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Is this guy a joke or a bad dream? Why travel so much, call a summit and it only seems to be getting worse? Cap and tax, health care? How about tax cuts and some real stimulus. http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/11/12/the-obama-jobs-summit-perhaps-not-the-best-idea.aspx http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/11/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5618462.shtml
Obama Heads to Asia, Breaks Foreign Travel RecordPosted by Mark Knoller
Even before President Obama sets foot on Air Force One tomorrow to
begin a 9-day trip to Asia, he has traveled to more countries in his
first year in office than any of his predecessors.
Since taking office, he has made 7 foreign trips and visited 16 countries, 3 of them twice.
The Asia trip – which takes him to Japan, Singapore, China and
South Korea – will bring his total to 8 foreign trips and 20 countries.
The only other president to come close to Mr. Obama's
first-year-in-office globe-trotting numbers is President George H. W.
Bush, who took 7 foreign trips to 14 countries.
His son traveled abroad five times to 11 countries during his first
year. President Clinton only did 2 foreign trips to 3 nations in 1993.
Foreign travel by American presidents is a relatively new practice.
No sitting U.S. president left the country until Theodore Roosevelt in
1906. He made a single foreign outing: a 3-day visit to Panama in
November of that year to inspect construction of the Panama Canal.
First Year Foreign Travel By U.S. Presidents
| # of foreign trips | # of nations visited | | Barack Obama (so far) | 7 | 16 | | George W. Bush | 5 | 11 | | Bill Clinton | 2 | 3 | | George H.W. Bush | 7 | 14 | | Ronald Reagan | 4 | 2 | | Jimmy Carter | 2 | 3 | | Gerald Ford | 3 | 5 | | Richard Nixon | 3 | 13 | | Lyndon Johnson | 1 | 1 | | John F. Kennedy | 4 | 6 | | Dwight Eisenhower | 3 | 3 | | Harry Truman | 2 | 3 | | Franklin Roosevelt | 2 | 2 | | Herbert Hoover | 0 | 0 | | Calvin Coolidge | 0 | 0 | | Warren Harding | 0 | 0 | | Woodrow Wilson | 0 | 0 | | William Howard Taft | 1 | 1 | | Theodore Roosevelt | 0 | 0 | Source: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
Katie Connolly
oday, just before jumping on Air Force One for his nine-day trip to Asia, the president announced that he'll convene a
"jobs summit" in December. Amid rising joblessness, the summit will
ostensibly aim to figure out ways to create new jobs and stem the flow
of recession-induced layoffs. The president will invite CEOs,
economists, unions, and small-business leaders to meet with
administration officials at the White House to discuss the issue. "It's
important that we don't make any ill-considered decisions—even with the
best intentions—particularly at a time when our resources are so
limited. But it's just as important that we are open to any
demonstrably good idea to supplement the steps we've already taken to
put America back to work. That's what this forum is about," Obama told
reporters today.
Is
it a good idea? Yes. Having key stakeholders put their heads together,
or at least communicate about the problem, will undoubtedly produce
some interesting ideas and spark important conversations. But is it a
good idea for Obama? That's questionable. The "optics" of the
summit—those elusively defined, fuzzy readings of events that pundits
like to bang on about—might just work against him.
The president has recently been accused of "dithering."
Of course, that particular criticism was in regard to his impending
decision of Afghanistan strategy—arguably the most important decision
of his presidency so far, given the potential for loss of life. But the
word has stuck in people's minds because, depending on your
perspective, dithering and deliberating can be interchangeable. And
Obama is undeniably a deliberative president. He shares none of his
predecessor's brash decisiveness—a fact that I, for one, am happy
about. I'm pleased to hear of any president who takes time to weigh
options and map out their implications. But I'm not sure the public
finds that tendency comforting anymore.
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Fuck yea, we breaking records yall!
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 watson5j: | |
Fuck yea, we breaking records yall!
Absolutely true, and none of them are worthy of bragging at all.
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Do we not have enough problems domestically to worry about?
It just seems to me that our president should be concentrating on problems in our own backyard rather then worrying about the rest of the world. Lets get a hold of our econonmy, create jobs, clean up the inner city, work on poverty, slow down the violent crimes that happen thousands of times a day, capture and prosecute homegrown-terroist, fix our public education system, etc etc.
Maybe that just makes too much sense.....I dunno
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| Quartersack: | |
Do we not have enough problems domestically to worry about?
