France Bashing, Again!

[Octafish]

Robert "Busted Iran-Contra and all he got was fired from Newsweek" Parry" represents what's best about American journalism -- a desire to tell the Truth. Here's his latest, worthy of passing around to friend and foe alike:

France Bashing, Again!

By Robert Parry
October 4, 2004

Like an ex-high school football star who flopped as an adult, George W. Bush is flashing back on his glory days of winter 2002-2003 when bashing the French was a sure-fire way to get the crowd cheering.

Battered from his first presidential debate with John Kerry, Bush returned to a favorite golden oldie of baiting anyone -- in this case, Kerry -- who suggests that Washington should care what the rest of the world thinks. Bush apparently wants to make “France” the new political f-word.

On Oct. 1, the day after the debate, Bush told an audience in Allentown, Pa., that Kerry was demanding “that America has to pass some sort of ‘global test’ before we can use American troops to defend ourselves.” Bush then added: “The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a veto by countries like France.”

SNIP...

Here’s what Kerry actually said in response to a question about whether he would use preemptive military force, which is defined as an attack on an enemy that is preparing to attack but has yet to launch an attack: “No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, … you’ve got to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test, where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.”

CONTINUED BRILLIANCE...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/100404.html

[shaolinmonkey]

1. To quote Bush:

"SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES! FRANCE SUCKS!"

[Octafish]

4. Is Bush Nuts or Psycho?

NUTS...

Physician sees ’presenile dementia’ in Bush’s faltering speech

By Jerry Mazza

In a letter to the editor of Atlantic Monthly, October 2004, Joseph M. Price, M.D. of Carsonville, Michigan, comments that James Fallows’ July/August Atlantic article on John Kerry’s debating skills ("When George Meets John"), "was interesting, but most remarkable was Fallows’s documentation of President Bush’s mostly overlooked changes over the past decade-specifically ’the striking decline in his sentence-by-sentence speaking skills.’" Dr. Price understands Fallows’ initial "speculations that there must be some organic basis for the President’s peculiar mode of speech, a learning disability, a reading problem, dyslexia or some other disorder."

Quoting Fallows, Dr. Carson also agrees with him that "The main problem with these theories is that through his forties Bush was perfectly articulate." Yet, Dr. Carson stated he felt "that something organic was wrong with President Bush, most probably dyslexia, but . . . was unaware of what Fallows pointed out so clearly: that Bush’s problems have been developing slowly, and that just a decade ago he was an articulate debater." He was as Fallows said, "artful indeed in steering questions and challenges to his desired subjects . . . who did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones." As Dr. Carson suggests, "Consider, in contrast, the present: ’the informal Q&A he has tried to avoid,’ ’Bush’s recent faltering performances,’ ’his stalling, defensive pose when put on the spot,’ ’speaking more slowly and less gracefully.’"

Dr. Price suggests that "not being a professional medical researcher and clinician, Fallows cannot be faulted for not putting two and two together. But he was 100 percent correct in suggesting that Bush’s problem cannot be ’a learning disability, a reading problem, dyslexia,’ because patients with those problems have always had them." The doctor. goes on to say, "Slowly developing cognitive deficits, as demonstrated so clearly by the President , can represent only one diagnosis, and that is ’presenile dementia’! Presenile dementia is best described to nonmedical persons as a fairly typical Alzheimer’s situation that develops significantly earlier in life, well before what is usually considered old age."

Dr. Carson adds, "It runs about the same course as typical senile dementias, such as classical Alzheimer’s-to incapacitation and, eventually, death, as with President Ronald Reagan, but at a relatively earlier age." Dr. Carson adds, " President Bush’s ’mangled’ words are a demonstration of what physicians call ’confabulation,’ and are almost specific to diagnosis of a true dementia." His advice: "Bush should immediately be given the advantage of a considered professional diagnosis, and started on drugs that offer the possibility of retarding the slow but inexorable course of the disease."

CONTINUED...

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3403

PSYCHO...

IS BUSH NUTS? – THE SEQUEL

by William Thomas |

Is Bush nuts? Or merely a convincing actor? As his murderous charade crumbles around him, will his fantastic feats of denial hold up? Or will this pretend president crack up - taking the rest of us who knows where?

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has published transcripts of last year’s negotiating session between Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas, faction leaders from Hamas and other militant groups and America’s latest Action Hero – who stunned everyone present by saying, "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

Would you call this speaker delusional?

