Jennifer Rubin is trying to gin up outrage about the fact that Obama hasn’t visited Israel during his first term. At first, I thought this was a silly argument. After all, you know, Obama isn’t president of Israel, or ambassador to Israel, or well, anything in regard to Israel. He’s President of the United States, and he doesn’t have to go anywhere he doesn’t damn well please. And it isn’t like he hasn’t met with Israel leaders in Washington.
But then it occurred to me that Israel is, after all, a pretty important place. It is, after all, a country of almost 8 million inhabitants, about as many people as live in New York City, and heck, Obama’s been to New York multiple times.
Anyway, in the interests of properly focusing our outrage, I thought I’d make a list of other countries Obama has failed to visit so far. They include, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. Bolivia, by the way, is the smallest of the group in population, but still has 10 million, and is in our hemisphere to boot!
He’s barely set foot in Africa, having only been to Ghana and Egypt, that is 29 more countries larger than Israel there alone. He hasn’t been to Malaysia or Vietnam or the Philippines or Pakistan or Bangladesh. He hasn’t been to Spain, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, or the Balkans at all.
He’s really been slacking. I mean, yeah, he’s visited our major European allies…. and Brazil… and India… and Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt and China. He’s been to Japan and South Korea. Russia and Australia.
That’s a lot of visits… and well, he’s brought off virtually all of these trips with more skill and aplomb than Romney managed in his failtastic recent visit to England, Israel, and Poland.
You’d think that given Romney’s inept recent trip the wingnuts would be trying a different avenue of attack. But in reality, if they want to talk about foreign travel, I’m game.
Baud
Barack Obama hates black people.
amorphous
Has he visited Mars? Why do only our rovers care enough about our Martian allies?
Baud
@amorphous:
Funny you should ask.
MikeJ
United States, Canada, Mexico,Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru.El Cid
Obama should schedule a visit to Kenya for the week after the election, so that if he wins it, we get to watch all the nutters’ heads explode.
PurpleGirl
He did go to Ireland in May 2011… visited the village that his mother’s family immigrated from. The village restored some buildings, painted things, etc. It rained that day. Everyone fell in love with Michelle. It was the first stop on a four country trip.
RSA
At least Obama didn’t forget Poland.
AxelFoley
@PurpleGirl:
You are correct.
beltane
Jennifer Rubin is just upset that the President of the United States hasn’t gotten down on his knees to kiss her prime minister’s feet. Aren’t vassals supposed to kiss their lords’ feet in exchange for keeping their fiefdom?
amk
perpetually poutraged rubin should look at the thugs who ran to eesrael to kiss their ass. sleazy raygun comes to mind.
sean
@PurpleGirl: Your are most certainly correct: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-05-23-Obama-Ireland-visit_n.htm
Warren Terra
Per Wikipedia, other Presidents who didn’t set foot in Israel during their first term in office:
__
George W Bush (only appearance in Israel May 2008, for the 60th anniversary of the founding; visited seven Arab or Muslim countries in his first term, and that’s counting neither Nigeria nor the Philippines, which have large Muslim populations)
George H W Bush (never went there as President)
Ronald Reagan (never went there as President)
Gerald Ford (incomplete term; never went there as President)
Richard Nixon (first visit June 1974, in his second term)
LBJ (never went there as President)
Kennedy (never went there as President)
Eisenhower (never went there as President)
Truman (never went there as President)
In fact, the only Presidents who visited Israel during their first terms in office were Carter and Clinton. Somehow I doubt Jennifer Rubin likes the peace deals either brokered – or, indeed, much of anything about Carter.
beltane
@amk: But that’s how a hack like Rubin wants her (American) politicians to be-sleazy and obsequious.
mai naem
Kenya, Mombasa – his birthplace. Obama’s not been there. How rude!!!!!
Also Mecca – his religion says he supposed to make a pilgrimage annually if he can afford it. If A.R. Rahman can go every year why can’t Obama? Again, he’s being disrespectful.
Suffern ACE
Obama and Benji don’t get along and if I recall correctly Benji made a big show of embarrassing Biden on his visit there. Our congressmen are groveling snivel buckets. Our president shouldn’t be. When even Sarkozy calls your leader a liar, perhaps said leader can sit in the corner for awhile.
Maude
Is the song title So, I’ve never been to Spain?
Where is DougJ when you need him?
jacy
@amorphous:
I thought Obama kept his secret time/space doohickey on Mars. You know, the one he used to go back in time to change his birth certificate.
I’m too tired to look it up, but I’m pretty sure there was photographic proof. I saw it on the Facebook.
