Financial crisis meeting;

(CNN) � The global economy may be undergoing a significant downturn, but the White House's dinner budget still appears flush with cash.

After all, world leaders who are in town to discuss the economic crisis are set to dine in style Friday night while sipping wine listed at nearly $500 a bottle.

According to the White House, tonight's dinner to kick off the G-20 summit includes such dishes as "Fruitwood-smoked Quail," "Thyme-roasted Rack of Lamb," and "Tomato, Fennel and Eggplant Fondue Chanterelle Jus."

To wash it all down, world leaders will be served Shafer Cabernet �Hillside Select� 2003, a wine that sells at $499 on Wine.com.

The exceedingly pricey wine may seem a bit peculiar given leaders are in Washington to discuss a possible world financial meltdown, but Sally McDonough, a spokeswoman for Laura Bush, said it "was the most appropriate wine that we had in the White House wine cellar for such a gathering.

McDonough also said the White House purchased the wine at a "significantly lower price" than what it is listed at.

"Of course the White House gets its wine at wholesale prices," she said. "Given the intimate size of the group, it was an appropriate time for The White House to use this stock."

The leaders of the U.K., France, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and 11 developing economies have all come to Washington at the behest of President Bush in an effort to express confidence in the fundamental underpinnings of the world's economy.

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So...seems the upper echelon doesn't give a darn about cutting back. Their dinner consisted of

"fruitwood-smoked quail with quince gastrique; quinoa risotto; thyme-roasted rack of lamb; tomato, fennel and eggplant fondue; a salad course of endive, baked brie and walnuts; and a pear torte to cap the meal.

Among the wines: bottles of Shafer Cabernet "Hillside Select" 2003 � about $300 per bottle � for the main course and the much cheaper Landmark Chardonnay "Damaris Reserve" 2006 for about $40 per bottle with the appetizer course. The Chandon DEtoile RosDe sparkling wine that accompanied dessert runs around $30 a bottle.

Presidents pay for their own groceries, even while living in the White House. But during official or state dinners, such as Friday night's, U.S. taxpayers foot the bill.

Bush's guests for the dinner included Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd; Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Joseph Harper; Chinese President Hu Jintao; French President Nicolas Sarkozy; German Chancellor Angela Merkel; and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. About two dozen leaders in all attended the dinner in the White House's State Dining Room."

It must be nice. Oh, and BTW, since my DH is self-employed and work as been so slow this year, does he qualify for a bailout??? Of course not.

Who really derailed the Thursday meeting?? It's coming out on the Internet now, See below.... ***Edited by Moderator***

http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/09/26/in-wh-meeting-obama-muddied-waters/

Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went unarmed into his first meeting with the new commander in chief -- no aides, no PowerPoint presentation, no briefing books. Summoned nine days ago to President-elect Barack Obama's Chicago transition office, Mullen showed up with just a pad, a pen and a desire to take the measure of his incoming boss.

There was little talk of exiting Iraq or beefing up the U.S. force in Afghanistan; the one-on-one, 45-minute conversation ranged from the personal to the philosophical. Mullen came away with what he wanted: a view of the next president as a non-ideological pragmatist who was willing to both listen and lead. After the meeting, the chairman "felt very good, very positive," according to Mullen spokesman Capt. John Kirby.

As Obama prepares to announce his national security team tomorrow, he faces a military that has long mistrusted Democrats and is particularly wary of a young, intellectual leader with no experience in uniform, who once called Iraq a "dumb" war. Military leaders have all heard his pledge to withdraw most combat forces from Iraq within 16 months -- sooner than commanders on the ground have recommended -- and his implied criticism of the Afghanistan war effort during the Bush administration.

But so far, Obama appears to be going out of his way to reassure them that he will do nothing rash and will seek their advice, even while making clear that he may not always take it. He has demonstrated an ability to speak the lingo, talk about "mission plans" and "tasking," and to differentiate between strategy and tactics, a distinction Republican nominee John McCain accused him of misunderstanding during the campaign.

Obama has been careful to separate his criticism of Bush policy from his praise of the military's valor and performance, while Michelle Obama's public expressions of concern for military families have gone over well. But most important, according to several senior officers and civilian Pentagon officials who would speak about their incoming leader only on the condition of anonymity, is the expectation of renewed respect for the chain of command and greater realism about U.S. military goals and capabilities, which many found lacking during the Bush years.

