Obama 2 / Sin City 0

Oskar Garcia from the AP wrote an article about Obama's recent unfavorable comments directed towards Las Vegas. Props to him. It seems that Obama remarked last February that federal bailout money should not be used for trips to Las Vegas. I am not sure what, if anything, Obama expected to result from his seemingly reasonable comment. But casino officials, whose image in my mind is that of the polished and gorgeous Italian mobster-type from Ocean's Eleven, reported that companies simply rescheduled their meetings at other destinations. Obama took heat for costing Vegas much needed tourism income. Surely those business leaders were not so dense as to understand from Obama's comments that their choice of destination was offensive to taxpayers. What is wrong with our society when the President's unscripted remarks aren't registered as the warning they should have been for companies to trim the excess in their budgets financed by taxpayers?

Fast-forward one year to a town hall meeting in New Hampshire. The White House transcript reads, "When times are tough, you tighten your belts...You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices." Again, what does it say about society when the President of the United States feels it is his job to teach fiscal responsibility to private citizens? Should not their parents and even grandparents have taught them this years ago? Of course Obama is right. In response to Harry Reid and other Nevada government officials' criticism, Obama issued a letter which stated, "I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun." What a concept.

Similarly, the restaurant industry raked Oprah Winfrey over the coals last year for her counsel that families avoid eating out. Suze Orman often appears on Oprah's show to discuss debt-free living; Oprah emphasizes living without debt because of the peace that lifestyle can potentially bring to her viewers. It makes more sense to learn from Oprah and Suze about the benefits of personal fiscal responsibility rather than from the President, who has far more pressing matters to deal with.

It is difficult to listen to the President speak of tightening our belt, cancelling company training retreats, saving for college, and making hard choices when he is absolutely unwilling to do any of these things on a federal level. No wonder the bail-out business execs simply changed the venue of their convention rather than pare down the event or cancel it all together. Obama and the Dems campaigned on getting rid of fraud, lobbyists, and waste. Obama promised to cut the budget with a scalpel, cutting 100 million dollars here and there because, even in Washington, that adds up. That sounded reasonable until Obama's State of the Union and his new budget. He promised an almost free college education to everyone, so why not blow our cash on family bonding in Vegas rather than save for college? Under a budget that assumes passage of the cap and trade plan, energy rates would "necessarily skyrocket." This money will subsidize energy producers that are less than profitable in a normal market. It begs the question as to whether or not these energy companies will use consumers'/unwitting taxpayers' money to finance their company conventions in Vegas. We cannot afford medicare/medicaid as it exists today. Nor can we, or should we, afford the prescription drug plan that Obama abhors. Yet Pelosi is, in her own creepy words, planning to pole vault over dissenters in Congress, over the will of the people, in an ends-justifies-the-means attempt to pass her healthcare bill. I've heard that the financing for the new budget includes the projection that $.42 of every dollar spent will have been borrowed (from China for sure) or printed. If that is not the mother of all bailouts, I do not know what is. Obama is the biggest hypocrite we have ever encountered in a President, even bigger than the definition of "is" himself and bigger than the cowboy that brought us the idea that we need to put aside free market principles in order to save the free market...I have decided that I would rather watch the remarkably talent-developing, physically fit, educationally- ambitious, service minded young women competing in the Miss America pageant than watch Washington screw up.