<< NEWS BRIEFLETS ~ MAIN ~ ECO-DESTRUCTION ENCOURAGED >>
PRESIDENT WANTS TO BE LIKED
Insight from Simon Barnes:
US President George Bush failed to go along with the Kyoto Protocol because he thought that the American people wouldn’t like him if he did. So he turned it down, at incalculable cost to the world.
Mr. Barnes is a sportswriter.
(Via Murph)
Apparently Simple Simon doesn’t realize George has nothing to do with it: the US Senate passed a resolution 95-0 advising Bill Clinton not to sign the damn thing, and if he did, it would NEVER be brought up for vote to ratify.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 01 13 at 03:37 AM • permalinkOh, yeah… everyone here already knows that. I just saw an opportunity to use the “Simple Simon” gag.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 01 13 at 03:38 AM • permalinkAnybody who actually knows how the American system of government works knows that, even if Bush were a rabid supporter of Kyoto, he’d need 67 votes in the U.S. Senate to bring it into force. And there just aren’t that many votes for it.
Frankly, the negotiators of the treaty itself, at least had they been honest with themselves, would have known that there was no chance of U.S. Senate approval during the lifetime of the treaty.
So, it was never intended by any of the negotiators with an understanding of reality that the U.S. join Kyoto. Since Bush didn’t negotiate the treaty, the only ones who can blame Bush for that fact are the dishonest, the ignorant, and the delusional.
Posted by Warmongering Lunatic on 2006 01 13 at 03:53 AM • permalinkThe devious Bush is planning his next run to be for Ruler of the World! Countries containing over half the World’s population are either not subject to the Protocol or will not sign it. These people will like him. And he doesn’t care about shuffleboard either.
[India, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Malasia, Pakistan, S. Korea, Latvia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, almost all of Africa,...]
I bumped into Sebastian Coe at the airport after the last Olympic Games. I offered, perhaps tactlessly, to buy him a cup of coffee. He politely declined and went and sat somewhere and stared blankly at the aeroplanes. He was clearly suffering from a critical bout of schmooze-fatigue.
Like most lefties, Barnes doesn’t consider the possibility that Coe thinks that he is a sanctimonious loser and would rather sit by himself than put up with Barnes’ whiney crap.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 01 13 at 06:14 AM • permalinkYou see Simon, unlike in some other countries, Mr Bush lives and works in a democracy. It’s a silly, wasteful thing where if your job is a politician and people don’t like you, well you don’t get to keep your job.
Now under socialism this doesn’t apply and we can all see the attraction of that for you. I think Vietnam is still socialist, why not move there?
“Sportswriter Figures Out Democracy” would have worked as a title too.
Posted by Paul Zrimsek on 2006 01 13 at 08:57 AM • permalinkI thought it was Kim Jong Il who was ronery?
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2006 01 13 at 09:06 AM • permalinkI bought Simon’s book on birding. Protocol says you’re supposed to link. What’s a protocol?
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 01 13 at 12:27 PM • permalinkThe US Senate wouldn’t have ratified Kyoto even if Ralph Nader had been elected President in 2000. That’s why Bill Clinton stuck the treaty in his pocket after sending Al “We Must Protect Mother Gaia” Gore to sign it. It was all a dog-and-pony show.
Posted by Randal Robinson on 2006 01 13 at 12:56 PM • permalinkPresident Bush played club rugby at Yale, so I have to give props to seamless journalistic technique.
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 01 13 at 01:07 PM • permalinkSo the ugly secret here is that George Bush failed to go along with the Kyoto Protocol because the American people (taxpayers, citizens, voters… you know) didn’t go along with it?
Who the hell does that Dubya think he is anyway?
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 01 13 at 04:40 PM • permalinkPresident Bush succeeded in not going along with Kyoto.
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 01 13 at 05:19 PM • permalinkReminds me of a recent article in the (Newcastle) Herald where a sports columnist decided to use his column to attack John Howard. The backstory was that Howard had been in Pakistan and was asked to bowl a few balls in a friendly cricket match; Robert Dillion (I believe that was his name) chose to abuse as best he could the “feeble” cricket skills of a man well into his 60s. It was a childish and pathetic attack, coming at the end of the IR debate (it takes Newcastle a few days to realise that the rest of the country has moved on).
#22 Anagillis
As I remember it was a kid’s cricket match, and quite a few journos had a go at Howard’s bowling. So what was he supposed to do? Send a warne level spinner at a 10 year old? Dolts.Ross
We’ve got a ruminative, bloviating pseud, too, who goes on and on before, during, and after boxing contests. His name is Larry Merchant. Now I don’t know if Larry has ever decided to write about Kyoto (beautiful ancient city, a must-see if you are ever in Japan. Too bad it has gotten saddled with being the eponymous name of this treaty), but if he ever does, it would be so full of wordy, spiraling descriptions which eventually just trail off into a cloudy sky of unintelligibility, that we would never know if he was for the treaty or against it. That’s the great thing about Larry. He talks his ass off but you can’t make heads or tails of what he was saying, and once you realize that, you just tune him out.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
perhaps a genuine confusion with the marquess of Queensbury rules?
ear bitng and all that