What Recession? Barack & Michelle on a Date, Fly to NYC for Broadway Play | UPDATE: Cost Breakdown of Date from UK News Source
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 31, 2009
Barack and Michelle on a date to NYC for dinner and Broadway show
UPDATE, JUNE 1, 2009:
Barack & Michelle’s Saturday Night Date… Finally, the REAL Cost to Taxpayers Revealed | Video Update: WH Press Sec Gibbs Dodges Reporter’s “Date Night” Cost Question
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Original post: May 31, 2009
I have nothing against the president and his wife having a date. Heck, all happily married couples should go on real dates together — if they can afford it.
Which for most couples these days, they cannot. Not in the style of last year, anyway.
If my husband and I could afford it, we’d have real dates, too, just like Barack and Michelle do. Maybe you would, too. Like going to a movie AT NIGHT, not a matinee, and not having to split one soda between us to save money… oooh! And maybe spring for that big barrel of buttered popcorn. Wild and impetuous date, that would be… throw frugality out the window for a night!
OK, we know our dates won’t ever, ever be anything like Barack and Michelle’s dates. That’s what happens when you’re an average American and you aren’t being funded by millions of American taxpayers, right? AND you and I don’t have sleek luxury jets at our personal disposal. There are pricey amenities and privileges given to our POTUS as part of his “elected career package.” I’m quite OK with that, to a point.
To a point.
With GM to file for bankruptcy tomorrow, and the nation further in the toilet financially than promised (more economic destruction looming), why NOT take Air Force One ($30,000 an hour to operate) and have a real date on Saturday with your loving wife (and your aides, and your WH press corps) by taking in a Broadway play and an expensive dinner in New York City? Does Obama have an unlimited entertainment fund? I know he’s paid a salary… what in the heck does he spend that salary on, besides buying a few burgers for Joe Biden’s lunch?
Obama, you’re president, after all. No worries that most American couples in Middle America can’t afford a night out in the very same town in which they live, you just grab that golden ring of elitist opportunity and fly out on your taxpayer-funded jet to a Broadway play. Has the term “setting an example” ever crossed your lips… when it comes to yourself, not the millions of people you admonish when they speak out against your reckless spendthrift bills, your increased taxation proposals?
Once again, how much did this little “date-with-the-missus” jaunt cost us? And to how many Democrat fundraisers did you fly this past week to raise money for the 2010 Democrat elections? I know of two jet trips, one to California and one to Nevada, but I may have missed a few. As you said at the Dem fundraiser in Beverly Hills, filled to the hilt with liberal celebrities, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” No, we haven’t.
So, Air Force One got a good workout this past week. Can’t wait to see what happens next week…
CORRECTION: Air Force One was NOT used for the NYC Barack-Michelle date, as was presumed. According to Reuters, they flew in a smaller Gulfstream 500 plane to JFK airport, before hopping into Manhattan on the Marine One helicopter. Air Force One was used for the Democrat fundraising events, however. More from Hot Air below, concerning the air travel.
Why use Gulfstream planes at all? Why not just use Air Force One, which would likely have kept at least one of the other planes on the ground, instead? Perhaps the White House wanted to emphasize the non-official nature of the visit; I suspect they didn’t want AF1 to return to New York City’s skies so soon after the Scare Force One fiasco. However, AF1 is built to keep the President in close touch with the government in times of crisis. It exists for precisely that reason, and is meticulously maintained to ensure the safest possible flight.
But the real foolishness was the Gulfstream and helicopters for the media. Are we to believe that the national news media has no reporters in New York City? The Big Apple isn’t exactly the Badlands of the Dakotas, or the remote peaks of the Rockies, in terms of media saturation. It looks like Obama wanted to make this a media event and didn’t mind using three planeloads of taxpayer money to stage it.
Associated Press: Broadway’s bright lights shine on first couple
Trip raises conservative ire…Following dinner at Blue Hill, a West Village restaurant touted by New York magazine as a “seminal Greenmarket haven” that features food grown by chef and owner Dan Barber on his upstate farm, the president and first lady were headed to the Belasco Theater to see “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
[...]
The White House declined to say how much the trip was costing taxpayers, and even before the smaller jet left Washington, the there-and-back trip drew criticism from the Republican National Committee. The RNC issued a news release that chastised Obama for saying he understands American’s troubles, but then hopping up to New York for “a night on the town.”
Noting that General Motors is expected to file for Chapter 11 protection on Monday, the news release said: “Putting on a show: Obamas wing into the city for an evening out while another iconic American company prepares for bankruptcy.”
UPDATED:Cost Breakdown of Barack and Michelle’s Date provided by British newspaper:
Mail Online.uk: How Obamas’ romantic £120 trip to Broadway racked up a £45,000 bill — ..that’s for three private jets, two helicopter rides, extra planes for security and closing roads for motorcade | Click to read full article
Presidential limo parked outside Belasco Theater
Related reading:
Reuters, Front Row Washington: Obama’s Date Night on Broadway
Hot Air: Blaming Obama for the night on Broadway?
Fire Andrea Mitchell: White House refuses to release cost of Obama’s little “date” in New York
Gateway Pundit: Obama Upset With Commoners For Criticizing His $74,000 Date Night
Sister Toldjah: Presidential vacations: What a difference a President makes
The Swamp: Obama: ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet’
Michelle Malkin: Spendapalooza: The Obamas’ vacation at Martha’s Vineyard
TheHill.com: Obama in L.A.: ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet’
Hot Air: Obama vows: I have not yet begun to destroy the economy
Phelim McAleer & Ann McElhinney, Big Hollywood: Come Fly With Me | Obama’s Broadway date and Eco-Hyprocrisy
Frugal Café Blog Zone: The Obamas’ Personal Debt vs. Obama’s Demand That Americans Cut Back and Party Boy Obama Livin’ It Up Like Royalty While Americans Struggle to Buy Food
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