UPDATE: FALSE? – Rush: Obama’s Midwest bus tour was a fraud

***UPDATED***

According to Rush, Obama only rode on the buses for short periods of time during his Midwest bus tour. The rest of the time he flew on Air Force One and the buses were flown from one stop to the next:

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UPDATE: Apparently the account from which Rush got his information may not be accurate. Borrowing from Human Events:

Blogger “Coldwarrior” strongly doubts the reports of aerial bus transportation, and offers some careful Google map work to disprove it:

First, just take a look at the route. It was relatively short (about 380 miles with a total drive time of under 7 hours from Cannon Falls to Alpha, IL) and the confirmed stops along the way were in some cases only 22 or so miles from each other and, it appears, the furthest distance between two stops was about 59 miles (Decorah, IA to Guttenberg, IA).  I plotted on Google Maps the cities he went through, in this order:  Cannon Falls, Zumbrota, Chatfield and Harmony, MN; Decorah, Guttenberg, Peosta, Maquoketa and Le Claire, IA; and Morrison, Atkinson, Galesburg, Alpha and Peoria, IL.

Here’s a link to a Google Map showing all the places he visited:  http://g.co/maps/4kmv

Here’s the official route as it was announced:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/15/tune-president-obamas-town-hall-meetings-week and the itinerary for some of the events are also set forth, with the dates, locations and times.

That’s about all you’d need to debunk this.  I was under the impression, as you may have been, that this “bus tour” was a long, long trip deep into Iowa and then all the way across Illinois, but it wasn’t.  It was a trip that could have been covered in less than a day with a stop every 35 to 45 miles on average.

Because the distances between some of his stops were as few as 22 miles, and there’s plenty of photos and videos showing him in all of these locations, practically it would have taken longer to get to an airport, load up, take off, land, unload, etc. than to simply just make the drive.  And, as you’ll see, there just aren’t the kind of airfields need in that part of the country.  I know.  I’ve driven much of the route over the years.

So, secondly, even if they had wanted, despite the short distances involved, to fly the buses and/or Obama ahead to the next stop, there simply are not enough airfields in that area of the country that could handle the aircraft involved (certainly not the 747 AF1 and not the C-5A or C-17 cargo aircraft that would have been needed for the buses).

And from Mediaite:

Mediaite’s White House correspondent Tommy Christopher calls the story “sheer idiocy,” pointing out that a five-minute review of the pool reports from the trip shows that the large contingent of press that travels with the President was with him every step of the way. “There was even one pool report that gave an odometer reading, for crying out loud.”


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