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November 21, 2005
WB: No Exit
Comments
Oh wow, he looks like he’s shrinking. And he can’t get out…………..
Alicccccccccceeeeeee!!!!!
I’ll have another hit of that barkeep.
Posted by: anna missed | Nov 21 2005 9:10 utc | 2
Exit strategies are not his strong suit.
Obvious, but someone had to say it.
Posted by: Monolycus | Nov 21 2005 9:13 utc | 3
He runs into trouble when the media access/citizen access/non-major cojones dollar contributor event isn’t totally scripted. He might have made a better career as a teevee entertainer for kids in the manner of Soupy Sales, Groucho Marx, at the advent of that medium. Now we see how the Federal govt spending for that type of a frank discussion with real troops teevee episode works well for him. Does it come out of the budget of the DoD or education spending for kids with special needs? I knew he was going to be an embarrassment on this trip. If his handlers didn’t want him to look bad overseas, they shouldn’t have allowed him overseas. But, hey, 1st president to Mongolia. And he’s praising the Mongolians for sticking him in bringing democracy to Iraq. Koreans pulling out.
Posted by: christofay | Nov 21 2005 9:25 utc | 4
sticking with him, rather. maybe I meant sticking him
Posted by: christofay | Nov 21 2005 9:26 utc | 5
Don’t Ask
“The first time the Bushes traveled to China together in their current capacity, she had to tell him to slow down as he tried to race through a tour of the Great Wall. She once persuaded him to go to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, only to see him burn through the place in 30 minutes. He dispensed with the Kremlin cathedrals in Moscow in seven minutes. He flatly declined an Australian invitation to attend the Rugby World Cup while down under.”
Posted by: annie | Nov 21 2005 9:37 utc | 6
I like this part….
“Respectfully, sir — you know we’re always respectful — in your statement this morning with President Hu, you seemed a little off your game, you seemed to hurry through your statement. There was a lack of enthusiasm. Was something bothering you?” he asked.
“Have you ever heard of jet lag?” Bush responded. “Well, good. That answers your question.”
Oooh. What a meanie.
Posted by: jm | Nov 21 2005 10:28 utc | 8
Okay, except why is the President of the United States of America, and all his men, suffering from jet lag?
What emergency summons him to China to speak to the world (and Chinese) press so urgently that he is not well-prepared, not well taken care of.
Yes, yes. We are at war. But what kind of leader of the free world is this, not much of a statesman. I do feel for the guy left out unsupported in a very foreign land under the hot lights. He is undoubtably the most, or at least one of the ten most powerful people alive today. Is it endearing to us that he can play the fool?
“Hey, throw me that football!”
Posted by: jonku | Nov 21 2005 11:03 utc | 9
“I was trying to escape…
…It didn’t work.”
prophecy?
Posted by: citizen | Nov 21 2005 15:14 utc | 10
visual confirmation that bush is indeed a stooge. nyuk nyuk nyuklehead…
Posted by: b real | Nov 21 2005 15:57 utc | 11
“ooop’s
what do I do now?
I know, keep pulling on the ***&* thing”
voice in ear piece: “43, 43, GO THE OTHER WAY!” (mumbling – for gawd’s sake)
Posted by: joanna | Nov 21 2005 16:14 utc | 12
Preznit no. 43, G.W.Bush, re his China trip:
… In five years in the presidency, Bush has proved a decidedly unadventurous traveler, an impression undispelled by the weeklong journey through Asia that wraps up Monday. As he barnstormed through Japan, South Korea and China, with a final stop in Mongolia still to come, Bush visited no museums, tried no restaurants, bought no souvenirs and made no effort to meet ordinary local people.
“I live in a bubble,” Bush once said, explaining his anti-tourist tendencies by citing the enormous security and logistical considerations involved in arranging any sightseeing. “That’s just life.”
