Something To Ponder

[dales]

Why President Obama keeps the press away – playing golf with Tiger Woods doesn’t look good with 12 million Americans out of work and a $16 trillion debt

[oldr_n_wsr]

While I am no Obama fan, I don't see what it matters who he plays golf with.

[Guinevere]

Are we *really* going to do this again ? Where is the Zzzzzzzzzz smiley?

[oldr_n_wsr]

You mean Obama has played golf in the past?
Who knew about this and why hasn't he been brought up on charges?

[dales]

Wait, there's more............

Barack Obama has kept the press well away this President’s Day (Washington's Birthday) weekend (hat tip: Drudge Report) as he golfs with Tiger Woods in Florida. As Politico’s Dylan Byers writes:


Ed Henry, the Fox News correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents Association, released a statement Sunday evening in which he said the press corps had been given no access to the president, who was joined on his outing by star golfer Tiger Woods, and that the WHCA would fight for greater transparency in the days ahead.

"Speaking on behalf of the White House Correspondents Association, I can say a broad cross section of our members from print, radio, online and TV have today expressed extreme frustration to me about having absolutely no access to the President of the United States this entire weekend," Henry said in a statement, relayed in a White House pool report. "There is a very simple but important principle we will continue to fight for today and in the days ahead: transparency."

More details on the president’s golfing getaway at a highly exclusive club are provided by the Associated Press, which reported earlier:


President Barack Obama played golf Sunday with Tiger Woods, the White House said Sunday. Once the sport's dominant player before his career was sidetracked by scandal, Woods joined Obama at the Floridian, a secluded and exclusive yacht and golf club on Florida's Treasure Coast where Obama is spending the long Presidents Day weekend. The two had met before, but Sunday was the first time they played together.

The White House, which has promised to be the most open and transparent in history, has prohibited any media coverage of Obama's golf outing.

The foursome also included Jim Crane, a Houston businessman who owns the Floridian and baseball's Houston Astros, and outgoing US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, a former mayor of Dallas, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Crane and Kirk also were part of Obama's foursome on Saturday, the White House said.

President Obama’s latest mini-vacation follows in the wake of his lavish Christmas/ New Year holiday on Kailua Beach in Oahu, Hawaii, which cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $7 million. As veteran White House reporter Keith Koffler noted at the time:


In a move that is rich in irony, President Obama agreed Tuesday night to sign an emergency deficit reduction bill that does almost nothing to rein in spending and then jetted out to Hawaii to resume his vacation at an extra cost of more than $3 million to taxpayers.

The price tag is in addition to more than $4 million that is already being spent on the Obamas’ Hawaii idyll, bringing the total cost of the excursion to well over $7 million. The added cost was incurred because by the time the Obamas return from Hawaii – whenever that is – the president will have used Air Force One to travel to Honolulu and back twice.

According to Koffler, "the total cost to taxpayers of Obama’s vacations to Hawaii since becoming president is likely in excess of $20 million, and possibly much, much more."

It is not hard to see why Barack Obama is rather camera shy over his latest golfing outing, this time with sports superstar Tiger Woods. The optics certainly don’t look good for a president who has in the past called on Americans to make sacrifices, while blatantly refusing to do so himself. It’s certainly not an image the president wants to project to the 12.3 million Americans who are out of work, or the millions more who are also seeking full-time employment. Nor does it suggest he is serious about reining in the $16.5 trillion of debt his government owes, $6 trillion of which was racked up in his first term of office. Flying Air Force One to Florida at a cost of about $180,000 per hour hardly sends the right message to US taxpayers, who have just seen their payroll taxes go up. This is the latest demonstration of an overwhelming culture of impunity in a celebrity-obsessed Obama White House, frequently coupled with a disturbing lack of transparency that would be roundly condemned by the likes of The New York Times, NBC, or CBS if a Republican were in office. It is also a presidency that is rife with hypocrisy, as Obama’s words in Virginia in April 2011 perfectly convey:


We are going to have to ask everybody to sacrifice. And if we’re asking community colleges to sacrifice, if we’re asking people who are going to see potentially fewer services in their neighborhoods to make a little sacrifice, then we can ask millionaires and billionaires to make a little sacrifice.

