Proverbs 27:17 As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another.

This is what happens when you are never seriously challenged and live in a bubble with others who just reinforce what you think. You stumble around unable to respond to even the simplest questions outside of how great you are.

Well, yes, they do have to travel with Secret Service protection and on government aircraft. I get that and agree with it. But the question was about the number of vacations, some of them separate and to some pretty flashy destinations. Good job for the interviewer.

Hopefully John will show up soon to remind us that other Presidents took vacations, too. So there.

Other presidents took much cheaper vacations, like to their own homes.

The only thing I will grant him on this issue is that most of the last several presidents lived on farms or ranches not in the middle of Chicago. Presidential security in Hyde Park would be a nightmare.

When George Bush was president the dems kept a tally of how many rounds of golf and how many vacation days he took and all the breathless news coverage outside his Crawford Texas ranch. Have there been any random acts of journalism tallying Captain Awesome’s count?

“I think most folks understand how hard I work..” Maybe if he had been a plumber he would understand how hard he does not work as POTUS. This is his first real job.

CarolynP. We live in Hope. From factcheck.org-
Q: Has President Obama taken more vacation time than his predecessors?
A: According to one count, Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush spent more time on “vacation” during their first year than President Obama did. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton spent less time on “vacation.”
Only Jimmy and Bill took less time off. What a legacy.
This guarantees his reelection

According to one count, Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush spent more time on “vacation” during their first year than President Obama did. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton spent less time on “vacation.”
Only Jimmy and Bill took less time off. What a legacy.

Relying on a “fact check” statement that 1) relies on “one count” (but fails to say what that one count is) and 2) puts “quotes” around vacation is probably not the most reliable, or factual.

See?

According to one count, the Titanic didn’t “sink” in the North Atlantic. It was “abducted” by aliens.

Besides, it doesn’t matter if Bush took 100 days and Obama took 75. What matters is the perception. Hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly his family to Hawaii, Spain, etc. when most people are wondering how they’re going to pay for their utility bills or groceries (or birth control, according to Sandra Fluke). There’s a reason Obama’s approval rating is hovering right below 50%…

The reliability of Factcheck.org, an Annenberg Public Policy Center project, is open to debate. And if the number and destinations of previous presidents’ vacations were open to public scrutiny and debate, so are this president’s.

John – your statement only pertains to the first year of Obama’s presidency. You also used “vacation.” What do the scare quotes imply?

Liars figure and figures lie. Notice how fact check limits their analysis to the FIRST year of the presidencies. What about the first three years. That information is available but left out.

Also, the destinations and entourages are what startle the American people. I guess that they are too good for Camp David?

Even more than the jet-setting vacations, the the frosty “how dare you question me” demeanor he takes on.

and the commander in chief dude wears mom jeans… how can you be cool and wear mom jeans?

Life’s a b****, ain’t it.

Amyp, seemed worried about President Obama’s rating so here is the wiki page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating.
Considering the mess he was handed he is doing above average it would appear. Four more years! Four more years!

John: Four more years of your current administration and you poor dumb saps will be bankrupt. You already have a worse debt-to-GDP ratio than Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, or Ireland — and that’s not counting the tens of trillions in unfunded Social Security obligations. The Chinese have stopped buying your bonds; the only way you are able to finance your profligate government is by ordering the Federal Reserve to buy those bonds and take them off the market — in other words, by printing money in the trillions of dollars. Hyperinflation and repudiation are only a matter of time.

But hey, if you want your country and your economy to be ruined, good on you. I feel sorry for those of your fellow Americans who still have a sense of reality and responsibility.

John, Wikipedia is an inherently unreliable source. You can never tell who put that information up there, and what their bias might be. Try Rasmussen, which has a history of getting things accurately, if election results are the measure. Obama’s been consistently below 50% approval, with only a few blips above that line, since August 2009. His “strongly approve” vs. “strongly disapprove” measure is -18% right now, and has been consistently negative since mid-2009. The Real Clear Politics average, which includes both conservative and liberal polls as an average, has Obama’s approval at 47.3% right now and his disapproval at 47.7%. These are dismal numbers for a re-election bid.

