Linked by Drudge – no surprise there – a story about Obama’s new presidential limousine:
The Obamobile being prepared for the president-elect is said to be a monster gas-guzzler made by General Motors, the troubled car giant. It will look like a black Cadillac but is built like a tank. A spy photographer who tracks down future car models for magazines snatched pictures of the heavily disguised first-car-in-waiting when it was being road-tested last summer.
The armour-plated car, which has a raised roof, windows up to 5in thick, extra-strength tyres and a body made of steel, aluminium, titanium and ceramics, is thought to be based on a GMC 2500 truck that gets less than 10 miles to the gallon. Three cars are believed to be in production so that two can serve as decoys.
The thing is that Obama has little to no say in anything involving his security. In fact, I would be surprised he even knows anything about this. Perhaps if America didn’t have to deal with some of the crazies (you know, like the nuts you regularly saw at Sarah Palin rallies) the president – no matter what his or her party affiliation – could still cruise through the streets of Dallas in an open air limo. The fact is, Obama can’t do that – and he has no say in it.
If the Secret Service determines that Obama is going to do “x” for his safety, Obama does “x” whether he wants to or not. I suspect security for Obama will be unprecedented. There are nuts out there – enabled on by crackpots on the right – who neither want “the most liberal, most socialist president in history” nor “an African American President” in the White House.
So, Obama will be carted around in a limo built like a tank that gets 10 miles to the gallon precicely because he has no other choice, and to use this as a jab to say that he’s not as green as he promised he would be is plain stupid.
myiq2xu
Obama will travel in a customized Cadillac? RedState’s gonna have fun with this.
Tom
stupid stupid stupid. next on the agenda: obama isn’t green because air force one burns through 50 gallons of jet fuel a minute.
Nazgul35
So let me get this straight…
It was road tested last summer (before Obama won) and had to be designed before that (perhaps before he was even the Democratic Party nominee) and Drudge thinks this is a story?
What’s worse: Drudge for thinking this is a story or the Traditional Media for running with it?*
*Rhetorical question alert
UncommonSense
This is exactly right. The Secret Service is charged with protecting the president, and that is what they are going to do, no matter what.
This is why I had no patience for people who criticized George W. Bush for not returning immediately to Washington, D.C. on 9/11. The Secret Service would have been derelict in its duty to let him go back to the capitol before we knew the threat had passed. That would have been insane.
I cut Bush no slack for the My Pet Goat moment, but no rational person could fault him for a delayed return to the capitol.
Likewise, nobody but a wingnut would criticize Obama for going along with the Secret Service’s efforts to keep him alive.
Drudge is a joke.
MattF
Would it be a little mean to point out that Bush and Chaney probably have vehicles that make this look like a pedicab? I sure hope so.
28 Percent
Typeical LIEBERALS you will defend you’re Obamessah no matter WHAT HE DOES. But you just wait I will bet that even though he is "green" and made environmental extremist extremism a "cornerstone" of his campaign the Executive Mansion (that is right your Man of the People will live in a mansion! you do not have a leg to stand on he has fooled you all) it is a very old house and not "energy efficient" so you’re dreams that you have a president who is "at one with nature" (hahaha) will not come true. I bet he will use hundreds of thousands of kwh of electricity more than everybody else uses it just shows what a hypocrit he is and how stupid you are to believe him.
Michael D.
@28 Percent: I’ve seen some pretty godawful spoofs. You make them look incredibly talented by comparison.
r€nato
Of course, if Obama chose to drive around in a Prius, he would be endlessly mocked for that too.
Heads I win, tails you lose – the motto of the Rabid Right.
Jon H
It’s not like the damn thing is used for long distance drives.
Bob In Pacifica
Now if Bush rode around in an F-250 to haul brush around his ranch, that’d be cool with certain segments.
Jon H
MattF wrote: "Would it be a little mean to point out that Bush and Chaney probably have vehicles that make this look like a pedicab?"
Well, no, theirs are probably the old version, which probably has less armor, thus less weight.
Focusing on the President’s limo is kinda silly, anyway, since it never ever drives alone. It’s part of a motorcade, which, if I’m not mistaken, includes a truck with a pop-up gatling gun in the back.
Josh Hueco
@UncommonSense:
Drudge has chosen to use his ‘talents’ in service of his right-wing patrons. He has his reward.
