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UNSMART ALEC
The UK Telegraph’s Alec Russell—based in Washington DC since 2003—revives a celebrated modern myth:
Mr Bush’s daring piece of presidential theatre yesterday appeared to be more successful than the stunt he pulled in 2003. The images of the president serving Thanksgiving dinner to the troops were undercut when it emerged that he was holding a fake display turkey. Yesterday was very much a sombre affair.
Russell might be in a sombre mood today, once his editors alert him to the fact the turkey wasn’t fake. It’s been 923 days since Turkeygate began, by the way; we hit 1,000 days on August 30. Oh, the parties we shall throw! Feel free to invite Alec, whose Telegraph blog allows comments.
(Via walterplinge)
It’s been 923 days since Turkeygate began, by the way; we hit 1,000 days on August 30. Oh, the parties we shall throw!
yes, we shall celebrate that Grim Milestone.
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2006 06 14 at 02:35 PM • permalinkHmmmm.
Ooo, a party! I’ll bring the polyvinyl canapés.
Don’t laugh but someone actually invented plastic food. It was a polymer that could be spun and formed into many different shapes and with different textures as it was combined with actual food. So “plastic” spaghetti could be 50%+ plastic polymer and 50%- of actual durum wheat.
The idea being that you could eat your fill of plastic food while losing weight.
I have no idea what the experience passing this stuff through the GI tract was for those that tried it out. But I do notice that this stuff isn’t anywhere on any shelf.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 06 14 at 04:01 PM • permalink“Yesterday was very much a sombre affair.”
Huh? Hectic, maybe, but sombre? Far from it. Has “journalism” always been this preposterous? There are (too few) excellent reporters - but so much of this stuff is beyond belief .... why, it’s enough to .... provide fodder for a whole set of blogs.
You could see the charge Bush derived from being here, and especially from being able to thank the military (and civilians) in attendance. I didn’t get to shake his hand but watched from a nearby perch as he worked the long line at the barricade.
The roar of applause and cheers when he entered the ballroom (now known as the Green Bean, for the coffee operation that’s set up there since last December) was perfect. It was one of the most enjoyable moments I’ve had here.
For the record, I failed miserably by not offering a detailed report to this blog last Thanksgiving, regarding polyurethane foul. I didn’t see any. However, the only whole turkey I saw was on FoxNews, a live shot from Camp Prosperity (a small base at Checkpoint 12, the start of the airport road or “Route Irish”). Here at the embassy annex we had the turkey roll we have fairly often - a disappointment. To top it off, the shrimp cocktail made over 150 people sick the next day.
But the reality is that the food service here is incredible - and that applies to forward bases as well. The job done by the evil KBR (Haliburton) is amazing. I’ve often wondered what a WWII vet would think eating in a front-line cafeteria today.
Fear I won’t be here for Thanksgiving this year (or rather regret, in a way - I’ve never enjoyed any work more than this), so I won’t be able to offer live, on-the-spot plastic turkey intel.
But I do recall chuckling to myself last November, walking through the line and thinking about the hilarious plastic turkey material Tim has posted here since Dubya’s first gutsy trip in 2003.
Which brings us back to the sad excuse for writing cited above. A president taking real risks to see his troops and make his points is performing a “stunt”? I’m afraid this perfectly encapsulates the unseriousness of so many clueless reporters and pundits. I suppose it was ever so - the rare true leader with personal and moral courage being ridiculed by his vast lessers.
Did many of the guests put in for Purple Hearts, IceCold, after the shrimp attack? (Or do none have political aspirations?)
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 06 14 at 05:17 PM • permalinkI note that Alec acknowledges in his blog, after numerous comments correcting him, that the turkey was not a fake turkey, but a “display turkey”. WTF is a “display turkey”?
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 06 14 at 05:29 PM • permalinkWTF is a “display turkey”?
A geniune bird with all the trimmings, put out as a centerpiece at military bases for a homey touch at holiday meals (the troops are served sliced turkey out of trays in the queue). This, to leftists, is very sinister.
Bush took a picture with the display bird, then had more pics snapped of him serving the troops from the serving trays. This, also, is very sinister to the leftists.
A display turkey is not sinister, it’s merely for display. Like the series of “moderations” that GWB has enacted for our viewing pleasure in recent months - a hotch potch of mea culpas all designed to win back the support that’s deserted him. All of this is for display. Like a display turkey.