"Open and serious debate versus ideological certitude will be a great relief to the military leaders," said retired Maj. Gen. William L. Nash of the Council on Foreign Relations. Senior officers are aware that few in their ranks voiced misgivings over the Iraq war, but they counter that they were not encouraged to do so by the Bush White House or the Pentagon under Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"The joke was that when you leave a meeting, everybody is supposed to drink the Kool-Aid," Nash said. "In the Bush administration, you had to drink the Kool-Aid before you got to go to the meeting."

Obama's expected retention of Robert M. Gates as defense secretary and expected appointment of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser have been greeted with relief at the Pentagon.

Clinton is respected at the Pentagon and is considered a defense moderate, at times bordering on hawkish. Through her membership on the Senate Armed Services Committee -- sought early in her congressional career to add gravitas to her presidential aspirations -- she has developed close ties with senior military figures.

Some in the military are suspicious of "flagpole" officers such as Jones, whose assignments included Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, Marine commandant and other headquarters service, and who grew up in France and is a graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. But Jones also saw combat in Vietnam and served in Bosnia.

"His reputation is pretty good," one Pentagon official said. "He's savvy about Washington, worked the Hill," and at a lean 6-foot-4, the former Georgetown basketball player "looks great in a suit."

Although Jones occasionally and privately briefed candidate Obama on foreign policy matters -- on Afghanistan, in particular, as did current deputy NATO commander Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry -- he is not considered an intimate of the president-elect.

But as Obama's closest national security adviser, or at least the one who will spend the most time with him, Jones is expected to follow the pattern of two military predecessors in the job, Brent Scowcroft and Colin L. Powell, who injected order and discipline to a National Security Council full of strong personalities with independent power bases.

Although exit polls did not break out active-duty voters, it is virtually certain that McCain won the military vote.

In an October survey by the Military Times, nearly 70 percent of more than 4,000 officers and enlisted respondents said they favored McCain, while about 23 percent preferred Obama. Only African American service members gave Obama a majority.

In exit polls, those who said they had "ever served in the U.S. military" made up 15 percent of voters and broke 54 percent for McCain to 44 percent for Obama. "As a culture, we are more conservative and Republican," a senior officer said.

Obama has said he will meet with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs as well as the service chiefs during his first week in office. At the top of his agenda for that meeting will be what he has called the military's "new mission" of planning the 16-month withdrawal timeline for Iraq. Senior officers have publicly grumbled about the risk involved.

"Moving forward in a measured way, tied to conditions as they continue to evolve, over time, is important," Mullen said at a media briefing four days before his Nov. 21 meeting with Obama. "I'm certainly aware of what has been said" prior to the election, he said.

The last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, clashed with the chiefs during his first sit-down with them when they opposed his campaign pledge to end the ban on gays in the military. The chiefs, some of whom held the commander in chief in thinly veiled contempt as a supposed Vietnam draft dodger, won the battle, and Clinton spent much of his two terms seen as an adversary.

But Mullen came away from the Chicago talk reassured that Obama will engage in a discussion with them, balancing risks and "asking tough questions . . . but not in a combative, finger-pointing way," one official said.

The president-elect's invitation to Mullen, whom Obama previously had met only in passing on Capitol Hill and whose first two-year term as chairman does not expire until the end of September, was seen as an attempt to establish a relationship and avoid early conflict. While some Pentagon officials believe an Iraq withdrawal order could become Obama's equivalent of the Clinton controversy over gays, several senior Defense Department sources said that Gates, Mullen and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of the military's Central Command, are untroubled by the 16-month plan and feel it can be accomplished with a month or two of wiggle room.

These sources noted that Obama himself has said he would not be "careless" about withdrawal and would retain a "residual" force of unspecified size to fight terrorists and protect U.S. diplomats and civilians. The officer most concerned about untimely withdrawal, sources said, is the Iraq commander, Gen. Ray Odierno.

Even as the Iraq war continues, defense officials are far more worried about Afghanistan, where they see policy drift and an unfocused mission. With strategy reviews now being completed at the White House and by the chairman's office, an internal Pentagon debate is well underway over whether goals should be lowered.

