Via CNN:
The Republican National Convention launched a website blasting what it considers Obama's "leisure activities or missteps" during the oil disaster, like playing golf, attending concerts and vacationing in Asheville, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; and now Maine."Aw, come on, what is the problem? Republicans will complain about anything. Why aren't they happy to see him doing things other than governing. That government is best which governs least....
Obama has also faced criticism for scheduling a trip up north, instead of vacationing in the Gulf, as he advised other Americans to do.
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67 comments:
The more vacations Obama takes, the better.
Less harm done.
I don't think the website was tested on all platforms. I'm sure it works fine on a windows box running Internet Exploiter, but not on a linux box running firefox -- things are overlapping and it looks ugly. I assume that last word is angry, but I can't tell because the oil graphic is on top of it.
Some of the items in the list are pretty tame: Obama is Planning a third vacation to Maine? This inspires anger in people?
Obama is Planning a third vacation to Maine? This inspires anger in people?
I recall the constant wailing and gnashing of teeth over Bush's vacations. Then again there are a whole lot of people who can't take vacations because they don't have a job so it might raise some hackles with some demographic that doesn't see much being done to improve the economy.
Oh Christ Ann, this is way too easy. Thank you.
The GOP - except for hypocracy
@MadMan, I recollect considerable ire coming from your side when Bush senior and Bush the second vacationed in Maine. We Republicans assumed that complaining about presidential vacations in Maine was the in thing to do.
Of course if your position is that everything is going just peachy-keen and there are no pressing problems with, for instance, the economy for Barack Obama to attend to, then I guess it's okay.
That is bullshit Hoosier. When you go out and fail to clean up the house, and leave it for the next person to do, well that person needs and deserves a break too.
and if you think bush, being out on vacation 1/8th of his presidency and out to lunch the rest of the time gets a gold medal for professional loafing..well kiddo, everyone is tired of the mess he left behind.
Ya'betcha!
I think the entire federal government should go on a permanent vacation.
HD, one of the problems with the word "hypocrisy" is that the people who resort to using it to bolster their arguments are also the most likely to misspell it.
It really isn't Obama's work that is the problem. It's the thousands of liberal, crazed toadies running around D.C. crafting 2,000 page bills for congresspeople to pass without even knowing what's in them. Without the toadies, the nation would not really be in much danger from D.C.
Normally I wouldn't begrudge the guy vacation time, but considering he was supposedly wasn't going to rest until the leak was fixed (besides disowning it, then owning it before disowning it again), and should have been focused like a laser on jobs and the economy to boot, I'd say he deserves the criticism.
Fore!
Why aren't they happy to see him doing things other than governing.
Because we have to PAY for these other things.
Going on Vacation is not the same as Planning a Vacation.
I have planned many more vacations than I've ever taken in my life.
Thank you for explaining why Maine was in there BigMike. At first I thought it was just to raise the ire of Martha's Vineyarders.
i got so excited by this easy dunk shot i got careless. sorry
This proves the fix is in.
When both parties are all about this level of juvenile "nya nya" discussion about diversions like vacationing, etc., it demonstrates they are really both comfortable with the way things are. This was true in the Bush years (the Dems weren't actually serious about changing any Bush policies if elected (save for taxing and spending even more) -- See the Obama Gitmo/surge/wiretapping/Patriot Act/etc. policies) and it looks like it's true now that the shoe's on the other foot.
Instapundit's calls for tar and feathers are on the money if you ask me. I am beginning to fear what some people might do if this non-responsive government attitude continues much longer.
wv: "matincel" - what happens in co-ed prisons
Oh Christ Ann, this is way too easy. Thank you.
The GOP - except for hypocracy
Gosh House, can't you see the traps set for you. You've got to have more substance than:
Bush did it too!!!
OR
Look at the mess Bush left for President Obama!!!
And (hope against hope) I pray that one day you'll see how these two arguments are contradictory:
So which is it? a)undoing what was done before and setting things right OR
b)doing it the way it was done before
Finally I would come back to this key point. The candidate who made such a big deal about JUST WORDS being more than just words surely understood that his "words' (just or otherwise) would be played back to him over and over again. And I quote:
"We will not rest until this well is shut, the environment is repaired and the cleanup is complete."
Timing is important. Black Messiah sends his wife down to the Gulf to lecture people that they should all remember that the Gulf is a great vacation spot and tourists help the "victims of BP".
Then she jets off to Maine with two 747s, two Marine helos, a fleet of 16 armored SUVs all for the #1 Carbon-user on the planet for their 3rd vacation since the spill started.
This morning I made the mistake of allowing the sound on the TV.
