http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091027/pl_politico/28764 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091027/pl_politico/28764)


A four-hour stop in New Orleans (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/politico/pl_politico/storytext/28764/33869619/SIG=11mfjcp1c/*http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28216.html), on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/politico/pl_politico/storytext/28764/33869619/SIG=11mod0aei/*http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/27942.html).
Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.
Freezing out a TV network (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/politico/pl_politico/storytext/28764/33869619/SIG=11mc5iou1/*http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28417.html).
Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/politico/pl_politico/storytext/28764/33869619/SIG=11hm7draq/*http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/Golf), too.
President Barack Obama (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/politico/pl_politico/storytext/28764/33869619/SIG=11obom7os/*http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/BarackObama) has done all of those things — and more.
What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.
It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.

Interesting article.

I have wondered something along the same lines: if there was an attack on this country nine months into his Presidency, would Obama had shouldered most of the blame, as Bush did?

I don't know, would Obama make a colossal fuckup out of everything like Bush did? I guess we'll wait and see. Or we can just let the protofascist propaganda outlet invent news about it in meantime.


Comically, one of your links took us to one of the many issues Bush spent eight years ignoring, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28772.html , modernizing the grid.

The golf thing is idiotic.

Remember Bush gave up playing up for the troops?
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/05/bush-gives-up-g.html

Whoopie!

Maybe this horrendously stupid photo op had something to with it too.

Z3p9y_OEAdc

So yea.. maybe Obama has played more golf... but how about you compare time spent on actual vacation? OH wait... that may present a more accurate picture.

By 2003 Bush had taken 250 days off either at Crawford or at Kennebunkport... that would 27% of his presidency. Ok.. so maybe Obama has played more golf. Lets find out who has played more Monopoly, or played more hands of gin rummy.. or something equally as non informative.


Fucking Politico... drudge whore hacks.

I see the usual board suspects answering a question with a question.. Way to dance there boys...

That's because we know better than to attempt to reason with the unreasonable.

I have wondered something along the same lines: if there was an attack on this country nine months into his Presidency, would Obama had shouldered most of the blame, as Bush did?


I don't know if I heard more people blame Bush or Clinton for WTC. Because of that, I think your question is invalid.

If it happened now, there would be a large amount of the population that blamed Obama for sure. There would also be a large part of the population that would blame Bush. I don't see that being any different than it was 8 years ago, other than I don't see Obama potentially rushing us into a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Obama can play golf three times a week and he will still beat whoever runs against him because the Republicans have lost their minds, their credibility, and any hope for 2012.

I don't know if I heard more people blame Bush or Clinton for WTC. Because of that, I think your question is invalid.

If it happened now, there would be a large amount of the population that blamed Obama for sure. There would also be a large part of the population that would blame Bush. I don't see that being any different than it was 8 years ago, other than I don't see Obama potentially rushing us into a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Actually, I believe that Obama would bear a huge amount of the blame - certainly the most vocal. Republicans have been harping the rhetoric about him being weak, and making the country vulnerable to attack, from even before he was elected. It sounds petty right now, but it's really shrewd politics on their part.

They've set the groundwork. If anything ever happens in the future, whether it could have been prevented or not, you'll have Republicans howling to every ear out there, on every channel, in every paper/magazine, that they "told us so", and almost guaranteed they'd win the next election. Hell, knowing Republicans, they'd probably try to force an impeachment.

Obama can play golf three times a week and he will still beat whoever runs against him because the Republicans have lost their minds, their credibility, and any hope for 2012.

Is that right? I see the Dems have placed them selves as the holy ones looking down there noses upon the masses..

Is that right? I see the Dems have placed them selves as the holy ones looking down there noses upon the masses..
The Republicans, of course, would never look down their noses at the masses. Even as sales of Ayn Rand's books soar...

I think the president would definitely take the blame, although as with Bush it's hard to pin that directly on the man in office. A lot of events let up to 9/11. The real problem I had with Bush was how he dealt with different crisis, mainly 9/11 and Katrina.

