Posted on 09/05/2005 12:21:32 PM PDT by Tom87
"That man, the king of vacations ... the king of vacations in his ranch said nothing but, you have to flee, and didn't say how ... that cowboy, the cowboy mentality," said [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chavez, chuckling in a reference to Bush without naming him directly.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
He'll be madder yet, if some natural catastrophe hits him and his. If he is w/o food, he can eat his words.
Give me a Cowboy every time! The Lesbo-Homo DU point your finger and blame game will not move you an inch forward! Like their beloved France and Canada they will kowtow to a gnat! God all Mighty I wish they would get the hell out of America. They keep promising, but they keep spewing their leftist crap! It is truly amazing how good at blaming others and the hateful spew the D-Rats have become. The D-Rats have no concrete answers, just a vial word of disgust. The extreme left is soon to be extinct! God willing! They have no belief and I hope they burn in Hell for eternity!
Why doesn't he just call Bush a doo-doo head, too? Cripes, and that guy's in charge of a country?!? Admittedly, another backward Latin country, but a little decorum - please!
Chavez, Castro, and assorted leftists here in the good old USA.
Hmmm... Left-wing dicatators spouting off DNC talking points...
After he gets to the TAJ, middle Africa, north Africa--taking 100s with him I'll look into THAT! OK?
The POTUS is never really on vacation!
A "vacation" is getting away from work. Therefore, the President of the US is never actually on "vacation". He just moves his Presidency to another location. You are falling for the "perceptions" of the RAT media.
And unlike Hillary and Chelsea, Laura has never used Air Force One as her private globe trotting jet.
Bush going to the Texas White House is more akin to Roosevelt coming down here to his "Little White House" in Warm Springs, Or Reagan going to the Western White House. Or Lyndon Johnson going to The Ranch. Their enemies might call it "vacationing", but bashing Bush on this one, is way way out of line.
Perception? Bush can't ever win the "perception" game when the MSM acts as the Democrats' echo chamber. I say, "hat's off" to Bush for ignoring them both. He knows he's not loafing, and really, isn't that what the criticism means to imply?
Chavez....go find a real job. No one here cares what you say. We love our Cowboy President. He's the best kind.
I would like to repeat this qualification: Chavez' moral credibility notwithstanding. (While his buddy Castro may not be the "king" of political persecution, he certainly belongs to that aristocracy.) A criticism is not invalid just based on the person who utters it--not that Chavez is alone in this particular criticism.
As for someone's complaint that this came from the Washington Post, they were merely conveying a wire report that seems to have been well diffused across the board. I imagine Fox News reported it as well, though I couldn't figure out their search engine to look for back editions when I was intitially looking for a citation. Compare also The Washington Times at http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/K/KATRINA_VENEZUELA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-09-01-19-47-41.
Anyway . . . let me try putting the question another way: Would there be any advantage or benefit to having the president spend more time in Washington, or at least less extended leaves?
Yeah, he does. And he won't take phone calls while he's gone.
Nobody took more vacation time than Bill Clinton, but since he didn't have a home to go to, he spent them in different places all during the year.
Bush has a H O M E to go to.
Or maybe the debate should be more open-ended: Should the president arguably spend *less* time in Washington than he currently does?
And inasmuch as these are working vacations, should there be some regular accounting of what work is being done?
I'm not at all saying that it's a cushy low-stress job, mind you. But if I were the prez I would try to do more to assure people that I was fully engaged in the extremely important responsibilities I had been charged with (though I guess the other edge of the sword is that people could then accuse you of being a "control freak").
From http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200509020916
Commentary on AP's "Venezuela's Chavez Offers Hurricane Aid"
By Pedro Mario Burelli
02.09.05 | PMBComment: In times of tragedy it is fair to help your enemies, but what is not acceptable is to callously take political advantage of human tragedy. In a country in which the media, and obviously their audiences, love the odd or sensationalist story, Hugo Chavez's offer to help the US has captured the attention of many ill informed talking heads in the US. This AP report is one of the first that starts questioning Chavez' motivation and provide a little bit of very relevant background. In December of 1999, after days of non-stop rains, Venezuela suffered its worse natural disaster in history. Simultaneous mudslides wiped out large sector of Vargas State, the destruction was hard to comprehend and the death toll topped 15,000. Venezuelans of all walks of life rushed to help as did many nations in the world, including of course the US. Let's examine what Hugo Chavez did during those days:
1. He was out of the country - unbeknownst to anyone... He was receiving "mental healing" in La Havana after one of his frequent breakdowns.
