Conservatives continue to attack Michelle Obama as proxy to her husband, this time over the idea that in a bad economy, the Obama family shouldn’t dare go anywhere lest they draw the ire of swing state voters in Republican focus groups.
“They view everything through their own personal situation and if they can’t afford to do it, they can’t enjoy it, they don’t like Obama using their tax dollars to benefit himself,” said pollster John McLaughlin. “In this case, they see him as out of touch. While they are struggling he’s not sharing in that struggle and he’s basically doing what they can’t do on their tax dollars,” added the GOP pollster.
He and several other top-tier Republican pollsters, organized by Resurgent Republic, traveled to 11 battleground states to host focus groups of independent and swing voters, mostly Democrats, who voted for President Obama in 2008 but who are now on the fence.
McLaughlin handled blue collar and Catholic voters in Pittsburgh on April 3 and Cleveland on March 20. He found that they are very depressed about the economy and feel that their tax dollars are being sucked up by both the rich and those living on government assistance.
During the focus group discussions about debt and spending cuts, many in his group volunteered criticism of the presidential vacations as something that should be cut. Among the lines McLaughlin wrote down was one from a Democratic woman who said, “Michelle Obama spends $1 million to take the kids to Hawaii,” and another who said, “President Obama was the only president to take so many trips.”
The theme, said McLaughlin, is that the first family “is out of touch” with working class voters.
What the focus groups are really proving is that the FOX News style propaganda attacks on our “uppity” First Family who should “know their place” and not be so “lazy” and “go on vacation so much” are working with the intended target, at least to some extent. The First Lady in particular has been savaged for spending “millions” on pricey vacations and top-shelf fashions, all supposedly on the taxpayer dime.
There are two things wrong with it. One, the costs include security for the First Family, and given the unalloyed hatred these assholes have for the Obamas, I’d say that security is pretty necessary, possibly more necessary that with any other residents of the White House before them. Second of all, President Obama and Michelle Obama have still taken far less vacations than the Bush family preceding them. Laura Bush took yearly trips to Yosemite National Park with family friends and Secret Service protection. The total cost of just the White House trips to the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas? Some $20 million for just the plane costs.
President Bush took 149 trips to Camp David, 77 visits to his Crawford ranch, and 11 trips to his father’s Kennebunkport mansion. Since Air Force One reportedly cost $56,800 per hour to operate in 2004 (which Bush used to get to Crawford), and the plane can travel up to 630 miles per hour, it cost at least $259,657 to get the 2,880 miles to Crawford and back, each time Bush went, or roughly $20 million dollars just for taking the plane on the Crawford trips alone. Add in the cost of putting up Secret Service and other staff for the ranch trips, as well as the Kennebunkport and Camp David trips, and you get, well, a lot.
That’s okay, because it’s not like Bush crashed our economy or anything while he was busy clearing brush. There’s one big difference in Presidential history when it comes to the Obama family, and that’s what these Republican pollsters are pushing among working-class Democrats, trying to get them to abandon the President for being too “elitist” and instead vote for the guy worth a quarter-billion dollars with the multiple vacation homes and cars…or not vote at all.
But don’t you dare bring the issue of race into it.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, Faux focus groups tend to be teatard rabble.
Fuck them. With an unlubed rusty chainsaw with no governor.
toma
It’s okay because George hated the government. If he’d actually liked the government, like Barack, then spending its money would be ‘greedy.’
Clime Acts
I don’t care who is in the White House, they all take way too many schmancy vacations when they ought to be staying in D.C. and fucking working.The ARE, after all, paid $400,000 a year plus free housing and god knows what else, plus they sold their souls to get there. Do the fucking job.
Cause there are one or two things in this country that need attention.
And yeah, these people raising the issue for the first time now are likely racist right wing idiot pigs.
Which does not negate the substance of my first paragraph above.
PeakVT
Bush went on vacation more than every other weekend during his two terms, but he was a war preznit, so that makes it okay. Peacetime presidents should be satisfied with a trip to that McDonalds with the really big playhouse.
ant
there was a post over at ann althouse’s blog yesterday about something the first lady said. Reading the comments was a real eyeopening experience for me.
Republicans hate Michelle Obama more than they do Barack.
This leads me to believe that racists dislike black women more than black men. Something that had never even occurred to me before yesterday.
Scott S.
Bush went on more vacations than anyone, but that’s okay, ’cause HONKEYS.
amk
I stopped reading further. As if gallup isn’t enough.
Can we focus on more important thngs than these bright objects cooked up by thugs ?
cmorenc
It’s ok because everything that happened prior to January 2009 is prehistory, before anyone started recording any of it. Except for 9/11 or the fact that there was once a President named Ronald Reagan back in an idyllic time when everything was sunshine and lollipops.
amk
@Clime Acts: too much butthurt this early in the morning? Go fucking see a doctor. Or better yet, go fuck yourself.
Johnk
Not that additional proof is necessary, but it is just another reinforcement that the a-holes calling themselves republicans are truely, complete and utter racist a-holes.
