Fuck Obama

[Nordic]

yeah i had to explain it to my son, too. maybe that's a good thing and he won't fall for any of the military's bullshit. my son had never seen anything like that before.

[ninakat]

Obama Gives Up the Fake "Hope and Change" Act ... And Adopts the Neocon FEAR Playbook
Monday, May 9, 2011
Washington's Blog

[Nordic]

Good one, NK.

Then there's this. I'm not a fan of Rachel Maddow, but she seems good here, and this is fucking frightening:

[Nordic]

Holy shit ....

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2011/05 ... -accounts/

Obama freezes Chicago Palestinian leader’s bank accounts

The US government has frozen the bank accounts belonging to Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian community organizer and director of a social service organization serving the Arab community in Chicago, and his wife, Naima.

Meanwhile, several members of Congress have written to the Obama administration to express their concerns about violations in civil liberties as a result of earlier government actions toward Abudayyeh and other activists.

The freezing of the Abudayyeh family’s bank accounts on Friday, 6 May is the latest development in a secret grand jury investigation that has been launched by US District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office in Chicago. The freezing of the accounts has raised concerns that criminal indictments in the case may be imminent.

“I was downtown [in Chicago] on Friday, I had parked my car in a garage and when I tried to use my debit card to get out, it was declined,” Hatem Abudayyeh, director of the Arab American Action Network, told The Electronic Intifada. “I talked to Naima right away and she said she had no access with her card either, so I had to call a friend in the [Chicago] Loop to borrow money to get my car out of the garage.”

The next day the couple went to their bank branch, where the manager said that he had no information but that their accounts were frozen as a result of a government order.

The Abudayyehs’ accounts were frozen just two days before Mother’s Day is observed in the United States. “We were planning on having lunch with my mom and her family, and I couldn’t buy flowers or anything like that,” Hatem Abudayyeh said.

Last September, federal agents raided and searched the Abudayyehs’ home and confiscated the family’s belongings, including financial records and, as Hatem Abudayyeh told The Electronic Intifada last November, “everything that said ‘Palestine’ on it.” Federal agents also confiscated home videos that Naima Abudayyeh, a Palestinian immigrant, had recorded during a family visit to Palestine last summer.

The Abudayyehs’ five-year-old daughter was present during the raid and the family was mainly confined to their small living room during the hours-long search through their home.

That same day, federal agents raided several other homes and offices across the Midwest, serving subpoenas to 14 anti-war and international solidarity activists to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago. After those activists refused to testify to a grand jury, saying that they were being unfairly targeted because of their work organizing in opposition to US foreign policy in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Colombia, nine additional activists were served subpoenas around the month of December.

The nine additional activists served subpoenas are all residents of Chicago and all are Palestinians or those who have organized in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The Electronic Intifada’s managing editor, Maureen Clare Murphy, was served a subpoena on 21 December. The subpoena issued to Murphy is not connected to her work with The Electronic Intifada, but likely targets her because of her Palestine solidarity activism.

All 23 activists who have received subpoenas since September have refused to testify, despite risking being jailed for doing so.

A grand jury, no longer in use anywhere outside the US, is an investigative tool that allows the government to compel citizens to testify even if they are not suspected of any crime. Activists targeted by these subpoenas, their lawyers, and their supporters, believe the government is using the grand jury as a form of political inquisition and intelligence gathering, targeting groups and individuals working for a more peaceful US foreign policy.

Attack on the US Palestinian community

According to a statement made by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression and the Coalition to Protect People’s Rights and also distributed by the US Palestinian Community Network, “Not only does the government’s action [to freeze the bank accounts] seriously disrupt the lives of the Abudayyehs and their five-year-old daughter, but it represents an attack on Chicago’s Arab community and activist community and the fundamental rights of Americans to freedom of speech” ( “Demand US Attorney Fitzgerald unfreeze the bank accounts of the Abudayyeh family,” 8 May 2011).

Of the total of 23 activists who have been subpoenaed, seven are Palestinians from Chicago — home to one of the largest Palestinian communities outside of the Middle East. Scores of Arab community and Palestine solidarity organizations, as well as anti-war groups, civil liberties organizations and faith groups, have issued statements condemning the investigation and attempts to criminalize the Palestine solidarity movement in the US.