How about a bad liar? Bush has denied knowing the now-discredited Chalabi - despite having invited him to sit with Laura Bush during last year’s State of the Union address. Bush also denies knowing Enron’s’ Ken Lay of Enron, whom he has corresponded with, and who was a chief contributor to Bush's 2000 election bid.

Or just plain sick? Having promised during his presidential campaign to avoid tapping Social Security - except in cases of war, recession or a national emergency - Bush gleefully told his budget director just after the horrific Sept. 11 attacks: ”Lucky me. I hit the trifecta.” –
SNIP...

THEY WERE HERE A MINUTE AGO

This isn’t funny. Remember that annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in March 2003, when Bush made a series of "jokes" about the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction? Showing slides of administration officials looking around the Oval Office, Bush laughingly said in a mock voice-over, "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere."

It was hilarious! Except for the deaths of tens of thousands of kids and their parents and grandparents in Iraq, plus more than a thousand American GI’s - all killed by the lies GW told about WMD; now just “material for yucks," David Corn wrote in The Nation.

CONTINUED...

http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Is_Bush_Nuts_The_Sequel.htm

[PATRICK]

2. Junior jumped on that word so hard

that no script writer in his circle could stop him from using it over and over. I don't even think it is to balance his dumb defensiveness on the great coalition with Poland. the Dems are certainly not going to insult any ethnic group. Apparently Americans with French heritage don't count in critical electoral areas.

Bush's sincere extreme isolationism and disdain for the UN, typical of the tribe although Bush hypocritically is a multi-corporational globalist, comes through obnoxiously loud and clear.

Well, temporarily we are not telling Polish jokes anymore.

[Octafish]

5. Why would Bush like ENGLAND so much? Benedict ARNOLD liked England.

Gee. Odd who is friends with whom.

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president

Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday September 25, 2004
The Guardian

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html



"I'm a nice NAZI. A kompassionate konservative. Why you votin' fer?"

Timeline of Treason: The Bush Family Connections to the Nazis

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/timeline.html

[seemslikeadream]

7. I wonder why old family friend and U.S. ambassador to England

Mr. Farish, picked-up and left his post so suddenly last summer?

[tmooses]

3. Bush pick out one term out of context

And then runs with that. It's the Karlrovian response.

[Octafish]

6. Krugman noted that, as well.

Yours are minds that can still reason, despite the best efforts of the BFEE. BTW: A most hearty welcome to DU, tmooses!

The Falling Scales

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 5, 2004

Last week President Bush found himself defending his record on national security without his usual protective cocoon of loyalty-tested audiences and cowed reporters. And the sound you heard was the scales' falling from millions of eyes.

Trying to undo the damage, Mr. Bush is now telling those loyalty-tested audiences that Senator John Kerry's use of the phrase "global test" means that he "would give foreign governments veto power over our national security decisions." He's lying, of course, as anyone can confirm by looking at what Mr. Kerry actually said. But it may still work - Mr. Bush's pre-debate rise in the polls is testimony to the effectiveness of smear tactics.

Still, something important happened on Thursday. Style probably mattered most: viewers were shocked by the contrast between Mr. Bush's manufactured image as a strong, resolute leader and his whiny, petulant behavior in the debate. But Mr. Bush would have lost even more badly if post-debate coverage had focused on substance.

Here's one underreported example: So far, Mr. Bush has paid no political price for his shameful penny-pinching on domestic security and his refusal to provide effective protection for America's ports and chemical plants. As Jonathan Chait wrote in The New Republic: "Bush's record on homeland security ought to be considered a scandal. Yet, not only is it not a scandal, it's not even a story."

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/opinion/05krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugman

[PATRICK]

8. LIHOP

in broad daylight. There is still remarkable aversion to the practical evil of the entire Bush agenda. Nor does that purpose(or distraction or concentration on other things) have to be understood or assigned. It is merely the most obvious thing in the world that Bush is inviting a terrorist hit where innocent civilians will be the fodder to feed a new tyranny. Failing that, the fear of real danger will do so long as none dare blame their exposure on Bush.

As long as the sun shines most good people cannot accommodate this thought. That is what makes the sidereal assault upon us so successful.

[oasis]

9. Bush's precious "Coalition of the Willing" played a key role in selling

the war to the American people. In other words, "no coalition, no sale".

So before the invasion of Iraq, Bush felt he needed to give the impression that "global" leaders were important partners in the "War on Terror".

He's flip-flopping again. :wow:

[SOS]

10. France has troops in Afghanistan

yet Bush continues to insult them.
Demeaning your ally on the ground to gain a few xenophobe votes isn't "leadership".
It's idiocy.