[Qdkczrdi]

... Still waiting to hear if Rush has taken a swim as he thinks oil spills like this are natural.

http://www.aolnews.com/gulf-oil-spil...ida%2F19594174

(Aug. 15) -- President Barack Obama may have only spent 27-hours on vacation in Florida. But during that short visit with wife Michelle and daughter Sasha, he did everything he could to convey the message that -- as he explained to reporters on Saturday -- despite the BP oil spill, "Beaches all along the Gulf Coast are clean, they are safe, and they are open for business."

That's something the region's hard-hit business folk desperately wants the rest of America to hear. Florida alone has lost more than $1.2 billion in vacation-related revenues, as hundreds of thousands of vacationers have stayed away from the disaster zone.

The first family was pictured taking part in a range of quintessential gulf tourist activities, from playing a round of miniature golf, to eating a fish dinner at an outdoor restaurant and enjoying a boat ride in the Atlantic. Most importantly, though, the President took a dip near waters that have swallowed up some 200 million gallons of oil since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April. When he first arrived in Panama City, Fla., the president said that he wouldn't let press photographers snap him in the water. He was worried, he explained, that his naked torso would end up splashed across magazine covers once again. Obama wanted the cleaned-up gulf beaches to be the focus of the media's attention, not his finely honed pecs.

...Obama's decision to dive in has gone down well with the locals. "[That] image does matter to us," Beth Oltman, president of the Panama City Beach Chamber of Commerce, told Fox News shortly before the shot was made public. "We cannot pay for that media attention -- by just having the president of the United States in our gulf will show so many different Americans that our waters are safe to come swim in."