Mystery swirls around George W. Bush 'Miss me yet?' billboard

Mystery swirls around George W. Bush 'Miss me yet?' billboard

For all of the wonderful things life in the Internet age provides us, there are some notable drawbacks. One of them is that email and popular social media tools like Twitter and Facebook provide powerful launching pads for unchecked rumors and popular myths. Often these rumors and myths are proven false by websites like Snopes.com and FactCheck.org, but not this time.


The Internet has been abuzz with rumors that if you drive down Interstate 35 near the town of Wyoming, Minnesota, you'll see a billboard bearing the image of a smiling George W. Bush accompanied by the question "Miss me yet?" The online rumors were confirmed by this image:




Many initially thought the picture was a hoax created through Photoshop. But now multiple people have confirmed its existence. The mystery surrounding the billboard quickly morphed from a "Fact or Fiction?" story into a genuine "Whodunit?" Who paid for the ad, and what was their motivation? Are they Obama supporters sarcastically hoping to remind disgruntled liberals about how things were under Bush, or are they Bush supporters sincerely hoping to remind voters of the past administration?


To get some answers, Yahoo! News tracked down Mary McNamara, the general manager at the Minneapolis office of Schubert & Hoey Outdoor Advertising, the company which owns and leases out the billboard space.


"The ad was purchased by a group of small business owners who wish to remain anonymous," McNamara said. However, McNamara did offer this political bombshell: "Some of the people in the group who paid for this were Obama supporters."

McNamara told us that the message the group hoped to convey was one of "Hope and change, where is it?" She went on to say that she has yet to receive any negative feedback about the ad, which has been up for about a month, and added that some have even contacted her office offering to donate money to keep it up.

However, not everyone is buying McNamara's portrayal of the group's ideological makeup. Cindy Erickson, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Chisago County, where the billboard is located, suspects the ad's funders are conservative activists posing as Obama supporters.

"I don't have any idea who did it, but my thought was that they're Tea Party people," she said. "Regardless, it's been the subject of many conversations around here."

While Minnesota has long been a blue state, Chisago is part of a Republican-leaning string of suburban counties surrounding Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Obama lost the 2008 vote in Chisago by 10%. But Erickson argued that local Democrats who voted for him are content with the job the president is doing. She added that if the intent of the ad was to reflect poorly on Obama, then it's failed to deliver its message.


"I think most people have interpreted their message to be 'If you think it's bad now, don't forget how bad it used to be,'" she said. "It's just a goofy photo of him. It's goofy."


Yahoo! News' attempts to get a comment on the billboard from George W. Bush's representatives were unsuccessful.

-- Brett Michael Dykes is a contributor to the Yahoo! News blog

Thats funny... at the same time sad, it shows what a horrible state our whole nation is in.

i don't miss him. he's the person that got the ball rolling and got us in this trouble.

W makes me sick.

It makes me sick that people blame Obama for not getting us out in 1 year. He can't undo 8 years of disaster in one.

true, but imo he kinda got him self into it by saying he could. promising hope and change, and then failing to deliver within the first year isn't very good. I still voted for him, and he still has 3 more to fix it, but people don't care about that, they care about the first year.

If you think thats bad, you should check out a gun forum sometime. Those people are fucking redic.

thank you ....nuff said.

i think the problem with obama (i don't side with either party) is that he continued the bailout bullsh!t that bush decided would save america. i was hoping that obama would also stick to his word about getting out of the war, but i think he found out how fucked it is over there and knows we can't just pull out thanks to bush. republicans shot themselves in the foot when they decided to not back ron paul and went with mccain.

He stated MULTIPLE times in his campaign that change would and will not happen over night. He said most everything he does/tries to do wont see any difference until the end of his presidency and possibly many years after. It just boggles my mind that people can expect instant results. Unfortunetly, because the American population is so demanding and expect instant gratification, I dont see him getting a second term.