But the bloghead’s three-year crusade, his incessant demand that the truth be told about the turkey is getting very tedious. No one cares if it’s true or not, least of all the bloghead. This is just rubbish standing in for content. What’s got me is where is the business model here? I mean Timbo must be of independent means, coz there sure aint bucks in a few hundred measly page views about the fake turkey every couple of months.
Fess up, blogmeister. Who’s paying you to put out this tripe day in day out?
Posted by Miranda Divide on 2006 06 14 at 07:16 PM • permalinkPsst, Miranda…plastic turkey posts are specifically designed by Tim to draw you out of your cardboard box every now and then. And a good and timely thing it is, too, what with the recent trolls falling far short of the stellar example you have set here over the years.
BTW, nice job suppressing your subconscious desire for writing something non-stupid long enough to go from “fake turkey every couple of months” to “day in day out” in the span of only one sentence. You’ve still got it, Rander!
#11 But the bloghead’s three-year crusade, his incessant demand that the truth be told about the turkey is getting very tedious.
Not at all. It’s the left’s lies about President Bush and the War Against Terrorism that is tedious. So how about doing your part to help stop it MD.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 06 14 at 07:55 PM • permalinkHow did three comments sneak in before mine? Two of them from Dave S????
Posted by wronwright on 2006 06 14 at 07:57 PM • permalinkHey, Dave S. (and I don’t for a second believe that’s your real name) all’s fair in love and the culture wars. Your ‘lot’ invented “anything goes”, remember? Impeaching a President for a blow job is a good marker point.
But on reflection, you’re right, goddammit.
I don’t care. I don’t care abt fake turkeys, about Tony Snowjob, about the chairman of Goldman Sachs, about “don’t bring it on”, about 30,000 dead Iraqis (GWB’s guestimate), about closing gitmo, about the wiretaps on your phone, your armageddinoutahere budget deficit, your spiralling gas bill, about the record profits you deliver to George’s oil company buddies… I don’t care for any of that. My lot and I are riddled with indifference at the unravelling of your pernicious agenda.
Why don’t you get yourself one of those one way tickets to the resurrection, the one’s going cheap, straight to the most convenient torture chamber on foriegn soil.
hmmm, it seems I really do care a lot. Just like an evil lefty, always flip-flopping.
Posted by Miranda Divide on 2006 06 14 at 08:02 PM • permalinkMD hits it precisely. The Left cares nothing at all about truth or falsity. This is the main difference between them and their opponents.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 06 14 at 08:16 PM • permalinkYour ‘lot’ invented “anything goes”, remember? Impeaching a President for a blow job is a good marker point.
Wasn’t my lot. I’m a libertarian. I thought it was asinine. Come to think of it, so did my conservative friends. Of course, we’re Gen-Xers, and the “destroy the unbelievers!” impulse on the Left and Right tends to come mostly from Boomers.
Why don’t you get yourself one of those one way tickets to the resurrection
Sorry, I’m an atheist.
the one’s going cheap, straight to the most convenient torture chamber on foriegn soil.
Huh? Did you just puke alphabet soup on your keyboard?
your spiralling gas bill, about the record profits you deliver to George’s oil company buddies
Huh. And here I thought you were telling us before the war that Iraq was all about getting cheap oil. Whatever.
BTW, you might want to crack a basic business text and look up the distinction between “profit” and “profit margin.”
Quality lefty barkmoonery, btw. Excelsior!
If MD is so exercised, why doesn’t she move to a more tolerable country that fits her beliefs? I recommend (in this order) North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, China, Iran, Venezuela. In any of those she can practice her lovely lack of differentiation beteween truth and lies to her tiny little heart’s content.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 06 14 at 08:19 PM • permalinkPerhaps the resonance of the guitar strings with the GlobalWarmingMenace of BigWoodenAlGore caused Katrina to become a Category 5 Hurricane and not only kill 10s of thousands but lead to multiple rapes and murders in the Superdome.
Ooops. Wait just a moment. Turns out Katrina wasn’t even a Cat 3 hurricane it hit NO, fewer than 2000 were killed and the rapes and murders (celebrated by Anderson Cooper and others of his ilk) didn’t happen. Oh, what the hell. True, false, who cares? It’s fake but accurate, contains loads of ‘truthiness’ and allows MD to ‘speak Truthiness to . . .’ well, whatever Tim is.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 06 14 at 08:24 PM • permalinkDamn him for believing that woman and that black fella when they said they could handle it, huh?
