White
House, Press Corps Use Mid-East Crisis to Distract From Failing Economy Plus Obama’s
penchant for fundraising and golf. By August 14, 2012, Obama had already reached 203 fundraising events. Obama has
spent a minimum of 600 hours playing 100 rounds of golf as of July. Presidential
Daily Brief (PDB) just 536 times, or 43.8% of the time in office, or roughly 436
hours on Intelligence briefings.
National Security Council Spokesman Tommy Vietor Dismissed Concerns That Obama Is Skipping His Daily Intelligence Briefings As "Not Particularly Interesting Or Useful."
"I asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor
about the findings, and whether there were any instances where the president
attended the intelligence meeting that were not on his public schedule. Vietor
did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time
of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is 'not
particularly interesting or useful.' He says that the president read his PDB
every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference
whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive
discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials
where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions. 'I actually don't
agree at all,' Vietor told me in an e-mail, 'The president gets the information
he needs from the intelligence community each day.'" (Mark Thiessen, Op-Ed, "Why
Is Obama Skipping More Than Half Of His Daily Intelligence Meetings?," The
Washington Post , 9/10/12)
