Putting Obama's Vacations into Perspective

I was reading the Hannity message boards, and someone brought up the Obama's vacation schedule again.

And someone else, as per ususl, said, "big deal. What about Geoege Bushs schedule?"

Here's the thing - with regard to vacations, it does not matter what any other President did!

Each President has to be judged on their own merits, given the time in which they live, and the state of the country itself in that time.

So, Bush took a lot of vacations. More vacations than any other President up til that time. Shame on him. (Even if the President "is never really on vacation.") And it doesn't matter that he took most of them on his ranch, instead of visiting Mexico, or Florida, or Martha's Vineyard. Let him be judged on his vacations and where he went based on the time in which he lived.

Let him also be judged by what he was telling the American people, as opposed to his own actions. (Was Bush telling people to stop driving, to hget used to their gas and electricity bills skyrocketing? I don't think so.)

And the same holds true for Obama.

So let's judge Obama and his vacation taking on his merits alone. On what he's doing in the time andconditions that he's living in.

So, he's got a wife, and he's got two teen-aged daughters growing up at the White House - something no other president has had. (The Clintons had only the one daughter.)

And between the two of them, they make $700,000 a year. So in that sense they can certainly afford to take all these vacations. If Mrs. Obama wants to leave 4 hours before her husband...as a private person with a lot of money, she's got the right to do that. (But just think if it were a CEO and his wife going on vacation, and the wife pulled a stunt like that. Oh, the outrage.)

But of course obama and his wife are not private people, They are the President and the First Lady, and any vacation they take requires a bevy of Secret Service agents, special planes, special accommodations.

And all that costs tax-payer dollars.

(This was pointed out on Hannity and an Obama defender pointed out, "so what? All the money they spend is a very miniscule part of our trillion dollar debt." Which is true. But he didn't seem to see the irony in that...that the percentage of Obama's spending on vacations is so miniscule because his spending on other things is so wildly out of control.)

Now, if the US were in the midst of a booming economy, with 5% or less unemployment rate, would any of us care about Obama and his many, many vacations? I don't think so. But the US right now is in the worst financial crisis its ever been, 10% of Americans are out of work, of which 40% are black American teens, people are struggling with foreclosure, etc., etc., and Obama keeps spending our money like water.

Mrs. Reagan was castigated back in her time because she told Americans to tighten their belts, then went and bought a new china service for the White House. (A china service that would be used by all visitors to the White House, not for her own personal use.)

Where's the castigation of Obama from anyone on the Democrat side?

If Mitt Romney had said, "I like travelling to foreign countries on business because one of my jobs is to scope out the vacation possibilities for the wife and kids" the mainstream press would have had screaming headlines trumpeting his being out of touch. Obama says it...the mainstream press doesn't even mention it. (Presumably Obama was joking when he said it, taking a poke at Republican's obession with his vacations, but I actually heard him say it and he sounded serious to me...)

But that's the point. Obama is out of touch with the common folk. He'll pander to those upset over the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of a white (never mind that he's Latino) who afterwards was released after only 6 hours of interrogation instead of being arrested, but he won't do anything to get those 40% unemployed black teens into employment - by telling them to "stop dressing like hip-hop thugs, stop getting tattoos on neck and arms, learn how to speak English recognizable by 90% of the population, learn how to do math...and then maybe you can get a job." Of course he's not going to say that - it took the Mayor of Philadelphia to have the guts to say that.

Then there's the choice of Obama's vacation spots. Back when the Gulf Oil spill was at its height, Obama took the whole family down to Florida for 1 day - 1 day - before going up to Martha's Vineyard for the rest of his vacation! Why not spend all of your vacation in Florida, to help bring needed dollars to that area?

Many tourist areas that have been in business for 40 years or more are going out of business because the common traveller just can't afford to drive across country, and in so doing, stop in at these out of the way places anymore. But the cachet of a President having spent a vacation nearby - even a Democrat president, might be enough to get people to tighten up their belts and go vacationing to that area. Of course we'll never know because Obama doesn't vacation in places like that. He spends his time at Martha's Vineyard or in Mexico or in Spain...(at least,Mrs. Obama).

Considering what's going on in the USA today, the unemployment and the misery in the country today, I'd say that yes, the Obama's vacations certainly are a scandal - how many they take, and where they take them.