Bush gimmick funds his re-election

San Antonia Express-News via the Houston Chronicle ^ | April 10, 2004, 12:58AM | By JAN JARBOE RUSSELL

[.cnI redruM]

Dial 1-800-WAHAAHH! If george Soros REALLY cared so much, he'd use his money to build daycare centers, not mess around with grubby politics.

[Smartass]

SO WHAT?

[no dems]

And the point of this article is.........?

[tet68]

Hey Jan, bite me! Everybody knows there aren't any liberals in heaven, they're all down below with the lawyers.

In any event, don't be bringing the Marines into this,
you didn't have a problem with this sort of thing when
Bill Clinton was fundraising the Chinese.

[Clara Lou]

What about the Dean "gimmick" and the Kerry "gimmick"?

[weegee]

In the 1840s, my great-grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick, arrived in Texas when it was still under Mexican rule.

She needs to go back to History class. The Battle Of San Jacinto (which shortly followed the fall of the Alamo) occurred on April 21, 1836.

Mexico was not running Texas in the 1840s.

Also to clarify, Samuel Maverick came to this area in 1835 (so yes he was in Texas under Mexican rule but briefly).

You'd think someone living in San Antonio, writing about family history in Texas the weekend "The Alamo" opens would know better. At least if she's going to whine about others using the word.

Here's Leon Hale's take from earlier this year.

Probably the version nearest fact is in the New Handbook of Texas. This is a husky six-volume reference published by the Texas State Historical Association, an organization that does its best to cull the fiction out of our state's history. Not an easy job, especially when we've got folklorists making daily contributions of legends and myths.

The handbook tells us that in the 1840s Samuel Maverick moved for two or three years from San Antonio to the Texas coast. Lived at Decros Point in Matagorda County.

While there, a fellow who owed him $1,200 paid off the debt with 400 head of cattle. Apparently Maverick wasn't enthusiastic about ranching on the Gulf Coast. When he moved back to San Antonio he left those cattle in the care of a family that didn't take care of them well. A lot of the calves were not branded and of course were running free.

So, when local folks saw an unbranded calf they referred to it as "one of Maverick's," and eventually called it simply a maverick.

Writers of cowboy fiction have long been fascinated by this story and versions keep popping up.

Recently I ran across an offshoot of the story in Wolfville Days, a book written in 1902 by Alfred Henry Lewis. An old cattleman in this book tells tales about life in Arizona when it was a territory. One day he used the word "maverick," and a greenhorn asked what it meant.

Long ago, says the old cowman, before fences came to the range, all the ranchers in Texas got together about branding cattle. (Getting all the ranchers in Texas together even long ago would have been a fancy trick.) Each rancher described how he would brand his cattle, and these brands were recorded in a great book.

"A old longhorn named Maverick," says the storyteller, announced at the meeting that since everybody but he had declared a brand, without objection he wouldn't do any branding at all, so any unbranded animal on the range would be recognized as belonging to him.

Nobody objected (if you can imagine that), and within 10 years Maverick had gathered thousands of unbranded calves that were missed on roundups or strayed from their mamas, and so he became in this way a major Texas rancher.

Furthermore, according to Lewis' storyteller, it came out that this fellow had bamboozled everybody in the cow business, because in the beginning the only livestock he owned were a few scrawny steers, and not one mother cow that might have an honest calf.

Which is a story you might still tell for the truth in Arizona, but not in Texas.

[Buck W.]

"The country may be going broke..."

Really? What a shameful technique: float a false but believable statement, then build your thesis on it. The paper's editors should have more integrity that to let this high school newspaper trick get printed.

[evilC]

Well, kiddo, there are more liberals in heaven these days than on Earth ...

Well there is his first lie.

[weegee]

The "revived" public Media Schadenfreude and and Media Shenanigans lists:

Freepmail An Amused Spectator to get on/off this list.

[RichInOC]

And this is new how?

[bayourod]

"that boy Bush."

Is Pat Buchanan writing for liberal papers under the name "Jan Jarboe Russell " now?

[RetroSexual]

Well, kiddo, there are more liberals in heaven these days than on Earth, that's for sure.

That sounds like my personal Hell!

[kcvl]

About the author...

http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/columns/jjrussell/bioMaina.htm

[weegee]

My father was run out of politics because he refused to deny free speech to a small group of communists.

Another useful idiot working in the service of Joseph Stalin.

[zbigreddogz]

Sombody please post the Democratic National Committee symbol for me please.

[Unicorn]

Sicko

[bayourod]

"that boy Bush."

Is Pat Buchanan writing for liberal papers under the name "Jan Jarboe Russell " now?

[weegee]

She has written hundreds of magazine articles and her stories have been seen in The New York Times, George magazine, Talk magazine, Good Housekeeping, Working Woman, Slate and Redbook. She has been a frequent contributor to National Public Radio, and a guest on both the Today show and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Her editors should be sure to look over her works more closely if she is going to make such obvious historical blunders as to when Mexico rule what became the Republic of Texas and then the state that is now Texas.

Perhaps they should ALL be emailed.

[weegee]