Although Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has requested four more U.S. combat brigades, some Pentagon strategists believe a smaller presence of Special Forces and trainers for Afghan forces -- and more attention to Pakistan -- is advisable.

Bush's ideological objective of a modern Afghan democracy, several officials said, is unattainable with current U.S. resources, and there is optimism that Obama will have a more realistic view.

A number of senior officers also look with favor on Obama's call for talks with Iran over Iraq and Afghanistan, separating those issues from U.S. demands over Tehran's nuclear program.

One of the biggest long-term military issues on Obama's plate will be the defense budget, currently topping 4.3 percent of gross domestic product once war expenditures are included.

Obama has said he will increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, finding savings in the Iraq drawdown and in new scrutiny of spending, including on contractors, weapons programs and missile defense.

"They know the money is coming down," a Pentagon official said of the uniformed services, and many welcome increased discipline.

But it's neither the military's nature nor its role to volunteer the cuts, the official said. "It's for Congress and the administration to say 'Stop it.' "

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta and research Editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Two days ago on C-Span they seemed to congratulate the bigwigs of the financial companies who got BILLIONS in BONUSES. They ran down the list of those that were being questioned and how much they received. It's absolutely sickening. I had to turn it off.

for quite some time for just such a thing. We haven't spent foolishly or lived above our means. New toys and technology don't impress us much. We have been fortunate and blessed.

SUGGESTED SOLUTION TO CARMAKER'S CRISIS, AS WELL AS SOME ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Maybe I've gone off the deep end - but I'm so sick of hearing about the big 3 bailout requests I've come up with a serious suggestion to help them.

I think its environmentally, morally, and financially irresponsible for the government to give tax breaks to those who buy NEW cars (much less bail out the manufacturers). The majority can't afford them anyway (or can't guarantee they'll have a job to make payments on them tomorrow), and we already have enough cars! Backyards and junk yards are full of cars because we can't get parts for them! How many economy cars that were good on gas are sitting in junkyards - because we don't have the parts to keep 'em on the road?

Why can't we get parts? The greedy corporate suits in Detroit figured if we couldn't get them, we'd be forced to buy new cars whether we wanted to or not! So they won't make them. I guess their plan didn't work, because when we bought new cars, we bought them from someone else.

I believe replacement parts manufacturing can be profitable - as the few little companies that make replacement parts for classic cars can prove. It might not restore the bonus of every deprived CEO in Detroit, but it could save quite a few line jobs. There is no longer a big market for new cars - but there's a constantly growing market for replacement parts. Its better than continuing the denial that Detroit has been in for the last decade - clinging stubbornly to the myth that we LIKE what they make, that we WANT it, and that we can AFFORD it, and that every one of us pines away for shiny new giant gas-guzzler in our driveway. We like what they USED to make, the muscle cars, the economy cars, the cars that were our sentimental favorites back in the day, when cars didn't cost the price of a house, and lasted longer than the 5 year warranty! They still have the blueprints to make the parts for those models, as well as parts for later-model cars past their warranty. That's what we want, what we can afford - and the sheer volume of parts purchased would make them a profit as well as helping the little guy with bad credit survive. Not everyone can get a loan for a new car - or even a used one - but those that can't could probably come up with the price of a needed part

I propose we reduce the production of new cars drastically. Instead we revamp a large number of our factories to manufacture parts for the cars that already exist (if we really MUST bail out the big 3, let's insist they put the money toward this). Alternatively, we insist that for every new car they manufacture - they must manufacture a certain number of essential repair parts for their discontinued models (which, according to recent news - will be most of them). This creates jobs, renews the jobs at some of the small non-union subcontracting plants that had to close when told to stop making the parts, or at least saves the jobs of UAW workers who were making unwanted new cars. Let them close their dealerships - but keep the dealer repair shops open. We then give tax credits for anybody who takes classes on repair - this creates jobs, as more people would rather fix it versus junk it (and can certainly afford the part easier than a whole new car). We give tax credits to anyone who gets a non-running vehicle operational again, we give tax credits for anyone who opens a repair/refurbishment shop, we give tax credits to junk yards that reduce their scrap heaps. Much better than a tax credit encouraging people to take on even more debt for a new car!

