HOW MUCH DID OBAMA’S FAMILY VACATION COST TAXPAYERS

That’s the generous estimate of how much the Obama family vacation cost taxpayers this Christmas. $1,474,200 to be exact.

The Hawaii Reporter compiled an estimated account of expenses for the Obama trip and found that, before factoring in unknown costs, taxpayers forked over almost $1.5 million. Here’s how the paper broke it down:

Mrs. Obama’s early flight to Hawaii: $63,000 (White House Dossier)

Obama’s round trip flight to Hawaii: $1 million (GAO estimates)

Housing in beachfront homes for Secret Service and Seals in Kailua ($1,200 a day for 14 days): $16,800

Costs for White House staff staying at Moana Hotel: $134,400 ($400 per day for 24 staff) – excluding meals and other room costs

Police overtime: $250,000 (2009 costs reported by Honolulu Police Department)

Ambulance: $10,000 (City Spokesperson)

TOTAL COST: $1,474,200

Then there are the unknown costs: --The hidden costs!

WOMAN SPENDS 2 HOURS EATING 30,000 CALORIE ‘CHRISTMAS DINNER’

A New Jersey resident striving to become the world’s fattest woman got one step closer this holiday season. That’s because her “Christmas dinner” consisted of a 30,000 calorie feast (which included two whole turkeys) that took two hours to eat.

Donna Simpson, 46, is already about 650 lbs and is looking to gain 350 more before hitting her goal weight of 1,000 pounds. Here is a run down of what Simpson ate: -CLICK for her MENU!

EMAILS REVEAL NYC MAYOR’S OFFICE OFFERS BEHIND-THE-SCENES SUPPORT FOR GROUND ZERO MOSQUE

Internal emails obtained by Judicial Watch suggest a number of top deputies in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office “went to great lengths” to help the developers of the proposed Ground Zero mosque, including drafting a letter addressed to the community board on their behalf. --The New York Daily News!

45 people lynched, chopped up and burned amid Haiti cholera fears

Angry Haitian mobs have lynched at least 45 people in recent weeks, accusing them of spreading a cholera outbreak that has killed over 2,500 people across the country.

The number included at least 14 suspected sorcerers previously known to have been lynched in the far southwestern region of Grand'Anse as local people feared they were spreading cholera with a magical substance.

"We have counted 40 people dead in Grand'Anse department alone, where people are attacking natural healers they accuse of cholera-linked witchcraft," said communications ministry official Moise Fritz Evens.

Five other people were killed in similar circumstances elsewhere in the country.

"The victims -- most of them voodoo priests -- were stoned or hacked with machetes before being burned in the street," added the official, who was presenting the results of an investigation conducted in Grand'Anse earlier this month.

Communications minister Marie-Laurence Lassegue said "voodoo practitioners have nothing to do with the cholera epidemic. We must press for an awareness campaign about the disease in the communities.

Official figures earlier showed the water-borne bacterial infection has claimed 2,591 lives so far in the nation's first cholera outbreak in more than a century. The disease first appeared in mid-October in the north.

Health ministry figures as of December 17 showed 121,518 people had been treated for the water-borne bacterial infection, including 63,711 who received hospital treatment. --MORE

"The Titanic" by Walter Lord verses "My Life" by Bill Clinton

Titanic: Cost - $29.99.
Clinton: Cost - $29.99.

Titanic: Over 3 hours to read.
Clinton: Over 3 hours to read.

Titanic: The story of Jack and Rose, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.
Clinton: The story of Bill and Monica, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.

Titanic: Jack is a starving artist.
Clinton: Bill is a bullshxt artist.

Titanic: In one scene, Jack enjoys a good cigar.
Clinton: Ditto for Bill.

Titanic: During the ordeal, Rose's dress gets ruined.
Clinton: Ditto for Monica.

Titanic: Jack teaches Rose to spit.
Clinton: Let's not go there.

Titanic: Rose gets to keep her jewelry.
Clinton: Monica' s forced to return her gifts.

Titanic: Rose remembers Jack for the rest of her life.
Clinton: Clinton doesn't remember Jack.