Fox would shrivel to nothing without continuous clips of Obama.
Referring to the halted leak, by mistake I overheard "we still have a lot of ..." *click*
Typical, I thought in that moment, until present it was "they" now it is "we". I imagine whom he sways with that, so carry on, but for myself and for that he can just piss right off.
I don't see a problem with "leisure activities", either.
Presidents work even while doing them (or at least they bookend them with work), and they need downtime like everyone else - perhaps more so.
I thought all the carping about Bush's "vacations" was stupid partisan shot-taking (since he was working during them, as Presidents do), and I think the same thing about this.
(And like Ann, I like less government, and thus a less frenetically busy Executive strikes me as ideal.
The "necessary" things for handling this at the Presidential level could have been done in a few hours of pen work, after a few days of figuring out what they were, and a few hours of lawyers drafting the orders, I'd think.
The scandal here, if there is one at all, is not that Obama's taking vacations, but that he hasn't, for example, used an Executive Order to allow various useful measures.
(E.g. allowing those Dutch oil cleaning ships to be used, even though they don't meet normal 99.999whatever% purity standards.
That might be a fine standard for normal responses [or it might not], but it sure seems like a case, here, for the Executive to override everyday Executive branch regulations to allow a very-good-but-not-as-good solution that comes closer to meeting the quantity needs.)
After Cedarford's comment, what more is there to say?
The entire stank of our current government's handling of its business brings to mind a particularly funny episode of the Jack Benny Show television program wherein the word "execrable" kept popping up throughout the 1/2 hour in increasingly funny spots.
Execrable's the word for these stinking fish in DC.
wv: "agater" -- A mastectomized community organizer with a potato allergy.
Who amongst normal people spends their time looking at RNC or DNC websites?
Mt Desert Island, Maine, is a great place to vacation, but it's far better to go their in September rather than July. It is also far better to stay on the southwest part of the island rather than with all the snooties in Bar Harbor.
Bush got ripped on vacations because the White House Press Corps didn't like hanging in middle-of-nowhere Texas. They would much prefer that the president vacations someplace they would like to go.
As for the Gulf spill this was guaranteed to be a loser for BO:
-It was bad
-it was bad in a place that has suffered
-it was bad in a place that has suffered and was an issue in the last election
-his administration would get assigned responsibility with little ability to fix the problem. (I listened to a sound bite from the president about the present cap holding and possible contingencies and thinking to myself What the hell does he know about it!
-it would expose the weakness of the "just words" approach (nagging and shaking of fists will not fix a problem)
And there's the camera.
If our president has any influence over the affairs of the House he would do everything in his power to punish Rep Markey for his demand to turn the camera on.
But in the end, thank God we may be nearing the end of this. i just hope and pray that at some point in the future New Orleans and Louisiana can get out or the "victim" role.
I have planned many more vacations than I've ever taken in my life.
And in his short time in office Obama has taken more vacations than I've ever planned in my life.
@ac245
and you aren't president either.
ps...please forward me your comments on the first 9 months of the GWB presidency when he was on vacation 40% of the time (not counting weekends)...huh?
You can of course bitch all you want, free speech and free country, but people take you more seriously if you are consistent on a topic and not just out to play gotcha.
ya'betcha.
This may actually be a way for the GOP to test talking points.
The web has a list of 18 items. People select their top 5. This is getting saved somewhere. The analysts do a straight frequency count, take the most popular ones and run on this.
Clearly, some are more meaningful than others (ie, turning down help vs vacations). I wonder what the analysts would do if democrats decided to overload this with the most superficial complaints.
This guy is used to doing nothing. Problem is, when he wants to do something, it only makes things worse.
Just ask the people in Gulfport or Mobile.
HDHouse said...
When you go out and fail to clean up the house, and leave it for the next person to do, well that person needs and deserves a break too.
The bank/real estate meltdown was a result of Willie's subprime mortgages, abetted by the authors of 'finance reform'. Willie not only didn't clean the house, IIRC, he trashed it.
MadisonMan said...
I don't think the website was tested on all platforms. I'm sure it works fine on a windows box running Internet Exploiter, but not on a linux box running firefox -- things are overlapping and it looks ugly.
Too damned many programmers are too lazy to do some browser sniffing.
PS Somebody get HD a dictionary.
hypocracy???
And he thinks he's smarter than everybody else?
The best visual from Michelle Obama's trip to the Gulf this week was the black and white top she wore.
It looked like she was playing in crude oil just before the photo was taken. See pic here: http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/r984569284.jpg
Apparently Gulf residents needed to be reminded of the spill. No wonder Drudge ran this photo for two days straight.
