On the road to the ranch
Cattle near the ranch
Tonkawa Park
Posted on 09/30/2004 6:59:07 AM PDT by Mike Fieschko
CRAWFORD — Photos of President Bush hugging diners and mugging for the camera adorn the walls of the Crawford Coffee Station, a popular cafe in this small Central Texas town Bush calls home.
Just a few miles from the Bush ranch, the spot is a popular place for locals to gather in the morning for coffee, breakfast and a glance at the day's news.But the rack that once held the Lone Star Iconoclast — Crawford's weekly newspaper — now is empty, thanks to a blistering indictment in Tuesday's paper of Bush's presidential record and a call to elect Democrat John Kerry in November.
For a town drenched in Bush, the editorial is practically political heresy.
"Not only is he the president of the United States, he's my neighbor, he's my customer," Coffee Station owner Nick Spanos said. "We're not carrying that paper after today."
The firestorm began Tuesday morning, when readers opened up the newspaper to Page 2 and found an entire half-page criticizing the president for a variety of failings, and calling for the election of Kerry.
By the afternoon, news of the editorial was burning up Internet blogs and e-mail boxes all over the country.
Iconoclast publisher W. Leon Smith, who co-wrote the editorial with two other writers, is unapologetic.
"We're just trying to point out the direction the country's going in, and it's not good," he said.
Smith is majority owner of the Iconoclast, the Record of nearby Clifton and the Bosque Globe. He's also the mayor of Clifton and a Democrat who was defeated twice in campaigns for the Texas House of Representatives.
Now, Smith has become an iconoclast in his own right, challenging the widely declared belief that Crawford and its environs are "Bush Country."
The Iconoclast was founded in 2000, after the November election, but before Bush was declared the winner in a highly controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision.
During that murky month, the newspaper endorsed Bush, Smith said.
The newspaper also backed Bush's call for normalcy after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supported the resolution to go to war with Iraq — proof, he said, the paper is not out to get the president.
But this editorial has caused waves at the offices of the Clifton Record, where all three papers are produced.
Wednesday, staffers were busy putting together the Record, which hits stands today.
They also were busy fielding phone call after phone call from curious journalists, emotional readers, and angry advertisers.
"Some of them do use colorful language," marketing director Melanie Milbradt said with a grin.
As of Wednesday morning, more than a dozen readers had canceled their subscription and six advertisers had pulled their spots from the paper.
Smith expects there will be more, and he's preparing for the worst.
"It will probably put us under," he said.
Smith's desk at the Record offices is piled with paper, and his cubicle is filled with Mickey Mouse paraphernalia — two clocks, posters and even his computer screensaver.
He pulled up his computer e-mail inbox, filled with messages of varying intensity.
Smith said about 75 percent of them applaud the editorial, but the remaining fourth border on vitriol.
"It really appears to be me that we no longer live in an open society," he said. "When you get to the point where you can't express an opinion, then you're in trouble."
Smith said too many voters suffer from an emotional attachment to a person, particularly when that person happens to be president of the United States, and he lives a few miles down Prairie Chapel Road.
"We're not electing a king or an emperor, we're hiring somebody," he said, matter-of-factly. "Do they work every day like everyone else and get the job done or not?"
The Clifton Record has not yet endorsed a candidate, but Smith said the paper's editorial writers will get together soon. The choice likely will anger more readers.
In Crawford, where the Iconoclast doesn't even have an office, the slap at the town's most famous resident — and tourist attraction — is being taken personally.
"Good Lord, of all the places that George Bush could have chosen to live, he chose Crawford. This is kind of like a stab," said Larry Nelson, manager of Crawford Country Style, a store that sells "Western White House" souvenirs.
Wednesday, St. Louis residents Jerry and Barbara Tuma were passing through Crawford on a cross-country trip.
They said they also were upset by the editorial.
"If you don't have something nice to say about your neighbors, say nothing," Jerry Tuma said. "Let the big papers with 15 people analyzing this stuff write about it."
I guess he prefers going in LOTS of bad directions with John "Ambivalent" Kerry.
