News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. April 5, 2013: Well Whoopee Doo – when is the last time you read anyone use that arcane phrase?.
Whoopee Doo! President Barack Obama this week promised to return 5 percent of his salary to the U.S. Treasury. Whoopee Doo or as a White House official stated: “The President has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury.”
O My God! Barack Obama feels our pain!. Whoopee Doo, Whoopee Doo!
Enough!
Why did he do it? Because other federal employees are taking a cut a furlough as a result of da, da, da, – The Sequester. Guess who is NOT losing any salary because of The Sequester? Not most of Obama’s staff nor Vice President Biden. And surprise! NOT any of the 535 Wonderful Members of Congress.
Did our Feckless Leader – (that is a joke for my readers – calling Barack Obama a Leader or said another way, just kidding!) Whoopee Doo!
Is President Obama urging Vice President Biden or his own staff or Congress to voluntarily take a 5% pay cut temporarily, just as some lower level employees are forced to take? Did President Obama in a gesture of solidarity ask elected officials all over the country to take a 5% pay cut as a means to prove they all feel our pain? OF course not!
President Barack Obama does not want to upset all these important people. He does not like to upset anybody except most of the American people. Important people are a different story. They are HIS people, especially the rich ones who claim to be caring Democrats.
Back to Obama’s 5% pay cut the real …. funny issue here.
Obama gets paid $400,000 a year in cash by the American taxpayers. So his cut amounts to all of $20,000 IF it goes on for a year. Doubtful! But who cares? His salary is another joke. His salary is frosting on the cake – yes I know, another arcane phrase.
He lives the most luxurious life on Earth except for maybe some Saudi sheiks; but they have to wear those white sheets all the time and tell everyone they don’t drink alcohol or fornicate. Obama does not have to put on that show.
In truth Obama lives far, far better than those very rich Saudi “leaders” (another joke since they all steal all that oil from their fellow citizens.)
All of Obama and family’s housing, food, travel, security and everything else is paid for by us. You can’t do much better than The White House and all their chefs and personal staffs, and all the helicopters, and Air Force One – the best airplane in the world, and lots of other big jets when Michelle wants to go gallivanting on her own. Gallivanting! (Another good word.)
The point is the $400,000 salary is just something for Obama to pocket. In addition, he gets a lot more from the royalties from all his “non-fiction” (another joke) books. Of course the big, the really big payoff for Barack and Michelle, is “deferred” until 2017 when they leave The White House and cash in their very valuable chips. Get very rich!!
Now how do I get back to the Keystone Pipeline from here? Easy!
By way of San Francisco! That is where President Obama was on Wednesday night. How much did it cost him to get there from Washington, DC? Nothing! He took Air Force One as usual. Who needs a salary anyway? What was our President doing in San Francisco Wednesday evening? He was visiting very, very rich friends at their homes. The kind of West Coast Super Rich Democrats who will take very good care of Barack and Michelle beginning in 2017, when they will need a “salary” again. Private jets are expensive.
OK! OK! Let’s stay on message. Here is what The New York Times reported …
“Mr. Obama delivered his remarks to a group that hardly needs to worry economically: Thomas F. Steyer, the hedge-fund billionaire, and his wife, Kat Taylor, along with 100 guests at their home who each paid $5,000 to $32,400. The Sea Cliff home looked out directly over the Golden Gate Bridge.”
Which finally gets us to the second part of his week’s Commentary. It all ties together.
Obama’s remarks at the luxurious home of these Super Rich Democrat friends …
The President spoke about the Keystone Pipeline in code.
He said and again quoting from my favorite source NYT…
“Mr. Obama, who appears to be leaning toward approval of the pipeline, acknowledged that it is difficult to sell aggressive environmental action to Americans who are still struggling in a difficult economy to pay bills, buy gas and save for retirement.”
“You may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but it’s probably not rising to your number-one concern,” Mr. Obama said. “And if people think, well, that’s shortsighted, that’s what happens when you’re struggling to get by.”
SURPRISE! Bet everything you own that Obama will approve this horribly dirty coal pipeline because too many important people who count with Obama want it. No, not the Super Rich Thomas and Kat Steyer his friends! They hate the pipeline, but they won’t love Barack any less when he makes a “difficult” decision to say yes to the pipeline.
Obama is worried about all those other very rich guys who want the Keystone Pipeline very much – all those dirty coal loving industrialists.
The Obamas want to become the very first Billionaire Former First Couple as I have been reporting from the beginning and to get that rich they need as many rich friends as they can find – not just Rich Democrats like the Steyers who will forgive him no matter what he does. And the Rich Ones who won’t!
Since Obama is NO leader and will say anything to anyone if it suits his needs. Hey it got him elected President twice, why knock it? It works. President Barack Obama will have NO problem saying YES to Keystone soon while also earning the sympathy of brain dead Democrats who will “understand” his difficult choice. What a Con Man? The best ever!
Too bad, there are a lot of informed Canadians – those who will not sell their own mothers for a Canadian dollar – where the dirty tar sands are – who won’t understand.
One of them, Thomas Dixon, wrote an Op Ed piece in The NY Times on April Fool’s Day ….
Titled “The Tar Sands Disaster,” it states:
“IF President Obama blocks the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all, he’ll do Canada a favor … Canadians don’t universally support construction of the pipeline. A poll by Nanos Research in 2012 found that nearly 42 percent of Canadians were opposed. Many of us, in fact, want to see the tar sands industry wound down and eventually stopped, even though it pumps tens of billions of dollars annually into our economy.
“The most obvious reason is that tar sands production is one of the world’s most environmentally damaging activities. It wrecks vast areas of boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70 square miles.”
And Canadian Dixon continues …
“Also, bitumen is junk energy. A joule, or unit of energy, invested in extracting and processing bitumen returns only four to six joules in the form of crude oil. In contrast, conventional oil production in North America returns about 15 joules. Because almost all of the input energy in tar sands production comes from fossil fuels, the process generates significantly more carbon dioxide than conventional oil production.”
“ There is a less obvious but no less important reason many Canadians want the industry stopped: it is relentlessly twisting our society into something we don’t like. Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state.”
I do not need to quote any more. Either you get it or you don’t want to get it.
WHY would we ever want this dirty, dirty junk tar coal burning in our power plants for decades to come? We don’t need it. We now have more coal and natural gas pumping in the U.S. than we know what to do with and there will be even more in the coming years.
And how could our self-proclaimed environmentally friendly forward thinking President Barack Obama ever approve this pipeline? How I explain above!
And how I explain week after week – he is not what he wants us to believe he is! He is a Con Man. Maybe the best ever!
Anyway President Obama has more on his mind. Bigger problems!
How is he going to make up that $20,000 in lost income?
All he has to do is think ahead.
He will be well compensated for approving the Keystone Pipeline.
Later! In 2017 and long after! But he will remain sad he “had to” prove it.
(I just wanted to end with another Obama joke so I included that nonsense!)
About The Writer: Arthur Piccolo is a professional writer and commentator and often writes about Latin America for New Americas.