If some of elderly vehicles are unsafe by today's standards, we could manufacture parts that make them safer and update them, depending on the needs of each model. Surely the powers that be could run a scan for every VIN and get the statistics for how many models of each are currently still on the road (just like they do when there's a safety recall), and decide from there on whatever issues need addressed.

We should also consider legislation that insurance companies stop totalling vehicles without proof that their repair will be more expensive than a new car. "What a car is worth" needs to be restructured - what is the environmental/financial impact of junking it worth - the cost of a new one? If an old paid-off car ran perfectly fine before the wreck - should it be totalled because the damages came to a couple bucks more than the Blue Book value? I really don't think so! In this economy, having a paid-off vehicle with the option of keeping minimal insurance on it is nearly priceless!

We found out during the last couple years that we really can't afford a brand new McMansion, and we don't actually need one either, and we're much better off with less house than our budget can stretch to cover. Many of us know the same thing about the brand new car, but we don't have a choice because we can't fix the old one, and can't trust that the used one we buy will have parts available for it when it breaks down. That needs to change. We need more cost-effective options and we WANT the choice of fixing what we already paid for, instead of being forced to buy ever-more expensive brand new ones again and again and stuffing the landfills indefinitely!

My solution also applies to large appliances. Our landfills are full of them! The manufacturers of refrigerators, washers/dryers, riding lawnmowers, etc. should be required to produce a set number of repair parts for their older models - instead of making commercials about a lady throwing her old one off a cliff simply because she's tired of it!

Do we really want to be a nation of salesmen and consumers? I think we'd have more pride, strength and better ability to make it through these hard times if we replaced our salesmen with repairmen, blind consuming with sensible choices, and learn to one-up the Joneses with how much we saved from the landfill instead of how much we spent. Let's stop planned obsolescence and let the companies that refuse to give up the practice go belly up! They deserve it - they are trashing the environment as well as ripping off their customers - deliberately manufacturing products to break down in a couple years is just morally wrong. Lets make if fashionable to preserve and restore instead of consume and discard! I hope I'm not the only one that's tired of this - so is anybody with me on this? If you're in favor spread the idea! Discuss this with everybody!

9. Ridicule. In an interview with the Washington Post on 07/9/2008, McCain advisor and national campaign general co-chair Senator Phil Gramm was defining McCain's plans to reform the U.S. economy. Gramm explained the nation was not in a recession, stating, "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline." This would be the same Phil Gramm of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which allowed commercial and investment banks to consolidate. The legislation allowed Swiss Bank UBS to purchase several American institutions. Gramm later became a lobbyist for UBS, collecting over 750,000 USD in fees. UBS alone issues over 18 Billion USD in subprime mortgages.

8. Denial. Black Monday, 09/15/2008. John McCain: "The fundamentals of our economy are still sound." A worldwide stock market crash occurred as Lehman Brothers filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and major investment bank Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America. Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 500 points, which is the biggest point drop (up to that point) since September 2001. FTSE 100 dropped 212 points, and it was the biggest one-day percentage drop since January 21, 2008. Hong Kong, Japan and Korea stock market suspended that day due to public holiday, and they fell over 5% on the following day. Two weeks later, we had a blacker Monday (09/29/2008) with a 777.68 point drop on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

7. Political grandstanding. Announcement of suspending his campaign to return to DC to "lead" Congress during economic bail-out negotiations. This effort led to a defeat of the measure when the votes were cast. Tried unsuccessfully to use the bailout as an excuse to postpone the presidential debate.

5. Incoherence. Threatens to fire the chairman of the SEC if he were in office, even though the president does not have the authority to do so.

4. Theft of intellectual property. Claiming previously existing mortgage buy-out proposal as his own.

3. Avoid / change the subject. Greg Strimple, a McCain top advisor: If we keep talking about the economy, we will lose."

2. Engage the politics of division, hate, fear mongering and cultural warfare with high-gear Obama smear campaign: Ayers, ACORN, Farrakhan, Rev Jeremiah Wright, Barack Hussein Obama, etc.

1. McCain�s send message to voters is to stop whining about the economy and start focusing on attacking Obama.