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**Written by Doug Powers

Harry Reid’s love of all-things-cowboy dates back to his great great grandfather Bucky Ried, who, as legend has it, once taxed a man to death just for snorin’ too loud.

That trait has stayed with the family, and now the Senate Majority Leader is leading the fight to maintain taxpayer support for those paying artistic homage to rugged individualism and self-reliance. Crazy and ironic, but true:

In the middle of his tirade against House Republicans’ “mean-spirited” budget bill on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Senate Majority Leader lamented that the GOP’s proposed budget cuts would eliminate the annual “cowboy poetry festival” in his home state of Nevada.

Reid clearly has a soft spot for the Baxter Blacks of the poetry world and thinks Republicans don’t.

“The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1 … eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts,” said Reid. “These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”

It not only creates jobs, but apparently lives too.

Do you think Harry’s considered that maybe some of those tourists show up for the brothels in addition to the cowboy poetry?

**Written by Doug Powers

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