Now you’re clutching at straw men, Dave.
Posted by Miranda Divide on 2006 06 14 at 08:26 PM • permalinkIf Saddam’s followers say the turkey was plastic - it must be true
Posted by Islam/cancer-Chuck Norris/answer on 2006 06 14 at 08:50 PM • permalinkAnother plastic bird sighting here.
Posted by Islam/cancer-Chuck Norris/answer on 2006 06 14 at 08:53 PM • permalinkCongrats Dave…I don’t know how you did it, but Miranda hasn’t, ermm, opened up like that in quite a while.
Though, come to think of it, maybe wronwright used the Tardis to sneak away with Miranda’s lithium supply in between posts 11 and 18.
Anyway, you other trolls, watch the champion emeritus in action and learn something.
... and the image of him strumming a guitar while New Orleans was being destroyed.
Presumably because most lefties are too stupid to understand a merely text-based lie like the plastic turkey hoax (after all, that picture clearly showed a real turkey), and thus need visual aids for their make-believe alternaverse?
Thanks for inadvertantly providing more ammunition, Hal…a truly impressive own-goal. Maybe you should stick to fouling up gorbal worming threads with your nuttery.
This Alec has been wholly captured by the Belt-Way Bullshit Brigade.
If he’s English [as I assume], he should be ashamed of all the tired cliches he’s feeding back to London:
Rove is ‘Bush’s Brian’
Bolton the ‘Uber-Hawk’
Now the ‘Plastic Turkey’ folly.Doesn’t the Tellie have better people to send than this?
A sad comment on the British Right these days.Doesn’t the Tellie have better people to send than this?
Sadly, that’s what seems to happen to most foreign correspondents to the US. The German newsweekly I read is centre-right in general (both in the editorial line as well as most of its journalists), but the US correspondent’s output tends to be carbon-copy MSM nonsense most of the time. I complained about it once (when Dubya’s “fundamentalist Christian base” was juxtaposed with the “enlightened” Democrat voting base as though that’s a completely self-evident proposition), but after the utter non-response I got, I’ve just taken to ignoring that idiot’s articles.
Inconvenient Facts will be ignored, right Miranda?
Look at what you’ve done Miranda,
You’ve gotten poor Dave S. all hot and bothered. You have to stop waving those facts around like that.
You make an interesting observation about the slim pickings here when some serious but inconvenient drama in unfolding in the world. When the Haditha story broke, the loudest thing on this blog was the sound of crickets.
Nearly 1000 days gone since the turkey moment. How time flies! How many days has it been since Mission Accomplished?
#3 Addamo, you don’t get it, do you?
The purpose of blogging is to keep the professional journalists’ noses to the grindstone, and keep them there.
When a Major Bonehead in Washington shows his ignorance and studipity we cane him.
There are too many of them, I fear.We celebrate our victories, unlike you.
When Bush said ‘Mission Accomplished!’ we still think he was justified - an amazingly short war you didn’t want or support.
That is the sort of ‘error’ the Left celebrates for lack of *real* ones.We celebrate the unmasking of Dan Rather annually.
If you don’t like *our* party, arrange your own.When the Haditha story broke, the loudest thing on this blog was the sound of crickets.
That was the sound of people who were waiting to see what happened rather than jumping to conclusions while an investigation was underway. And what do you know, it’s looking more and more like there was no massacre. Shocking, huh?
Oh, Addamo [#33, sorry] you apparently *know* all the truth about Haditha, and I guess you gloat over the so-called terrible nature of US soldiers. [Are you a US citizen?]
Did you also notice the *caution* we showed over the ‘Gaza Beach Child Massacre’ too, which the PLO and Hamas have quickly used, but will not let the world press examine?
#20: Looks like fun, Dave S. I’ll fisk him/her from another direction.
Your ‘lot’ invented “anything goes”, remember? Impeaching a President for a blow job is a good marker point.
Clinton wasn’t impeached for playing lollipop with Monica, he was impeached for lying to a grand jury. The impeachment process at least had the salutary effect of showing that the President wasn’t above the law, and that Clinton was a fundamentally unserious man who thought it was perfectly ok to turn the oval office into a massage parlor.
Why don’t you get yourself one of those one way tickets to the resurrection
As a devout Catholic, I’m working on it.
the one’s going cheap, straight to the most convenient torture chamber on foriegn soil.
