Brian Schweitzer is not fat

[grasswire]

And check this out!


Montana Governor Foments Real ID Rebellion
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/montana-governo.html

Montana governor Brian Schweitzer (D) declared independence Friday from federal identification rules and called on governors of 17 other states to join him in forcing a showdown with the federal government which says it will not accept the driver's licenses of rebel states' citizens starting May 11.

[AllieB]

1. He has a round German face and is a big guy.

I'll never understand DU's obsession with 'fat'. You think sometimes that this is a message board for anorexics and bulemics.

[XemaSab]

17. I want to comment on this, but I just ate a cake

BRB.

[Cha]

18. It's good you're waiting until you

digest it:P

[XemaSab]

20. Down in 5, up in 5

:puke:

Now I'm saying that I think you're spot on in DU's obsession with fat. Spot on.

[woodsprite]

2. The more I read about him, the more I like him.

Maybe his speech at the convention will bring him into the spotlight like the 2004 speech did for Obama.

[OHdem10]

3. At least we Dems have a "manly man' for a change.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. Schweitzer is a pit fighter.

He likes to fight inside, knees, elbows, eye gouges, fishooks, biting, ball-grabbing, the whole nasty bit. Bless his heart, grinning like a mule eatin' briars all the while, too.

We need more Schweitzers and less of those who get an attack of the vapours when the crusts are not cut offa the cucumber sandwich quarters just so.

[grasswire]

8. and he takes his border collie to work

The border collie, Jag, goes to the capitol with him daily.

[eleny]

12. "Bless his heart..."

Excellent! :rofl:

[grasswire]

22. Jag even has his own book.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

5. Delete Dupe

Database farted again. Peeee-You.

[Graybeard]

6. When he worked in Saudi Arabia he learned to speak Arabic!

He would be a valuable asset in the Obama administration. He has an impressive resume.

[1corona4u]

7. Who said he was?

I can't believe how trite some people are. Lately, all I have seen is age, age, age, old, old, old...now what, it's fat?

Give me a friggen break. Seemed like a great man to me...

[grasswire]

9. some on DU...

...said they didn't like his homespun, "redneck act" and his fat guy self.

[1corona4u]

16. Unreal.

I put that in the bigotry category. Hypocrites.

[DevonRex]

10. I now have a small crush on him. He looks just like most ranchers

and farmers I have known. Healthy.

[grasswire]

11. Schweitzer to Congress: "Do something. Anything. Move."

That's the caption the NYT has under this photo.

Beautiful Montana in the background. Great pic!

[SoxFan]

13. snarf!

[scheming daemons]

14. he looks like he could be Tim Russert's brother

[grasswire]

15. On horseback

From a New York Times Magazine profile:

It’s fun being governor of Montana. Just watch Brian Schweitzer bouncing around the streets of Helena in the passenger seat of the state’s official S.U.V., fumbling with wires, trying to stick the flashing police light on the roof. When he spots some legislators on the sidewalk, he blasts them with the siren, then summons them by name on the loudspeaker. The men jump, and the governor tumbles out of the car, doubled in laughter, giving everyone a bear hug or a high-five or a soft slap on the cheek. Schweitzer, a Democrat in his first term, marches into a barroom in blue jeans and cowboy boots and a beaded bolo tie, and his border collie, Jag, leaps out of the vehicle and follows him in. The governor throws back a few pints of the local brew and introduces himself to everyone in the place, down to the servers and a small girl stuck there with her parents. He takes time from the backslapping to poach cubes of cheese from the snack platter and sneak them to the girl, who is now chasing his dog around the bar. “This is how you make friends with Jag,” he advises her. “Just hold it in your hand and let him take it.”

As soon as Schweitzer was elected in 2004 — the same night that George W. Bush carried Montana by 20 percentage points — pundits began declaring him the future of the Democratic Party. Never mind that it was his first elected office: the 51-year-old farmer and irrigation contractor had folksy charm and true-grit swagger. He shot guns, rode horses, took his dog to work and decimated his opponents with off-the-cuff one-liners heavy on the bull-and-horse metaphors. He didn’t act like a Democrat, in other words, and to many Democrats, reeling from consecutive losses to Bush, that seemed like a pretty good thing.

