The (p)resident’s five-week working vacation is making for some delightful commentary. Of course, the force behind these critiques draws from the many senseless deaths that have occurred in Iraq, compliments of Mr. Bush’s passionate policy.

This year’s Texas outing has turned out a little dicey for Vacation Boy. A woman who put the better part of herself into a child so he could die in Iraq followed the national media down to Crawford where she requested a meeting with President.

The COMMANDER IN CHIEF said “no” and now he’s under siege by a hippy encampment under siege itself by local rednecks. It’s quite the tableaux.

Three days ago, one of Bush’s neighbors rode out to the edge of his property and blasted a shotgun for the encampment to hear. Welcome to Texas, y’all!

He said he was hunting doves. He’s a kind of metaphor for U.S. military policy.

A day later, a guy in a pick-up truck mowed down all the white crosses with the names of slain soldiers placed along the side of the road by Cindy Sheehan and her supporters.

Shotguns and pick-up trucks. And they say we blue-staters exaggerate.

But back to the articles.

Maureen Dowd is one of those people who gets to leave her job saying whatever she wants at the country’s premiere journalistic outlet to go write a book...and then come back.

Maybe it’s because she’s that good. Oh sure, she has her critics, but the scribe has to marvel at her chutzpah, the whole marvelous spectacle in fact, of a sassy dame perpetually hounding the (p)resident on matters her stately colleagues refuse to broach.

Her article is called “Biking Toward Nowhere” and can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/opinion/17dowd.html

In it Dowd reproduces Bush’s most recent comments on having a war-mom and her scruffy friends mucking up the West Texas landscape.

“On Saturday, the current President Bush was pressed about how he could be taking five weeks to ride bikes and nap and fish and clear brush even though his occupation of Iraq had come a fiasco.”

the scribe likes the liberty Dowd takes with her language, inserting the word “occupation” in a manner so casual you wouldn’t think that it was a matter of debate.

Anyway, the article goes on to report (w)’s response: “I think it’s also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.”

That’s because he’s lucky enough to have life.

“Pressed about how he could ride his bike while refusing to see a grieving mom of a dead soldier who’s camped outside his ranch he added: ‘So I’m mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I’m also mindful that I’ve got a life to live and will do so’.”

Again, that’s because he’s lucky enough to have a life.

“The president,” she writes, “is in a truly scary place in Iraq. Americans can’t get out, or they risk turning the country into a terrorist haven that will make old Afghanistan look like Cipriani’s. Yet his war, which has not accomplished any of its purpose, swallows ever more American lives and inflames ever more Muslim hearts as W. reads a book about the history of salt and looks forward to his biking date with Lance Armstrong...

“The president’s pedaling as fast as he can,” she concludes (we jumped a bit), “but he’s going nowhere fast.”

Except maybe straight to hell, but that’s the scribe, not Maureen Dowd.

And so what if someone who makes their living beating up on the (p)resident beats up on the (p)resident?

Well, that’s why the research crew here at highwayscribery has fished up this next piece for you.

It’s written by Marg Stark, a San Diego journalist and Navy wife. It’s called “While President Bush is on vacation” and can be found here at:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050817/news_lz1e17bush.html

The article opens at a beach party thrown by military families where she, Marg, is having to answer her five-year old son’s question about why there are so few daddies.

The answer, of course, is that they’re all tanning themselves in Mesopotamia.

“For this reason,” she writes, “I find it appalling that [p]resident Bush is taking a five-week vacation at his ranch in Texas this year, having reportedly taken more time off than any president in recent history save Ronald Reagan.”

You got to give it to these (r)epublicans; they not only take your money, they take your leisure time too (scribe).

“Whether or not these are ‘working vacations,’ (Marg) the message the president’s extended holiday sends to Americans is disturbing. Never mind that military units are shipping out mere weeks after coming home from extended deployments in Iraq. Those of us at home don’t have to keep any home fires burning. Heck, we don’t even have to keep the lights on at the White House. Since a contingent of our youngest, and in many cases our least-privileged citizens, has agreed to fight on our behalf, we should, instead, unabashedly serve ourselves heaping portions of leisure and amusement.

“Couldn’t the president have spent these five weeks visiting American families and towns mourning soldiers lost in the strife in Iraq? (good question) Perhaps he, Laura and the girls could have spearheaded fundraising activities for Operation Homefront in support of our service members and their families – some of whom are on food stamps and can barely make ends meet" (sounds reasonable).

Stark better watch out or Hannity and O’Reilly are going to assassinate her character on national t.v.

Of course, even those titans are helpless before the fact all mothers are blessed and especially those who send husbands and sons to war. And their attacks couldn’t blunt the fact that Cindy Sheehan and Stark are indicative of the fact support for the war is being lost among those who have helped supply and wage it.

That ain’t good and as Dowd suggests, somebody better tell “the Boy in the Bubble.”

“The Washington Post’s” David Ignatius goes for the more even-handed approach by dubiously giving (w) his due on “telling Americans the painful truth” about Iraq, his approach to the constitution being drafted, and the spirit of realpolitik “that undergirds the administration’s upbeat talk.”

the scribe thought it was “realpolitik” from neo-cons that got us into this mess in the first place.

But really, Ignatius can’t help himself either. His what the administration is doing “wrong” portion of the column is much more, shall we say, “ebullient” than his what it’s doing “right” offering.

Here he is:

“Now let’s look at what Bush is doing wrong. In speaking about Iraq policy to the nation, the president often seems tone deaf. Taking a nearly five-week vacation when U.S. troops are experiencing a living hell is a mistake.”

(maybe he can fly in overnight with a turkey)

“It reinforces what’s cruelest about this war, which is that the soldiers in Iraq are doing all the suffering.”

(because nobody else was interested in the job)

“Meanwhile, people back home go about their business. The president doesn’t ask the country to sacrifice (because he knows we won’t) with taxes to pay for the war, or with an energy policy (what energy policy?) that would reduce our vulnerability to Mideast turmoil.”

the scribe thought we were the Mideast turmoil.

Ignatius’ “Convincing America on Iraq policy,” can be found here:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050817/news_lz1e17ignat.html