Obama, on Verge of 50, Returns to Fund-Raising

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

CHICAGO — For many men, turning 50 can be a day of reckoning, marked by graying hair, a slowing step and the wistful recognition that you are probably never going to make it to the corner office. What could be better, at such a melancholy moment, than to celebrate at home, among old friends?

But if you are already in the corner office, and it’s oval, you get to celebrate your 50th at a fund-raiser in a Chicago ballroom, with Jennifer Hudson singing “Happy Birthday,” Herbie Hancock jamming and 100 “friends” paying $35,800 a plate to commiserate over dinner, while bankrolling your bid to keep your job.

“It is true that I turn 50 tomorrow,” Mr. Obama told the raucous hometown crowd, “which means that by the time I wake up, I’ll have an e-mail from A.A.R.P., asking me to call President Obama and tell him to protect Medicare.”

For the president, just about any place would be better than where he spent the last month of his 40s — pinned down in the wet-blanket heat of Washington, fighting over health care benefits and tax breaks for corporate jets with an insurgent band of House Republicans eager to paint him as a liberal fossil.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/us/politics/04obama.html

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NYT photo by Stephen Crowley: President Obama greeted supporters at a fundraiser in the Aragon in Chicago on his birthday.

[madrchsod]

1. ya..at the Arragon....

i think that`s all i should say about that...

[Wait Wut]

4. Have you ever been there?

I have. It's a beautiful, historic building. A great place for our President to celebrate a landmark birthday.

[Tx4obama]

2. He is still as witty as ever. That's OUR guy :)

“It is true that I turn 50 tomorrow,” Mr. Obama told the raucous hometown crowd, “which means that by the time I wake up, I’ll have an e-mail from A.A.R.P., asking me to call President Obama and tell him to protect Medicare.”

----

Happy Birthday to YOU Mr. President.

[Wait Wut]

6. +1

Wish I could be there!

Viva CHICAGO and HAPPY BIRTHDAY Mr. President!

[No Elephants]

15. Yeah, laughing about Medicare cuts. Hysterical. As funny as laughing about killer drones.

By the way, you do know the President has writers, right? And apparently, his are about on the same level as the ones who thought Bush's looking for WMD's under his couch while people were dying would be a hoot.

[Tx4obama]

18. Oh come on.

Of course it was funny BECAUSE he is NOT going to cut medicare - I am sure Obama finds it funny that so many people are accusing him of cutting benefits in SS, medicare, medicaid when he is NOT going to do that.

The joke was about his AGE and about AARP - he was not laughing about making cuts - because he is NOT making cuts.

I guess some folks will always try to spin things into something that is not there.

[TheeHazelnut]

3. ugh

only a Democratic president can truly crush hope as has. if our own treat us like this there is no hope in the system.

[HDPaulG]

5. $35,800 a plate?

Great news for the conceder-in-chief...moderate conservatives are gaining demographics in Chicago too.

[hay rick]

7. vs. $49,777 median family income (2009).

Great news! We ordinary folk, whose interests he claims to represent, can also pull up a seat at this table. We just have to be ready to "eat our peas" for the rest of the year.

[HDPaulG]

10. Right on hay rick!

[frazzled]

12. Tickets for the birthday concert began at $50

Though the invite I got was for $200 (I didn't attend). Maybe they went out by zip code, and I'm glad some people got to go for less.

The $38,500 dinner cost is for donors giving to the DNC--their contributions to the presidential campaign are limited to $2,500 per person per year. An individual may give $30,800 per year to a national party committee, however.

[No Elephants]

16. Yeah, in 2008, I got an invite, too. $250 to stand in a packed room for a bit

or have dinner with him afterward in another room at thousands and thousands per plate per person. I had the option of which I wanted to sign up for.
Also got a $2500 invite to shake his hand or some such at a later event. Got a lot of other invitations, too. And "free" T-Shirts.

But, I was a different kind of Obama fan, then.

He still sends me 8 X 10 glossies with his pleas for money, too, and has fundraisers still call me, even though I asked him and the DNC to remove me from their lists.

He'll get as much of the money as he raises for the DNC as he wants, and more, as he is boss of the DNC.

[Systematic Chaos]

8. So this email from AARP is somehow going to make a difference?

:banghead:

[Duke Newcombe]

9. Not one thin dime from me, Mr. President...

...not until you act like who I voted for.

[HDPaulG]

11. Nor from me!

[Dystopian]

13. ..."by the time I wake up, I’ll have an e-mail from A.A.R.P.."

Not funny.
I didn't get an email from AARP.
I started getting snail mail from them when I was forty-eight.
I was so pissed off that I was getting OLD...
I searched the web in an attempt to email them of my demise..

Now I'm 59....I'm OLD.
Rich people can make light of growing old....
He's set for life.

He may be a fossil...but he ain't no liberal.


peace~

[JournalistKev87]

14. Wow!

“It is true that I turn 50 tomorrow,” Mr. Obama told the raucous hometown crowd, “which means that by the time I wake up, I’ll have an e-mail from A.A.R.P., asking me to call President Obama and tell him to protect Medicare.”

So much for listening to the people's voices, emails, tweets, etc. What a smug thing to say! It sounds like a joke Chimpy would crack.

Oh, wait--this is technically Bush's third term, so a comment like that makes sense.

PRIMARY OBAMA!

[nyy1998]

17. Happy Birthday Mr. President!

nt