President Shoe

Does the world seem a little crazier today than yesterday? A little stupider? Not that it hasn't been appalling enough over the past year (and last night's crappy Friends finale didn't raise the intellectual or artistic stakes any - talk about torture!) but just leafing through today's paper was like a whole unswept minefield of incendiary stories as bomb-worthy as the thought of next season's promised Matt LeBlanc Friends spinoff Joey.
BOOM! Bush says sorry. Gee – was it something we said? The Presidential apologist made yesterday's blog redundant by finally feeling officially awful about the shocking photographs depicting American abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Of course he made the apology to the King of Jordan – which is sort of like beating me up, piling me naked onto a human pyramid, then apologizing to my neighbours in Suite 426, but failing to alert my family or friends…
BOOM! Photograph of Lynddie England – the funky little female soldier featured so pertly and prominently in so many of the Abu Grhaib prison pictures; though sporting the same tired army fatigues, Lynddie accessorizes with this season’s military ‘must have’: a naked Iraqi on the end of a leash. (Friends and family of the West Virginia native express the traditional disbelief and surprise that little Lynn would have anything to do with such nefarious goings-on… they probably add - though it’s not mentioned in the article - how surprised they all were to discover the quiet guy living in the Boo Radley-type house down the street was slaughtering teenagers in his basement. He seemed like such a shy man - but he always generously supplied plenty of barbecue for the neighbourhood’s 4th of July block party…)
BOOM BOOM! President Bush makes clear his support of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – despite the fact that Rumsfeld failed to alert him to the situation in Abu Grhaib. (Or any of the other detention facilities/photography studios where abuses were apparently recorded and documented with a zeal unmatched since Nazi Germany.) He shoulda known better - Rumsfeld has made no secret of the fact that he considers the Geneva convention as nothing more than the loosest and most easily ignored of 'whateverish’ guidelines. The protection of statutory rights are presumably only extended to those Rummy considers human.
BOOM! Conservatives float the idea of Don Cherry as a candidate in the next federal election. If idea-floater Peter McKay is allowed to continue to rave in public with neither medication, nor fulltime nurse, steps really should be taken to alert mental health officials that a card-carrying nutjob is running around Ottawa unattended... though fully miked for sound bites.
And so it goes…
* A report from the Associated Press about a group of elders in a Pakistani village passing sentence on a poor local farmer who had the unmitigated criminal nerve to admire one of their daughters; the sentence allowed the father to rape the farmer’s sister and sister-in-law. With elders like that, it's just a pity the nearby Arabian Sea is too warm to sustain ice floes...
* U.N Peacekeepers sent in to protect the civilian population and put a stop to the commerce in human sex slaves are reportedly responsible for 20% of the Kosovo sex trade, hiring prostitutes as young as 11 years old.
* The United States plotting to end communist rule in Cuba by trying to sideline the next Castro in line for the job, Fidel's brother Raul Castro. The President’s fervent desire for democracy in Cuba does not include allowing Americans any freedom in Cuba or Cubans' freedom in America. Unpleasant, mistrustful snippiness continues as the strategy of choice.
* Adidas has just come out with a $250 athletic shoe equipped with a microchip that adapts the sneaker to the wearer’s size and stride. The ‘smart shoe’ – secretly developed over the past 3 years at a classified location in Oregon– is expected to revolutionize the running industry. According to Adidas Global Marketing Director Erich Stamminger, the runner ‘…senses, understands and adapts.’
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?