Suffern ACE
Well, to be honest, I have always wanted to go to the places where the Obamas go, but never really was all that interested in Crawford Texas or Maryland. I’m sure they are nice places and all, but not really touring places. The issue is that the Obamas place in Chicago could not be secured, so unlike the Bushes, they can’t just go home for a few days without messing up their neighbors. So if you can’t go home, you might as well go anywhere.
Clime Acts
@amk:
too much butthurt this early in the morning? Go fucking see a doctor. Or better yet, go fuck yourself.
Hmmm…care to respond to my point, moran? Or is it just more Bot phlegm spewing: “It’s ok that BO vacations a lot because IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY IS AWESOME THAT’S WHY SHUT UP.”
Basically, you think stupid and inappropriate shit other presidents did is ok for Obama cause…why?
ETA: On the other hand, your botulistic attitude towards the presidency would explain why you support Obama continuing so many Bush the Much Lesser policies. Because why not?
gnomedad
Having, maintaining, and protecting a President and his family is expensive. Get the fuck over it. But that’s not really what this is about, is it?
wenchacha
I’m not saying it will help, but I’d like to suggest that Juicers from the Cleveland and Pittsburgh areas inundate their respective papers with LTEs about the truth of Presidential expenditures re: vacations, security, etc.
Imagine if it stirs some local commentary on the subject.
Same deal with papers all over the country with info on the facts of what used to be known as “welfare.” Women don’t get unlimited infinity dollars for Duggar-sized litters. People are sure they do, and that is all they need to know.
It’d be nice if, for once, we could catapult some of the facts over “general knowledge” propaganda.
RP
as if we needed further evidence that Clime Acts is a paid GOP troll.
Hal
First, can I call complete bullshit on the voters who voted for Obama but are now on the fence? You’re travelling the country on behalf of a guy worth a quarter of a billion dollars to try and paint the Obama’s as out of touch elites? What about the concerns he points to that tax dollars are being sucked up by the rich? Romney’s policies aren’t going to help that.
Ultimately, it would be really interesting to see how many people this guy actually talked to.
Also:
Wow, really? That makes that escape scene in Independence Day seem more realistic now.
Clime Acts
@RP:
omg, giggle.
So your position is that any commenter who criticizes Obama is a GOP troll? Interesting.
Although I could use the money in this economy. Do you know where and how I might apply for such a position?
amk
@Clime Acts: What part of go fuck yourself do you not get, you racist pig ?
Mnemosyne
I think our reincarnated trollie friend Taco was providing the official Republican line yesterday when it said it was okay for Bush to spend half his time in office on vacation because the economy was good (yes, he actually claimed that), but Obama shouldn’t be allowed to see his family at Christmas because the economy is bad.
Zach
I’m going to hazard a guess that they don’t run AF1 at top speed at 45,000 feet on a regular basis.
amk
@Hal: I would take anything that comes out of rethug pollsters with tons of salt. Remember the gazillions of pumas?
Brachiator
@ant:
Sadly, I think this is an excellent observation. For racists a black First Lady fails the wish fulfilment test of someone you would either want to be or want to marry; and they go ballistic over a black woman symbolically representing the country or offering a vision of political motherhood.
@Clime Acts:
There was no substance. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.
For example, according to historians, Franklin Roosevelt visited his Little White House in Warm Sprngs sixteen times between 1932 and 1945. And still dealt with the freakin Depression and World War II. Presidents before and since have had places to go to relax. And yet, you have this stupid idea of the Obamas being confined to quarters for the duration of his term.
Mary G
Off topic, but very funny: Game of Thrones Cast with 2012 Political Personalities, from anibundel
Hal
@Clime Acts:
Prove to me that Obama isn’t doing his job, and instead, is just taking vacations.
What would you consider ok in terms of vacation places, time on vacation etc?
If all the President did was sit his ass behind the desk in the oval office, the criticism of him would be that he was out of touch because he isn’t travelling the country meeting people. And he does have a wife and young kids. Expecting them to stay behind the fence of the White House for 4 to 8 years because some Republican asshats just see the Obama’s as uppity negroes is just giving in to their bullshit pov.
Clime Acts
@amk:
hahahahaha…RAAAACCCCCISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTT.
And always so well spoken and clean mouthed.
Could you provide links to where I have said anything specifically racist?
Or is it just a general feeeeeeeling you have?
Idiot.
Brachiator
OT: A moment of sheer beauty. The Space Shuttle Enterprise flying over NYC
Today the space shuttle Enterprise took flight one last time on the back of a 747
RP
No, my position is that anyone regurgitating idiotic rightwing attacks is a GOP troll.
Cris (without an H)
And failing that, with Chris Christie.
You gotta have something if you wanna be with me.
Some Loser
These fuckers just can’t help themselves. They can’t attack him on policy or the economy, so they take aim at his family. Even after he avoided doing this whenever he campaigns. I wonder what it is like to hate everything just because the Obamas do it.
Clime Acts
@Hal:
P
Where did I say that was the case? Is everything black and white to you? Why yes, it is. I said, in general, that ALL presidents spend too much time travelling around vacationing and fundraising when they should be working in D.C. And yes, Dubya was likely the worst.
