Obama's New Ride

The Times has details on Obama's new wheels-

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.

Presumably this means that it's a Secret Service project rather than an Obama camp one.

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.

And of course the arrant hypocrisy of Obama's demands for more fuel efficient cars to be used by Americans is compared to his gas guzzler. Just like the revolting hypocrisy of his belief that so-called "assault weapons" need to be banned in America because they "belong on foreign battlefields", at the same time as his protection detail is armed with actual assault rifles. Nevermind that the weapons he wants to ban aren't actual assault weapons.

For those not in the know the so-called assault weapons ban Obama wants to implement won't actually ban assault weapons. By definition, an assault weapon is one that fires an intermediate sized cartridge and that is selective fire- that is, it can fire either semi-auto (one shot at a time) or full auto (many shots each time the trigger is pulled). These are already prohibited- what the "assault weapon ban" will actually ban are weapons which look like true assault rifles but which are only capable of semi-auto fire. They are functionally identical to semi-auto rifles used for hunting and plinking and so on. In many cases these supposed assault weapons are less powerful than lever action guns and bolt action rifles.

Another fact which should be pointed out is that, as the authorities have admitted themselves, the last AWB had no effect on crime whatsoever- a ban is simply a measure to undermine the Second Amendment and to make it look like Obama et al are doing something about crime- in actual fact it only affected law-abiding citizens exercising their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If you're concerned about violent crime and criminals using guns (the same people who will ignore any new gun law any way), then you'd be better off pursuing tougher sentencing for breaking the law.

Back to the car story now and I only have one question- what's wrong with the vehicle that Bush uses at the moment? Okay, two questions- how much is this costing the US taxpayer?