YUP, if this doesn't top it all off...thanks for coming out George!!

Whites-only gated community in Houston

Bush Ditches His Ranch for Ritzier Digs in Dallas
By Leslie Savan, TheNation.com
Posted on December 13, 2008, Printed on December 13, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/112437/

So it's official: George W. Bush is not a cowboy. We pretty much
suspected he wasn't when we learned that, for all his bow-legged
strutting, the man's afraid of horses. But last week, Bush let the
other Lucchese boot drop: He and Laura bought a $2 million, fancy-
pants house in Dallas's toniest neighborhood and will soon be high-
tailin' it out of that eight-year-old stage set of a "ranch" in
Crawford. Any uncleared brush can go clear itself.



Oh, the couple will undoubtedly drop by the old chuckwagon, do some
weekends maybe (and it could well become the safe-house George
retreats to when, and if, the long pent-up Furies finally claim his
mind). But the move to Dallas is a 180 from what Laura told USA Today
during a ranch tour in April, 2001, that she and George "want to grow
old here."

Instead, the Bushes' old growth will take place primarily at a
refurbished 1959 home in the upscale neighborhood of Preston Hollows,
just blocks from other powerfuls, like Ross Perot, Senator Kay Bailey
Hutchison, Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban, and Texas Rangers'
owner Tom Hicks, who bought the business from previous owner George,
making him even wealthier. A Dallas realtor described the exclusive
area (literally: until 2000, a neighborhood covenant deemed it for
whites only, making an exception for servants) as one where many
"older homes are being torn down and big new ones, mega-mansions, are
being put up in their place."

Bush's Western White House was a bit like that too: a 1,583-acre
McRanch, a former pig farm actually, bought in 1999 to de-
Kennebunkport George during his initial run for the presidency. The
brand new, one-story ranch house--with geothermal heating and other
eco features that were good enough for him and his but not the
country--was supposed to be finished by Election Day 2000. It's not
clear whether it was plumbing or stolen-election problems that caused
the delay, but the home wasn't ready until after the Inaugural.

Bush imagineers Karl Rove and Karen Hughes didn't exactly broadcast
the spanking newness of the place, because the idea was to make it
seem more like a homestead, handed down not by the Bush family (as
Yale and Skull'n'Bones were), but as something distinctly W's, his
true home, as if the switchgrass itself had curled its tendrils up
through New England and around George's belt loops to pull him back to
the east Texas soil where he rightly belonged.

A ranch, a place where bulls theoretically roam, seems to dial up the
manliness of any commander-in-chief: Reagan had a ranch, so did fellow
Texan Lyndon Johnson, in contrast to Jimmy Carter who, as the GOP
never tires of noting, had a "peanut farm." With a ranch, Bush could
pre-empt any mortifying Newsweek covers, like the "Fighting the Wimp
Factor" one his father suffered in 1987.

If he couldn't ride a horse, and wouldn't even pose on one, 43 could
clear some mean brush. As former Texas agriculture commissioner Jim
Hightower, who dubbed the Crawford digs a "ranchette," said in 2004,
"Bush is always inviting the media out to take pictures of him
clearing brush. In my experience real ranchers spend virtually no time
clearing brush. They're usually tending cattle....the cattle you see
as part of the photo op aren't even his. They're somebody else's that
he rents the land to."

But as we all know, it made a smashing backdrop, and most media are
backdrop fools, much as they were for Bush's Mission Accomplished
aircraft carrier backdrop. Long after Bush had come to be seen around
the world as all hat and no cattle in every embarrassing way, his
rough-hewn cowboy image lived on in the media. To this day Europeans
knock his "cowboy diplomacy," perhaps not realizing how cool that
sounds to the chickenhawks who, like *** Cheney, scratch in the dirt
of American exceptionalism.

If portraying George as a cherished Western archetype made the media's
story-telling job easier, it also made any reporting that pierced the
hype just seem off, if not also wrong and school-marmish.
Geomythologies can work anywhere. The awful reality of Sarah Palin
was, and still is, buffered by the very snow of kute'n'kooky Alaska.
Which is one reason the media slathered over Sarah: A gal who can skin
and dress a moose is the true heir of Bush's faux frontier spirit.

As for creating a post-presidency image, Rove, Hughes, and gang are
hard at work on the "Bush legacy project," setting up mealy "exit
interviews" on network TV and issuing talking points for officials to
mouth when they discuss Bush in public. Most laughably, they claim he
has upheld "the honor and the dignity of his office," code among the
morally shortsighted for not having sex in the Oval Office--as if
there is no dishonor in lying a country into war, nor any indignity in
torturing helpless captives.

Some of those exit interviews, however, do reveal the new, probably
unintentional Bush persona that is shaping up: not cowboy but cowed
boy. He's the pleasantly henpecked, suburban house-husband, bumpin'
around the kitchen, getting underfoot, submitting to Laura's will, as
she drags him by the spurs from the ranch back to civilization.

"She's got this great, idyllic vision of me kind of with a little
apron on that says 'Barney's Dad' on it, flipping burgers," Bush told
NBC news. At times he looks ashen, as if she was holding him together,
almost as if she realizes that he's a fragile husk. The buzz is that
she could sell her memoir for millions, but he might not even be able
to "replenish the old coffers" with speaking fees, once upon a time
his idea of a gold-plated presidential 401k.

The move from the ranch, which Laura never much liked anyway, and
George's creeping dependency on her, have been underway at least since
July. That's when, at a private Houston fundraiser, a cellphone camera
caught the reformed alcoholic president explained the economic crash
by saying, "Wall Street got drunk...and now it's got a hangover." Bush
had to shout over the rising laughter as went on to say that the
"housing issue"--a reference to the toxic mortgage securities that
were destroying the global financial system--wasn't a problem in
Houston, whose loyal Republican wealthy were toasting him at the
fundraiser, "and evidently not in Dallas, 'cause Laura's over there
trying to buy a house today." Horselaughs rip through the room as
someone yells out, "What about Crawford?"

"I like Crawford. Unfortunately, after eight years of asking her to
sacrifice, I am no longer the decision maker," he said, adding, "I did
tell her, 'We've been on government pay now for 14 years, so go
slow.'"

On the big wide screen of stereotypes, if a ranch masculates, house-
husbandry emasculates. But such weakness could provide Bush with just
the patina of innocence, even infantilization, that someone who
refuses to ever accept responsiblity needs. It's like his recent
admission that he was "unprepared for war"--who can blame him for
failures he could not foresee? Those of us who have reviled his
administration and longed for the day when justice would take its eye
for an eye are supposed to stay our hand now, like Mel Gibson does at
the end of "Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome." After Mel finally knocks
the orc-metal helmet off the evil MasterBlaster, he's shocked to find
it hid an innocent, baby-faced mongoloid.

Do you want to take revenge on Barney's Dad?
.