Dallas Zoo and George W Bush library

Beams from World Trade Center

Now for the other Bush, George W. Bush. His library opened last week, so the crowds were pretty heavy. The exhibits went from childhood almost immediately to his bid for Governor of Texas except for acknowledging a drinking problem during that about 'silent' period. But then again, there was considerable space spent on the 2000 election, the back and forth of which way Florida had voted, culminating in a Supreme Court Decision – lamenting Florida’s poor election controls, but agreeing that the votes had to be counted according to the existing state process. The key policies of the early Bush administration were to provide tax cuts to move the economy forward, the “No child left behind” program to ensure that poor Americans had sufficient education opportunities, and surprisingly a World AIDS program to reduce that disease in Africa. The best part of the library was the days around September 11^th – it vividly brought back those memories , especially the destruction of the World Trade Center. America didn’t know what would happen next, and Bush did his best to get us to return to a normal life as quickly as possible. Of course, Congress passed the Patriot Act giving new powers to the Federal government to monitor terrorist activities in the U.S. and his administration started using “intense interrogation techniques", that many would consider torture, to determine what other terrorist activities might occur. The fact that none have occurred since then in the U.S. (while many have occurred world-wide) is considered a success of these policies. There is also a lot on both the War in Afghanistan and Iraq allowing you to see the strategies considered, taken, and the results of those decisions. One of the more interesting aspects of the museum was “decision points” where you are faced with a decision (our's was about Katrina: should we let the National Guard handle the situation, send federal troops without police power, or invoke the insurrection act and send troops with policing power). The group decision was to invoke the act, Bush chose to send troops without policing power (which is what Mary and I chose).  The museum finished up with other policies of the Bush administration: adding drug benefits to Medicare (which passed), an immigration reform bill and changing Social Security with private accounts (both of which were never passed). No matter what one thinks of Bush, this was a good summary of his administration.

Lion at Dallas Zoo

In the afternoon, we went to the Dallas Zoo. While it is a rather small zoo (we saw all of it in 3 hours), it obviously has been recently modernized. Most of the exhibits were large environments with a minimum of bars and fences. That was particularly true for the gorilla, lion, and cheetah exhibits. It being a Saturday, the zoo was crowded, but that also meant we had lots of activity going on. We saw the feeding of the Nile Crocodiles, Orangutans, and a bird show. Our highlight was the bird exhibit with a nice selection of colorful birds: a toveta-golden weavers, saddle-bill storks, and red and yellow barbets. And --- we finally saw a tiger, they’ve hidden from us in India and during our last two zoo visits.   

Red and Yellow Barbet