You can call him a liar. You can call him a war criminal. You can say he is the worst President ever. None of that bothers George W. Bush--but you better not say anything about his clothes.
During his August vacation, President Bush read an article written by Marques Harper of the Austin American-Statesman. The article commented on the clothes Mr. Bush wears when he is pretending to clear brush on his fake ranch. Instead of ridiculing Bush’s cowboy costume, the article only said that Bush had “opted to look more like ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ than a sweaty, tough ranch hand.” Evidently, “Them’s fightin’ words” to tough, sweaty cowboys like George W. Bush:
- Harper received a phone call that morning from White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino, who, Harper told friends, said the president read the article and was unhappy about the way he was portrayed.-- Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts, The Washington Post, 8/14/07
Instead of getting into a narcissistic snit, Bush should have taken the comparison as a complement. He and Chuck (Walker, Texas Ranger) Norris have a lot more in common than an over-starched cowboy shirt and a ten gallon hat. Norris is the other guy who actually believes the “surge is working” and “morale is up--way up!”--at least that’s what he wrote to WorldNetDaily.com during a visit to Iraq (9/17/07).
…and by the way:
- “The new book by former Mexican President Vicente Fox states that Bush is actually afraid of horses and referred to him as a ‘windshield cowboy’, a rancher who prefers to work his spread from behind the wheel of a pickup truck.”--UPI, 9/22/07
Cowboy Bush’s “spread” consists of no horses and only five cattle (www.telegraph.co.uk, 9/21/07)
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The DP2 program is dead--may it rest in peace and never rise again. The DP2 is an aircraft that is suppose to take off vertically, like a helicopter, and fly at 700 miles per hour; but it doesn’t. Even though it has been under development for over 20 years and has cost the American taxpayer $63 million, it has never got more than a few feet off the ground before crashing.
The Pentagon has repeatedly rejected the DP2 program, but it has been kept alive by “earmarks” slipped into spending bills, mostly by Republican presidential candidate Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), who just happens to represents the district where the plane is built. Over the years, Rep. Hunter has accepted $36,000 in campaign donations from the DP2’s creator, Anthony DuPont, but denies that the contributions have any connection to his undying support for the DP2. (ABC News, 8/24/07)
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If you think the Hurricane Katrina disaster taught the Bush Administration a lesson on the importance of placing experienced professionals in key positions, you would be wrong.
Brock Bierman is the new Federal Emergency Management Agency official “charged with helping small states--from Wyoming to Rhode Island--cope with Katrina-size disasters. …He’ll also be director of FEMA’s community preparedness division, which oversees the national Citizens Corps Program.”
parachuting into close election campaigns to turn out votes for President Bush and other Republicans …[H]e has no background as a police or fire professional, or in emergency management or homeland security.” (The Providence Journal, 9/14/07)
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- “A Kansas military cemetery has run out of space after the burial of another casualty of the Iraq war, officials said on Thursday. ‘We are full,’ said Alison Kohler, spokeswoman for the Fort Riley U.S. Army post, home of the 1st Infantry Division.”--Reuters, 9/20/07
A couple of solutions have been offered to solve the problem. Fort Riley officials say they can bury bodies on top of bodies--if family members are willing to share a plot; and Kansas Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts have sent a letter to the Department of Veterans Affairs, asking for money for a new cemetery at Fort Riley. The Senators acknowledged that a new cemetery at Fort Riley would not “alleviate this situation immediately”, but still felt it was “vitally important… the least we can do is provide them with an honorable burial ground.”
No, the least we can do is to quit sacrificing lives in Iraq and never let another President start a war without informed debate and an official declaration of war from Congress. If Congress cannot free itself from the stranglehold of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned of; they better start building more military cemeteries now.
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