What does "clearing brush" actually mean?

For the last several days, according to Trent Duffy, that's what your dear leader has been up to. But he can't literally be clearing brush - that's idiotic, considering how much sport is made of the activity whenever chimpy does it.

I'm sure there's been plenty of speculation here on this, but I really do wonder what it actually does mean.

it probably means downing a few bottles of hooch.

"Clearing brush" is a euphemism for getting wasted...

either with Bushmills or (knowing how low-class he is) Everclear.

So he can have privacy required to down the bottles of hooch.

and Lord knows what the hell else.

... that there is ONE thing in this world the Chimp is competent to do -- so he does it as often as possible.

brush around the White House to keep him occupied there.

Welcome aboard the Good Ship DU, Faux pas!

:hi:

:hi:

didn't spend his entire adult life in golf communities and weekends at country clubs strategizing dirty tricks with his fellow GOP operatives and fascists.

"works hard" according to his propaganda catapulters.

So what's the beef?

I like his comments that most people don't sip wine at Martha's Vineyard. Well most people cannot afford 1,600 acre ranches that don't have any cattle on them.

I have an uncle who has about 500 acres in Missouri. He calls it "the farm". He's a hunter and fisherman. They spend a LOT of time working up there.

But he doesn't do it on "company time". I can assure you the man does not have 3 months of vacation every year. And he certainly doesn't have staffers from the company he works at drug along and doing work for his farm on the company dime.

Add theft to another in the long list of impeachment counts. If a congressman paid staffers to do work on their personal property out of congressional budgets, they'd be brought up on charges. The same thing should go for the president.

WE DO NOT PAY THOSE PEOPLE TO DO PRIVATE LANDSCAPING WORK!!!!!!

It gives the grass a chance to grow.

on Bush`s ranch it means....A photo op where you can watch him pretend he`s just a regular guy even though everything he has was handed to him.

some folks call it a sling blade, I call it a kaiser blade... Mmmm Mmmm.

I was thinkin', I'm gonna take me some of these taters home with me. Mmmm.

Not kidding, that's what it's called. Ever notice it's only him clearing the brush? What he is doing is a fool's errand. You just don't do that on a ranch. Guarans,all his neighbors hire Mexicans at $.35 an hour to "clear their brush".

the farm/ranch, how close to the bone the farm/ranch runs, etc. Specialized equipment is often a luxury that family farmers can't afford.

We certainly cleared a lot of it by hand when I was growing up.

w can't ride horses - he never learned. He doesn't raise cattle or anything else on the pig farm. Well, he probably raises the roof when he's good and soused. That's about it.

I grew up in the country and I know what "clearing brush" means and w ain't got no need to be clearing brush.

Yes but a lot of Pork probably DOES travel through that estate.

an area of my lot that got away from me. The week wacker comes next. Also, I am pruning back trees and shrubs that have grown too rangy. Pruning is not hacking stuff down.

It's a former pig farm. Any grass that ever existed there is long gone. He's chopping down cedar, yaupons, and mesquite. Naturally, everything grows back. He only chops off at groundlevel. All of those trees come back from the roots. In force. Dumbya will NEVER be done "clearing brush" on his piggy farm. Not ever. He's doing it for the photo-op imagery when you know he's really wishing he could just pour asphalt or concrete on it all and be done with it.

The day that fool leaves office (and if he doesn't end up in Gitmo), he'll sell that 'ranch' and high-tail it back to Dallas. He won't go to Houston. that's for certain. Poppy lives there. Baby don't like his Poppy.

But, yes, you're right. On a real ranch, the grass would be saved by clearing brush.

Constant re-enforcement is required, since the chimp is so not a cowboy.

is when you clean out the small bushes and junk that grow under your trees in your woods.You have to keep it cleaned because of fire.But it is hard work and I don't believe he does it.

And welcome to DU, msblueinredstate!

I'm in Pearl River County east of New Orleans. Glad to have you onboard DU!

... he does it when the cameras are on. Just like Reagan and his fire wood.

and doesn't have farm hired hands to do it, there is plenty of it here and it grows fast. There are juniper (or "cedar" trees, although they aren't true cedar) that are considered trash, there's all kinds of underbrush that grows. I read one time that he wanted to clear out the junipers to free the oaks. Well, so do I, because of water resources.