I don't really mind that Obama vacations or plays golf or jogs or spends an hour shooting hoops.
The McCain staff that wouldn't schedule time for Palin to run was stupid.
As much as I'm a complete couch potato (computer chair potato?) I can't help but observe that successful people with the most demanding possible jobs and schedules make time for physical activity and mental down-time. I think it's necessary.
OTOH, please go to HDHouse's link for exactly why it's utterly acceptable to call Democrats and Liberals on their hypocrisy. THEY are the ones who set the standard for what a president should be criticized for during a crisis.
And after you do that... go to the (actually really cool) Republican web site and look at the top five things people are criticizing Obama for.
NONE of them are playing golf. Not one.
When I looked, none of them involved vacation time. None of them even involved failing to show up for memorials or oil spill related events.
Those things are on the list, and are certainly annoying to some people, but what really bothers people are the failings of substance. Denying international help. Refusing the berm building. Not getting the booms down there. Those things where Obama actually impeded a solution.
It would have been better if he was golfing.
Let some underling tell the Dutch to Yes, Please, send your Mega-Skimmer. But of course! Move those booms. Let me talk to the EPA, consider the berms approved.
@ac245
and you aren't president either
@ HD. I don't give a shit how many vacations ac245 plans or takes or how many you plan or take, because I'm not forced to see my tax dollars pay for your vacations.
The President is certainly entitled to take some time off and have a bit of leisure time, HOWEVER because it is also OUR money and that he is supposed to be working for US, a little proportinality might be in order.
Also as someone else stated. Timing is everything. That plus the perception that while Rome (the US in case you can't make the connection that I'm not really talking about Rome) is burning, Obama is frittering away his time and our money instead of concentrating, laser like, on the problems.
Appearances are everything. Bush (43) would take his staff down to Texas and work almost the entire time. Sure, there were shots of him biking or clearing brush, etc., but that was exercise.
What you never saw was him playing golf. Not after he committed troops to combat.
The problem for Obama is that he said that he wouldn't rest until the spill had been overcome. And then we have endless golf games, entertaining celebrities at the White House, vacations, etc. (I put the basketball, but not the golf, in the same category as Bush biking or cutting wood - exercise).
Sure, it is all form over substance, but that is what put Obama in the White House. The substance, again, doesn't match the words, but in this case, it is easy to illustrate.
The CNN article is sort of cute.
Adorable even.
It's not about the GOP website, it's about Obama taking vacations.
So it only mentions that the GOP site complains about vacations, leaving the impression that the GOP site, just like the CNN article, is about Obama's vacations.
The GOP site includes all the aspects of Obama's mishanding of the oil spill crisis.
The CNN article just talks about Obama's vacation and vacation related items.
Blogger HDHouse said...
@ac245
and you aren't president either.
ps...please forward me your comments on the first 9 months of the GWB presidency when he was on vacation 40% of the time (not counting weekends)...huh?
Sure, demented old grandpa Harold, I'll get right on that. Right after you produce:
...evidence of your nine medical patents.
...evidence that "the right wing" was responsible for the "General Betrayus" smear.
...evidence that the laughable bprepublicans.com site Althouse highlighted a few days ago is a fake.
Come on, gramps! Get the lead out of your Depends and get crackin' on backin' up your claims!
"What you never saw was him playing golf. Not after he committed troops to combat."
Or not.
Bruce Hayden said...
Bush (the child) would take his staff down to Texas and work almost the entire time. Sure, there were shots of him biking or clearing brush, etc., but that was exercise.
What you never saw was him playing golf. Not after he committed troops to combat. "
You are kidding right?
One more plausible reason for him stopping golf was a recurrent knee problem in 2002-03. that aside, I think that the total was about 980 vacation days in his 8 years. that works out to be about 33.5% of his time OUT of the office working part days...so stop with the silliness. Bush was the all time holder of vacation days in office so just stop with the jive.
I think this is useless twaddle and the GOP should focus on smaller government and conservative principles rather than middle school sniping.
Besides, the Dems have already cornered that market.
Trey
...one of the problems with the word "hypocrisy" is that the people who resort to using it to bolster their arguments are also the most likely to misspell it.
I just assume that "hypocracy" is used to refer to "rule by hypocrites." Hard to argue with that.
It plays a lot nicer on my mac. Font sizes aren't right on the linux box.
I saved my top 5. potus@whitehouse.gov is my email address.
There's one advantage to being out of power -- you may damn the Administration for doing and you may damn them if they don't.
Oh, Palladian, you stole my thunder. I demand a recount!
