FOD 2014.07.28

Last week featured a spate of articles echoing the same theme - barack obama has gone ROAD (Retired On Active Duty). That's a derogatory term for someone who is nearing retirement and has decided to sit back and do as little as possible in the meantime.

The first article pointing this out appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

July 23, 2014

Obama to World: Drop Dead

As the world burns, the president spent this week fiddling at fundraisers in the living rooms of five Democratic Party fat cats in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. As White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri famously explained, changing the president's fundraising schedule "can have the unintended consequence of unduly alarming the American people or creating a false sense of crisis."

That's one heck of a way to justify continuing to rake in the bucks. A false sense of crisis? JHC, what world are those morons living in?

Alarmed? Who's alarmed? What false sense of crisis? Vladimir Putin's masked men in eastern Ukraine shot Malaysia Airlines Flight 17's 298 people out of the air just about the time Israel and Hamas commenced their death struggle, not long after the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham occupied a third of Iraq within seven days. Now ISIS is cleansing Mosul of its Christians.

Nope, no crises there.

If news coverage defined reality, you'd think the civil war in Syria was over. There just isn't space to fit it all in. The homicidal Islamic fanatics of Boko Haram may soon establish statelike control of northern Nigeria, as ISIS has in Iraq. Last week the April kidnappers of the world's now-forgotten "our girls" gunned down another 44 Nigerians, then days later killed 100 more in villages abandoned by the Nigerian army.

Funny, isn't it, how the press and our elected 'leader' has forgotten about Boko Haram and the "Bring Back Our Girls" Hashtag. I guess the thugs running that particular terrorist group are feeling neglected, because they've stepped up their level of violence in the past week. And there are now reports that they've kidnapped the wife of the Cameroon's vice Prime Minister.

obama's reaction to all this?

*crickets*

A second article reinforces the notion that our pal barack now views being president as a burden - an unwelcome distraction from his parties and rounds of golf.

 July 24, 2014

The Vacant Presidency

The president’s demeanor is worrying a lot of people. From the immigration crisis on the Mexican border to the Islamic State rising in Mesopotamia, Barack Obama seems totally detached. When he does interrupt his endless rounds of golf, fundraising, and photo ops, it’s for some affectless, mechanical, almost forced public statement.

The preferred explanation for the president’s detachment is psychological. He’s checked out. Given up. Let down and disappointed by the world, he is in withdrawal.

The world is aflame and our leader is on the 14th green...

That last sentence pretty much sums up the whole rotten situation.

They've even noticed over in the U.K.

July 26, 2014

Barack Obama has already checked out of his job

President Obama has emotionally checked out of his job a couple of years early, it seems. How can one tell?

Candidates for president who brazenly assume they are the inevitable victor are sometimes accused of “measuring the drapes” for the White House.

Obama, conversely, seems to be prematurely packing his bags in hopes for an early departure.

... (there are) multiple reports from outlets such as The New York Times and Politico, detailing how Obama has increasingly been spending his time at trendy restaurants and fancy, late-night dinner parties with celebrities and various intellectuals.

Rubbing elbows with the rich and elite is fine enough. Unfortunately, the work suffers. The degree to which Barack Obama is now phoning it in – sleepwalking perfunctorily through his second term, amid golf rounds and dinner parties – is astonishing.

... it seems as if “No Drama Obama” is no longer even worried about keeping up appearances; he doesn’t care enough to fake it.

Consider this: In recent days, a) Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down, apparently by Russian separatists in Ukraine, b) In the Gaza strip, the numbers killed continued to mount as Israelis and Palestinians exchange rocket fire, c) a huge influx of children fleeing Central American poverty and gang warfare swamped America’s southern border, creating a humanitarian crisis. And, oh yeah, d) Christians living in Mosul were given the choice to either convert to Islam or flee the area they have inhabited for nearly two thousand years.

You know what else has happened during this time? a) Obama played many rounds of golf, b) he attended numerous fund-raisers, c) he dined on barbecue in Texas and burgers in Delaware, and d) he almost appeared on the comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night television show in Hollywood.

I say “almost” because the White House finally relented. “We ultimately elected not to have the president do that interview over the course of this trip,” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, conceded. “And that is at least in part related to the challenges of doing a comedy show in the midst of some of these other more serious matters that the president’s dealing with in the international scene.”

It's mind-boggling that they even had to think about that decision.

Obama’s not dumb, and he’s clearly capable of marshalling an effective propaganda campaign when he wants to. So what explains this series of bad optics, which might be described by PR professionals as political malpractice?

The only thing that makes sense is that he is exhausted and, perhaps, has checked out of the job early.

If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, then Obama is dining out, golfing, and raising money while the world collapses.

Just to top things off, he's also preparing to head off for a 16 day vacation with the rich and famous in Martha's Vineyard - again.

5 Months Off: Martha's Vineyard Break Will Put Obama Over 140 Days On Vacation

When President Obama wraps up his 16-day summer break next month on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., he will have taken all or part of 141 days of vacation, time split between summers on the island, winters in his native Hawaii and birthday weekends at his Chicago home.

Obama has been criticized for taking costly and lengthy vacations, especially compared to the short trips most Americans take. The U.S. Travel Association told Secrets that the average American vacation lasts just 3.7 days.

Forget income inequality. We've got a problem of vacation inequality.