With the fires we've had this week, having less brush to burn is important.

Look, I can't stand the guy. But if his idea of relieving stress is to go out and clear brush (IF THAT IS TRUE), he's not any different than a whole lot of people in this neck of the woods, or for that matter, in this country, who enjoy going out, working on their gardens, clearing their lots, etc.

I do happen to think it's a photo op any other time of year because no one in their right mind would be out, for example, in July or August, clearing brush.

Certainly not juniper, and certainly not something he's dug from the ground.

Anyway, I guess it is exactly what many here have speculated: an attempt to style him as a gen-u-ine working stiff, not a Capote-dressing gooselips or gormless statesman-manque, as other photographs have him.

by thinning out the junipers, there are a bunch of more effective ways than hand-clearing -- even if he leaves out things like mechanical "chaining", or spraying of herbicides. Small controlled burns in the wet season, or "goating", would have the advantage of treating larger areas (and he's claimed he is doing this so Laura can seed wildflower meadows, which would require that size of clearings).

I talked with an ecologist in your part of the state, who trained at Lady Bird Johnson's research center -- and she figures that, as you say, it is mostly a photo-op. Besides, he doesn't seem to have done the types of basic surveying which would indicate where the "cedar" brakes should be left to stabilize slopes, and where their removal may increase available runoff (not just temporarily, but in the longer term -- the water resources angle you mentioned). I worked for awhile on a West Coast oak savanna project (oaks were being choked by blackberries, broom, gorse, etc. which unlike the juniper are exotic species), and we needed to consider soil erosion, microclimates, and changes in shelter/food availability for other species, before we broke out the brush-hooks.

Personally, I am all in favor of sending him out there -- with a pair of clippers or a Sandvik cutting tool perhaps, since I worry about him having access to power tools -- if it keeps him calm and distracts him from messing around in foreign or domestic policy! As you say, the brush regenerates so quickly that he will be at work for decades and decades.

It's so funny that Bush discovered his "hobby" months before he made a run for the presidency. Up to that point, his "hobby" seems to have been binge drinking.

at least in his case..................

at it mano a mano, "Brokeback" style.

Maybe "clearing brush" is a euphemism for getting rid of political enemies.

He's not a leader. He's a puppet.

I own acreage. I do not clear brush. Oh, ok, I jumped on my tractor and pushed a bunch of blackberries out of the creek area. It took a couple of hours.

Carter has a wood shop. But Carter has humanitarian blood. He cares. Bush doesn't give a shit. This is the same person who shot people with his bb gun as a kid. The same person who trashed his rental house in college, and never paid the deposit back. The same asshole...

Many landowners clear brush or timber for aesthetic reasons rather than economic reasons. In fact, clearing brush or timber when woody plants are not overabundant often decreases land value and income potential.

Aesthetics relates to perceptions of beauty, which are learned responses shaped by peer pressure, education, and experiences. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is pretty to one person may be ugly to another. Many landowners believe brush and timber are undesirable because they developed this perception through the influences of families, neighbors, and peers. Generally, these people are good influences who help us learn important values, such as right from wrong. But we should also recognize that we develop our prejudices and biases through the same influences. For example, these otherwise good influences sometimes cause people to believe that only a certain skin color is acceptable even though God created several, or that other nationalities are substandard even though most Americans originated from other countries....

If you follow the rural real estate market much, you will notice that a substantial percentage of buyers are not full-time farmers and ranchers....

Woody plants have substantial value beyond their economic value. They stabilize stream banks and steep slopes better than most other alternatives. Much erosion has been caused by clearing woody plants from steep slopes or from the banks of creeks and rivers. Many wildlife species depend upon woody plants to provide essential components of their habitats. Woody plants in riparian zones (near streams) tend to provide some of the most important plant communities for many wildlife species....

