Cowboy Diplomacy

I thought the same thing, bronze.

Funny cartoon, but I’d guess that BO doesn’t know how to use what’s in the holster!

The incoming administration will need more than hope n change to fill President Bush’s boots that’s for sure. Can’t just pass those on, they have to be filled by someone who knows what to do with them.

Hey Dave, I’ll tell your sister you said Hi.

Now Scram!

Bronze,

Didn’t get the sister joke, guess that one’s big at your high school.

Re: George Bush the Comboy. The Connecticut Cowboy, that is.

Boy, did he sell you guys a bill of goods on that one. Obama, the effete elitist. Bush, the tough man of the people. The man of the people who went to high school at Andover, one of the most elite private prep schools in America. He then went on to Yale (as a legacy) and Harvard.

The Texas thing? Big act. He went to *junior high* in Midland. And Midland? – not exactly Dodge City. There were enough Ivy League graduates when GWB was growing up in that simple litte Texas burg that they had a Princeton, Harvard, and Yale alumni club.

It takes more than walking with a spread leg swagger, talking like you’ve got a dip of Cope in your mouth, and posing clearing brush on your ranch, to make you a cowboy, rather than a spoiled rich kid.

Dave Noble said: The Texas thing? Big act. He went to *junior high* in Midland. And Midland? – not exactly Dodge City. There were enough Ivy League graduates when GWB was growing up in that simple litte Texas burg that they had a Princeton, Harvard, and Yale alumni club.

It takes more than walking with a spread leg swagger, talking like you’ve got a dip of Cope in your mouth, and posing clearing brush on your ranch, to make you a cowboy, rather than a spoiled rich kid.

Ouch, Dave… suffering from the new socially accepted and spread, progressive disease called class envy there? Since Obama, it’s become quite the rage. Congrats on being in vogue, guy.

So if you’re wealthy, you can’t be a “cowboy”? Oddly enough, many huge spreads are wealthy landowners, and are very “cowboy”.

Odd that the “cowboy” moniker was a liberal media invention, meant as an insult of course. Now I see many instances where the Bush haters are poo poohing him as a “rancher” because of satellite photos of the home.. (like you can see details while viewing 1600 acres… duh)

But just so you have your class envy suit on straight, there is no just “posing” clearing the underbrush on Bush’s Crawford ranch. It’s the real deal, and is his thing for relaxation and exercise. Plus he ropes (that’s a joke, son…) aides into theraputic brush clearing as well.

And to straighten out another internet insult, he does keep a small herd of cattle on the acreage. But cattle are a high maintenance livestock, not exactly a good 2nd job choice for a POTUS who may prefer to be more hands on with his gentleman ranch.

But Bush is a “cowboy”… wealthy or not. Then again, I doubt he gives a flying pig whether you, and the rest of the know it all urbanites, have a clue to the work it takes to keep up on acreage… or even a small handful of livestock.

Really, Dave Noble…. I’m “outraged” and “emotional”?? LOL You haven’t cyber-seen me “outraged”, guy. When I am, you’ll know it. But it’s hardly at you. And this doesn’t even register on my “emotional” meter.

But I do have a “disdain” meter… it got a bounce.

I don’t know that you’re an urbanite, but your political positions are distinctly urbanite. If you’re a country guy, you must be one lonely dude. And a chainsaw and a tree doesn’t make you an acreage owner. I know people with 5000sf lots who can wield a chain saw….

You, however, have a grand amount of class envy (another urbanite trait)… especially when it comes to Dubya. Unless you’re his next door neighbor, and/or former classmate, I’d suggest you label your personal judgments of him as nothing more than editorial slams. (opinions formed as a result of not an auto-biography, but some author with who knows what as a personal opinion)

Or feel free to continue to expose more of the class envy denizen, bitterly clinging to his Obama campaign promises, that you appear to be.

And oh yes, I’m sure that your life of achievements done “on your own” surpass that of a Texas Governor and POTUS. By gawd, you do have the chutzpah. (oooooo… the “outrage” I demonstrate… LOL!)

I’d say give it a rest on the personal slams with your BDS, Dave. Like I said, I doubt he cares what you, Dave Noble, think. And personally, I don’t think you’d recognize a modern “cowboy” if he ran over you in his Land Rover, Jeep or Ford pick up while herding cattle.

Mata,

Sorry should read:

What in the flying hell are “urbanite views?” I didn’t want to dilute that point with a typo.

