Free Republic

New York City Mayor Eric Adams touted the tent city he is subsidizing as "a model for America's future. The cost of traditional living quarters in our city has gone beyond what the average person can afford. The facility on Randall's Island has most of the comforts of home. The migrants staying there are given three meals a day, fluff-and-fold laundry service and an array of entertainment including TV and video games. When combined with the free medical care and cell phones provided by the federal government it's a viable lifestyle." Photos of the insides of the compound show an...

Reports that the cost of entertainment at the White House have soared during President Obama’s term were called “unavoidable” by First Lady Michelle Obama. “Barack is no ordinary president,” Michelle contended. “He is a Nobel Prize winner. He is tremendously popular all over the world. Polls show that if everyone in the world could vote for the President of the United States he’d win with over 70% of the votes. So, naturally, it’s going to cost more.” The “rock star” status enjoyed by President Obama “boosts both the frequency and expense necessary to entertain visitors at the White House,” Michelle...

Kim Jong-un Inherits Father's Taste for Bling North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is spending top dollar on luxury products from overseas. He is apparently building a private ski resort and importing equipment to build his own sauna. The younger Kim's propensity for luxury goods seems to exceed even his late father Kim Jong-il's penchant for the good life, which involved expensive whiskey and foreign cars bought as gifts for loyal officials. According to diplomatic sources, the North recently imported sauna equipment from Finland and Germany. "Kim Jong-un likes to drink and party all night like his father and ordered the...

Meanwhile. . . What sort of trade agreements can you get after impressing the world by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on . . . 34 U.S. Naval warships, 40 aircraft, hundreds of swank hotel rooms, a half-mile, onetime use bomb proof tunnel, thousands of close friends and journalists (and the families of close friends)? Not too much. Notta . . . From Headline News: Obama leaves G-20 empty-handed on currency spat Leaders of 20 major economies on Friday refused to endorse a U.S. push to get China to let its currency rise, keeping alive a dispute that...

Pundits, political analysts, and politicians on both sides of the aisle have offered their recommendation for items which should be placed at the top of the 112th Congress's legislative agenda. Surprisingly, in light of the negative press the Obamas have received relating to their recent junket to India, so far as I have seen, not one person has suggested including legislation limiting the amount of taxpayer funds that may be expended on presidential trips -- official or otherwise -- and the White House party budget. Like all government agencies, the White House operates on the basis of appropriations that originate...

US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will be extremely busy in Mumbai, upon landing on November 6 for a two day India visit. As the world’s most powerful man and his wife zip around the city visiting the 26/11 memorial on Marine Drive, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mani Bhawan and other locations in south Mumbai, the security obviously will be water-tight . Adding to the Obamas’ busy schedule is Michelle’s likely visit to Kamathipura, where she will meet commercial sex workers on the invitation of an NGO. The highprofile visit is likely to inconvenience the...

Billionaires Reluctant to Give Up Their Toys 10 April 2009 By Ira Iosebashvili / The Moscow Times For most of the decade, the country's billionaires spent hundreds of millions of dollars on boats, jets, expensive art and the occasional football team. But, despite strained bank accounts and public outrage, the tycoons have been loath to part with their expensive trinkets, choosing instead to hunker down and wait for better days. To be sure, these are not happy days for the country's superrich. In Forbes magazine's latest ranking of the world's wealthiest people, Russia's billionaires had an estimated collective loss of...

With many top notch pizza restaurants in the Washington DC area, people have been questioning the propriety of flying a chef all the way from St. Louis to bake 20 pizzas for a bash thrown at the White House by President Barack Obama. The added expense during these times of financial crisis strikes observers as unnecessarily ostentatious. “Well, you know that the President is the ruler of all the United States,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs reminded critics. “It is his prerogative to exploit all of the resources of the realm. It just so happens that he took a fancy to...

Apparently, there is no story small enough for the right to try and discredit the President with. Prominent conservative blog Ace of Spades really lays into Barack Obama for, of all things, ordering pizza. I wish I was kidding. Unfortunately, he left out some important facts. Here's the thrust of Ace of Spades' Pizza-Gate: What a douchetool. How much does Obama love his pizza? So much that he is willing to fly a chef 860 miles to Washington D.C. to make him a personal pizza. When you're the president of the United States, only the best pizza will do -...

Merrill Lynch CEO Thain Spent $1.22 Million On Office /snip The following is a list of the items in his suite: Area Rug $87,784 Mahogany Pedestal Table $25,713 19th Century Credenza $68,179 Pendant Light Furniture $19,751 4 Pairs of Curtains $28,091 Pair of Guest Chairs $87,784 George IV Chair $18,468 6 Wall Sconces $2,741 Parchment Waste Can $1,405 Roman Shade Fabric $10,967 Roman Shades $7,315 Coffee Table $5,852 Commode on Legs $35,115 /snip

(02-08) 09:45 PST WASHINGTON D.C. -- A political odd couple, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White House spokesman Tony Snow, today slammed critics of Pelosi's bid to use a government plane that can fly her nonstop between Washington and her home district in San Francisco. "This is a silly story, and I think it's been unfair to the speaker,'' Snow told reporters. E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com.

Critics charge that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is abusing the perks of power by asking for a jumbo military jet with sleeping accommodations for her flights across the country. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Pentagon agreed to provide the speaker, who is second in the line of presidential succession, with a military plane for added security during trips back home. Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, flew in a small commuter-sized Air Force jet. Pelosi wants a larger aircraft that can fly to her San Francisco district without stopping to refuel. Some sources are claiming that Pelosi...

The cost of weddings in the United States has soared to a point some of today's younger generation may be turning away from the ritual. Courtney Martin, whose article on marriages appears in the Christian Science Monitor, seems to be one. She says a typical wedding in 1990 cost $15,208, compared to $4,376 in 1980. Martin, who has no immediate plan to wed her friend of seven years, says that wedding today will set a couple back $22,360, or enough for private college tuition for their future child if that sum is invested at 10 percent return. "Truth be told,...

Twenty years ago, as a struggling and penniless sous chef in Paris, Giorgio Locatelli once saved a month's salary simply to buy a cut of beef. But then it wasn't just any cut. It was Wagyu, and it was making its European debut as the world's most expensive meat. Yesterday he tasted it again, though this time it was free. Which was just as well, really, since the rare ingredient, imported from Japan, was the gourmet filling in Britain's most expensive sandwich - a speciality which goes on sale from tomorrow at the Sandwich Counter at Selfridge's, in Oxford Street....

/begin my translationWhere Kim Jong-il Sleeps and Works £ At Chang-sung Guest House, Kim Jong-il in shorts on a restaurant boat While Kim Il-sung was alive, his son, Kim Jong-il, constructed all facilities (used) for Great Leader('s private life) below ground and interconnected them in a cob-web fashion (using tunnels,) in the name of "safeguarding the Great Leader." In reality, however, they were intended for (safeguarding) his future. He created special military engineering corps exclusively for this kind of project and pursued the construction of fortified underground facilities for a few decades. As a result, we suspect that their expertise...

<p>North Korea's enigmatic leader Kim Jong Il demands the finest food and drink. But while he indulges, his countrymen starve.</p> <p>SEOUL -- Kim Jong Il likes to eat sashimi carved from a live fish. He hates anchovies on his pizza. He insists that the grains of his rice be absolutely uniform in size and color.</p>