Day: April 24, 2006

Dutch Firm Baa-Ttles Local Mayor Over Ads
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – A Dutch company that is blanketing roadside sheep with its logo faces a $60,000 fine — but said Monday it’s the mayor of a small town nearby who should feel sheepish for trying to ban the ad campaign. The company said the mayor was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, to which the mayor responded that the company was just trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes in the escalating contest of sheep-related puns begun by an Associated Press intern.

Many Mexicans Ignore Presidential Campaign
MEXICO CITY – An old joke is being recycled in the Mexican capital as the campaign gears up for the July presidential elections: “If the three main candidates were together in a plane crash, who would survive?” In America, we have a similar old joke: “If the two main presidential candidates went quail hunting with Dick Cheney, who would survive?”

Vatican to Issue Document on Condom Use
VATICAN CITY – At Pope Benedict XVI’s request, the Vatican is preparing a document about condom use by those with AIDS, a top cardinal said in a published interview. Among condom uses the pope is expected to approve are water balloons, mop-handle grips and stick-shift dust covers.

Sorbonne Reopens After Weeks of Protests
PARIS – Students returned to classes past police vans Monday as the landmark Sorbonne University in Paris reopened after being closed for six weeks amid protests of a youth labor law that mired France in crisis. They even have a term for it in French — “coupure de ressort” (spring break).

Chavez: U.S. Diplomat Welcome in Venezuela
CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuela’s president said Sunday that he would welcome a visit by a top U.S. State Department official and hopes to build close ties with like-minded Americans despite his vehement opposition to President Bush. While hinting that he would prefer a visit from “That eye-candy Condi Rice,” Chavez defined “like-minded Americans” as “ultra-left-wing authoritarian neo-communist autocratic whack-jobs.”

A Nation That Ceases to Be Good Will Cease to Be Great

Larry Wilkerson, who was State Dept. Chief of Staff under former Sec. of State Colin Powell — and a lifelong Republican — has been critical of President Bush since Powell resigned, but now he has gone ballistic:

In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great — as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.

From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.

Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration.

Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility.

This administration has expanded government — creation of the Homeland Security Department alone puts it in the record books — and government intrusiveness. It has brought a new level of sleaze and corruption to Washington (difficult to do, to be sure). And it has done the impossible in war-waging: put in motion a conflict in Iraq that in terms of colossal incompetence, civilian and military, and unbridled arrogance portends to top the Vietnam era, a truly radical feat.