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JOKE BELLOWS
“Who does Condoleezza scare?” asks Bob Ellis. “Not Putin. Not Sharon. Not Musharraf. Not Mubarak. Not Koizumi. Not Kim Jong-il. Not Castro. Not Chavez. Not Kofi Annan.”
It’d be pretty easy to scare Kofi; just yell “They’ve found the documents! The documents you signed!” and old Kofi would be headed for the nearest window. Bob continues:
When America used its power and bombed, bunker-busted and killed 150,000 Iraqis and pulled down a statue, but still couldn’t guarantee a safe street, a day’s electricity or a justly administered prison, it showed itself so impotent as to be a kind of big, bellowing, murderous joke.
Bob hasn’t killed anyone, and his paternity case a few years ago ruled out impotence, but “big, bellowing joke” still serves as a reasonable self-description.
And though it isn’t headlines yet, this impotence is the new reality. Bush’s popularity is the lowest it has been. The John Bolton appointment and the looming oil-price depression on top of his record half-trillion-dollar deficit will show him to be the most economically incompetent US leader since Hoover.
There is no place except here to make Hoover?
The fact is that Condoleezza’s tenure has coincided with, or caused, the end for a while of American power.
You see if I am right.
Bob rarely is. How’s that Kerry landslide coming along, pal?
When America used its power and bombed, bunker-busted and killed 150,000 Iraqis…
OK, that study came out, when, last October? That means in the last six, seven months, another 50,000 have been killed. That’s 7,000 a month at the low end, or about 230 a DAY!
Yesterday the terrs carried out an attack that killed 60. It was in all the papers, lead the broadcast news reports; supposedly as a sign of how “well” the terrs are doing.
Where are the reports of all the others?
Or, since the original “study” included the entire population of Iraq in its “margins” of error, have they simply pulled another number out of their asses?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2005 05 04 at 11:12 AM • permalinkHadn’t realized her job was to frighten people. Guess it’s worked on Bob, though.
Posted by Hucklebuck on 2005 05 04 at 11:18 AM • permalink“Who does Condoleezza scare?�
I’m confused. I thought that lefties hated the Bush administration for being a bunch of bullying, murderously insane cowboys. Now he’s bitching because Condi isn’t scaring the shit out of the world?
“When America used its power and bombed, bunker-busted and killed 150,000 Iraqis and pulled down a statue, but still couldn’t guarantee a safe street, a day’s electricity or a justly administered prison, it showed itself so impotent as to be a kind of big, bellowing, murderous joke.”
Ah, I see. Real power comes from efficient municipal management. Hail, Switzerland!
“show him to be the most economically incompetent US leader since Hoover.”
Yup. Compare Bush’s single-digit inflation, single-digit unemployment, and single-digit interest rates with Jimmy Carter’s score on all three, and you’ll see that Carter was twice as good!
“The fact is that Condoleezza’s tenure has coincided with, or caused, the end for a while of American power.”
Yes! Because correlation means causation. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. On a personal note, I would like to apologize to America for contributing to this decline vis-a-vis my receding hairline.
“You see if I am right.”
Let’s see - unchallenged military superpower, strongest economy in the world, declining crime rates… yep, looks pretty grim. Must kill myself now.
You mean we get to be a pitiful helpless giant again? You can bring back 1970, but only if Hendrix comes with it. And a Carlton-Collingwood Grand Final for you.
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2005 05 04 at 11:52 AM • permalinkThe John Bolton appointment… will show him to be the most economically incompetent US leader since Hoover.
Huh, what?
Posted by Matt Moore on 2005 05 04 at 12:26 PM • permalink“Oh, so now it is 150,000?”
Inflation.
Posted by Jim Treacher on 2005 05 04 at 02:21 PM • permalinkDave S, besides militarily and economically, the US is also powerful culturally as Josef Joffe discussed in a 2003 column entitled “Gulliver unbound: can America rule the world?”:
A third mainstay of American preponderance is cultural. This is another significant contrast with past hegemons. Whereas the cultural sway of Rome, Britain and Soviet Russia ended at its military borders, American culture needs no gun to travel. If there is a global civilisation, it is American. Nor is it just McDonald’s and Hollywood, it is also Microsoft and Harvard. Wealthy Romans used to send their children to Greek universities; today’s Greeks, that is, the Europeans, send their kids to Roman, that is, American universities - and to British boarding schools.Why this peculiar twist? Maybe, it is the fact that America is the ‘first universal nation’, one whose cultural products appeal to so large an audience because they transcend narrow national borders. It all began a hundred years ago when Russian Jews from the Pale started making movies in Hollywood that interpreted the ‘American Dream’ to the rest of the world.
To recapitulate: This Uber-Gulliver packs a threefold set of uniquely big muscles - military, economic and cultural - and there is nothing on the horizon of political reality that suggests the speedy demise of his hegemony. Gulliver unbound
Posted by wronwright on 2005 05 04 at 06:28 PM • permalinkQuite right, wron - an addlepated omission on my part. I had forgotten how our stormtroopers round up people in other countries at gunpoint and force them to eat at McDonald’s and watch cheesy action movies.
What’s that you say? Foreigners actually lap our culture up voluntarily like Janeane Garofalo at a cheesecake buffet? I don’t believe it.
BTW, how come our shitty action movies are glorifications of mindless violence, while even shittier and more violent Hong Kong action pics are art or something? Is it the slow-motion doves?
BTW, how come our shitty action movies are glorifications of mindless violence, while even shittier and more violent Hong Kong action pics are art or something? Is it the slow-motion doves?
No, it’s the way that bullets that hit anything other than human flesh cast off sparks. And the way that they convinced a generation of wannabe gangsters that turning your gun on its side looks cool.
jic - Sometimes the bullets that hit people throw off sparks in John Woo movies. Hard Boiled for instance.
Posted by Matt Moore on 2005 05 04 at 08:37 PM • permalinkJim Treacher — Not inflation… reloading.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 04 at 09:03 PM • permalinkTerryelee — I think the evil Christian Theocrats plan is to kill so many Iraqis that they have to ban birth control just to provide more targets…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 04 at 09:06 PM • permalinkHas anybody told Sir Max about this buffoon?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 04 at 09:12 PM • permalinkRemember those terrible blind date type TV shows where they got all those frighteningly vacuous and self-absorbed young things to talk about themselves and about the only thing any of them could think of to say was how much they like to “rage” and they all said it over and over again?
Bob Ellis reminds me of those people.
Hang on a moment. Are you telling me somebody actually dropped a paternity suit on Bob Ellis! What kind of person would do that to a child?
Humiliation aside, the kid would have to support him.
Posted by James Hamilton on 2005 05 05 at 03:19 AM • permalinkWell, she certainly scares the Four-X out of Ellis…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 05 at 10:13 AM • permalinkBob the Slob loves to cheat on his wife. And yes, it takes a particular sort of woman to believe rooting Bob is something cool. He’s also an accomplished drink driver (most of us would never make it through the Bilgola bends in his usual state) and loves to “go the grope” at parties after a skinful. He’s quite comfortable publishing lies to sell books (smearing women is a favourite).
An ideal judge of US immorality eh?
PS. nothing has been claimed here that is not freely acknowledged by the the Great Slothful One himself.
The thought of being rooted by Ellis is enough to bring one out in hives.
Posted by Susan Norton on 2005 05 08 at 06:45 AM • permalink
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Oh, so now it is 150,000?
The man is not only an idiot, he is a lying idiot.