How about four weeks a year? Generous at any level.
Please link to where I said all the president should do is “sit on his ass,” though many executive jobs require lots of ass siting. Big deal: $400,000 plus perks. Who said the wife and kids can never go anywhere? Whose post are you really responding to?
You know, there really is a strong Bot tendency to totally paraphrase commenters with which they disagree in such a way that the resulting word salad bears little resemblance to the point to which they pretend to be responding. Telling.
Comrade Dread
For Republicans, history jumped from 9/11 straight to 1/20/2009.
Anything that happened in between those dates is completely insignificant and not at all their faults. The years simply do not exist.
So let it be written…
Citizen Alan
@Clime Acts:
No, I think anyone so obviously consumed with hatred of Obama is probably a GOP troll, or at best a dripping shit-stain of a person and no longer worthy of an instant of my time. Die in a fire, you racist pig. Consider yourself pied.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Clime Acts:
I don’t consider everyone who collects tolls on a bridge a troll, nor do I consider everyone who criticizes Obama a troll. You, on the other hand, are a troll.
amk
@Clime Acts: A racist pig never admits to being one because it’s an innate coward.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Clime Acts:
I bet you would be hard pressed to come up with four weeks per year that POTUS has taken in actual vacation time.
36 hours in Florida is not a vacation no matter what Fox News says.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
98% of this is a combination of racism in the focus groups and leading questions from the GOP operatives running the exercise. But a small contributing factor is that the Obamas were much more middle-class in orientation than the Bushes and even in the WH they tend to head toward the sort of vacation destination which a middle class person can relate to, such as Hawaii. The average American doesn’t have a personal ranch somewhere to go to, and neither do the Obamas. So when Bush traveled to Crawford, the reality of what that meant, and the level of luxury it implied, that never got thru to the average person. But an average person can hear about a POTUS family trip to Hawaii and think “waah! I wish I could have that!” because in a better economy a trip like that might have been within their reach.
yopd1
What’s ironic is that Obama has no qualms about admitting he and his family are well off. He says it every time he mentions a tax increase on the rich. Unlike Romney who does everything to try and show he is like everyone else.
Obama is proud of being successful and wants to illustrate it to others that their is nothing wrong with it. Yet, he is called the soci…st.
4tehlulz
The only way that President Obama can be worthy to be president is to not take any time off.
This also applies to Barack.
Dave
There’s also all this tittering now about the president’s “big stick”…? Bubbled up from Drudge to actual news (and Andrew Sullivan, natch). Here it is represented by NBC as a gaffe (???!!?) when it’s, you know, the billionth quote of T. Roosevelt.
Everyone who mentions this “story” should be called out for racist penis obsession please.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Clime Acts:
Sure you are, we all believe you so very, very much that you just so very, very concerned about the important issues the nation faces with your NOT racist posts that just happened to be wholesale repeats of GOP talking points you have independently come up with by yourself.
Clime Acts has a black friend, am I right?
Mike Lamb
@Clime Acts: Leaving aside certain perception issues, which are legitimate in certain cirucmstances (i.e. Bush at his ranch during Katrina), do you really think a President takes a ‘vacation’ in any normal sense of the word? You think Obama sets an “auto-responder” in his Outlook that says he’s out of the office with limited access to email for the next 2 weeks? There’s no such thing as a vacation for a President.
Walker
I love this “swing state voters in Republican focus groups”. Not swing voters. Not randomly selected voters in swing states. But carefully selected Republican focus groups from people who just happen to live in a swing state.
Keep choking that chicken.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Speaking for myself, I kind of like the idea that the person who has their finger on the proverbial nuclear button is able to take some time off from the job from time to time to relax a little bit, and I don’t think it is a good idea to have the WH effectively barred to anyone who has a family and thinks that putting them in a sealed vault for 4 years is a bad idea.
__
GWB took far more vacation time on the taxpayer dime than Obama is doing, but that is so far down near the bottom of my list of complaints about the W admin that it isn’t even worth thinking about except as ammunition to refute right-wing bullshit talking points about Obama’s vacations.
Steve
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I don’t know why you all think the guy is a troll. I mean, so what if he called Trayvon Martin’s mom a grifter. Lots of non-racist, non-trollish people like to take shots at the dead kid’s mom, it’s not unusual.
amk
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Yup. Shrub’s vacations were least of the problem.
Brachiator
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
In Obama’s case, he is also going home, to a place where he has a significant personal connection.
And it seems like only yesterday when idiot pundits were talking about Hawaii as an exotic destination.
The stupidity is breathtaking.
And unlike even the Clintons, who liked hanging out with the rich and powerful, the Obama’s don’t seem comfortable with doing the lavish second home, hanging out at luxury locales thing.
Of course, if Romney is elected, I can imagine conservative nutballs saying, “Well, the Romneys have five homes. It’s only natural that they spend some time in all of them.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@yopd1:
That’s because Obama’s family earned like a bunch of elitists, not inherited it like Romney or Bush did.
I mean seriously, do you see Romney or Bush breaking into the upper 1% from even a middle class background. If wasn’t for their families Bush would be selling used farm tractors and Romney would be managing the night shit at an I-Hop. That’s why they are ordinary folks, deep down they are just as worthless as the rest of us.
