Back In The Saddle
"Bush is repellent, a hawk who was a coward, leader of the most corrupt administration since the Twenties. He’s not a legitimate President," - Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, while taking questions from schoolchildren at London's City Hall.

While New York City residents are afflicted by a despotic little mayor who legislates morality, threatens his constituents with "doomsday" budgetary scenarios, nasally whines that he is "not here to run for the polls" and takes part in a fake wedding to Barbara Walters, reminding one of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone delivers the goods on Bush.

As if his insightful take on Bush's presidency wasn't clear enough, he later added about the Bush Regime that: “This really is a completely unsupportable Government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.” When asked to clarify his attack on Bush, Mr. Livingstone said Mr Bush was a coward who had avoided serving in the Vietnam war only through the influence of his father.

"You have got this super-patriotic hawk who was a coward when his country was actually involved in a war which he politically supported." and added that he thought George Bush "is the most corrupt American president since Harding in the Twenties".

President Harding was embroiled in the Teapot Dome Scandal which was a controversy over the leasing and control of oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming. Harding died in the third year of his first term. Bush is now in the third year of his first term.

Hmmmm.

But perhaps funnier, was that pansophical parrot Ari Fleischer was asked about the mayor's comments during yesterday's press briefing and responded by noting "First of all, I've never heard of the fellow. Second of all, I wouldn't dignify it with a comment."

Never heard of the mayor of the capital city of your biggest ally? Perhaps all those hours boning up on the fiercely cliché-ridden anti-Saddam rhetoric and all the months of polishing lies and evasions for the Administration leaves one with a rather stunted view, dancing from the head of a pin.

While Ari might not have a comment to dignify the mayor's comments with, Desultory Turgescence does:

Bravo, Mr. Livingstone!

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Perhaps it is coincidental timing, but Desultory Turgescence, while in the throes of the past two week sabbatical, has officially begun plans for a move to merry ole England sometime in the next two months. While it isn't quite the same as Moving to Florida, the appeal of the Shirley Donkey Derby may be too powerful to resist, not to mention the Fat God's Brewery and the distinct lack of moral monopolists polluting the landscape.

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Thanks to Snakeskin for publishing The Young Man's Checklist of Imperatives which first appeared on Desultory Turgenscence a few weeks ago.

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Thought of the Day:

"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober."
G. K. Chesterton