Snap! Oooh ... my bad!

I goofed when I suggested in a previous post that President Bush shirked his responsibility to respond adequately to Hurricane Katrina after he learned about the dire predictions of the disaster to come.

I forgot! He couldn't have known that a Powerpoint briefing was emailed to the White House Situation Room. He wasn't even there! He was on vacation! He was nowhere near the White House Situation Room.

Whew! Boy, am I glad. I was starting to worry that he didn't care. It turns out that he was simply enjoying his vacation and didn't want to be bothered by one of the biggest mutha falutin hurricanes to bear down on the Gulf Coast in history. That's a lot to have to deal with. He's just a guy trying to be the President of the United States. It's hard ... you know ... hard work.

I can imagine that all that hard work -- reading documents and watching Powerpoint presentations -- can wear the guy down to the point that he needs a nice month-long vacation from being King of the World.

Turning back the clock to last summer -- what seems like another time in another universe -- let's review President Bush's vacation. In the month of August 2005, I wrote four posts to PGR about Bush's vacation to break all vacation records. Recall that was the month that Cindy Sheehan was making news by camping out in front of the Crawford Ranch to get a meeting with Bush to talk about her son's death in Iraq.

This chart shows that monkey boy was then well on his way to setting a new record as the most-vacationing president ever. With another three and a half years to go in office, he was on target to beating his daddy's previous record as the most-vacationing president ever.



Newsday observed that "prior to his August slumber, Bush had spent 40 percent of his time away from the White House," and the Guardian noted that Bush's August trip to Crawford was his 50th visit to the ranch.

Recall as well that it was after a previous month-long August vacation George W. Bush was caught off-guard when -- despite dire warnings -- terrorists struck the United States.

Here's David Letterman on Bush's 2003 vacation:

How many of you get a month vacation? Well President Bush will be getting his month-long vacation. The White House is calling it a 'working vacation.' And I am thinking, well that pretty much describes the entire presidency, doesn't it? ... Bush says he is going to be very active, he plans to exercise every day. And he says he exercise every day because it clears his head. Hey, mission accomplished.

Hey, do any of you see room for a projector on the presidential pontoon boat? Of course not. Get real! Give the guy a break!


Photo: AP/Susan Walsh, published on Yahoo.