Replies to post #102373 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

.......Bush Spent OVER a YEAR at Camp David PLUS he spent OVER another Year at his Crawford Ranch.

487 Days At Camp David For Bush

George W. Bush is today making his final visit to Camp David as president.

He will likely miss the place: According to CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller, today's trip marks Mr. Bush's 149th visit to the presidential retreat. The planned three-day stay, during which the president is being joined by family and former and current aides, will bring his total time spent at Camp David to all or part of 487 days.

Yes, that's 487 days. And Camp David is not even where the president has spent the most time when not at the White House: Knoller reports that Mr. Bush has made 77 visits to his ranch in Crawford during his presidency, and spent all or part of 490 days there.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-4728085-503544.html

........That's going to be hard to beat BY any President. And really ? have you ever worked, it's quite obvious you are not self employed. .... as IF you were you would all ready know that people do all sorts of stuff when they have time . AND guess what ? He even works out a couple of times EVERY day PLUS he plays a lot of basketball throughout the week ...OMG! we have a President who is a multi-tasker ..! how UTTERLY FRIGHTENING!!!!

better buy another gun.

[arizona1]

Please comment on this.

Down on the Ranch, President Wages War on the Underbrush
Bush Conscripts Aides in Tireless Pursuit of Clearing Ground

Saturday, December 31, 2005

CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 30 -- On most of the 365 days he has enjoyed at his secluded ranch here, President Bush's idea of paradise is to hop in his white Ford pickup truck in jeans and work boots, drive to a stand of cedars, and whack the trees to the ground.

If the soil is moist enough, he will light a match and burn the wood. If it is parched, as it is across Texas now, the wood will sit in piles scattered over the 1,600-acre spread until it is safe for a ranch hand to torch -- or until the president can come home and do the honors himself.

Sometimes this activity is the only official news to come out of what aides call the Western White House. For five straight days since Monday, when Bush retreated to the ranch for his Christmas sojourn, a spokesman has announced that the president, in between intelligence briefings, calls to advisers and bicycling, has spent much of his day clearing brush.

This might strike many Washingtonians as a curious pastime. It does burn a lot of calories. But brush clearing is dusty, it is exhausting (the president goes at it in 100 degree-plus heat), and it is earsplitting, requiring earplugs to dull the chain saw's buzz.
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For Bush, who is known to spend early-morning hours hacking at unwanted mesquite, cocklebur weeds, hanging limbs and underbrush only to go back for more after lunch, it borders on obsession.

Aides are corralled to help, although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a frequent guest, has escaped brush duty. "The tradecraft she uses to get out of it is highly confidential, and I can't discuss it," said national security adviser Steven J. Hadley. To date, no visiting foreign leaders have been conscripted.

The president "clears brush like he rides his bike," said deputy press secretary Trent Duffy, who has sawed beside Bush. "He goes at it."

Ronald Reagan chopped wood and rode horses, Bush's father sailed off the shore of Kennebunkport, Maine, and Bill Clinton jogged. For George W. Bush, clearing brush projects the image of a cowboy president, a tough rancher fighting the elements to survive. That is, of course, the White House's projection; the president's critics take a dimmer view.

"Most likely he's doing that to show the media he's got a chain saw," joked Larry Mattladge, who raises Black Angus cows three-quarters of a mile from the Bush ranch and built his fence rows out of cedar posts. "It's a man's thing. Brush clearing is not only for the young at heart, it's for the young. It's to show he's a Texan."

Presidential historian Robert Dallek said: "This is part of his macho image. Obviously this is nothing Bush has to do. He's the son of a rich man who doesn't have to spend his time cutting underbrush."

But some of Bush's neighbors in the Crawford area said they understand his pleasure -- even if he doesn't have to do it. "We do it because we have to," said Zach Arias, who with his wife raises cows on 400 acres about 20 miles from town. "But afterwards, you kind of go, 'Wow. I feel good about what I did today.' " White House counselor Dan Bartlett explained it this way: "It's therapeutic for him, I guess. There's very few things he gets to do hands on."

Clearing brush is a lot like weeding the yard, although on a real ranch it is an economic necessity. In central Texas, cedar and mesquite trees are invaders competing for moisture with grass, gobbling water from the soil and hoarding rain and sunlight on their branches. With his livestock's food supply at stake, a farmer could live or die on how well his brush is cleared. Local agronomists say brush control has been a part of rural Texas since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s, when the botanical bandits spread across the arid soil.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/30/AR2005123001326.html

[bulldzr]

Shrub Bush SUCKED at Golf... even though he was a rich kid and had every oportunity he just plain SUCKED at it. He SUCKED at fishin' too, and like Cheney who shot his friend while in a drunken stupor, Shrub SUCKED at hunting too... mistakingly shooting an illegal kildeer bird instead of a quail while on a freakin' "quail" hunt "picture op" during his Guvernatorial campaign in Texas. What a couple of freaking goofballs he and Cheney are.

In fact, unlike his father, Shrub Bush SUCKED at all sports, that is why he was a freakin' Cheerleader in college and has to act like some kind of bully Cowboy. Why is this even an issue?

Obama is a better athlete, and he is smarter all around; and has actually read books and worked for his good grades in school and won scholarships to college instead of being the rich kid with the Senator Grandpa who had EVERYTHING given to him like Schrub yet barely passed.

You don't have to ask me twice which one is the better American!

Again, why is this even an issue? We are talking playground goofball vs a true and qualified leader.

[BullNBear52]

From a period stretching from April 3 to May 22 of this year, the president went golfing eight of nine weekends. WOULD YOUR WIFE LET YOU DO THAT??

