Obama to spend 200 million per day on trip to India

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Tress

Tress

Haha, just kidding. What I meant to say is that some people are fucking retarded.

Basically, Republicans Mike Huckabee and Michele Bachman went on cable news networks claiming that Obama was set to spend 200 million per day on his trip to India. It turns out they got that number from Glenn Beck, who seems to have gotten it from the Drudge Report, which got it from the Press Trust of India, who quoted an anonymous Indian official. Needless to say it's all bullshit.

You know, at first I was mad at Huckabee and Bachman for repeating such stupid claims, but I think the problem really lies with the whole "agree with me or die!" atmosphere in politics right now.
 
strawman

strawman

Once you account for every little cost, direct or indirect, it may well be nearly 200 million a day, though it seems very unlikely.

The reality is that international relations is expensive, and even if it's only 2 million a day it may be worth it. Keep in mind that India has nuclear weapons, and is an important ally in that region - the least we can do is send the president over to hobnob with them once in awhile.
 
Adam

Adam

First Lady Puffinstuff said:
Once you account for every little cost, direct or indirect, it may well be nearly 200 million a day, though it seems very unlikely.

The reality is that international relations is expensive, and even if it's only 2 million a day it may be worth it. Keep in mind that India has nuclear weapons, and is an important ally in that region - the least we can do is send the president over to hobnob with them once in awhile.
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The war in Afghanistan costs $180m a day. There's no way that these figures resemble anything near reality and it's telling how quick commentators fell over themselves to deride Obama for it.
 
Tress

Tress

Norris said:
This would be super important if it were at all true.
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The point is that many politicians are too quick to repeat ridiculous things without stopping to verify accuracy. And while that is not new, it's still important to point it out. Besides, it was funny.
 
HCGLNS

HCGLNS

Six years ago, the US President came to my town to deliver a 15 minute thank you speech. They took over an entire floor of the hotel I was working in for two weeks just to set up a back up communications centre, in case their primary portable system failed.
 
Krisken

Krisken

From the Yahoo comments? You have to lose a significant degree of brain matter to make any sense of those.
 
Tress

Tress

No, I'm confused about the fact that Huckabee has reversed his position and is defending the costs (real or otherwise) of Obama's trip.
 
strawman

strawman

Tress said:
No, I'm confused about the fact that Huckabee has reversed his position and is defending the costs (real or otherwise) of Obama's trip.
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He sort-of flip flopped. He now seems to be saying that we shouldn't have scheduled the trip in the first place due to the cost. However, it's already scheduled and it would hurt relations to cancel it.

Still a pretty mixed message, but does it matter? He's not really a player anymore is he? Why are people paying any significant attention to him?
 
Krisken

Krisken

Because we have a 24 hour news cycle. No matter how irrelevant, someone somewhere cares what this dink has to say.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

It reminds me of FDR being accused of spending millions to rescue his Scottish Terrier, Fala, from Alaska.

Roosevelt addressed Republican charges that he had accidentally left Fala behind on the Aleutian Islands while on tour there and had sent a U.S. Navy destroyer to retrieve him at an exorbitant cost:

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. [laughter] Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks — but Fala does resent them. [laughter] You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I'd left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him — at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or 20 million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious. [laughter] He has not been the same dog since. [laughter] I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself — such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog! [laughter]
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