What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.

Have you wondered if he even works?

Have you wondered if he actually reads the paperwork and let me tell you I am sure anything with the government there are tons of paperwork!    So if he isn’t in the Whitehouse like Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon and the list goes on….

Who is running this country? 

It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.

Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?

And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?

“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. … There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”

Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.

But others say there’s a larger phenomenon at work — in the story line the media wrote about Obama’s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.

Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington.

So the negatives that sprung up around Obama — like a sense that he was more flash than substance — track what negative coverage he’s received, captured in a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.

“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.

I think that is an ignorant reason, he is new, he is black…. come on…. he is the President.  It doesn’t matter if he is new or black or likable.  Alot of Presidents were likable.  It is what they do while they are in office.  So far, this one travels so much.  I do wonder if he is so concerned about the Climate, Energy and what not, then how come the planes… I say planes because it isn’t just Air Force One it is an entourage at the cost of, I am curious the costs, because U.S. is borrowing money every day to run this country.  This President like every American has to make cut backs.  It is basic Economics 101.  When no money is coming in… you don’t keep spending.  Right???

Democrats find the complaints of Obama “getting a pass” hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.

He has an agenda that includes the loss of lives in our Military.  He doesn’t care.  He doesn’t want to fight the war but he doesn’t want to bring them home.  So what does that say to you?  It is one thing to think but see he is wandering all over stumping for the Democrats in local elections.  Why is that?  Oh I am sure you know as well as I do.  This is a farce.  He is waiting thinking he is going to get more power.  Power to do his bidding to the people as he wishes, you know… like a dictator.   Is that the change you wanted?

“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp.  It goes with the territory.”

There are signs the friendly tone toward Obama is ebbing. Case in point: a front-page story in The New York Times noting that Obama’s all-male basketball games drew fire from the head of the National Organization for Women, who called the games “troubling.”

But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have gotten a pass:

New Orleans

As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration for abandoning and then neglecting the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five campaign trips to the city.

But as president, Obama waited almost nine months before visiting the Big Easy, spent less than four hours on the ground there and then jetted to San Francisco for a $3 million Democratic fundraiser.

Wow isn’t that amazing… he waited 9 months to go to New Orleans… stayed what a couple of hours and ran off for a fund raising in San Franscisco.  WAKE UP!!!  This is not the change you wanted.  This is playing games, lying to the people, telling them what want to hear.  You know that irritating salesman you wish you would have not let him in the door when he came by to sell that vacuum or encyclopedia’s. 

“Don’t judge anybody on the amount of time that they’ve spent there. Judge only what this administration promised that they would do, what they’ve done every day and what they’re continuing to work on,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, pointing to positive reviews of the federal government’s efforts under Obama.

Well if he was doing his job, we wouldn’t be bringing it up would we?  He campaigned for over 2 years for this job. Now that he has it, he needs to do it.

For their part, Democrats can’t see how Bush officials can muster much umbrage over anything related to New Orleans, given how the Republican administration handled the initial response to Katrina.

Managing the press

When the Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and disparage Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there were few immediate howls of outrage — even from Fox’s fellow journalists in the media.

Press defenders and First Amendment advocates who jumped on the Bush administration for using military analysts to shape war coverage reacted with a yawn to the White House’s announcement that it had deemed Fox to be not a “legitimate news organization.”

“Had I said about MSNBC what the Obama White House said about Fox, the media uproar would still be going on,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as Bush’s press secretary until 2003. “I instinctively would have known … the media would have leapt to their feet to defend them. I’m shocked it’s not happening now.”

I saw a glimmer of hope from the media when they stood together with Fox.  I thought that was the best thing they actually did all year.  Not that they hadn’t had the opportunity.  But the fact that they had the American Morals of Freedom to actually refuse to leave out a cohort, one they compete against and some might not like Fox but see it goes to the control over the Media that well, Anita Dunn in an interview talked about.  Maybe there is hope yet for the rest of them.

One press veteran agreed. “If George Bush had taken on MSNBC, what would have happened?” said Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s one place you can point to a real difference in how I’d imagine Bush would be treated.”

Politicizing the White House

Throughout the Bush administration, liberal critics warned that the hand of Bush political adviser Karl Rove was spreading politics into all corners of government. Reporters were on alert for any sign that politics was infecting the work of federal agencies. One top appointee got in hot water for allegedly asking agency officials to work to “help our candidates” across the country.

