This story at the CBS News Political Hotsheet yesterday has a somewhat puzzling opening paragraph:
It happens every time a president leaves town to make an Earth Day speech. Reporters scramble to point out how much fuel was expended so the President could talk about conserving energy and using alternative fuels.
Wait, you mean the reporters looked for the facts, based on an angle that would be obvious to a 2-year-old? This is kind of like saying, “It happens every time a house burns down. The firefighters scramble into their big red truck so they can spray water on the fire.” Yeah, how boring!
Anyway:
In flying to and from Iowa today, President Obama took two flights on Air Force One and four on Marine One.
The press office at Andrews AFB wouldn’t give me the fuel consumption numbers for the 747 that serves as Air Force One without the approval of the White House Press Office, which as I write this has yet to be given.
But Boeing says its 747 burns about 5 gallons of fuel per mile. It’s 895 miles from Washington to Des Moines, so a round trip brings the fuel consumption for the fixed-wing portion of the President’s trip to 8,950 gallons.
And he used about 166 gallons on Marine One. All so he could get to Newton, Iowa. Apparently he’s unaware that anywhere in the world he gives a speech, it’s going to be covered by the news. (Unless they’re not allowed in, that is.) But then, there aren’t many places in America where you can give a speech with the backdrop of a windmill manufacturing plant. That’s how we’re going to break our dependence on oil, by putting up windmills all over the place. Windmills that nobody wants in their backyard. Just ask Ted Kennedy.
Well, the whole trip was silly and self-negating, but at least he looked good doing it. It’s not like anything else matters.
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Simon, you forgot to add in the fuel cost for transporting the tele-prompters in.
That was a lot of fuel to use on a simple campaign stop…oh wait, he was elected president wasnt he?? Huh, I wonder if anyone told him he is suppose to stop doing campaign stops when you get the Frigging Job.
But he has 2012 to think about already
How dare the toothless masses begrudge the Messiah HIS fuel for His private planes!!
And when High-Speed trains will be builded across the United-States, would he still fly around? The whole thing smells a lot like Jimmy Carter.
Gee, why am I not surprised? He flew to Denver to sign a bill into law that most Presidents would sign at the White House. I wonder how many liberal tree huggers like Leo or Al will actually mention anything like this and complain about what he did. I think I hear crickets in the background folks. Now, if it were Bush…….
Hey. He won. So all that stuff he said before? Whatever.
“I wonder how many liberal tree huggers like Leo or Al will actually mention anything like this and complain about what he did. I think I hear crickets in the background folks.”
AAW………they won’t say a thing, their messiah won and that shut ALL their yaps. Except for us average Joes and Janes who are living life like normal people…we’re the big bad boogeypeople of the ecology nightmare.
Everytime the president flies, there is another air force 1 (to confuse the enemy) and 3 marine helicopters as escorts. The amount of fuel burnt on this jaunt is probably 3x the 9000 gallons stated.
“…there aren’t many places in America where you can give a speech with the backdrop of a windmill manufacturing plant.”
You know Hollywood has this great technology called blue/green screen. If your local weatherman has one why doesn’t the POTUS?
How do these things not occur to him? Taking a private 747 across hundreds of miles for a single environmental speech on Earth Day, for crying out loud?? If he’s as technically savvy as he’s supposed to be, with the blackberry and making everyone switch to computerized medical records and all, why can’t he just do a teleconference? Or record in front of a blue screen and have windmills added in, like weathermen do?
And as far as windmills go, they are a terrible eyesore and take up miles and miles of land and (what used to be) beautiful mountain tops. Same goes for the massive expanses of solar panels that they want to line our deserts with (that, btw, require a LOT of water to wash – weekly). How can they uglify all that land with windmills and solar panels, and then throw a fit about drilling in ANWR or out in the ocean?
TP: Seriously, these things DO occur to him, or to someone nearby. The point is that HE DOESN’T CARE. The mainstream media and his other sycophants have got his back, and as far as he’s concerned, he can do no wrong. He and the First Klingon have been flying chefs in to custom-create pizzas for them, people. The guy thinks he’s king for life, and that he is accountable to no one.
When El Prez pulls something lame like this and people come up with rationalizations that mostly amount to, “It’s for the greater good,” it kind of reminds me of the movie Hot Fuzz.
