Desperate false propagandizing Liar,

August 5, 2009 Q: Does First Lady Michelle Obama have an "unprecedented" number of staffers?

A) NO. The White House’s "personnel records indicate" that there were 24 staffers for Laura Bush!

According to the 2009 White House report to Congress, there are 16 people with a title specifically indicating they work for Michelle Obama’s office. In other words, there are 16 people with "first lady" somewhere in their title, such as Jocelyn Frye, deputy assistant to the president and director of policy and projects for the first lady.

The list reported by (PD's Dishonest Lynn) Sweet and The Last Crusade, however, includes six other staffers who do not have "first lady" in their title but are a part of the first lady’s office staff, such as Desiree Rogers, special assistant to the president and White House social secretary, and Natalie Bookey, staff assistant.

We contacted Katie McCormick Lelyveld, Michelle Obama’s press secretary, to check the list’s accuracy. Lelyveld told us in an e-mail that the first lady’s current staff size is actually 24, not 22, as the chain e-mail claims. Lelyveld couldn’t provide a list of the staffers at that time.

First Ladies Past

The chain e-mail’s author claims that "[t]here has never been anyone in the White House at any time that has created such an army of staffers whose sole duties are the facilitation of the First Lady’s social life." The author claims that "even Hillary, only had three; Jackie Kennedy one; Laura Bush one." But the counts for those first ladies are incorrect – and they’re way off.

Stephen Plotkin, reference archivist for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, told us in an e-mail that Jacqueline Kennedy’s office was "headed" by one person, but said that there were "at least 9 people working for Mrs. Kennedy, with the promise of a great many more" during her time at the White House.

Kim Coryat, an archives technician at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, told us it can be difficult to nail down a precise count of staff considering "White House staffing for all offices ebbs and flows with time." But she said in an e-mail that White House telephone directory records indicate that Hillary Clinton had at least a staff of 13 as of October 1993; 18 as of April 1997; and 19 as of March 2000.

Lelyveld said that Michelle Obama’s staff was actually no different than that of her predecessor, Laura Bush. "[W]e have exactly the same staff number as Mrs. Bush and our office organization reflects a similar staffing model, so insinuations otherwise are wrong," she said. Lelyveld said that the White House’s "personnel records indicate" that there were 24 staffers for Laura Bush at some point.

We were able to verify at least 18 staffers for Laura Bush, as of June 30, 2008, via the 2008 White House staff list published in The Washington Post’s White House Watch column.

Sixteen people were specifically referred to as a "first lady" staffer, and Amy Zantzinger and Dorothy Thornton served as White House social secretary and deputy social secretary, respectively. It’s possible that someone with the title of "staff assistant" was assigned to the Office of First Lady as well, as is the case with Michelle Obama’s staff.

The combined annual salaries for the 22 staffers we can specifically identify as working for Michelle Obama come to $1.6 million. For the 18 we could identify as working for Laura Bush in 2008, the total is $1.4 million.

Dr. Myra Gutin, a professor of communications at Rider University and a first ladies historian, says that the first lady’s role has certainly "grown and evolved" since the 1960s, but generally speaking, the first lady’s "staff numbers about 14-16." Gutin told us she recalled "some first ladies have had staffs of more than that." http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/michelle-obamas-staff/

Pundit - have you heard of Factcheck.org? Laura Bush had 18 staff members. And what does it matter anyway

Amy,

Pundip has a long and tawdry history of making things up. He is what is known as a pathological liar.

Poor Luette - check your facts -

Jackie Kennedy had 40

Lady Bird Johnson had 30

Hillary Clinton had 19 in her final year as first lady

AND HERE ARE LAURA BUSH's (looks like more than one to me)

2008 White House Office Staff List - Salary
Published Thursday, July 24, 2008


The following information is from a White House report to Congress on White House office staff. It does not include staff members of the Office of Management and Budget, household staff or military attaches. The Office of Vice President refuses to submit its staff list to Congress, although those staffers who are on the Congressional payroll, by virtue of the vice president's mostly ceremonial role as president of the Senate, are listed here. The information is current as of June 30, 2008. By statute, the president's salary is $400,000 and the vice president's is $221,100. Unless otherwise noted, all salaries are per year. This list is ordered by salary. You can also see the list ordered by name and title.