Maude
OT
Robert Hughes has died at age 74.
He wrote The Fatal Shore, a copy of which sits on my kitchen table.
He was known as an art critic.
The most recent book he wrote was Rome.
He was an incredible writer.
Just Some Fuckhead
Never been to Israel? How is this possible when they have the third holiest Muslim site on the freaking planet? Next yer gonna tell me he hasn’t been to Saudi Arabia.
Mnemosyne
@jacy:
You mean his TARDIS?
(Oh, sure, they say it’s a Photoshop job. They always say that.)
Wag
If he visited more foreign countries, then Jennifer Rubin would be complaining about the cost to the taxpayers of all that travel.
Morbo
If he had visited Israel, Rubin and her ilk would accuse him of pandering for Jewish votes.
MikeJ
@Wag: Did you know that his trip to India cost $200,000,000,000,000,000,000 per minute?
SP
Fuck, wag- I hate reading through a ratively short thread thinking I have something original to say, and the very newest comment says it.
Wag
@Warren Terra:
So see, if Obama were a REAL Democrat, he’d have gone to Israel already. How un-Democratic of him
Anya
Is Jennifer Rubin someone important? Did she not lose any shred of credibility she had during the Norway Massacre?
SP
I don’t know what ratively means but autocorrect seems to think it’s a more common word than relatively.
Just Some Fuckhead
@MikeJ: Sounds like they were eating those lavish five dollar GSA cookies.
Origuy
@mai naem: Minor nit: Muslims are only required to visit Mecca once in their lives. Obama has been to Riyadh, though. Maybe he sneaked over to Mecca then.
Yutsano
@PurpleGirl: You’re correct, though I’m at work and can’t go link fishing right now.
@MikeJ: You should hear that in the original Magyar.
Mark S.
@Anya:
Did Rubin ever have any credibility?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Others have noted he did travel to Ireland. Didn’t he also go to Sweden to pick up his Nobel?
@Warren Terra: You rock, Warren. Rubin is flat out pimping Romney campaign talking points. I don’t know who the WaPo ombudsman is these days, but this really ought to be addressed. Did Fred Hiatt hire this Rubin asshole? In any case, ultimate blame lies with Donnie Graham, who is turning Mummy’s vintage LaSalle into a clown car.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
And then she’d complain that he’s spending all the taxpayers’ money to go on vacation.
jacy
@Mnemosyne:
Well, if Obama was The Doctor, it would esplain a whole hell of a lot.
Anya
@Mark S.: I am assuming she had little since she’s a blogger for the Washington Post.
stibbert
i recall Barack’s trip to Ireland, he visited the village from where one of his mom’s ancestors had emigrated to the US. seemed to me he was rather well-received in Ireland!
you could prob’ly find some stuff on YouTube, there was an Irish pub-band that climbed the local charts w/ a song whose chorus declaimed:
O’Leary, O’Reilly, O’Hare & O’Hara
Vote Irish in 2012, vote for Obama!
so i gather he was awarded an honorary apostrophe, by acclamation, & that O’Bama rules over O’Rmoney, as far as the Emerald Isle is concerned.
jl
Has Obama visited Bermuda, the Cayman Islands or Switzerland? Has Obama visited banks in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands or Switzerland??
And you wonder why people think Obama hates free enterprise?
Soonergrunt
It occurs to me that in the case of Israel, it would be better for the US (and Obama) for Likud to come to US, hat in hand, than the other way around. Rubin, being a likudnik, obviously doesn’t see it that way. For that reason, if I were a State Department Area Officer, I’d strongly recommend that as long as Likud generally and Netanyahu specifically are in power in Israel, that the President not go there.
@Baud: You win.
Soonergrunt
@Mark S.: No. SATSQ.
Steve
Remember, no matter how many smears they fling at Obama, Harry Reid is the only practitioner of dirty politics on earth. Don’t forget it.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is in Norway, all the others are in Sweden.
Calouste
@Maude:
Sad to hear that. The Fatal Shore is mandatory reading for everyone who has a closer relationship with Australia than watching Olympic swimming or drinking Foster’s.
Anya
ALEX PAREENE on Ms. Rubin:
mai naem
@Soonergrunt: I have to say the security issue was my first thought when they started bicthing about Obama not going to Israel. Are you freaking kidding me?Do I trust a Likud nutcase government to look out for Obama’s security while he’s in Israel? Hell, no! Bibi does not like Obama. And I’m sure that open mike deal from France didn’t help. Jennifer Rubin and that idiot NJ woman from Romney’s fundraiser can go screw themselves. I want my president to stay alive, not die. I realize they don’t like Obama, but even those pigs should realize the economic disaster that would result from an American president being assassinated.
