WARMING UP FOR BUSH
“RUMMY TV”
CBS INVESTIGATES ITS OWN

The President is meeting with the man he described in the presidential debates as his “friend” Vladimir. Bush and Putin will be getting together in the Slovak capital of Bratislava a town that I first heard of when a group of anti-war activists went there for talks with the Vietnamese during that war. (I was there in 1990). There has been a bit of tension of late between, the US and Russia. American officials have been scolding Moscow for undermining democracy; Moscow has scolded back. This may be the one wild card in an overseas trip that has felt like a fully scripted and pre-orchestrated diplomatic minuet. (They will be signing a pre-packaged accord to ostensibly curb nuclear terrorism too.)

Most of what I saw on TV of this junket were the one on ones. But J Webb of the BBC was tracking the nuances and flavor of it all for a travel diary, a blog of sorts that he kept for the Beeb website. Here’s a hysterical moment he captured and that many of us may have missed:

“WARM-UP ACT”

Some amazement at the warm-up act for the President at his US airbase visit before he left Germany.

Cheerleaders - scantily-dressed and provocatively choreographed - charged around the stage, shaking their assets at the assembled troops.

The trouble was, the troops had brought their wives. The audience wore the fixed expressions of people who were aware they were witnessing a bad idea in action.

Admittedly, this was an all-American affair, and cheerleading is an all-American, wholesome sport.

But these pictures were available to any TV station in the world - including the Muslim world.

Also warming up for the president was Condoleezza Rice, wearing a skimpy… only kidding.

But she was there, and in the very interesting new role of American superstar in her own right.

Sure, she is already a well known figure. But national security advisers are not - I’m talking politically now - sexy. Secretaries of state, on the other hand, project real power.

I noticed Condi afterwards posing for photos for soldiers.

If she can do the touchy-feely stuff as well as she does the clever stuff, then she is surely a contender for the presidency in 2008.

I noticed, incidentally, that many of the soldiers wanting to have their photos taken with her were black.

A Republican who gets the religious vote and the conservative vote, the wealthy vote AND the black vote, now that would be something…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4290241.stm

DIVORCEES NOT WELCOME

How bizarre that just as this blatant display of what many in the Rapture division of the GOP would consider immoral, the Times of India was reporting that Bush has let it be known that he “his religious values” will keep him from inviting or allowing Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles into The White House because they are “divorced”.

The newspaper interviews the writer Anita Nair who I hung out with last year at a conference in Barcelona. She is perplexed:

I think Bush’s attitude is very archaic and judgmental. So what if Charles and Camilla are adulterers? There are worse crimes in the world. I can understand the Queen’s attitude. She is his mother, and I think mothers have a right to be judgmental about their children. But Bush, the President of another country? What does it matter to him as to who sleeps with whom? Look at the crimes in America, look at what America is doing to other countries Those crimes are far bigger.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1029085.cms

PROTESTS UNDERCOVERED HERE

Reuters reported: “Ignoring snow and freezing temperatures, the demonstrators held banners chastising Bush in English with slogans such as: “You can bomb the world to pieces but not into peace.” Many had pre-printed posters reading: “Bush, No. 1 Terrorist.”

“Before the march, which Mainz police said was one of the largest ever in the city of about 300,000, one peaker told the crowd: “Mr. Bush, please leave our country. You started an illegal war against Iraq.”

“German police confiscated one poster that read: “We had our Hitler, now you have yours.”

VENEZUELA AT RISK

Today I received a request from public television in Venezuela to show my film WMD. (PBS in America has rejected it for reasons unstated.) And then I read that the US is criticizing Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela for its lack of media freedom. According to an Al Jazeera report: “Chavez says the US is plotting to assassinate him:

Venezuela has rejected recent US accusations against President Hugo Chavez as slander, designed to prepare the ground for an impending “attack” against the country.

Casting itself as the victim in a spat with Washington, Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez dismissed as “impertinent” charges Venezuela limits free speech on Wednesday.

He also ruled out accusations that Caracas associates with Colombian guerrillas and is a destabilizing force in the region.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/006B0B53-90FB-4EF1-AEC9-BDC5318132D0.htm

RELAPSE

The Pope is back in the hospital with “flu.”