Sen. Rand Paul Returns Unused $600k from his Office Budget.. If All 535 in Congress Did this, it would be $321 Million

Imagine that… a third of a billion dollars saved if everyone in Congress followed the lead of Senator Rand Paul:

from Politico:

Sen. Rand Paul is taking his own message of fiscal conservatism to heart,  returning about 17 percent of his Senate office budget to the U.S. Treasury.

“It’s the only budget I control,” Paul (R-Ky.) said on Wednesday at a news  conference in Louisville, Ky., according to a Thursday report in The Courier-Journal, a Louisville-based  publication. “It’s not enough, but it’s a start.”

Paul, who is set to return $600,000 from his $3.5 million  office budget, has returned six-figure sums before.

The libertarian-leaning lawmaker said his office scrutinizes spending from  big-ticket items like travel, down to “computers, paper, ink cartridges.  Everything we buy,” the report said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/rand-paul-repays-600k-to-treasury-87910.html#ixzz2LZ0CS12N

 

Politico’s VandeAllem Discuss “Battered Media Syndrome” and Why They Are Obama Lapdogs Still

from Brietbart:

Politico’s Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (VandeAllen) must have recently woke up feeling a little dirty about themselves and their chosen profession. Maybe it was due to Obama not leaving any money on the dresser this weekend. Whatever the motivation, it is fun to read their long, rambling rationalization for why they, their awful publication, and the media as a whole have spent the last four years willingly assuming the position of Obama’s footstool.

What we obviously have here is a case of Battered Media Syndrome. The media obediently adore, ferociously protect, and do everything Barack tells them to do. But right now the media are feeling a little taken for granted — battered, if you will.  But rather than stand up for themselves, the boys at Politico have composed a love letter to Obama, that says in so many words: You only treat us bad because you’re so amazing!

for the full article: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/02/19/Politicos-VandeHei-and-Allen-Why-Were-Obamas-Lapdogs

Obama Team “Embraces” Ad with Blatant “Lies”, and Politico Helps Bury It

Right now the biggest political story of the day is the disgraceful ad released by the pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities USA, that shamelessly, openly, and falsely blames Mitt Romney for the death of a woman afflicted with cancer. In the ad, a man named Joe Soptic tells a tragic but completely misleading story that lays the unfortunate death of his wife at Romney’s feet.  The ad is so outrageous, even the mainstream media has demanded the Obama Campaign repudiate it.

The response from the Obama camp has uniformly been to declaratively deny any knowledge of the content in the ad. This includes Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter, Obama Campaign Senior Adviser Robert Gibbs, and Obama Campaign Spokesperson Jen Psaki.

So, you have the biggest political story in the country, you have three Obama officials (two of them very high-profile) playing Who me? when it comes to the story, and then you discover the following….

But Cutter hosted an Obama campaign conference call in May in which Soptic told reporters the very story featured in the Priorities spot.

…what do you do?

Well, if you’re the corrupt Politico, you dutifully report but bury what is very big news that could affect Your Precious One’s credibility.

Full article: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/08/08/Politico-buries-Obama-lie

Liberal Bloggers Hail Praise on the New Obama: Hail King Obama!!

from Politico:

Liberal bloggers reacted in shock and surprise to President Barack Obama’s decision to recess appoint Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and members to the National Labor Relations Board, heralding a “new Obama” — one they hope is more likely to challenge Republicans head-on.

“This is part of the ‘new Obama,’” writes John Aravosis of the liberal AMERICAblog.

I really didn’t think Obama would want to set a new presidential precedent like this,” writes FireDogLake’s David Dayden, who had earlier predicted that the president would pass on recess appointments. “But obstructionists in the Senate have really left him little choice. … Until a price is paid for obstruction, there’s no reason for the obstructors to stop.”

”No More Mr. Nice Obama” and “King of the Playground,” blared headlines for posts at the progressive The American Prospect.

Obama is “sending one more signal that the days of his accommodating Republican rejectionists are over,” the magazine’s Harold Meyerson wrote.

Daily Kos hailed Obama’s move as “bold,” a decision made despite the site’s prediction that “most [Republicans] will declare their use of a recess appointment to be unconstitutional, while talk of impeaching Obama will likely spread throughout the right-wing media.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71115.html#ixzz1ic40dzT

Politico: POLL: Careening to a Great Great Depression

A record-high of nearly half the country fears the economy is careening toward a depression, helping push President Barack Obama’s approval rating down by six points in just the last two weeks, according to a new poll.

