You are currently browsing the daily archive for July 21, 2006.
Via CNN.com
Bush’s German back rub magnified on Web
[Snip ...]
Coupled with Bush’s use of an expletive at the summit and a U.S. senator comparing the Internet to a "series of tubes," the incident reveals anew the power of the Web — and YouTube, specifically — to beam embarrassing political gaffes around the world.
Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, agrees that today, public figures have to be more careful in "a thousand ways." But he maintains sites like YouTube can be revealing.
"If they’re not doing something that’s embarrassing, they have nothing to worry about," he says. "A president ought to know enough not to use an expletive in a fairly open meeting and almost any male alive today knows that you don’t offer uninvited massages to any female, much less the Chancellor of Germany."
Many writers saw a sexist aspect to Bush’s back rub. "This isn’t a Sigma Chi kegger, it’s the G-8 Summit," wrote blogger Christy Hardin Smith on Firedoglake.com
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It seems clearer and clearer that the Bush administration is ready to label anyone who doesn’t agree with American values as "terrorists", and that it is ready to, or will, wage war against all and sundry who have been so labeled.
Wonder where Osama is these days ?
From the Washington Post (Misleading Headline Alert !):
In Mideast Strife, Bush Sees a Step To Peace
Fred S. Zeidman, a Texas venture capitalist who is active in Jewish affairs and has been close to the president for years, said the current crisis shows the depth of the president’s support for Israel.
"He will not bow to international pressure to pressure Israel," Zeidman said. "I have never seen a man more committed to Israel."
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Maybe it’s all the fault of the liberal media, Democrats and others who disagree or disapprove of Bush administration policy, and anyone who just doesn’t believe enough …
Via Hullabaloo … the full post is here.
Iraqi leaders have all but given up on holding the country together and, just two months after forming a national unity government, talk in private of "black days" of civil war ahead.
Signalling a dramatic abandonment of the U.S.-backed project for Iraq, there is even talk among them of pre-empting the worst bloodshed by agreeing to an east-west division of Baghdad into Shi’ite and Sunni Muslim zones, senior officials told Reuters.
Tens of thousands have already fled homes on either side.
"Iraq as a political project is finished," one senior government official said — anonymously because the coalition under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki remains committed in public to the U.S.-sponsored constitution that preserves Iraq’s unity.
One highly placed source even spoke of busying himself on government projects, despite a sense of their futility, only as a way to fight his growing depression over his nation’s future
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BTW, I am also timing myself as I post this.
George Harrison and the Pirate Song
Including the typing of text, less than one minute
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