Posted outside a local restaurant:
"WE DONATED OUR SPINACH TO THE U.N."
PAD
Posted by Peter David at September 21, 2006 06:47 PM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingOk, now everyone in the office wants to know why I can't stop laughing.
Iowa Jim
I remember that when I first heard about the e.coli contamination of the spinach, the first thing I thought was: "My God, someone warn Popeye!"
Is that wrong?
Couldn't we send a few bushels to Iran as part of America's new spinach-for-oil program? Maybe we could kill several birds with one vitamin-enriched stone. And since Iran's president seems to be best buds with Venezuela's outspoken leader, maybe they could sit down together for a nice house salad before they go home tonight.
Now what will all those American parents do now that the starving children in China actually *have* spinach?
BTW... just got the latest X-Factor and noticed what you guys are doing with the covers for this storyline... a "Tryp"tich, indeed...
This is where my sense of humour hits the Queensway for parts unknown.
I cannot find this amusing.
Judging from some of the recent speeches there it would seem that Great Britain has already been sending beef.
Dwight, normally I would agree with you, but I'm not all that delighted with the UN as a group right now, after these past several days. Not about having the leaders of Iran and Venezuela stand up and address the world body; after all, that is their right as member nations. But I can't understand why the UN didn't send several thousand troops into Sudan months ago and say to the government, 'You're killing your people; we're going to stop you. Are you actually going to fire upon an entire army comprised of nations that can flush you out of office in about an hour?' Instead, we get meeting after meeting and meetings about meetings, and people continue to die. This is the kind of situation that the UN should be able to deal with, and until they do, I'm perfectly happy for people to send them spinach.
Joe: Blame that on lobbying and other, less well-regarded tactics on the part of the Sudanese government. The UN and African Union thought they had a deal worked out for Blue Beret reinforcements to the AU peacekeepers already on the ground. There's something on CBC.ca in the archives for The Current covering this in detail. I'll try to dig up the links to the relevant *.ram files.
As to intervening in the Sudan, it's really not the UN's place to do so unilaterally, as no international issues are involved. (Rather like it wasn't the US's place to invade Iraq unilaterally, but we'll just set that aside...)
Kinda like the FBI is (technically) supposed to get involved only in crimes with interstate implications or when invited by local cops.
However, back to the original point (or whatever it was) of this thread:
"I say it's E.coli, and I say to hell with it!"
Oh - and i leave you with this rather unsettling image (admittedly, it's someone's PhotoShop over a photo, but still...):
http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2006/09/hello_vader.html
Posted by AdamYJ at September 21, 2006 07:26 PM
I remember that when I first heard about the e.coli contamination of the spinach, the first thing I thought was: "My God, someone warn Popeye!"
Is that wrong?
Considering that you just made me spit coffee all over my computer screen, yes, it was very, very wrong. :)
Honestly, if it gets them to take up the invitation to relocate to Caracas, may be a good plan.
Posted outside a local restaurant:
"WE DONATED OUR SPINACH TO THE U.N."
That's in bad taste...
Sadly, the "Popeye's Funeral" idea was seized upon by the Op-Ed cartoonist of the Ottawa Citizen. Olive standing with a flower at the graveside, to boot.
&$%#@!!!
Posted by: Chris Grillo at September 22, 2006 09:22 AM
That's in bad taste...
You know what I find to be in bad taste? Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, who has allied himself with Iran's nutcase president Ahmadinejad, giving a speech from the floor of the U.N. General Assembly where he branded the U.S. an "imperialist empire" on the verge of collapse. Chávez even had the nerve to suggest that rather than trying to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons, the U.S. should halt its own production. As if that would cause Iran's crackpot government to have a change of heart! As if a nuclear Iran isn't a threat to global stability!
Or how about in 2003, when Libya was given chairmanship of the U.N. Human Rights Council?
THOSE things were in poor taste.
I've got mixed feelings about Hugo Chavez. On the one hand, I agree with him that Bush is just about the worst president ever, or at least, the worst one in my living memory.
On the other hand, the USA is still me team, as they said on Southpark and I felt outrage over Chavez's commentary, which was very undiplomatic.
Bush may be an ass, but he's our ass.