ROTFLMCO!

[oldr_n_wsr]

Obama obviously needs a break.
Now if there was snow up in Pa, I would be taking a break too. Maybe I should learn to golf and do that instead of snowmobiling.

[Long Run]

This is the larger Obama press evasion story that people should be concerned with:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/o ... 87764.html

President Barack Obama is a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House.

Not for the reason that conservatives suspect: namely, that a liberal press willingly and eagerly allows itself to get manipulated. Instead, the mastery mostly flows from a White House that has taken old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting). And it’s an equal opportunity strategy: Media across the ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access.

The results are transformational. With more technology, and fewer resources at many media companies, the balance of power between the White House and press has tipped unmistakably toward the government. This is an arguably dangerous development, and one that the Obama White House — fluent in digital media and no fan of the mainstream press — has exploited cleverly and ruthlessly. And future presidents from both parties will undoubtedly copy and expand on this approach.

“The balance of power used to be much more in favor of the mainstream press,” said Mike McCurry, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Nowadays, he said, “The White House gets away with stuff I would never have dreamed of doing. When I talk to White House reporters now, they say it’s really tough to do business with people who don’t see the need to be cooperative.”

* * *

The frustrated Obama press corps neared rebellion this past holiday weekend when reporters and photographers were not even allowed onto the Floridian National GolfClub, where Obama was golfing. That breached the tradition of the pool “holding” in the clubhouse and often covering — and even questioning — the president on the first and last holes.

Obama boasted Thursday during a Google+ Hangout from the White House: “This is the most transparent administration in history.” The people who cover him day to day see it very differently.

“The way the president’s availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years is a disgrace,” said ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who has covered every president back to Gerald R. Ford. “The president’s day-to-day policy development — on immigration, on guns — is almost totally opaque to the reporters trying to do a responsible job of covering it. There are no readouts from big meetings he has with people from the outside, and many of them aren’t even on his schedule. This is different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.”

[dales]

[rubato]

I hate to spoil your bullshit party:


__________________________
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2010 ... ident?lite

Fact Check: Obama 'less' press conferences 'than any recent president'?
By NBC's Domenico Montanaro

Newt Gingrich this past week said the following, per NBC's John Boxley, about Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R) not speaking to the press.

"I think she should have a press conference at least as often as President Obama...check how often President Obama has had real press conferences, very very seldom, less than any recent president."

So First Read did check.

First, a note about accessibility. President Obama went through one of the longest primaries in American history. Democrats had about 40 debates, including the three for the presidential general election. That's not including the various question-and-answer sessions at the back of campaign planes. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and most of the others who ran in 2008 were far more vetted and questioned than Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Christine O'Donnell, or Sarah Palin, for that matter, whom the press had just two-plus months to question before the general election.
Advertise | AdChoices

Regarding his time in office, President Obama, through Sept. 10, 2010, has held 37 press conferences (16 solo and 21 joint), according to data compiled by Dr. Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University. Obama has held 67 short question-and-answer sessions, 216 interviews and 820 addresses and remarks.

He has averaged about two press conferences per month. Where does that rank when it comes to "any recent president?"

It's slightly less than former President George W. Bush, who average 2.2 per month over eight years; it's the same as former President Clinton, who also averaged 2.0 per month; and four times as many as former President Reagan, who held just an average of 0.5 per month. In fact, Obama in less than two years, has given just 10 fewer total press conferences than Reagan did in eight years (36 vs. 46).

President George H.W. Bush gave an average of 3.0 per month; Carter just 1.2 a month; Ford 1.3; Nixon 0.6; Johnson 2.2; Kennedy 1.9; Eisenhower 2.0; Truman 3.4; Hoover 5.6; Coolidge 7.8; Wilson 1.7.

