All Kerry has to do to wrap this up tonight is say

[fishface]

"The Republicans said to put them in charge and all your woes would be solved. Well they've been in charge for four years now. How are your woes doing?"

Case closed on the little cowboy.:evilgrin:

[edbermac]

1. Exactly...go through the whole laundry list of the last 4 years...

and just look into the camera and say "You want 4 more years of THIS?!?"

[opihimoimoi]

2. NO SHIT< the Woes are Growing >...not gettin any better either

The Woeful Prez, The Energizer Prez, The Lolo Prez, The "What Me Worry?" Prez, The Cheerleader Prez, The Balance Challenged Prez, The Gut Feeling Prez, The National Joke Prez, The Alliterate Prez, The Chimp InaSuit Prez, The Weapon of Mass Deception Prez, The BS Prez,


Kerry will kick his ASS.

[saccheradi]

3. The approach seems right...

he needs to pound Bush into the ground in the eyes of the people... he can only do that if he connects with them directly.

[kentuck]

4. All we have to fear is fear itself...

And that would be more effective than most people realize, imo..

[caledesi]

5. FR -excellent! Email this to the campaign. nt

[sphinx77449]

6. That good for nuthin little ...

.. weenie is no more a Cowboy than he is a Texan, a Conservative, a Republican, a Patriot ... or for that matter ... a human being.

I can tell you that there are LOTS of "cowboys" that would love to take that smirkin, arrogant sack of sh*t out to the barn for a little conference.

Funny how people that ARE what "w" professes to be are some of the most offended by the mental midget's (no offense meant to short people !!) wasting of good oxygen (what little of it is left).

FYI

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A Connecticut Cowboy in King Rove's Court


by James Heflin - January 22, 2004

Between the Lines
George W. Bush's gray matter was sizzled in the obliterating sun of west Texas. Sizzled, shrivelled and realigned. Even now -- watch closely -- he twitches toward Mecca, at least the oil underneath it.
The curious arrangement of synapses that resulted is often misapprehended because Bush is analyzed, pondered and deciphered as a Texan.

Texans, most of whom revel in the outrageous stereotypes that abound to the east of Texarkana, are a different breed entirely. They get the sizzle of the Texas sun from day one, developing extra large synapses, toughened and well-cinched in the face of the solar onslaught. Those synapses give rise to an uncommon stubbornness -- Texans seldom are less than set in their opinions, and those opinions, clichés notwithstanding, run from diehard Democrat to Phil Gramm inanity.

That hardened brain phenomenon gives rise to nuts of every stripe. Yes, this is the state that spawned Stevie Ray Vaughan, but this is also the state that spawned Vanilla Ice. Texas has its own category on the News of the Weird website.

The key to understanding Bush's brain is that -- let me be clear -- he is not and never will be a Texan. He was born well to the north and east, in a place full of tight-sphinctered Episcopalians with closets full of spare loafers and old copies of Wine Connoisseur . He started life as a Connecticut Yankee.

The pleasant New England light and crisp air did not provide George with the synaptical fortitude to resist the Texas sun. When the Bushes moved to the heart of west Texas, Odessa-Permian, the brain sizzle began. Those around him were well defended, but young George was not. He tried to fit in, really he did. But factors beyond his control were at work. That relentless onslaught left its mark.

R eal Texan and Democratic humorist Jim Hightower points out that real Texans have beer, blood and barbecue stains on their Stetsons, whereas poor George sports a shiny Neiman Marcus topper. You see such evidence on every hand. Bush's "family ranch" was completed just before his election, outfitted with rustic paraphernalia that Bush likely couldn't name, let alone use. His almost-Texan accent features a weird, too-fast mangling of words into a clenched-mouth stumble in which "social security" becomes "sosha cure-dee."

Real Texas cowboys are generally a polite lot, blue collar sorts with little to prove and a lot to do. Our sizzle-brained, rich Yankee cowboy seems to have a lot to prove and little to do.