Oooo Weee! Pee on a flat rock and it gets around to ever one.
The free market is about to operate efficiently...
God I am so tired of these liberals cry "OMG no Free Press! Where is my Freedumb Of Speech???" whenever they lose business for spewing their propaganda in public. If you are an editorial writer/singer/actor and you make outrageous public statements, it's going to turn reasonable people off. You are free to vomit whatever bile you want, but people don't have to listen to it and certainly don't have to pay to hear it.
"It really appears to be me that we no longer live in an open society," he said. "When you get to the point where you can't express an opinion, then you're in trouble."
Mr. Smith is mistaken. He can express his opinion all he wants. But there is no right to be heard.
Actions have consequences, buddy.
It might be a fun project for the pajamma clad crowd here at FR to research W. Leon Smith's political affiliation, donations to candidates, etc.
Nobody stopped him from expressing anything. What a dunce. Some people just don't "get it". For example, you have the perfect right to go to Harlem and scream "Ni**er" over and over on the street corner. You might not get to scream that word there for a long time but you sure have the right to do it as long as you can get away with it before someone else expresses their own rights.
Sounds like people looking for publicity, to me.
Spoken like a true Kool-Aid drinker. The twit doesn't understand economics and a person's right to choose how he spends his money. He would probably be much happier if there was a mandate that said we had to buy his paper, no matter how much we detested it...
""It really appears to be me that we no longer live in an open society," he said. "When you get to the point where you can't express an opinion, then you're in trouble."
Ya see Mr.Smith. This is your problem.
If the PEOPLE disagree with you, then they have every right to cancel their subscriptions and pull their advertising.
That's what an OPEN SOCIETY is!
But never expect a Liberal to understand that, because to them, if you don't agree with them, then YOU are wrong!
What a loser!
THANKS for posting that. We have been to Crawford MANY times on our way to and from Lubbock and Houston. Beautiful country. We always stop at the gift shops and buy things that have the President's name on them. Cups, shirts, buttons, etc. The town has those gift shops due only to Pres. Bush. Once he is out of office, those shops will have no business and will have to close. There are at least three big shops that sell Bush merchandise. The newspaper is biting the hand that feeds it.
Isn't that what the advertisers and subcribers who are dropping the paper doing - expressing an opinion? The free speech thing works both ways you know.
What is it with stupid Texas democrats (like Dan Rather)?
It's called the free market, Mr. Smith.....you are free to publish your opinions, and the people are free to cancel their subscriptions to your biased newspaper. Duh.
"When you get to the point where you can't express an opinion, then you're in trouble."
No, Leon, it's the opinion you (freely) expressed that caused the trouble. Please continue! Your subscribers will do exactly what you advocate...fire a publication that no longer meeting their needs. After all, you're not a king or emperor, either (regardless of what Dan Rather told you).
I cancelled my subscription before I subscribed!
Um, Mr. Smith, nobody pays me for my opinion; in fact I feel obligated to contribute to Free Republic because it publishes my postings for me.If nobody wants to pay you for your opinion, wecome to the club. No hard feelings, and nothing is wrong with the First Amendment, thank you very much.
There is a de facto thing called freedom of commerce. You don't like the product, you don't buy it. It's just that simple.
No one stopped you from expressing your opinion. (Although one might argue that a true friend would have.) You're simply have to cope with the repercussions of your own actions. I hope your 15 minutes of fame was worth it.
We had a liberal rag take over the local 'tiny' paper. Along came the liberal trash and editorials. Then a strange thing happened. A free newspaper, supported by local ads, showed up. Now the free newspaper is delivered in trucks and the liberal rag sits on the shelf. The news coverage in our new newspaper is right down the middle.
People can get what they want. Fair is fair. Support your local advertisers.
So this paper only came into existence in 2000? And its 2000 endorsement of Bush came AFTER his election? And the publisher is a (failed) democrat politician?
This looks like a DNC set-up, whose seeds were planted in 2000.
and the people of crawford have decided that the newspaper is going in the wrond direction...
