Well, the fact is, he takes more vacations than any human being I've ever seen. They used to complain about George Bush, but I understand he's already exceeded George Bush and we're not even through the year. So he likes vacation.
It sends a bad message. Here we have a country that really is going to hell in a handbasket. Let's not kid ourselves. What's happening to this country is horrible. All over the world, they're talking about it. And we have a president that's constantly -- whether it's Martha's Vineyard or someplace else, constantly on vacation. I mean, all the time he's on vacation! So I think it sends a very, very bad message.
Hell in a hand basket indeed. And before the latest vacation there was President Obama taking a taxpayer paid political trip in a million dollar, Canadian-made bus! Where is this guy's common sense.
Michael A. Walsh's column in the New York Post says it all.
...Fasten your seat belts, America -- it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Especially if you’re unemployed -- because help is most definitely not on the way.
What else to make of Obama’s three-day “jobs” barnstorm through the Midwest -- the Magical Misery Tour, as GOP hopeful Mitt Romney dubbed it? And now comes the annual Martha’s Vineyard vacation: The president will spend the next 10 days holed up at a tony, 28-acre elite playground called the Blue Heron Farm as the country plummets toward a double-dip recession.
Does nobody in the White House realize how poorly this act is playing?
Hitting three Midwest communities in two sleek, specially outfitted, Canadian-made million-dollar campaign buses, the president came off like a visiting Marie Antoinette, out among the besieged peasantry for a few days to preach his newfound religion of jobs.
Then Obama got caught in a spirited discussion -- one that could only diminish him -- with a truculent private citizen, Ryan Rhodes, who confronted him in an Iowa rope line to ask whether veep Joe Biden had called Tea Partiers “terrorists.”
Why think it will help to promise yet another speech on the economy -- when Obama has already been a constant, hectoring presence on the airwaves for the past month, demanding more spending and higher taxes on the “rich”?
Same for the the transparently political, utterly preposterous notion of a new Cabinet-level Department of Jobs to solve the nation’s employment woes: Just what the country needs, another expensive, useless and quickly metastasizing bureaucratic monstrosity.
With 16 months -- at least -- left in the Obama presidency, the law of diminishing returns has kicked in hard. The president’s approval rating stands at 39 percent in one major poll, and even the Congressional Black Caucus is starting to bail on him. “We’re supportive of the president, but we’re getting tired,” Rep. Maxine Waters told a Detroit audience Tuesday.
Obama’s slide may be good political news for conservatives, but it’s extremely bad for the country.
Realistically, the economy won’t materially improve over the next year or so, no matter how many bus rides Obama takes. Unemployment will likely remain well over 8 percent, and the debt-ceiling deal will do little or nothing to solve our economic woes. It’s going to take the next election before we can begin to start repairing the damage.
After nearly three years, we’ve seen everything this president has to offer: His cure-all is always more public spending (so what if we can’t afford it?), plus punitive taxes for some.
If he wants to really go after the truly rich, instead of simply high-income earners, why not suggest an emergency wealth tax on inherited fortunes that would hit supporters like the Kennedys and the Kerrys right in their yachts and Hyannis Port compounds?
Of course, he won’t. Instead, we’re in for another finger-wagging address to the nation, another call upon Congress to do something, another plea for civility while excoriating Republicans for not seeing things his way.
It’s a fantasy world of bus trips, White House parties, golf, speeches and discredited Keynesian economics, leading from behind while carping about those who actually put ideas on the table. We’re all just along for the ride.
