I doubt W will do a BJ and hit up Iran and Syria to contibute a lot of money to the library so he wont invade.
Ping
I fully expect Mr. President's library to be firmly planted on the SMU campus (btw... I've heard a rumor the Bushes are in the early stages of looking for a home/property in the the Dallas area... will it be Highland or University Park or Inwood or the Golden Corridor - between Preston and Hillcrest?).
Cool video. Ping
Ping in honor of Joanzie
Can we appoint the Texas Tech football coach as an advisor to the military too?
I am hoping for Texas A & M. Sort of a mirror of Bush I. It would drive the liberals in Austin nuts.
I sincerely hope West Texas doesn't get it just because it's much too out-of-the-way to get the traffic this library and museum will deserve. Dallas is a much better location.
Rally sends West Texas Coalition off to capital
Wednesday D-Day as group makes bid for Bush library
BY ELLIOTT BLACKBURN
AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
A murmur went through the Frazier Alumni Pavilion when Red Steagall began stuttering.
Earlier, a contingent of the Texas Tech Goin' Band From Raiderland had roared into the building and cheerleaders leapt and tumbled as part of a send off rally for a West Texas group that will try to win a Lubbock home for the Bush presidential library on Wednesday.
But as the DVD that contained the video portion of the group's presentation skipped and stuttered through the Texas poet laureate's narration, coalition chair David Miller could only grimace briefly and joke.
Joe Don Buckner / Staff
Texas Tech cheerleaders and band members lead a rally at the West Texas Coalition for the Bush Presidential Library send off Monday at Tech. A group of coalition representatives will pitch a Lubbock home for the Bush library to a national site selection committee Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C.
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"This is the reason we're using very little, if any, technology on Wednesday," Miller told a crowd of more than 100. "Normally, this video makes me cry for other reasons."
The West Texas Coalition for the George W. Bush Presidential Library has worked for weeks to develop a presentation that will sway a national site selection committee to name Lubbock and Midland as the homes of museum, archive, and academic facilities honoring the president.
A roughly 15-person group - all but a few of whom coalition chair David Miller has declined to identify - will begin their two-and-a-half hour presentation to the selection committee Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C.
The committee includes former Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, Bush's younger brother Marvin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and White House counsel Harriet Miers.
Miller said the group continues to refine the presentation, but was confident and ready for their 9 a.m. appointment with selection committee members.
The video highlighting the region's friendliness, potential and values would be smooth as silk, he added. The video can be viewed at The Avalanche-Journal Web site.
"We'll test and retest," Miller said. "Believe me, it won't happen up there."
Miller's group will present the video along with a thick tome with Lubbock's plans for a reading center at Midland College honoring first lady Laura Bush, an institute to study the spread of democracy, and museum and archive facilities.
The package also contains tens of thousands of letters of support from regional schoolchildren, visitors to the coalition's Web site and others.
"You will be very proud of your presentation team," Miller told the crowd.
Monday's event, thrown by the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce and the Texas Tech Alumni Association, was the last in a string of public presentations given before the coalition travels to Washington, D.C.
Every speaker expressed confidence in Lubbock's chances against competitors at Southern Methodist University and the University of Dallas in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, and at Baylor University in Waco.
Association assistant director Jim Douglass even offered a few jabs, conceding only that Dallas had highways - for better or worse - and Waco had Davidians, a reference to the religious group that made headlines during a standoff with federal agents in the early 1990s.
Lubbock had friendly people, great weather and sunsets and a sharp group of librarians waiting, he said.
"I know that no one in the state would be as appreciative as West Texas," Douglass said.
Councilman Gary Boren offered a blessing, and Miller later said faith was another major asset to the library's cause.
Tech is a public school in the running against a Methodist, Baptist, and Catholic university in the bid process, but Miller noted that area faith-based schools have signed on to the proposal to support Lubbock.
"We have bathed this project in prayer," Miller said.
Landing the library would kick off a party even bigger than the celebration held when Texas Tech came to Lubbock, said W.B. "dub" Rushing, a Lubbock builder and long-time supporter of a West Texas location for the Bush library.
The president wouldn't find better support anywhere else, and wagered Bush captured a bigger percentage of votes in Lubbock than in Dallas.