Bush embarking on a 5-week vacation.
 

well deserved

liberating the world from the grip of terror is hard work. just like the steel mill workers in the simpsons, president bush works hard and plays hard-er.

This may come as a shock but the president can still work from Camp David or his home

I love the whole facade of Bush the long time rancher.

This isnt Esty again...
 

He's spent close to a year of his 4.5 yr presidency in Crawford. Assuming those figures are correct.

Looks like he got rid of a lot of barns.
http://cryptome.sabotage.org/bush-ranch-01m.jpg

I can do most of my work from a remote location as well, but for some odd reason, my employer expects me to show up for work more often than the president of the united states does.. I would argue that this is true for most employers. It's part of what you have previously called, having a real job.

something tells me that people call these things 'vacations' for a reason, and that he doesnt squeeze in his ranch maintenance or whatever loser hick shit during his lunch break. does he do some work there? probably; but he doesnt go on vacation for the work, hes goes for the leisure. for 5 weeks no less. regardless of what he does or does not accomplish, appearances count, and running around with your idiotic dog for the summer isnt what people expect from a leader. the point is that there are undoubtabely better uses of time

The pre-9/11 intelligence pdb memo: "BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S." (including references to possible hijacking) was ignored while Bush was on vacation. It was a month before 9/11.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0409041pdb1.html

he and rush should have gone to club gitmo for vacation
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/eib...tmo.guest.html

Oh no. Whatever will the country do? Everything will just shut down completely unless the President is in the White House saying "Don't worry folks. The President is on duty." Its bad enough that we have to put up with this kind of reckless abandon on a daily basis. (As though the need of the President to eat and sleep really comes ahead of our national security!) Now the President dares to go to Texas of all places! He may as well have gone to the North Pole for all the good he is to us now!

I'm going to go hyperventilate now. Hopefully this pilotless plane we call a country will survive this dire crisis. :rolleyes:

I... think… I'd rather have him on vacation doing nothing but pretending to be a cowboy than at the white actually doing things… like invading countries illegally. Ya know what W? Take the rest of the year off for all I care.

Hah, you really think I posted this because I'm scared the country will go down the drain without him at the whitehouse?

It just goes to show how intellectually disengaged from his job our president is to take such an inordinate amount of vacation time (in a time of war, no less). Or maybe I'm wrong and Bush is actually right on top of everything and takes all the extra vacations because he's a prick.

ok, bush aside, at what point do you draw the line and think that a president devotes too much of his time to vacationing? no one is attacking the idea of a vacation for a president, which is what you seem to be defending against, just how long is fair and appropriate.

in all honestly, you yourself must be at least a little perturbed about how much time he feels necessary to devote to his ranch and whatever other dust farms he poses for photo ops in. obviously itd take a lot of time away from the office to actually do damage, but the better question is what he could be doing with this time. personally, if i was president, i wouldnt waste a single second. 4 years is nothing in political terms and theres a lot of work to be done. a presidency is an tremendous opportunity and responsibility. call me an idealist, but i think a president could, and should, be making better use of his time

that said there are a lot of personal things about the president that i, and i know a lot of foreigners, seems to really cringe at. the fact that he doesnt feel compelled to read the newspaper, or the fact that he never left the country before coming president are two that are particularly embarrassing. i cant place where i heard the latter one but its true as far as i can recall, isnt it?

Well, you were the one who insinuated that 9/11 might have been prevented if Bush hadn't been on vacation.

I'm a big fan of the fact that the American executive branch is weak. Truthfully, there's not a lot of "better" ways for the President to be spending his time. The only really pressing issue that might require Bush's full attention is Iraq, but he's been generally deferring to the judgment of the military leaders on the ground. If he was picking out bombing targets like LBJ did, sure, he should probably do that in DC. But daily briefings from the ground where the guys in Iraq say "We wanna do X" and Bush says "OK" can be done anywhere. Other than that, I'm not sure exactly what people expect the President to be doing with his time. If he has to sign/veto a bill, he can do it from Texas. He's made his Supreme Court appointment. What other parts of his job are there that would require him to be in pocket? I guess he could go out and push his agenda on social security and the like some more...but I somehow don't think thats what people want.

arguments can be made about what is and isnt needed of him, especially with congress out for the summer and things in something of a lull, but im more concerned with, like i said, what could be done. again, call me idealistic, but theres something incredibly unnerving about him feeling compelled to sit on his ass. im not necessarily saying that you are insinuating this, but i wouldnt buy for a second the idea that the president ever has his hands tied or whatever and cant put his responsibility to good, if not better/fuller, use. this can be said about vacations of any length, but bush's are particularly long and numerous. i know youre on thin ice when you argue about what somebody 'should' or 'could' do, because its a never ending thing, but in principle its not absurd to want the president to do more than what is specifically, or critically, needed of him, so i dont really care for hearing about bare requirements. this goes for all elected officials too, its not unique to the presidency

the sun king doesn't give a crap what any of us think.

at the end of the day, whether something or nothing happens, it all boils down to, hey, i'm the leader, and i'm never wrong.

he can be 100% resolute from any location, 100% of the time.

i dream of being president someday, so i too, can be in the best physical shape of my life. my current job doesn't alllow for lots of exercise time, and i only get 2 weeks vacay, with no holidays off except for christmas and thanksgiving.

Heh, well I'll just moot my own previous point by saying I think he would have ignored that memo regardless.

I think most experts would agree that today the executive branch has never been more powerful... All three branches of government under the same party, led by the executive...

The judicial is still by far the most powerful

the judicial didn't lead the country into war under false pretenses.

I think hes talking about all those activist judges.

"Judges, tigers, and bears, oh my!"

That still doesn't amount to much. Just because the legislature acts in way that the President approves of doesn't mean that the executive branch is more powerful as a result. If Bush wants to do something the legislature won't allow, it's not gonna get done. And if the legislature wants to do something Bush doesn't, they can probably make it so it will get done. If anything, I'd say Bush has been one of the weaker Presidents we've had in a while. Has the guy ever used a veto?

And since when has the judicial branch been under any party? Much less the Republican party?

Right. It was the legislative branch that did that.

The legislative branch didnt lead us anywhere.

They're the ones with all the power. The President can't lead anybody anywhere unless they actually follow. This idea that the war in Iraq is proof of the executive branch's power is just a little hard to swallow.

Congress didnt have Iraq on the brain since it came into office.
Congress didnt present deliberately misleading intel to the President saying "Lets get these towel heads."
Congress did act like a bunch of spineless idiots, but the war was entirely Bush's doing.

Spineless idiots? Sorry. But I'm not letting Congress off the hook that easily. The vote to give Bush the ability to go to Iraq is not an "oops" sort of situation. They and they alone had the power to make Iraq happen or not happen. They made it happen. George W. Bush didn't have enough power in his office to make any of his alleged agendas reality. Congress did. Just because Bush got what he wanted doesn't make him have more power than the Congress.

man, i disagree with corganist in most of the threads i read here, but i have to side with him here. I just dont think the presidents vacation is as important as the Daily Show will make it seem.

Bush may do a lot of things, but being able to create, finance, and declare a war is not something he did on his own.

Like he said, it may have been something he wanted, but he did not have enough power unilaterally do something like that.

I hope he has a good vacation and plays lots of table tennis.