Tuesday, August 30, 2005

El Rancho del Pendejo The LA Times questions whether Bush's Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford is really a ranch. . . .  with a handful of cattle now on the property, some Texans suggest that calling the place a ranch could be considered a stretch. "There are some guys that are all hat and no cattle. The president's not that way; he's hat and five cattle," joked Austin lawyer and former U.S. Rep. Kent R. Hance, who as a Democrat beat Bush in a 1978 congressional race by portraying him as an Ivy League interloper. It's probably a tax dodge, the same way Steve Forbes keeps a few head of cattle on his property in New Jersey and calls it a farm.  I actually could have driven a half hour east yesterday to not to the Prairie Chapel Ranch, but to Rancho Cucamonga -- an area of suburban sprawl that's even less of a ranch than Bush's spread -- to see Bush in person, but it hardly seemed worth the effort to hear the same old lies I can get on TV and radio, and I'm sure they wouldn't have let me in, since as usual his audience was hand-picked to allow only supporters, lest he be traumatized by having to confront substantive questions.  The opposition assembled outside: In Rancho Cucamonga, 40 miles east of Los Angeles, hundreds of anti-war protesters chanting "Impeach Bush" and carrying sigs that said "Bush lies, soldiers die" and "War is terrorism" stood on a corner . . . . The increasing number of such demonstrations shows that no matter what the number of cattle Bush has on his ranch, the American populace is not as bovine as it used to be. 2:30:14 PM