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Travelocity has a round-trip fare of $300 from LAX to Heathrow. I still have a little time…
This is of course appalling, but the truly stupid thing is that people carrying signs supportive of Bush and his “administration” go unmolested.
Pop quiz: You’re someone who wants to get close enough to the President to fire off a few rounds. You decide to go in carrying a sign. DO you make a sign that supports Bush or one that indicates your opposition?
Honestly, did the Secret Service learn nothing from Taxi Driver?
Holy shit! There’s a giant statue of Bush in Trafalgar Square?
That don’t seem right.
AS was pointed out elsewhere…he IS our 3rd George. We don’t LIKE third Georges.
Says a lot about the measure of a man if he can’t handle public criticism, doesn’t it?
Now that’s funny. Good one, elucidator, damned good.
Heh.
Slightly less exicitable article here, moslty about the Bush/Blair relationship. Worth noting: this visit has been planned for two years; it’s a formal one at request of the Queen.
And your idiocy continues, fueled by your blind hatred of Bush.
You’re acting like the US Secret Service members that guard the president are a bunch of yahoos with full-choke shotguns and WWI trench warfare machine guns or something, and that they are just itching to open fire on a bunch of innocent people if they see anyone holding anything that looks like a gun.
These folks are actually some of the best trained individuals in the world who know how to use a weapon properly. It’s sad that in your blind anti-Bush rage you are so quick to lash out against anyone that has anything to do with him, as if the Secret Service members actually care about politics instead of just about protecting the president.
What would you have the Secret Service people do? Not be allowed to shoot back at all if someone is shooting the president? Wouldn’t that rule endanger the lives of the Londoners gathered around because they could be hit by the gunman just as well as the president could?
Dude, the article is about how unnamed “high officials” at Scotland Yard are upset at some of the Secret Service’s requirements, and you decide to take this as an occasion to call Bush a fascist. I don’t think your “argument” warrants any more of a detailed response from me. If you can’t see how you have yet to make a prima facie case of anything to get worked up about, then nothing I say is going to convince you. I know your MO, too, DtC, and you’ll take any opportunity to take a jab at “shrubby” that you can.
Also, i always feel like a need to say this when I respond to an OP like this one: I am not a bush supporter or a conservative, really. I’m a libertarian, so I’m a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. I really don’t give a shit about Bush one way or the other, I just hate it when people have a totally biased viewpoint and then go looking for any little fodder for their stupid flames.
Blind hated? Uncle Beer is a gun-owning, government-hating Republican! Jiminy, reasoned disagreement with government tactics does not equal “blind hatred.”
Are you trying to give Reeder competition in the Irrational Fuckhead contest?
heh, UncleBeer - you’ve got a ‘blind hatred of Bush’??? when did you come over from the dark side??? why dinja let me know?? we’ve got space in the ‘liberal but not a fucking lunatic section you know’!
That should read, “big government-hating”
Doesn’t the fact that the Secret Service is allowing pro-Bush rallies to occur within camera-shot of the President but is banishing anti-Bush protesters to small out-of-the-way areas prove that the Secret Service–if not caring, per se–are at the very least being exploited for political purposes?
depends on who you think gave the order.
I personally doubt that it came through the SS channels.
Unclebeer, sorry I painted you as a bush hater a bit too hastily. I usually avoid threads like this, so I’m not up on who’s who.
I still disagree with your point, though, and the tone of your first post in this thread seemed alot like the tone Reeder and DtC adopt, namely: Bush is bad, therefore everything done by anyone connected with Bush is also bad.
The operative word in the article is “demand”. What did the US say we would do if the “demands” were not met? Hey, when you go to buy a car, do you walk right up the dealer and tell him what’s the highese price you’re willing to pay?
What’s wrong with you Pommies-- can’t you negotiate, or are you just a bunch of Nancy-boys? Why hell, I remember a time in the 80s when you had a real man running things over there!
Not at all! I rush to dispel that illusion! Laura Bush is quite attractive and gracious, and is a positive asset in any White House setting where such attributes are needful.
His dog, according to reports, sat by in passive contemplation while GeeDubya choked on a pretzel. This implies a previously unsuspected moral gravity in dogs, an awareness of the ethical consequences of action/inaction. If Timmy were the Anti-Christ, and had fallen into the well, would Lassie rush to bark an alert?
And GeeDubya himself, despite lying, war-mongering, and such misadventures, has never been proven to wear brown shoes with a blue suit.
That’s three right there! Q.E.D.
Yeah, but someone told me that he wears white shoes after Labor Day.
Not quite so fast, ye fashoin guru of Nipples; from ** Mehitabel**'s link:
"But it’s going to be a nerve-racking three days. “It’s all thin ice,” says a Foreign Office official. One element of unpredictability: Bush hates — really hates — the fuss and formality in which state visits are steeped. The last time he dined with the Queen — in 1992 at his father’s White House, wearing cowboy boots emblazoned with GOD SAVE THE QUEEN — he asked if she had any black sheep in her family. “Don’t answer that!” his mother Barbara interjected, trying to avoid embarrassment. " - I don’t know what to say anymore about this oafish and parochial small-time spoilt brat
I await the Alamo-style tasselled jacket with some trepidation, perhaps he’ll keep that back for his pro forma, re-election ‘world statesman’ photo op with Quennie – and I don’t mean Charles. At least I don’t think I do.
But I do look forward to seeing how Royal gritted teeth look as I suspect Her (slightly Left-ish) Maj is going to hate doing this *so much *. . .
Gun culture?
How about mortar culture, bomb culture, dirty bomb culture, RPG culture? The idea that Bush doesn’t have legitimate security concerns heightened by hostile big crowds nearby attempts to defy all logic.
Are his conditions reasonable? Probably not. Maybe Bush should not leave the White House. Saves money.
Hmmmm. I’ve now been called a unthinking apologist drone for the Bush administration as well as a holder of unreasoning blind hatred for the man - all inside of two weeks. Whatever. My first post in this thread could have been more explicit, I suppose, but I accept your apology.
To continue this hijack just a little bit further. No, I don’t believe that the Secret Service guys shouldn’t be permitted to return fire. And I understand that they’re well-trained individuals. If the situation warrants, there’s no reason that return fire should be proscribed. This type of thing should be exactly what those “Rules of Engagement” cover.
However, the Secret Service, and other agencies—domestic and foreign, in addition to first-rate weapons training, also have first-rate investigation capabilities. Rather than loosing fire into a crowd of people and taking even a small chance of injuring/killing innocents, I’d much prefer that the perpetrator be permitted to escape. He’ll be caught another day.
Your argument that a supposed assassin is, himself, a danger to the assembled crowd is utter nonsense. The guy’s not gonna stand around picking off inconsequential people after shooting the President of the United States. He’s gonna be concerned with saving his ass and making like the wind.
Also left unsaid by me, is my disgust at Bush’s transparent attempts to insulate himself from popular criticism. I find them very unseemly and especially troublesome. He’s becoming more like the emperor who wore no clothes.
No. You were pretty much on target without the qualifier, gobear.