[SpamCop-Social] Re: vacation on the ranch [spurred by something else]

[D.F. Manno]

In article <dghipi$i9r$1 at news.spamcop.net>, "Bcs1" <bcs1 at spamcop.net> wrote:

> vacations:
> /begin mini-rant/
> 
>  It seems to me that there's almost always a jab here, or an insult there 
> that has something to do with a/an (insert descriptive word here) vacation.
> 
> now honestly, and I mean HONESTLY!!!!!!!!!
>  out of this group of mostly intelligent people, is there really a single 
> one in here who buys the vacation crap for one second?
> 
> I have an office upstairs, I can sit and do my job there as well as I can 
> sit here in my bedroom and do it. Yet every-so-often up rears the head of 
> the "vacation comment" monster.
>  Bush has a ranch in Texas, another president had a "camp" another one had a 
> freaking "peanut" farm.
> now is there REALLY one person who doesn't KNOW that those presidents are 
> totally equipped to do their job from ANY of those locations?
> 
>  besides the office in DC IS more for show than anything...hell in the event 
> of an emergency they can do their job from the back of a limo.... so what's 
> all the fuss about?

1) He's spent more time on vacation than any two-term president in history, and 
he's been in office less than five years. He's spent nearly an entire year on 
vacation, a month more than previous record-holder Reagan. This in a country 
where the average worker gets less than two weeks a year.

2) Not much government work gets done while he's on vacation. Other officials 
take advantage of the time to go on their own vacations (like Cheney and Rice 
during Katrina). The pace of work in the White House slows down as well.

3) He doesn't appear to focus on what little government work he does do while on 
vacation. He blew off the intelligence briefing he got a month before 9/11 
warning him that bin Laden was poised to attack the U.S. 

4) The Shrub does not like having his vacations interrupted. According to 
articles in the current issues of Time and Newsweek, Bush aides wasted valuable 
time in the Katrina aftermath debating whether to tell him he had to return to 
Washington, because they were afraid he would get angry.

5) The symbolism was terrible. As people were dying on the Gulf Coast, he was 
eating cake with contributors and playing guitar with a country music star. You 
may say that symbolism is unimportant, but for a president it is. Perceptions 
become reality. In this case, public perception was only catching up to what the 
reality has been all along, but his procrastination in returning from the ranch 
crystallized his isolation. It will damage him in that he will find it harder to 
get anything done during the rest of his term.
-- 
D.F. Manno | dfm2a3l0t2 at spymac.com
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often
very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit
to oppression.--H.L. Mencken, "Minority Report" (1956)