Posted on 11/29/2002 9:06:12 AM PST by quidnunc
So much news, one can barely take it all in. From Il Nuevo in Italy comes the intriguing story, "Shoplifter Caught With Frozen Drumstick In Pants":
"A shoplifter who stuffed a frozen chicken drumstick down his underpants was caught because he couldn't stop hopping around. A cashier spotted the 25-year-old man moving around and repeatedly touching his groin as he queued for tills at a supermarket in Saronno … She called a security officer and the man immediately admitted he had stuffed some frozen food down the front of his pants … He had been unable to keep still because the frozen drumstick was giving him pain."
There, in a drumstick, is the Chrétien-Ducros approach to damage control: bury the story, stick it out of sight, keep smiling and walk calmly toward the exit, no-one'll notice a thing. Then the world looks on amazed as a supposedly semi-serious second-rank power is suddenly convulsed in weird spasms, doubled up in pain, hopping around, clutching its groin.
What happened this last week? I think President Chirac got it right. Treating M. Chrétien like a lame mutt the neighbourhood gang keeps lobbing pebbles at, he imperiously swatted aside a press question about Morongate. "We are in France," declared M. Chirac. "We are not here to discuss Canadian domestic issues."
Exactly. This is a domestic issue, not an international incident, despite Saddam Hussein's decision to leap to Miss Ducros' defence, surely a measure of the poor fellow's desperation. President Bush is not troubled by being dismissed as a moron by the Government of Canada for the same reason that that smug grandee from CPAC put up to defend our honour on CNN was not troubled when Bob Novak read out something by a columnist from The London Free Press, Herman Goodden. "Who is this guy?" scoffed the CPAC honcho. "I've never heard of him."
-snip-
Here he (Blair) is addressing his party a year earlier:
"America has its faults as a society, as we have ours. But I think of the union of America born out of the defeat of slavery. I think of its constitution, with its inalienable rights granted to every citizen, still a model for the world. I think of a black man, born in poverty, who became chief of their armed forces and is now Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and I wonder frankly whether such a thing could have happened here. I think of all this and I reflect: yes, America has its faults, but it is a free country, it is our ally and some of the reaction to September 11 betrays a hatred of America that shames those that feel it."
Why couldn't Chrétien say that?
Because he doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe Bush is his friend, either: He knows the President regards him as a boorish irrelevance. But some lies are easier to tell than others, and these days all the Liberals have to offer are loose lips: If we boast about our exceptional peacekeeping often enough, the fact that we no longer do it won't matter. As long as our nomenklatura pays loose-lip service to Kyoto and "encourages" the rest of us into 1986 Honda Civics, it doesn't matter that Herb Dhaliwal swans around like a Hamas warlord in his three-tonne Cadillac Escalade. Geez, that's bigger than my SUV and I'm in favour of global warming. The almost Soviet disconnect between reality and the party line is so routinely accepted in Canada's public discourse that you can understand Francie's resentment at being momentarily confronted by Mr. Bush's vulgar obsession with the facts.
Fortunately, even as she was packing, Warren Kinsella was live on the CBC restoring the alternative universe of Liberal poseur politics: Canada is America's "closest ally," he said, and furthermore it was Jean Chrétien who persuaded George W. Bush to seek UN Security Council approval on Iraq.
Let me ask again: Does even Warren believe either of these things for a nano-second after they've tumbled from his lips? Bush wouldn't consult Chrétien if he needed a good restaurant in Nunavut, and you can't be an "ally," close or semi-detached, when you've got no military. You can be the girl standing at the station waving her handkerchief as the troop train pulls out and the Glenn Miller band plays Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me). But even Jean and Warren aren't ready to try selling us that one. Hence the contortions of modern Canada: the conscientious objector who insists he's on the front line; the "soft power" whose last drumstick is defrosting in his pants.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
About 150 were killed in small shooting wars during peacekeeping missions since the 1950s. To say that they haven't taken casualties since the Korean War is false, unless one thinks that these missions are a walk in the park.
Yeah, if only they would do that.
I've had enough of tiresome socialist, appeasers such as M.Chretien. Thankyouverymuch. There is a "moron" in power in North America alright but it surely isn't George W Bush. Canada has the good fortune of being geographically blessed. Chretien can rest easy knowing the world's only super power is watching his back and that we're a peaceful, liberating nation not a conquering one. He has been able to fund and enact the failed policies of his government with nary a worry about budgeting significant increases for his country's national defense. Has there ever been a nation so economically and militarily outmatched by a bordering neighbor with less reason for concern ? Monsieur Chretien is an unappreciative, ungracious boob who is not fit to shine the boots of our "cowboy" president. May God continue to bless America and President Bush.
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