So some Bush aides went nearly apoplectic earlier this month when they spotted Gibbs and Obama’s political guru, David Axelrod, in photos of a Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan policy.

“Oh, the howling and screaming that would have happened if Karl Rove was sitting in on even a deputies-level meeting where strategy was being hammered out. People would have just gone ballistic,” said Peter Feaver, a former White House aide for both Bush and Bill Clinton.

Also, in about nine months, Obama has already attended more than two dozen fundraising events, while Bush did only six in his first year in office, according to a tally by CBS’s Mark Knoller.

Two dozen Fund Raising Events….   Let’s see   24 vs 6.   Mmmm…. something looks very wrong here doesn’t it?

Gibbs said Obama had to do more to raise a similar amount of money, since the kinds of soft-money fundraisers Bush did early on were banned. “This president … doesn’t accept money from PACs or lobbyists and doesn’t allow lobbyists to give at fundraisers that he’s at, as well,” Gibbs added.

Dealing with business, in secret

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney endured years of criticism and lawsuits that stretched all the way to the Supreme Court over secret meetings Cheney’s Energy Task Force held with oil and gas companies. When the policy emerged, critics said Cheney was carrying water for the industry.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.   It is amazing the dirty dealings, the secret meetings, the changing of the locks, the selfish power grab thinking that the people don’t notice what is going on, then you have the Unions throwing their Labor under the bus, Pharmacueticals making deals to keep the deal on Medicare, and then spending millions, not 9 million but 150 million on ads for healthcare.  That is one prime example.  Had Bush done that… Wow the shot would be heard around the world.  Nada on the home front for Obama.  Suprisingly.   One more point…. Obama promised… oh what was that word… oh yes,  Transparency.   Now I always thought that Transparency was visual, was available for everyone to see.  I guess we don’t know the new meaning of the word because everything that was promised were outright lies.

Obama pledged to hash out health care reform live on C-SPAN and excoriated Bush for kowtowing to the drug industry. But aides signed off on the drug industry’s agreement to find $80 billion in savings to support reform. However, Obama aides didn’t disclose that the agreement involved the White House promising that current health legislation wouldn’t include further cuts or give the government the right to negotiate over drug prices.

Toning down human rights

During the campaign, Obama talked tough on China. While candidate Obama pushed Bush to take a hard line, President Obama hasn’t. Hoping to win China’s help on Iran and North Korea, Obama skipped a meeting with the Dalai Lama and said little when China undertook a violent crackdown in its largely Muslim Xinjiang region. The White House has pledged to meet with the Dalai Lama later.

And while candidate Obama warned Bush against a “reckless and cynical initiative [that] would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments,” President Obama’s envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, seemed to lay out a similar incentive-driven approach.

I think this President you will find is the most useless, cruel and hapless President you will ever know and you thought Jimmy Carter was bad, wait until we are through with this one.  This one does not impress anyone but the lying progressives with a marxist, socialist, communistic agenda.

“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” The White House backed away from Gration’s characterization of the strategy but did recently lay out a strategy of engaging with the Sudanese regime.

Traveling and recreating

In his campaign and as president, Bush was mocked for a lack of interest in all things foreign — seven minutes touring the Kremlin, 25 minutes at the Great Wall of China, before declaring, “Let’s go home.”

During a trip to Europe in June, Obama chastised German and French reporters for suggesting that he was snubbing those countries by making only brief stops in each. “There are only 24 hours in the day. And so there’s nothing to any of that speculation beyond us just trying to fit in what we could do on such a short trip,” he told reporters in Germany.

But after taking his wife out for an attention-grabbing date night, Obama promptly jetted back to Washington. Within about 90 minutes of arriving at the White House, the tightly scheduled president was on the move again — headed to Andrews Air Force Base to play nine holes of golf

All this at Taxpayer expense literally as well as monetarily.

 

 

  Obama at Fla. Air Station

Fla. senator’s ultimatum   

 

   POTUS boosts Dem candidates

 

Marking chopper crashes    POTUS mourns Afghan casualties 

 

 

Obama stumps for Corzine

Obama urges the crowd to elect the ‘frazzled, scraggly’ guy.

View Video

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091027/pl_politico/28764

Josh Gerstein 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/us/politics/27obama.html?_r=1&ref=politics

http://www.politico.com/obamainvideo/