PS – IIRC, hacktacular conservatives like Drudge, Douthat, and Reynolds were the sons of pretty outspoken liberals who were active in the civil rights movements. It’s possible that they chose their politics as some sort of rebellion against their parents, who were much, much better people than their offspring will ever be.
jenniebee
I fault him for not staying put at the first military base he landed (the idea that the wouldn’t have been safe at a locked down military base – even an Air Force base – is laughable). He didn’t have to be in DC, but it would have been nice if he hadn’t been, you know, completely out of the fucking loop. His failure to put his foot down and take control of his own security situation meant that Cheney ended up in a tussle with top brass over whether the veep had the authority to order the Air Force to shoot down the fourth jet.
If the Secret Service had their druthers, I’m sure they’d prefer to lock the President and his family in a nuclear-hardened bunker in an undisclosed location for the entire four years of his term. It’s the president’s job to draw the line and decide what’s an appropriate level of risk.
TheHatOnMyCat
This is the best video I have seen of Barack’s lunch stop at Manny’s Deli on Friday.
It’s long, but watch the whole ten minutes if you can.
Slightly OT, but unless you think you can have a real thread about a limo ….. I mean, I’m a car guy, and I can’t get worked up about a limo. Put the man in a tank, for all I care, just take care of him.
28 Percent
@Michael D.: not everybody understands my art.
TheHatOnMyCat
Heh.
Zifnab
I remember during the primaries when John McCain made a few jokes about not needing body guards. Obama was something of a novelty because he picked up a security detail so quickly. It’s a rather pathetic game wingnuts play, mocking practical measures while lauding massive waste.
It’s the same whiny bullshit that gave us "Al Gore has a big house!" And its times like this when I really miss $4 / gal gas.
Tony J
Fixed.
Tony J
Okay. So. WTF happened to the ‘Strike’ function?
As in "Plain Stupid" should be stricken. Or strucked. Meh, I’ve had too much coffee anyway.
Scott H
Reagan got shot for overruling his Secret Service detail. No more of that, thank you.
I thought the limo manufacturers alternated. I would’ve expected the new vehicle(s) to be Lincoln.
August J. Pollak
This will be the editorial style for the next four years, guaranteed.
"Why does our emperor not walk the halls of the Forum alone at twilight? Is he not the man of the people he promised to be?"
Incertus
@Zifnab: Indeed. I’m surprised no one has come up with the "at least the tires will be fully inflated" line yet.
Faux News
Does anyone here remember when during the Clinton era the Secret Service shut down the street on the north side of the White House? This was before 9/11 and the SS had determined that a car/truck bomb detonation on that street would injure or kill the POTUS and his family.
Now the R’s had the House and Senate at the time. Care to guess what happened next? They began to howl and scream that CLINTON was trying to hurt the local businesses that were adjacent to that street and they DEMANDED the street be re-open. The R’s hounded Clinton to the very end of his term to reopen the street, which of course he never did. For some strange reason their howling and screaming stopped after 9/11/01. Wonder why?
4tehlulz
Drudge et al are just pissed because it’ll be a little harder to whack Obama. This whining about gas mileage is just their attempt to make lemonade out of the lemons of increased protection.
ksmiami
All I can say, is since the Democrats are the ones in perpetual danger of the crazies, I want the Secret Service to do everything in their power to keep Obama and his family safe.
R. Porrofatto
Boy are they desperate. The current model is already an armor-plated gas-guzzler — like anyone expects something else? I wonder if the new one (which could just as easily be called the McCainMobile, but then it wouldn’t have been linked by Drudge) is also being built by Centigon, whose marketing claims that their armored vehicles "provide total confidence across a full range of threat levels," kind of like deodorants for Ralph Peters or Jules Crittenden.
JohnR
It’s kind of pointless even to make fun of this, although perhaps periodic compilations of then/now or us/them contradictory quotes would be amusing. The simple fact is that anything at all is grounds for wild-eyed rants by a big chunk of the American people – it’s not just Drudge, and it’s not just the Rabid Right (although they’re particularly good at it, having made this technique the mainstay of their argument style for decades now). Obama, like liberals in general, Democrats in general, Blacks in general, intelligent people in general, and thoughtful people in general, are enemies of Real Americans (ie willfully stupid, fearful people who feel they’re not getting enough of the government’s pie and it’s somebody’s fault other than the blindingly obvious choice). This means that he’s always fair game for his obviously deliberate bad choices and character flaws: he’s too thin, he’s too popular, he’s too smart, he’s too glib, he’s too secretive, he’s too open (he must be hiding something), he’s too good at faking key documents (but _not good enough_!), he’s too tall, he’s too black, he’s not really black, he’s too liberal, he’s too conservative (but only pretending), he’s too rich (but not the _right kind_ of rich), he’s too beholden to his contributors (but not the _right kind_ of contributors), etc. ,etc., etc., He’s Deliberately Being Better Than Me, And It’s Not Fair! See, these are the people who killed Jesus for being too troublesome and for making them feel bad about themselves. Mocking them only makes them more certain that they’re right, and ignoring them only makes them more determined to Show You All. I think Jesus’ approach is one of the best ones – love them anyway, and you largely take away their best weapon – their self-loathing hatred of The Other.
