What a moron

Is anyone paying attention to the NATO meeting? The triumphalism is a little nauseating, but the thing to watch is the attempt to make an alliance to defend Western Europe against the Red hordes into some sort of rapid reaction force, enforcing the will of the US in parts of the world that are not North nor are they Atlantic. Meaning Iraq of course. Which is not what NATO is for.

What NATO is actually for, as we know, is a penis substitute. “Tomorrow NATO grows larger,” said Bush. “Tomorrow, the soul of Europe grows stronger.” NATO is GeeDubya’s shiny red sports car, his way of making himself feel less inadequate, a feeling which always seems to come over him when he spends too much time with Colin Powell, for some reason.

Elsewhere in his speech: “We’re tied to Europe by history. We are tied to Europe by the wars of liberty we have fought and won together.” Funny, I thought a war of liberty was why we weren’t tied to Europe anymore. “And now that the countries of Europe are united in freedom, they will no longer fight each other and bring war to the rest of the world.” No, bringing war to the rest of the world is pretty much our job now. Actually, what that sentence shows is the myth of the peace-loving naive Americans dragged into the conflicts of the evil warlike Europeans. He also uses the phrase that terrorists come from failed states, which is his excuse I guess to fight states like Afghanistan and Iraq, which is something the Pentagon knows how to do, while avoiding tracking down actual terrorists, which they haven’t got a clue how to do.

The meeting was held in the Czech Republic, which needs a better name, and which kept having to fend off invasions from the old Warsaw Pact. The dictator of Belarus didn’t get a visa, despite his threats. Nor did the defense minister of Kazakhstan, whose plane was forced down by US war-planes. And Kuchma of Ukraine, which has an ok name but which still seems funny without the definite article, showed up despite being told not to, because of arms sales to Iraq, which Bulgaria has also done, but it just joined NATO (one of the secret conditions of which is that it sell its national tobacco factory to an American company, it says in the Guardian). The big question of the conference, though, was will they or won’t they, and Bush did indeed shake the hand of German Chancellor Schröder. At least Bush probably knows his name, as opposed to that of Elton Gallegly, chairman of the House International Relations Sub-committee, one of the 4 representatives of the US Congress, as Elton Gallegly, if that is his real name, found out when Bush tried to introduce him.

Canadian PM Chrétien also showed confusion, after his spokesmodel was overheard calling Bush a “moron.” (The exact phrase, which I could not find in the Toronto Globe & Mail, the 1st paper I looked in, was “What a moron”.) He is not a moron, said Chrétien, he is a friend. What, like he can’t be both?

http://www.preventcancer.org/colossalcolon/ for the Colossal Colon tour to promote colon awareness. Personally, when I want to be aware of my colon, I take a look at the piece of it I keep in a plastic container.

Since the Supreme Court banned executing the retarded, California is going to test the IQs of all death row inmates. With a 10-minute IQ test, which they tried to implement before their lawyers got wind of it, although they failed in that.

People that go to malls to pray (and not that they’ll be able to fit into that dress).

A letter to the NY Times notes that the gov plans to keep information on every purchase we make or library book we check out, our travel, bank records, medical records, e-mail etc, but won’t track gun sales and ownership. That the program is headed by John Poindexter is yet another hilarious Bush PR misstep that won’t damage him like it should, like the thing about expanding snowmobiles in Yosemite while we’re preparing for another war to safeguard our precious, precious oil.

The Miss World pageant is taking place in Nigeria. So far the death toll is over 50.

A story in the Post about the State Dept considering taking Burma off the list of major drug traffickers (knocked down one place by our good friends the Afghans, no doubt) suggests a cozying up to the dictators that needs to be watched.