Yutsano
@jacy: (SPOILERS!)
Well, the Face of Boe did say The Doctor was not alone…
Heliopause
Hell, I wouldn’t either. If you’re a Christian all the good shit is in contested land. Visiting dignitaries have to go to a 2000+ year old pile of rubble and feign emotional involvement, then you have to do a photo op with their raging asshole PM who makes Dubya Bush look like a good dinner date by comparison. I think you’d have a better time picking a random Six Flags out of a hat and going there instead.
mai naem
@Origuy: I have to admit, I didn’t realize he had been to Saudi Arabia. I just remembered the Indonesia and Egypt visits during his muslim apology tour. Obama apparently likes the French. Old Europe and all. He’s been there four times. This must be where he gets his sochulist ideas. I don’t know why the Rmoney campaign doesn’t exploit this weakness for things French on Obama’s part. This campaign is just so incompetent.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
Yeah. The Republican Presidential Nominee has been to Macau, and his Vice President has investments in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands… how can Obama match that kind of foreign policy experience?
beltane
@mai naem: Obama may have visited France four times but Mitt Romney actually lived there for a bit in the 1960s while other Americans of his age were dying in the Vietnam War which he, of course, supported.
PeakVT
OT: It looks like crap, but here is a summary chart of the tax returns released by presidential candidates up to now.
scav
Speaking of the Tardis and Mars, I have almost hoped that one of the (later) transmissions from Odyssey showed a Sycorax or two, just for a static-filled moment.
DougJ
Should have titled this one “the poor, the poor, the poor Israelites”.
Fluke bucket
Obama will win the election and go to Israel during his next term. It is to fulfill the scripture. “and when you see the abomination that causes desolation standing in the temple” then something awful happens but I forget what.
jl
@PeakVT:
Thanks.
Interesting sudden shrinkage in info produced by GOP candidates.
Your chart says Humphrey and McGovern did not release any returns? Is that right, or is your chart not displaying correctly in my browser?
patrick II
@stibbert:
The lyrics are right, but the spelling wrong. It was O’Bama who visited Ireland.
PurpleGirl
I wrote my post and then confirmed with a quick Google search and modified the post a bit. The following is the first of the links from Google:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389934/Barack-Obama-Ireland-visit-Wife-Michelle-looks-windswept-arrives-Dublin.html
Narcissus
Some asshole commentator on NBC just said that, as Grenada “Celebrates the intervention of us troops during the Reagan era”, now they can also celebrate the Gold medal for Kirani James.
El Cid
Ted Strickland is going OFF on Mitt Romney lying about Democrats trying to ‘take away’ early voting in Ohio from military members (versus reality, i.e., restoring it for everyone) — almost yelling that it’s utterly false and disgusting and repeating over and over that “he should HANG his head in SHAME”. Shame, shameful, dishonest, blatant, ashamed, “Mitt Romney should know better,” shocking, irresponsible, etc.
Politifact should give him Four Spaghettios for this irresponsible public rant — Strickland simply does not have any proof that Mitt Romney is intentionally lying, and if Strickland has proof that Romney’s internal cognitive state is that of conscious and malicious intent to deceive for gain, he should present it now.
stibbert
@Calouste: i’m saddened to hear that Robert Hughes has passed, his Fatal Shore book is a monument to ‘eyes-open’ history.
might i recco to you, Peter Temple’s mystery novel, ‘The Broken Shore’? Temple has serious chops as a writer, & the book puts racism out on a line to die.
i also recall, that Patrick O’Brian cited ‘Fatal Shore’ as a source for v. 14 of his Aubrey/Maturin series.
dslak
Didn’t Obama go to Israel before he was president, though? Does visiting Israel only count while one occupies the Oval Office?
PeakVT
@jl: No, they both released zero returns. I put them in so I would have everyone who was nominated since George Romney tried to get the nod. Maybe I should take Humph, Dick, and George out?
jl
@El Cid:
I think Politifact very daintily rates it “false”.
And I rate Politifact’s blurb on the recent Harry Reid unpleasantness as ‘pants on fire false’.
I guess there is a meeting to the chant ‘Pants on Fire Pants on Fire’ that I did not understand before.
jl
@PeakVT:
No, I think the chart is great as is. The Democrats were late, but are getting better and staying better. The GOP is collapsing, from looks of McCain and Romney compared to previous GOP nominees.