Well, I am still waiting for him to walk on water. It has been 100 days after all. Sheesh!
Ok, I’m not questioning the hypocrisy and the utter lack of consideration on Obama’s part here…burning (unidentified) amounts of fuel to preach about the Earth Day seems pointless and stupid to me…but what kind of transportation would you guys have him use? I always thought that the President of the United States is entitled to his plane…if only for security measures. I mean, it’s not the first time I see people complain about him using a private jet. What is he supposed to take a coach bus or something? I’m not defending what he did or anything, I’m just saying…
I think, Nati, what most posters here are saying is that he really didn’t HAVE to fly anywhere at all for this. He just chose to. And we’re not supposed to notice the hypocrisy, or oddity, if you will, of burning that much fuel for so little reason, particularly on EARTH DAY, because it’s not Bush, and therefore not evil. Make that “Evil”.
Yeah! If Obama were serious, he would walk everywhere! Or maybe bike there! Or, um, drive a hybrid? How long would an 1790-mile round trip take in a car? Figuring sixty miles an hour, on average… Thirty hours?
How much is the president’s time worth? He gets, what, $400,000 a year? Divide by 365, then 24 (he doesn’t stop being president at five, you know)… $45.66 an hour? So taking the trip by car would have run us $1400, about. How much does 9000 gallons cost?
All right, I’m on a roll now. How much does jet fuel cost? I’m pretty sure we can demand, like, a refund or something for however much it should have cost, or the difference or something.
Real reason why the budget is $1.3 trillion? To pay for Air Force One’s jet fuel.
I just hope he didn’t say something helpful like:
With my new recovery bill, this windmill company will be hiring back all the shifts they layed off last year, millions of workers fueling our new green economy…
‘Cuz that’s pretty much what we call the Caterpillar curse, out here in the rust belt.
Beige, I understand what everyone is saying and I agree that he didn’t have to fly anywhere this time. It’s just that I’ve been noticing people criticizing him for using his jet on other occasions, too. Expensive and bad for the environment as it is, the private jet sort of seems as an appropriate transportation and a security measure for the President. I don’t know, I just can’t picture the president, say, driving across the country. Just doesn’t seem safe to me.
It was amazing. You could see the rise of the oceans reversing, right here in Iowa.
I’m laughing to hard at this f*ckery to even have a real comment.
Nati,
It seems that he is using his plane even more so than Bush did and nobody is questioning it. He does not have to fly everywhere to sign bills when most of the other Presidents did it right there in the White House. The real hypocracy here is that he is preaching to us about conserving but hikes his thermostat up in the oval office and flies his plane out for a day on our dime while telling us we need to cut back. Kind of like Al Gore, but using our money to do this stuff with.
Here are some JET A fuel prices (per gallon):
Wash. Nat’l – $8.61
Southside of Atlanta, GA (small airport) – $2.77
ATL Hartsfield – $6.42
I don’t know what the USAF pays, but let’s be REAL conservative at $3 to $4/gal, x 9000 = $27,000 to $36,000.
I don’t begrudge him use of the plane, with all its secure communications, etc., but I do expect him to be frugal, like everyone else here.
But wait ! Who are we to question ? Lemme think … oh, yeah, we’re the ones funding it!
BTW, I posted rather late to the Jessica Biel story. Did anyone notice that the bathroom picture was taken in a guy’s bathroom ?
(Begin sarcasm) Obama is beyond hypocrisy and waaaaaaay beyond having to justify anything he does because, dude, HE WON!! When are we going to get that through to our thick still-not-taxed-enough skulls? (End sarcasm)
What I wonder is, how do typical tree-hugging multi-zillionaires (the first one to come to mind is Babs) justify flying around in private jets between their Malibu compound and Fifth Avenue penthouse while expecting the little people (schmucks who buy tickets to their movies or concerts) to just put on an extra sweater if the thermostat falls (begin sarcasm) below 30 (end sarcasm)?
AAW, I agree, he shouldn’t be using the jet when he doesn’t even have to go anywhere. This time and all those times you’ve mentioned, I see that there was no need for him to go anywhere at all. It’s just that even when he has to go somewhere you sometimes still hear people say “whaaa he’s using his private jet again”. Pretty much every time he flies anywhere (even when he has to) you hear people complain. But yeah, I see everyone’s point, if you’re preaching conserving and cutting back (on everything) to everyone else, the excessive use of the private plane is hypocritical and inconsiderate.