Bill, I agree that the remarks that Chavez made were in poor taste- I'm not sure there are a lot of people would dispute that. Even though some of us might believe that our commander in chief may leave traces of sulphur in his wake, there's a certain tackiness to standing up in somebody else's country under the cloak of diplomatic immunity and blast their leader like that. I have no problem with Chavez calling Bush a donkey from his own home, but doing so in New York was less than politic. Or completely politic, depending on your point of view I guess.
I know I am gonna get slammed for stating this here, however I feel I have to point something out. In my mind having Chavez come here and say that, is really not that much different than some musician ragging on our president on foriegn soil. And than insulting their fans who feel that was uncalled for who responded by not buying concert tickets.
Third best sign I've seen of late.
The top two come from photos I saw of signs in a Bourbon St. store.
FEMA - The other "F" word.
&
FEMA - Fix Everything My @$$
"In my mind having Chavez come here and say that, is really not that much different than some musician ragging on our president on foriegn soil. And than insulting their fans who feel that was uncalled for who responded by not buying concert tickets."
Your opinion and it's fine if you want to keep it. Although, I think there is a difference between statements made about a country's leader and a statement made about the country or its people as a whole.
Had someone like the Dixie Chicks said that they hated America or that they were embarrassed to be from America... That's one thing. But they didn't. They took a dig at Bush and people accused them of insulting America and supporting Saddam and terrorist.
I also don't really care what Chavez says. His speach was filled with over the top hyperbole, firebrand garbage and insults with little or no real debating points. His opinion of what my country is or is not really means very little to me. Let him say his bit, get back on his plane and go the "F" back home.
Doesn't offend me in the least.
Posted by: Bill Myers at September 22, 2006 10:55 AM
THOSE things were in poor taste.
I wouldn't know. I didn't eat Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez or Libya. ^_^
Did anyone else miss my pun?
I was in New Orleans this year for Jazzfest -- putting my tourist dollars to work and getting excellent food and music for my trouble -- and there were TONS of shirts with slogans like that for sale (and ones referening Nagin's "Chocolate City" remark).
But I just wanted to add that while I can't speak for Chris Grillo, his original "bad taste" remark might just be a simple food pun, and not necessarily a reason to jump on him about Chavez.
Just a thought.
(Drum roll)Chris Grillo, ladies and gentlemen- Chris is here all week! Be sure to tip the waiters and don't eat the spinach! At last, a thread I can sink my teeth into.
That thudding sound you heard was the final small piece of good taste hitting the floor, but screw it, it's Friday and it's been a long week. Especially for the devil, I mean, oh, never mind.
Okay, now I guess I CAN speak for Chis -- but I can only speak too late.
The important difference between the Dixie Chicks and Chavez is that the Dixie are private citizens (albeit celebrities) and they made their comments at their own concert. It was their forum to express themselves. Chavez was a visiting head of state in the US standing before the entire world forum. His comments were wholely inappropriate for that forum by all the established principles of decorum.
As for insulting their fans, well, that's just shooting themselves in the foot career-wise. Their comments didn't hurt anyone besides themselves. Chavez's speech carries a lot more weight because of his position as a head of state. His speech has harmed our ability to make alliances and has emboldened our enemies.
But then again, so has the last 6 years of the Bush administration.
Chavez is a kook. Nobody with a lick of sense thinks of him as anything else. Yeah, I know a few of the far left have held him up as some kind of icon, the next Fiedl Castro. Top which one can point out that Fidel is no prize either, unless one is so stuck in an anti-America frame of mind that ANY petty dictator is ok as long as he parrots the extreme left agenda. Chavez is Castro without the style.
One might as well just embrace the horror and root for the president of Iran as well, if one is so inclined.
Luckily, said fools make up only a small percentage of the left, though they are overrepresented on the web. Even Nacy Pelosi and Charles Rangel, no strangers to over the top comments, saw through this ass-clown. Good for them.
There may come a point where it will become obvious that every cent we spend on the UN could be better spent doing what the UN ought to be doing. The corruption there seems endemic and accountability doesn't seem to be on the agenda.
Yeah, I know a few of the far left have held him up as some kind of icon
Any member of the left who really believes this isn't a member of the left as we know it because the whole "leftist" stuff down south has a far different definition than what we're used to.
But that's just imo.
