Category: US Politics

Barack Obama announced that he would not have a federally-funded presidential library, but instead would rely on private money paid to the Obama Foundation to build a “presidential center” that may or may not have any books (we still don’t know, but there definitely will be basketball courts). That’s what Obama wants, so that’s what Obama gets.

The entire project would be all his to control, a monument created by the person being honored. Normally, that is the practice of dictators like Saddam Hussein, but Barack Hussein Obama was a president like no other.

And oddly enough, the building style chosen by the Obamas resembles nothing so much as a cenotaph, even though Obama is alive and kicking.

3 cenotaphs:

Hong Kong

New Zealand

London

Source

Of course, the usual claque applauded.  Politico Magazine gushed that it would be:

…a new model for a privately run presidential museum that can be laudatory in its exhibits and partisan in its programming, but not while under the troubling imprimatur of the federal government—and without the taxpayers footing the bill. 

Unfortunately, the notion that taxpayers would be unmolested is fake news. Start with the acres of city-owned park land on the shore of Lake Michigan that Chicago handed over as a gift, in apparent violation of law. The group Protect Our Parks has sued to prevent the giveaway, and cites this Illinois State Law. (They have also cited my writings, which gratifies me no end.)

But the taxpayer-owned parkland is but one aspect of the rape of the taxpayers. The new Illinois state budget artfully obscures the estimated $244 million dollars that Land of Lincoln Obama taxpayers will be giving to make the project happen. The Illinois Policy Institute writes:

Projects relevant to the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park will cost taxpayers $224 million, according to the Washington Examiner.

This includes $174 million for roadwork in and around Jackson Park and $50 million for renovations to the Garfield Green Line station, two miles from the presidential center. Illinois taxpayers will be on the hook for $199 million of the total cost, with $25 million of the Garfield station renovations funded through a federal grant, according to the Washington Examiner.

Fifty million dollars for renovating one El station that is two miles from the project? Are we supposed to believe that tourists would walk that far though Chicago’s notoriously dangerous Southside to visit the library? And how can it take that much money to spiff up a station that already is in operation? Paint and ceramic tiles aren’t that expensive. Elevators and escalators don’t cost ten million dollars each.  

Unfortunately, Illinois taxpayers would have no way of knowing this money was flowing to the presidential project from looking at the state’s 1,245-page budget, which makes no mention of the Obama Presidential Center. That spending is hidden, but has been confirmed by political figures such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

Taxpayers aren’t the only ones kept in the dark:

The negotiating process in drafting of the budget took place outside of public view and state senators were given five hours to read the massive document before taking a vote.

But rest assured that diversity will be foremost in the minds of those selecting contractors to build unusually expensive projects for the library. As the Obama Foundation promises:

 In our first year, we announced our plans to hire a diversity consultant to prioritize the hiring of local, diverse residents for construction and subcontracting.

 

Barack Obama announced that he would not have a federally-funded presidential library, but instead would rely on private money paid to the Obama Foundation to build a “presidential center” that may or may not have any books (we still don’t know, but there definitely will be basketball courts). That’s what Obama wants, so that’s what Obama gets.

The entire project would be all his to control, a monument created by the person being honored. Normally, that is the practice of dictators like Saddam Hussein, but Barack Hussein Obama was a president like no other.

(Source: Obama.org)

And oddly enough, the building style chosen by the Obamas resembles nothing so much as a cenotaph, even though Obama is alive and kicking.

3 cenotaphs:

Hong Kong

New Zealand

London

Source

Of course, the usual claque applauded.  Politico Magazine gushed that it would be:

…a new model for a privately run presidential museum that can be laudatory in its exhibits and partisan in its programming, but not while under the troubling imprimatur of the federal government—and without the taxpayers footing the bill. 

Unfortunately, the notion that taxpayers would be unmolested is fake news. Start with the acres of city-owned park land on the shore of Lake Michigan that Chicago handed over as a gift, in apparent violation of law. The group Protect Our Parks has sued to prevent the giveaway, and cites this Illinois State Law. (They have also cited my writings, which gratifies me no end.)

But the taxpayer-owned parkland is but one aspect of the rape of the taxpayers. The new Illinois state budget artfully obscures the estimated $244 million dollars that Land of Lincoln Obama taxpayers will be giving to make the project happen. The Illinois Policy Institute writes:

Projects relevant to the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park will cost taxpayers $224 million, according to the Washington Examiner.

