Exploiting the opportunity

Something else Prince Charles doesn’t have to squeeze out of a tube himself, because he has one of his valets do it: toothpaste (from a crested silver dispenser). Actually, Chuck has recently economized, cutting down to four valets, but the Guardian still asks “why exactly does one man need so many people to help him get dressed?”

In analyzing GeeDubya, here are a couple of quotes from him, from the Post’s piece on Bob Woodward’s new book on the Afghan war:

“I can be an impatient person." He spoke about his "instincts" or his "instinctive" reactions a dozen times during the ranch interview. "I'm not a textbook player; I'm a gut player," he said.

Ignoring the content, which just proves again what I’ve said about him in the past, that he thinks “instincts” are an adequate replacement, indeed superior than, intelligence or knowledge, look at the sentence structure. Maybe he’s been doing this all along and I just noticed it, but I’ll be on the lookout in the future. He’s thinking of himself in the third person; he’s using nouns where normal people would use adjectives or verbs. Most people would say “I can be impatient,” how many people that you know would say “I can be an impatient person”?

This isn’t scary at all: Britain is considering replacing electronic tags for paedophiles with surgically implanted ones, that can be used to track them at all times via GPS and monitor their heart rate and blood pressure, sending out the police if they think he’s getting too excited.

Fans of urine-related sports should click here.

Sharon plans to expand settlements in the West Bank. Yeah, we know he does that anyway, but usually he lies about it. He says on radio that Israel must “exploit the opportunity to create new facts in the field and create contiguity” (that means ethnic cleansing). I assume the opportunity he’s so eager to exploit is the latest attack on Israelis. Think he’ll get into trouble for the word “exploit”? Me neither.

Former Italian Prime Minister Andreotti is sentenced to 24 years in prison for getting the Mafia to assassinate, in 1979, a journalist who was close to the story of Andreotti’s complicity in the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro. No one thinks he’ll actually have to go to jail, though. I don’t think anyone ever does in Italy.

For the first time North Korea says that it has nukes. Not that this means they do, of course.

The new Pakistani Parliament has finally been allowed to convene. It has a record number of 1) mullahs, 2) women (many of whom are standing in for male politicians Musharaf barred from running). Should be fun.