Early this week, we wrote that President Bush was spending part of his vacation "clearing cedar" on his Texas ranch, only to have several readers write to ask what clearing cedar actually means.
"Growing up in central Texas made me very familiar with the cedar trees so common and yet hated by ranchers," wrote Ronald Best, who abandoned the cedar canopy of Texas for Lakewood, Colo. "To hear that our president personally cares about his land to pitch in and clear these pesky junipers himself says a lot about why President Bush is beloved by so many Texans."
How are the cedars usually cleared?
"When I was a child, itinerant 'cedar choppers' moved from ranch to ranch, clearing and burning cedar trees," says Best. "My father once warned us about these mysterious people and when my sister and I misbehaved, (he) would tell us we could be given away to these mysterious people."
HUMBLE ARI
The dog days of August have crept into political pollster Frank Luntz's usually busy office - or so we gather from his latest poll, "Ari, We Thought We Knew Thee."
Only 27 percent of Americans, the unusual poll finds, are able to correctly answer the question: "Who is Ari Fleischer?"
And (as my ex-girlfriend would say) your point would be?
"Over the years, secretaries in presidential administrations have been criticized for grandstanding or taking advantage of their appointed powers," Luntz explains. "Not so, evidently, with recently departed White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Surely someone who was interested in self-promotion could have made quite a name for himself."
But in fairness to Luntz, there is a far more serious side to the poll.
Fleischer was the public face of the Bush White House, if not the entire country, for nearly 2½ years: from the unprecedented deadly terrorist attacks on this nation through the controversial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"He was on the news 365 days a year, yet only one in four Americans know him," observes Luntz. "That doesn't say much about the American people."
SPAMMING BUSHIES
Bryan Wilkes, a member of the Bush administration, was surprised to get "spammed" Tuesday (Aug. 13) by Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean.
"I think it's interesting that Howard Dean is spamming people to try to get support, especially since he's touting his online grass-roots efforts," Wilkes said of the candidate's mass computer e-mailing.
The former governor of Vermont brags in his generic spam message that he's attracted more than 250,000 supporters via the Internet in recent months - raising a whopping $7.6 million during one eight-day period in June.