Feel better Dave Noble?

Haven’t a clue to “urbanite” political view points? Now why do you think rural America, fly over country, and the urban centers are generally opposite on elections and policy?

No Mama Bear in me, and Bush doesn’t need my help in defence. Frankly, with all the sheeeeet from the press and personal insults from Congress all these years, the man has got one tough hide. And just so you know, after this bail out bit, I’d like to corner him myself with a few choice words.

But my criticisms of him is of his policies (mostly domestic)…. not his personal life as you attacked. INRE your asinine statement:

He spent his entire life being covered for by his Dad and his Dad’s friends and business associates. Not that my life is a paradigm of achievement, but what I have accomplished, I accomplished on my own.

Last I looked, Daddy Bush & company don’t control the Texas, nor the US electorate. Your statement is nothing but class envy and hatred…. a “distraction”…. got those Obama favored Alinsky talking points down, don’t you? Everything you said is all about how privileged you believe Bush is.

And if I finished my Administration with our troops tied down in two countries, the economy heading for a Depression, and an approval rating in the lower quartile, I’d say I’d failed. I’d rather do a small job well, then blow a big one. We don’t know what Obama will do, but unfortunately we know what Bush has done.

Yes yes… and all the world was rosy before Bush came into office. Your next door neighbor farts, and it must be Bush’s fault. Ya know, Dave, that you insist on blaming all the economic and world’s ills on Bush really takes you to a new low in mental analysis and knowledge of current socio and economic events in the last couple of decades. But if it makes you feel good… go for it. Just don’t expect me to give you a prozac nod of agreement.

Frankly, I’m really tired of you BDS types running down this man with your personal insults and slams. I’ve had to listen to it for six years, so today I feel quite free to wave the fly swatter at stupid crap like you laid out as I pass thru a thread. Is it high on my emotional meter? Nope… but my disdain at your whining, exaggerated falsehoods and unqualified criticisms warrants the cyber tongue to weigh in.

I’m angry about what Bush has done to this country. No, things were not rosy before, but this has been a terrible eight years. And only an unthinking or self-deceptive partisan would argue otherwise.

Why is it not the converse: That only an unthinking or self-deceptive partisan would believe that it’s been a terrible 8 years, because of Bush?

I’d still like to know your biography recommendations upon which you are basing your character assessment of Dubbya as getting by on life, strictly because of privilege.

This is old news. Historians of this ilk make me want to puke all over academia. I wonder if any of them signed onto this, as well? President Bush’s time in office isn’t even over yet, let alone seeing things from 50 years down the road, and they’re writing him off as the worst president? They’re idiots. They may “know” their history (so claims their diplomas), but they certainly can’t distinguish from their own biased opinions and absorb current events with clarity and thorough research. Historians don’t distinguish themselves as being somehow objective, detached observers; they’re just as partisan as the rest of us.

Of course, the public, being less informed regarding history than professional historians isn’t too far removed from the historians perspectives on Bush’s presidency: they give it an approval rating of around 25%.

Why don’t you try “being misinformed by them”? Looks to me like the historians are just as brainwashed by the media distortions as the “less informed” public you speak of.

I’d say Sam Pender has more knowledge on the history of what got us into the Iraq War than any of those so-called historians. And to my knowledge, he did so without a PhD to his name.

Love this part:

That was in the spring of 2004. In the meantime, Bush has established himself as the torture president, the basis for his invasion of Iraq has been exposed as a fraud, the Iraq War itself has gone disastrously, the nation’s network of alliances has faded, and the economy has gone into a tailspin–not to mention the bungled handling of relief for victims of hurricane Katrina. In 2004, only 12 percent of historians were ready to place Bush dead last.

Here are some of the comments that the historians furnished:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of areas: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

The BDS is so transparent. Can you not see it?

The Treatment of Bush has been a Disgrace
What must our enemies be thinking?

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.

According to recent Gallup polls, the president’s average approval rating is below 30% — down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, “Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.”

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president’s original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country’s current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, “We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.”

To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman’s low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.

Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman’s presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years — and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty — a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry’s legal team during the presidential election in 2004.

Don’t go lumping Parker in with the same crowd as Will and Buckley Jr.

claiming bias, at the media

There are those who are uninformed and then there are those who are misinformed. I blame the latter case on the mainstream media which even Mark Halperin of Time magazine readily admits.

