Word: austine
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...Honda has sold only 2,000 Insights, the first hybrid gas-electric car to hit U.S. roads. But it seems to have found an unexpected fan base: politicians. Since the $18,880, two-seat 70 m.p.g. runabout became available in December, it has been snapped up by Austin, Texas, Mayor Kirk Watson (who traded in a Chevy Tahoe), San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Utah Senator Bob Bennett and Maine Governor Angus King. It must be a more painless way of pulling in the green vote than Sierra Club dinners...
They don't have much time, or much reason to hope: Republican presidential nominee Governor George W. Bush, who has had more executions during his five-year tenure in Austin than any other governor in the nation since capital punishment was reinstated, has made his support for executing mentally retarded inmates clear. In 1995, the newly minted governor rejected a clemency plea from lawyers for Mario Marquez, a mentally retarded adult whose verbal and reasoning skills were comparable to those of a 7-year-old child...
...missed his bed, his feather pillow (he carries one with him), his dog Spot and his cat Ernie. For all his jokes about suffering, he campaigns at what must be the most leisurely pace since Eisenhower. Two events a day is not uncommon. On July 13 Bush left Austin, Texas, at 8:30 a.m., gave a half-hour speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Pittsburgh, Pa., attended a dinner at 6:30 p.m. in East Brunswick, N.J., and called it a night at 8:20. The next day began with a 7 a.m. breakfast, an hourlong visit...
After three days of happiness, I had learned enough about Bush to predict, midday on July 21 (on tape at CNN), that he would pick Cheney as his running mate. Not only did Cheney have the good-guy characteristics prized from Kennebunkport to Austin; he was also the only person on the list to get quality time with Bush, to become a good guy in his eyes. While the others were busy submitting to psychological strip searches (tell me the worst thing about yourself) and submitting personal data for Cheney to interpret (Gov'ner, I wouldn't worry too much...
Cheney's degree of access was rare. Bush is known for having a minute inner circle--three aides, a handful of friends. For all his outer amiability, Bush is something of a hermit, "not very sociable," by his own account. He's seldom out and about evenings in Austin, likes to fall asleep watching sports stretched out on the sofa and has no qualms about leaving a roomful of hands unshaken in favor of downtime. His weekend getaway is 1,600 acres of dusty, dry prairie in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but chop wood and drive...