On other hand, maybe McGovern and Dukakis (Edit, oops, meant Humphrey, Dukakis released returns) financials were so boring and piddly compared their competition that one one cared.
Oh for the days when we had open and candid GOP candidates like Tricky Dick!
Steve
@mai naem: I find it pretty hard to accept that the President can go to Cairo safely, but Israel is too dangerous.
wmd
New anti-Obama meme coming: he’s bad for Veterans. Friend heard from his Air Force daughter(she just re-enlisted for a third time) hat Veterans benefits are being cut due to Obama and she told him he should think twice before voting for Obama this year.
I explained that cuts are due to the debt limit BS from last summer, and fall on Congress setting priorities, not Obama.
Soonergrunt should be all over this one.
Redshift
@jl:
I think it’s more likely that it took a while for the tradition to be established after Romney, Sr. started it.
jwb
@wmd: This one has been being set up for awhile. My sister (whose husband is a warrant officer in the army) has been complaining about Obama and military benefits for a couple of months at least. She’s not prone to right wing nuttiness, so I figure it’s making the rounds in military circles.
PeakVT
@Redshift: I ran across one article that asserted that the Agnew fiasco boosted disclosure demands, which seems reasonable.
El Cid
I am very happy that Joe Conason and Michael Crowley were on Hardball with Shouty McBostonIrish on how Obama — as I really, really felt must be happening — has developed ‘genuine disdain’ for Mitt Romney.
And, also, how no one actually likes Mitt Romney.
Romney is a sneering, callous dick, and I have felt entirely from Obama and his campaign that Obama sees Romney as the snotty, sneering, entitled, lying dickwad he is.
Villago Delenda Est
@jwb:
The only person running for the Presidency in 2012 that I know has called for cuts in Veterans services is Michelle Bachmann.
She walked that back within hours of uttering it, too.
If there are cuts in VA benefits, it’s due to the utter scum that are teatards. Especially the loons in Congress.
jl
Is Politifacts ‘Rating their Promises” feature half way honest, or just more BS PR, faked up to be centrist mush?
Honest question about Politifact. No joke. God love ’em as my grandma would say.
Just a glance shows Obama better at promises kept, compromise. Though Obama slightly worse than GOP in percent of promises broken.
But look at the ‘not yet rated’ category; it’s huge for GOP.
GOP has 57 promises on the board, 34 rated, and 23 not yet rated, with no reason given (like ‘stalled’ or ‘in the works’). For Obama: 508 promises, 506 rated, a whopping 2 not yet rated, with no reason given.
Interesting. That it was important to go through 99.6 percent of Obama’s promises, but 40 percent of GOP promises just sit there in a pile in corner.
Hey, maybe if Politifact did not waste time issuing bogus ratings for bogus controversies that are not even, if the dispute were reported correctly, under Politifact’s purview, they might have time to get to some of those.
srv
I think we need to start speculating which Obama regulations caused this Chevron refinery to blow up.
Local station is a complete shill. Guy on the ground was talking how it looked like the fire had gone down, and was maybe out (never mind the blazing fires behind the smoke), talking head said “people say they’re having problems breathing” and he replies “I can breathe, but I’m getting a really bad migraine”
jwb
@Villago Delenda Est: I agree with you. I’m just reporting what’s bubbling up from my non-crazy sister’s network. And, yes, I try to set her straight whenever something like this comes up.
srv
Caller: “burning eyes, burning throat”
Talking head: “hmmm”
Caller: paraphrasing: should I get the fuck out of here?
Talking head: “Our guidance is you should stay inside”
jwb
@jl: You know very well if they were to go through the rest of that GOP stack, the numbers would tilt heavily in favor of Obama, and if there is one thing Politifact will never do is show that the GOP lies more than the Dems even if, you know, the GOP lies more than the Dems.
Angelo
@amk: Jenn just can’t start her day off right if we haven’t killed any brown people.
Redshift
@wmd:
Sounds like you did pretty well answering off the cuff, but another useful fact is that veteran benefits are exempt from the sequester. (I often suggest that since this was inaccurate, the person may want to be wary of the source they heard it from in the future.)
jl
@PeakVT:
“The Agnew fiasco boosted disclosure demands”
Good point. Agnew was a bit before my time in terms of paying attention to politics, even though I remember, even as a very young kid, he looked to me much more like an ‘icky old man’ than the others. Ha, see, even in my formative years I had political instincts.
But I digress. You make a good point, and the chart leaves out info on individual elections for whose who ran twice. So maybe you should just add a note to clarify.
I would still keep McGovern and Humphrey.
