Author: admin

I thought it was ridiculous that people made fun of George H. W, Bush for vomiting on the Japanese Prime Minister. What was he going to do? He had to puke, so he puked. It happens to the best of us, and more importantly, has nothing to do with his intelligence or how capable he is as a leader.

But his son’s verbal vomit does have a lot to do with his ability to lead this country and the world. What I found to be the most damning is the least quoted part of Bush’s comments. As you read this transcript, remember that this is not a small child talking, but the President of the United States of America: The camera is focused elsewhere and it is not clear whom Bush is talking to, but possibly Chinese President Hu Jintao, a guest at the summit.
Bush: "Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home. How about you? Where are you going? Home?
Bush: "This is your neighborhood. It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home?"
Reply is inaudible.
Bush: "Eight hours? Me too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country."
At this point, the president seems to bring someone else into the conversation.
Bush: "It takes him eight hours to fly home."
He turns his attention to a server.
Bush: "No, Diet Coke, Diet Coke."
He turns back to whomever he was talking with.
Bush: "It takes him eight hours to fly home. Eight hours. Russia’s big and so is China."

Russia’s big and so is China??????? This guys sounds like a third grader. Do you know anyone who would have a conversation like this with their neighbor, let alone a business associate, let alone a world leader? Who’s proud to know that Russia is big and so is China?

Can anyone now credibly claim that Bush is secretly working on a master plan behind the scenes and that he’s just playing cowboy for the cameras? I hope the master plan doesn’t involve figuring out how long it takes to get to China.

If someone is this ignorant, they’re usually embarrassed and try not to talk much. But this guy is so dumb he has no idea how dumb he is. This sounds like a conversation you might have with a child, a mentally challenged child. Johnny, do you know how big Russia is? How about China?

This would all be unfortunate if George was your dentist, or worse yet, your accountant. But he is the leader of the free world. This man makes life or death decisions every day. If you say you’re not scared about that, you’re lying.

Would you let him do the books for your business? Would you trust your company in his hands for eight years? (No matter how Republican you are, you know you just said no to that question.) Would you trust him to be your kids’ guidance counselor and take his advice seriously? If your kids were in the Army and he was their field commander, would you feel good about putting their lives in his hands?

Come on, no one is crazy enough to say yes to that. Yet, he has all of our lives in his hands. The emperor has no clothes. The emperor has no clothes. It’s about time someone in the mainstream media said it.

In the old empires, there would be a lot of marriages between the royal families. And from time to time, these inter-family marriages would produce a mentally challenged son who would inherit the throne. This would set the empire back for hundreds of years. I’m not saying anything, I’m just saying. Russia is big and so is China.

The Democrats for a long time have felt embarrassed about pointing out the obvious. The emperor has no brain. This is what I can’t understand about the Democrats, they’re always playing patty cakes while the Republicans are ripping their face off. John Kerry should have stood at the lectern during the debates and pointed to George Bush and said, "The leader of this country has to be the best and the brightest. If any of you think that he is the best and the brightest America has to offer, go ahead and vote for him!"

The theory is that people would be turned off by that. The theory assumes that people are also idiots and they love their cohorts. That is simply not true. Everyone understands that they have a friend they’d like to go fishing with and a friend they can trust to look after their affairs – and they’re not necessarily the same guy. And that your fishing buddy might not be a great choice for President of the United States of America.

Kerry should have embarrassed Bush, made people feel sorry for him. It would have hurt in the short run and given him a temporary downward blip in the numbers, but in the end, when people went into that voting booth, they would have felt pity for Bush – in that scenario, Kerry wins easily. Nobody votes for someone they pity.

Unfortunately, right now we are in the position of being pitied by the rest of the world. We have third grader for a President. And worse yet, the Vice President has him convinced he is the second coming of Winston Churchill. Scared yet?

In a Weekly Standard column titled "Our war", editor William Kristol called Iran "the prime mover behind the terrorist groups who have started this war", which, he argued, should be considered part of "the global struggle against radical Islamism".

He complained that Washington recently had done a "poor job of standing up and weakening Syria and Iran" and called on President George W Bush to fly directly from the "silly [Group of Eight] summit in St Petersburg … to Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us, against our common enemies".

"This is our war, too," said Kristol, who was also a founder and co-chairman of the recently lapsed Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Echoed Larry Kudlow, a neo-conservative commentator, at the Standard’s right-wing competitor, the National Review: "All of us in the free world owe Israel an enormous thank-you for defending freedom, democracy and security against the Iranian cat’s-paw wholly owned terrorist subsidiaries Hezbollah and Hamas.