Titanic: Rose goes down on a vessel full of seamen.
Clinton: Monica, ah...let's not go there either.

Titanic: Jack surrenders to an icy death.
Clinton: Bill goes home to Hillary (basically the same thing).

$2 trillion debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US cities

Overdrawn American cities could face financial collapse in 2011, defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowings and derailing the US economic recovery. Nor are European cities safe – Florence, Barcelona, Madrid, Venice: all are in trouble.

More than 100 American cities could go bust next year as the debt crisis that has taken down banks and countries threatens next to spark a municipal meltdown, a leading analyst has warned.

Meredith Whitney, the US research analyst who correctly predicted the global credit crunch, described local and state debt as the biggest problem facing the US economy, and one that could derail its recovery.

"Next to housing this is the single most important issue in the US and certainly the biggest threat to the US economy," Whitney told the CBS 60 Minutes program on Sunday night.

"There's not a doubt on my mind that you will see a spate of municipal bond defaults. You can see fifty to a hundred sizable defaults – more. This will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of defaults."

New Jersey governor Chris Christie summarized the problem succinctly: "We spent too much on everything. We spent money we didn't have. We borrowed money just crazily. The credit card's maxed out, and it's over. We now have to get to the business of climbing out of the hole. We've been digging it for a decade or more. We've got to climb now, and a climb is harder." --MORE

Friendly Holiday Advice

Please take care of yourself this Christmas.  A recent joint study conducted by the Department of Health and the Department of Motor Vehicles indicates that 23% of traffic accidents are alcohol related.  This means that the remaining 77% are caused by clowns who just drink coffee, carbonated drinks, juices, milk, water, and garbage like that.  Therefore, beware of those who do NOT drink alcohol.  They cause three times as many accidents.

Obama's Justice Department Sues School for Refusing to OK Teacher's Pilgrimage to Mecca

DoJ's Eric Holder sued a suburban Chicago school district Monday for denying a Muslim middle school teacher unpaid leave to make a pilgrimage to Mecca that is a central part of her religion.

In a civil rights case, the department said the school district in denied the request of Safoorah Khan on grounds that her requested leave was unrelated to her professional duties and was not set forth in the contract between the school district and the teachers union. In doing so the school district violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to reasonably accommodate her religious practices, the government said.

Khan wanted to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia which every adult Muslim is supposed to make at least once in a lifetime if they are physically and financially able. --MORE

Isn't it time for this dangerous con to end?

The unusually chilly global-warming summit!

Cancun is hosting the U.N. conference on man-made climate change — amid record cold temperatures!

The irony: As negotiators from nearly 200 countries met in Cancun to strategize ways to keep the planet from getting hotter, the temperature in the seaside Mexican city plunged to a 100-year record low of 54° F. Climate-change skeptics are gleefully calling Cancun's weather the latest example of the "Gore Effect" — a plunge in temperature they say occurs wherever former Vice President Al Gore, now a Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist, makes a speech about the climate. Although Gore is not scheduled to speak in Cancun, "it could be that the Gore Effect has announced his secret arrival," jokes former NASA scientist Roy W. Spencer.

The reaction: ClimateGate was "bad enough," says Duncan Davidson in Wall Street Pit, but Cancun's weather is particularly "inconvenient" for global-warming alarmists. It's a reminder that global temperatures have "flatlined" despite rising carbon dioxide levels, "which is decidedly chilling against the concept of hampering economic growth to limit Co2 emissions." Grow up, says Tony Juniper in The Independent. "Sure, it's cold outside," but "the trend data show that the world is warming, that the climate is changing, and that the release of greenhouse gases is the cause." The longer we use every cold snap as an excuse to put off reducing emissions, "the bigger the risk we run. Tick tock, tick tock." The SPOOF!

Obama's Broken Promises

-- Politi-FACTS: CLICK!

Approved Applications for Waiver of the Annual Limits Requirements of the PHS Act Section 2711 as of December 3, 2010

Why are 222 businesses (so far) exempt from His obamacare? --Obama's List

What side are you on?

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he's "offended."