A virtualized ‘Fuehrer Bunker’ existence …
Posted by: Outraged | Nov 21 2005 17:08 utc | 14
Bush praises Mongolian hordes for revisiting Iraq
Note the photo caption: ‘Failed exit strategy’
Posted by: Oz | Nov 21 2005 17:22 utc | 15
The Chinese are certainly not paragons of virtue re Human Rights, yet, to understand how far we have fallen whilst spouting our ‘Human Rights champions’ rhetorical mantras … the rest of the world IS watching and taking note …
Torture chief gets nod from Beijing
By Hamish McDonald in Beijing
November 22, 2005
The United Nations’ chief torture investigator arrived in Beijing to look at China’s prisons yesterday in a visit that will add to US embarrassment over its Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
Manfred Nowak, an Austrian law professor and the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, will spend 12 days in China after a decade of negotiations by his office.
China has hedged for years about terms of the visit but appears to have given critical guarantees, including private access to prisoners and promises not to take action against those who report mistreatment.
Dr Nowak’s visit to China comes a few days after he rejected the terms offered by the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, for a visit to Guantanamo Bay.
Dr Nowak said he and other UN human rights specialists would not have been allowed to speak privately with inmates. This was a minimum requirement for such a visit and to accept the US terms “would have created a disastrous precedent” he said…
Posted by: Outraged | Nov 21 2005 17:54 utc | 16
(Posited this over at Digby’s also)
Why is it that the Shrubbery is beginning to take on the mannerisms and outward appearance of……Johnny Carson?
Could it be the ‘awwwww-shucks’ impulse has overtaken his public persona completely?
Has anybody seen him sneaking smokes behind the podium while the film clips/commericals for his war play between sound bites?
It’s possible that he was feeling superstitious. The first time that he was ever asked a real question was in 2003, during a tour of Africa. Things are easier to stage manage on your own turf.
Further, as globally despised as he has managed to make himself, I have to imagine those nervous nellies in the secret service must have been seriously damaging his calm. I’m just grateful that he was enough of a statesman to refrain from throwing up on anybody important (since 1992, “To do the Bush thing” has been a euphemism for vomiting in Japan).
Posted by: Monolycus | Nov 21 2005 21:19 utc | 18
I burst out laughing when I saw the front page of the NYT this morning @ Starbucks. The photo editors must have had a field day with those three shots.
@citizen,
not prophecy, perhaps metaphor. Because after ’06 he actually will find his way “out” [of office].
Posted by: gylangirl | Nov 21 2005 22:26 utc | 19
I’m just grateful that he was enough of a statesman to refrain from throwing up on anybody important (since 1992, “To do the Bush thing” has been a euphemism for vomiting in Japan).
Ain’t it the truth, Monolycus. Seems that every time a Bush opens his mouth, nothing good comes out.
Posted by: jm | Nov 21 2005 23:13 utc | 20
Bush is a moron: Hurray, we all agree. But visiting Mongolia is an important part of the containing the emergent Chinese empire. If you don’t agee, then please provide facts and statistics.
Who appointed GW Bush and the rest of the US sheriff, decided that China was growing as an Empire(which is difficult to argue since it’s borders have been largely static-they are a little smaller now than they were for several thousand years, it has virtually no navy and the army is fully occupied dealing with internal dissent), that that empire needed containing, and that the only proven consistent agressors on the planet, the US were the nation to do the job?
Pardon?
Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 22 2005 8:47 utc | 22
Pardon?
Ha!
I know that Democrats are a lost cause, but it does still ‘amuse’ me also that so many American ‘progressives’ cling to this “American Exceptionalism” shit, and still talk the same ‘containment’ narrative.
If ‘containment’ of China results in any attempt to block resources (kinda like with the Japanese empire), that would be an act of war.
I don’t see that happening. Anyone ‘gaming’ a real conflict with a real army must know that America can’t win.
I think there might be a better than 50% chance that they will try their luck with Syria, then try to consolidate their gains. Seems like the easiest play with a bad hand. But China – or North Korea ? No, all fart and thunder, they don’t have the balls for a real fight.
All this empire stuff is not worth it anyway. Looking (not so) far off into the future, America might be a much nicer place without an empire. A quite little backwater. Of course, the UN will have mandated that the USA revert to the original thirteen colonies; Mexico will get Texas restored; San Francisco State will have a free trade agreement with the State of Los Angeles; and Kansas will still be Kansas.
Compared to China, America will be Petticoat Junction (a fitting epithet – some Karma here?)
Posted by: DM | Nov 22 2005 12:01 utc | 23