The investigation for which the 23 activists have been targeted takes places in the context of widespread surveillance and repression of the Muslim and Arab communities in the US.

And as The Electronic Intifada reported in November of last year, the investigation targeting the subpoenaed activists is just the latest chapter in a long history of US government attempts to criminalize Palestine community organizing and support work in the country.

In December 2001, the US government shut down the largest Muslim charity in the US, the Holy Land Foundation, which sent direct humanitarian aid to Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, amongst other places. Five defendants prosecuted in relation to the case are serving out lengthy prison sentences of 15 to 65 years (for more information, see the Holy Land Foundation case website).

Other prominent Palestinian community organizers in the US who have been put on trial in recent years because of their work educating Americans about the impact of US military aid to Israel and raising funds for humanitarian assistance for Palestinians living under occupation are Dr. Sami al-Arian, Muhammad Salah and Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar.

All three were acquitted by juries of US citizens of all terrorism and racketeering-related charges but have been charged with or convicted of obstruction of justice or contempt of court for refusing to name the names of other Palestinian activists in the US and in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Investigation into material support law violations

While the US government does not comment on grand jury investigations or even confirm that they are underway, search warrants used to raid activists’ homes last September indicate that the home invasions and subpoenas are part of an investigation into violations of the law banning material support for foreign terrorist organizations.

The material support legislation was enacted under the Clinton administration, expanded with the PATRIOT act under Bush and expanded even further last summer after the Supreme Court ruled in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project that political speech can be considered material support for foreign terrorist organizations if done in a “coordinated way.”

The broad scope of the material support laws — especially after last summer’s Supreme Court decision — has provoked sharp criticism from civil liberties groups. Humanitarian agencies have also protested the breadth of the laws, saying it impacts their ability to carry out their work.

Critics of the legislation have pointed out that had these laws been in place during the South Africa anti-apartheid movement, it would have criminalized the entire movement in the US. At the peak of the movement, the Reagan administration’s State Department placed Nelson Mandela’s party, the African National Congress (ANC), on the designated foreign terrorist organization list. The South Africa solidarity movement in the US took direction from the ANC.

Undercover agent at center of case

The basis of the investigation for which Abudayyeh and the 22 other activists have been targeted appears to be the word of an undercover law enforcement agent who infiltrated anti-war groups in Minneapolis.

The agent, who went by the name of Karen Sullivan, became involved in the anti-war movement in Minneapolis around the time of the 2008 Republican National Convention — one of the largest anti-war protests in the US in years (“Who was Karen Sullivan?” City Pages, 20 January 2011). The 14 activists subpoenaed in September were all involved in organizing permitted marches to protest the convention.

In addition to apparently surveilling activists, the undercover agent also disrupted their work. “Sullivan” elected to join an educational trip to Israel and the occupied West Bank in the summer of 2009. When she and the two women from Minneapolis with whom she was traveling arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, they were detained and ultimately deported. The two women with whom the agent was traveling have since been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury.

The identity of the undercover agent has been confirmed in discussions between the activists’ legal team and the US attorneys. However, the undercover agent’s identity was not disclosed during the discovery process of the lawsuit filed by Mick Kelly — one of those raided in September — after Kelly was shot at close range and injured by a high-velocity marking device during one of the Republican National Convention marches.

Attorneys representing Kelly, one of the organizers of the march, filed a motion in March of this year to reopen the lawsuit discovery process and subpoena “Sullivan” as she was present when he was shot (“Lawsuit against police violence at Republican National Convention to go forward,” Fight Back! News, 4 March 2011).

Call to action

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression and the Coalition to Protect People’s Rights are calling on supporters to call US District Attorney Fitzgerald’s office today to protest the ongoing investigation and the freezing of the Abudayyeh family’s bank accounts (“May 9: Demand US Attorney Fitzgerald unfreeze the bank accounts …”).

Meanwhile, hundreds of concerned citizens have signed a pledge issued by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression to take action in the event of activists being jailed for refusing to testify to a grand jury or being indicted (Pledge to resist FBI, grand jury repression).

Activists across the country have built a broad support movement that has seen trade union resolutions in support of the targeted activists from locals representing more than 600,000 workers in the US. They have also lobbied to elected representatives and several members of Congress have written letters to the Obama administration raising concern of the investigation’s violations of civil liberties (see “Statements from legislators about the case,” Committee to Stop FBI Repression).