It doesn't matter who they blame, it matters who is really at fault... And that would be Bush. His actions created more terrorists then anything Obama has done since taking office.

Are there really people who blame bush for 9/11?

They hang out with the people who blame Clinton.

And write books about it.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51463

You can definitely blame the CIA and all of the various administrations that allowed us to continue training/inciting our current enemies, and Bush certainly set us up for more trouble than ever in the future. He didn't have time to cause 9/11 though.

Hmm, unless you mean Bush Sr.

I blame William Henry Harrison personally.... that rat bastard

Are there really people who blame bush for 9/11?

Though we'll never really know I'm sure most of the blame can probably be summed up with the end of Charlie Wilson's War:

“These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. Then we fucked up the endgame.”

We created the Taliban through our arming the Afganistan people, encouraging them and their war against the Soviets, and when the USSR finally fell not doing anything to rebuild and re-educate. We created an armed, militant, and impoverished people. And then there are probably another few dozen reasons on top of all of that, all of them dramatically complex and many we'll never really understand.

But, for those of us who want to blame Bush, he did get a security briefing on August 6th, 2001 entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" ( http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/ )

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

What did he do when he got that memo? He didn't try to figure out what to do about Bin Laden, he didn't even play a round of golf, he instead went on vacation for a month to Crawford.

Despite our two wars, Bush was on vacation for one third of his presidency (487 days at Camp David, 490 days at Crawford), Obama has taken a portion of the day off on Sunday ... I fail to see how even you, Sixee, could possibly think those are similar.

Are there really people who blame bush for 9/11?

No. I blame him for 6 plus years of Iraq. When you do something wrong and on a tangent...it pays to at least listen to those who might "get the Endgame right".


As for the rest, people figured back then that Bin Ladin was just so much talk. Another idle treat to be filed with all the other idle threats nutjobs and doushebags stream into the media and various intelligence networks every day. We had blinders on to the principle that a bunch of goat fucking savages from some dirt patch 5th world country could ever strike at us on our own turf and succeed. Well obviously that was incorrect logic. So, what better solution is there than stick a stick into someone else's yellow jacket nest.

Despite our two wars, Bush was on vacation for one third of his presidency (487 days at Camp David, 490 days at Crawford), Obama has taken a portion of the day off on Sunday ... I fail to see how even you, Sixee, could possibly think those are similar.

I never said they were similar, I just said the article was interesting. If you mean that I think somehow Obama is as bad of a President as Bush, because he has 'taken more time off' than G.W. had at the same time in his Presidency, then that's on you.

If you think that I find the media's protrayal of one person over the other different, you'd be closer to the mark. (hint: vacation time isn't the only thing discussed in the article.)

I just wonder how differently Obama's Presidency will be viewed in 20 years, than it is today. Espically by those who are throughly convinced he can walk on water.

I just wonder how differently Obama's Presidency will be viewed in 20 years, than it is today. Espically by those who are throughly convinced he can walk on water.

Well, people still worship Reagan, even though he (charismatically) began dismantling our industry and sinking us massively into debt.

I heard a funny statistic yesterday. Now with an inflationary economy, if wages don't rise, people technically lose money every year. So you expect at least some wage growth and that's a good indicator of how the economy is really doing.

So stated wage growth was actually negative under GWB, making him the worst performing president in history in that regard. However, what actually happened was that although the price employers were paying exceeded the rate of inflation by a large margin -- better than it did in the Ford and Carter administrations -- the entirety of it was eaten by health care costs paid by the employers.

So if Obama can do anything to stem the tide of the health insurance sector cannibalizing the rest of our economy at an accelerating rate, he'll probably get fairly high marks historically. If he doesn't, being as that was his chosen issue, he'll probably be considered another Carter (even though in the grand scheme of things Carter wasn't really all that bad, but he was saddled with certain issues that he couldn't resolve).