The most press conferences by a president -- by far -- was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who held 1,020, or an average of seven per month. Calvin Coolidge, however, had more press conferences on average -- 7.8.

As far as strictly solo press conferences, President Obama has given two fewer than President George W. Bush did in his first four years (15 vs. 17). President Bush gave 33 in his second term. President Clinton gave 44 in his first terms and 18 in his second term. H.W. Bush gave 84 solo in four years. President Reagan gave 27 solo in his first term, and 19 solo in his second. President Carter gave 59.

President Obama has given more interviews to reporters than any of his immediate predecessors through Sept. 10 of their first terms. He's given 216 interviews; President George W. Bush gave 76; President Clinton 82; George H.W. Bush 87. President Obama's addresses and remarks are already more than H.W. Bush (625), but W. Bush (908) and Clinton (837) gave more.

*** CORRECTION: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated the timeline for the interviews given by previous presidents. The data was through Sept. 10 of each presidency. Also, added above was that Calvin Coolidge gave the most press conferences on average than any president.
_____________________________


_____________________________

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012 ... 23650.html

Three conclusions:

1. Obama is doing just enough press conferences -- to say he’s doing enough just press conferences. At this point in his presidency, George W. Bush did 67. Obama has done 68. Winning!

He is, however, doing more solo flights than the downright hermetic Bush, who conducted a grand total of 11 solo press conferences at this point in his presidency; a whopping 56 were joint availabilities with world leaders, which are a lighter lift.

Obama has done 30 alone, 38 in tag-team fashion.

Over the same period Bill Clinton did 116 total (40 solo, 76 joint); George H.W. Bush was the most accessible POTUS with 125 (76 solo, 49 joint).

The takeaway? The most accessible president was a one-termer.
__________________________________


And speaking of being silent ... When is the party who created the worst collapse in 80 years going to tell us what they learned and won't do again?


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

More statistics here:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/newsconferences.php




See link for data. Obama averages about 20/month or more than Nixon, Ford, Carter, and 4x as many as the "Great Non-communicator" Reagan.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

And let's talk vacation! The President (with his party's help) who dug us into the worst economic disaster in 80 years was the vacation King!

After the first three years:

Obama ...............78 days
George W Bush ..... 180 days Obama 57% less
Reagan .............. 112 days Obama 30% less



_____________________________________
http://politic365.com/obamas-vacations- ... -the-most/

“This is the biggest job in the world and I’ve never seen a president make it smaller,” Speaker Boehner complained.

But did Boehner, Conners, Romney or West stop to compare President Obama’s vacation time to other Presidents?

Calls to several Presidential libraries reveal that President Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, was on vacation more — 1,020 days — than any U.S. President since Herbert Hoover and possibly more than any other President in history.

Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was in office 12 years from 1933 to 1945, was on vacation less days than President Bush at 958 days. Calls to several Presidential Libraries reveal that no President can come close to Bush’s 1,020 days on vacation in an 8 year period. Even Lyndon Johnson, who spent 484 days at his ranch in Texas and at Camp David during his presidency, came in under Bush’s vacation time. Some claim the cost of Bush’s frequent trips to Crawford, Texas cost taxpayers upwards of $20 million, but the numbers are hard to confirm.

A recession started in 2001 as Bush took office after 22 million jobs were created during the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 2000. Bush began wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and presided over the loss of 4 million jobs. The debt when Bush left office was $10.6 trillion. In 2005, the Washington Post noted President Bush’s frequent vacations in a piece titled Vacationing Bush Poised to Set a Record as Bush took the longest single vacation — 5 weeks — of any President in 36 years.

President Bush spent 32% of his presidency on vacation.