This gold-plated ranch hand has, it's true, been largely embraced by real Texans. Some would have it that the Texan embrace makes perfect sense, that it's the state, after all, that killed JFK. (Guns don't kill people, Texas does.) Probably, some right-wingers really were secretly or openly thrilled, but in 15 years of living in the Lone Star state, never once did I hear even the most numb-headed conservative praise the death of Kennedy.

The love of Bush is, like everything about his careers in business and politics, the sad product of manipulation.

Texas is not Republican because its citizens are best served by Republicans; it was, for years, a Democratic stronghold. It is Republican because presidential senior adviser Karl Rove, in an earlier incarnation, applied his dark magic to most every Texas GOP campaign in the 1980s, exposing such dirt on Democrats (some real, some imagined) that the GOP seemed the lesser of two evils.

Texan stubbornness is at times a virtue. But now that it is clear that Governor Bush left a wake of corruption, pollution and power-hungry prairie dictators behind him, Texan stubbornness has prevented comprehension of the obvious. The temporary effectiveness of dressing up the Connecticut blueblood as a Gene Autry squint-eye is dissipating, but nobody likes to admit they've been had, most of all Texans.

There will always be the calcified conservative mob in the Lone Star state, the rednecks who drag black men behind trucks and call their guns by pet names, but to tar the whole sprawling state for their support of Bush is just plain silly.

Texas didn't do it. The suckers who fell for Karl Rove's jive did it. And now history repeats itself on a national level.

But even some elements of the religious right are noticing that W's cowboy shirts still have wrinkles from the package, that his boots have never contacted cowpies. All those Rove-inspired equivocations, bows at Shinto shrines and Ramadan dinners at the White House haven't gone unremarked. Texas' libertarian congressman Ron Paul railed against the war in Iraq with all the fervor of Howard Dean. And then, of course, there are the millions -- millions -- of beleaguered Democrats who inhabit the Lone Star state, who currently sport a majority in the state's congressional delegation.

It was inevitable that this would happen. Rove is a dazzling magician, one whose sleight of hand has fooled even many a Texan braggart. But what he is not, clearly, is a competent mad scientist. The brain of a Bush, no matter its time in the Texas sun, just ain't up to a permanent cowboy brain graft. The twitches have begun.

If the tide turns, if Rove's puppetry falters, there'll be hell to pay. Remember the Alamo? A Connecticut Cowboy in King Rove's Court

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A greenhorn on the ranch

Albert Scardino and John Scardino
Thursday April 1, 2004

It's a good thing George Bush found a job in the White House. Though he owns a ranch in Texas, he'd make an inept cowboy. He can't seem to keep the herd settled in for the night.
All those little calves getting lost in the gullies. One is Valerie Plame, the CIA agent outed by someone hanging around the White House corral. Another is the Afghan war, orphaned by the Iraq campaign.

A third, the cost of the prescription drug programme, just keeps bleating from the bushes: $40bn a year as the White House promised eight weeks ago when the bill was being debated? $53.4bn as they say now that it has become law? $60bn as the administration's own analyst warned months ago but which his bosses ordered him not to share with Congress?

The president wouldn't do so well in all those small town saloons either. Too tempting to get all liquored up and then pick a fight with just about anybody for no good reason, as he's been doing since he came to Washington. The world's steel industry had to obtain a protective order to keep Bush from assaulting it.

Who knows why he's taken to beating up on scientists of every description, not just on global warming but on points that have been long settled. On evolution, for instance, he believes "the jury is still out," as he said in the last presidential campaign. Charles Darwin is damn near pre-deluvian himself, at least in the Christeo-Bush Calendar, the one that believes time began six thousand years before the birth of Mel Gibson. Besides, he wasn't even a Democrat.

The president can't even see where he's going. Last week, he stepped in the middle of Richard Clarke, his one-time terrorism tsar. Mr Clarke said the president and his staff were tone deaf to the repeated warnings they received about al-Qaida in the months leading up to September 2001 - and they still are, he added.