Obama on the other hand managed to become president of the United States while being a member of the most hated minority in this country and having a name two letters off from our worst enemy. How much of over achiever can you get?
chopper
@Clime Acts:
BO doesn’t vacation a lot. that’s kinda the whole point.
this is why people think you’re either a troll or retarded, or both. you cough up some stupid republican talking point, and when people tell you to knock it off you go all ‘oh, so it’s okay that [stupid republican talking point] because it’s obama? OBOTS!’.
amk
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Excellent. Without their dads/grandads, these punks would be nothing. That’s why they hate a real achiever.
JustMe
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Hm. That’s an interesting point. The essential middle class mediocrity of a Hawaii vacation may itself annoy people more than going to an estate in west Texas or Kennebunkport. Never thought of it that way, but it’s a compelling line of reasoning.
SenyorDave
@Brachiator: WTF does Cokie Roberts do? How the hell could anybody pay her for what she supposedly does. Is it performance art?
Chyron HR
@Clime Acts:
I can’t help but notice that you have a strong tendency to totally paraphrase commenters with which you disagree in such a way that the resulting word salad bears little resemblance to the point to which you pretend to be responding. How telling.
Yutsano
@chopper: But see Special Timmeh’s point is the President shouldn’t vacation at all. He should stay cloistered in the White House and never leave until his term is up because doing otherwise is wasting his precious tax dollars. After all, he has the highest salary in the federal government and free housing, what the hell does he need a life for?
Forum Transmitted Disease
Screw the facts. The idiots who will decide this election – and make no mistake, they are idiots – don’t give two shits about the facts and sure as shit aren’t going to sit through your well intentioned lecture aimed at eliminating their ignorance.
Where’s the counterattacks? The pushback?
Hell, all these lumpenproles know is that the black president is driving around, doing black stuff that probably involves drugs, white women, and Glocks, in a sweet Cadillac that they’ll never be able to afford. And there is nothing out there to tell them any different.
The Fox propaganda machine is working and hasn’t even gotten out of first gear yet. Our propaganda machine is…oh yeah, we don’t have one.
liz
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if something like half the people polled didn’t even know Hawaii was a state. It’s appalling how many people I know think of Hawaii as some sort of far flung island that was created only solely for vacations for middle class and rich people. Instead of what it actually is, which is a nice island that’s home to a lot of poor people too. They think a President can’t be “from” there or go “home” there.
SatanicPanic
I propose slapping any uninformed idiot who says “The president needs to be working on getting the economy fixed, not taking vacations.” For crying out loud, “the economy” is not a stack of reports on his desk that needs to get done before the weekend. It doesn’t work that way, dummies.
This is “Why can’t politicians get together and work out our problems” or “We should vote out ALL incumbents” level stupid.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Yutsano: and by going by the conservatards I have meet it is very likely Special Timmeh has at lest four weeks of vacation a year, assuming he is not on social security.
Omnes Omnibus
Is a president, any president, ever really on vacation? I would say no. They don’t walk away from the responsibilities of the job for a few days just because they are in a location other than the White House. This is a complete BS meme.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@SatanicPanic:
__
And even if it were, his critics would be complaining to the skies above that Obama put the wrong cover sheet on it, because he didn’t read the memo.
Linda Featheringill
@ant: #5
Hmmm. I’d like to get some feedback from some AA folks on this one [or folks with ties to racists, for that matter]. Personally, I have no idea if it is true or not.
Ben Cisco
@Yutsano: And if he did forego vacations, Special Timmeh would
findmake up another raison d’etre for outrage.I can manage not to get overly angry at people who are genuinely ignorant, but when they are just willfully stupid (pundits and “real ‘Murkans” alike), I just want to punch ’em in the junk.
slim's tuna provider
it’s important for the prez to go on vacation because it demonstrates that everyone deserves a vacation, an idea the modern employer accepts with the greatest of reluctance. that said, i think clinton’s vacations were the most annoying, as they were mostly centered about golfing with other Big Dawgs at the Vineyard. while bush was lazy, at least clearing brush is actual vacation, not hobnobbing with Friends of Bill. obama’s reasonable family time vacations are probably as pitch perfect as you can get.
SatanicPanic
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: And we’re gonna need him to come in on saturday
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
There is also the strange racist spin that often gets put on this whenever nutballs comment on the personal lives of the Obamas. These comments seem to come down to the contradictory wish that the Obamas, who should never have been allowed to live in the White House in the first place, at least “have the decency” to stay inside where no one can see them, and work until they are thrown out by Romney or some other authentic Real White American(tm).
OzoneR
@Clime Acts:
That’s more vacation time than Obama takes
kindness
People….c’mon now….trolls are for mocking. When you get all serious on them, they take that as their arguments (statements really) have a certain validity, when we all can/have seen most trolls statements fail in every conceivable test.
