gridlore: Doug looking off camera with a grin (Drama)
Douglas Berry ([personal profile] gridlore) wrote2003-11-25 08:18 am

Shrub attacks Shrubs!

and the Queen is furious!

Sigh. Our President, asshole of the decade already, has no damaged trees planted by Queen Victoria. Exotic plants destroyed, the palace's flock of flamingos traumatized.. we even damaged the walls of Buckingham Palace!

Which, if I recall correctly, does in fact have a paved road leading to it.

To the Brits who read my journal. Please invade us and conduct a regime change. Take us back! We'll learn the real words to "God Save the Queen!" You have better beer, we have better food, it will be the perfect match! (Dibs on being granted the Duchy for California.)

You can even burn the White House again!

[identity profile] valkyrwench.livejournal.com 2003-11-25 08:36 am (UTC)(link)
*sigh* The Ugly Americans. And some people wonder why the rest of the world hates us so.

[identity profile] cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com 2003-11-25 12:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, well... if they don't like us, they should just GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR WAY!

(oy.)

Ya...well, How american of then

[identity profile] morbek.livejournal.com 2003-11-25 01:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Seems to me that maybe a revolution is in order!
Manners in our culture seem to be diffusing into the ether, the netherworld or maybe our "give it to me now, self centered and selfish attitudes".
I sent thank you notes to two people who bent over backward (interesting sight) to help with our latest move. They both cried when receiving the cards! Didn't that used to be common place - you know...formal thank-yous?
The administration attitude simply puts into clear view our ethnocentric attitude that no one else's stuff is important...because it's not important to us....Baghdad museums?

One small question:

[identity profile] vargr1.livejournal.com 2003-11-25 01:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Who gave the Bush team permission to do this?

You don't just walk into a country and make these changes. Every detail of these plans are talked about and worked out way ahead of time. If the Bits had a problem with them, the time to fix it was during the planning phase.

So, who in the Britsh gov't gave the go-ahead to the plan?

[identity profile] todkaninchen.livejournal.com 2003-11-25 04:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow.

The balls on the Secret Service...

...the bureacratic inertia feeding the mission requirements must be like a tsunami in power to just do that without really paying attention to the "cost".

Talk about the "power of big government"!

Re: One small question:

[identity profile] gridlore.livejournal.com 2003-11-25 07:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I imagine that the plan included discussions of the disruptions, which we assured them would be minimal.

Then we bulled in with twice the man power and acted like bulls in a china shop.

Re: One small question:

[identity profile] vargr1.livejournal.com 2003-11-26 05:47 am (UTC)(link)
Thats a bit of an assumption. Not saying it couldn't be true, but i'd like to have more info before making the assumption. Nothing like this happens without a very detailed plan of what to do, and what gets changed. Especially something like where helos are going to land.

Moving the President around is expensive

[identity profile] murbin.livejournal.com 2003-11-26 06:37 am (UTC)(link)
Go back and look at the cost of the Africa trips former President Clinton took.
Moving the President around is very, very expensive, and involves huge amounts of people and security.

As for this case, it seems the US visitors could and should have behaved better *and* somebody on the British side made a big mistake when he/she said, "Oh right, just land the Blackhawks here."

Re: Moving the President around is expensive

[identity profile] todkaninchen.livejournal.com 2003-11-26 04:22 pm (UTC)(link)
I meant the whole "mission" oriented mentality of the Secret Service to totally steamroller the Brits' sensibilities that way.

Re: One small question:

[identity profile] gridlore.livejournal.com 2003-11-26 09:23 pm (UTC)(link)
That's how Bush and his team have operated all along. The really believe that Bush is the Ruler of the World, and everyone else everywhere is expected to accomodate him.