This includes $174 million for roadwork in and around Jackson Park and $50 million for renovations to the Garfield Green Line station, two miles from the presidential center. Illinois taxpayers will be on the hook for $199 million of the total cost, with $25 million of the Garfield station renovations funded through a federal grant, according to the Washington Examiner.

Fifty million dollars for renovating one El station that is two miles from the project? Are we supposed to believe that tourists would walk that far though Chicago’s notoriously dangerous Southside to visit the library? And how can it take that much money to spiff up a station that already is in operation? Paint and ceramic tiles aren’t that expensive. Elevators and escalators don’t cost ten million dollars each.  

Unfortunately, Illinois taxpayers would have no way of knowing this money was flowing to the presidential project from looking at the state’s 1,245-page budget, which makes no mention of the Obama Presidential Center. That spending is hidden, but has been confirmed by political figures such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

Taxpayers aren’t the only ones kept in the dark:

The negotiating process in drafting of the budget took place outside of public view and state senators were given five hours to read the massive document before taking a vote.

But rest assured that diversity will be foremost in the minds of those selecting contractors to build unusually expensive projects for the library. As the Obama Foundation promises:

 In our first year, we announced our plans to hire a diversity consultant to prioritize the hiring of local, diverse residents for construction and subcontracting.

 

Lacking a catch of late, the New York Times decided to pull a Scott Pruitt on United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, accusing her of being Extravagance Woman, a regular Stateside Imelda, based on a $53,000 purchase of customized and mechanized curtains for her United Nations apartment. It’s got more than a whiff of the jobs they did on former EPA Director Scott Pruitt for his first-class airfare, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Tom Price for his chartered flights, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for his office doors, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson for his office table, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin for his plane rides. Hey, what better way to pick off another Trump scalp?

The Times led with this breathless outrage to set the narrative:

The State Department spent $52,701 last year buying customized and mechanized curtains for the picture windows in Nikki R. Haley’s official residence as ambassador to the United Nations, just as the department was undergoing deep budget cuts and had frozen hiring.The residence, in a new building on First Avenue, has spectacular views, and Ms. Haley is the first ambassador to live in it.

But this time, they picked the wrong woman, because the “narrative” just doesn’t work.

Turns out the fancy curtain order was the work of Samantha Power, President Obama’s former UN ambassador, who, when she wasn’t busy unmasking Americans to learn all about what was going on in the Trump campaign (or maybe handing her password out, given the quantity of such unmaskings under her name), was also busy getting the decorating in. Status stuff, like self-opening curtains, the better to impress the Harvard and NGO crowds who undoubtedly would come by to visit. And it was President Obama who approved the purchase.

Here is what Fox News reported:

But the paper didn’t mention until the sixth paragraph that Haley’s spokesman said the Trump administration had no input in the purchase decision.

So after running a headline suggesting Haley was corrupt and extravagant, it turns out she had nothing at all to do with the fancy curtains Obama approved for his cronies, confident Hillary Clinton would be elected president in 2016. Based on the outcry from leftist NGOs and academic elites, it looks like the Obama administration’s plan was for a place that would become a clubhouse for their ilk and other hangers-on, with the coming new Clinton administration, and now Haley was occupying the space. That explain why Obama would have approved such an extravagant purchase so late in his administration, at a time of cutbacks — and why they are screaming about it. According to Fox, they hollered about it all over Twitter and then to the Times:

“How can you, on the one hand, tell diplomats that basic needs cannot be met and, on the other hand, spend more than $50,000 on a customized curtain system for the ambassador to the U.N.?” Brett Bruen, a White House official in the Obama administration, told the Times.

“When @nikkihaley’s not busy rejecting the idea of universal human rights, she’s busy spending $52,701 of US tax payer money on curtains for her residence. Milk the people, screw the world. Fine priorities you got there,” Andrew Stroehlein, Human Rights Watch’s European Media Director, wrote in a tweet.

Either some of their rice bowl is threatened, or else it was the same dynamic seen in outgoing Mexican presidents, all socialists, who famously spent up a storm as they exited, and then took the light bulbs as they went. 

It’s great that such a lie was shot down so instantly by Fox. But what’s obnoxious about the whole report is that it was so out of character for Nikki Haley to ever be involved in extravagant purchases, something that surely would have come out during her time as governor. Haley has always been one of the cleanest whistles in the Trump administration with impeccable integrity. To suggest she was one of the old boys spending up the public fisk on fancy office equipment is the height of absurdity, and says a lot about the Times’ refusal to employ newsroom skepticism to their reportage in matters of Trump. Oh, and it’s a bit sexist, too, given that they were all on the big story of Sarah Palin’s extravagant campaign clothes. Apparently, they’ll believe anything if it smears conservatives.