Schweitzer’s grandparents were homesteaders who immigrated to Montana from Ireland and Germany. His parents were ranchers who never completed high school. And until 2000, Schweitzer and his wife, Nancy, were farming in Whitefish and raising their three children. And then, despite the fact that he was a virtual unknown in politics, Schweitzer began a quixotic bid to oust Conrad Burns, a two-term incumbent Republican senator. To the surprise of Montana’s political class, he came within four percentage points of succeeding. Almost immediately, he began campaigning for what would be an open governor’s seat. Even after choosing a Republican as his running mate, he thumped his primary opponent by a 52-point margin, then won the general election by four points.

Within months of his election, bloggers were clamoring for a presidential run, and his popularity transcended the wonk journals to include coronation as “Hot Governor” by Rolling Stone magazine, while “60 Minutes” called him the Coal Cowboy. On camera he persuaded Lesley Stahl to take a whiff from a vial of diesel fuel synthesized from coal — a product that Schweitzer claims will not only fill Montana’s coffers but also help end the nation’s dependence on foreign oil peddled by “sheiks, rats, crooks, dictators.”

snip

“I was a critic of Nafta, I was a critic of Cafta and I’ll be a critic of Shafta,” he says of free-trade agreements, long the hobgoblin of even the most articulate liberal politicians. “Why is it that America supposedly creates the best businessmen in the world, but when we go to the table with the third world, we come away losers?”

[grasswire]

19. more from the NYT magazine

When I was visiting with Schweitzer one day during the legislative session, an aide rushed into his office with news that a group of Democratic state representatives from the Great Falls area were threatening to withdraw their support from the governor’s ethanol bill. Schweitzer was leaning back in his chair, beneath an oil painting of a Native American woman playing a flute, beside a window opening onto a view of snow-covered mountains. If Schweitzer is, as his critics contend, mostly a showman, he has chosen the perfect stage. Helena’s domed State Capitol is a transcendent gallery of marble columns and stained-glass atria, a temple so sincere in its exultation of frontier democracy that, for the cynical, it may resemble a Frank Capra movie version of government more than it resembles the real thing. Citizens wander freely in the corridors of power and, from the Senate gallery, can observe their lawmakers beneath frescoes of Lewis and Clark meeting Sacagawea, and of General Custer about to take a dagger to the gut at Little Bighorn.

The Great Falls representatives refused to come meet Schweitzer in the governor’s office — located about 800 steps from their chamber — because they were upset that the governor canceled a meeting with them earlier that day. “That’s it,” Schweitzer said, leaping up. “I’m taking ’em to the woodshed.” In an instant he was stomping down the corridor to the rotunda, his dog at his heels, and charging up the staircase to the House chamber. The governor corralled the Great Falls representatives in a meeting room and listened to their grievances. He leaned forward intently, his head bobbing almost imperceptibly, his eyes wide open and blinking in a strict cadence, receiving and processing data as if it were an electrical current. He clutched the edge of the table, and I suspected that if he let go, the rotors spinning in his skull would have broken the pull of gravity and sent him spiraling into orbit.

Sufficiently charged, the governor whirred into action. His monologue combined pep talk and sales pitch, threats and promises, science lecture and economic briefing. He spoke at length on the difference between malt barley and high-protein wheat, and on the profit margin of ethanol refineries, pounding his finger on the tabletop for emphasis. He went on uninterrupted for seven minutes, and when the fusillade was over, one of the representatives voiced a small objection from an industry lobbyist that Montana wheat would make for low-grade ethanol.

“Now that,” said the governor, slapping the table in triumph, almost evangelically, as if the Republic itself depended on this vote, “that sounds like somebody who didn’t take a single class in agronomy!”

[NashVegas]

21. He's Built Like a Bull

I likes 'im.