The way Clarke tells it, the Bush troop wanted a war against Iraq no matter how many times the intelligence services tried to warn them away. A bit reminiscent of General George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn, considering whether to chase a decoy band of warriors down a gulch where the biggest army of native Americans ever assembled was awaiting him. "Should I go down there, Scout?" he asked a Cheyenne staff member he had arrested on suspicion of betraying him.

"You go down there, General."

"Aha," says Custer. "You think that I think that because you betrayed me, I won't go down there if you tell me to. But I know you think that, so I will go down there and find the enemy unprepared, and I will eradicate him."

That was one fictional version of a conversation the morning of Custer's Last Stand. True or not, Custer died before sunset.

But we're mixing metaphors here. Back at the cow herd, even vice president Cheney can act like a stray. When the Clarke revelations broke, Cheney said the former counter-terrorism chief wasn't "in the loop". If the czar wasn't involved, no wonder there was no policy.

The Clarke revelations could have been any of a dozen other pasture pies. Take China. In the last two years China has become America's favourite credit card issuer. Every month, the US borrows $10bn from China to go shopping. Sooner or later, America will max out the cards. When that happens, interest rates could skyrocket and the dollar plummet. It doesn't sound quite that simple when the Bush administration talks about it. They talk about trade deficits and balance of payments and the strength of the dollar. That's so much pidgin.

Here's how it works. The US buys textiles, electronics and equipment from China and pays for it with dollars. At the end of every month, there is $10bn more stashed inside the People's Republic than at the start of the month.

There aren't enough mattresses in China to hold it all, so the manufacturers take their customers' payments down to the Central Bank on the corner and exchange it for renminbi, their currency. The bank collects a mountain of greenbacks in Beijing.

Meanwhile, Washington no longer has much income because it has cut taxes three times since Bush took office. It doesn't spend much more, except on war, but it no longer has enough coming in to pay its bills. It has to borrow, about $40 or $50bn a month.

To raise enough cash to keep going, the government issues IOUs in the form of bonds. (I just need some help until pay day, says the Treasury). The Chinese take the bonds and send the dollar bills back across the Pacific.

This kind of arrangement is usually self-correcting. The currency of the buyer grows weaker with each passing month, the currency of the seller rises. Eventually, the debtor nation finds that it needs much more of its currency to buy the same quantity of goods.

But the Chinese have fixed their currency against the dollar, so it will not rise - until they let it go. When they do, it will be like the lightening bolt that touches off the stampede.

Afghanistan, Plame, North Korea, trade war, old Europe, al-Qaida sleeper cells, the federal debt and all the other unsettled cows in the herd will take off together. Don't count on Bush waving his hat at the front of the stampede to turn it. He'll be driving his pony alongside as fast as it will run, firing his six shooter in the air to spur them on.

Not exactly, of course, because President Bush isn't a cowboy. He's the president. To help him stay that way, he'll drop down to South Carolina, dying textile mill territory, and promise that if re-elected, he will impose quotas on millions of dollars of Chinese textiles to help save American jobs.

That's a bit like asking your bank for a $1m mortgage, then complaining that the rates should be higher because your $100 savings account isn't paying enough interest.

As they say about some posers in Texas, "All hat, no cows".

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Commentary: Bush the true cowboy?


By Patrick Reddy
Special to United Press International


Sacramento, CA, May. 19 (UPI) -- "The life-style in Texas is marked by bravado, zest, optimism, ebullience and swaggering self-confidence. This exuberant, razzle-dazzle approach is sometimes referred to in Texas as the 'wheeler-dealer' spirit. Nobody seems to know, or care, where the term originated (in gambling halls, no doubt), but everybody knows what a wheeler-dealer is: a canny adventurous millionaire whose approach to business is strictly free-style." -- "The Super-Americans" by John Bainbridge.