Share this:

Share

[Nordic]

Cornell West says "fuck Obama"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/16-1

The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic
by Chris Hedges

The moral philosopher Cornel West, if Barack Obama’s ascent to power was a morality play, would be the voice of conscience. Rahm Emanuel, a cynical product of the Chicago political machine, would be Satan. Emanuel in the first scene of the play would dangle power, privilege, fame and money before Obama. West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by the corporate state and the financial elite against the poor and working men and women, and that justice must never be sacrificed on the altar of power.

Perhaps there was never much of a struggle in Obama’s heart. Perhaps West only provided a moral veneer. Perhaps the dark heart of Emanuel was always the dark heart of Obama. Only Obama knows. But we know how the play ends. West is banished like honest Kent in “King Lear.” Emanuel and immoral mediocrities from Lawrence Summers to Timothy Geithner to Robert Gates—think of Goneril and Regan in the Shakespearean tragedy—take power. We lose. And Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite in exchange for the hollow trappings of authority.

No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

“When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,” says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. “And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now.”

“I have to take some responsibility,” he admits of his support for Obama as we sit in his book-lined office. “I could have been reading into it more than was there."

"I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman as his mentor,” he says. “But it became very clear when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level.’ And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, ‘I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade. I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong.”

West says the betrayal occurred on two levels.

“There is the personal level,” he says. “I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, ‘Brother West, I feel so bad. I haven’t called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re busy.’ But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, ‘That’s something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you can’t get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa.’ Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel.”

“What it said to me on a personal level,” he goes on, “was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no] sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”

But there was also the betrayal on the political and ideological level.

“It became very clear to me as the announcements were being made,” he says, “that this was going to be a newcomer, in many ways like Bill Clinton, who wanted to reassure the Establishment by bringing in persons they felt comfortable with and that we were really going to get someone who was using intermittent progressive populist language in order to justify a centrist, neoliberalist policy that we see in the opportunism of Bill Clinton. It was very much going to be a kind of black face of the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council].”

Obama and West’s last personal contact took place a year ago at a gathering of the Urban League when, he says, Obama “cussed me out.” Obama, after his address, which promoted his administration’s championing of charter schools, approached West, who was seated in the front row.

"He makes a bee line to me right after the talk, in front of everybody,” West says. “He just lets me have it. He says, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying I’m not a progressive. Is that the best you can do? Who do you think you are?’ I smiled. I shook his hand. And a sister hollered in the back, ‘You can’t talk to professor West. That’s Dr. Cornel West. Who do you think you are?’ You can go to jail talking to the president like that. You got to watch yourself. I wanted to slap him on the side of his head.”

“It was so disrespectful,” he went on, “that’s what I didn’t like. I’d already been called, along with all [other] leftists, a “F’ing retard” by Rahm Emanuel because we had critiques of the president.”

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, has, West said, phoned him to complain about his critiques of Obama. Jarrett was especially perturbed, West says, when he said in an interview last year that he saw a lot of Malcolm X and Ella Baker in Michelle Obama. Jarrett told him his comments were not complimentary to the first lady.

“I said in the world that I live in, in that which authorizes my reality, Ella Baker is a towering figure,” he says, munching Fritos and sipping apple juice at his desk. “If I say there is a lot of Ella Baker in Michelle Obama that’s a compliment. She can take it any way she wants. I can tell her I’m sorry it offended you, but I’m going to speak the truth. She is a Harvard Law graduate, a Princeton graduate, and she deals with child obesity and military families. Why doesn’t she visit a prison? Why not spend some time in the hood? That is where she is, but she can’t do it.”

“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,” West says. “It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother it is frightening. And that’s true for a white brother. When you get a white brother who meets a free, independent black man they got to be mature to really embrace fully what the brother is saying to them. It’s a tension, given the history. It can be overcome. Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.”

“He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,” he says. “He’s got two homes. He has got his family and whatever challenges go on there, and this other home. Larry Summers blows his mind because he’s so smart. He’s got Establishment connections. He’s embracing me. It is this smartness, this truncated brilliance, that titillates and stimulates brother Barack and makes him feel at home. That is very sad for me.”