I think some of those forms of government, such as socialism, have their uses, but to hold up complete loons like Chavez or Castro as icons? Yeah, sure, we'll just create statues for Lenin and Mao while we're at it. :P
Okay, as I said, here's some of the relevant links to CBC's The Current archived segments on the Darfur Crisis still in progress, with all files in *.ram format, FYI:
May 2, 2006 - Part 1, specifically.
Hope those help explain some of the details as seen from outside the USA...
Posted by Chris Grillo at September 22, 2006 02:32 PM
Did anyone else miss my pun?
If not, does that mean I have to accept the "Clueless Numbskull Award" again? Because I've won that one and awful lot and I really think it should be someone else's turn this week.
Somewhere, there's a terrorist cell thinking to themselves, "All this time we were trying to build bombs, when all we had to do was poop on their food!"
If not, does that mean I have to accept the "Clueless Numbskull Award" again? Because I've won that one and awful lot and I really think it should be someone else's turn this week.
It's ok, we retired your number. :)
Any member of the left who really believes this isn't a member of the left as we know it because the whole "leftist" stuff down south has a far different definition than what we're used to.
Well, you have to admit, an awful lot of otherwise smart people seem to hold Castro in a baffeling degree of high regard,
Being in another country may have made the Dixie Chicks more self-conscious about Bush. I know that in the last year or two I've had an insticnt that I should apologize to people from other countries, when encountering them on-line, for being an American. I can see how that urge would be much stronger when you're actually in another country, and Bush is from your state.
The problem is that there's rampant hypocrisy on both sides.
On the one hand you've got Bush at the UN, making perfectly reasonable speeches in a perfectly reasonably tone...but the actions he's taken in the past years are seen as those of an unreasonable warmonger.
On the other hand you've got dictators and strong men from other countries standing there badmouthing Bush, feeling strengthened by the disdain and anger felt toward him by not only the world community, but Americans. Except we, as Americans, know that if--in their own countries--people spoke out against these SOBs in the same manner that we in America have spoken out against Bush, those protestors would disappear, be smacked down, executed. As bad as Bush is...they're worse.
And that is ultimately the greatest problem with the assault on Iraq, the secret tortures, the disdain for the Geneva Convention: In surrendering the moral high ground, we render ourselves indistinguishable from those who would destroy us.
PAD
Posted by Peter David at September 24, 2006 08:39 AM
In surrendering the moral high ground, we render ourselves indistinguishable from those who would destroy us.
I was thinking something very similar when Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf accused the U.S. of threatening to bomb Pakistan if they didn't cooperate with the war on terror. President Bush and the neocons in his administration have done enough stupid things to lend just a shred of credibility to that accusation. Is it true? I don't know. I tend to doubt even the Bush administration would be that stupid. But again, there's the rub... they've done so goddamned many stupid things that I can't rule this one out.
To me, it isn't even a question of whether we are literally indistinguishable. Sure, you can raise a number of points to distinguish us from them. But the fact that it even becomes a question is troubling. Our strength has always been in our moral superiority. We should be so diametrically opposed to their ideas and practices with OUR ideas and practices (not just with our speeches) that to even raise the question of us being like them would sound silly. This should be on all issues, including political dissent, treatment of the enemy, respect for self-determination, respect for other religions and cultures, and the use of force. There should not be even a single parallel that can be drawn. The only line that should be drawn is the one dividing us from them, and it should be so clear that people who like our ideas will automatically know which side to join. That's how we'll win.
There's something else that separates us from the ones trashing Bush. He's (like it or not) one of us. (Please, no "I'm no [insert favorite Anti-Bush League crack HERE]" responses, I mean he's ours, he's American.) One can say whatever one wants to inside the "house", but when one of the neighbors come in, without any of the inside knowledge, spewing things in the same vein, that's when it gets outta line. Unfortunately, Bush is such a, well, character, that it's easy to jump on the bandwagon against him. It's going to take whoever gets the job next some SERIOUS time and effort to convince anybody outside our borders (and some inside, now that I think of it) that we're not all Bush.
One thing about the moral high ground. If we want to claim it, we need to deserve it. None of this Kindergarden level "Well, they hit us first so they DESERVE it!" garbage. A line has to be drawn somewhere, both in what we allow to happen to our people and in what we allow the response to be. There needs to be rules, not reactions after we've been hit in the gut.