"They are defending their own homeland and very existence, but they are also defending America’s homeland as our frontline democratic ally in the Middle East," according to Kudlow, who, like Kristol and other like-minded polemicists, also named Syria, "which is also directed by Iran", as a promising target as the conflict expands.

The two columns are just the latest examples of a slew of commentaries that have appeared in US print and broadcast media since Israel began bombing targets in Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah’s fatal cross-border attack last Wednesday.

They appear to be part of a deliberate campaign by neo-conservatives and some of their right-wing supporters to depict the current conflict as part of global struggle pitting Israel, as the forward base of Western civilization, against Islamist extremism organized and directed by Iran and its junior partner, Syria.

This view was perhaps most dramatically expressed by the former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, in an appearance on the National Broadcasting Co’s Meet the Press on Sunday when he described the conflict as "the early stages of … the Third World War".

The effort to frame the current round of violence as part of a much larger struggle – and Israel’s role as Washington’s most loyal front-line ally – recalls the neo-conservatives’ early reaction to the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Just nine days after September 11, Kristol and PNAC – whose charter members included Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and half a dozen other senior Bush administration officials – released an open letter to Bush that called for the United States to retaliate not only against al-Qaeda and Afghanistan, but also against Israel’s main regional foes, beginning with Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat.

In addition, the letter advised, "any war against terrorism must target Hezbollah. We believe that the administration should demand that Iran and Syria immediately cease all military, financial and political support for Hezbollah and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these state sponsors of terrorism.

"Israel has been and remains America’s staunchest ally against international terrorism, especially in the Middle East," the letter asserted. "The United States should fully support our fellow democracy in its fight against terrorism."

While the Iraqi and Palestinian components of PNAC’s agenda were soon adopted as policy and in essence achieved, neo-conservative hopes that Bush would move on Hezbollah – as well as Syria and Iran – eventually stalled as US military forces became bogged down in an increasingly bloody and costly counter-insurgency war in Iraq.

As the situation in Iraq worsened, neo-conservative influence in and on the administration also declined to the benefit of "realists" based primarily in the State Department who favored a less aggressive policy designed to secure Damascus’ and Tehran’s cooperation in stabilizing Iraq and strengthen the elected Lebanese government of which Hezbollah was made a part.

In that context, the current conflict represents a golden opportunity for the neo-conservatives to reassert their influence and reactivate their Israel-centered agenda against Hezbollah and its two state sponsors.

"Iran’s proxy war", blazed the cover of this week’s Standard, which also featured no fewer than three other articles, besides Kristol’s editorial, underlining Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas and the necessity of the US standing with Israel, if not taking independent action against Tehran and/or Damascus as recommended by Kristol himself.

A major theme of the new campaign is that the more conciliatory "realist" policies toward Syria and Iran pursued by the State Department have actually backfired by making Washington look weak.

"They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago," wrote Kristol. "Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak," he went on, adding that "the right response is renewed strength", notably "in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran [and] consider[ing] countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities".

The notion that US policy in the region has become far too flaccid and accommodating is echoed by a number of other neo-conservatives, particularly Michael Rubin, a prolific analyst at the hardline American Enterprise Institute and protege of Cheney confidant and former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle.

In a companion Standard article, Rubin qualified recent State Department policy as "all talk and no strategy" that had emboldened enemies, especially Iran, to challenge Washington and its allies.

In another article for the National Review on Monday, bluntly titled "Eradication first", Rubin elaborated on that theme, arguing that diplomacy in the current crisis will only be successful "if it commences both after the eradication of Hezbollah and Hamas, and after their paymasters pay a terrible cost for their support. If … peace is the aim, it is imperative to punish the Syrian and Iranian leadership," he wrote.

Above all, according to the neo-conservatives, the US position in the region is now inextricably tied to the success or failure of Israel’s military campaign.

In yet another Standard article, titled "The rogues strike back: Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah vs Israel", Robert Satloff, executive director of the hawkish, pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued that "defeat for Israel – either on the battlefield or via coerced compromises to achieve flawed ceasefires – is a defeat for US interests; it will inspire radicals of every stripe, release Iran and Syria to spread more mayhem inside Iraq, and make more likely our own eventual confrontation with this emboldened alliance of extremists."

(Inter Press Service)

With Europe and the US sweltering in one of the hottest summers on record, one hundred thousand New Yorkers are suffering under a blackout. The blackout was caused by a series of faults stemming from overload due to the intense heat.

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