The man of “yes we can” seems more and more like “ehh I really don’t care”. That’s the feeling you get when you hear today’s big news from the campaign trail, in which President Obama rolled out his new “rural job initiative”:

At the White House Rural Economic Forum in Peosta, Iowa, Tuesday, President Obama will announce four new economic initiatives that the administration says will spur growth and help create jobs.  

• The Small Business Administration will double the amount of investment capital funneled to rural businesses through its Small Business Investment Company program. The total capital infusion will be $350 million over the next five years, officials say. 

• The administration will sponsor and host “conferences” to help connect private equity and venture capital investors with rural start-ups. And, they’ll use “marketing teams” to go out and pitch federal grant money to private investors. 

• USDA will provide access to Labor Department job search tools at its 2,800 field offices nationwide. 

• HHS will modify the National Health Service Corps loan repayment program to allow more than 1,300 small, rural hospitals to recruit new physicians. (The White House estimates that the addition of one new primary care physician in a rural community generates $1.5 million in annual revenue and creates 23 jobs annually.) 

That is a good start considering the hardship that has hit rural America, but the rest of America is also bleeding profusely. So what is the President’s answer to that? 

President Barack Obama announced Monday night that he will put forward a “very specific” plan on job creation and deficit control in September for Congress to act on when they return from the August recess.

“I’ll be putting forward, when they come back in September, a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs, and to control our deficit,” he said at a town hall in Decorah, Iowa. “And if they don’t get it done, then we’ll be running against a Congress that’s not doing anything for the American people, and the choice will be very stark and will be very clear.”

Welcome to the problem. The job situation in this country has been pathetic for years now. The Republicans promised new jobs last fall, but once they retook the House, they quickly forgot about that promise. Instead we were given 15 pieces of legislation since the start of this session, including one piece that just recognized Ronald Reagan. Not a single piece of legislation did anything to address the jobs situation that is hurting so many Americans and the President hasn’t pushed anything either.

The fact that we now have to wait until September to hear this grand plan is troubling, to say the least. It leaves one with the sense that the President has just ignored the jobs situation up until now. I know he was busy with the debt fight, but given the huge staff at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, I’m sure more than one thing can be handled at a time. 

I’m sorry, but the unemployment rate has been over 9% since May of 2009. Has it really taken 27 months for this President to realize something needs to be done and now wants us to wait another month? Maybe he just thinks we are a lot of idiots out here?

I really don’t know if the President just doesn’t get what’s happening to Americans or if he is surrounded by the biggest group of idiotic advisers to ever plague our country, but this isn’t working. While millions of Americans are not working and worrying if they will be able to eat or even have a home, our Congress is on a month’s long paid vacation. I’m also tired of hearing people on the left blame this vacation on John Boehner. Apparently people forget Article 2, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.

Americans want leaders that they can see empathy from. What a better way for the President to show that he cares than calling a prime time address and during that, saying he is invoking this power to get Congress back to work so that they can get America back to work? Tell the American people that it is unacceptable that the Congress decided to take a whole month off to vacation while close to 20% of this country is in dire times, with almost 10% of that in disastrous times. 

Do you not care, Mr. President? Do your advisors not care? Why not take the drastic measures included in the Constitution so that we can try and get something going? 

Then let’s look at what Robert Gibbs said today:

 Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says Republicans must decide whether they’re going to “swear allegiance to the tea party” or work with Democrats to create jobs.

Gibbs, who now advises President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, tells NBC’s “Today” show Congress should “pay attention to creating jobs again.”

(emphasis added)

Congress should have been paying attention to this, but hasn’t, and yet the President has done nothing to push the issue. Again – he can call them back to session and tell them to get to work on it, but apparently the President hasn’t been focused on jobs either since we now have to wait until September to hear his grand plan. Of course that isn’t what Gibbs is saying:

Gibbs says Obama favors a number of moves to help businesses step up hiring. He says “the president is not focused on keeping his job, most of all. He’s focused on creating jobs for the American people.”

He’s not focused on keeping his job, but focused on creating jobs? What’s the President doing this week? Oh yeah – he’s on the campaign trail! That sounds like a focus on keeping his job, not creating jobs for Americans.

Of course the President could be focusing on a lost cause this week. People still have some faith in the man, but it’s quickly going the way of American jobs. We’ve got 15 months to go until the election and that is no time to really turn an economy this bad around. By that time Americans will sour more on Barack Obama and we will most likely end up with a Republican in the White House. That might not be all that bad either. If they can bring in a lot of minimum wage jobs, that’s better than the no-wage non-jobs we are seeing now. 

Please Mr. President – use your brain and your power and get the ball rolling on fixing this problem. Americans are fed up with this economy, yet they do still have more faith in you than anyone else. Use that power of the pulpit to get Congress back in session and working. If the Republicans want to play their obstructionist games, then let it be. We will then have a great target to go after next year.