Shoeraq

After President Bush's apt ducking of two shoes thrown straight at him, the State of Texas announced that a shoe rack will heretofore be called a Shoeraq in memory of the incident and spelled as one word. Those hunting trips Bush took with Dick Cheney in Texas were a hell of a good training. If nothing fatal came out of dodging bullets thrown at him, they sure developed excellent reflexes in Bush. In Iraq, the government decided that the pair of shoes thrown at Bush will be auctioned and the billion dollar proceeds be sent out to GM, Ford and Chrysler as a first bailout handout so that their poor CEOs can fly back to Congress on private jets and ask for more money.

Shoe pride is now high in the Middle East which plans to advertise its shoes as the only ones that can demonstrably and reliably follow a straight throw-line to the individual in target. The boom in shoe exports soon to follow this world-class demonstration is the perfect solution to the desperate need for countries in the Middle East to diversify their oil-based economies and offer traditional new ways for young people there to express themselves.

Within minutes of the incident being reported and with the Pope's blessing, the Holy Shoe Trinity of Ferragamo, Prada and Bruno Magli announced plans to set up shoe manufacturing in Iraq. Unfortunately the shoes that were thrown at Bush were too cheap a brand to be auctioned at Christie's and fetch the trillion dollar amounts needed to bail out the US economy.

The Iraqi government announced that all journalists in Iraq will be given Italian brands to shoeraq freely against foreign dignitaries with an exception made for Carla Bruni because she still is too God-damn pretty and because she was hired to advertise the shoes in a new commercial where she and Sarkozy will be shown quarreling. At some point Carla will take off her shoes and throw them at petit Nicola who being so petit won't have to duck down to avoid the hit. The commercial will close by Carla singing "Some fights you don't wanna miss"

In a show of accord with this gracious decision to exempt Carla from Shoeraq, the Vatican requested that devil-wearing Prada design special protest-shoes with angel wings on the side for use by protesters when new priest-in-child scandals break out. This is how the new design will be used to the Church's favor. By mastering his God-intermediation powers the Pope will animate the wings attached to the shoes turning the shoe-throwing protests into a massive up-the-sky dove-release spectacle. Those protesters who refuse to use the Pope-animated Devil-wears-Prada shoes will be denied a fair hearing postmortem.

Religious-devout Iran who has tremendous spiriticopolitical influence over Iraq also announced that when a persona non grata visits Iraq from a country well-versed in the Satan, female journalists will be invited to attend the press conference. Under special fatwa from resurrect-elect Khomeini, all female journalists present will wear stiletto heels with the clear understanding that they'll use them to Shoeraq the foreign dignitary but not miss him next time.

Finally, fashion-conscious protesters in democracy-born Greece who are in the streets for a second week and bored sick of throwing rocks and Molotov bombs to the police are inspired anew by Shoeraq and vow to compete head-on with the Middle East on riot publicity. They believe Bush was actually controlled by the CIA and that's why he maneuvered so fast and dodged the shoe. Down with the CIA controlling our leaders they cry. Shoe stores in Athens are busy placing massive orders of Middle East shoes in response to the high demand from angry left-wing protesters who now want to burn down Athens shoe-style.

Don't you just love to read the news Bush makes when he travels abroad? By getting himself into the most unimaginable situations, it helps fire up people's imagination everywhere. By ducking successfully the shoe throw and letting the journalist go free for exercising his freedom of speech, Bush finally unveiled his version of how democracy will spread in the Middle East. I throw guns at you, duck it if you can. You throw shoes at me, I sure duck it well!!

I am ashamed to joke like that but compared to Bush, Obama might end up being a very boring, uneventful and yes here is my shame, less colorful US president...

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Press conferences going Japanese

Following the shoe incident with Bush in Iraq, press conference organizers are thinking of instituting new rules and manners. All participants will be asked to take their shoes off and wear paper-thin slippers. The measure is expected to improve the hygiene and ambience of the press room and make everyone relax and feel more comfortable.

Initially the idea was to ask participants to tie their shoes and hang them on power lines and phone wires outside the venue to give it western-style semantics but the fear this could be interpreted as a gangs-in-town sign or a drug dealer's marking made everyone revise and adopt symbolism-neutral Japanese manners on room hygiene.

I guess the most symbolic and heard-out-loud kind of peaceful protest to a future Bush-style US president, might be to hang shoes from power lines and telephone poles everywhere in town so that the message is visible from everywhere no matter what route the presidential motorcade will take to get in and out of town. It will be a spectacle to remember and the number of shoes hanging in protest a new Guinness world record countries will compete in!

