A 25 day vacation too!
President Obama?
No, no: Reagan – in 1983. The right wing media was outraged! Kidding.
Eric Boehlert (Media Matters): The annual summertime ritual of conservatives attacking Obama for going on summer vacation is swinging into high gear, as the president and his family prepare for a trip to Martha’s Vineyard.
…. Context, though, is sometimes helpful in terms of highlighting how silly the cries of protest from the far-right media really are. For instance, at the same juncture of his first term, Ronald Reagan, like Obama, was battling a bad economy. Unemployment stood at 9.5%. Reagan’s response his third August in office? He set off for a nearly month-long vacation.
Not only did Reagan go on a secluded, 25-day California retreat, but his top aides reportedly stopped relaying news events to him so as to not disturb the president’s sojourn.
From the Washington Post, Aug. 22, 1983:
As President Reagan relaxes on his mountaintop ranch northwest of Santa Barbara, tucked away from the workaday cares of Washington, his top advisers have decided to put an end to what one of them calls “unnecessary news stories”. The negative news coverage that the president abhors was a topic of discussion at a White House breakfast the day before Reagan left on his present 25-day trip, the 17th stopover at his ranch since his election.
Full post here (via The Political Carnival)
Thanks Fred
The Obama Diary 
Where are Tapper & Todd on this?
Put this in Peggy Noonan’s inbox.
OT, but a sweet video of our great VP Joe in Asia:
I love Joe.
The food made me hungry 😯 looks so good!
I know! It’s only 8:15 here and now I’m dying for Chinese food!!
Me too Meta. I’m starving for some Chinese food after seeing the video. VP Biden is just a wonderful Vice President and an excellent representative of the United States. I love that he took his granddaughter on the trip. It’s wonderful when any person, young or old is expsed to cultural diversity.
Ride or Die Joe is the best Vice President ever.
And I’ll drink to that, my Friend 🙂
Yes, and I’ll drink to that, my Friend 🙂
Reagan was purposely NOT briefed while on vacation? OMG, this is really disgusting. Too busy riding his horses or clearing brush.
It didn’t say he wasn’t briefed. He just didn’t get the negative news like Reagan on vacation while economy tanks.
Why is it so easy for us to locate these stories and the lazy bums of the media can’t find information which they are trained to locate… I saw an interview on the MSNBC around the 11am hour and the host asked the reporter if she new anything about other Presidents vacation stats and she said no. First of all, she should have known and he should have known as well.
On a lighter note, I am glad the President did not change his plans because he is not a slave, he is the President of the USA and he freaking needs downtime.
“Why is it so easy for us to locate these stories and the lazy bums of the media can’t find information which they are trained to locate…?”
Ans: The only “story” that the media is interested in is the false rumor that casts our current President in a bad light.
No, he’s not a slave, but that’s how they’re treating him, just like a slave, no respect, say anything about him, and to him, calls him a liar, Hitler, and many, many, many, other strong negative words, all because he’s Black. Down right shameful, I tell you, Shameful!! this Is NOT right!!! The same God made them, made the rest of us too, so how and why can they feel so special??? Exactlt who are these people?? Who are they??? Just who do they think they are???? 🙄
You know what’s cool about digital photography and the web? This was taken 26 minutes ago!
Good morning, Mr. President!!
Thanks for this Meta. Tweeted it to @MittRomney @ReincePriebus @mitchellreports @peggynoonannyc and told them to stop whining about his vacation. Because even on vacation, he still gets up early to receive a National Security Briefing.
Who else would have to take his assistant for counterterrorism on vacation with him? Guess John Brennan is “on vacation,” too.
Reagan would have said, “Just tell me the good terrorism news, John.”
Great photo! Hope our President’s already gotten some rest.
you are very welcome Chip 😉
Hypocrisy; thy name is the GOP, the MSM, and the Teaparty. This has got to be tweeted multiple times. If anyone wants to tweet this to Reagan mouthpiece Peggy Noonan, her twitter handle is @peggynoonannyc and Sarah Palin who was whining about President Obama’s paltry 10 day working vacation. @SarahPalinUSA and to @FoxNews and the rest of the media that acts as a schill for the GOP: @mitchellreports @chucktodd @jaketapper @Markknoller @JoeNBC @Morning_Joe @WillieGeist1 @msnbc @ABC @CBS @NBC @bwilliams @contessabrewer @RNC @SpeakerBoehner @EricCantor @MichaelSteele @RepPaulRyan @MittRomney @ReincePreibus @NewtGingrich @TeamRickPerry @GovernorPerry @MicheleBachmann @JonHunstman @RonPaul. You know what just tweet it to the whole fucked up hypocritical scumbag lot of them.
I retweeted BWD’s great tweet to most of the newspeople. Refuse to tweet to the quitter.
I agree, it is best to ignore her completely. Starve her of the attention that she craves. That may hasten her self implosion…I can hope!
Did you guys see her numbers in AK? She’s in the toilet she deserves to be, and her handpicked Senate candidate is even lower than she is. Murkowski, who has shown a modicum of independent, is wildly popular.
Thank you. Why gives Ms. Palin any suggestion that she is relevant? She needs to be put in her place as a “has been.” Her message is the same as it was in 2008. Her rhetoric is like a broken record that the needle gets caught in the “scratch” to be repeated over and over again. The more that she is ignored, the greater the possibility she will be seen as disposable and irrelevant.
Or as Rachel Maddow said yesterday, “Hypocrisy thy name is Thursday.”
But Eugene Robinson just HAD to get in his dig about the optics of the vacation. Let’s be clear — if he’d stayed in D.C., we’d hear what a remote, unfeeling father he is.
Is any of this b.s. working? Seriously?
I have an issue with the whole idea about ‘optics’. I am far more invested in substance. But I recognize that MSM is optically driven, being hucksters of influence as opposed to the information delivery systems they should be.
grrrr—– MSNBC on the vacation ‘controversy’. The Palin clip, the snarky letter from the Republican party of MA.
NO mention of the fact that Congress is off for a month, that Boehner’s House is off one week out of every three.
Dear Melissa Harris-Perry and the other halfway decent lefties — stop doing false equivalencies to be ‘fair’ when your own network isn’t bothering to be fair on the other side.
I don’t know what I’m sick of the most… the GOTP’s incessant hypocritical crocodile tears PBO whining OR the MSM’s irresponsible propagandist reporting style that’s more like listening to a gossip column than actual “news”. Ah the hell with it… they BOTH nauseate me equally.
If I want to be entertained, I listen to music, go see a show, listen to a good joke, or have a rock skipping contest across a lake. When I watch what’s being passed off as news these days, I want to be informed and I want comparative truth supported by FACTS… NOT a bunch of insignificant infotainment BS like “why is the President going on vacation NOW and who has a problem with it?”. Why?…. because he DESERVES a vacation… more than any other President has over the past 40 years… that’s why. WHO has a problem with it? Every Obama hatin’, right wing fake progressive knee jerk reactionary. End of story. Now, “THE NEWS”….