Yup. She knows the hours I put in at work and realizes that the 4-5 hours I may spend on a golf course are a welcome relief.

[arizona1]

Psycho Talk! - NOW WATCH THIS DRIVE!

Gotta love these pix...













The party who brought you George Bush, and their servants in the media...
by blackwaterdog

Sat Jul 17, 2010 at 12:30:41 PM PDT

Present this:

1. Barack Obama's failed presidency suffered two more setbacks this week. One, of course, was the passage of the toughest financial regulations reform since the '30s. The other was his outrageous decision to take his family to Maine for the weekend. The MSM is stunned:

(CNN) -- President Obama and his family left Washington Friday for a weekend getaway to Maine, but along with a little rest and relaxation comes criticism that the president is taking it easy with the Gulf of Mexico oil crisis in a critical phase.

The Obamas plan to spend the weekend on Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. The trip marks the president's third vacation since the oil disaster began in April. <...>

Just for the record, in 18 months, president Obama had 65 vacation days including time spent at Camp David. At the 18 month mark of Dubya's disaster, he had taken 120 vacation days which included 13 trips to Crawford "Wrench". All in all, Bush took 487 days at Camp David and 490 days in Texas, the equivalent of almost 2.7 years in his 8 years in the Oval office. ONE THIRD of his entire Presidency, including the entire month just before 9/11.

But it's not just the media who's shocked, the role model for public service - also known as the Republican Party - just can't take this negligence anymore.

Booman:

...The Republican National Committee launched a website blasting what it considers Obama's "leisure activities or missteps" during the oil disaster. I sure don't recall a website by the Democratic National Committee devoted to attacking Bush for his many vacations -- ever, much less one pointing out the time the time he took off to cut brush while his national security experts were warning that Al Qaeda was poised to attack the United States.
I'm not providing a link for that site by the way. Search it out if you like fallacious and nonsensical information about our "lazy" Democrat President from the party who gave us this man to lead this nation:

Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons said the Republican criticism is "galling," considering Bush's frequent trips to Camp David and his home in Crawford, Texas. "Barack Obama is working as hard as any president that we've had in recent history and certainly harder than the most immediate previous president," he said.

Jamal Simmons is right. Not that anything is going to change. The majority of the press will still go after Obama 1000 times harder than they ever went after Bush because of what too many of them have allowed themselves become: mouthpieces for Republicans, conservatives and corporate lobbyists always willing to publicize the talking points which criticize Democrats in order to prove that they do not have a "liberal bias."

// more

And as the most awesome Gail Collins wrote in her BRILLIANT column today:

"Presidents are certainly entitled to vacation, just like everybody else, but there is a fine line as to when presidents should do it, what they should and where they should do it," a former member of George W. Bush’s staff told CNN. The staff member in question, Brad Blakeman, was in charge of appointments and scheduling. Surely there is nobody better qualified to discuss this important subject than the man who helped the previous president get out of town for a third of his entire time in office.

2. If that's not enough, the lazy president played Golf. Again. This was too much for the new speaker of the House, the world-class-workaholic, John Boehner. Digby:

Last year Jake Sherman at Politico did a little digging into Boehner's golfing shenanigans. Boehner's PAC spent over 80 grand on golfing outings in the first half of the year. "And the minority leader," Sherman wrote, "doesn’t hold his events at worn-out municipal courses. The most recent outing was a $20,921.34 event at the plush Robert Trent Jones track in Gainesville, Va., an invitation-only private club that was once also home to the Professional Golfers Association's President’s Cup."
The Republicans are so obtuse that they are actually running a campaign criticizing Obama for being a golfer, when their own House Minority leader spends more time on the golf course than Tiger Woods. It virtually defines the word hubris.

They can't get away with that...Nobody's going to do this stuff if we don't do it.

3. Still from Gail's brilliance - happy to link her twice ("Let’s repeal the oil spill and start all over"! :):):):

...Who says that Boehner just hangs out at bars and tanning parlors and doesn’t work hard? The man is tireless! Everybody else was exhausted, but he wanted to start over.

...Most Republicans are not joining Boehner in his call to repeal the financial reform bill because they are too busy calling for the repeal of health care reform. The bill should be scrapped and replaced with much better ideas," said Mario Rubio, the Republican Senate candidate in Florida.

Rubio’s own idea is to eliminate the requirement that healthy people have insurance, but keep the part that says insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions. This sounds like the ideal solution — no one would have to buy insurance until they got sick, and then they could make the companies sell them a whole bunch of coverage. I don’t know why nobody thought of this before...

Really, go read it. And after you'll laugh hysterically, you may feel like crying, because this is where we're heading if these idiots will retake power.

4. But, Americans are not as stupid as the GOBP thinks, and even if their memory can be short, the trauma of Bush years is still deep enough to scare them:

Bloomberg poll: Americans Blame Bush, Not Obama, for Deficit, Jobs, Afghan War.
"Bush was there for eight years and everything just kept getting worse," says poll participant Kelly Redding, 31, an independent voter from Columbus, Ohio. "Obama can’t perform miracles overnight."

Jeremy Dawson, 31, who has served three tours in Iraq, is among those who blame Bush more than Obama for some of the nation’s biggest problems.
"He focused so much on Iraq and Afghanistan and not enough on America," says Dawson, who votes as an independent. "There was little or nothing being done in this country."

We just have to make sure that we remind them every day. EVERY DAY. VP Biden, last night:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/17/885101/-The-party-who-brought-you-George-Bush,-and-their-servants-in-the-media...

So, the president is on a weekend break, and the people are angery. I tell you! THEY ARE ANGRY!!!!