Obama begins 6th Vacation this Year
Aug 20th, 2010 by Tennessee Walker
After his vacation stay in Florida just a short while back, President Obama is now off to Martha’s Vinyard for another vacation. It is apparent that Obama believes he should not be working when much of America is also not working.
According to Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, the president was “going to spend a little time recharging his batteries” at the Massachusetts island ahead of the November midterm elections.
Recharge his batteries??!!!. This guy needs more battery recharges than a 1993 laptop computer. But I digress.
Burton goes on:
“There will be some hiking, some time at the beach, some time at the ice cream store – all the sort of things you do when you’re at Martha’s Vineyard. You enjoy the people and the good food.”
He is also expected to work on his swing at Mink Meadows golf club in Vineyard Haven and to work out every day, as he did when the First Family visited Martha’s Vineyard last year.”
So Obama will be working on his golf swing while Americans are looking for work. You gotta admit this guy is one of us.
Now for those of you who think Obama’s lack of attention is a bad thing and that he should be working on things like improving the economy I say Horsefeathers!!!???!!!
In just 2 years look what Obama has managed to do with this Nation; Record Unemployment, Record Deficits , Record Debt, Failure in Foreign affairs, one can go on and on.
For my money I would rather see Obama on vacation until about 2013 when he can go on permanent vacation.
From the article:
Now back to your regularly scheduled hate.
In just 2 years look what Obama has managed to do with this Nation; Record Unemployment…
Actually the record for highest unemployment belongs to Reagan (10.8%, December 1982).
Reagan inherited a 7.2% unemployment rate and turned it into a 9% – 10% unemployment rate where it remained for TWO YEARS before it started going back down. In Obama-time, that would be Spring 2011.
Failure in Foreign affairs
GWB is the winner of that one, for the invasion of Iraq (also see: record deficits, abandonment of Afghanistan). Obama has got nothing close to that.
Alpha, good stuff. Keep it up. Notice candidate O’Donnell and almost all these “patriot” folks just plain make things up. When they are not telling lies they just plain insult people. The disturbing part is they are the first to tell you what great Christians they are.
You don’t think we won in Iraq?
You think we should have left Saddam in power, the world would be better off with this guy and his two spawn running the show?
Alpha….seriously….I feel sorry for you hating your country with such a passion.
You don’t think we won in Iraq?
You can’t win when you are fighting the wrong guy. We lost the moment we landed.
Scratch that – actually we lost when Colin Powell presented to the UN. The first casualty was the truth.
You think we should have left Saddam in power, the world would be better off with this guy and his two spawn running the show?
Saddam was a bastard, but he was their bastard. Not ours.
Conservatives used to believe in avoiding overseas conflicts that didn’t concern us.
On Iraq, you are wrong. Before we went in, it was ruled by one of the world’s most destable despots, responsible for the deaths of nearly three million people. Today it is a democracy, a friend and an ally. And there is no longer a theat of Saddam’s million man army invading Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, a very real and very reasonable fear until Bush, God bless him, eliminated it.
If that’s not a success, nothing is.
You will likely come back with the “we found no weapons” argument. But WMD was one of only seventeen reasons given by the U.S. to the U.N. Security Council to justify the use of force against Iraq. The other sixteen are still valid. You are referred to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the Council in late 2002 for reference.
If you’ll read Powell’s speech, you will realize that this was not only a fight that concerned us, but a crucial front in the war on terror. Always remember that. Iraq was not a stand alone war, but one front in a much wider conflict. A conflict that if we see it through will result in Iran being surrounded on both sides by young democracies. That’s in our interest too.
I don’t know where you’re getting your unemployment data from. According to BLS, the record for unemployment is not 10.8%, but the 24.9% that occurred at the height of the Great Depression under a man who’s policies would place him in the ideological center of the Democratic Party today.
BLS also reports the unemployment rate during the ’82 recession touched 10% for the first time in September 1982. It remained above 10% for ten months, not two years. By two years after September 1982, unemployment was 7.3%.
The idea that George W. Bush spent 849 days on vacation, fully 2.32 years, or 29% of his time in office is a lie so flagrant that it has long since been discredited. Yet people continue to tell it. Bush spent 28 days per year at his Crawford ranch. That adds up to 224 days of vacation over 8 years, not 849. No secular socialist has ever been able to account for the other 625 days they claim Bush was on “vacation.”
BLS also reports the unemployment rate during the ’82 recession touched 10% for the first time in September 1982. It remained above 10% for ten months, not two years. By two years after September 1982, unemployment was 7.3%.
Exactly. Reagan took three and a half years to get back down to the 7.2% unemployment rate he inherited from Carter.
Reagan is still the record holder for unemployment, both in highest peak and in duration of misery.
I don’t know where you’re getting your unemployment data from.
I linked to a site that uses BLS data. If you like you can get the same data from BLS:
http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm
It’s alright O’s on his 8th vacay this summer ’cause old Joe B is hard at work out in Sticksville, USA, laboring mightily to the push past the furthest margins of Democrat delusion:
http://delawarelibertarian.blogspot.com/2010/08/direct-from-twilight-zone.html
Okay, I misunderstood your context. You’re not counting from the peak, but from the day Reagan took office.