In general, some woody plants are good for the landscape. Brush and timber can be beautiful and valuable.

www.noble.org/Ag/Wildlife/ValueOfWoodyPlants/Index.htm

If he were serious about raising cattle, he would hire someone to clear the brush. But the article points out that game living in the brush might be a more profitable use of the land.

Bush is not in it to help the environment or to run a profitable ranch. His true fans get hot & sweaty over those pix of him being hot & sweaty.

clearing--says brush is "bird feed...deer feed...and cow food. Brush is where birds live."
So * is actually upsetting the ecology of a dirt ranch.

... I don't think he's thought things through. I put my resource management students onto the problem, and they found out that there are various techniques, e.g. biological control or off-season burns, which he could use, if he's serious about wanting to open up the landscape and alter the local hydrology. These would be more efficient, and not need to be re-done constantly.

Plus, if it's really a restoration project -- he hasn't shown us any sign of preliminary ecological studies, experimental treatments, or all the "homework" which a serious effort would require (to avoid messing up the habitat and at the very least wasting a bunch of time and effort). This is especially important in his area, to avoid harming populations of the endangered golden-cheeked warbler -- the bird needs mature stands of "cedar" (Juniperus ashei) to build its nests. He shouldn't be able to have it both ways, going on about how he has only the best intentions for the environment and is trying to "improve" it -- yet for all we know, he's making it up as he goes along (sort of like some of his other policies).

I like the aesthetics quote you posted. Isn't it interesting that the landscape he's hoping to end up with -- artificial fishpond, open woodlands with flowers and mature trees but minimal scrub understory -- look a lot like an Eastern deciduous woodland? The type of well-manicured setting which would be familiar to him from prep school grounds and estates in Connecticut, for example? And he always seems to be down in the canyons where the water is, along with the big trees ... not the arid uplands and grass balds, which are much more characteristic of the local environment.

As it is, he will be lucky if he doesn't bring down an entire hillside due to careless overcutting. And there are plenty of published studies and reports which suggest that it's an overgeneralization to conclude that removal of brush from all areas will result in an increase in available runoff (particularly in the long term). But it's consistent with his approach, rushing in without knowing what he's getting into.

clearing shrub.

adults in an agricultural setting. There were several people there who just weren't capable of many tasks. One guy in particular would pick up sticks in the vegetable garden and put them in a pile.

Whenever I read about Bush "clearing brush" I picture my old pal Wendall wandering the garden with a bucket of sticks

:)

I'd happily pay w's salary if all he would do is go around picking up sticks and putting them in a bucket.

hired help...sending trays of food and beer to the presstitude,lining their pockets with dollars=bush is clearing brush.

Jim (Beam). Chimpy is too stupid to be allowed to actually use a chainsaw. He'd saw his own foot off.

Johnny Walker, wouldn't want to leave anyone out. :D

"Clearing Bush", means exonerating members of the BFEE from any kind of wrongdoing...
You can bet that's what they are all busy doing in Crawford as we speak...

:)

Bring in brush for photo op. I'll just bet he is always in the same location on his pig farm, clearing out the same brush, every time the cameras are around.

for what he's doing to democracy, our Constitution and the Bill of Rights: chopping it all down, chain-sawing it, and ripping it out by the roots.

"Hey, Rush! This here's Gee Dubya! Wanna clear some brush this weekend?"

:evilgrin:

What is more likely to burn? Standing cedar trees or giant piles of dead cedar trees that have been felled and left because it was too dry to burn them???

The first couple get them for all their vacations. :evilgrin:

You like that thar rugged outdoor work? I'll give you some of it!

Here, you can work with Juan here. You habla espanol, don't you, Retard-Boy? You and Juan'll be a good pair, b/c Juan can read my instructions to you.

can clear it.

"We use the very best compost, so we get some really tangled brush. He likes it tangled. We try to keep the level of thorns and briars down, though. He's not too crazy about thorns. Sometimes if the weather doesn't cooperate, we don't get a good enough crop, and then we fly in brush from California."

That's too funny for words! Still, I say it's the "Bush" we need to clear away, who cares about his "brush," I'm hungry for more news reports that detail presidential "High Crimes and Treason."

they are Texas Ashe Junipers, commonly called "mountain cedar", and are ecologically important.