"Young and eager, cocky and eternally hopeful, the West seethes with the spirit of why not?" -- Neil Morgan, "Westward Tilt: The American West Today. "

--

Frederick Jackson Turner called the West the most American of all regions. As the newest section, it has absorbed people from all over the world. Except for Florida, the population has largely been moving westward. Future President Woodrow Wilson wrote: "The West has been the great word of our history. The Westerner has been the type and master of our American life." Europeans first colonized the Eastern Seaboard before moving quickly inland, creating the first "western" frontier almost immediately. As Robert Hine and John Mack Faragher noted in their revisionist volume, "The American West: A New Interpretive History," "every part of the country was once a frontier, every region was once a West."

Pennsylvania was known as the "keystone" to the first frontier. After the Revolutionary War, Ohio was known as the "new West." St. Louis called itself "the gateway to the West." As a center of railroads and cattle stockyards and also the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail to the Southwest, Kansas City ("Crossroads of the West") then became the new western capital. And of course, the term "California Dreaming," backed by the legendary Gold Rush and Hollywood, has attracted millions of new residents (this writer included).

For two decades after the second world war, Westerns were the most popular entertainment. Staples of Western scripts included drinking, female entertainment, (inevitably) fighting and gambling (see "Maverick" with James Garner). In fact, pioneers moving to an often-dangerous frontier were literally gambling with their lives. That cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas increased their populations by more than 3,000 percent in the last century indicates that this gamble paid off for many. Based on his aggressive foreign policy, his bold political moves and the constant quest for more tax cuts, Bush has taken more risks than any president has since Roosevelt. Stylistically, "W" is much bolder than his logical and cautious father. In fact, given the high stakes he's playing for, George W. Bush might well be the ultimate western gambler.

While his father was a mixture of New England preppie and Texas oilman, George W. has always been more comfortable as a Texan. (Although born in Connecticut, he's spent more than two-thirds of his life in Texas). Western themes have oozed from Bush's career. A 1999 profile in The Economist portrayed him as "a mysterious cowboy, straight from a Clint Eastwood script, who rides into town from the west." In 2000, supporters who raised more than $100,000 for Bush were called "Pioneers." Norman Podhoretz, Michael Barone and Bill Kristol have pointed out that Bush is more like Ronald Reagan than his father. In terms of policy, that's true: He's much more conservative than his father, who raised taxes rather than cut them and who sought an international consensus instead of acting alone.

His Texas roots are crucial to understanding Bush's style. The Lone Star State has changed more than any other Southern state except Florida over the years. As V.O. Key pointed out, the discovery of oil and its attendant industrialization made Texas more western than southern. (Fort Worth is generally considered the dividing line between the Southeast and Southwest). One western trait has been tolerance: The western tradition of "rugged individualism" holds that a person is to be judged by their accomplishments rather than their background. In 1960 the West was the most heavily white region (more than 90 percent). Four decades after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, the West has been transformed into the most integrated region: 24 percent Hispanic, 10 percent Asian, 5 percent black and 2 percent American Indian. (Counting Texas as a western state makes the region even more ethnic). However conservative his policies are, George W. Bush is a true child of the '60s, appointing the first black secretary of state and national security adviser and numerous other women and minorities.

And the straight-talking westerner has long had success in campaigns: Andrew Jackson represented the "New West" beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Then came Lincoln, the "log-splitter" from the western prairies whose administration did so much to open the West with land grants and the trans-continental railroad. Theodore Roosevelt grew up in New York but was reborn on a Dakota ranch, eventually becoming a war hero, best-selling author, conservationist and the United States' first "cowboy president." Lyndon Johnson was the first Texas rancher to be president and once compared his intervention in Southeast Asia to defending the Alamo. And of course Santa Barbara rancher and former western film star Ronald Reagan was the epitome of Western politics and culture. Even eastern pols have been influenced by western mythology: Boston's John F. Kennedy dubbed his administration "the New Frontier."

The second President Bush is just the latest "cowboy politician." It's no accident that Bush used western imagery after Sept. 11, 2001, when he said Osama bin Laden was "wanted, dead or alive." And it was clearly in the western tradition when "W." launched his mano-a-mano fight against Saddam Hussein after Iraqi agents tried to assassinate members of the Bush family. Texas historian T.R. Fehrenbach attributed Texans' hawkishness on foreign policy to "frontier attitudes" from the Indian Wars. George W. Bush would make Sam Houston proud.