Mock the trolls. Laugh at them. Deride them. Don’t expect to win any arguments with them. Their ‘reason’ defies logic.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
These guys must all be socialists. Obama shouldn’t have to appologize for being successful – the guy on the other side sure doesn’t.
eemom
I thought when the President goes on vacation the Vice President gets to do the job?
Oh wait, that was in fifth grade. Never mind.
Egg Berry
focus groups, ah yes, the plural of anecdote.
El Cid
They hate Michelle Obama even worse because she’s hot, and they know it, and they don’t know what to do with those funny feelings they’re having, so they make sure and hate her even louder.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
if it gives you a chance to bleat-off to a pollster you never heard of, but think you should have, tell them you were once an obama supporter. see look, no racism! added bonus.
then they will take you so seriously when you tell them why you just can’t, as a matter of conscience, support the democrats anymore. i really hope the only people they are fooling, is the people paying the pollster.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
For conservatives, nothing a black man does can possibly be legitimate.
Except die, of course.
Brachiator
@Egg Berry:
oooh. Good one.
gene108
@ant:
Yeah, they really are getting nasty towards Michelle O. I’ve read comments about calling her an “orangautanga”…pretty nasty comparing her to a monkey…
Culture of Truth
Why doesn’t he vacation in America istead of Hawaii
Ben Cisco
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Yup.
amk
Getting back to real issues
13 Traitors who voted against students – Barrow Bishop Boren Donnelly Higgins Hochul Kissell Lipinski
Matheson McIntyre Owens Peterson Walz
Steve
The most amazing part is that they think Mitt Romney can be the standard-bearer for this “Obama is out of touch” argument. Some of you may have seen that clip from 2004 with Mitt Romney making fun of John Kerry’s many houses. There is absolutely zero self-awareness going on.
Ben Cisco
@gene108: They’re just mad because her arms are more toned than theirs. Easier for them to compare her to an animal. Really disgusting, subhuman behavior from them.
Seanly
@Omnes Omnibus:
Call me petty, but somehow, I do picture Bush as sitting around swilling cheap beer & playing Xbox while he was in Crawford.
Calouste
@SenyorDave:
Cokie Roberts does f’ all. It’s what she did is what got her where she is in life, and what she did was being born to a former House Majority Leader. /American meritocracy at work.
Brachiator
@Seanly:
To be fair, Dubya gave up drinking.
I see him clumisly dropping the Xbox and choking on a pretzel. Fortunately Laura is near by to help him chuck up the pretzel.
Culture of Truth
I doubt was really doing much of that, but to the extent he was, I know what I’d rather do on my vacation.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@El Cid: Yes, the arch wingnut at worked launched into this long rant about how big Micheal Obama’s butt is. That was shocking to hear in a work place and it was clear time to change for the NSFW subject of little Marcy’s jungle leaver.
Calouste
@Steve:
I’m not sure it is a lack of self-awareness as it is blatant, cynical, 24/7, wall-to-wall all-the-time outright lying.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Steve: three weeks ago Mitt “Mr Harvard Business School” Romney was making fun of Obama’s Harvard Education.
Egg Berry
@Brachiator: That we know of.
Villago Delenda Est
@yopd1:
He’s not trying very hard, or he can’t try, because he and his wife fail utterly when they attempt to do so. Two Caddys, a car elevator, diamonds in the cookies, they fail at this every fucking day.
kindness
@Calouste: I hate to say it but I respected Cokie back when David Brinkley had her on the show. That was the 80’s and she was less forward about being a Republican cheerleader. Now, she’s a dottering old hag who can hardly speak her lines properly. Now, she’s past her Sell By date and it shows.
slim's tuna provider
@Culture of Truth: bush was obsessed with clearing brush to the point of ridiculousness. both ranch work and being nice to muckedy mucks sound like the opposite of vacay to me, though…
Napoleon
@gene108:
An orangutan is an ape, not a monkey. Somewhere on some internet forum used by orangutans some orangutan is going to be complaining that you are comparing her to a monkey.
Tony J
@Mary G:
Also OT, but On that T. I posted this earlier in the week but I still think it’s funny enough to go back to.
Kcarab Amabo is just about Romney’s only chance of putting Obama off his game. Granted, he’d beat Mittens to death with a fire-extinguisher just as soon as he got him alone after the innauguration, and then rule America from a throne of bones as a conquering tyrant, but winners don’t sweat the consequences, do they?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Ben Cisco: Knowing the racists I do, I can tell you word for word what it would be:
“That stupid ni##er can’t get the job done like a normal human being can! Takes him five hours to do what a human can do in one. Bush coulda handled this with one hand tied behind his back! Heh, that’s why they call ’em obsolete farm equipment, yuk yuk yuk”
I spelled it better than they ever could, but you get the concept.
Tony J
The Link, like a pooch, was screwed.
This link.
Culture of Truth
Personally I don’t get it. But maybe hacking away at dead brush was something he was actually good at.
Tony J
Oh for the love of Brian Eno!
How does this Link thing work?
I swear to Cupid there is a fekking link in there.
YellowDog
This is the classic Karl Rove tactic of creating false equivalencies to neutralize an issue. They can’t do anything about Romney’s wealth or his personality, so they make it an issue with the President. That’s why we have heard about eating dog (Seamus), taking expensive vacations (Paris mansion while on a church mission), Michelle is out of touch (dressage). It will only get worse.