Karen
I read somewhere years ago that after Kennedy refused to let the Secret Service put the "bubble top" on his limo, then was killed, the security precautions were taken out of the President’s hands. He has no say in the matter anymore. They will do what they feel is necessary to prevent another Dallas in ’63.
The Moar You Know
If only he had agreed to those ten town-hall meetings with McCain. Then he could ride around on a motor scooter and no one would care. But he didn’t, and he didn’t take public financing, so obviously this is all his fault.
/Drudge
Ash Can
As for my own 5-second review, I think 28 Percent is a riot — his/her flailing is always as over-the-top as possible, and s/he hits all of the RW talking points with equal bombast. Of course, my reaction is tempered by the fact that I’ve seen 28% slip and speak out-of-voice, proving that s/he’s a spoof. Nevertheless, I’ll take the wild-ass, bugfuck crazy spoofs over the articulate but bone-dry ones any day of the week.
@TheHatOnMyCat: When I saw that news story, it reminded me that the last time I was at Manny’s I got there too late for the oxtail stew. They were already out of it by 11:30 AM. Dammit. Parking around there is hellacious enough even without the Secret Service detail, but their food is worth the aggravation.
Now I’m jonesing for a pastrami sandwich. Methinks the other neighborhood grade-school moms and I should organize a lunch field trip for ourselves one of these days…
The Other Steve
Insane, possibly.
But it would have been what a leader would have done.
I have no patience for fuckwits who still make excuses for that jackass coward.
The Other Steve
BTW, the official phrase is now Palin Stupid(tm), not Plain Stupid(tm)
The Other Steve
oops, deleted
Zifnab
Did George Bush every open the street? Because I certainly didn’t see that happen in his first 100 days. Maybe I missed it?
Remember, we’ve got a peasant in the White House again. Can’t let one of the huddled masses start taking on aires like he runs this country or anything. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after decades of Republican waxing and waning majority, it’s that any given action can be either right or wrong. It’s right when a Republican does it. It’s an impeachable offense otherwise.
Zifnab
And it only gets worse!
If this doesn’t prove he’s a secret Muslim, I don’t know what does.
lover of jazz
well, drudge is an idiot, so this is about what one should expect.
Joe
Please, please, please let the wingnuts make a big deal out of this. It makes them look stupid, which is good for us. Keep them marginalized.
Brachiator
Must be a slow news week. I guess Bush must have fixed the economy and ended the war in Iraq, so there must be nothing else for slime like Drudge to blog about.
I am getting a bit annoyed at revelations about Obama’s security arrangements (e.g., a past story about Secret Service code names for the president and his family, etc.). I imagine next up will be demands that Obama fly coach instead of using Air Force One.
Given the increase in outright hate chatter on the web and elsewhere since Obama’s election, it is too bad that Drudge and Limbaugh and other right wing pundits are incapable of dialing back their conservative bile.
Balconesfault
Hell – you forgot about the sizable percentage of Americans who think Obama’s a closet Muslim, out to bring Islamofascism to our shores.
And oh yeah – nobody wants to be the person who took out the Antichrist!
gopher2b
These two things are not at all the same. Gore is a hypocrite.
I would feel more comfortable if they drove Obama around in a tank.
Incertus
@Brachiator:
Are you kidding? These are gravy days for those people. Some days I think they won’t be satisfied until we have major cities burning, a la 1966.
Comrade Glocksman
The stories about his SS protection are pretty harmless as far as helping out a would be assassin goes, so I’m not annoyed so much as amused by the reaction of Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage™ over this non-story.
Shit, the kooks would learn more (mis)information from a Tom Clancy book than what the SS allows to leak. :)
Personal Designation
Bush was too busy carrying out his murderous 9/11 attack to be anywhere "on time".