The spectacular growth of the West tilted the balance of power in national politics: In 1932, the Mountain West and Pacific region accounted for 12 percent of the Electoral College. As of 2004, the West will have 23 percent of electoral votes. Since JFK's death in 1963, every president elected has come from either the South or the West.

The West has also won the "style" war. Advertising is dominated by western imagery: blue jeans, cowboy boots and belts, casual shirts, ranch houses, steakhouses, pick-up trucks and sport utility vehicles all promote an easier lifestyle than in Eastern cities. Bush represents the Old West, but also parts of the high-tech "New West." His ability to carry western swing states like Arizona, Colorado and Nevada helped deliver his electoral majority in 2000. Once again, he will be depending on a coalition of the South and the West in 2004.

Bush policies on tax cuts, eliminating the inheritance tax (he wants the ranch to stay in his family) and Social Security reform to allow younger workers to choose their retirement options are modern versions of rugged individualism. The opening days of the Bush administration were not particularly controversial. His first tax cut came when there was a budget surplus, and even some Democrats voted for it. But after his approval ratings soared due to the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush Team became greatly emboldened. They pushed through a second and third wave of tax cuts in the face of huge projected deficits due to increased defense spending. Even now, the administration is trying to extend future tax cuts. The president sought and won a mandate in the 2002 mid-term elections, pumping up Republican turnout, while Democratic voters were generally unmotivated. In 2003 Bush made it clear that he would settle for nothing less than a "regime change" in Iraq. And last December, the president forced his Medicare prescription drug bill through a reluctant GOP Congress despite controversy about the costs and benefits.

Whatever Bush's political successes, he has put his party's future at risk. Just as U.S. expansion hit the limits of the West at the Pacific Ocean, conservative ideology may be reaching its limits. A deficit that is already more than $600 billion may drive a stake through the heart of a Republican Party that has had fiscal responsibility as its founding principle. Small-business people aren't likely to appreciate the doubling of the national debt in five years. There are signs that inflation is returning for the first time in more than 20 years. Since all bankers fear inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will surely raise interest rates sharply next year to keep things from getting out of hand. The result is a likely economic slowdown in time for the 2006 mid-term elections. A backlash would probably set in if U.S. soldiers are still dying on a daily basis in Iraq next year.

Bush's gambles on huge tax cuts may pay off this November as the business cycle is generating enough jobs to reduce unemployment, but his party could be set up for big losses in 2006 or 2008. Since the popular vote was instituted for the Senate in 1913, a six-year political cycle has emerged. Whenever one party has controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, there has never been a six-year period that didn't see heavy losses for the party in power. After six years, most administrations begin to run out of steam and voters are less forgiving of errors. With unified control of the government, voters know whom to blame if things go wrong

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W’s ranch spurs homely feel to President’s image

George Bush bought his Texas ranch just prior to the presidential primaries. Does this make it a true home or a PR ploy? Douglas Quenqua and Sherri Deatherage Green report.



Published in PRWeek USA , Sept. 3, 2001


All presidents have their vacation spots, and all vacation spots have their PR value. The WASPy shores of Hyannis Port helped America forget JFK’s Irish Catholic heritage; Martha’s Vineyard and its effete North-eastern vibe nearly drowned out Clinton’s Arkansas drawl; and Teddy Roosevelt, after leaving the White House but before seeking a third term, reminded everyone of the burly outdoorsman he was with a year-long African safari. And then there’s the ranch. Reagan and LBJ had theirs, and now George W. Bush has his - and the PR mileage is considerable. All last month, the morning paper and the evening news regularly featured images of the president in a cowboy hat, the president wearing denim, the president standing under a great big Texas sky. The message was clear: “This president is not a politician. He’s a Texan.” To be sure, few doubt that Bush genuinely enjoys — even needs — his time alone among the bluffs, but PR experts agree the locale also does wonders for his image.

