Of course they couldn’t have done the children’s festival thing with Chavez, because everyone knows he eats babies

From the Guardian, more on the increasing authoritarianism of Russia. Lots of details, including the banning of yet another party, but here’s my favorite bit:

The mayor’s office [in Nizhny Novgorod] announced a children’s festival on the site of the proposed march, and blocked off the road to carry out what it said were urgent repairs.

Speaking of rallies, the US’s Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, at the Council of Americas, said that Argentina shouldn’t have allowed Hugo Chavez to hold his rally in Buenos Aires at the same time as Bush was in Uruguay earlier this month. “I didn’t think that was the right thing to do.” Really, when George Bush is speaking, it’s just good manners for everyone on whatever continent he’s speaking on to keep quiet and still and listen respectfully. Were you people born in a granero?