{"id":5051,"date":"2005-08-24T12:59:27","date_gmt":"2005-08-24T16:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/5051.html"},"modified":"2005-08-24T12:59:27","modified_gmt":"2005-08-24T16:59:27","slug":"it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-vacation-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-vacation-is\/","title":{"rendered":"It depends on what the meaning of ‘vacation’ is"},"content":{"rendered":"

This one, by way of our friends at Think Progress<\/a>, would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the White House is a little sensitive about the fact that Bush routinely takes time off and recently broke the record<\/a> for most vacation days for a president (Reagan took 335 days off; Bush sailed past that late last week). How sensitive? Bush aides are now denying<\/a> that his vacation is really a vacation.<\/p>\n

[White House Spokesman David] Almacy said the reason that Bush is in Crawford, Texas, is due to the renovation of the West Wing of the White House.<\/p>\n

“He’s operating on a full schedule; he’s just doing it from the ranch instead of from the White House,” Almacy said. “The only week he had officially off was this last week.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me get this straight. Almost immediately after Congress broke for August recess, the president packed his bags and made a bee line for Crawford. For nearly a full month now, we’ve seen him clearing brush, ignoring Cindy Sheehan, riding his bicycle, “improving the land<\/a>,” and relaxing with friends and family. It is, to borrow a phrase, “hard work.”<\/p>\n

But the new line is that Bush has only taken one<\/em> week off. He’d love to be in DC, dealing with a bloody and costly war, but those darn West Wing renovations are keeping him from the White House.<\/p>\n

How do they explain, then, why Bush has taken every August off since being sworn in five years ago? For that matter, if only last week was “official” time off, how does the White House explain the previous three weeks of leisure activity?<\/p>\n

If Bush’s vaunted communications team is going to spin Bush’s unrestrained love for time off, even during a war, they’ll have to do better than this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This one, by way of our friends at Think Progress, would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. Apparently, the White House is a little sensitive about the fact that Bush routinely takes time off and recently broke the record for most vacation days for a president (Reagan took 335 days off; Bush sailed past […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}