I saw a column recently (Thomas Sowell’s, I think) about a throwaway bit during the campaign, in which The Wonderful O mentioned his desire to form a federal police force that was as well-trained, well-armed, and well-equipped as our military. Nobody has really made any mention of it since, but Sowell–and many others–think they would be Obama’s personal SS. So I guess his environmental hypocrisy would be the LEAST of our worries, by that theory. Not sure what to think on that one, actually. After the Black Panthers showing up at polling places in November to discourage McCain voters, it wouldn’t really surprise me much.
He’s already signed in the national service bill. That news just came and went–his getting a dog got more coverage by the MSM. He’s pretty much on schedule for all the things he said he was going to do.
Ah, the smell of forced volunteering on the horizon… I just love being made to donate my time. It’s so giving of me!
Agreed that he’s still in campaign mode, as is evident in stuff like this. Town hall meetings? Rallys? Is it really 2012 already, because that would make me happy — we’ve survived Obama and can elect someone else.
I always thought that the whole thing about volunteering was that you did it without being paid or coerced…of course, I also thought that bills went TO the president to be signed. Apparently the bills really hop on Air Force One for a trip across the country before they get signed. Schoolhouse Rock so did not cover that part.
I think I just dated myself.
And don’t you love how they’re now flying Air Force One around Manhattan, wasting all that fuel and harming the environment, just for a photo op of the plane? Someone needs to tell them about Photoshop.
Unfortunately, the President, like most people, does not have wings attached to his back. He flies in an airplane like everyone else but, due to security, it costs A LOT more money & fuel than the average citizen uses. I realize that flying around the world on a private jet to talk about conservation is a little hypocritical and “expensive” environmentally, but, until they find a different way for these people to travel, what do you expect them to do? Walk from England to the US? Have the President take a train to the middle of the country? Or drive? Or ride a bike? We all have things in our carbon footprint that we “could” do without, but most people are not scrutinized in the same way because then everyone “could” be proven to be a hypocrite in some way.
Many of the environmental suggestions for regular people are ridiculous and EXTREMELY INCONVENIENT but I supposed that, even though I do many things for the environment, the fact that I don’t unplug every appliance in my house every time I leave makes me a hypocrite too. I guess the 5 cents worth of energy per day I (and you) could save is going to be the tipping point to Global Warming. I also assume you will call me a hypocrite for trying to be environmentally friendly but still needing to use airplanes to travel long distances.
It seems like I am taking both sides but I am not. I am in favor of doing REASONABLE things for the environment, but there are a lot of issues are causing the problem — mostly industry — but we want to nit pick everyone for not being 100% environmentally pure. You must realize that some of the things we currently do have no alternatives yet you expect people who promote the environment to somehow figure out a way to do things without using a single atom of carbon. They are not magicians. They have to work with what we have now but are also striving to change the status quo so we all can use less carbon. If you have better ideas, then maybe you should present them to the President, but, of course, you don’t have any solutions, just criticism.
Not expect me to take them seriously when they preach about Global Warming. I’ll believe there’s a crisis when they start acting like it.
Unlike you.
And I did offer him a solution: Make his speech from home. They have cameras and stuff there, pretty sure.
“You must realize that some of the things we currently do have no alternatives”
Dude – nearly everything you listed that requires an airplane could be accomplished without the person physically being there. If one thing pisses me off more than any other about dumbass environmentalists, it’s that they can figure out two million ways for ME to cut my ‘footprint’, but the word ‘teleconference’ has evaded their notice for a decade.
Why does a President who claims to support the environment need to fly all the way across the country to give a speech? They can’t roll a big screen out for everyone to watch his speech? With a $25 dollar webcam you could even let the people at the event ask questions and interact with him! It’s not like this technology is new, companies have been using it to cut travel costs for a while now.
And isn’t he supposed to be the ‘most tech-savy President in history’? Wasn’t it HIS campaign that pissed all over John McCain because he couldn’t ‘check his own E-mail’ (despite the fact they were wrong, he just can’t type because of his injuries as a POW)? But he (and most of the environmental lobby) can’t managed to figure out a simple teleconference? Give me a break.
He needs to keep better track of his planes. He didn’t even know where one of them was yesterday. The problems of the rich and famous, how we can only wish…