JFK loved golf but after the Democrats (and Kennedy) blasted Eisenhower for his golf outings, once he became President he tried to limit being photographed while playing it.
Think about all of those Camelot photos. Do you recall any of JFK playing golf?
Politics has strange golf partners.
raf wrote: "I just assume that "hypocracy" is used to refer to "rule by hypocrites." Hard to argue with that."
Aristotle throws his ms of The Politics down a well. "Damn! And I thought I was being all inclusive and systematic and stuff. Damn! Epic fail."
I am interested in what proportion of time Obama has spent on vacation. It's probably lowest on the priority scale, but I am interested.
Meanwhile, back on the ocean killer ranch:
(Press Register)
BP buys up Gulf scientists for legal defense, roiling academic community
Published: Friday, July 16, 2010, 5:00 AM Updated: Friday, July 16, 2010, 6:34 AM
Ben Raines, Press-Register
For the last few weeks, BP has been offering signing bonuses and lucrative pay to prominent scientists from public universities around the Gulf Coast to aid its defense against spill litigation.
BP PLC attempted to hire the entire marine sciences department at one Alabama university, according to scientists involved in discussions with the company's lawyers. The university declined because of confidentiality restrictions that the company sought on any research.
MadisonMan,are you launching Firefox with KDE or Gnome?
Sorry. I really should have included the next paragraph:
The Press-Register obtained a copy of a contract offered to scientists by BP. It prohibits the scientists from publishing their research, sharing it with other scientists or speaking about the data that they collect for at least the next three years.
One more plausible reason for him stopping golf was a recurrent knee problem in 2002-03. that aside, I think that the total was about 980 vacation days in his 8 years. that works out to be about 33.5% of his time OUT of the office working part days...so stop with the silliness. Bush was the all time holder of vacation days in office so just stop with the jive.
Let's see - he would ride a bike and jog, but wouldn't ride around in a golf cart and play golf because of a knee injury. Makes sense to me. Oh, and I know plenty of people who play golf with knee injuries, including a girlfriend who injured her knee playing tennis and had to give that sport up for that reason.
And being out of the office is not the same as a "vacation" for a President, no matter how you want to spin it. It just means that he worked at his home in Texas, just like his father did in Maine, Reagan did on his ranch in CA, Carter did on his peanut farm, etc.
I have a friend who is an attorney in Spokane. Throughout the summer, he works in his house, looking out over a gorgeous lake in Idaho six days a week, and goes into the office on Wednesdays to sign paperwork. He claims his production actually goes up then, as compared to the winter when he is in the office every day.
It is plain silly to suggest that someone who takes much of his immediate staff with him to, has top of the line teleconferencing capabilities at, etc. his second home is on "vacation". To suggest otherwise, which the Democrats did for eight years, is pure spin and misrepresentation.
I just assume that "hypocracy" is used to refer to "rule by hypocrites." Hard to argue with that.
I believe it would mean "little" or "less" "Rule"
Frankly what conservatives and libertarians are looking for.
It isn't his vacations that are killing us.
Is the swarm of administrative termites back in DC endlessly chewing away on the framework of our liberties thats whats going to do us in.
@BruceH....yes...as equally silly as the assertion that because Obama plays a round of golf means he isn't doing his job. or is that old double standard rearding its teaparty head again?
I suspect the New Black Panther Party suggested Maine.
But Maine or Mississippi, the Obamas are having the time of their lives.
@C3 3:18,
Hypocracy might mean limited government, but in the case of this administration I think it means incompetent governance.
"because Obama plays a round of golf"
A round of golf? You think its about playing A round of golf?
Might be from playing 41 rounds of golf while focusing like a laser on the economy, the gulf, etc, PLUS the 8 years of folks like you convinced that working at Camp David or Crawford with your top aids is exactly like going to a hotel somewhere. Wait, I forgot. Rules for (D) much different that rules for (R).
My top five (with some amplifications) were:
1. Made it a felony for the media to travel to the site.
2. Turned down help from 13 countries for 70 days because of a overwrought concern for the Jones Act.
3. Wouldn't meet with BP for 60 days, and when he did, met with them for only 20 minutes.
4. Instead of attending a memorial service for the eleven workers killed, Obama flew to California to raise funds for Barbara Boxer. Obama doesn't have enough empathy to coat the point of a pin.
5. Hasn't returned nearly a million dollars in campaign contributions from BP.
OT: It warms the cockles of my heart that Obamacare will eviscerate Medicare right about when the 63-year-old HDHouse will qualify for it. Eat your own pudding, you leftist shill. :)
HD is really tone deaf today.
