braesdemblog

Rumsfeld Wins 'Foot In Mouth' Prize

from www.msnbc.com/news/999746.asp

Plain English Campaign baffled by defense chief’s comment


LONDON, Dec. 1 — A particularly curious statement by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s at a press briefing won him an unexpected honor on Monday. Rumsfeld, usually renowned for his uncompromising tough talking, was awarded the “Foot in Mouth” award for a baffling message which probably left his audience in the dark, Britain’s Plain English Campaign said.

“REPORTS THAT say something hasn’t happened are interesting to me, because as we know, there are known unknowns; there are things we know we know,” Rumsfeld told the briefing.
“We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
John Lister, spokesman for the campaign which strives to have public information delivered in clear, straightforward English, said, “We think we know what he means. But we don’t know if we really know.”

100,000 March Against Bush in London Last Week

below is a reuters article about the 100,000
protesting Bush in London, but the real pics and
stories that round out the true tale can be found at
London Indymedia:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/

UK gov tries to nip budding dissent in its
schoolchildren:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2003/11/281180.html

(Reuters) - Around 100,000 protesters marched through
London and tore down a mock statue of visiting U.S.
president George W. Bush on Thursday, many of them
convinced his policies were to blame for anti-British
bombs in Turkey. Demonstrators of all ages beat drums
and blew whistles along a three-mile route that took
them past parliament and the end of Downing Street,
where crowds paused to jeer toward Prime Minister Tony
Blair's office. More...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=US&cat=Bush_Administration

This Is Our President Speaking??!!

Sit back and have a few laughs with some classic
George W. Bush quotes!

"The vast majority of our imports come from outside
the country."
- George W. Bush

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
- George W. Bush

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any
Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."
- Governor George W. Bush

"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made
good judgments in the future."
- Governor George W. Bush

"The future will be better tomorrow."
- Governor George W. Bush

"We're going to have the best educated American
people in the world."
- Governor George W. Bush

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
- Governor George W. Bush

"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of
NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a
part of Europe."
- Governor George W. Bush

"Public speaking is very easy."
- Governor George W. Bush

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer
people going to the polls."
- Governor George W. Bush

"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or
may not occur."
- Governor George W. Bush

"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
- Governor George W. Bush

"Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession
that teach our children."
- Governor George W. Bush

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment.
It's the impurities in our air and water that are
doing it."
- Governor George W. Bush

"It's time for the human race to enter the solar
system."
- Governor George W. Bush

AND THE SCARIEST ONE OF ALL:
"There ought to be limits to freedoms."
- Governor George W. Bush, May 1999

Mayor of London Says Bush is 'Greatest Threat To Life On Planet'

Livingstone Says Bush is 'Greatest Threat to Life on Planet'
by Nigel Morris
 
Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, launched a stinging attack on President George Bush last night, denouncing him as the "greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen".

His provocatively timed comments, on the eve of Mr Bush's arrival in London tonight, threaten to create severe embarrassment for the Prime Minister. They also come with talks under way on whether to re-admit Mr Livingstone to the Labour Party before his five-year exile ends.

Although he made his many differences with the Government on a range of issues clear, he reserved his strongest comments for the American President in an interview with The Ecologist magazine.

The President's three-night trip, which will culminate on Friday with a visit to the Prime Minister's Sedgefield constituency, has sparked a flood of protests from those opposed to his foreign policy. But Mr Livingstone's outburst makes him one of the most high-profile and explicit of his critics.

Mr Livingstone recalled a visit at Easter to California, where he was denounced for an attack he had made on what he called "the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years". He said: "Some US journalist came up to me and said: 'How can you say this about President Bush?' Well, I think what I said then was quite mild. I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction."

Mr Livingstone, who is holding a "peace party" for anti-war groups in City Hall tomorrow, added: "I don't formally recognize George Bush because he was not officially elected. So we are organizing an alternative reception for everybody who is not George Bush."

He said he supported stronger links between European Union countries only because he wanted to see a powerful bloc emerge to rival the United States. "The American agenda is sweeping everything before it, and although it's not perfect, the EU is better on environmental issues. It's a less rapacious form of capitalism."

The Mayor said he had viewed Labour's 1997 election manifesto as a "load of old guff they'd come out with because they didn't want to upset the Daily Mail" that would rapidly be ditched. "I was amazed when it transpired that Blair had been serious," he said.

Accusing Mr Blair of suffering from a "background problem", he said: "There is nothing in his past that was radicalizing. He wasn't interested in all the great student activities, the radical campaigns.

"He did not get involved in politics until the 1970s, when the high point was passed. So you have someone of the summer of '68 generation who actually wasn't part of it."

On GM foods, he said: "If the Government ignores public opinion, then civil disobedience on this issue is legitimate, as long as it's not violent.

"But the most important thing that affects a government is not peaceful protest, but fear of the ballot box.

The Mayor's comments will infuriate Downing Street at a time when No 10 is examining ways of bringing Mr Livingstone, who was expelled from the Labour Party for standing as an independent in the London mayoral elections of 2000, back into the fold.

How Can Any American Be So Stupid?!