Babel Fish has its limitations, doesn’t it?
your spiralling gas bill, about the record profits you deliver to George’s oil company buddiesLet tyrants rule, as long as I can get my Valvoline at 1990 prices.
Are people just being randomly pressed into doing troll duty? Has the Left instituted conscription?
Addamo, re #34, I reckon any guy who causes the Liberation of 50 million people from dictatorship and repressive theocracy can’t be all bad. Even if he is a Texas Cowboy.
Like the photo though, and it deserves more publicity and a lot of mockery.
How come Lefties have to Lie so much, when there’s so many Brain-Farts and idiocies in the Bush Administration that they should be criticising?
Possibily because making stuff up has become a habit.
This does nobody any good. An opposition is supposed to act as a check and stop the worst mistakes of one side, and the Left isn’t doing it’s job. Stuff they should be complaining about - giving dictatorships such as Belarus too much slack - they stay silent about for the most part. Instead they support smelly kleptocrats like Mugabe just because they’re vaguely Leftish.
When is the Feminist Left going to urge intervention in Iran to stop the Mullahs from executing women who dare defend themselves against rapists?
Sorry, feeling a bit bitchy today, hormone levels etc.
Nah, you deserve it.
Alec Russell is worse than I thought.
This is his blog and my comment on him there:
Quoting Alec:
“Haditha is clearly a catastrophe and one which, like Abu Ghraib, will be deemed an awful milestone along America’s road from victory to despair and ignominy in Iraq. But for once I find myself agreeing with Donald Rumsfeld when he says that 99 percent of the US troops are decent, and well-trained…
..To despair of the mission in Iraq seem[s] reasonable enough under the circumstances. But don’t despair of the US soldiers.”ME:
These lines astonish me. So you KNOW that Haditha is a ‘catastrophe’ and that it will lead to ‘ignominy’ and ‘despair’ in Iraq, just like Vietnam. It’s an ‘awful milestone’ -another cliche.
And this is despite your view that 99% of US soldiers are fine, well-trained people.
What does this say about your assessment of the USA, or my own nation Australia, or for that matter Western civilisation as a whole!If just 1% can doom the lot, why do you carp about having too few there originally?
Your defeatism is appalling, and not even relieved by your weasel word ‘deemed’ which includes you, as you say in your own conclusion.If this is the best you can do in a blog, I have little faith in the good sense of The Telegraph, or its readers for taking you seriously.
“bloghead”, Miranda? What happened to “blogmire”? “Sheeple”? And other choice bits of moonbat vocabulary that you once crapped around the place? Are your trolling skills that rusty after being kept away from computers in the hospital?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 06 15 at 01:59 AM • permalink#40 - Christ in a chicken basket, paco! What the hell are you trying to do? I say I’m an atheist, you say you’re a Catholic. I say impeaching Clinton was asinine, you say it was legit. Don’t you know that we’re supposed to be lockstep dittohead soldiers in the Blair Zombie Army? You’re going to make Addamo and Miranda’s heads explode.
Addamo, in #33:
Look at what you’ve done Miranda,
You’ve gotten poor Dave S. all hot and bothered. You have to stop waving those facts around like that.
Well, I suppose we should be grateful that Addamo has demonstrated himself to be an intellectual equal to Miranda Divide. Or at least aspires to be an intellectual equal to Miranda.
Although I hesitate to use the word “aspires”, since “aspires” is supposed to be an improvement. With Miranda, that’s an oxymoron.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 06 15 at 02:10 AM • permalinkWow—there seems to be a burr under the left’s collective saddle. They’re very testy for people who are going to take over everything soon.
Addamo, this is for you.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 06 15 at 02:52 AM • permalink#37,
I haven’t reading all threads lately so I apologise if this has been mentioned before but FrontPageMag has an article on the “Gaza Beach Child Massacre”. They’re saying that what went off was a Hamas mine and that it couldn’t have been an IDF artillery shell that was responsible.
#7. My dad served in WWII, and the only thing I remember him banning from the house was Spam. When I asked him why, he told me that he had eaten it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a solid three months.
Elizabeth
Imperial KeeperPosted by Elizabeth Imperial Keeper on 2006 06 15 at 11:03 AM • permalink
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Here’s a scoop for Alec: on the recent surprise visit to Iraq, President Bush actually met with a fake display Prime Minister. Possibly plastic. The real PM - as Addammo will probably demonstrate later with his 100% reliable and believable links - was busy driving around Baghdad in his limo, hanging out the window shooting orphans.