“This was maybe America’s last chance to fight back against the greed of the Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats, to generate some serious discussion about public interest and common good that sustains any democratic experiment,” West laments. “We are squeezing out all of the democratic juices we have. The escalation of the class war against the poor and the working class is intense. More and more working people are beaten down. They are world-weary. They are into self-medication. They are turning on each other. They are scapegoating the most vulnerable rather than confronting the most powerful. It is a profoundly human response to panic and catastrophe. I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone.”

“Can you imagine if Barack Obama had taken office and deliberately educated and taught the American people about the nature of the financial catastrophe and what greed was really taking place?” West asks. “If he had told us what kind of mechanisms of accountability needed to be in place, if he had focused on homeowners rather than investment banks for bailouts and engaged in massive job creation he could have nipped in the bud the right-wing populism of the tea party folk. The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways.

“We have got to attempt to tell the truth, and that truth is painful,” he says. “It is a truth that is against the thick lies of the mainstream. In telling that truth we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous with some of the worst things in the American empire. I don’t think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama. If it turns out in the end that we have a crypto-fascist movement and the only thing standing between us and fascism is Barack Obama, then we have to put our foot on the brake. But we’ve got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties. Our last hope is to generate a democratic awakening among our fellow citizens. This means raising our voices, very loud and strong, bearing witness, individually and collectively. Tavis [Smiley] and I have talked about ways of civil disobedience, beginning with ways for both of us to get arrested, to galvanize attention to the plight of those in prisons, in the hoods, in poor white communities. We must never give up. We must never allow hope to be eliminated or suffocated.”

© 2011 TruthDig.com

[Alaya]

Thank you, Nordic and nina for getting my blood going again. Was getting kinda sleepy on everything.

[IanEye]

"This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy -- over and over and over again -- who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture.

I'm not saying that he doesn't like white people. I'm saying he has a problem. He has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist. Look at the things he has been surrounded by." - Glenn Beck

“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin.

All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother it is frightening." - Cornel West

I think Melissa Harris-Perry does a much better job of telling Cornel West to go fuck himself, than Cornel West did telling Barack Obama to go fuck himself.

[Nordic]

Admittedly West should have left the history of his personal snubs out of his article. Because they could be easily attacked by the likes of Melissa Harris Perry. I cringed a bit when reading those.

But this?

There is the tiresome repetitiveness with which West invokes the name of his erstwhile Harvard nemesis Lawrence Summers as indicative of President Obama’s failed economic vision.

Why is complaining about Summers "tiresome repetitiveness?" The appointment of Summers, and Geitner, was a disgrace, and WAS indicative, profoundly so, of where Obama "stood" on the economy. Summers is a fucking idiot who has "failed upwardly more than GWB. Both he and Geitner were as responsible as anyone person, with perhaps the exception of Greenspan, for the mess we were in that THEY were supposed to fix.

What's "tiresome" about pointing out the truth?

Sorry, I think the Melissa Harris article simply attacks West rather than West's valid points about Obama. However West did make the mistake of putting in points that weren't valid, and that were personal to him. He seems too honest, to me, since he admits he was hurt by what he sees as personal snubs, but he should have left those out. But he's not one to filter himself that much, is he?

[IanEye]

yes, I probably should have started a “Fuck Cornel West” thread, I suppose.

I have no desire to defend Obama, I just thought Ms. Harris-Perry did a good job of pointing out the compromised position of attacking Barack Obama while lauding Tavis Smiley:

Let me be clear, being an Ivy League professor does not mean that one has no room to offer critical engagement on issues of race. Like Professor West, I too make my living at elite, predominately white institutions. For the past five years we were on the same payroll at Princeton. Like Professor West I supplement my income by giving lectures about race, politics, and history. Like West I hope to influence policy, inspire individuals, and intervene in public conversations about race. My criticism of West is his seeming unwillingness to acknowledge how our structural positions within the academy and in public intellectual life can be just as compromising to our position vis-à-vis black communities as is President Obama’s.


