President Bush Meets with Rolling Thunder
President Bush, center, is presented with a Rolling Thunder jacket by Artie Muller, left, president of the veterans group, and Gary Scheffmeyer, vice president, on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday.
President George W Bush is now an honorary member of Rolling Thunder. Today, Rolling Thunder was welcomed at the White House - don't know about you, but I would have loved to have seen rhose motorcycles pulling up to the front of the White House!
The President paid tribute to the group. "You've done a lot for the country, and the troops appreciate you, and the veterans appreciate you, and your president appreciates you."
The leaders of rolling thunder also met with the President in the Oval Office. They talked about increasing benefits for PTSD for Veterans. After the meeting, Muller said: "He said he is going to really look into it. He said that really has to change. I know he can't do everything we've always asked, but I know he's come close."
Thank you, Rolling Thunder.
The President paid tribute to the group. "You've done a lot for the country, and the troops appreciate you, and the veterans appreciate you, and your president appreciates you."
The leaders of rolling thunder also met with the President in the Oval Office. They talked about increasing benefits for PTSD for Veterans. After the meeting, Muller said: "He said he is going to really look into it. He said that really has to change. I know he can't do everything we've always asked, but I know he's come close."
Thank you, Rolling Thunder.
10 comments:
History will be kind to this great man.
That's really cool!
Have a great holiday!
Gawfer rode in the west coast so cal version this weekend.
What great pictures, fantastic!
...don't know about you, but I would have loved to have seen rhose motorcycles pulling up to the front of the White House!
Do ya even have to ask? ;-)
I'd have loved to have been part of that...
That 'brave' person Anonymous stopped by to spew some hate - in case he comes back -
1 -Why did you ask why comments are moderated when the answer is on the page? - 'comment moderation policy' - I'm sorry you can't read.
2 - You have no Freedom of Speech here - again - read the Constitution - you have freedom of speech from government intervention. You have no rights here and none will be given. Take your hatred elsewhere.
I bet President Bush was honored more then words.
~Teddy Bear
I am so proud to be an American, Flag. Thanks for posting this.
Great post, Flag! Born to be wild, heh! --deb
Hmmmmmm I think Garrison Keillor didn't like being inconvenienced by Rolling Thunder
baltimoresun.com
The disturbing roar of hollow patriotism
By Garrison Keillor
May 28, 2008
Three hundred thousand bikers spent Memorial Day weekend roaring around Washington in tribute to our war dead, and I stood on Constitution Avenue on Sunday afternoon watching a river of them go by, waiting for a gap in the procession so I could cross over to the Mall and look at pictures. The street had been closed off for them and they motored on by, some flying the Stars and Stripes and the black MIA-POW flag, honking, revving their engines, an endless celebration of internal combustion.
A patriotic bike rally is sort of like a patriotic toilet-papering or patriotic graffiti; the patriotism somehow gets lost in the sheer irritation of the thing. Somehow a person associates Memorial Day with long moments of silence when you summon up mental images of pilots revving up B-24s and infantrymen crouched behind piles of rubble steeling themselves for the next push.
You don't quite see the connection between that and these fat men with ponytails on Harleys. After hearing a few thousand bikes go by, you think maybe we could airlift these gentlemen to Baghdad to show their support of the troops in a more tangible way. It took 20 minutes until a gap appeared and then a mob of us pedestrians flooded across the street and the parade of bikes had to stop for us, and on we went to show our patriotism by, in my case, hiking around the National Gallery, which, after you've watched a few thousand Harleys pass, seems like an outpost of civilization.
There stood Renoir's ballerina in pale blue chiffon and Monet's children in the garden of sunflowers. And Mary Cassatt's "The Boating Party," which I stood and stared at for a long time. A lady in a white bonnet sits in a green sailboat, holding a contented baby in pink, as a man rows the boat toward a distant shore. (Perhaps the boat is becalmed.) The man wears a navy blue shirt, he is preoccupied with his rowing, and the lady looks wan and mildly anxious, as well a mother should be. The baby is looking dreamily over the gunwales. Is the man a hired hand or is he the husband and father?
A work of art can lift you up from the mishmash of life, the weight of the unintelligible world, and vulgarity squats on you like an enormous toad and won't get off. You stroll down past the World War II Memorial, which looks like something ordered out of a catalog, a bland insult to the memory of all who served, and thousands of motorcycles roar by disturbing the Sabbath, and it depresses you for hours.
If anyone cared about the war dead, they could go read David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter or Stephen Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers or any of a hundred other books, and they would get a vision of what it was like to face death for your country, but the bikers riding in formation are more interested in being seen than in learning anything. They are grown men playing soldier, making a great hullabaloo without exposing themselves to danger, other than getting drunk and falling off a bike.
No wonder the Current Occupant welcomed them with open arms at the White House, put on a black leather vest, and gave a manly speech about how he'd just "choppered in" and saw the horde "cranking up their machines," and he thanked them for being so patriotic. They are his kind of guys, full of bluster, giving off noxious fumes, and when they leave town, nobody misses them.
Meanwhile, the man pulls at the oars, the lady wonders if this trip was a good idea or if some disaster is at hand, and the child lolls on her lap, dazed by the sun. They started this trip in 1894 and haven't advanced an inch; meanwhile, half the people who ever stood and watched them have reached that distant shore and the rest of us are getting closer every day.
I am the boatman and maybe you are, too - it is quiet on the water, we lean on the oars, and we are suspended in time, united with every other man, woman and child who ever voyaged afar.
Garrison Keillor's column appears regularly in The Sun. His e-mail is oldscout@prairiehome.us.
Is it ANY wonder why it is that I, a combat veteran, absolutley HATE the moonbat and anti-Americanist jerks that make light for political gain?
One day, there is going to be open season on these asswipes and I will Indian Leg Wrestle anyone - disability set aside - for First Blood.
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