The man had things to do, give him a break! Why micro manage the president’s schedule? He can do anything he wants anytime he wants to do it *SHEESH*
Al Gore does have a big house, its called the internet and there we have "many mansions" (rooms in the Greek).
Screamin' Demon
President Obama toolin’ around in a Jimmy? I can’t begin to tell you how cool that would be.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
No, that’s not entirely right. I can’t remember, it was either Ford or Carter, but one of them really liked to move freely to meet people and the Service had to scramble to do their thing.
As far as I know, the President is free to move anywhere (s)he damn well pleases. Who’s the Service to dictate what Emergency Solver Number One needs to do? And what if the Service could use such authority to limit the movements of the President and his/her affairs?
After all, the Secret Service is still a branch of Treasury, which is a branch of the Executive.
(female presnit pronouns added to sooth myiq, whereever he may be)
tavella
Yeah, it was the wandering all over the country thing that was the issue. It was panicky, and panic was not exactly what I would hope a president would project in times like those.
Indylib
I watched a National Geographic show a week or so ago on the SS. It showed a lot of what they did to secure the auditorium at LSU for a graduation speech Bush gave. A month of prep time, hundreds of people, flew equipment in from DC, including the Presidential Limo, snipers on surrounding buildings, SS agents on the stage. This was for a trip in which W was on the ground in Baton Rouge for about 80 minutes.
When you multiply that times the thousands of campaign stops that Obama did it’s pretty damned impressive. I was in awe when I actually stopped to think about everything the SS had done during the campaign to keep Obama alive.
jake 4 that 1
Waaah! Why is there a gate around the White House?! The people’s taxes pay for the building and its upkeep, we should be able to stroll in and raid the fridge whenever we want!
Assuming this is the vehicle in question, I’m sure the spy will thank Sludge for the little chat he had with the S.S.
What a pathetically stupid man.
Jacob Davies
You’d think the limo would be the least of it, I mean, the President flies an entire 747 when he wants to go someplace far away. Think how much fuel would be saved if he just flew on Southwest!
Brachiator
@Incertus:
Since the Republicans tried to play the "real Americans" card, I hold them and the conservative pundits responsible for the creeps who will inevitably attach themselves to the GOP and seek to find approval of their most reprehensible views. And unfortunately, as a recent LA Times story notes, the hate-group fringe is reacting to the recent election results, and it is not pretty:
People like Drudge indirectly feed into this crap.
Martin
Hmm. Air Force One burns 8 gallons per mile, and Biden isn’t even allowed to ride on it. So he has a car that is 80 times more efficient than this and that’s what we focus on?
And let’s not forget that the limo has it’s own plane that gets about the same mileage, so even when Obama isn’t in the limo, it’s burning up an additional 8 gallons per mile. And if there’s any distance to cover, Marine One does that (which either has its own plane or goes with the limo, I forget) and the limo drives ahead empty to receive Marine One.
And why aren’t we blaming GM for the shitty mileage, or Chevron for not having natural gas or hydrogen fueling stations around the country? It’s not like Obama designed the engine in the damn thing anyway.
I propose a solution: Obama loans GM $25B to design a presidential limo that gets 20 MPG on alternative fuel. Let’s call it the ‘Wingnut Automaker Bailout Package’. And just to get rid of the nasty no-bid aspect of it, $25B for each of the other two automakers to build competing designs.
Malron
ZOMG!!! OBAMA BOUGHT AN AMERICAN CAR!!!!!
That’s not change we can believe in. Who knew GM was in the tank for Obama too?
oh really
I don’t know that to be true, and I am skeptical that it is. There may be strong pressure on the president to adhere to prescribed security measures, but I really doubt that he (or someday she) has no say.
Martin
Technically, he has some say, but probably not much. I’m sure there is either an executive or congressional order that covers his protection that is non-trivial or near impossible for him to route around. One thing that the government is generally pretty good at (Cheney notwithstanding) is putting in checks against this kind of crap so that the President cannot be forced to undermine his own authority. The President would be insulated from having control over his detail because the security detail isn’t there for personal benefit, but for national security, and generally individuals in authority are insulated from conflict-of-interest national security decisions. That way if he was being blackmailed or wanted to commit a crime or something like that he couldn’t dismiss his detail.
Marshall
Somehow I doubt that the Secret Service told President Clinton to go into those MacDonalds while he was jogging.
Martin
Are you arguing that the Secret Service sent Clinton to McDonalds for his safety? You have the whole thing backward. You need to argue that McDonalds was unsafe to prove your point, which is impossible.