Bush passed Reagan in total vacation days in 2005 with three and a half years left in his presidency. Reagan spent all or part of 335 days in Santa Barbara over his 8 year presidency. Bush spent 487 days at Camp David during his presidency and 490 days at his Crawford, Texas ranch, a total of 977 days.

When you add the days President Bush spent at Kennebunkport, Maine, he spent a total of 1,020 days away from the White House — close to 3 years. At 1,020 days, Bush was close to being on vacation more days than President John F. Kennedy’s total days in office (1,036). Representatives at the Nixon and Johnson Libraries indicate those two Presidents were on vacation less than 1,000 days during their terms.

President Obama has been on vacation 78 days from 2009 to 2011. At the three year mark into their first terms, George W. Bush spent 180 days at his ranch in Crawford, Texas and Ronald Reagan spent 112 vacation days at his ranch in California. Of course, staff was around all three Presidents on vacations and all White House aides argue that the commander-in-chief is never “out of touch” with work.
....
________________________________________

[Econoline]

I think that during the period of 1923 to 2013 the meaning of the term "press conference" has changed considerably. Just look at the (almost obsolete?) term itself: "press conference"??? If any President were to allow access only to the people who were defined as "press" during the Coolidge administration, he would be more isolated than the boy in the bubble. And sure, Roosevelt provided a lot of access to the press...but he also demanded--and got--as much complicity as he wanted as far as what was reported and what wasn't.

For better or worse, the Presidency, the press, and the relationship between the two have changed over the years, and it's probably not useful to judge present conditions by the standards of another era.

ETA: and we could do a whole 'nother thread on the change in the meaning of the term "vacation" over the years....

[rubato]

No president since has ever communicated as effectively as FDR did in his "Fireside Chats". The tone is conversational and respectful of his audience. He covers topics very thoroughly and clearly for an America which was far more naive then about world affairs, military strategy, the economics of the depression.

It is well worth going back and reading a few of them.

yrs,
rubato

[Long Run]

Not all press conferences are created equal, they can vary in time, who is called, when they are called (lull time or during a crisis), etc. In addition, since that "Fact Check" in 2010, the number of press conferences has continued to decline. Picking 2010 as the measuring time for how many conferences he has done is odd since it is 2013, especially since the press was still in its full-on honeymoon with Obama.

If we look at early 2012, we get a different picture.

By DONOVAN SLACK |
2/9/12 4:18 PM EST

President Obama has not held a solo press conference for nearly three months -- the second-longest stretch in his presidency. He delivered two speeches today but didn't take any questions so it seemed like a good time to crunch some numbers. Here are the longest periods between solo pressers since the president took office, according to presidential scholar Martha Joynt Kumar:

110 days: March 11 - June 29, 2011

88 days: Nov. 13, 2011 - present

84 days: Sept. 25 - Dec. 18, 2009

83 days: July 15 - Oct. 6, 2011

75 days: June 27 - Sept. 10, 2010

The number of times he's solo'ed in front of the press corps, which typically asks tough questions and has caught him off guard in the past, has steadily ticked downward each year -- 11 in 2009, 10 in 2010, and eight in 2011. He stopped doing prime-time conferences long ago. At his last one, in July 2009, he spoke off-the-cuff about the arrest of his friend, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates.

White House officials say Obama regularly sits for interviews and takes questions when appearing with foreign leaders. They also say the current stretch of 88 days includes his Christmas vacation in Hawaii.

Kumar, a professor at Towson University and author of “Managing the president’s message,” said that after a few years in office, it becomes more difficult for sitting presidents to field impromptu questions from the full press corps.

"As time goes on, there are unfolding events, problems and issues that at a particular time you may want to avoid discussing. You may be in the middle of delicate negotiations," Kumar said. "So it's hard to scheduled them in advance or schedule them reguarly."

