The White House and Pentagon have fielded questions about the Indian report and have dismissed the claims in the article.
\"I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd this notion that somehow we're deploying 10 percent of the Navy, some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the president's trip to Asia,\" Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters this week. \"That's just comical. Nothing close to that is -- is -- being done.\"
Will Robinson wrote:What isn't normal is the number of people in his entourage and the expense that is racking up.
How do you know the expense? Those figures are not disclosed for security reasons. If you're going off that $200 million crap, it's wrong. I cite snopes:
snopes wrote:The information from that Indian article was quickly picked up and reported as fact by a number of media outlets in the U.S. and elsewhere, but its veracity is highly questionable. Any presidential trip abroad involves considerable expense to transport and house security officials and presidential aides and staffers, and those costs will likely be on the higher side for this trip since President Obama will be attending the G20 Summit in Seoul, South Korea, along with other world leaders (which requires the presence of additional numbers of U.S. government officials as well as heightened security). However, citing a cost figure of $200 million per day stretches credulity to the breaking point: That number would entail a total outlay of $400 million for the two-day visit (a whopping $2 billion if the cost were applied across the entire ten-day trip), and even if President Obama were accompanied by a prodigious 3,000-person entourage, with the U.S. government picking up the entire tab for all of them, the U.S. would have to be spending the unbelievable sum of $66,000 per person per day to reach that figure. Moreover, the only source for that dollar amount is a single foreign news report which quotes an anonymous Indian official (who likely is not privy to all the cost and security details of the president’s Asian trip).
Here's a couple other links about how damn wrong it is:
Getting back to Corporate Personhood, the SCOTUS next week will be looking at a case that will determine if those mandatory arbitration clauses in your cell phone and other contracts that would prevent you from joining a class action lawsuit are enforceable. so far several state high courts have said they're unenforceable because they're unconscionable, and the 9th circuit US appeals court has agreed with them, but we all know how much the current SCOTUS loves business.
So if this ruling comes down in the corporations favor, look for every transaction you make to require a \"you cant sue us\" take-it-or-leave-it non-negotiable contract shortly afterward.
Avder wrote:So if this ruling comes down in the corporations favor, look for every transaction you make to require a "you cant sue us" take-it-or-leave-it non-negotiable contract shortly afterward.
Krom wrote:All of that sounds pretty normal when the president goes to visit some place, the secret service usually drags out everything including the kitchen sink. They probably did pretty much the same anytime Bush left the country (or even much more when he went to Iraq on Thanksgiving that time).
And even then they can't keep someone in a small room from throwing a shoe at his head!
What isn't normal is the number of people in his entourage and the expense that is racking up.
The White House and Pentagon have fielded questions about the Indian report and have dismissed the claims in the article.
"I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd this notion that somehow we're deploying 10 percent of the Navy, some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the president's trip to Asia," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters this week. "That's just comical. Nothing close to that is -- is -- being done."
indeed goober. When I read those claims, I pictured that in just about every anti-obama person's house, they had the fox mulder's "i want to believe" UFO poster in their bedrooms.
