Posted on 06/28/2002 10:13:20 PM PDT by Anewday
Why we should be worried about George W Bush
29jun02 THE world outside the US is now getting used to the fact Americans have a fraudulently elected nitwit as their president, but George W. Bush excelled himself this week with a "long-awaited" definitive speech on Middle East policies that stretched even the weirdest imaginations. BRUCE WILSON in London reports:
US embassies around the world moved to "explain" the batty future Bush saw for Israel and Palestine, but nothing could disguise that the bedbug was running the White House and anything could happen next. Hey, look. Even Tom Cruise is worried. In London this week he said he wanted his adopted kids brought up outside the USA because of what happens inside the USA. He listed terrorism and street crime, but very cogently he listed corporate crime as a reason not to bring up kids in the old US of A.
Now, Tom Cruise is not a Grade A rocket scientist. In fact, he is a Grade A Scientologist. On the whole, though, I would say he was brighter than George W. Bush (along with my neighbour's catatonic cat) and it was most intriguing that he named corporate crime as a reason not to want to grow up in America.
The WorldCom affair comes after the Enron affair while the Andersen affair simply defies belief. It has become perfectly clear that major US corporations have been running out of control, throwing billions of dollars into a kind of international financial black hole.
In vain you ask (as I tried to do), well, where has the money gone? I mean, if you back a loser at Randwick, then you know where your money went. If these companies have lost billions – $US3.8 billion in the case of WorldCom – why hasn't somebody won it? Or got it? Where has it gone? Or, more to the point, did it ever exist?
Of course it did, said the Doormouse. Otherwise, it could never have been lost and 17,000 people sacked for the lack of it. This is Alice in Wonderland stuff, capitalism rattling around like a high-velocity round in a mental vacuum. Where was government? Where was control?
Twenty years ago, when I lived in Washington, the US was said to have a trillion-dollar-a-day economy that was so strong not even government could screw it. Now, you have to ask if things have turned, that apparent fraudsters like WorldCom can screw government.
Dubya Bush seems reluctant to address these issues. He is a Texan (although not by breeding) and there they let things take their course, execute mentally deficient minors, and generally behave like good old boys, taking the Chevy to the levee.
If it were not for September 11, Bush would be in serious political trouble in America. He may be yet, in the mid-term November elections. His shocked nation rallied around him as the personification of The Flag when the atrocities stunned us all. His personal rating broke all records.
Since then, though, what? On this side of the Atlantic he is seen as a kind of strange joke. Britons try to understand him, but in Europe they simply think of him as a sort of circus act. The Middle East pronouncement was so absurd they didn't know whether to laugh or simply ask the US senior political attache over for a commiserating drink.
These concerns are based on the belief – that seems to be proven – that Washington itself is a divided city. Colin Powell, in State, is trying to plead reason over the clamouring voices in Defence, led by Donald Rumsfeld, clearly a man not always entirely in control of his senses.
Bush is listening to Rumsfeld, and other strange voices – not least the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. And, as he does, the US looks more and more to be a long way away from the rest of the world.
bruce.wilson@newsint.co.uk
NB. The previous editor of the Daily Telegraph is now the editor of the New York Post, another Murdoch paper.
I am outraged at this article and Mr Murdoch claims to be a proud American - how can he employ somebody who hates America?
This particular "bloomin' limey", anyway.
I've known catatonic cats with more intelligence...
So will Tom Cruise be leaving with Alec Baldwin anytime soon
Murdoch is a shrewd businessman who saw a market in the USA for a news channel that offered "fair and balanced" coverage of the news. American conservatives were thirsting for something besides the liberally slanted dreck that was being dished up by CNN and the broadcast networks.
Since Murdochs papers in Austrailia are all liberal rags, it seems that he is catering to the thirst of those readers to read any amount of socialist slanted news about the USA. Makes you wonder about the Aussie population.
The New York Post Editor knows better than to bring that crap here to America. I've been glad that the format still rules at The Post because I was kind of worried about him coming here.
The Aussie media is filled with blatant Bush-hate, America-bashing, anti-Semitism, and absolutely blind slavish boot-licking lust for the farthest of far-left thought, practically all of it written (as you can see from this so-called "article") by people who literally are so stupid that they are unable to compose comprehendable sentences, much less entire essays. (At least the people at the Guardian and the Robert Fisk types in the UK can actually write, even if what they have to say is nauseating.)
The Australian media situation is so bad that most people do not believe it until they see it for themselves. Which is why I recommend you all check out the weblog of Tim Blair, a moderate-to-conservative Australian journalist and columnist who provides daily updates of, and hilarious trashings of, the unreadable, hate-filled bile pouring out of the Australian media. It's not just the newspapers, either. It's the radio stations, national TV, everything.
As for Murdoch, well, just remember that most liberal rags here in the US have their token conservative columnist, so I suppose you've found that paper's token anus.
Get a grip.
And glad we are of that.
Interesting how there is no mention of Bill Clinton in this article.
So we are supposed to believe that the massive fraud at MCI Worldcom and Enron is the fault of George W. Bush, of course.
Nothing to do with that great "it's the economy, stupid" president Bill Clinton, whose "reign" shaped a corporate world where the "needs" of the stockholders are more important than the "needs" of the customers, and the "needs" of the top managers are way beyond the needs of employees.
Oh yes, GWB and his "oil industries cronies" are responsible for all of it.
Too bad this authord didn't see an interview I did this week, where one economic academic pointed the finger of blame squarely at Clinton, for putting a "stamp of approval" on a culture where lies, cheating and theft are okay.
Isn't this hideous??? And the press eats it up. Dufuses.
This is not because Murdoch is secretly a socialist. It's because a terrifying percentage of Australians in general are EXTREME leftists, and they only know Murdoch from what he's done in their own country, just as most Americans only know him as "that guy that owns Fox and the New York Post." In other words, the people you talked to were shocked because they're ignorant.
Rupert Murdoch is a right-winger. He worshipped Reagan and Thatcher, and despised Bill Clinton. He is almost singlehandedly responsible for the utter and total annihilation back in the 1980s of one of the most powerful and corrupt unions in UK history: the newspaper union. He worships free markets, and is conservative on most major issues: anti-drug, anti-abortion, etc. It's just that he won't let politics stand in the way of a good business deal.
Since Murdochs papers in Austrailia are all liberal rags, it seems that he is catering to the thirst of those readers to read any amount of socialist slanted news about the USA. Makes you wonder about the Aussie population.
On this, you are absolutely 100% correct.
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