Obama's Vacation: Have The Republicans, At Long Last, No Sense Of Decency?

By Manifesto Joe

It's not enough that Republicans oppose anything and everything that might address the country's socioeconomic ills.

President Obama can't even go on vacation. The minute he and his family landed at Martha's Vineyard, these ludicrous hypocrites started calling him "the Clark Griswold president" -- a reference to the character played by Chevy Chase in the National Lampoon vacation movie series.

I suppose that if one is a ruthless, disingenuous, opportunistic gob of political pond scum, it's a good gamble that the American people, at least enough of them, are this stupid and also suffer from amnesia. Given the huge success that the right wing of the Republican Party has had at the polls over the past 30 years, there must be some truth to this.

But how many of us have forgotten Il Doofus, and how much time he spent on vacation in that prairie oasis of Crawford, Texas? Not everyone, and certainly not me.

In the first place, anybody who would want to spend an August vacation in Central Texas has got to be a drooling idiot. Where I live in Texas, today it was something like 110 in the shade this afternoon. I had to spend some time outdoors earlier, and it felt like a sauna out there. I sweated out a fresh shirt in less than an hour. At least the Obamas have the good sense to go up north to Martha's Vineyard in August. That's evidence of their intelligence.

Then, let's look at the numbers. This is from a Washington Post article:

Veteran CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, a fastidious keeper of presidential statistics, has kept count. By his tally, Obama has embarked on nine "vacations" since taking office, bringing his total days off to 48. Some of those trips lasted a day and some, like his Christmas holiday in Hawaii, more than a week.

By comparison, Bush had visited his ranch in Crawford, Tex., 14 times at this point in his administration and spent 115 days there. And yes, Democrats let him have it, too, complaining that he was a chronic vacationer.

White House advisers made clear in the days leading up to this getaway that a president, especially a wartime president overseeing a country in the grips of economic distress, is never really on vacation.

Here's a link to the entire article.

There are plenty of grave political issues to argue about right now. This isn't one of them. But this illustrates how low, slimy and contemptible the Republican right wing has become, that they would begrudge a president of the opposing party a few rounds of golf, reading time, and some precious time with his family. Il Doofus was on vacation on Aug. 6, 2001, when he was warned that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil was imminent. He stayed in Crawford for a month after that. Funny how the Republicans never mention any of that.

The world suffers from the staggering number of people in it who are stupid, or lacking in moral character, or both. And, unfortunately, there are also a good many who have plenty of moral character on a personal level but have trouble thinking their way through a grocery list.

As long as there are all of the above in America, there will be a Republican Party. And that's sad, because the U.S. needs a responsible conservative political party, and a responsible opposition party. Right now, it has neither.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.