Obama Skips Jersey To Look For Oil From Up High

Well, fellow New Jerseyans, expect Obama to be cancelling a lot of trips to New Jersey in the upcoming months; after all, it's well known he avoids red states like the plague...

But this is an interesting, out-of-the-ordinary story from the LA Times; it goes through how Barack Obama cancelled his May 5th trip to New Jersey in order to tout the recovering economy (maybe he got a sneak peak at today's 9.9% unemployment rate?) in order to detour to Louisiana to prevent a personal image issue:

Instead of being an opportunity to advance Obama's economy argument, suddenly that already-announced midweek New Jersey trip loomed as potential proof to critics that the boss wasn't paying adequate attention to this real environmental crisis in a region notoriously quick to loudly blame others for its disasters and local lack of preparation.

New Jersey was canceled, though locals didn't learn until Saturday afternoon and the White House announcement was delayed until Sunday.

A Louisiana trip was laid on for Sunday....

The president was also seen taking off for a disaster scene tour in a chopper. But winds were such and the threat of fog possible that the president only saw the ordinary Louisiana coast.

After all that travel, logistics and talk, he never spotted one drop of oil.

The good news for him is twofold: He was seen caring about the incident.
And he wasn't seen looking uselessly out a plane window as Bush was. [and for more on the picture to your left, see here: Obama's amazing ability to feign interest in stuff ]

Aides were quick to describe how useful the tour was for Obama to see something for himself. He did get out the main message-quote about BP being responsible for every dime, even though there's a $75 million limit on a causative party's costs.

Local officials were quoted as appreciative of his presence which, truth be told, did absolutely nothing to stop the oil, advance the recovery or mitigate any damage beyond that potentially to the president's image if he hadn't gone.

So Obama cancelled New Jersey, where he was to try to protect himself from economic criticism, to fly over Louisiana, in order to protect himself from environmental criticism.

As the above story points out, with Barack Obama, it's never about reality - unemployment continues to climb, the market continues to plummet, oil continues to gush, the slick gets longer and wider - it's only about other people's perception...of him.

Hint to the president: All the photo-op flyovers in the world won't save you or your party when unemployed folks get caked in oil when they try to forget their worries at the beach.

And thanks, Baracky, for skipping out on Jersey. We get enough amateur bullsh*t spewed at us from Trenton that we don't need to pay a hundred cops double-OT just to get a sprayful from you as well...