Davis X. Machina
@Culture of Truth: Fair fight, though — gotta admit that.
quannlace
Where the hell do these fools get the idea that tax payer money is going towards Michelle Obama’s wardrobe? I think she can afford her own clothes.
*******
And if they’re going to wail about wasting the taxpayer’s money; where was the outrage over Gingrich getting Secret Service protection, at $40,000 a day, for weeks when it was obvious his campaign was over?
Calouste
@Culture of Truth:
Well, Kaiser Wilhelm II spend his involuntary retirement chopping trees. There must be some connection there.
Davis X. Machina
@Calouste: And the Grand Old Man, W.E. Gladstone, was a mighty feller of trees, too. So it’s not partisan, this war on carbon sinks….
amk
@quannlace: well, whiteys don’t waste.
Ben Cisco
@amk: Kissell’s a waste, but I expect he’ll eventually get replaced by a REAL wingnut next time ’round.
Ben Cisco
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Sad to say, you’re probably right.
nathaniel
I thought the reason we didn’t want to raise taxes on the wealthy is because they are the job creators with their spending. Isn’t that what the president is doing creating jobs with these trips?
Ben Cisco
@nathaniel:
No, ’cause none of those rules apply when the would-be job creator is a Ni-CLANG!
/wingnut
Scamp Dog
@Hal: That’s amazing! I wish I could ride in an airplane that went that fast!
What, it’s just an ordinary 747, going as fast as ordinary airliners, like the ones I’ve ridden on? How am I supposed to keep my hate going?
Svensker
@Linda Featheringill:
I’m not black so I don’t know that perception. I do know that Michelle’s “the first time I’ve been proud of my country” line gave every racist asshole I know cover to hate the shit out of her. I know what she meant but I sure as hell wish she hadn’t said it. That’s all they think about when they see or hear her: “She wasn’t PROUD of AMERICA until THEN? ! ! ! ZOMG she HATES America. She hates US.” Every fucking time they talk about her.
Tone In DC
@Ben Cisco:
Me, I’m just glad the First Lady (and BHO) actually speak in complete sentences. Without troll-like word salad. After 8 years of Bush Jr., this was and is a nice change.
Mouse Tolliver
Like Bill Maher said, Republicans aren’t all racist, but if you are racist you’re probably a Republican.
henrythefifth
I take it these concern trolls do not have the ability to type “George W. Bush vacation days” into the Google machine and realize the hypocrisy of their narrative? (This is rhetorical)
PurpleGirl
@quannlace: President Obama’s salary comes from taxpayer money and therefore, Michelle gets a share of that and buys clothes using his money, i.e. taxpayer money.
What they don’t want to acknowledge is that as with their own salary money, it becomes Obama’s/their money to spend as they wish (or need to).
Don’t look for logic, there isn’t any in their stance.
psycholinguist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Obama on the other hand managed to become president of the United States while being a member of the most hated minority in this country and having a name two letters off from our worst enemy. How much of over achiever can you get?
That’s a pretty insightful analysis you got there. And I think it goes some way towards explaining both perceptions of Bush and Obama – Bush is the shmuck who won the lottery, Obama is that guy from some other planet. – In fact, some may simply not find his story believable, and feel compelled to invent some alternative narrative to explain his success, something along the lines of a vast international Muslim conspiracy that helped him along each step of the way to the presidency. I’m looking at you Bill Ayers!
Ben Cisco
@Tone In DC: Isn’t it though? That probably is yet another burr under the haters’ saddles – you know, ’cause he don’t be speechifyin’ in Ebonics and sh*t. POTUS and FLOTUS are the antithesis of every single negative connotation, every stereotype of black people that exists in this country, and the haters cannot stand it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Seanly: Nevertheless, he was “on call” so to speak. Scary thought, I know.
Clime Acts
@Citizen Alan:
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Clime Acts
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I wouldn’t know. Unlike you, I don’t watch Fox News. Why do you?
Clime Acts
@Mike Lamb:
Oh please. I think we’d be amazed to know just how much of any white house activity is run on auto pilot by the minions.
How the hell do you think Shrub did it?
Clime Acts
@Yutsano:
Link please?
Clime Acts
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Do you have fun with the voices in your head? I have my own business and take whatever time off I damn well please.
On the other hand, I don’t run the United States of America, and I don’t make $400,000 a year.
It’s beyond funny that you think of me as conservative. By BJ standards I’m a far left radical socialist hippy. Which is why Barack Status Quo Obama is a predictable disappointment.
Baggins Comma D
@Clime Acts:
No, but your use of the word “moran” in comment # 13 is pretty much a dead giveaway. See, e.g., here.
Clime Acts
@Brachiator:
LOL
Clime Acts
@OzoneR:
lol. Links?
Clime Acts
@Brachiator:
As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with this issue, I don’t think Dubya made it thru his terms without picking up the bottle again.
And he never sought treatment or a program of any kind to change his thinking and his perceptions. Ergo he was a raving dry drunk. And if one knows much at all about alcoholism, that explains a great deal of the shit that went down while that psycho was in office.