By that standard, Obama inherited an unemployment rate of 7.6% from President Bush. President Reagan inherited 7.5% unemployment from President Carter.
Now for your “two year” comment, you’re using a 9%-10% range. If you’re drawing a line at ten percent, the U1 index under Reagan stayed above ten percent for ten months, then fell rapidly. Under Obama, it stayed above ten percent for three months, but has leveled off just below the ten percent line and has been there for seven months.
If nine percent is the line, it stayed there for nineteen months, not two years under Reagan. Unemployment under Obama hit nine percent for the first time in May 2009. It has been there now for sixteen months and is unlikely to fall below nine percent at any time on our current economic course.
You said that Reagan is the record holder at 10.8% but that would require one to believe that there is no data prior to the founding of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1948. It is well documented that under President Hoover, unemployment peaked at 24.9% in 1932 after he raised taxes to confiscatory levels and imposed the Smoot-Hawley tarriffs.
By the way, I notice you don’t mention how Reagan finished. The final unemployment report of his Presidency was 5.4%. Let’s see how Obama does. Right now, he’s on track to become the first president since Hoover to have a net loss of jobs on his watch.
Despite these comparisons, the differences between the two men are staggering.
Reagan believed in the power of the people, so he enacted tax cuts to put the money where he knew it would do the most good. Obama? Some tax credits for favored constituencies, but no tax cuts. Obama believes in the power of the government.
Obama repeatedly tells us that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression. Reagan actually did. Remember double digit inflation? Double digit interest rates?
Obama tells us he just walked in and inherited this mess. Reagan actually did.
Obama was a U.S. senator for four years prior to becoming president and cast a critical vote that sits directly in the chain of events that caused the melt down. Reagan held no portfolio of any kind for six years prior to his election.
Ronald Reagan believed in America as a Shining City On A Hill. Obama has spent nineteen months apologizing for it.
I’m glad BO takes a lot of vacations- it keeps him from screwing-up the economy any more than he already has. He’s making the hand-wringing Carter look like an economic genius.
“Change…has come…to America”
Yeah…now, read the polls, chump.
Let’s see how Obama does.
Okay, let’s.
Here’s the jobs creation chart (from bls data):
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/mayjobs.jpg
Right now, he’s on track to become the first president since Hoover to have a net loss of jobs on his watch.
Let me know when net job creation goes negative again, like it did in GWB’s first term, and then maybe I’ll think about taking you a little bit seriously.
Here’s data on job creation by President:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/
Hey Jimmy Carter – looking good on jobs !!
Let’s see how Obama does.
Okay, let’s.
Here’s the jobs creation chart (from bls data):
washingtonmonthly.com/mayjobs.jpg
Right now, he’s on track to become the first president since Hoover to have a net loss of jobs on his watch.
Let me know when net job creation goes negative again, like it did in GWB’s first term, and then maybe I’ll think about taking you a little bit seriously.
Here’s data on job creation by President:
blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/
Hey Jimmy Carter – looking good on jobs !!
Hats off to Mr. Borgia for a great post.
Agreed Pat. You need to read Mike’s blog, The Daily Borg. It is on our links. Check it out.
Bush wound up in positive territory for his first term and more than three million plus to the good in eight years. During a fifty two month span from late 2003 to the end of 2007, he created 8.5 million jobs.
Obama’s more than two million in the hole nineteen months into his term with no real job creation in sight.
Remember when you were talking about cherry picking data for your own purposes? Why don’t you take that graph you’ve posted from Washington Monthly and extend it fifty two months further to the left. You’ll find the longest continuous period of job growth in BLS record keeping history. And all on the watch of George W. Bush. More than eight million jobs were created during that time.
Now extend that graph to the right two months and let’s see how Obama’s doing?
133,000 jobs lost in July, just off the edge of your graph.
Yes, the eight year number is not as good as he deserved, per your Washington Monthly post. But history also recognizes he inherited an epic train wreck from Bill Clinton and fixed it so competently that the vast majority of the American people barely noticed a recession took place. He also was the victim of a recession brought on by Congress’ failure to fix Fannie and Freddie, leading to the housing market collapse and all that followed. And the senator at the forefront of the failure to fix Fannie & Freddie?
Barack Obama (D-IL)
But history also recognizes he inherited an epic train wreck from Bill Clinton
LOL!
and fixed it so competently
Double LOL!!
Enjoy your break with reality.
You don’t think the dot-com crash was a ‘train wreck?’ It was. It happened under Clinton (Spring, ’00, as I recall?), but it was Bush that inherited the effects.
You don’t think the dot-com crash was a ‘train wreck?’
You aren’t that familiar with the real economic statistics, are you. The dot com crash wasn’t that bad as far as recessions go.
I’ll take the end-of-term Clinton economy over the end-of-term Bush economy any day.