Bush bought his ranch in 1999 as he was preparing his campaign for the presidency. So while the images spell out “ Texas man coming home to his ranch and the soil,” might the reality be closer to “Savvy politician manipulates the media with a well thought-out backdrop”?

According to Elton Bomer, the retired Texas secretary of state who assisted Bush in his purchase of the ranch, image was not a factor. “One thing I can tell you for sure: there were no PR considerations when he bought that ranch. He purchased it as a great weekend getaway, a place to go on vacation, a place where he could do some fishing.”

Bomer agrees, however, that the ranch has PR value. “It portrays to the people of the country who he really is, and that is someone who is close to the land and loves the outdoors sincerely. . . . I think people like to know that he’s a regular fellow, not a stuffy aristocrat that wants to stay behind closed doors in air conditioning.”

Whether or not Bush bought the ranch with such images in mind, his handlers are taking full advantage of the photo opportunities. “Bush’s team sees everything in the context of its potential as a photo op,” claims Mike Hailey, communications director for the Texas Democratic Party. “Camelot was a state of mind when it was associated with the Kennedys. Bush’s people hope Crawford will invoke that same sort of imagery, only with a country-western flavor.”

LBJ’s home away from home

LBJ’s ranch served much the same purpose for him. “When he first came into office, he seemed to be proud of that cowboy image,” remembers his former press secretary George Christian. “He wanted to have pictures taken riding a horse. The Westerner image was something that he cultivated. He built it up; he didn’t try to hide it.” Over time, however, LBJ found that his down-home image began to backfire.

“Later he got a little sensitive about the cowboy image. He thought that it was hurting him, that maybe the Eastern intellectuals didn’t really appreciate that and looked down on him.”

It is unlikely, however, that Bush will experience the same backlash. After all, LBJ was born on his ranch; Bush was born in New Haven , CT , a place synonymous with East Coast privilege. If anything, Bush’s time in Texas is being used to rid him of that Eastern prep-school aura. “A lot of people don’t really believe he’s from Texas ,” says Bill Cryer, former press secretary for Texas Governor Ann Richards, who Bush defeated in 1994. “I think a lot of people, especially people in Texas , see him as sort of a Northeasterner. He has to overcome (that).” Indeed, most of the cows on Bush’s ranch don’t even belong to him, local sources confirm. They belong to Kenneth Englebrecht, who now works as ranch manager and previously owned the land with his father.

The president owns just three longhorns: two cows given to him by his senior gubernatorial staff as a Christmas present in 1999, and the calf of one of them. Always quick with a nickname, Bush quickly dubbed them Elton (after Elton Bomer) and Ofelia (after his secretary, Ofelia Vanden Bosch). Unfortunately, the name “Elton” turned out to be a bit masculine for what was, in fact, a female animal; Bomer blames himself for the mistake. Once the slip-up was discovered, Bomer says the governor changed the cow’s name to Eltonia.

Local sources also confirm that the rickety ranch house seen on TV is not the one where Bush’s family actually stays. The Bush residence is on the same property, only tucked further back, where the press does not wander all day. The rickety house is a recently restored structure that predates Bush’s purchase of the land by at least several decades. What it’s used for today, nobody seems to know.

Cowboy George

So, is America buying the Cowboy George image sold by the Western White House (the same name used for LBJ’s spread), which Bush’s handlers called the ranch to offset the impression they were all on the longest presidential vacation since Nixon? Do Americans know that, while LBJ was literally coming home to his ranch, Bush is coming home to his latest real estate purchase? Does it make a difference in how they perceive him?

“If you did a poll, you’d find that 95 percent of the people couldn’t make that distinction,” claims Cryer. RG Ratcliffe, state political reporter for the Houston Chronicle, agrees. “He’s getting a lot of criticism for how much time off he’s taking, but that’s really kind of an insider game,” Ratcliffe suggests. “In terms of how the public views him, when they see him, (they see) images of him working on the ranch, him being the common man out there. That comes across pretty well. All of these images for the average American are much more positive than the image of a guy walking out to a helicopter on the White House lawn and flying out to Camp David .”