Even those Wikipedia numbers, if accurate, don’t look too good. If you were a Democratic political operative you’d be worried.

Jay Random. The difference between out debt and those European country debts is ours is self inflicted. America has the resources but things like the Bush tax cuts prevent us from raising enough revenue.
Katherine. What are the numbers of the head to head race, Obama against Romney. Looking good for Obama but it’s still to early to call

Romney’s ahead at this point. It’s too early for that to be definitive, of course.

Europe’s debt problems are also self-infllicted. Too much spending over too many years, too many entitlements and not enough productivity. And if you really want the economy to crash again, go ahead and increase taxes to pre-GW Bush levels. Have emergency food supplies on hand.

Variation on a theme: “Since God has rewarded us with the Presidency, let us enjoy it!!!”

“America has the resources …” actually you don’t. What you do have is the capability to print money up to the amount of your debts, which promptly zeros the debt. Right now, the reason people still think that’s possible is the presence of the “Bush tax cuts” which are keeping the US economy functioning. The one thing that Mr Geithner is counting on is that the Europeans, et al, know that when he decides to roll over and become dead so will everyone else. And especially the Chinese and their massive reserves of US dollars? The real ones are gone and those on the books are bookkeeping scratches. And they don’t have enough gold to cover their own debts.

Cheers

I say again America has the resources. Here is some data. A little old, 2005, and I’m sure the Chinese have improved their position but the American economy is dominent.
http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/rank/PNB2.html

Jay Random. The difference between out debt and those European country debts is ours is self inflicted.

All national debts are self-inflicted. Those European countries spent beyond their means. In the case of Greece, it meant that Leftist idiots with an exaggerated sense of entitlement voted themselves 12 months’ pay for 10 months’ work and all the social programs they could ask for, and expected German bondholders to pay for it. In your case, it meant that Leftist idiots with an exaggerated sense of entitlement voted themselves Obamacare, nationalized auto companies, trillions in ‘stimulus’ money for political cronies, and, of course, all the Social Security they could ask for — and expected Chinese bondholders to pay for it.

See how that works?

You are implying, of course, that it’s the fault of those nasty Republicans for failing to raise taxes to the point where all this bread and circuses would be paid for. In fact, that would have been impossible, since Congress never budgeted for any of the recent binge spending. You have gone three years without passing a budget, in flagrant contravention of your own Constitution, because the Democratic Senate and the Democratic President would not allow a budget to pass. (And a Democratic House of Representatives, until the people rose up in 2010 and rectified that error with their votes. Now you get budgets passed by the House and killed in the Senate.)

Ya gotta love John. He is so predictable! The epitome of the Kool-Aid drinker! Bless his heart!

Sorry to interject here…but I just discovered another one of Obama’s Czars was instrumental in Romney’s governorship of MA:
Yep, Kevin (fisting, GLSEN) Jennings.

Romney’s Governorship was the petri-dish, experimental lab for Obama’s Presidency…health care, LBGTQXYZ agendas, social programs, the works…even corporate taxes.

Yikes…I forgot to close the hyperlinks. I am very sorry, CJ

Whitestone. I’m confused, are you saying is Obama’s or Romney’s fault not Bush’s?

Jay, way above you wrote: “John: Four more years of your current administration and you poor dumb saps will be bankrupt.” In a certain sense Leftists are already bankrupt (morally, ideologically etc.) but unless you are commenting from out side the US, I got new for ya. Four more years of B’wana and it ain’t gonna just be the Left that is bankrupt. We’ll all be in a world o’ hurt.

I do agree with John to a small extent: the US does indeed have the “resources” to turn our situation around. But those resources do not include government programs and tax revenue. These are road blocks to a healthy economy not the highway to prosperity.

I think Jay Random is Canadian. Canada gives me hope. A decade or so ago, they were in terrible shape and headed for worse. They got a more sensible Prime Minister and have cut spending and things up there now look a lot better than they do in the States. Who’d ‘a thunk it?

Katherine: Quite right. I am Canadian, and voting in an economist as Prime Minister is the most sensible thing this country has done in decades.