I don't see anyone stopping him from expressing his opinion. He can express any damn opinion he cares to. People are simply expressing their opinion by pulling their ads and cancelling subscriptions.
Seems to me that the left wants free speech reserved for them alone, and not for anyone that disagrees with them.
George Soros to the rescue
Someone should tell the ignoramus that the right to associate includes the right to disassociate.
Glad the power of the marketplace is having an impact.
The whole thing is tedious, tawdry and unnecessary. The paper brought this on by itself.
You're free to express an opinion---you did, didn't you?---but you're not entitled to universal agreement and hermetic insulation from opposing views.
Sheesh. Leftists are such pussies.
LOL, thank you hanoi john!
The Stone-age press is the only industry in America that thinks they can insult 50-60% of their customers. Mr Smith is just about to find out that myth is not true.
Pray for W and Our Troops
You can't force us to pay to listen to yours, dip$hit.
Does he even live in Crawford?
This guy has a right to express any opinion he wants, but what about my right not to like it?
Just because I voice an unpopular opinion
and then get rejected
does not mean I have been denied the right to express my opinion!
Hello???
What they are crying about is the fallout from their upopular opinion and THAT is someone else's right to free speech, which they then find unbelievably offensive!!!
This is the liberal mantra every time they suffer fallout for expressing their wacked out views
"It will probably put us under," he said
BWAAAAA
Come to LA you'll fit right in.
"It really appears to be me that we no longer live in an open society," he said. "When you get to the point where you can't express an opinion, then you're in trouble."
Well, I don't get it - when his readers and advertisers state their views against HIS editorial, isn't that EXPRESSING THEIR OPINIONS? Oh, I forgot: the only ones who have a right to express their opinions are anti-Bush people. Now I see.
The profound stupidity of that statement is astonishing.
I don't know if it's an "open society" if the same guy is mayor of the town, owner of several businesses in town, and publisher of the town's only newspaper.
No conflict of interest there?
I hope he gets thrown out of the mayor's office too.
I totally agree. Now, where is that email address of his, so we can tell him PERSONALLY about what an open society is?
Also, we should let the San Antonio paper know, too.
These stupid liberals really don't get it, do they?
Hey, Smith: you can, and DID, express your opinion. What gets you in trouble is the free market society in which the townpeople are free to express their response to it! And for you, that means a sunk newspaper business. Hahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!
I got an email from a liberal about twenty minutes after this was published. Here is the actual editorial:
Kerry Will Restore
American Dignity
2004 Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement
Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:
Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans' benefits and military pay.
Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.
These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.
The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.
Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.
Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.
President Bush has announced plans to change the Social Security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.
The Social Security Trust Fund actually lends money to the rest of the government in exchange for government bonds, which is how the system must work by law, but how do you later repay Social Security while you are running a huge deficit? It's impossible, without raising taxes sometime in the future or becoming fiscally responsible now. Social Security money is being used to escalate our deficit and, at the same time, mask a much larger government deficit, instead of paying down the national debt, which would be a proper use, to guarantee a future gain.
Privatization is problematic in that it would subject Social Security to the ups, downs, and outright crashes of the Stock Market. It would take millions in brokerage fees and commissions out of the system, and, unless we have assurance that the Ivan Boeskys and Ken Lays of the world will be caught and punished as a deterrent, subject both the Market and the Social Security Fund to fraud and market manipulation, not to mention devastate and ruin multitudes of American families that would find their lives lost to starvation, shame, and isolation.
Kerry wants to keep Social Security, which each of us already owns. He says that the program is manageable, since it is projected to be solvent through 2042, with use of its trust funds. This would give ample time to strengthen the economy, reduce the budget deficit the Bush administration has created, and, therefore, bolster the program as needed to fit ever-changing demographics.
Our senior citizens depend upon Social Security.
Bush's answer is radical and uncalled for, and would result in chaos as Americans have never experienced. Do we really want to risk the future of Social Security on Bush by spinning the wheel of uncertainty?
In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush's lead through any travail.
He let us down.
When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.
He did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides. He merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.
