TRAIL MIX

The Real Deal

George W. Bush seems to think he can sell himself like beef and home mortgages. His new slogan, “Real Plans for Real People,” is similar to the National Livestock and Meat Board’s 1988 ad campaign: “Beef: Real Food for Real People” and the ongoing campaign of LoansDirect.com: “Real Rates. Real People.”

LoansDirect’s CEO said the company has used the slogan for more than two years to reassure customers that, while they’re borrowing money through their computer, their loans are handled by real people--based in Huntington Beach.

“People are always scared to be ripped off,” Anthony Hsieh said, “and although the word ‘real’ gets used quite often and loosely, I still think it has an impact on your basic consumer.”

And your basic voter?

What, no Jacuzzi?

When the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported this week that GOP vice presidential nominee Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, plan to build a large and lavish house in the suburbs of Washington, the Cheneys wanted to set the record straight.

“There’s no Jacuzzi,” said Lynne Cheney.

“There’s no Jacuzzi,” added Dick Cheney. “The other thing in there said it was a 21,000-square-foot house.”

“That’s as big as this school,” his wife interjected.

“Do you know how big that is? It’s just wrong,” the candidate added. “It’s a big house, but it’s more like 8,000 square feet than 21,000.”

Cheney speculated that the reporter may have mixed up the plans, saying again: “There is no Jacuzzi.”

The Cheneys said they had planned for some time to build the home about a mile from where their daughter Liz lives with her husband and three children. The plans now are on hold. Just to be clear, he said again: “There is no Jacuzzi. It is not 21,000 square feet.”

Chutzpah

Democrat Joseph I. Lieberman’s candidacy for the vice presidency has gone to the heads of the Jewish community.

Zipple.com, which is devoted to “everything and anything Jewish,” is selling a star-spangled, white leather yarmulke emblazoned with a red-and-blue “Lieberman 2000.”

“The Lieberman yarmulke bridges tradition with modernity in this history-making millennium campaign,” Zipple’s CEO Jory Rozner said. The company says it has sold more than 1,000 of the caps, at $14.95 each.

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Compiled by Massie Ritsch from staff and wire reports