Anita McBride - Chief of Staff to First Lady ($172,200)
Sally Niemiec - Press Secretary to First Lady ($102,000)
Sara Armstrong - Deputy Chief of Staff to First Lady ($102,000)
Deanne Ballard - Director of Scheduling to First Lady (($78,400)
Kristin Mende - Deputy Director of Policy and Projects to First Lady ($53,000)
Charity Wallace - Director of Advance to First Lady ($65,000)
Misty Marshall - Director of Correspondence to First Lady ($62,400)
Melissa Carson - Personal Executive Assistant to First Lady ($51,300)
Marisa Etter - Deputy Director of Scheduling to First Lady ($52,500)
Kristy King - Deputy Director of Advance to First Lady ($52,500)
Lindsey Knutson - Special Assistant and Personal Aide to First Lady ($62,700)
Kimberly Ranson - Executive Assistant to Chief of Staff to First Lady ($46,200)
Julie Adams - Deputy Press Secretary to the First Lady ($57,500)
Jennifer White - Trip Coordinator to First Lady ($30,000)
Diane Davis - Executive Assistant to First Lady ($30,000)
Bethany Shaffner - Confidential Assistant to First Lady ($32,000)
Cherie Harder - Director of Projects to First Lady ($108,000)
Nikki McArthur - Speech Writer for the First Lady ($63,500)
Segura, Millicent - Deputy Director of Correspondence for the First Lady ($47,000) 1,268,200
Miller, Kasdin - Assistant Press Secretary to the First Lady ($43,000)

Total salaries $1,311,200 and I DID NOT include in here the staff and executive assistants whose salaries I COULD NOT VERIFY but there were 7 of them.

Amy, "luette 7:08PM Jackie Kennedy one; Laura Bush one"

The above dishonest poster claimed FMR. First lady bush employed just one assistant from an easily discredited & dishonestly posted chain letter email.

@Napoleonic Psycho birther .000 truf, anyone well knows what a well proven liar you are and that you, NOR anyone else have ever contradicted anything that I have ever posted.

My posts contain unbiased SOURCE links for independent verification unlike YOUR delusional fantasies!

Tiny is your little ED problem any better?

Very perceptive PCL rightly so advised you, as well as blasted you for your obvious & well proven hatred of women.

She also advised Science may cure your ED but not; your 'Mrs', chief complaint; "tiny, is it in yet?" Thankfully I have always been blessed by having neither of your many & tiny problems.

Pundip,

Are you trying to tell us you're a woman? I was exposing your dishonesty, and unless you are a woman, your stupid comment makes absolutely no sense. How typical of you.

With all due respect to you, which is none, now you're citing PCL as a source. LMAO!!! A drunken fool is your idea of an expert? Good grief, you're an idiot.

I know you aren't very bright Pundip, but your obssession with other men's penises has come up before. Now it's time for you to come out of the closet. Are you a woman, or a gay man?

If you are male, in your singularly hermaphroditic way, I think you should be aware that your concern over others penis size, and comments about how well endowed you are (compared to field mice), is proof of your feelings of inadequacy. You are projecting (but not very far) your own shortcomings.

Why would your flaccid mind resort to juvenile genital humor when we have so many adult topics to deal with?

Is it because you have serious intellectual inadequacy issues as well? Clearly, you are well justified in that.

Or, are you upset at being outed as a short dicked, gay, pathological liar? Maybe I should be calling you Stubdip.

Pelosi's Horror Show showed up just in time for Halloween. What an abomination of dishonesty and power grabbing. This monstrosity is an obscenity, and only a dedicated, parasitic, government tit sucker, and fool, would want the country to get saddled with this poorly disguised tax bill.

This pile of Pelosi poop will kill more jobs, further damage small businesses, run health insurers out of business, and very likely bankrupt the nation.

The CBO has this ridiculous excuse for a "health plan" at over 1 trillion dollars and you can multiply that figure by at least 10.

Every government program is estimated WAY below what they end up actually costing. We can't afford this NOOSE AROUND OUR NECKS, even if the CBO is accurate, which they aren't.

The real cost of this will break this country's financial back, all because we are allowing Obama to stonewall on tort reform, health savings accounts, removing state's restrictions on where we can buy insurance, etc.

This bill, and all of the plans introduced by the Lying liberals, are nothing less than a means to gain stifling control of our lives, and nothing more than a Marxist method for imposing intentionally crippling taxes that will put the knife in the back of capitalism.

And all that, luette, has to do with this article, how?


http://wp.me/pywxb-Jq

Medicare's less than 1% & SS

Take all the numbers and triple them and you might be close. It will create a domino effect that will bleed this country dry of money and then the real agenda will be our only option. Total dependency on the federal government. SEEP!

Just so you know, Medicare's quoted "administrative overhead" of 3% (that's the actual figure - not pundit's stated 1%) is lower than private insurers because CMS (Medicare) is able to use creative accounting to shift large portions of its administrative overhead to other agencies and to the providers.

CMS allows the IRS to collect and distribute its funding, unlike private insurers, which have to pay employees to do it.

CMS requires much more paperwork on the part of health care providers than the private insurers, requiring greater office staff expense on the part of doctors.

That paperwork, along with its lack of adequate oversight, is a big cause of the greater fraud that occurs with Medicare than with private insurers.

I contend that to get an accurate estimate of Medicare's true administrative cost, you would have to include the portion of the IRS budget required to calculate, collect, and distribute the Medicare portion of the annual tax, as well as include the waste, fraud, and abuse of Medicare that does not occur with private insurance.

In the end, private insurers are sometimes unethical in their treatment of patients, although that can easily be legislated into fairness. The private insurers are much more well-run than Medicare.