I think Nixon released some before his first run for president because of a scandal: The Checkers speech? with his wife’s famous raggedy cloth coat?
S. Holland
@El Cid: Yes, yes, yes!
PurpleGirl
@jl: with his wife’s famous raggedy cloth coat?
The phrase was “a plain Republican cloth coat”.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv:
Caller: “Refinery fire and smoke! Bad!”
Talking Head: “Better you than me, the talent, dumbass.”
eric
Just think what Rubin will say when Obama rides into Rock Ridge………….
Villago Delenda Est
@jl:
It was when he was Eisenhower’s VP nominee. Someone used Tricky Dick’s own vile tactics against him, and Eisenhower basically let him twist slowly in the wind.
Nixon turned it around with the “Checkers” speech. The “bribe”, you see, was a little dog that one of the daughters (Tricia, IIRC) named “Checkers”.
Wiki article that goes into detail
jl
@jwb:
But look at that stuff. The front page is embarrassing.
Some of the blurbs that summarize the dispute are misleading or nearly incomprehensible. The decision about who was the person who made the charge is capricious. And then you look at the lopsided pile of unrated promises to the right.
Yeesh. It’s like going to a old relative’s house who has congestive heart failure. They claim that they are behaving, but you open the door and there they are with a smoldering cig in their lips, highball in hand, and ice cream dribbling down their chin.
I would say that it is like a public health nurse knocking on rehab patient’s door, and after a minute of clinking bottles, the door opens with the patient swaying in a haze of cheap vodka. (Actually, that last is rather indirect evidence and unfair to the poor addicted patient).
The thing looks like a joke at first glance. Will it even be a good place to skim through the tedious arguments of insidious intent for good references any more?
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: I did not know that, or I totally forgot it. Now I know/remember another touching anecdote in US history. I guess about Nixon’s kid and her dog, if not Nixon himself.
I will have to listen to that speech now.
PeakVT
@jl: I saw one mention of that, but I haven’t found it anywhere else, so I ignored it. I haven’t found an authoritative source for the information, and some is conflicting. I don’t have access to something like lexis-nexis so I’m not going to try to track down original historical news reports to get a definitive answer (that would be the media’s job, at this point).
GregB
Shorter Rubin:
Bibi’s balls have gone uncupped for almost three years and they are getting cold.
Villago Delenda Est
Agnew resigned for reasons unrelated to Watergate. Apparently, he had some graft arrangement set up before he was Governor of Maryland, and after he moved on to the Vice Presidency in ’68, he kept receiving payments. Apparently, at least one of those payments was made in his office while he was the sitting VP.
Agnew pled “no contest” to a single count of tax evasion (part of a plea bargain that included his resignation as Vice President) for failure to report bribes he’d received in 1967.
Gory details at his Wiki page.
Jebediah
OT: Does anyone know how many types of gnomes there are, and how to talk about the differences between them?
I am unfamiliar with the gnomenclature.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jebediah:
Just say gno to Gnomeregan!
Jebediah
@Jebediah:
The preceding message brought to you by the letters T, H, and C.
Joel
Rubin should never write again after Breivik. Seriously.
Amir Khalid
@Origuy:
Additional nit: Mecca is off limits to non-Muslims.
Origuy
@Amir Khalid: Right, but Obama is a sekret Mooslim, according to Rubin’s ilk.
ponce
Just another lame wingnut attempt to draw attention away from Mitt’s unreleased tax returns.
bob h
I don’t want my President visiting Israel because it is full of crazed, messianic zealots.
Patricia Kayden
@Warren Terra: Exactly. But who cares about those pesky facts?
KXB
@Warren Terra:
It’s always amusing when this comes up. Fact is, a President has to balance different interests in a region as headache-inducing as the Middle East. Is Israel our biggest headache? No, I would personally give that title to our good friends the Saudis. But the Israelis are not particularly helpful, and given that they have not actually won a war since 1967, I’m not sure how much of a military asset they are. Dollar for dollar, Jordan is probably the most valuable ally in the region, but they are not a democracy, so they are not accountable to their people.
Robin G.
@MikeJ: THANK GOD I WASN’T THE ONLY ONE.
LAC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Amen! If Hiatt had any backbone, he would dare Rubin to publicize those donkey sex show pictures with him and the WAPO honchos (’cause you know that has to be how she was hired) and fire her frowsy ass. Then she can go to work where she really needs to be – up Romney’s colon.
Tribeca Mike
The president has been to Ireland, which is good enough for me.
Mariefla
After the earthquake he has not gone to Haiti. A country of nearly 10 million people located a 1.5 hour plane ride from the US.