how is it even possible that dubya pronounces vehicles "VEE-HICK-ULS"?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0426/p01s04-uspo.html

Money well spent, I'd say!!

a) actively held onto the accent at all costs, instead of trying very hard to assimilate like everyone else in similar situations does. GW IN STUBBORNESS SHOCKA

b) gotten back in touch with it consciously for political reasons later on.

Either way, it does seem a bit too much at times.

xpost: haha i think i've said this here before, but when bush bought his "ranch" as he was gearing up to run for president in 1999, my dad and my uncle were scratching their heads.. "crawford???" but that's the absolute middle of nowhere.. it was speculated that a place like that would be much easier to defend. against.. whatever.

and tracer, yeah, it has driven me crazy for six years that every time he goes to the "ranch" to clear brush, the media largely pretends that, you know, this is the simple life he left for washington. i see occasional references like "which was built during his 2000 presidential campaign," but i mean, the thing's basically a soundstage. it's a set.

I've stopped asking myself this about anything George Bush. I think I was starting to lose it. I kept thinking it's all a bad dream, some grotesque nightmare that would surely pass. Let's face it. The devil has sent an assclown to help destroy the world. Fucking brilliant, if you think about it.

Nobody's speaking voice is worse than HRC's FLAAAAAT Midwestern

Who cares about them? They're Democrats.

Issues like these are funny because it has to keep the idea afloat that Republicans keep reelecting complete and utter morons to head their party (Bush, Quayle, Reagan, Eisenhower, etc) but it has to also find a way to explain how their seemingly sophisticed ploys work without giving them too much credit for being smart (i.e. The cult-like powers attributed to Karl Rove for every slick political move by the Right). Even is Rove never existed you'd have to invent him as he serves the purpose of making it look like Bush couldn't tie his shoelaces without some Satanic "behind-the-scenes" figure who makes all the intellectual moves for him.

Trivia: Did you know FDR spoke with an English accent (presumably picked up from his schooling there) and used phrases like, "That's not cricket."?

http://www.clickfire.com/georgebush2.jpg

just a few George Bush quotes:

"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" —Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

"I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question."George W Bush, Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Oct. 4, 2000

"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet." George W Bush, Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

"Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be an assignment." George W Bush in an interview with the New York Times, Jan. 14, 2001

"We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease." George W Bush, after meeting with the leaders of the European Union, Gothenburg, Sweden, June 14, 2001

"There are some great admonitions in the Bible, talking about, you know, don't try to take the speck out of your neighbour's eye when you've got a log in your own. I'm mindful of that." George W Bush, Sam Howe Verhovek, New York Times Magazine, 13th September 1998

"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill." George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003

"More Muslims have died at the hands of killers than -- I say more Muslims -- a lot of Muslims have died -- I don't know the exact count -- at Istanbul. Look at these different places around the world where there's been tremendous death and destruction because killers kill." George W Bush, Washington, D.C., Feb. 18, 2004

"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." —LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." —Greater Nashua, N.H., Jan. 27, 2000

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17,

"They misunderestimated me." —Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

xpost

"You've got to understand what a bad dresser George was," said Joe O'Neill, an friend from those days. "George didn't dress down, which intentionally looks bad. He just dressed bad. He dressed in the dark."

I don't have a problem with regional dialects, by the way. It's just that his talk doesn't sound like any rich kid talk I have ever heard. His dad does have a definite twang too, now that I think of it. maybe they just soaked it up more than most carpetbaggers do.

Err, I pronounce "vehicle" that way and I don't have my southern twang anymore. Basic pronunciation of particular words is harder to drop than an overall "accent."

yeah, but you are probably not the son of a patrician east coast millionare. or maybe you are, what do I know? but those people are usually really picky about how their kids talk. that's why they send them to those fancy schools. well, it's one reason anyway.

Barbara Pierce was the third child of the former Pauline Robinson (1896-1949) and her husband, Marvin Pierce (1893-1969), who later became president of McCall Corporation, the publisher of the popular women's magazines Redbook and McCall's. She was born and raised in the suburban town of Rye, New York, near New York City and went to Rye Country Day School, followed by boarding school at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina.

Her ancestor, an early New England colonist named Thomas Pierce, was also the ancestor to Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States

x-post with myself

well, he was good at it at first before everyone hated him. he was the guy that people wanted to have a beer with, remember?

VEE hickuhl sounds more common, I pronounce some words like that (Durant, Oklahoma is Doo-rant no matter how hard I try).

OK can we all just agree that this quote is totally badical?

"'The unanimous consensus' of journalists and acedemics, pundits and prophets, the national community of intellectuals and critics' had been that Eisenhower's conduct of the presidency had been 'unskillful and his definition of it inaccurate...(he) elected to leave his nation to fly on automatic pilot'"

That is from his first biography. Eisenhower was later shown to be intentionally inarticulate in press conferences and to also pretend to not understand his own translators when he was dealing with difficult foreigners. I wouldn't be shocked if we find out years from now that a lot of Bush's "idiot schtick" was a political trick to evade closer scrutiny and have people dismiss him out of hand.

It's better to have the intellectuals and hipsters think you're a puppet and an idiot and to not preceive you as a threat than to have them constantly at your throat for being "evil" ala Nixon and Cheney.

I remember a book saying that Nixon actually called Eisenhower the most cunning politician he'd ever met. It's politically beneficial to flatter your opponents into thinking they're dealing with an absolute dummy before defeating them in consecutive elections (As Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush have all done).

Because I was contrasting media treatment of Democrats with Republicans?

timmy tannin had already talked about the accents and backgrounds of past Democrats. And I like Truman btw.

Years from now? A lot of people have been saying this since the day he started running for President.