Obama to America: Do as I say, not as I do.

Obama's first State of the Union address took the same road he often takes with every other speech. He talked about himself. He fills almost every sentence with I, I, I, and Me, Me, Me, as would be expected of any narcissist who is in love with his own image. He refuses to accept blame for his actions which the majority of the public has now rejected and instead continues to accuse everyone else for his failures. Obama not only considers himself an elitist but one who is so consumed with self-importance that he must be better than everyone else. While Obama calls for a halt to spending by the Federal government he sees nothing wrong with the vast personal expenditures he and his wife and the leaders of his Democrat cabal continue to write up. Even the little things such as his wife Michelle taking a short trip to the local Washington, D.C. Farmers Market and bringing along 13 car loads of security personnel, staff photographers to record the photo-op and assistants so she could buy some organic vegetables. Or Barack and Michelle going out on a "date night" to New York City and costing the American taxpayers over $100,000 in costs for Air Force One. 

Last year it was documented on The American Thinker web site that Michelle Obama has a personal staff of dozens of people that have an annual salary of $1,488,500. just to help her get dressed and schedule appointments. The story posted on July 8, 2009 reads: 

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Supporting Michelle Obama in the Manner

by Ralph Alter

The figures are in.  As required by Congress since 1995, salaries paid to staffers employed in the West Wing of the White House must be publicly reported.  Most of you won't be pleased to learn that your tax dollars are paying $1,448,500 annually to provide the First Lady, Michelle Obama, with the staff she feels she needs to execute her duties as FLOTUS.  

For purposes of comparison, please consult Dan Froomkin's 2004 White House Staff List-By Salary published in the Washington Post on June 13, 2004.  Tallying Laura Bush's staff from the list provided by Froomkin totals $561,325 in annual salaries for the former First Lady's staff.

This number does not include White House maintenance or kitchen staff or the occasional pizza night with Barack and Michelle flying in the chef from a St. Louis restaurant to kick back and share some deep dish with 140 of their close personal friends.  Nor does it include date nights in Chicago.

And it certainly doesn't include Michelle's European vacation with her daughters.  In fact, CNS reports that "the White House will not reveal the cost to taxpayers of the European vacation that first lady Michelle Obama and the president's two daughters, Malia and Sasha, took last month." 

Despite deploying multiple aircraft, a huge staff and a motorcade of 20 vehicles including support staff on tours of London and Paris and la-di-da, apparently the White House feels there is some sort of executive privilege involved in withholding the cost of the First Family's extravagances from the citizens who foot the bill for them."

And another web site, Politics Daily, obtained the actual salary records for Michelle Obama's staff.

The salaries for staffers in the Office of First Lady are also on the newest list. The highest paid is Chief of Staff Susan Sher, who gets the top $172,200. Here are the rest:

$140,000
Frye, Jocelyn C. (DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)

$113,000
Rogers, Desiree G. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND WHITE HOUSE SOCIAL SECRETARY)

$102,000
Johnston, Camille Y. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
Winter, Melissa E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)

$90,000
Medina, David S. (DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)

$84,000
Lelyveld, Catherine M. (DIRECTOR AND PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)

$75,000
Starkey, Frances M. (DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND ADVANCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)

$70,000
Sanders, Trooper (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)

$65,000
Burnough, Erinn J. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)
Reinstein, Joseph B. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)

$62,000
Goodman, Jennifer R. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND EVENTS COORDINATOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)

$60,000
Fitts, Alan O. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ADVANCE AND TRIP DIRECTOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)
Lewis, Dana M. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT AND PERSONAL AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)

$52,500
Mustaphi, Semonti M. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)

$50,000
Jarvis, Kristen E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT FOR SCHEDULING AND TRAVELING AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)

$45,000
Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)
Tubman, Samantha (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,SOCIAL OFFICE)

$40,000
Boswell, Joseph J. (EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)

$36,000
Armbruster, Sally M. (STAFF ASSISTANT TO THE SOCIAL SECRETARY)
Bookey, Natalie (STAFF ASSISTANT)
Jackson, Deilia A. (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)

