bmac32 Loc: West Florida

Of course you hear what you want, she said the WH denied the trip was going to cost.

Got top, will sell, cheap!

Standard liberal reply, 'there is', yes there is.

Terry Allan Hall Loc: Republic O' Tejas

Might want to think a little harder...

Nickolai

The same can be said for Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers and seveal other billionares that most people aren't even aware of that fund front groups of the Tea Party and assorted other ultra right wing organizations.

bmac32 Loc: West Florida

Origins: On 2 November 2010, the Press Trust of India published an article about U.S. President Barack Obama's upcoming 10-day Asian trip (scheduled to begin in India, followed by visits to Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan), stating that the American chief executive would be accompanied by a contingent of 3,000 people and would be taking over the entire 570-room Taj Mahal Palace hotel during his stay in Mumbai, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of about $200 million per day. Another report from the same source claimed the President would be "protected by a fleet of 34 warships" during his time in Mumbai:
"The huge amount of around $200 million would be spent on security, stay and other aspects of the Presidential visit," a top official of the Maharashtra Government privy to the arrangements for the high-profile visit said.

About 3,000 people including Secret Service agents, US government officials and journalists would accompany the President. Several officials from the White House and US security agencies are already here for the past one week with helicopters, a ship and high-end security instruments.

[President Obama] will also be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast during his two-day stay there.

"Except for personnel providing immediate security to the President, the US officials may not be allowed to carry weapons. The state police is competent to take care of the security measures and they would be piloting the Presidential convoy," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The information from that Indian article was quickly picked up and repeated as fact by a number of media outlets in the U.S. and elsewhere, but its veracity is dubious. The only source for the claim about the mind-blowing $200 million per day expense outlay was a single foreign news report which quoted an anonymous Indian official and provided no detail whatsoever (or even a general explanation) about how the $200 million sum was derived or could possibly be expended.

Any presidential trip abroad (the purpose of this trip is official business, not a personal "vacation," as claimed by some sources) 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 traveling to a city which was recently the target of terrorist attacks
and will be attending the G20 Summit in Seoul, South Korea, along with other world leaders (all of which requires heightened security, as well as the presence of additional numbers of U.S. government officials).

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 unbelievably staggering sum of $66,000 per person per day to reach that figure.

And, as the the Wall Street Journal observed, the details of the report are "demonstrably incorrect," and it certainly isn't the case that the U.S. will be picking up the tab for everyone traveling with the president:
The report is demonstrably incorrect. It says the White House had blocked off the entire Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai — it hasn't — and that the press traveling with Mr. Obama will be staying there. We won't. Besides, the press pays its own way at considerable cost to the media outlets, not the U.S. taxpayer.
Additionally, U.S. officials disclaimed numeric figures cited for the President's Asian visit as "wildly inflated" and "absurd":
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor shot down the $200 million-a-day figure: "The numbers reported in this article have no basis in reality. Due to security concerns, we are unable to outline details associated with security procedures and costs, but it's safe to say these numbers are wildly inflated," Vietor said.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell also outright rejected the claim that 34 warships would patrol the Mumbai coast while Obama is in town.

"I think there has been a lot of creative writing that's been done on this trip over the last few days," he said. "We obviously have some support role for presidential travel ... but I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd, this notion that somehow we are deploying 10 percent of the Navy, some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the president's trip to Asia — that's just comical.

"Nothing close to that is being done, but the notion that president would require security as he travels to India and elsewhere should not come as a surprise to anyone," he said.

A military official also [said] the warship claim was inaccurate. The official knew of no such plans and said, besides, a carrier strike group typically has 10-12 ships at most.
Moreover, CNN noted that the cost of similar trips undertaken by other presidents came nowhere close to the $200 million per day figure being claimed of President Obama's Asian visit:
While the exact cost of Obama's 10-day trip to Asia is not known to the public, an examination of similar presidential excursions in the past support the likelihood that the $200 million-a-day figure is exaggerated.

For example, an 11-day trip by then-President Bill Clinton to Africa in 1998 involving about 1,300 people cost $5.2 million a day, according to the federal Government Accountability Office, which adjusted for inflation.
The U.S. government isn't likely to be forthcoming with a cost breakdown for President Obama's Asia trip (particularly since a large chunk of the expenses necessarily involve security arrangements, which obviously can't be publicly outlined or detailed), but it's probably safe to say that the ultimate cost will be well short of the claimed $200 million per diem figure.

Some readers who inquired about this item amusingly garbled its details, mistaking Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace hotel for the famous Taj Mahal mausoleum in Agra:
Is it true that President Obama rented the entire Taj Mahal and is bringing in the near future, thousands of people to a meeting there?

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/india.asp#S47BMgj6pjMHzQOh.99

Btfkr Loc: just outside the Mile High City

Yes, of course you hear what you want. Guess you missed at the beginning Oreilly himself saying the $2mil figure was bull? Point being, it was bull and all the Foxsters still reported it.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2010/11/obamas_india_trip

http://www.factcheck.org/2010/11/ask-factcheck-trip-to-mumbai/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/nov/04/michele-bachmann/rep-michele-bachmann-claims-obamas-trip-india-will/

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/india-on-200-million-a-day-no/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

http://newstrust.net/quotes/22

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/05/103290/obamas-asia-trip-expensive-but.html

There's plenty more but I'm tired of clicking. 8-)

docwill

Post some links...

Btfkr Loc: just outside the Mile High City

Btfkr Loc: just outside the Mile High City

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lJIWl6Nf30

then to the right are lots more.

Nickolai

Coos Bay Tom Loc: coos bay oregon

Who has the real news or is the media just telling stories? I want to know from the in the know people.

vernon

the largest deficit gwb had was 400bil check it out.

Btfkr Loc: just outside the Mile High City

President George W. Bush - President Bush added the most to the debt, more than $6 trillion. This more than doubled the debt, which was $5.8 trillion on September 30, 2001 -- the end of FY 2001, which was President Clinton's last budget. Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks by launching the War on Terror. This drove military spending to record levels, $600-$800 billion a year. This included the Iraq War, which cost $807.5 billion. President Bush also responded to the 2001 recession by passing EGTRRA and JGTRRA, otherwise known as the Bush tax cuts, which reduced revenue. He approved a $700 billion bailout package for banks to combat the 2008 global financial crisis. For more, see the Bush Administration.

thats from: http://useconomy.about.com/od/usdebtanddeficit/p/US-Debt-by-President.htm

Btfkr Loc: just outside the Mile High City

Democracy now. Yes they are left but if there is ill on either side they do it, and they report things that are never even mentioned on msm.

Terry Allan Hall Loc: Republic O' Tejas

That number purposely excludes the costs of "Operation Screw Iraq Out Of Their Wealth" (Bu$$h's Folly)...check it out.

vernon

he never haad a budget over 400 bil!the bail out money was to get the banks out of trouble caused by dem law.now you hate the tax cuts but they got us out of the clinton recession,but im sure you know this.