It just seems to me that our president should be concentrating on problems in our own backyard rather then worrying about the rest of the world. Lets get a hold of our econonmy, create jobs, clean up the inner city, work on poverty, slow down the violent crimes that happen thousands of times a day, capture and prosecute homegrown-terroist, fix our public education system, etc etc.
Maybe that just makes too much sense.....I dunno
yeah the mofo should call a job summit or something.
i can't recall Bush doing one thing about any of these issues in eight years in office, yet Obama hasn't been in office for a year and he's blamed for all of america's issues.
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| 4sakenme: | |
i can't recall Bush doing one thing about any of these issues in eight years in office, yet Obama hasn't been in office for a year and he's blamed for all of america's issues.
ahhh yes. The "Bush did it... business as usual" arguement.
If he didnt campaign on promising to be everything Bush wasnt... people wouldnt be on his ass about doing absolutely nothing.
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| 4sakenme: | |
i can't recall Bush doing one thing about any of these issues in eight years in office, yet Obama hasn't been in office for a year and he's blamed for all of america's issues.
I didnt say anything about Bush because........well, he is no longer the president. I also never blamed Obama for all or any of America's issues. I simply stated that we have enough problems in our own backyard that we need to concentrate on instead of visiting other countries every 23 days.
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Obama is soon going to announce a "War on Unemployment"
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| Jaybone2315: | |
ahhh yes. The "Bush did it... business as usual" arguement. If he didnt campaign on promising to be everything Bush wasnt... people wouldnt be on his ass about doing absolutely nothing.
It's not that Bush did it... it's that Bush didn't do anything to help most of these problems.
I'm glad Obama is taking dozens of trips around the world. America needs a much better image after some of our recent debacles (under... Bush).
And he's working to create jobs with this job summit.
What exactly would you do differently right now? Not improve foreign relations? Not call a job summit? Some of you people bitch just to bitch. Grow the fuck up, he can't fix everything in one year, nor did he say he would. Read his speech the night he won the vote, he said it would take many years to fix all of these issues and that's what he's starting to do.
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| ohioschwa: | |
Obama is soon going to announce a "War on Unemployment"
The "war on terror" was a Bush idiom, so this makes no sense.
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| 4sakenme: | |
i can't recall Bush doing one thing about any of these issues in eight years in office, yet Obama hasn't been in office for a year and he's blamed for all of america's issues.
So when will Obama take ownership of this issue? A true leader is presented with a problem and solves it. How is going on a trip to Asia, the largest expansion of government with Obamacare and tax and cap helping us get out of this recession?
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| Vypirious: | |
What exactly would you do differently right now? Not improve foreign relations? Not call a job summit? Some of you people bitch just to bitch. Grow the fuck up, he can't fix everything in one year, nor did he say he would. Read his speech the night he won the vote, he said it would take many years to fix all of these issues and that's what he's starting to do.
pump the brakes bud.
I was just pointing out how the other guy managed to bring up Bush (as usual with Obama threads).
Im not president... Its not my job to fix shit, and I would have no advice on how to help him. I just dont think that making trips to other countries helps our economy and job growth here in the US. But like I said... it not my job.
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| Vypirious: | |
I'm glad Obama is taking dozens of trips around the world. America needs a much better image after some of our recent debacles (under... Bush).
How will this create one job?
| Vypirious: | |
What exactly would you do differently right now? Not call a job summit?
Can we get a list of attendees? Will only liberal economists and Union leaders be there? Unions decimated the big 3, now you want to go to their leaders for ideas on how to improve the job situation. Makes sense?
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| rebelfd: | |
So when will Obama take ownership of this issue? A true leader is presented with a problem and solves it. How is going on a trip to Asia, the largest expansion of government with Obamacare and tax and cap helping us get out of this recession?
Obamacare is only going to cover 2% of people in the US. Yea, that's a vast expansion.
Bush/Cheney firing the entire upper branch of the Pentagon and all those political firings of the court system... boy, that did nothing to expand their power!
Not to mention handing out BILLIONS of dollars of taxpayer money to defense contractors who were college friends and business associates of Cheney.
Obama is going to be hard pressed to be able to do anything near the expansion of power that the Bush administration created.
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| Vypirious: | |
| ohioschwa: | |
Obama is soon going to announce a "War on Unemployment"
The "war on terror" was a Bush idiom, so this makes no sense.
Lyndon Johnson was the first president who used the the term war on _____, in 1964 with his war on poverty.
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