Bush v. World

From a worldy man:

Today's Bangkok Post highlights the absolute fury Europeans are expressing towards the Bush Regime's foot dragging and sabotage. The E.U. has declared that if Bush and his lackeys don't shape up on climate issues immediately, they will boycott the face-saving environmental Bush is convening in Honolulu in January. Portugal holds the rotating E.U. presidency right now and Humberto Rosa, Portugal's chief environmental negotiator, spoke for all of Europe when he said, "If we would have a failure in Bali it would be meaningless to have a major economies' meeting [Bush's MEM] in the U.S... We're not blackmailing. If no Bali, no MEM."

The Bush Regime, which has been on the defensive all week and is severely alienated from the rest of the world, reacted predictably. A White House flack: "We don't feel that comments like that are very constructive when we are working so hard to find common ground on a way forward."

Anyone who has followed the Bush Regime's policies and tactics in the past 7 years well knows that "working so hard to find common ground" means threatening and bribing everyone else to accept its reactionary positions. The biggest applause at the Bali conference came when Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore stood up and said aloud what everyone has been whispering: that Bush is intentionally wrecking the conference's goals of capping greenhouse gas emissions.

The pompous, even contemptuous, Bush Regime response to the criticism is nothing short of galling to the rest of the world. "We will lead," Bush's delegate blustered, "we will continue to lead. But leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow." But following a self-proclaimed "leader" more concerned with the ideological imperative of massive profits for its campaign donors isn't something anyone else is buying right now.

"Leadership requires others to fall in line and follow" --- there we have the Bush philosophy on governing in one complete sentence that applies to torture, spying on Americans, going to war, natural disasters, economic malfeasance, and any number of failures of this administration.

Anyone who so much as gives George Bush the time of day is a coward.