Some of you may have noticed that we have declined to comment on President Bush's record-setting vacation-going. Partly this is because we believe critics are being disingenuous in portraying this as anything like the kind of vacation normal people take. He's the President and there's no off-the-clock hours; if something big happens, he can't exactly send people to voicemail. We can wish he wasn't our President full-time ("Hello, Manpower?"), but there ya go.

The other reason we shall not mock our absentee Commander-in-Chief is that, frankly, we worry about anyone who doesn't leave D.C. in August. The fact that he goes to Crawford, well, that's a separate cause for concern. If there is any place in the world uglier than than Washington in the dead of summer, it's dry-as-dirt, boring-as-rice central Texas. We know this because the sad sack scribes who followed Bush there yesterday told us so. An anonymous kvetcher writes in after the jump.

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[REUTERS/Larry Downing]

Dear Wascally Wonkette: 

 

Each summer the White House press corps packs up a month's worth of crap and heads to Waco, Texas, to stay close to their ward, President Bush, who camps out in August at his 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch in nearby Crawford. Bush knows the elite and effete Washington reporters despise Texas. He once sarcastically sympathized, "I know a lot of you wish you were in the East Coast, lounging on the beaches, sucking in the salt air" -- or, in the case of the network talking heads, dancing naked on their own private islands as they sacrifice children to the God of Eternal Youth.

 Most reporters stay at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Waco (management there puts a flier into each room -- even on the 10th floor -- explaining why there are so many goddamn crickets behind the bureau). Some who plan long stays hole up at the Residence Inn, which offers equally decrepit rooms but also a decrepit kitchenette (complete with crickets).

 So imagine one reporter's excitement when he heard there was a brand new Westin Hotel in McGregor, a tiny crossroad town just seven miles from Crawford. The reporter heard the stunning news from a waiter in the Hilton's restaurant Damon's (Motto: "Our Food Sucks Donkey").

"A Westin!?" the scribbler asked. "Munh huh," the waiter said.

And he was no liar: There's a brand new Weston Inn and Suites at the corner of routes 317 and 84. That's Weston, with an "O." But it's just like a Westin, right down to the adjoining "RV Park with Full Hookup."

But change is coming to Waco. I hear there's a Ritz Karlton under construction.

 

Sucking Donkey in Waco