Tone in DC
@Ben Cisco:
True dat.
Clime Acts
@slim’s tuna provider:
I always assumed that brush clearing horseshit was conceived purely as a show for the rubes. The press never called Bush out on the fact that he never owned a ranch until he began running for president and he never rode a horse.
Complete bullshit.
amk
hey idjit troll. Are you talking to yourself ? What a buffoon.
gwangung
@Clime Acts:
Bullshit from a bullshitter.
ET
Isn’t it Mark Knoller of CBS who was tracking all the Bush vacation/away from DC time. I think Obama taking a lot of vacations was a hot story last year as well.
CBS News from August 2011 says this:
So far, President Obama has taken 61 vacation days after 31 months in office. At this point in their presidencies, George W. Bush had spent 180 days at his ranch where his staff often joined him for meetings. And Ronald Reagan had taken 112 vacation days at his ranch.
xian
concern troll is concerned
rikyrah
you know they are
Black
Black
Blackedity
Black
Black
Black
Blackilicious
Black
Blackerific
Black
oh yeah..
they are
BLACK BLACK BLACK
Chyron HR
@Clime Acts:
Well, duh. Conservatives dislike Obama because Glenn Beck told them Obama hates America and the Constitution. You’re a True Progressive who dislikes Obama because Glenn Greenwald told you Obama hates America and the Constitution.
Totally different.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@psycholinguist:
Yeah, this.
Pre-Obama, I heard many racists around me refer to Gov. Deval Patrick (another Harvard grad) as an “Affirmative Action Case”. And if you called them on it, you’d get looked at like an idiot as they shook their heads in pity. Obviously no Ni{CLANG!] could ever possibly earn a scholarship through merit (as the Gov did) and make his way through an Ivy League school without special treatment and/or cheating.
Not one college grad in the bunch, BTW. The idea that someone of color could achieve what they couldn’t (or could have but chose not to) simply did not compute.
Insomniac
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Nice “slip of the keyboard” there :-). Or maybe not a slip…? ;-)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Clime Acts:
__
If he was so predictable, why are you so angry about something that you knew ahead of time? Are you trying to tell us that you have sufficiently acute powers of analysis and deduction that you are able to perceive objective reality and use it to forecast the future, but lack the emotional maturity to assimilate that knowledge and deal with it in a constructive manner?
__
__
Sure, just like all the other far left radical socialist hippies who are perfectly happy to echo far right wing racist dogwhistle attacks when it suits them.
__
On the other hand we do have some other information which suggests a slightly different personality at work. On another thread you already admitted that you didn’t vote at all in the 2008 election. Now we have this:
__
__
[note: most small business owners are not so free to just up and go off somewhere whenever they feel like it, so you must be one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to play well with others in order to get the job done. Which explains a lot, actually]
__
and this:
__
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So what have we here? A cranky and spiteful small business owner, one who is not accustomed to accomodating other people in the course of running his own business, with an admitted alcoholism problem at some point in the past, someone who declined to participate in the last presidential election, and who evidences a burning hatred of the current President, supposedly on left-wing ideological grounds, but who repeats right-wing noise machine talking points, and who rarely (if ever) has anything to say about past democratic Presidents, left, right or centrist.
__
Ladies and gentlemen, draw your own conclusions.
Just Some Fuckhead
Oh, Zandar, it’s going to be a long ‘nother four years of misery for ya if Obama gets reelected.
Rightwingers were apeshit over Clinton’s vacations, especially the ones to Martha’s Vineyard. AND THAT WAS WHEN THE ECONOMY WAS ZOMGS AWESOME.
History didn’t start with the First Black President and it won’t end there. Get some perspective.
amk
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Niiice. You killed the troll with its own words.
Mnemosyne
@ant:
I think it’s a toxic mix of racism and misogyny. I mean, it’s bad enough that these days they have to pretend to respect black men, but at least they’re men.
Combine having to be respectful to a n* with having to be respectful to a lowly female creature and you get some head-asplodey spewings.
David Koch
Meh.
Michelle Obama’s approval ratings are in the 80s.
She extremely popular, especially with women.
She was on Letterman a couple of weeks ago, and she couldn’t be more charming. http://youtu.be/Fl60I9mdRd0
No One of Consequence
Clime, baby, give it a rest.
If you find yourself being 90% of the last 10 comments on a topic, just let it die. Really. No one gives that much of a shit *what* you have to say.
Or you know, keep fuckin’ that farm animal…
eeesh. pahtehtick.
– NOoC
Brachiator
@Clime Acts:
Funny thing, here. I am not by any means fond of Dubya politically, but I will take him at his word until someone with actual knowledge of the facts brings some information.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: The drunk thing caught my eye too. Your post is a real eye-opener. Way to pull the threads together.
This person is one messed-up hateball, staying in the game after 4 bannings (by my count) in just this calendar year indicates an pathological need for attention and a degree of desperation that is just really quite pathetic.
