Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on March 23, 2009

By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone

White House Supersized Monster Castle Package IV for Obama daughters, $16,000 with extras, shipping, installation.

While my family and yours debate and agonize about which bills get paid this month and which ones we’ll have to float until next, and many Americans are struggling to bring their small business’s income down to $249,999 to avoid the upcoming “successful business owner punishment tax,” Obama is the proud daddy of two sweet little girls who have a super-deluxe playground set that cost more than my first, second, and third cars COMBINED. Granted, they were used cars (one was VERY used), and it was a significant time back, but I’m sure you get the drift of my comparison. Frugality vs. non-frugality. Us vs. them.

Not only is Pres. and Michelle Obama still partying nearly every night at the White House (gotta keep those Japanese wagyu steak retailers in business), Obama is racking up obscene costs to the taxpayers with his “gotta go, gotta go” obsessive coast-to-coast jetting on Air Force One (approximate cost is $30,000 per hour), but yet another straw of indignity of his elitist, narcissistic ways has been added to the groaning heap. OK, this one sounds petty (I’m so mean to deny his daughters a swing set, right?), but I’ve just about had it with his blatant disregard for taxpayers’ pain and his own lack of frugality during these difficult economic times.

He’s a spending addict, whether it’s for his personal agenda or for White House nightlife or for a castle playground set that his daughters are just about too old to want to use. And it has a PENTHOUSE BUBBLE, for crying out loud, which cost extra. Argghhhh…. Where is my aspirin?

Here’s the recap from Barack’s appearance on 60 Minutes (has he been on TV more often lately than J-Lo or Paris Hilton or Ryan Seacrest? Sure seems like it). When does he do any actual “president work”? I mean, even Anna Nicole Smith, when she was alive, didn’t have this much face-time on television every week. Actually, he does address his lack of work time in the 60 Minutes interview (see recap below).

Add in Obama’s insult last week about the Special Olympics, his surprise (we think it’s feigned) about the AIG bonuses, his multiple-trillion porkulus packages (how many are there now?), his insatiable desire to tax every bloody thing in sight, his attacks on Rush Limbaugh, his attempts to ban free speech on conservative talk shows on radio, his proposed changes to our nation’s right to bear arms, his desire to free Gitmo terrorists somewhere within the continental US… I’m exhausted with this man and this administration. His radical agenda and the daily trampling upon the Constitution doesn’t faze his zombie fans, but maybe the frickin’ CASTLE his kids now have will get their attention as they are losing the homes they themselves can no longer afford. Is Obama now one of the maligned “ultra-rich”? Of course not. In Liberal-Sheep Obama-bot World, Obama is absolutely perfect and incapable of doing the myriad self-centered, grandstanding, elitist, bigoted, short-sighted things he is indeed doing. Quick, close your eyes and just listen to him talk… so dreamy… see, he’s not the big bad socialist you evil conservatives want to paint him as…

A Playground You Can Believe In
By Mithridate Ombud
March 23, 2009 – 04:38 ET

Steve Kroft caught Barack Obama “laughing and chuckling several times while discussing the perilous state of the economy”, at one point asking “Are you punch-drunk?” Politico says “his awkward laughter highlighted an issue Obama has faced dating back to the campaign, a sense that he sometimes is too ‘cool’ and detached to fully grasp the public anxiety over mounting job losses and economic worries.”

We learn in the 60 Minutes interview that Mr. President has time off in the afternoon to see his kids, have dinner with the family, and takes weekends off after poking his head in to see what’s going on. So basically, the POTUS puts in less hours per week than I do. Kroft also fawns over the first family’s playground. What Kroft won’t tell you is that while millions of Americans wonder how their next mortgage payment is going to be made, and while their father demonizes Americans for having a culture of greed, the Obama children are literally playing in a castle.

The Obamas’ went with a Rainbow Play System which Obama himself called “the Rolls Royce of swingsets”, specifically the model is Supersized Monster Castle Package IV with a Double Bubble on the Penthouse, which retails for $14,799, plus $1,500 install, not including the surface it sits on. Taxpayer money well spent in a down economy. What, don’t your children have a penthouse on their swingset?

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UPDATE: The author of the above quoted material, Mithridate Ombud, didn’t have information at the time of the writing about whether or not taxpayers paid for the playground set. Several sources, including AP, now state that the Obamas paid for the set themselves.
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This is yet another example of what you voted for, you ill-informed, “feel, don’t think” Obama-bots. “Hope and change” is stupid rhetoric, like something written on a slip of paper found in a fortune cookie. You deserve this president who laughs on national TV when asked about the problems of the nation he is supposed to be leading. A president who sees nothing wrong in getting the biggest, most expensive playground set for his daughters when his nation is crying with rage and fear about their jobs, their homes, their futures. And then happily talk about it on television, when he should instead be focused on the ECONOMY. His lack of priorities and understanding of fundamental economics are astounding. Anyone in a business with this kind of dismal track record would be demoted or flat-out fired.

He’s a man-child, an empty suit, a redistributor of everyone’s wealth (except that of his own and that of his friends), a stammering mess when on national television without his precious teleprompter. And DO NOT bring up George W. Bush. Do not EVER attempt to blame any of this on Bush. It’s Obama’s glorious, elitist, radical mess, and it is going to get increasingly messier and the national debt larger, potentially larger than all debt from all US presidents combined, starting from George Washington up through George W. Bush.

It’s time to take action against this arrogant, “all for me, none for thee” administration… speak out against the growing tyranny. It’s time for all Americans (regardless of party affiliation) to evaluate what he’s proposed to do to our country and Constitution in just two months and to raise their voices and make them heard.

I have only two words to say in conclusion: TEA PARTY!

Argus Leader Wire Service: Obama kids swinging on S.D. set
FromThePen.com: Obama Buys Swing Set for His Teleprompter
Debbie Schlussel: Obama Tacky: Prez Who Whines Against CEO Perks & Salaries/Urges Belt-Tightening, Buys Gauche $3,500 Swingset for Daughters; UPDATE: Swing Set is $10,000?!
Politico: The Everywhere President
Gateway Pundit: Sen. Judd Gregg: US Couldn’t Join EU Due to Debt Levels

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Great post by Michelle Malkin about the lack of media coverage for the nation’s growing numbers of protest tea parties: The measly march of the Obama-bots and a tea party update: Tea Party progress report
And from Jim Blazsik’s blog: Got Tea? Orlando ‘Tea Party’ rally draws more than 4,000

Categories: Conservatism, Economy, Government, Social and Political Climate
Tags: America, Barack Obama, castle, debt, economic depression, economic free-fall, frugal, Obama, playground set, playset, Pres. Obama, spendthrift, taxpayers, tea party, White House