Welcome to "Bush Country"

So I just finished watching the Michael Moore on The O'Reilly Factor.  I was glad to see that O'Reilly had the balls to do an unedited interview, and now everyone can see why he normally does edit his show. He wasn't able to come back to Moore's question "Would you send your children to die to secure Fallujah?" We also got to the heart of why O'Reilly doesn't think he is a liar: "If you believe you are telling the truth, then you are not a liar."(rough transcription)

The rest of it was just sort of a shouting match, just in time for Moore to prepare for his imminent Crawford, Tex. debut. O'Reilly is going to be nothing compared to some of the talking heads tonight.

I really do commend Moore for coming to Bush's adopted hometown. Some of these people are so fanatically pro-Bush, and they have guns, too! I know, I live here. Give them an opportunity and they will show you, Mr. Moore. Not to mention Texas' conceal and carry gun laws.

As I've said before, I'm hoping to get some reaction from the Republican side today. This latest Waco Tribune-Herald article gives me some kind of inkling as to what to expect.

For one thing, these people are full of shit.

Organizers stress the rally is an effort to show support for Crawford's most famous resident, and not necessarily to protest the film or its screening.

"This is strictly pro-Bush," said Kathy Horton, a Crawford area resident who helped coordinate tonight's event. "We're not trying to be negative because they truly have the right to voice their opinion.

"We are just trying to put together a positive pro-Bush rally in support of his efforts of trying to keep America free."

Which is exactly why they rescheduled this event to coincide with the advanced screening of Fahrenheit 9/11. Local TV news mentioned that a republican group was going to be handing out t-shirts with Michael Moore's named X'd out. If true, rest assured your intrepid blogger will find one.

Another thing, these people don't really know why they support Bush, whether he was trying to "keep America free" from Saddam Hussein's WMD that didn't exist or saving us from a good economy, they just know that they're supposed to like him. He's the president, after all.

Others feel that Moore personally is reprehensible.

Brendan Steinhauser, a recent University of Texas graduate and member of the Young Conservatives of Texas Austin chapter, says he feels the filmmaker misleads people by using half-truths or pure speculation.

Does that sound like anybody we know? I don't know about you, but a lot of the same charges could be leveled at the man now known as Crawford's most famous resident. Everything from "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction" to "we can't let the smoking gun come in the form of mushroom cloud" use less-than-half-truths and crack-smoker speculation.

Maybe some of this ill-will that many feel could be alleviated if Bush just admitted the intelligence was wrong. I haven't heard that yet. I've heard that we need to act of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, but not that there were no WMD. Apparently, he still thinks we're going to find them.

There's a lot to be said for accepting personal responsibility for one's actions. It would be nice if our president would do that, but he won't because he's satisfied with our "darned good intelligence."