NERO FIDDLED - OBAMA VACATIONS

Submitted by: Donald Hank

Barack Obama Is Taking A 17 Day Vacation Even As America Falls Apart All Around Him

Posted: 04 Dec 2011 07:16 PM PST

What in the world is Barack Obama thinking?  The United States of America is falling apart all around him, and yet he decides to take a 17 day Hawaiian vacation.  Does he even understand that he is the leader of the free world?  Does he even understand that this country is mired in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression?

  Last year, a similar Hawaiian vacation by the Obamas ending up costing more than 1 million dollars.  Other than when I was in school, I don't remember ever taking a 17 day vacation.  In fact, most Americans do not even get 17 vacation days for an entire year.  Yet the Obamas seem to think that part of occupying the White House is to take as many vacations as possible.  

It has been reported that Michelle Obama spent over 10 million dollars of U.S. taxpayer money on vacations during just one recent 12 month period alone.  It would be one thing if they were taking these vacations at a time when America was thriving, but the truth is that the U.S. is facing one crisis after another right now.  Our debt is now over 15 trillion dollars. 

 If you can believe it, the U.S. government has not been operating under an approved budget for over 900 days.  

More Americans fell into poverty last year than ever before.  More Americans are on food stamps than ever before.  An average of 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States last year.  According to one recent report, only 7 percent of Americans that lost their jobs during the recession have "made it back" to where they were before the recession.  So perhaps Barack Obama should spend more time doing his job rather than taking extended vacations.

During this holiday season, tens of millions of American families are suffering horribly.  Any sane president would realize that this is not the time to be gallivanting off to Hawaii again.  The following short excerpt comes from a recent article in the Daily Mail.....

While most Americans are lucky to get a few weeks of holiday every year, it seems the country’s leader gets a little more freedom in the matter.

President Barack Obama has announced his Christmas vacation to Hawaii – for a staggering 17-day trip.

Obama, who visited the island just two weeks ago for an economic summit, will head to Honolulu on Saturday December 17 until Monday January 2.

But this is not just one isolated incident.  Obama has taken a whole bunch of vacations since he moved into the White House.  According to the New York Post, Barack Obama enjoyed a total of 10 separate vacations that stretched over a total of 90 vacation days during the years of 2009 and 2010.

In addition, Obama managed to find time for 29 rounds of golf during his first two years in office.

But reportedly the biggest "vacation junkie" of all in the Obama family is Michele Obama.

The following shocking excerpt comes from a different Daily Mail article....

The First Lady is believed to have taken 42 days of holiday in the past year, including a $375,000 break in Spain and a four-day ski trip to Vail, Colorado, where she spent $2,000 a night on a suite at the Sebastian hotel.

And the first family's nine-day stay in Martha's Vineyard is also proving costly, with rental of the Blue Heron Farm property alone costing an estimated $50,000 a week.

The source continued: 'Michelle also enjoys drinking expensive booze during her trips. She favours martinis with top-shelf vodka and has a taste for rich sparking wines.

'The vacations are totally Michelle's idea. She's like a junkie. She can't schedule enough getaways, and she lives from one to the next - all the while sticking it to hardworking Americans.'

During such hard economic times, how can Michelle Obama justify spending over 10 million dollars of U.S. taxpayer money on luxurious vacations?

The American people expect a president to be at the White House working night and day to solve the problems of this nation.

Sure, it would definitely be understandable to take a day or two off here and there, but the truth is that the president should be one of the hardest working people in the country.

Instead, Obama just seems to do less and less the longer that he is in the White House.  In fact, there have been numerous reports that Barack Obama barely even interacts with members of his own party in Congress anymore.

Our country is literally falling apart and we have a total lack of leadership at the top.

The rest of the world does not even respect the office of the president of the United States any longer.  Just check out the video posted below of Russian officials refusing to shake hands with him....

Sadly, there does not appear to be much hope on the horizon at the moment.

Right now, Newt Gingrich is leading the race for the Republican nomination.  If he wins the nomination, the American people will have a choice between two candidates that are almost identical in 2012.  The sad truth is that Newt Gingrich is not a conservative, and he never will be.  Rather, he is a big time establishment stooge that would keep marching America down the same road that Bush and Obama have been taking us.  When you sit down and really compare the Obama agenda to the Gingrich agenda, you will quickly find that they are almost entirely identical.  If the Republican Party nominates Newt Gingrich, it will be a complete and utter disgrace.

The reality is that we desperately need real leadership and real solutions.  Europe is on the verge of a massive financial meltdown.  If things take a wrong turn, we could easily be looking at a financial crisis even worse than the one we saw back in 2008.

Many in the mainstream media are using the word "recovery" now that the official unemployment has fallen to 8.6%, but as Mac Slavo recently pointed out, the real rate of unemployment is still up around 22 percent.

The official government numbers assume that 315,000 Americans "left the labor force" in November.  At a time when our population is constantly expanding, that seems like a shaky assumption at best.

The reality, as many of you out there are experiencing, is that times are hard and millions of Americans are becoming increasingly desperate.

For example, just check out what happened in the Sacramento area recently.  One church was hit by copper thieves three nights in row....

Members of a Carmichael church that had been targeted by copper thieves for two nights in a row managed to help nab the suspected thieves when the greedy pair returned for a third night.

Nobody is off limits for thieves these days.  If you can believe it, people are even stealing food from food pantries now.

This country is in a massive amount of economic trouble, and we desperately need some solutions.

But perhaps we should be thankful that Obama is taking so many vacations.

After all, just about everything he has done so far has ended up making things even worse.

Perhaps it is better if he simply does nothing at all.

But at some point this country is going to need real leadership and real solutions.

So what do all of you think?

Do you think that there is any hope for this country on the horizon?