“It’s the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war,” [ed. failure to force the United States to run like cowards?] Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. “It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.”

Halperin, who maintains Time’s political site “The Page,” cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.

WaPo admitted this the following week after the Election:

It’s like we’re living in a alternative universe. Now the MSM is admitting that they showed a complete and utter bias towards Obama…..NOW! When it’s too late to do anything about it. Just yesterday Mike posted on the Newsweek writers who hid the character concerns they had about the one. Now the WaPo has jumped into the act:

The [Washington] Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

My assistant, Jean Hwang, and I have been examining Post coverage since Nov. 11 last year on issues, voters, fundraising, the candidates’ backgrounds and horse-race stories on tactics, strategy and consultants. We also have looked at photos and Page 1 stories since Obama captured the nomination June 4. Numbers don’t tell you everything, but they give you a sense of The Post’s priorities.

The count was lopsided, with 1,295 horse-race stories and 594 issues stories. The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts’ views. There were no broad stories on energy or science policy, and there were few on religion issues.

Why would this imbalance exist?

Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Post reporters, photographers and editors — like most of the national news media — found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.

~~~

When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.

Last week, John Zogby and filmmaker John Ziegler released the following poll:

Zogby Poll

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet…..

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we “gave” one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

Watch the video here. Is there ignorance equivalency on the conservative side? Sure. But when more voters- doesn’t matter Republican or Democrat- know with knee-jerk speed the answer to “which candidate has the pregnant teenage daughter?” but don’t know the details of William Ayers and his association to Barack Obama (it’s the education reform, stupid), then I’d say the serious arm of the news media has failed to do its role in critical analysis for the sake of the people. When the media is in the tank for one party, we get Mexico.

Victor Davis Hanson:

The point is that somewhere around early to mid-2007 ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, Newsweek, Time, etc. chose to become — in the manner that they selected, emphasized, and presented their news stories — a quasi-official Obama media, or at least a quasi-official what-they-thought-Obama-was news media. Chris Matthews’ asinine statement about his investment in the success of the Obama administration was merely a crude summation of the creed of the more sober and judicious.

I don’t really think they can now pull off an Animal-Farm-like ‘two-legs were bad’, ‘now two-legs good’ complete turn-about just because they’ve taken over the manor. I do think that the media’s unprofessional lobbying for the cause of Obama — not now, but in a decade or two — will become a classic case study in any graduate class on journalistic ethics.

Amanda Carpenter:

John Ziegler didn’t know the kind of fury the left would unleash on him when he unveiled his web video “How Obama Got Elected.”

The ten-minute short featured 12 interviews he conducted with Obama supporters at Los Angeles polling stations on Election Day and the final product wasn’t flattering to liberals. His subjects couldn’t answer basic questions like “Who controls Congress” and “Who is Nancy Pelosi” or “Who is Harry Reid.” They could, however, correctly answer questions about GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and wardrobe budget without any problem.

The web video spread like wildfire around the internet, getting more than 1.4 million views. Ziegler plans to include the interviews in a forthcoming film titled “Media Malpractice…How Obama Got Elected.”

See his website and video here.

What does it say about our culture that gets its information/opinions shaped by the likes of Jon Stewart and SNL? As latenight comedians put it, they couldn’t find anything funny about Obama. He’s the dignified, serious cerebral candidate with the halo.

John Harwood:

I don’t think they are hacks for the Democratic Party. People write about what’s funny to them. And the stuff that’s funny to them is, is the stuff that comes out of what they see that they want to make fun of from Republicans.

This bias is nothing new. It’s been with us longer than the last 8 years, as well.

Word,

So, historians who disagree with you are “idiots” who make you “puke?” That not a very thoughful response. I figure I got off light when you accused me of being in a “kool-aid induced stupor”

You are in the 25% minority who approve of the President’s performance and the rest of us are kool-aid intoxicated, MSM-brainwashed fools who have not seen the light shining so brightly for you, the pure-minded. Now that’s an elitist atttitude, if I ever heard one.

And what has immunized you from the brainwashing that sanjay and I and so many others have succumbed to? Spending time here at FA? If you think you’re getting an unbiased presentation of the facts here you’re very wrong.