People were expecting something at least in the first year. People expect instant results regardless of what it is. He coulddve issued some executive orders or something. Bush did, he got stuff done signed the most executive orders out of any president to date, not all of them aregood stuff, but he got stuff done. It's just time for Obama to step up and get shit done. I know he can, he just has to do it. Maybe he should get sponsored by Nike

ok this is my theory.....

theres 312 million americans (legal) in amerca.

we spent 36 trillion dollars on the "bailout" , which by the way was like a bandaid on a bullet wound. now you have those same companies allowing ceo's and the likes to recieve high bonuses this year , simply because those assets were froze last year.

heres my idea of a bail out.....

ok , 312 million americans...if you give each american 1 million dollars. but first off its not free and its not cash. first thing to be taken off is any dept each individual has. so say jon doe has a 250,000 dollar debt. alright that comes off the top of his million. ok , now his mortgage is paid , his taxes are paid , and his carnote is paid. meaning the mortgage lender has recieved their money , the financing party for the car have gotten their money. and his taxes are caught up. alright well the banks arent having to foreclose , the financers arent having to repo , and the IRS isnt having to file tax leins on proterties.

allright so this is just one man. his depts are paid. now the $750,000 left, will be put into a government banking account assigned to your social security number and you will draw a check each month for the next 5 or 10 years to equal the amount of that money left over. at the end of the 5 or 10 years do this again.

now , people arent losing their homes , cars , small businesses etc. everything is paid off. and now people have money to spend so now the forclosed properties arebeing bought up , peoplae are buying new cars , and guess what the economy is being stimulated for real. so its a win , win for the citizens , and the banks , and americas general economy. i mean people had any debt they aquired wiped clean , so that means any creditors have their money. its a nicely executed plan if you step back and think about it.

the math , the way i see it , 312 million dollors every 5 or 10 years is a lot cheaper than 36 trillion in one year.

so why wont they do that? the government doesnt want us to have control. simple as that , they dont want us to be able stimulate our owneconomy and live in our own well being. i mean because ifthe above plan would be put in action , it would be "we the people" again. and we would have a very prosporous country. but instead the government has slowly started making the transistion to "us the government".

im actually considering taking this plan to a congressman, and getting it pettitioned sort of like the fairtax. if this "bail out" or "general consesus boost" plan that me and a few coligues talk about could go into effect hand in hand with the fair tax , this country would a. be the richest in the world with a very strong financial back bone , b. increase thelife expectancy rate due to lower stress levels , c. end poverty of american citizens d. might actually break the class barrier between lower , middle , and upper class people.

Schubert for president :W00t

no he didnt. thats a completely false statement made by people who dont know what communism is, anyone who read the communist manifesto would agree.

If we gave every American 1 million dollars, wouldn't that make the USA a communist country?

i need to learn some math also i was wrong , its 213 million americans. but , ok my math was wrong , anyway , with the billions sitting aside for government grants , and the millions sitting idle with the IRS unclaimed each year, this shouldnt be a problem.

why would that make it comunist? after your debts are paid , your monthly check is your discretion on how its spent.

True communism isn't even true to it's name. Even then not everything is divided equally. 99% of the population is equally dirt poor, while 1% is super rich. Anything is better than communism unless you're in that 1%.

So basically, what you just said. Was completely pointless? You replied to my post saying "Yes he preached communisim...but not communism, that was an exaggeration" Stop mind fucking yourself.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds...&dl=en&hl=en&q=how many people live in the US

304,059,724


You can just say he's a socialist, because of his policies, or what he said, ect ect. Thats called assuming, and it makes an ass out of u and me.

This.

The census isn't 100% accurate anyways. They can't keep track of illegals either.

We're screwed no matter what. Im 23 but Im pretty sure that me, my kids, my grandkids are going to pay a ridiculous amount of our salaries to taxes. Thats if we make it past December 21 2012 hahahahaha.
oh, and China will eventually tell us what to do because they practically own this country.

why is that a bad thing? my cousins live in sweeden, they pay insane taxes. but they get PAID to go to college. and its not any more selective than it is here in the states. you pay taxes and it helps you out in the long run. most of the people who oppose taxes when their younger will flip flop by age 60 and wish there were more tax programs to hep them as seniors.

i'm willing to pay high taxes if its includes universal health care.