Bush's Spring Break
 As my Spring Break comes to a close, it's nice to know that our president is getting his vacation time in, too.
Again.
For the 116th time in less than three and a half years.
One hundred and sixteen vacations in that relatively short amount of time! Most people are lucky if they get a few weeks off each year. Being a teacher, I get quite a bit of time off, but nowhere near that much. Here's how an excerpt from a recent Washington Post article summarized Bush's vacations:
This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.
To put that into perspective, out of each year, Bush is officially on vacation an average of almost five months. How does that rank with other presidents? After a little research, I found this:
Bush isn't the first president to get away from his work. George Bush Sr. took all or part of 543 vacation days at Camp David and in Kennebunkport. Ronald Reagan spent 335 days at or en route to his Santa Barbara, California, ranch during his eight years in office. Of recent presidents, Jimmy Carter took the least days off -- only 79 days, which he usually spent at his home in Georgia. That's less than three weeks a year, which is closer to the average American's paid time off of 13 days per year.
What about Clinton? As of December 1999, President Bill Clinton had spent only 152 days on holiday during his two terms, according to CBS News. A former staffer noted Clinton was such a workaholic that "it almost killed Clinton to take one-week vacations during August." (taken from Ask Yahoo)
So Clinton took 152 days in seven years on vacation. That comes out to three weeks a year. Far cry from the five months Bush Jr. shoots for.
Now I wouldn't be so upset with all this vacation time if Bush would do something I could get behind. Something that put our priorities where they belong.
In fact, wouldn't it be great if Bush made a speech tomorrow that outlined a new sense of direction? Someone online even took the time to write this speech for him. Now while I don't agree with every word (especially the part about the World Cup), I'd rather be hearing stuff like that than "we didn't move on the warnings the CIA and FBI were giving us because 'we had no actionable intelligence.'"
Speaking of action, the White House finally released the memo that raised such a big stink during Condoleeza Rice's testimony last week. Read it for yourself and decide if Bush should have done something different about it. For the record, when Bush got the memo, he was on vacation.
Related links:
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Tonight on Sky One, Ashley Revell (that's him on the left) is going to bet every last cent that he has on one spin of a Roulette wheel. And I do mean every last cent. The story is that the Londoner has sold everything he owns, including his clothes, and is going to bet it all (£75,000 or about $137,000) in one go. He has a fifty-fifty shot. If he guesses correctly, then he doubles his net worth. If he guesses wrong, then he's dirt poor and has to start his life all over again.