Here’s my earlier post that didn’t get through:

Word,

I would recommend “American Dynasty” by Kevin Philips.

Are all of our problems directly attributable to George Bush? No. But when he’s been running the country for eight years with his own party in control of Congress for six of those years, it beggars belief to suggest that he did not play a substantial role in a large number of the problems the nation faces at the close of his Administration.

Ya know, Jan aka Sanjay, it’s rather premature to pass judgment on the Bush effect on the world. You might want to dance in the streets about what you consider a schism in your own intellectual [GOP] camp,” but time must pass to see what has begun under Bush becomes, in the Middle East, as Iraq and Afghanistan evolve.

When Bush took office, Pakistan was a nuke armed enemy, Libya was embarking on a WMD programme, Iraqis were living under a despot, and the Taliban were safely nestled in as power in Afghanistan, playing host to Bin Laden. Jihad was viewed favorably with a high percentage of the Muslim world.

When Bush took office, the 911 suicide pilots had trained under Clinton’s nose, and the N. Koreans had conned him and Albright (in two party talks) into believing they weren’t seeking nuke weapons. The global Islamic jihad movements had declared war on the US in the World Islamic Statement of 1998, including both Bin Laden (AQ) and al Zawahiri as EIJ… as well as two other major jihad movements. The jihad movement had already struck the WTC in 1993, and attacked a US warship in Yemen.

All of that has now changed to more favorable conditions and future, under President George W. Bush.

But it is all Bush’s fault.

The economy had already started a downturn before Bush took office, the CRA regs were already in place for the subprime debacle under Clinton’s Treasury Sec’y, Bob Rubin… who’s busy getting a hand out for Citigroup today… and 2001 took our economy into a death spiral prematurely. Greenspan… who has spanned multiple administrations… kept the rates so low as to increase the problems with the subprime by causing runaway inflation prices on homes.

But it is all Bush’s fault.

Yep, Jan…. you may go to sleep tonight feeling you’re in good company for those who believe Bush is the worst POTUS in US history.

Then again, the world was once convinced the world was flat too.

Boy Sanjay, where do you live? On planet Saturn or what? Bush was one of your greatest President and was also a very fine man. I think you must be reading too much of the MSM bullshit… lol

I often believe that we liberals make a huge mistake criticizing Bush for is personal life, rather than his political policy. Aren’t we being a bit hypocritical when we point the finger at his drug/alcohol use, grades in school, or relationship with his father, and then get outraged by illegal wire tapping and invasion of privacy? POTUS is a citizen and a human being, just like the rest of us, and deserves the same privacy as the rest of us. Yet, he hasn’t used email in eight years, as they automatically become archived and public record.

I’m reading here a lot of criticism here towards Obama, based on his personal life (church going habits, smoking, ect…). How do we take a stance against the Right behaving this way if we’re doing the same thing on the Left?

Just a thought.

What is it with these leftwing moonbats that even when they win an election they are still so unhappy they have nothing better to do than attempt to hijack a thread like this and continue to spit their poison.

Maybe we should just put up a photo of President Bush once a day on a separate post just for them so they can continue to vent their irrational, puerile rage.

Here you go, have at it. But don’t continue to bore us all to death with this crap on every single post from here to eternity:

You people have more bile than brains and you should be ashamed of yourselves!

@Mike’s America:

You got that right Mike, vile, partisan, hackery spit, this character is drenched in it.

Love the photo, hubby has one of the President out working on the ranch, just like HE does EVERY week end, weather permitting, on our farm. Bad weather puts him working inside, I’m a week end farmer widow. He has done a six and a half hour drive every weekend since we bought the place in 1985. He knows exactly why the President loves to cut brush.

He has two photos of President Reagan, one with his horse and another of President Reagan in a Jeep Scrambler, his favorite. Hubby restored a 82 Scrambler, it’s up on mounts in his barn in a corner by the framed photos and his “I voted for Bush bumper sticker. BTW, hubby’s barn is paneled in knotty pine, has central air, satillite tv, phone, an electronic dart board, fridge for beer, micro wave for snacks and lots of other manly stuff. Never had an animal in it though, maybe a *kitten* some day soon. Just mentioning this because I don’t want anyone to think we would display presidential photos in an undignified way and….. to tick off some of the moonbats that can’t seen to control themselves in an adult manner. >wink<

Fair and balanced…for Jan:

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i294/serr8d/photochops/Barakstan.jpg

Jan… what can I say? “increasingly hysterical generation” or a “generation of whiners”… you wear those shoes well.