Now it’s a new black eye for the Times in its bid to Get Trump. It’s also another justification for why the public does not trust the press.

Lacking a catch of late, the New York Times decided to pull a Scott Pruitt on United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, accusing her of being Extravagance Woman, a regular Stateside Imelda, based on a $53,000 purchase of customized and mechanized curtains for her United Nations apartment. It’s got more than a whiff of the jobs they did on former EPA Director Scott Pruitt for his first-class airfare, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Tom Price for his chartered flights, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for his office doors, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson for his office table, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin for his plane rides. Hey, what better way to pick off another Trump scalp?

The Times led with this breathless outrage to set the narrative:

The State Department spent $52,701 last year buying customized and mechanized curtains for the picture windows in Nikki R. Haley’s official residence as ambassador to the United Nations, just as the department was undergoing deep budget cuts and had frozen hiring.The residence, in a new building on First Avenue, has spectacular views, and Ms. Haley is the first ambassador to live in it.

But this time, they picked the wrong woman, because the “narrative” just doesn’t work.

Turns out the fancy curtain order was the work of Samantha Power, President Obama’s former UN ambassador, who, when she wasn’t busy unmasking Americans to learn all about what was going on in the Trump campaign (or maybe handing her password out, given the quantity of such unmaskings under her name), was also busy getting the decorating in. Status stuff, like self-opening curtains, the better to impress the Harvard and NGO crowds who undoubtedly would come by to visit. And it was President Obama who approved the purchase.

Here is what Fox News reported:

But the paper didn’t mention until the sixth paragraph that Haley’s spokesman said the Trump administration had no input in the purchase decision.

So after running a headline suggesting Haley was corrupt and extravagant, it turns out she had nothing at all to do with the fancy curtains Obama approved for his cronies, confident Hillary Clinton would be elected president in 2016. Based on the outcry from leftist NGOs and academic elites, it looks like the Obama administration’s plan was for a place that would become a clubhouse for their ilk and other hangers-on, with the coming new Clinton administration, and now Haley was occupying the space. That explain why Obama would have approved such an extravagant purchase so late in his administration, at a time of cutbacks — and why they are screaming about it. According to Fox, they hollered about it all over Twitter and then to the Times:

“How can you, on the one hand, tell diplomats that basic needs cannot be met and, on the other hand, spend more than $50,000 on a customized curtain system for the ambassador to the U.N.?” Brett Bruen, a White House official in the Obama administration, told the Times.

“When @nikkihaley’s not busy rejecting the idea of universal human rights, she’s busy spending $52,701 of US tax payer money on curtains for her residence. Milk the people, screw the world. Fine priorities you got there,” Andrew Stroehlein, Human Rights Watch’s European Media Director, wrote in a tweet.

Either some of their rice bowl is threatened, or else it was the same dynamic seen in outgoing Mexican presidents, all socialists, who famously spent up a storm as they exited, and then took the light bulbs as they went. 

It’s great that such a lie was shot down so instantly by Fox. But what’s obnoxious about the whole report is that it was so out of character for Nikki Haley to ever be involved in extravagant purchases, something that surely would have come out during her time as governor. Haley has always been one of the cleanest whistles in the Trump administration with impeccable integrity. To suggest she was one of the old boys spending up the public fisk on fancy office equipment is the height of absurdity, and says a lot about the Times’ refusal to employ newsroom skepticism to their reportage in matters of Trump. Oh, and it’s a bit sexist, too, given that they were all on the big story of Sarah Palin’s extravagant campaign clothes. Apparently, they’ll believe anything if it smears conservatives.

Now it’s a new black eye for the Times in its bid to Get Trump. It’s also another justification for why the public does not trust the press.

Feinstein should skulk away in shame for this gambit.

Via Twitchy:

As Twitchy reported earlier, Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced that she’d turned over to authorities a letter that had some incriminating information about SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh and a woman, possibly reaching back as far as his high school years.

Of course, idiots like ThinkProgress’s Ian Millhiser floated the idea that Kavanaugh “may have committed a very serious crime — possibly even a sex crime.” A lot of people starting making #MeToo accusations.

With that insinuation floating around all day, The Guardian has a source who claims to know the contents of the letter, and … well, it doesn’t even rise to the level of Mitt Romney cutting some kid’s hair.

Keep reading…