I say that a better health care reform model would be to legislate the private insurers into ethical behavior with respect to pre-existing conditions, and to remove the legislative impediments to true competition by giving individuals tax breaks for contributing to their own health insurance premiums, and by allowing insurance to be sold across state lines.

For every shortcoming in the health insurance industry, there is a current law that causes it to be that way. Why not simply remove the legislative obstacles to a better health insurance system (does'nt cost a penny) rather than spending trillion of dollars???

boB, you complain about a 10% turnaround in GNP that was proven to be falling off a cliff at -6.5% Q1 '09 Contraction?

Are you sad 25,000 jobs were saved THUSFAR instead of 30,000 jobs?

quit conflating w's unanimous failures with Obama's 2009 w repair!

Q1 '09 -6.5% GNP w leaves in disgrace with -2M jobs lost 12/08 & -1.7M lost 1/09 via record low everything since 1938!

Q1 '09 w leaves Record $300B MONTHLY FY '09 deficit begun 10/01/08 totaling $1.2 Trillion in inauguration 1/20/09

Q2 -.7% GNP via just 1/3 of the stimulus

*Q3 +3.5% GNP GROWS for the FIRST time in a year via just 1/2 of the stimulus!

Q3 Consumer confidence rebounds from w's 10% to Obama's 42% a 20 month high!
Q3 Leading Indicators rise 5 months straight up!
Q3 Stock market gains +50% from 12 year lows left by w
Q3 Retail Sales rebound for the first time since 6/08
Q3 80% of economists prove 10/12/09 GNP is growing after 5 quarter decline via the 12/07 recession

Q3 In his spare time POTUS Obama ends w's missiles aimed at Russia, deflating renewed COLD WAR reignition!

Q3 Potus Obama proposes to eliminate Nuclear arms & lose nukes!

Q3 POTUS Obama proves the US is not representative of RW hate & war mongrels

Q3 Tebaggers leave record low 21% remaining RNC/GOP with 9% approval...

Forecast: 2010 Beck, Limbaugh love triangle with inHannity exposed as Faux declares expected bankruptcy.

Repubs now have;

* 9% Approval (Gallup 10/06/09)
* Record low 5/42 Solid & leaning states
* with just 21% GOP remaining Vs. 35% Dems, 39% Indys, 49% of Indys Support POTUS Obama. http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/party-id.php

GOP Congressional Approval * 10/06/09 Down to "9% from 13% last month." Gallup http://www.gallup.com/poll/123491/Approval-Congress-Falls-21-Driven-Democrats.aspx?CSTS=alert

Pundit,

Your Daddy either lied or was too inept to correctly report the numbers.

And you're okay with that.

Your dated and off-topic gibberish is nothing more than an attempted distraction, and it's not working.

boB, I sourced the posted facts independently from CBO, US Treasury and many respected private financial institutions not receiving any Government funding including;

The determination that the last expansion ended in December 2007 is the most recent decision of the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Announcement dates:
The December 2007 peak was announced December 1, 2008.
The November 2001 trough was announced July 17, 2003.
The March 2001 peak was announced November 26, 2001.
The March 1991 trough was announced December 22, 1992.
The July 1990 peak was announced April 25, 1991.
The November 1982 trough was announced July 8, 1983.
The July 1981 peak was announced January 6, 1982.
The July 1980 trough was announced July 8, 1981.
The January 1980 peak was announced June 3, 1980. http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html#announcements

@tiny birther .000 truf, Orly Taitz thrown out of Court again for proven frivolous conduct, perjury & willful misconduct.

CJ was kind enough, to as always honestly report; Taitz says she won't/can't pay her $20,000 Georgia "frivolous" fine either.

You WnutD's better dig deep for more of your soured Birther investments, or Taitz is likely going to jail sooner than expected for non payment of her "$20K Fine"! ROTFLMAO at your always dishonest, ineptitude.

Pundit, nobody cares where you got that stuff because it doesn't matter - it only matters to you because you're a goofball.

It doesn't change the fact that the guy you built a shrine to in your basement was off the mark on his figures by a whopping 20%. That's not an insignificant degree of error. And, wonder of wonders, it was a 20% error in his favor.

The only thing we've yet to hear is who he's going to blame for this latest snafu because you can bet your last Obama T-shirt he isn't about to take the blame for it himself.

just a note for PUNDIT to correct the inaccurate poll numbers:

Rasmussen poll:

Since late June, support for Republican candidates has ranged from 41% to 44%, while support for Democrats has run from 36% to 40%. Looking back one year ago, the two parties were in a much different place. Throughout the summer of 2008, support for Democratic congressional candidates ranged from 45% to 48%. Republican support ranged from 34% to 37%.
But in September, for the second straight month, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats inched up while the number of Republicans fell by half a percentage point.
Still, for the first time in recent years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports.

If the Republicans actually return to conservative values, there will be a landslide in 2010 that accurately reflects the country's conservative positions.