One of my Republican neighbors thought it would be funny to send this story to me. I don’t know who the author is, but I’m willing to bet it’s some yahoo, hill-billy who’s never opened a book since 8th grade. I’ve corrected the grammar for him before posting. Below you can read my response. Enjoy.

THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

CLASSIC VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up
supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant
should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing "It's Not Easy Being Green."
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing "We shall overcome". Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Al Gore exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share".

Finally, the EOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and,having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients. The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bit of the ant's food, while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: VOTE REPUBLICAN

Now after you’ve finished throwing up and asking yourself, "How can any American be so STUPID?" read my response to this yahoo, hill-billy:

THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
THE VERSION BUSH DOESN’T WANT US TO KNOW
by Kellen Wilson

If this were truly a fable where the ant was a Republican it would go more like this: First of all, you don't believe that the ant would be doing any hard work, do you? All hard work would be done by the grasshopper. And at a very low wage, I might add. You see, the Republican ant busted up the grasshopper union leaving the grasshopper to work at a much lower wage. This means that the mother grasshopper has to work just to bring in the same salary that the father grasshopper used to bring in alone. Then one day the Republican ant decides that even without the unions, wages were still too high and things like health insurance and safety regulations for his workers were eating into his profits and bonus packages, so he decides to move his anthill across the border where he can get Mexican beetles to do the work for dung.
Across the border the Republican ant is free to plunder the resources of another country and reap wild profits without having to worry about such foolish things as living wages, laws to protect the environment, safety regulations and child labor laws. This, of course, leaves the grasshopper without any meaningful work and he is forced into degrading service work ("would you like fries with that caterpillar, sir?") or playing the lottery. Some can't find work at all and end up homeless or sometimes the grasshopper feels hopeless and turns to drugs or crime, but that's okay, too because now the ant has more contracts to reward some of his biggest campaign donors in the flourishing new prison industrial complex industry. But wait, something's wrong. Even after moving his anthill across the border to exploit cheap labor and natural resources the ant is still losing money leg over claw. How can this be happening? After all, the ant is working the capitalist, free enterprise system full throttle, which means everything should be hunky-dory. Instead, the stock market is a free fall, 3 million jobs have been lost in the first 3 years under an ant administration, the economy is in a recession, the country is 2 trillion dollars in the hole, the states are broke, there’s no money for schools or infrastructure, Veterans of Foreign Wars benefits, nor any other vital social program. Of course, none of this stops the ant from getting huge tax breaks. And you would think with all of the tax breaks, privatization, corporate welfare and deregulation the ant's businesses would be thriving, wouldn't you? - You would be wrong. Because of mismanagement, corruption, malfeasance, and crooked Ponzi schemes the ant has run many multi-billion dollar corporations into the ground, screwed the grasshopper out of his life savings, stored the money away in offshore banking accounts and ran to Congress for a bailout, which will be paid with the grasshopper's taxes.

MORAL OF THE STORY: REPUBLICANS HAVE NO MORALS.

Joke

A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, "Wow, this seems worse than usual."

He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"

The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends; the press called him on the lie about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger, and now Campbell Brown is threatening to sue him for a sexual innuendo he made at a recent press conference. So we're taking up a collection for him."

The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"

The officer replies, "About 14 gallons, but a lot of folks are still
siphoning."

Bush Team Doesn't Want America To See Human Cost of War; Body Bags Now Labeled "Transfer Tubes"

For complete story go to http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/newsArticle.asp?id=1253

November 2, 2003, Summary:

As the saying goes, if you can't convince them, confuse them. With more lies told each day by President George Bush, here is yet another one. The US Department of Defense changed the name from "Body Bag" to "Transfer Tube" to describe how the bodies of our young warriors are returned home in the dark of night, with no official count of their growing numbers, and no solemn public ceremony to honor their proud service

Pentagon keeps dead out of sight.

Bush team doesn't want people to see human cost of war.
Even body bags are now sanitized as `transfer tubes.'

Americans have never seen any of the other 359 bodies returning from Iraq. Nor do they see the wounded cramming the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington or soldiers who say they are being treated inhumanely awaiting medical treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga.

In order to continue to sell an increasingly unpopular Iraqi invasion to the American people, President George W. Bush's administration sweeps the messy parts of war — the grieving families, the flag-draped coffins, the soldiers who have lost limbs — into a far corner of the nation's attic.

No television cameras are allowed at Dover.

"You can call it news control or information control or flat-out propaganda," says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington's American University.
"Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defence has ever undertaken in this country."

Simpson notes that photos of the dead returning to American soil have historically been part of the ceremony, part of the picture of conflict and part of the public closure for families — until now.

"This White House is the greatest user of propaganda in American history and if they had a shred of honesty, they would admit it. But they can't."

If there are no pictures of caskets being delivered to U.S. airbases, citizens don't think of them, analysts say. For every Jessica Lynch, the wounded soldier who returned to a hero's welcome and a book and movie deal, there is a Shoshana Johnson.

Johnson, shot through both legs and held prisoner in Iraq for 22 days, will receive 30 per cent disability benefits, about $700 per month less than her colleague Lynch.
Johnson is black, Lynch is white and the Johnson family says that is the difference.

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