The president’s approval rating stands at 48 percent in the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday, down from 54 percent in late May in the same poll. His disapproval rate rose three points to 48 percent.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56507.html#ixzz1Oi0faTqA

Claire McCaskill To Reimburse the Govt For $88k Worth of Charter Plane Flights She Expensed; Has Ownership in the “Charter Plane” Company

WASHINGTON — Sen. Claire McCaskill‘s office said Wednesday she plans to pay the U.S. Treasury $88,000 to cover the cost of charter flights she organized through a company in which she and her husband have an ownership stake.

The Missouri Democrat’s husband, Joe Shepard, incorporated Sunset Cove Associates LLC in 2002. The company owns an eight-seat, twin-engine plane which, according to records, McCaskill’s Senate office has paid to use 89 times out of taxpayer funds.

News of McCaskill’s use of the plane was first reported by Politico.com on Wednesday. The announcement that she would reimburse taxpayers came after the story was published online, out of an “abundance of caution,” according to spokeswoman Maria Speiser.

for full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/09/AR2011030904650.html

Another legislator who doesn’t use her married name, and who tried to screw the American taxpayers.

FOXNews’ Ailes Says “Blame is Bullshit” but told Satff to Avoid the Bombastic

But Ailes also said he has told Fox’s staff to stay away from “bombast.”

“I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that,” he said.”

For full article:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0111/Ailes_Shooting_blame_bullshit_but_anchors_should_tone_it_down.html

GOP Memo to 112th Congress: Bills Must Cite Constitutional Authority

Fulfilling one of their most prominent campaign promises, House Republican leaders have unveiled a new rule to require that each bill filed in the House “cite its specific constitutional authority.”

And for those who may have skipped that constitutional law class, Republicans have organized four staff briefings prior to the Jan. 5 start of the 112th Congress to provide guidance on compliance with the new rule. The first session will be Monday at 1 p.m. in the Capitol Visitor Center.

GOP leaders have prepared a memo for all members of the new Congress and senior staff informing them that no bill may be introduced unless the sponsor has submitted for the Congressional Record a statement “citing as specifically as practicable the power or powers granted to Congress” to enact the measure. The memo included five examples of forms that sponsors could include with their legislation.

And the memo warned that any bill that is filed without the requisite “constitutional authority statement” will not be accepted by the House clerk and will be returned to the sponsor. Such a statement, House Republicans added in a Friday statement, “also demonstrates to the American people that we in Congress understand that we have an obligation under our founding document to stay within the role established therein for the legislative branch.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46565.html#ixzz18QVwwxyk

FLOTUS White House: No Camelot!!

     Any comparison of Michelle Obama to the elegant and incomparable Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis has always grated on me, much like nails on a chalkboard! Thankfully, others are seeing that Michelle O is absolutely no Jackie O!! :

She has glamorized kitchen gardening, spotlighted childhood obesity and invited thousands of students, many of them minorities, to official White House events.

Expectations were high for a different kind of first lady, and in many ways Michelle Obama has lived up to them, maintaining the kind of high public profile that was widely anticipated when she and her husband came to Washington.

At the same time, she has been a victim of those expectations, disappointing some in Washington who hoped she would be a more expansive social presence, and eliciting the familiar criticism of recent first ladies that she keeps too much to herself. (See: Michelle Obama: No longer a ‘caricature’)

In a new book on the presidency, “Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House,” Richard Wolffe writes that because of the constant pressure of the past 22 months the president’s circle of friends and confidants “shrank rather than expanded.”

Interviews with the spouses of administration officials and members of Congress as well as Washington social observers suggest that the same thing is true of his wife as well.

In many ways, Michelle Obama has emulated the president’s approach, relying on a close-knit group of friends and confidants from Chicago to help shape her agenda and find her way in a community that she has been wary of joining. 

“There has been no attempt to reach out to people they don’t see as their people,” said the wife of a senior administration official, who doesn’t have Chicago ties. “They don’t reach out even to people in the administration who aren’t from their inner circle.”

“It’s extremely businesslike,” she added, before invoking a comparison with the early days of the Kennedy administration. “It’s not Camelot.”

For full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20101124/pl_politico/45558

Obama is a Failure; Has A “Different Belief System than Most American”

Fox News President Roger Ailes says in a new interview that President Barack Obama is failing and has a “different belief system than most Americans.”

“The president has not been very successful,”Ailes told The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz. “He just got kicked from Mumbai to South Korea, and he came home and attacked Republicans for it. He had to be told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with.

“He just has a different belief system than most Americans,” Ailes added

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45266.html#ixzz15aaP5ELw