Rather than using the billions of dollars expended on the invasion of Iraq to shore up our boundaries and go after Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Arabian terrorists, the funds were used to initiate a war with what Bush called a more immediate menace, Saddam Hussein, in oil-rich Iraq. After all, Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.
The Iconoclast, the President's hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper's publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Again, he let us down.
We presumed the President had solid proof of the existence of these weapons, what and where they were, even as the search continued. Otherwise, our troops would be in much greater danger and the premise for a hurried-up invasion would be moot, allowing more time to solicit assistance from our allies.
Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda.
Now he argues unconvincingly that Iraq was providing safe harbor to terrorists, his new key justification for the invasion. It is like arguing that America provided safe harbor to terrorists leading to 9/11.
Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.
We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a "wartime president." America is in service 365 days a year. We don't need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don't get done.
What has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of Iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a White House intern's dress. America's reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.
Iraq is now a quagmire: no WMDs, no substantive link between Saddam and Osama, and no workable plan for the withdrawal of our troops. We are asked to go along on faith. But remember, blind patriotism can be a dangerous thing and "spin" will not bring back to life a dead soldier; certainly not a thousand of them.
Kerry has remained true to his vote granting the President the authority to use the threat of war to intimidate Saddam Hussein into allowing weapons inspections. He believes President Bush rushed into war before the inspectors finished their jobs.
Kerry also voted against President Bush's $87 billion for troop funding because the bill promoted poor policy in Iraq, privileged Halliburton and other corporate friends of the Bush administration to profiteer from the war, and forced debt upon future generations of Americans.
Kerry's four-point plan for Iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. With the help from our European and Middle Eastern allies, his plan is to train Iraqi security forces, involve Iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive Iraq's multi-billion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with Iraq's neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq's borders and non-interference in Iraq's internal affairs.
The publishers of the Iconoclast differ with Bush on other issues, including the denial of stem cell research, shortchanging veterans' entitlements, cutting school programs and grants, dictating what our children learn through a thought-controlling "test" from Washington rather than allowing local school boards and parents to decide how young people should be taught, ignoring the environment, and creating extraneous language in the Patriot Act that removes some of the very freedoms that our founding fathers and generations of soldiers fought so hard to preserve.
We are concerned about the vast exportation of jobs to other countries, due in large part to policies carried out by Bush appointees. Funds previously geared at retention of small companies are being given to larger concerns, such as Halliburton -- companies with strong ties to oil and gas. Job training has been cut every year that Bush has resided at the White House. Then there is his resolve to inadequately finance Homeland Security and to cut the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS) by 94 percent, to reduce money for rural development, to slash appropriations for the Small Business Administration, and to under-fund veterans' programs.
Likewise troubling is that President Bush fought against the creation of the 9/11 Commission and is yet to embrace its recommendations. Vice President Cheney's Halliburton has been awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without undergoing any meaningful bid process -- an enormous conflict of interest -- plus the company has been significantly raiding the funds of Export-Import Bank of America, reducing investment that could have gone toward small business trade.
When examined based on all the facts, Kerry's voting record is enviable and echoes that of many Bush allies who are aghast at how the Bush administration has destroyed the American economy. Compared to Bush on economic issues, Kerry would be an arch-conservative, providing for Americans first. He has what it takes to right our wronged economy.
The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.
John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.
Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.
That's why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.
The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.
I just sent an email to voice my opinion and it bounced back. Its office@iconoclast-texas.com
Words have consequences.
Let the free market reign. The Crawford rag has a right to print what it chooses, and people have a right not to buy it. Just like CBS can obviously spew it's propaganda and discerning viewers can reject their rubbish.
Let's take back America from the Leftist whack jobs. We have been silent for far too long.
If it continued, I would then cancel.
If I were the owner of that coffee shop, I would invite the editor in for a discussion of the issues with my regulars.
Free expression is OK. Does the editor have a closed mind about Bush? That's what I would want to find out.
Shalom.
And guess what -- matter-of-factly it looks like the people of Crawford are firing somebody -- YOU and the ICON-O-BLAST.
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