Not too many people harping on the golf here.
A key word here might be "other." As in where is the "Other" White House for Obama? When he goes on "vacation" although he takes his job with him, it's sightseeing.
The thought comes to me -- Bush 41 and 43, Reagan, and Carter even, had another place to go. Not sure about Clinton unless it was Camp David. Kennedys had Hyannisport. I think even Nixon had his place at San Clemente where he could "move" the White House when he got out of Dodge for a little while.
Truman went home with Bess to Missouri. Roosevelt had his Hyde Park (NY) estate.
Apparently Hyde Park IL just doesn't have the Home draw for the Obamas.
Obama is like a motherless child. Where is his "home?" He has no other "western" White House.
I think for Obama there are no connections. For this man there is no homebase to go home to. (He does not have a place in Hawaii -- once he left he left.)
That should give one pause. We have a man as president who has no roots in this fabulous land of ours.
What some see as "vacation" is any place outside of DC. For these previous presidents -- they could move the staff and work from "home" as a way of touching base with pre-presidential normalcy, of having a homebase.
So comparing the "vacation days" really isn't that big a deal.
It's not the same thing HD.
OK, by Thoreau's saying Obama governs best just when we need a real effort. But he sabotages best when he can hide it under a cover story of media supported lies about needing to fix things in another faux crisis caused by his carefully screwed up socialist gang.
You can get a room in Bass Harbor for under a hundred a night. Same salt air as Bar Harbor, same yachts and dories bobbing in the harbor, same lobster rolls, same sunburn. Ay-yup, it's wicked wonderful Down East.
@JAL: Your point is huge. Obama's rootlessness and lack of strong parental influences fostered his malignant narcissism. His personal story would be sad, were it not for the fact that he is the President of the Whole Freakin' United States.
I hope that when we examine the backgrounds of future presidential candidates, we look at their upbringings more carefully. Hopefully then we can weed out the future Nixons or Carters or Clintons or Obamas.
@JAL, right on point.
The GOP should shut the hell up about golfing (let the cartoonists use that).
Stick with Scott's points.
Harp on Berwick, the first socialist head of our new national halthcare.
Three letters: J-O-B-S.
All else is deleterious crap.
MadisonMan,are you launching Firefox with KDE or Gnome?
Yes :)
I think it's kde. But I'm not sure. I haven't looked in several years.
How stupid and childish!
You expect Republicans to be the more mature party. Whatever happened to dignity???
A party is a brand only if you traffick in identity politics.
If you don't, then it's merely a team name. What does an elephant mean? Nothing. It's as meaningless as the Los Angeles Lakers.
When they moved the team from Minneapolis, they could have changed the name to something more meaningful, but they didn't, because it didn't matter.
What could they have changed it to, anyway?
The Los Angeles Smogs
The Los Angeles Traffic Jams
The Los Angeles Pretty Boys
The Los Angeles Drive-Bys
The Los Angeles ... heck I dunno.
The thing I couldn't hack about Nixon wasn't that he was homeless but that at his homes on the Atlantic and the Pacific he wouldn't take off his black brogues when he took a walk on the beach.
That's about how I responded, although I do think his administration has bungled the oil cleanup efforts. I don't blame him for the spill, and his golf only bugs me because the left whined about Bush taking too many vacations.
They spend all this money on a website and all they want to talk about is his golfing? That's why I've turned them down for donations for the past tw0 years.
How about http://democrats.org/ with its "The Accountability Project: A new way of holding Republicans accountable."
You'd think they hadn't been in control for the past several years.
Never underestimate how badly the Republicans can screw up an advantage.
In other news, Obama issued a statement at his Maine vacation home urging Americans to visit the Gulf of Mexico coast. (Not really--but you get the point.)
A pox on both. (Not a real pox--metaphorical pox.)
Oh Christ Ann, this is way too easy. Thank you.
The GOP - except for hypocracy
Seeing as how you spell it incorrectly, twice...and you don't make the same error twice, I must ask:
Do you even know how to spell hypocrisy?
That is bullshit Hoosier. When you go out and fail to clean up the house, and leave it for the next person to do, well that person needs and deserves a break too.
Except Obama was helping to run up the huge deficits when the Dems gained control of the pocketbook in 2006 and, not ironically, the deficits of "Bush" suddenly became quite bad.
It's not like he didn't have his hands quite deep in the pork parade and wasting of money.
It's like having a guest burn your house down...and then blame the owner of the home for not doing more to stop them.
Note: Bush actually did things while on vacation...signed bills and met with foreign leaders.
What has Obama ever done on vacation?
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