverage and pandering columns and “tailored” descriptions of what they purportedly called the news. Oh, yes. There are a whole bunch of hypocrites in politics, and the biggest of them all is our very own President!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aun_fNO0161g
After all the years of American financial and social help to the entire world, including Latin America, our neighbors to the south still face multiple issues… all related to poverty and the harsh rule of dictators .
And, as happened in Europe, America has once again tried to make everything right and everyone happy, but no one is ever satisfied with our help. We send money and are accused of trying to buy friends. We send troops to help them quell insurgencies and are accused of colonialism. We send Peace Corps and, in many cases, the insurgents take these volunteers as hostages. Is there anything that America can do to change this situation?
My answer is that we have to stop trying to buy friends. Thanks to the Marshall plan, Europe and Japan were rebuilt after WWII, even though we were not the aggressors in this war. Thanks to our massive influx of money and medical aid in Africa, many Africans are still living, despite being infected with AIDS. But, are we thanked? No, we are accused of not doing enough.
President Obama is the least experienced president we have ever elected, but hopefully, he will learn. If he wants to learn from history , this should be his first lesson! Do not expect to BUY friends and influence other countries. History will repeat itself until we learn that these countries take the money and run back to their own hidey-hole. Unfortunately, Obama’s “mea culpa” attitude is allowing the rest of the world to blame the United States for every problem everywhere! Even the leaders south of the border are taking this opportunity to once again take the money with one hand and criticize America with the other. When will we finally stop apologizing for our success and tell the rest of the world to straighten out and help themselves? Unfortunately, Obama did NOT learn this on his first trip to Europe. Will he learn from his Latin American trip? Well, it doesn’t look like likely. Here’s what the Latin America leaders had to say about their wonderfully generous neighbor, the United States:
Obama Gets History Lesson From Latin American Leaders (Update1)
By Helen Murphy and Joshua Goodman
April 18 (Bloomberg) — Latin American leaders railed against the U.S. during President Barack Obama’s first trip to the region, turning what was intended to mark a new direction in relations into a history lesson that chastised “Yankee troop” interventions and U.S.-dictated economic policies.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0409/White_House_No_bow_to_Saudi.html
No matter how the White House slices and dices it, President Obama is clearly bowing to the sheik! Check out the video on the above link to verify this yourself.
Whether it was his inexperience that made him think he should bow, or whether he is bowing to another Muslim leader, it was wrong. Americans do NOT, and never have, bowed to anyone!
Because it shows subservience to another foreign leader, Obama’s bow is a direct insult to all Americans whom he claims to represent.
April 2, 2009
For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The 61-point partisan gap in opinions about Obama’s job performance is the result of a combination of high Democratic ratings for the president — 88% job approval among Democrats — and relatively low approval ratings among Republicans (27%).
The results of a Pew poll are no surprise when you have a President who does not consider the opposing viewpoint of anyone and a Congress that is determining policy behind closed doors, without any input from the other party!
Rather than giving Queen Elizabeth a momento of Americana, maybe a craft from the Appalachians or maybe a native American blanket, President Obama gave her an iPod! And, to top it off, the Drudge is reporting that he had HIS OWN SPEECHES recorded on it.
My gosh! It is embarrassing that our president would actually believe another head of state wants to listen to his political speeches. But, it is indicative of the arrogance and deaf ear that the Democrats have for anything other than what they consider “their” agenda.
Of all the missteps by Obama in his choices of nominees, his comments about the mentally challenged, and even his challenging of Rush Limbaugh, this massive show of arrogance might seem insignificant. But, such a misunderstanding of what the world is listening for (and it is NOT his speeches) is just another demonstration of his inexperience.
