When We Dig A Little Deeper, We Find A Deeper Truth

Take a look at this from the Tribune-Review's Whisper column:

Call it situational austerity.

As the Obama administration announced proposed draconian cuts to the military on Monday, news broke that the president doesn't pinch pennies when it comes to “first family” vacations.

The Washington Examiner reported that the 23 holiday getaways Barack Obama and his family have taken since the president took office in 2009 have cost taxpayers $18 million.

And so on.  So from where does this information come?  This article at The Washington Examiner, where we can read:

With another Presidents' Day bachelor holiday planned by President Obama, this time golfing in California, and Aspen, Colo., resort reporters on the lookout for the annual first lady ski trip this weekend, the taxpayer's tab for the first family's vacations has topped $2.4 million.

But that's just the start. That total is just from the skimpy documents detailing travel and security expenses obtained by the public watchdog group Judicial Watch from a handful of first family vacations.

When all of the reporting of the first family’s 22 vacations so far to Hawaii, Martha’s Vineyard, Spain, Colorado, Florida, Africa and elsewhere is added up, the estimate reaches over $18 million when hotel and resort rent, security hotel and car rentals, and airfare are included.

Concerned about the trip expenses and the administration's lack of transparency on the trips, Judicial Watch has sought spending documents.[Emphasis added.]

Oh...so this is something from Judicial Watch, is it?

Interesting, yet again, how the Tribune-Review fails to ever mention the financial entanglements that connect it to one of its "sources."

If you're a frequent reader of this blog you'll know what's gonna happen now.

According to the data found at the Bridge Project, Judicial Watch has received a little over $10 million dollars in foundation support.  And according to the same data, more than 94% of it comes from the three foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner and publisher of the Tribune-Review, the newspaper from which I quoted the above "staycation" snark.

Meanwhile, back in reality, we might easily wonder how the current president compares with, oh I dunno, the previous occupier of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Luckily Mark Knoller of CBS news tracks these things and reported back in August:

—14: Number of vacation trips taken by Obama since he took office in January 2009.

—92: Number of days, all or in part, Obama has spent on vacation.

—57: Number of vacation trips taken by Bush at this same point in his presidency.

—50: Number of visits Bush made to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

—323: Number of days, all or in part, Bush spent at the ranch.

—7: Number of trips Bush made to his family's compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.

—26: Number of days, all or in part, Bush spent in Maine.

I wonder now if there had been a similar snarky complaint on the pages of Scaife's Tribune-Review about George W Bush's vacations.  Remember we were at war with the evil doers back then when, according to Knoller, Bush spent almost a year away from the White House either at his ranch in Crawford, Texas or his family Compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Then there's this from Catherine Poe, Senior Editor at Washington Times Communities:

President Obama in his first four years has taken 131 days, dividing his time between Hawaii, Martha’s Vineyard and, of course, Camp David, the official get away of U.S. presidents. At this rate, he could hit 262 days by the end of his eighth year, about average for modern presidents.

He certainly is not the king of vacation days. That honor falls to President George W. Bush, who racked up 1,020 vacation days in his eight years in office, including one five-week vacation, the most of any president in 36 years. Not to say he wasn’t on the job when he was at his Crawford, Texas ranch, but he was away from the White House.

 A thousand twenty days?  That's about 35% of the eight years Dubya was in office.

Interesting what you find with a little digging.

A Quick Silly

Some silly Obama-Derangement from our friends on the Tribune-Review editorial board today:

Vanity Fair has posted photos of President Obama with his feet up on his Oval Office desk. But it's not just any desk. This desk was a gift from Britain's Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. Known as the Resolute desk, it was built from the timbers of an Arctic exploration ship of the same name. Nothing like disrespecting history.

The braintrust has yet again taken offense at something Obama has done (or not done, or is planning to do even though there's no evidence that he is).  They're offended by this:


That's the first picture from the Vanity Fair photo spread on Obama, the "Lean-Back President."

With all of the real stuff they could have written about, this is what they do write about - outrage (OUTRAGE!) that President Obama would disrespect history by putting his feet on the Resolute Desk.

Funny, they didn't seem to have a problem with this photo:


Or this one:


Heck this bit of Obama-Derangement isn't even new - Snopes covered it more than 3 years ago.

The braintrust embarrasses itself (and the rest of the Tribune-Review).

Again.

On The 10th Anniversary of the Beginning of The Iraq War

A Letter From A Wounded Soldier To George W. Bush.

Some highlights:

I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

Go read the rest of it.  It'll break your heart.

Recess Appointments - Trib Style

A few days ago the editorial board of Richard Mellon Scaife's Tribune-Review published an editorial.  They wrote:

A federal appellate court ruling that President Obama's January 2012 “recess” appointments of three National Labor Relations Board members were an unconstitutional end run around Congress is a victory for the Constitution.

The Framers intended recess appointments to fill vacancies only after Congress — then able to meet just a few months a year because traveling to Washington took so long — had finished a year's work and couldn't confirm nominees.

But particularly in the past 60 years or so, presidents have stretched that power to evade Senate unwillingness to confirm certain nominees, and lawmakers have gaveled in and out of brief “pro forma” sessions to evade adjourning for the year — as they were when those NLRB appointments were made.

They go on to call for Obama's impeachment if he knew he was making the appointments knowing it was an abuse of power.  This is how they put it:

And if supposed constitutional scholar Obama didn't know better than to misuse recess appointments, he's no constitutional scholar. If he did know better, he committed an abuse of power that rises to the level of an impeachable offense.

Interesting that the braintrust points out how "presidents have stretched that power" over the last 60 years or so.  I mean considering this report from the Congressional Research Service.

The CRS did some work and found out how many "recess appointments" would not have been allowed had the appellate court ruling been in place since, say, late January of 1981.

I'll give them an exposition:

On January 25, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (DC Circuit) issued its opinion in Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board (hereafter Noel Canning).  In its ruling, the court determined that the President can make recess appointments only during intersession recesses, and that such appointments can be made only to vacancies that have occurred during the recess in which the appointment is made. The court also appeared to support the position that the recess appointment power may not be used to fill newly established positions, although that question was not before the court. [Italics in original]

In a footnote, they define "intersession" and "intrasession" this way:

Intersession recess appointments are those made between annual sessions of the Senate. The court indicated in Noel Canningthat intersession recesses are only entered into when Congress adjourns sine die to end the session of Congress. Intrasessionrecess appointments are those made during recesses within annual sessions of the Senate. {Italics in original.]

Guess what they found?

Of the total number of 652 intra- and intersession appointments made between 1/20/1981 to the present nearly 36% of them (72 intra-and 160 intersession appointments) came from one man: Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Another 26% (141 intra- and 30 intersession) came from George W. Bush.

Looks to me, that's more than half of the appointments.

According to this report, had Canning been in place Jeanne Kirkpatrick could not have been appointed by Ronald Reagan as "Representative, U.N. General Assembly Session" on September 8, 1981, and William Bennett could not have been appointed as "Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities" by Ronald Reagan. Alan Greenspan could not have been appointed "Chair, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System" by George H. W. Bush on August 10, 1991.

A question to my friends on Scaife's braintrust: tell me again how it rises to the level of impeachment?