Clown at the Wheel

I am not in a good mood.

This, I am certain sure, matters little to you but I wanted to set the context for this post. Ain't tripping all over Casa War Planner, strewing rose petals and humming a merry tune. That's all.

And it is not in the slightest that the ass clown in the White House -- our house, The People's House -- continues his feckless, childish, incurious escapades as our chief executive.

It is, I guess because I am awake at 0442 on a Saturday morning faced with the prospect of a full day at hard labor with little sleep and -- among other things -- my IRA down about $14,000 over the last week. (And I ain't rich; that's a sizable decline.)

Just, you know, a number irritants combining into a perfect storm of sullenness.

But, as long as I am up and irritable, let's have at what may be the underlying cause of my $14,000 loss -- and similar losses in your portfolios -- Barack Obama.

Yesterday, the jobs report came out. It showed that the private economy created only 69,000 jobs for the month of May. The report also said there were actually 49,000 fewer jobs in March and April than they originally reported. It also reported that unemployment went rose a to 8.2 percent, a tenth of a percent up from the previous month.

The day before, the ADP Monthly Employment Report stated that U.S. nonfarm private business sector increased by 133,000 from April to May.Also Thursday, the nation's Gross Domestic Product for the first quarter of 2012 was revised from 2.2 percent to an extremely anemic 1.9 percent.

Yesterday, stocks took a huge face plant -- the Dow Jones lost 275 (the most it's lost in 2012) points and the NASDAQ and S&P indexes were similarly off as well.

This morning, the movers and shakers in the world economic arena are saying we could be faced with a run on banks and a freezing of capital markets we saw four years ago. They call it The Great Panic of 2008.

So, amidst all of this terrible economic news, how does our POTUS respond? Well, yesterday, this man rode half way across this country in Air Force One to campaign for another four years for his job -- and you and I are picking up a majority of the expenses for this trip. I'll get back to you on that outrage later. First let me present to you with the White House schedule for 1 June 2012:

9:15 am The President departs the White House en route to Joint Base Andrews

9:30 am The President departs Joint Base Andrews en route to Minneapolis, Minnesota

10:45 am The President arrives at Minneapolis, Minnesota

11:45 am The President tours Honeywell’s Golden Valley facility

12:10 pm The President delivers remarks urging Congress to act on the “To Do List”

1:15 pm The President delivers remarks at a campaign event at
Bachelor Farmer Restaurant, Minneapolis, Minnesota

2:25 pm The President attends a campaign event, Bachelor Farmer Restaurant, Minneapolis, Minnesota

3:20 pm The President departs Minneapolis, Minnesota en route to Chicago, Illinois

6:10 pm The President delivers remarks at a campaign event, Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center, Illinois

7:25 pm The President delivers remarks at a campaign event, Chicago, Illinois, Private Residence

Wow! Now don't you feel better? I mean The Chicago Jesus is really on the job here, ain't he? I feel so much better now knowing that he is able to do some intel on the ground at a factory while Hoovering up some campaign bucks in Minnesota and Illinois.

But aside from him doing absolutely nothing to address the economy -- not even one pivot towards jobs yesterday -- the only thing I can see on his schedule that remotely appears to be a non-campaign event is the 90 minutes he visited the Honeywell plant to look around for half an hour and lecture congress on his "to-do list".

Pot meet kettle.

Oh, and on the subject of who's picking up the tab on these little forays, there's an article that Susan Crabtree did in April on the subject. Ms Crabtree points out:

Mr. Obama has shown a penchant for piggybacking fundraisers onto official trips, and figuring out the details of how much the Obama campaign must reimburse taxpayers for the mixed trips is complicated and opaque, confounding presidential scholars and even the most experienced federal election law experts.

“Nobody knows how much the travel has to be paid for by either the Democratic National Committee or the president's campaign committee, or how they come up with the data, or how long they have to reimburse it after the travel takes place,” said Brett Kappel, an expert on election law at Arent Fox. “It’s a total mystery — it’s a black box.”

Doing some digging, Ms Crabtree surmises that -- whatever is paid -- it probably ain't a whole hell of a lot (emphasis added):

Despite Mr. Obama’s pledge to run the most transparent administration in history, the White House and the Obama campaign have done little to clarify the situation.

White House and campaign spokesmen repeatedly told The Washington Times they were abiding by all campaign laws in their reimbursements for political travel by the president, vice president and other administration officials, but could not shed any light on how those reimbursement figures are determined and when and where the reimbursements are made.

A search of Obama campaign Federal Election Commission reports turned up less than $5,500 in payments last year to the U.S. Treasury — and those payments did not list the purpose behind them.

“The campaign will follow all rules and pay for the portion of travel that relates to political events, as has been true for previous incumbent presidential candidates,” said Obama campaign spokeswoman Katie Hogan.

And to put that five grand in context, there's this to consider:

Few estimates exist for the cost of flying the president, vice president and Cabinet and administration officials around the country, but the extensive advance teams, Secret Service agents, vehicles and military and civilian personnel required are not cheap. In 1998, the Air Force estimated the cost of operating Air Force One, a modified Boeing 747, at at least $57,000 an hour.

So, not only is his lobster-sucking wife living large on our nickel, turns out we're getting stiffed big time so this guy can get the funds to get his sorry ass re-elected.

Ruin your Saturday?

Did mine.

-30-