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012 ... 14050.html

2012 was an election year, so maybe is not a good year to note that the press conferences and serious interviews dropped even further. But in the two months after the disaster at the Libyan embassy, this was his record of access:

President Obama's on the record Interviews since Benghazi:

• 9/11: Miami’s DJ Laz — aka “Pimp with a Limp”
• 9/13: Noticiero Telemundo
• 9/18: Late Show with David Letterman
• 9/20: Univision Town Hall
• 9/23: 60 Minutes
• 9/24: The View
• 9/25: NBC News/Education Nation
• 10/10: World News with Diane Sawyer
• 10/12: The Yo! Show (where he deftly navigated the Nicki Minaj-Mariah Carey feud)
• 10/11: Cleveland Sports Radio 92.3 FM
• 10/18: Z107.9 Hip Hop Cleveland (radio interview)
• 10/18: Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• 10/24: The Tonight Show
• 10/26: MTV
• 10/26: Us Weekly -- select questions/answers from POTUS to appear

Other on the record interviews since Obama's last White House News Conference:

• Jimmy Fallon
• Glamour Magazine
• Half-time Interview with ESPN2 (USA basketball vs. Brazil where the president declared that the Dream Team would beat our current Olympic Team)
• Entertainment Tonight
• People Magazine
• Essence Magazine
• KOB-FM, Albuquerque [talked about his favorite type of chili and “Call Me Maybe”]

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/benghazi-gate ... z2LSGOUhto

Of course, even in the first year, liberal outlets like the New York Times were noting the lack of real access:

February 4, 2010
White House Memo
Few News Conferences, but Still Taking Questions
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — Over the last two weeks, President Obama has taken questions from unemployed workers in Ohio, students in Florida and a cancer survivor in New Hampshire. He took questions from YouTube users, Senate Democrats and even House Republicans. Almost everyone, it seems, but the White House press corps.

After a year in office, Mr. Obama has managed to do what every modern president may have wanted to do but never did: effectively shut out the reporters who work just a few feet from the Oval Office. He has not had a full-scale White House news conference in seven months, the longest such stretch by any president in a decade. And he has made a practice of not taking reporters’ questions at day-to-day events, as other presidents did.

None of that means that Mr. Obama has shielded himself from public scrutiny. But he has fundamentally altered the way a president deals with the news media. Instead of open-ended sessions with multiple reporters, he prefers one-on-one interviews, particularly with television anchors. He gives far more interviews than his two most recent predecessors did, reflecting the conclusion that the format is a more effective means for getting his message through.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/po ... nted=print

And he grants access to people who go easy on him like Steve Kroft, and he tries to limit access from conservative media who might actually question him critically:

“The favorite news outlet of conservatives ranks just ninth in presser questions in President Obama’s first term, getting to ask questions at only half the rate of the ‘Big Three’ broadcast networks,” reports Eric Ostermeier, a University of Minnesota media analyst who literally counted the number of questions at White House press conferences from 2009 through Monday.

Mr. Obama generally favored the “Big Three” — ABC, CBS and NBC — and the Associated Press, the researcher found.

“As for FOX, these have been relatively lean years in terms of getting the presidential nod at news conferences,” Mr. Ostermeier says.

His analysis finds that ABC reporters have been called on the most frequently during Mr. Obama’s 36 solo news conferences; the president sought them out in 29 of them. CBS reporters made the grade in 28 conferences, followed by the Associated Press with 27, and NBC with 26. Bloomberg News is No. 5 with 20, then Reuters with 17; the New York Times and CNN each with 16.

FOX was called on in just 14 press conferences, Mr. Ostermeier notes.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/wat ... z2LSHqEdJt

[rubato]

This one compared Obama up to the beginning of 2013:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/newsconferences.php

This one compared Obama up to the first quarter of 2012 (three years +):

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012 ... 23650.html

And this one compared Obama up to the time Gingrich made his typically afactual accusation, end of 2010 (less than 2 years)

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2010 ... ident?lite


Once again. Until the party which caused 8 years of stagnation and exploding deficits followed by the worst collapse in 4 generations tells us what they did wrong and won't do again we should refuse to listen to them. All they will do is to continue with lying distractions like this crap instead.


yrs,
rubato

[oldr_n_wsr]

Until the party which caused 8 has continued 4 years of stagnation and added ever exploding deficits followed by the worst continued and worsening collapse in 4 generations tells us what they did wrong and won't do again we should refuse to listen to them.