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The Best Transition President

If only Bush had governed the same way he handled the transition period, he would have made a much better president. All Obama said about Bush in his speech was to thank him first for his service to the country (way too general) and then for his generosity and cooperation during the transition (as good as it gets). He basically acknowledged that Bush existed and that he was at his best as a president-in-transition. Obviously Bush was not as good in transition when he 'snatched defeat from the jaws of victory' from Al Gore in 2000 but 8 years changed him a lot. In any case, what a cordial thing of Obama to say about Bush..

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If you can't trust your neighbor...

As all Canadians know, we are on the eve of having to show a passport in order to cross the US/Canadian border. In our 200 history as neighbors, this is a disturbing precedent, and yet both Clinton and Bush confessed to having absolutely no knowledge of it when they came to speak together in Toronto. The two former US Presidents came to discuss global and domestic challenges facing the U.S. and Canada and both of them were ignorant about it. That such an important step is implemented without their knowledge is beyond belief. How are we Canadians supposed to feel?

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The lost beauty of George W. Bush

People made fun or criticized Bush for not being smart or intellectual enough as president. Yet what people don't realize is that Bush was probably the most skilled president in terms of being able to ask a question and embed the answer in it. If you follow Bush's rhetorical questions you will realize that they are not rhetorical at all.

The answer is always embedded in it. Here's an example the media often cite to show how ungrammatically sound Bush is when all he is trying to do is weave the answer in the question.

Bush says: "Rarely is the question asked. Is our children learning?"

It's so obvious they are not and you know that as soon as you read or hear the question. This is a great skill and an act of brilliance by Bush. It was often overlooked in favor of spotting mistakes and making fun of him. That's mistaken!

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Waterboarded 183 times? My Guinness!

What a colossal admission of failure for torture efficiency no matter how you look at it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a month? No, that's not inefficient. No, it's not a miracle that this guy survived to confess whatever he confessed at the end. No, it doesn't matter that the Central Inefficiency Agency discredits torture intelligence. 1-8-3 times?? Give Me a break!

I'm curious what else the recently declassified memos say. Did it ever occur to anyone that the subject might die before confessing anything? Could that be the reason why millions of uninsured Americans allege that prisoners in Guantanamo received better medical treatment in a month than they do in a lifetime? Since the allegation is not true as the terrorists captured do not number millions and the uninsured don't get treatment anyway, did we really need the CIA to give us reasons to believe it could be?

Ok, maybe after count 68 the torture was repeated to extract pleasure or revenge. 183-68=115 times, excluding 69 for a kit-kat that leaves us at 114 times that waterboarding could have been repeated for sadistic reasons. The US doesn't torture people. So true. That's because it likes to torture people??

Whichever way you look at it, 183 times in a month just waterboarding is sick and irrational. Dick Cheney argues that it was justified because valuable information was received. Waterboard me once and I'll buy that...But for all we know, Osama Bin Laden is still alive and not captured and the Taliban seem poised to take over Pakistan! Waterboard me twice...hello?

Fortunately, Obama felt compelled to explicitly ban the practice. Europeans can now, once again, contemplate the US in personal pronoun terms, even though we may never be able to pronounce it that way.

I am looking at the photos of the guy before and after water-boarding. He doesn't look at his best before the interrogation but look at the photo of him that gets published in the media after the interrogation. He's a sketch!

If Obama felt compelled to publish the secret memo showing how number-irrational the CIA was, then it makes sense why he had to ban torture altogether. Think of all the aspiring die-hard terrorists around the world receiving the news that it took the 9/11 mastermind 183 times of waterboarding to break him.

As if Osama-Bin-Laden was not enough of a hero icon to the die-hard Muslims now they get a true martyr to look up to. All it takes is one clever mullah to promise 1 extra virgin in heaven every time waterboarding doesn't break the martyr. 72 virgins in heaven for attempting to blow yourself up plus 183 if you martyr it out like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did, that's 255 virgins, a nice big royal harem in heaven!!

Obama had no choice but to ban the practice otherwise thousands more would rush to sign up to break the record.

Honestly, I wish Obama had banned the practice without revealing the details. It makes the CIA look weak and unintelligent, it makes this guy appear as a martyr and it makes me sick to think that the practice was not legally considered torture at the time and now it is. But none of that upsets me more than the fact that it's not President McCain publishing the memos and discrediting the Republican Dick.

For all we know, Obama might have published the details because he might have been personally disgusted by it. For all we don't know, is that 183 is the official number...

What a Sick Dick, Cheney!

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