Everyone has at least some passing knowledge of Emperor Nero of the good old Roman days.... right?
Nero's rule is often associated with tyranny and extravagance.[4] He is known for a number of executions, including those of his mother[5] and stepbrother.
He is also infamously known as the emperor who "fiddled while Rome burned",[6] and as an early persecutor of Christians. This view is based upon the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, the main surviving sources for Nero's reign.
No, I'm not indicating that Obama executes people or persecutes Christians.
But there does seem to be a number of parallels in the area of "extravagance." (Tyranny aside, although there are major elements of that as well... such as the passage of the unpopular Obamacare program against the will of the people. Who can forget the Belle of Botox? " We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it," or words to that effect.)
Wednesday White House parties in the midst of a horrific recession?
Check.
Playing more golf in two years than Bush did in eight?
Check.
Setting up the school food Gestapo to control what schools can sell as food items, and to a lesser extent, what kids can eat at the cost of $4.5 billion?
Check.
Eating like the standards she wants to impose on everyone else don't exist?
Check.
Failing to lead by example? Smoking and eating in ways they're trying to stop the rest of us from doing? Vacations at a rate the middle class can't even dream of (and at the cost of literally millions of tax dollars) and, perhaps, the tinnest ear in the political world?
Check, check, check and double-check.
Here's yet another example:
Share on Facebook Email Print CommentFebruary, 21VAIL — First lady Michelle Obama enjoyed locally grown fare at a Vail restaurant Saturday night before hitting the slopes of Vail Mountain early Sunday.
2011 12:41 am
Michelle Obama enjoys fresh veggies at Restaurant Kelly Liken
Obama and her two daughters, 9-year-old Sasha and 12-year-old Malia — together with some family friends — are spending the Presidents Day holiday weekend in Vail. President Obama did not make the trip.
The first lady went to Restaurant Kelly Liken in Vail Village on Saturday night, dining on a pickled pumpkin salad with arugula and a braised ancho-chile short rib with hominy wild mushrooms and sauteed kale.
“Yes, it's true, the first lady dined at our restaurant tonight and seemed to really
enjoy it,” chef and owner Kelly Liken said.
The vegetables came from the greenhouse at Brush Creek Elementary School in Eagle as part of the Sowing Seeds program. Liken has helped spearhead the program, which allows local students to grow and harvest their own food and emphasizes the importance of nutrition, agriculture and sustainability.
“She was wonderfully gracious and very much interested in what we're doing in this valley for our kids' healthy lunch,” Liken said. “She was amazing and — all I can say is she was interested. It was really refreshing to see how interested she really was and how passionate about our kids' healthy lunches, as well as the movement to eat local here in the Vail Valley.”
Odd. Characterizing "braised ancho-chile short ribs," which has 1578 calories PER SERVING... 1279 of those calories FROM FAT as "healthy" is a bit over the edge, don't you think?
What, exactly, is so healthy about that?
So, the double-standard is institutionalized at the highest level. Weekly parties at least partially subsidized by the taxpayers, several "vacations" per year, mostly subsidized by the taxpayers...
Imagine how many teachers... firemen... policemen and the like this money could have saved instead of being wasted for the Obama's enjoyment?
Nope. These guys got nothing on Nero.
I guess when dear leader said, “Just like every family in America, the federal government has to do two things at once. It has to live within its means while still investing in the future. If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, you might put off a vacation. But you wouldn’t want to sacrifice saving for your kids’ college education or making key repairs in your house. So you cut back on what you can’t afford - to focus on what you can’t do without,” it only applied to the little people, us.
ReplyDeleteLooks like Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's former chief of staff is now the mayor of the city of Chicago.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm not a huge fan of Michelle Obama by a long shot, I don't understand what the problem is with her campaign to get more healthy food available to the school children and the general public. Whether she is able to be a good example or not is beside the point.
ReplyDeleteIt's time that the fast food business stopped passing off food that only has 35-50% real meat in it and the rest chemicals as good and desirable food. We really do need to start to teach our children about what real food is, good nutrition and how they need to take care of themselves and not live for the next Chicken McNugget. Junk food is slowly killing us and from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh we are making fun of efforts to curb its influence on our society because we are losing our freedom of choice.
If children play with guns don't we take them away, if they eat lead paint don't we make regulations against that? It's just that fast food is socially acceptable and many people are addicted to it....lets just look the other way as it helps to cause heart disease, diabetes and other major health problems. Its very slow poison and we don't see it that way. No matter what other agendas may be underway, I believe that she is trying to do something good. We all put unhealthy food on our plate, its just that she is in the spotlight and everyone sees when she slips up. Whether she eats this way or not, the message is still correct...we must eat more healthy as a society and we shouldn't have to wait until we are diagnosed with a life threatening illness to get the message.
Problem 1. Do as I say... not as I do.
ReplyDeleteProblem 2. $4.5 billion.
Problem 3. Its not a federal issue, its a parenting/local control issue.
One wonders what her response would be to some faceless bureaucrat telling her what she can feed HER children.
And where does she get off lecturing us when she feeds her kids a 1600 calorie-per-portion food for lunch, a food that would be disqualified from being served in our schools?
This "let them eat cake" attitude she and the rest of the administration displays is not one of their more endearing qualities.