Fixed that for you.

[Lord Jim]

More statistics here:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/newsconferences.php

Yes indeed, there are more statistics there; statistics that show just how misleading and intellectually dishonest that graph is....If you follow the link and look at the breakdown that went into those numbers, that appears directly above the graph, (unfortunately it's not an image, so I can't copy and paste it) you'll see exactly why...

Those numbers are grossly skewed by the fairly recent advent of the "joint press conference" (a few of them are legitimate, but for the most part they consist of things like the President letting the press in for a photo-op after a morning meeting with the the Prime Minister of Botswana, and answering a question or two...to lump those together with solo prime time press conferences is utterly absurd)

If you look at the data, you'll see that no President before Gerald Ford even had one of these pseudo "press conferences" (he had 1)

Neither Jimmy Carter nor Ronald Reagan had any; it was under George HW Bush that the practice began in earnest; (he had 46...probably related to assembling the coalition for the Gulf War)

Then Clinton really kicked it up a notch with 131 of these foreign leader stroke sessions, and GWB out did him with 157...

Barack Obama has had 44....

So let's take those out, and look at what really counts as a true press conference in the meaningful sense of the phrase; the solo press conference, (where typically Presidents answer questions posed by the national press corp, for a half hour or more) and the even more meaningful prime time solo press conference, where viewing audiences are significantly larger.

The first number is the number of solo, non-prime time, the second, solo prime time (sorry if it doesn't layout nicely):

Richard Nixon Totals 29 10

Gerald R. Ford Totals 36 3

Jimmy Carter Totals 52 7

Ronald Reagan Totals 15 31

George Bush Totals 89 2

William J. Clinton Totals 59 3

George W. Bush Totals 49 4

Barack Obama Totals 32 4

So now, what can we truthfully and honestly say about Mr. Reagan's record on press conferences?

In the category of full blown, prime time solo press conferences, Ronald Reagan conducted more than any President in history, by a country mile....(10 times more than Clinton, 8 times more than Obama)

On top of that, in those days there were far fewer television channels, cable news was in its infancy, and the major networks preempted their programming far more regularly to cover them than they do today...(even for a Prime time Presidential news conference.)

Which means that in addition to holding far more prime time televised news conferences than any other President in history, Mr. Reagan's press conferences were undoubtedly seen first hand by vastly more Americans than any other President, before or since.

To this I would add the obvious fact that the prime time solo news conference, in front of a large national audience, is the politically riskiest forum, (and the one requiring the most self confidence) in which a President can appear, since the direct audience of tens of millions of people makes it a lot more difficult to spin what was said, (unlike a morning press conference with maybe a million viewers from the three cable news networks combined) and also makes it difficult for a President to be able to count on friendly members of the media to filter the event by cherry picking favorable moments for the evening news...(Since so many people saw the whole thing for themselves...)

I hate to spoil your bullshit party

Yeah, I'm all broken up about having to do that...

[Lord Jim]

Ronald Reagan, Isn't he the president with the fewest press conferences, ever? Only 1/4 as many as Obama?

You know what's really puzzling rube...

Even if you include the pseudo-press conferences, (which of course one really shouldn't if they want comparisons that aren't completely meaningless, but for the sake of this question let's just pretend for the moment that they should be counted) based on the data at you own link, Reagan had 46 press conferences, and Obama has had 80...(44 of that total being of the pseudo variety)

Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to work out that 46 is 1/4 of 80?

Is your abacus broken?

[Lord Jim]

Re the original topic of this thread and supposed Presidential "vacations"....