As tenured professors Cornel West and I are not meaningfully accountable, no matter what our love, commitment, or self-delusions tell us. President Obama, as an elected official, can, in fact, be voted out of his job. We can’t. That is a difference that matters. As West derides the President’s economic policies he remains silent on his friend Tavis Smiley’s relationship with Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, and McDonald's—all corporations whose invasive and predatory actions in poor and black communities have been the target of progressive organizing for decades. I have never heard him take Tavis Smiley to task for helping convince black Americans to enter into predatory mortgages. I’ve never heard him ask whether Tavis' decision to publish R. Kelley’s memoirs might be a less than progressive decision. He doesn’t hold Tavis accountable because Tavis is his friend and he is loyal. I respect that, but I also know that if he were in elected office the could not get off so easily. Opposition research would point out the hypocrisy in his public positions in a way that would make him vulnerable come election time. As a media personality and professor he is safely ensconced in a system that can never vote him off the island. I think an honest critique of Obama has to begin by acknowledging his own privileges.

I believe some refer to this as “moral schizophrenia”….

[Nordic]

yes, I probably should have started a “Fuck Cornel West” thread, I suppose.

Yeah, but that would make you a racist.

[Nordic]

deleted for weird double posting.

[eyeno]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CLiO3lD ... dded#at=36

[8bitagent]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CLiO3lD ... dded#at=36

Not opinions to be debated, but fact...whatever you say Barry!

But ok, let's go with the official yarn...

Since when is the Pentagon "innocent victims"? While my stomach churns and I feel sad seeing charred and mangled Pentagon employees in their own cubicle(I do believe flight 77 with passengers on board slammed into the structure), I also know that that is also one of the most evil buildings in the world for the endless slaughter they've been behind worldwide.

If we take WTC and Dar-es-Salaam/Nairobi out of the discussion, then at worst the attacks attributed to al Qaeda proper have been asymetrical warfare against the US military. Again, I hate death and suffering period...but I just wonder when did the USS Cole ship and Pentagon get turned into "innocent civilians"?

[Gouda]

Naturally, we're going to have to 'Fuck Bill Clinton' (again) too...

Caught on film:

Bill Clinton to Paul Ryan on Medicare Election: ‘Give me a Call’
ABC News’ Jonathan Karl
May 25, 2011
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/0 ... call-.html

The day after the stunning upset in the special congressional election in upstate New York, Rep. Paul Ryan is a man under fire.

But ABC News was behind the scenes with the Wisconsin Congressman and GOP Budget Committee Chairman when he got some words of encouragement none other than former President Bill Clinton.

"So anyway, I told them before you got here, I said I’m glad we won this race in New York," Clinton told Ryan, when the two met backstage at a forum on the national debt held by the Pete Peterson Foundation. But he added, “I hope Democrats don't use this as an excuse to do nothing.”

Ryan told Clinton he fears that now nothing will get done in Washington.

“My guess is it’s going to sink into paralysis is what’s going to happen. And you know the math. It’s just, I mean, we knew we were putting ourselves out there. You gotta start this. You gotta get out there. You gotta get this thing moving,” Ryan said.

Clinton told Ryan that if he ever wanted to talk about it, he should “give me a call.” Ryan said he would.

(...)

[Nordic]

Obama’s motorcade fills up in the U.K. — at a BP station

Even the president’s car needs to pull into a convenience store every once in a while.

And according to astute observers at a UK gas station who documented the visit of President Barack Obama’s motorcade yesterday, it apparently doesn’t matter if the gas station of choice carries the BP logo, or that the fuel costs the equivalent of about $8.40 a gallon.

The London Evening Standard reports that the White House rang up a 350 pound tab — that’s roughly $570 — buying gasoline for seven cars at a BP-branded station in Pimlico, England. The automobiles apparently included the armored limousine that has ferried Obama around the United Kingdom, as well as vehicles that carry support staff, Secret Service members, reporters and others.

Onlookers didn’t spot Obama at the station, which sells gasoline at 136.9 pence per liter — or around $8.40 per gallon, if our back-of-the-envelope calculations are correct. That exceeds the U.S. average of about $3.81 per gallon of unleaded gasoline, according to AAA.

There’s plenty of irony in the presidential motorcade’s visit to a BP filling station, since the London-based oil giant owned the Macondo well that blew out in the Gulf of Mexico last year, killing 11 people and unleashing the nation’s worst oil spill.

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/05/25/obam ... p-station/