Color me surprised that you failed logic.
Phoebe
Guys, are you honestly up in arms over the fact that George Bush was not on task and at the helm in the immediate aftermath of 9/11? George Bush?
Marshall
Of course a McDonalds is (relatively) unsafe if it hasn’t been cleared in advance. The Secret Service certainly didn’t like him making his little drop-bys – that much was in the press. The point is, he was the boss, and what he said went.
When it goes the other way, you have a Praetorian Guard, and next thing you know they will be selecting the next President. If you doubt me, read Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars.
Jon H
"And why aren’t we blaming GM for the shitty mileage, or Chevron for not having natural gas or hydrogen fueling stations around the country?"
I for one don’t blame GM for the shitty mileage. Armor plate and 5" thick glass are heavy, so you need hauling capacity, and you want an engine with good performance for emergency acceleration.
You’re just *not* going to see good fuel efficiency.
A civilian vehicle with the same engine would probably get better mileage in a typical configuration and load, but civilian usage wouldn’t involve the weight of all the armor.
Jon H
I will be a little disappointed if it isn’t fitted with spinners.
Bob
Will the limo count against GM’s CAFE average?
r€nato
and fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror!
…or is that strictly a latino thing?
JWW
Michael,
There are nuts out there – enabled on by crackpots on the right
I would say that every president, every leader in the history of the world has had plots or threats against their lives. To narrow your pissant mind to the right is just stupidity. Men or women of such power are always at risk. You just throw out some unused sperm that can’t find a home.
You are one of those that has never looked at written history beyond your scool books.
mvr
@TheHatOnMyCat:
.
As long as they keep him safe I’m not going to complain.
As he once said about a related issue, when you are dealing with things like global warming where it is the cumulative effect of lots of people doing things, the solutions are political. If one guy riding in a low mpg vehicle survives long enough to impliment good policies related to climate change that does a lot more good than his driving a Carolla and not being able to get the job done.
Michael D.
@Marshall:
I doubt they told him not to go into McD’s.
But they could have dragged him out fo there if they wanted to.
Some of you don’t get it. The President of the United States is pretty much the property of the people while he is in office. Yes, he can decide what he wants to do. The secret service takes over and decides how he will do it. So yes, he has a say. If Clinton wanted to go to a McDonald’s, and if the Secret Service said no, then guess what.
Clinton didn’t go to the McDonald’s.
And I agree with a commenter at the beginning. When 9/11 happened, the Secret Service decided where the president would be safe. If Bush said “Take me back to the White House” they would have said “Sorry Mr. President.” And that would be that. The president may be the CinC, but he is basicaly property of the state when if comes to his security. When you become president, you give up your right to decide certain things.
Sorry if some of you don’t understand that, but it’s the way it is.
Seriously, does it take a Canadian ex-pat to explain this shit to you?
Geoduck
Re: 9/11. The thing I‘ve always wondered about is why the Secret Service didn’t drag Bush from that classroom/school as soon as word came in about the attacks. Coordinated strikes in multiple locations, and the President goes on attending a scheduled function in an unsecured building. Who decided it was safe to leave him there?
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
I’m sure Red State would prefer the open top Mazda Miata for him…maybe even suggest a drive through Texas past the book depository. I can see Palin and her mooseshooter husband leaning out the window to take a pop. With her limited knowledge of the constitution, she probably thinks she gets to be President if Obama dies in office
Marshall
I have worked for the USG, and have seen the Presidential and Vice-Presidential security up close. They work for the President. If he wants to get out of the car, he will get out of the car. I would note that Clinton did go to the McDonalds several times, when they could & no doubt did argue that bad guys could be staking out the limited number of fast food places the President could jog to.
My favorite example of this was Gorbachev stopping his limo and getting out to shake hands in DC (on Constitution Ave, IIRC) while he was head of the USSR. Drove the Secret Service nuts, but they couldn’t order him around, either.
Heck, I am even old enough to remember Nixon flying commercially. That was something of a stunt, but he did it, even though the Secret Service (of course) advised against it.
Kenneth Almquist
@Michael D:
According to the The 9/11 Commission Report, "While the plan at the elementary school had been to return to Washington, by the time Air Force One was airborne at 9:55 A.M. the Secret Service, the President’s advisers, and Vice President Cheney were strongly advising against it. President Bush reluctantly acceded to this advice and, at about 10:10, Air Force One changed course and began heading due west."