Now comes word that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has spent over 2-million dollars in the past two years on food and beverages and operating expenses for her Air Force jet that she demanded be reserved for her personal travel from Washington, D.C. to her home in San Francisco on weekends. This jet was required to be  capable of making non-stop trans-continental flights costing the taxpayers over $28,000 per trip. To make matters worse, there are additional costs related to meal preparation, pre-flight aircraft prepping and transporting flight crews which must be kept on stand-by. And these Air Force flight crews follow the same rules as commercial pilots in that they are only permitted to be on active stand-by for 8-hours periods and then need to relieved with another crew. It has been reported that Pelosi is not a punctual traveler and changes her plans often racking up additional costs to the Air Force. And when Nancy Pelosi's private Air Force jet does take off it doesn't land at SFO, the commercial airport in San Francisco, because that is an hour and a half drive from her home. Pelosi has her jet land at Travis Air Force base.

The latest tab was discovered by Judicial Watch and reported in WorldNet Daily News today.

"Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, which investigates and prosecutes government corruption, show Pelosi incurred expenses of some $2.1 million for her use of Air Force jets for travel over that time.

Judicial Watch said the newly obtained  2,000 pages of documentation show Pelosi's military travel cost the U.S. Air Force $2,100,744.59 over two years – including $101,429.14 for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol."

If you're interested in checking the dirty details you can view every one of the 1,949 pages obtained by Judicial Watch in their FOI request. They posted them on-line here: 
http://www.judicialwatch.org/story/2010/jan/nancy-pelosi-air-force-documents

Here is an interesting side note. Several web sites that check out rumors all agree that when Pelosi took over as Speaker of the House in 2007 she did not ask for a commercial size jet to fly her home on weekends. Documents released in March 2009 by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch reveal that between January 2007 and November 2008 Pelosi never used a military plane larger than a 12-passenger Air Force C-37 for any domestic flight. Judicial Watch says:

Speaker Pelosi used Air Force aircraft to travel back to her district at an average cost of $28,210.51 per flight. The average cost of an international CODEL is $228,563.33. Of the 103 Pelosi-led congressional delegations (CODEL), 31 trips included members of the House Speaker’s family.(CODEL means Congressional Delegation) “Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel. And these documents suggest the Speaker’s congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

History has always shown that whenever a conquering hoard takes control of a country one of their first acts is to loot the treasury. The current Democrat controlled government appears to be no different.  In spite of their assertions that they are a party of the people these Democrats seem all to interested in themselves and the people be damned. Want to know more about the depth of corruption within the Democrat Party? Look no further than Michelle Malkin's column on  August 20, 2008, The Democrat Party platform’s hidden Soros Slush Fund.

In practice, this Barack Obama brainchild would serve as a permanent, taxpayer-backed pipeline to Democrat partisan outfits masquerading as public-interest do-gooders. This George Soros Slush Fund would be political payback in spades. Obama owes much of his Chicago political success to financial support from radical, left-wing billionaire and leading “social entrepreneur” Soros. In June 2004, Soros threw a big fund-raiser at his New York home for Obama’s Illinois Senate campaign. Soros and family personally chipped in $60,000. In April 2007, Obama was back in New York for a deep-pocketed Manhattan fund-raising soiree, with Soros lurking in his shadow (yes, that’s him behind Obama grasping onto the stairs).

Then start to connect the dots with this Wall Street Journal column on August 18, 2009, Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling, Too bad it's not in U.S. waters.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

Now see the connection between George Soros, Barack Obama and the U.S. backed loan to Petrobras in this web blog Hot Air story, also on August 18, 2009. Good news: Obama backs off-shore drilling! Update: A Soros connection? by Ed Morrissey.

His New York-based hedge-fund firm, Soros Fund Management LLC, sold 22 million U.S.-listed common shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian oil company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Soros bought 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares.

Is it a coincidence that Obama backer George Soros repositioned himself in Petrobras to get dividends just a few days before Obama committed $2 billion in loans and guarantees for Petrobras’ offshore operations?   Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Like the French aristocrats two centuries ago, todays Democrats feel like they are royalty. This particular administration that has placed tax evaders, sex perverts, communists and animal rights advocates in places of power is totally devoid of morals and ethics and as the French people said of their royalty after their revolution, "Off with their heads." America has already seen one revolution that shaped the birth of this nation and we shall witness another come the fall elections in November.