Found another interesting number made headline news, and at the expense of the Obama administration, it would seem. In an article on Britain's Daily Mail website, Mail Online, a former long time White House staffer has just released a book dishing about the many spoils the presidents have enjoyed over the year.

The article also helpfully points out that the estimated $1.4 billion a year the Obama family costs U.S. taxpayers swallows whole the roughly $60 million tab the British Royal Family racks up per year.

Now I get the deal behind the security costs of moving the President of the United States around, but there are quite a few vacations that need to be discussed while we are on the subject, and not just the ones the Secret Service were enjoying in Colombia.

Where it starts getting a little hairy is in the president's staffing capabilities. The president can not only appoint staff members at his own personal discretion, but raise their salaries at his own personal discretion, as well. This is where you wind up with people like the crews that man the White House's movie theater 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Because, you know, to make room for all that Hope & Change, they forgot how the fuck to use the On-Demand or Netflix. They are salaried, and we pay for that. Or the handler for Bo, the family dog, who is reportedly paid over $100,000 per year. Altogether, 226 members of President Barack Obama's staff are paid over $100,000 per year- over $23 million for payroll right there.

Personally, I'd love to get my hands on the full list of staff members for President Obama, just to see how many different jobs there are on a White House staff, and how much they pay. I mean, it can't be glamourous, but I'd take $100,000 a year to cut the edges from Obama's pop tarts in the morning...

Ah yes, if only more shit were to come around full circle like this...Amanda Clayton, the Detroit woman who made national news after it was discovered she was continuing to collect food stamps after winning $1 million in the Michigan State Lottery, was found dead yesterday morning of a suspected drug overdose in Ecorse, Michigan.

After word broke out about the food stamps, Clayton was ordered to repay $5,500 for food stamps and medical assistance she had received, and given nine months probation on a felony welfare fraud charge. No further details were released by police.

Now that one of them heard somewhere that people get paid far more obscene amounts of money than they did to do a reality show, can anything stop Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and the Thompsons, a clear and early front-runner for America's Dumbest Family?

Alas, probably not. The show, which has somehow managed to draw an average of 2.4 million viewers an episode, peaking at 2.8 million viewers for what is now being called the "mid-season finale."

I can honestly say I added one thing to the list of Shit I wanna see when I get old, and that's the E! True Hollywood Story with whatever carnival-like crime scene this kid is found in. I maintain I am not much of a gambler, but my smart $20 is on auto-erotic asphyxiation misfire with a buffalo wing...

How interesting it is, that after four years in the White House, apparently the two main points President Barack Obama has picked up is that he disappointed himself and learned a lesson, only not the way he had anticipated.

Last Thursday, at a presidential forum taped for air on Univision, President Obama said the most important lesson he'd learned was that he couldn't change Washington from the inside, that "change will only come from the outside."

Okay, fair enough. So, if he already knows he won't be able to change anything, not one damn thing in Washington, then why in the name of bluest damn is he running for four more years? Still got a couple of under the table half-billion dollar "loans" to hand out, or does he have to make good on his promise to add Jay-Z to Mount Rushmore? I mean, honest to God, Allah, Buddha, At what point are we supposed to keep swallowing the hope and change nonsense he's been peddling like a 3 a.m. infomercial, when it is evident he doesn't even buy his own hype?

Maybe it's because he's become the inside, the very thing he said he was going to fundamentally change in the months before they finished swearing him in, and he realized he HAD NOTHING. That's the problem with smoke and mirrors- once the smoke has dissipated, all you are left with is a mirror, then you can clearly see the person to blame for the nonsense to begin with. We have all heard his best teleprompter-fed lines, and we've seen the end sum of all of his transformative thinking about the system, and in the final tally, he came up short. Not day late and a dollar short, more like tried to dunk and missed the goal completely. That kind of short.

A mere three days later, however, President Obama upped the ante. On 60 Minutes this past Sunday, the president said that his biggest disappointment is that he hasn't "changed the tone in Washington as much" as he would have liked. Pardon me, but wouldn't have changing the tone required doing something different? Not wrong way, drive us into the ground like a tent stake different, but trying different things to get those different results you were chasing?

Yeah, I know...a post about Twitter? What the hell? If I wanted to read your shit on Twitter, I'd be there now (@thomaskeister, by the way, just saying).

I know. Been getting a lot of things back on track both here and with Free Rein Media as of late, and social media was a good place to start. There's been a thorough housekeeping on both my Twitter feed and Free Rein Media's feed (@FreeReinMedia, if that wasn't quite obvious enough), and things will be much more streamlined in the immediate future, thanks to Who Unfollowed Me.

After running through the process, I'll admit to being a little bored. My sweetheart was down for the evening, the Broncos-Steelers game had finished up on NBC's Sunday Night Football (viva the start of a new season!), and I just had a little left of a Law & Order: Criminal Intent rerun, so it was off to the races with some random Twitter-related search engine rodeo. That's when I found out there is a couple sites touting valuations of your Twitter profile.

A few pages of resuts sifted through, and I found four that were still alive and/or kicking. Ran my profile and Free Rein Media's through them, and got the following results (@thomaskeister, followed by @freereinmedia):

Twalue: $973.47 / $554.19
TweetValue: $1,033.00 / $441.00
Twitiez: $473.01 / $208.09
Whatsytwitteraccountworth.com: $893.00 / $394.00
For an average value of: $843.12 / $399.32
Total avg. $621.22

Not bad, I figure, but I will be working more on this over the next few months. More updates on the website, Probably Uncalled For, and some retweeting from @FreeReinMedia.