2. No evacuation orders were given despite the evidence that rock slides had been detected in the mountains and the fact that it had long been known that great swaths of shoreline were at risk of mudslides (it had already occurred on a smaller scale in the 50's).
3. He did not return to Venezuela. An F16 from the Venezuelan Air Force was sent to bring back a crudely taped message to the nation which the government tried to pass as a live message from the Presidential Palace.
4. The President returned to the country almost 48 hours after the crisis began.
5. At the request of the government and coordinated by the Venezuelan Army, the US rushed to send two navy vessels with hundreds of members of the Army's Corp of Engineers with military bridges, tents, and water treatment and desalinization plants. With one of the ships at sea and the other about to sail, Chavez was advised by Fidel Castro not to accept the US offer... Two reasons were apparently given: the contingent would include a number of CIA spies and there was the risk of the US earning goodwill among Venezuelans. This incident created a major diplomatic incident. It would be interesting to hear Ambassador Maisto shedding some light to the US press and public about this precedent of Chavez playing with human misery.
6. The political police - DISIP - was accused of having executed a number of people in their untimely and sloppy effort to control looting.
7. Tens of millions of dollars contributed by the international community disappeared... Many Caracas-based Ambassadors tell stories of graft and incompetence associated with their donations.
8. Six years after the tragedy the reconstruction of Vargas has gone nowhere. I invite anyone to tour Vargas and reach their own conclusion about the state of that state.
So, we have another case of Hugo Chavez being advised by Ricardo Alarcon (President of Cuba's national Assembly and the Castro's regime top "americanologist") and their accomplices among the US lobbyist/apologist community, on how to put the Bush Administration on the defensive. While Bush and his team have a great deal to respond for what looks like a series of serious gaffes, Hugo Chavez has no moral authority to accuse anyone of lack of preparation and he should not be allowed a free ride with his blatant attempt to sell snake oil to the American people. Patton Boggs must know - and therefore advice their client - about what happens to people who live in glass houses when they opt to throw stones. PMB
Thanks for posting that, Cvengr. Such hypocrisy and opportunism doesn't surprise me.
But what's your opinion as to how much time our president should spend in Washington vs. Texas?
I doubt very seriously if he is absent from the issues that actually require Presidential cognizance and authority no matter where he might go.
He rates the leave, let him take it.
Besides, Crawford was probably closer to hands-on regarding Katrina than DC. As a freeby to the American taxpayer, he was able to swing by the disaster area on AF1 on his way back.
There were not just "200 buses". There were 200 buses in just one photo and Freepers studying the post-Katrina satellite images have counted over 400 buses altogether at other city parking.
At 70 people per bus that is 28,000 people per round trip that could have been taken out of the storm surge area in the 48 hours prior the Katrina striking.
After the storm hit, what makes you think that buses sent from outside of New Orleans could drive through the flooded mess any better than the 145 New Orleans city buses that were parked 1.2 miles away from the Superdome?
Was Scotty supposed to beam the outside buses to the Superdome and them beam them back out so that they would not have to drive through impassable roads?
The time to evacuate those 200,000 low-income people on public buses OUT OF THE STORM SURGE ZONE was BEFORE the Category 4 storm struck.
That was what the Southern Louisiana Evacuation Plan for New Orleans specifically called for.
The Democrat Governor and the Democrat Mayor did NOTHING to carry out that portion of the plan. They left 200,000 low-income resident abandoned and they now blame the Federal Government for not having Scotty beam down a massive logistics effort after a human disaster of their own making.
This thread was not intended to be about Katrina or its aftermath. The title I actually gave it was simply "Chavez calls Bush "King of Vacations'," but it apparently has been changed to match the title of the news article from which I excerpted a single key paragraph in which that jab is made.
So, regardless of how the blame for the mess in New Orleans is to be distributed . . . does anyone have an opinion on what amount of time is ideal for a president to spend in Washington vs. Texas or wherever his hometown (or second home/place of retreat) may be?
I know this question has come up long before Katrina existed. So there's no reason the two issues have to always be tangled up together.
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