Having had family that had to go through sobriety, I gotta say that this individual is not working his program.
xian
by their consistent obsessions shall ye know trolls. they can claim to come from whatever persuasion they want but when their only contribution to discussion is so focused it really doesn’t matter how they rationalize their trollery.
Sly
@ant:
Openly, yes.
But the median proportion of European ancestry in African Americans is around 20%, and 58% of all African-Americans have, on average, a proportion of European DNA that is equivalent to having at least one white great-grandparent, meaning that a considerable amount of this ancestry was introduced into the African American gene pool prior to the Civil War. Because of limitations of testing maternal lineage, most of this data comes from analyzing the DNA of black men and finding a white man in their genetic history.
In other words, a lot of white men were fucking a lot of black women in an era when black people had few, if any, acknowledged sexual rights of their own. An honest discussion would call this phenomenon rape on epidemic levels.
Publicly, of course, the planter class disdained the beauty of the black women they owned, largely to avoid any accusations (though the practice was fairly common, especially among windowed slave-owners). Jefferson himself once wrote that orangutans prefer sex with black women for the same reason that black men prefer sex with white women, and that was only eight years before Sally Hemings gave birth to their first child.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
I’m afraid that the deserting coward’s word is among the most debased currencies ever.
He lied about Iraq, why doesn’t he also lie about his abstinence from alcohol?
ruemara
@Linda Featheringill: As an AA, I have found the anger at the First Family telling, but the obscene hatred towards Michelle Obama has damn broken my heart. She’s a graceful, lovely, intelligent person and for her focus on veteran’s issues and health, her ass gets photoshopped as a massive grotesquerie a’la Hottentot Venus. She’s called a moocher for taking vacations with her children or traveling as the First Lady. False stories are made up about her to convey her greed and crassness to people of the ilk of the KKK. This is my theory. She is a woman and women, to a certain conservative mindset is suspect. But she’s also black and being black has to have an inherent quality of bestial. For her, as fully dark-skinned as she is, to be not just elevated to representing womanhood in this country, but to be visibly worthy of it, creates a type of rage that’s hard for those feeling it to really justify. It means that this woman, who at another time, in another place called America, who would not be worthy of attending school; who could be had by any white male who wanted without consequence; she may actually be better than them. Her family may be better than them and she is black. Plus, she’s changing the attitudes about black people worldwide, and giving birth to young black women who are always going to be at a higher socioeconomic class than the people who detest her. We used to be considered whores and animals just by virtue of being black. Michelle Obama is the most visible counter to the safely heart-ensconced consolation, “At least we’re not black” and it burns as an unchecked fire because they’d have to admit the prejudice to deal with it.
In my own small way, I have dealt with these things and it’s really hit me in the wallet. I truly never understood the why someone who seemed ok would turn vicious to me, afterI did something that actually helped them. Fellow women who would turn to me for that Empathetic Black Female Role Function at work, yet backstab me because “She’s keeping her skills to herself, so she always looks good because she knows how to do things”. Yes, that was an actual complaint. Odd thing is, if the women who had organized a little kaffeklachen against me had ever come to me and asked me to teach them the technical skills I had, I would have done so, gladly. And it wasn’t ever the first time, but in that work situation, it got so bad that when the assistant supervisor finally just used the term “ni33er” to my face, it was almost a relief to understand why my workgroup seemed to hate me. It did free me up to leave, so I thank them even now for the experience.
Jebediah
@Ben Cisco:
Even racist idiots don’t like being proven wrong, but how much worse is it when it is your entire philosophical framework is being so publicly dismantled?
I relish their tears of rage and frustration.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ruemara:
__
I’m sorry. I may not be able to apologise to you on behalf of the awful people who did that to you, but I can thank you for being as gracious about it as your comment indicates. You make our society a better place to live. Thanks for that, I appreciate it.
VividBlueDotty
This might be part of the problem (italics mine):
A 3-day weekend (which includes a National holiday) = an extended vacation.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Ugh. It does kind of confirm for me why some of my fellow white people seem to hate the Obamas so very much. I’m still convinced it has a lot to do with the fact that Barack Obama chose to be black. He made a conscious choice to go to those roots by moving to a city specifically because it had an up-and-coming AA mayor, marrying a black woman, and joining a prominent AA church. It just burns some people up that he would actually choose that life. Not only choose it, but then turn around and be wildly successful at it, both personally and professionally.
But I don’t worry about them as a couple too much. Take a look at this photo from 1996 when Barack was just starting his political career. Michelle is gonna rip your throat out if you mess with her family.
Brachiator
@ruemara:
Well said, and clearly from the heart. Thanks for this.
By the way, it is illuminating to see the girls and young women, of all ethnic groups, who clearly respond to Mrs Obama’s warmth and are inspired by her.
The haters are left with their stubborn, self defeating fear and anxiety.
OzoneR
@Clime Acts:
He took 61 days vacation in 31 months (2 years, 7 months) in offer, as per Mark Knoller from CBS
61 days is 8 weeks. He took 8 weeks of vacation in 2 1/2 years. do the math, comes out to just over three and a half weeks a year.
Now eat it.
Pseudonym
@ant: You’ve never read the comments on an ABL thread?