May 28, 2002



I saw this at Bartcop.com and just had to have it.


Moments in Churchilliana: Adventures with America's Dingleberry

"Look, the only thing I know to do is speak my mind, to talk about my values, to talk about our mutual love for freedom and the willingness to defend freedom. I think a lot of people on the continent of Europe appreciate that, appreciate the fact that we're friends, appreciate the fact that we work together, that there's a heck of a lot more that unites us than divides us." - the Oaf of Office, somewhere in France, 5/02.

Resident Clueless said that in Berlin -- where 100,000 gathered to protest on the eve of his visit -- he saw "hundreds of people lining the road, waving" as his motorcade passed. In central Paris, several thousand people demonstrated against his visit.

Later, when President Chirac called on a U.S. reporter, Emperor Snippy remarked sharply that "that's generally not the way it's done," adding later to Chirac: "I'll call on the Americans."

In Germany, at a news conference with Prime Minister Schröder, he talked of the West's obligation "to help Russia securitize the dismantling — the dismantled nuclear warheads."

"There are people who don't want peace and therefore are willing to kill." - the Oaf of Office, responding to the latest suicide attack in Israel.

- - from the Washington comPost and the NY Times



'Friends' Act Fails to Heal Rift', Jacques' nick isn't as cool as "Pooty-poot":

President Chirac lectured the US leader on why Europe found America's attitude to these subjects overbearing and self-serving. Their discussion was described as "frank", which is the standard diplomatic code for a failure to agree. On the environment, in particular, the French President said all countries should learn to reduce pollution and the consumption of "resources that cannot be renewed".

Repeated at a joint press conference, this assertion brought a blank stare from the Boob of Kennebunkport, who spent almost his entire career before politics in the oil industry.

Smirky the Red-nosed Boozer seemed to be in a skittish and unfocused mood after a five day tour to Germany and Russia. He referred twice to Mr Chirac as "President Jacques" and pronounced the French President's second name throughout as "Shrak".

Rumors that President Chirac called bugs bunnypants "le petit toutou imbécile" have not yet been confirmed.



'Why is the New York Times defending Bush's September 11 cover-up?'

(snip...) Once the official version of September 11 is called into question, the political and moral legitimacy of everything the government has done over the past eight months collapses. What then emerges is not merely some “failure of intelligence,” but rather the existence of a conspiracy organized at the highest levels of the state.

Were a serious investigation to be conducted, it would rapidly reveal that the Bush administration failed to prevent the terrorist attacks because it had already elaborated plans for war and internal reaction long advocated by the most right-wing sections of the ruling elite, and was looking for a suitable provocation to justify their implementation.

That is why after more than eight months there has been no investigation, and the government has responded so vitriolically to growing calls for a public inquiry—issuing threats to silence its critics and lurid warnings of new terror attacks to divert and disorient the public.

The response of leading organs of the US media to last week’s revelations has been aimed precisely at preventing a serious investigation. Among those sections of the American media that have echoed the threats and sophistries of the White House and sprung to its defense, the most significant from a political standpoint is the New York Times.

from Barry Grey in Pravda - read it and weep, media whores.



Oh 'Really? No, Not Really!

Spin this!

Bill O'Reilly's national radio program is tanking. Already, reviews of the program by listeners have been less than flattering, and some hard numbers are beginning to show the cracks: Arbitron ratings taken by WOR, O'Reilly's flagship station in New York, aren't at all encouraging. A radio industry insider predicts that O'Reilly will drop out of radio within a year.

While O'Reilly's WOR ratings show a "spike" of interest in the opening few days of the new show, the numbers suddenly took a nosedive. Insiders say the numbers show listeners are tuning in to O'Reilly to check him out. They apparently don't like what they hear and are not coming back. - - (from the alternate-reality nooze site, via the bushmoonie page)



In Other News:

Bush: 'Don't blame me, I lost the election'

White House Admits Far Greater Contact With Enron Than Previously Disclosed
But not nearly as much as it will be forced to admit to later.

Rumsfeld: Terrorists Will "Definitely" Acquire Nukes
Therefore, we might as well be the ones to sell them to them

CDC: 7% of U.S. Kids Have Attention Deficit Disorder
Percentage of adults with ADD even larger than whatever it was for kids.

O'Reilly Radio Talk Show Offers Alternative to Limbaugh
Will attack liberal media at a different time and station.

Bad News: Uninsured Patients 25% More Likely to Die Than Insured Patients
Good news: 25% fewer uninsured patients.

CORRECTION
Last week we stated that "the government of Iraq used deadly nerve gas on its own people in the nineteen-sixties." That should have read, "the government of the United States used deadly nerve gas on its own people in the nineteen-sixties." We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.



Don't Wag Your Finger at Us, Mr Bush
by Henry Porter in the London Observer :

There's a lot about 'president' Bush's manner, breezing through Europe and telling us all to pull our socks up, that makes you want to wipe the smile off his face. 'Iraq ought to be on the minds of the German people,' he said to a TV station in Berlin, 'because the Iraq government is a dangerous government.' Well, yes, but how exactly has Saddam's stance changed since this time last year when America was enjoying the first month's of George Bush's carefree unilateralism and Iraq was some way down the agenda?

The 'president's lecture tour of Europe and Russia reminds us how little experience he has of foreign affairs and how recent is his discovery of the history and complexities of issues which have been unquestionably better covered and probably better understood in Europe than in the US. As if to underline this point, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have used the Commander-in-Chief's absence from Washington to reveal their deep concerns about any attack on Iraq.

Europe may have its faults, as Bush and Colin Powell reminded us last week, but whatever our weaknesses of coordination, resolution and principle, it still seems mightily rich of Bush to expect us to go along with a policy General Tommy Franks, head of US Central Command, said would require at least 200,000 US troops and result in large casualties.

Eight months on from the 11 September attacks George Bush's reflection on the grave new world appears to be no more than a couple of slogans deep.

. Whatever else emerges from the Congressional inquiry into what went wrong on 11 September, we can certainly conclude that there was a monumental lack of grip at the top. And it is from this man that we are now all expected to take a dressing down about moral fiber, cohesion and foresight.

At the end of this week it is clear that Bush's presidency is showing signs of being disorganized and intellectually under-powered. He returns home to face a group of generals who are in more-or-less open contempt of his plan to launch against Saddam and an intelligence community which is riven with competition and cover-ups about who knew what before the al-Qaeda attacks. Reason enough for Europeans to be circumspect about his slogans in the future.




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