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

Presidents do not take vacations, ever, as most people understand the term; they are on the job 24/7 365 days a year. Even on Christmas day, a President's day begins with a National Security briefing, and even on days where Presidents are seen in public playing golf, wandering the beach etc., rest assured they have also spent a substantial portion of that day conferring with aides, receiving briefing reports, etc.

Additionally, (and this has been true for at least the past 40 years or more) the state of the technology available to the President means that there is nothing...absolutely nothing...that a President can accomplish from the White House that he can't accomplish equally well, wherever he or she is.

If it's absolutely essential, for symbolic, or point making purposes to return to the White House, a President can be back within 20 hours from even the most far flung corners of the globe, and within 6 hours from anywhere in the Continental US. And given the resources of Air Force One, while he is en-route once again there is absolutely nothing he can't accomplish from his plane that he could accomplish at the White House. He can contact anyone he wishes, hold meetings with any group he needs to, get any information he needs, and issue any orders the situation requires.

So it is just plain silly to talk about time President's spend away from Washington as though they were "loafing around". I don't begrudge any President, regardless of party, whatever amount of time he chooses, to move the on-going operation of the Presidency outside of Washington. (It should also be pointed out, that during these times that president's take these so called "vacations" Congress is generally also out of town)

In fact I think it's a good thing for President's to get out of town, have some R&R, re-charge a bit, get some fresh air and have some time for reflection. It's good for them, and it's good for the country.

I think it's petty, small minded, uninformed, and short sighted to criticize them for this. But invariably, as night follows day, you can always count on some voices in the opposition to try to raise a stink about it. Democratic pols and pundits do it when Republicans are President, and Republican pols and pundits do it when Democrats are in the White House...you can set your watch by it...Personally I wish both sides would just grow up and drop it, but that probably won't happen so long as they think they can score points with segments of the general public that will equate a "vacation" with "goofing off"....

(The funny thing is, it doesn't seem to work; I have never seen any polling data that indicated that a President's popularity had been negatively impacted by attacks on him for being on "vacation" but that doesn't stop them from doing it...)

All of that having been said, regarding the brouhaha surrounding the Tiger Woods golf meet-up....

I am completely certain that the motive for the White House to try to keep this on "the down-low" had absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Obama taking three days away from Washington, (BTW, both houses of Congress took nine) they know that attacking President's for taking time away from DC accomplishes nothing and that they had no reason to be concerned over that.

The obvious reason they didn't want a whole lot of attention involved with this, is because it was Tiger Woods....

Personally, I really don't care who a President chooses to play golf with, (so long as it isn't a Mafia Boss, an enemy agent, Scott Peterson, or OJ Simpson) but Mr. Woods is a man who is seen (rightly, I would argue) as something of a hypocritical dirt bag, and who has exhibited a deep and abiding disrespect for women....Team Obama was concerned that the optics of him paling around with one of the world's most notorious serial philanderers wouldn't play well with a substantial portion of his base.

While I think that might have been a justifiable concern, it seems a little puzzling that he would be worried about being photographed with a famous and reckless serial disregarder of marital fidelity, when he apparently has no problem having his picture taken on the golf links with this character:

[dgs49]

Any regular observer of this President can easily confirm that he is the greatest manipulator of information who has ever lived at 1600 Pennsylavnia Avenue. The photo above shows the two most dishonest presidents in my lifetime, but at least the one in the red shirt took pains not to lie LITERALLY. Sneaky, but arguably truthful, seemed to be his motto.

Obama just comes right out and says it, knowing that the Press will never call him on it. "Study ater study..." Yeah, he is the Prevaricator in Chief.

Contrast this with the empty accusations that dogges Bush43. He relied on the best information available from US and international sources - which turned out not to be true - and he was a "liar."

The election of 2012 was an IQ test, and the American public flunked.

Let the bastard play golf all he wants. At least he not fucking things up in Washington.