What the hell?

Pelosi spends last days as Speaker on expensive Hawaii vacation

What does the Speaker of the House do in her finals days in her position of leadership? If she’s Nancy Pelosi, she enjoys a taxpayer-funded luxury vacation at the Four Seasons Resort in Hawaii, of course.


Despite catastrophic global warming fears, Pelosi flew on a private jet over to Kona, Hawaii, and stayed in a hotel that reportedly costs $10,000 a night. Her trip happened to coincide with Obama’s family vacation in the area.

According to the Government Accountability Office (GOA), Obama’s round-trip costs will set taxpayers back about $1 million, including a $60,000 bill sending Michelle Obama out early
.
Taxpayers also funded beachfront property for the Secret Service to the tune of $16,800 a piece, along with footing a $134,000 bill for the president’s staff to join him on his luxury vacation

By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
Free Press Education Writer
•For the second time in two years, Detroit Public Schools plans to lay off school bus attendants who help special education and disabled students.  
Keith January, president of the AFSCME Local 345, which represents the bus attendants, said layoff notices were mailed out Monday to 88 of 175 bus attendants. The layoffs will be effective Jan. 14 because of the district's deficit.


Detroit Public Schools: 40,000 kids to get laptops from stimulus funds

By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
Free Press Education Writer
•Detroit Public Schools will spend $49 million in federal money to push technology in the district, including distributing 40,000 new laptop computers to students in grades 6-12 for use in class, as well as more than 5,000 new desktop computers.

Yea it's crap. They just don't get it or just don't care. Obama didn't have to take his staff and Michelle Obama didn't have to go out early. That's " some change " Obama.

I keep waiting for the US to experience the same thing that happened to Greece last year. A loss of investor's faith in the US that leads to a vicious cycle of skyrocketing borrowing costs which then leads to hundreds of billions (trillions?) in more financing costs - IF we're even able to borrow at all. Except unlike Greece, there will be no one financially able to bail us out. The Chinese have already shifted some of their investment money to European debt and are tightening the amount Chinese banks have to keep in reserve, i.e. less Chinese money to buy US debt.

Our debt now matches and will soon exceed our GDP. The Federal Reserve is now in a bid, obstensibly, to lower the value of the dollar. This is gonna make the price of gas climb even more which will then slow down the economy, maybe drastically. Truly, the Fed may have launched this massive US bond buying move simply to avoid the specter of nobody showing up to buy US bonds. To be clear, they're printing this money, it's not wealth that already exists.

If you had hundreds of billions to invest, would you lend it to the US ? Would you continue to do it year after year for the next decade when our debt will exceed 20-25 trillion dollars and ALL our Federal tax dollars, every damn one of them, won't even pay the interest on that debt? I wouldn't. Honestly, there isn't anybody on the planet who has the amount of money that we need to borrow over the next few years. We couldn't pay it back anyway. There's very likely a collapse coming.

The worst part about the new forum format is that, in trying to keep things quick, I have to hit the button that gives me new posts for every forum, and then I'm bombarded with political talking points (especially dumb political talking points that only seem to rile people up when the other side does it - "Obama plays Golf!!"  "Bush Takes vacations!!")

Can't you discuss this stuff on Redstate.com or something?