"IT’S OKAY TO RACIALLY PROFILE PASSENGERS"

In the wake of a cab driver shooting this weekend in New York City, the head of the state’s Taxi federation is encouraging drivers to profile passengers, especially blacks and Hispanics.

“Profile your passengers, it’s very important,” Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said yesterday. “I don’t care about racial profiling. You know sometimes it‘s good that we are racially profiled because the God’s-honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics. So if you see suspicious activity, you know what, don’t pick the person up.” --VIDEO!

List of facilities 'vital to US security' leaked

A long list of key facilities around the world that the US describes as vital to its national security has been released by Wikileaks.

The US State Department in February 2009 asked all US missions abroad to list all installations whose loss could critically affect US national security.

The list includes pipelines, communication and transport hubs.

Several UK sites are listed, including cable locations, satellite sites and BAE Systems plants.

This is probably the most controversial document yet from the Wikileaks organization.

The geographical range of the document is extraordinary. If the US sees itself as waging a "global war on terror" then this represents a global directory of the key installations and facilities, many of them medical or industrial, that are seen as being of vital importance to Washington. MORE!

Wave goodbye to Internet freedom

FCC crosses the Rubicon into online regulation

The Federal Communications Commission is poised to add the Internet to its portfolio of regulated industries. The agency's chairman, Julius Genachowski, announced Wednesday that he circulated draft rules he says will "preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet." No statement could better reflect the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality of Obama administration policies.

With a straight face, Mr. Genachowski suggested that government red tape will increase the "freedom" of online services that have flourished because bureaucratic busybodies have been blocked from tinkering with the Web. Ordinarily, it would be appropriate at this point to supply an example from the proposed regulations illustrating the problem. Mr. Genachowski's draft document has over 550 footnotes and is stamped "non-public, for internal use only" to ensure nobody outside the agency sees it until the rules are approved in a scheduled Dec. 21 vote. --So much for "openness."

Delaying Tax Vote Could Crash Stock Market Beginning 12/15

Failure by Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts, especially locking in the 15 percent capital gains tax rate, will spark a stock market sell off starting December 15 as investors move to lock in gains at a lower rate than the 20 percent it would jump to next year, warn analysts. While it is unclear how bad the sell off could be, it could wipe out the year's gains.

"Capital gains tax rate will increase from 15 to 20 percent if the tax cuts are not extended. The last time the capital gains tax rate increased--on Jan. 1, 1987 from 20 to 28 percent--investors realized their gains at the lower tax rate," said Daniel Clifton at a Washington partner at Strategas Research Partners. "We would expect a similar effect this time around as investors see the tax rate going up and choose to realize their gains and incur the 15 percent tax."

In a memo to clients, Clifton says that the date most clients are focused on is December 15th for a deal in Congress before beginning to sell. One reason: Many stock options expire that day and investors have to act.

The later Congress acts, he tells Whispers, "the more pressure that will build on the stock market.". The STORY!

How Much Did Taxpayers Pay for Andy Griffith to Promote ObamaCare?

Documents obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services reveal that the Obama administration spent $3,184,000 in taxpayer funds to produce and air national television ads promoting Democrats’ health care overhaul plan.

The ads, starring television icon Andy Griffith, were meant to educate “Medicare beneficiaries, caregivers and family members about forthcoming changes to Medicare as a result of the Affordable Care Act.” However, multiple media outlets, including the nonpartisan FactCheck.org, called the ads misleading. Mayberry's Story

Newark Mayor, Police Union Head At Odds Over Layoffs

While Sides Bicker, Residents Fear Spike In Crime

Newark residents were wondering Tuesday if their streets were safe after 14 percent of the city’s police officers were laid off.

The mayor of Newark and his police director said even with 167 officers laid off, people will not notice a difference on the street.

“Newark residents should know that tonight. We will have virtually the same amount of people, on patrol. As we had last night. And the night before,” Mayor Cory Booker said.
But that answer was not giving the citizens comfort.

“The criminals are sitting back, saying, ‘Oh boy. I like this. I like this!’” residents worry.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea because then violence increases because as they’re laying off police officers, they’re also laying off other people, and what do they turn to? They turn to violence,” added an inner city taxpayer.

"Coming to a City Near You"