"'As in all relationships, the EU and U.S. sometimes have different views,' Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel told reporters before Bush's scheduled arrival Monday evening" USA Today reported today, continuing with this retort from The Decider: "'A lot of people like America. They may not sometimes necessarily like the president but they like America,' Bush said in an interview with POP TV of Slovenia. 'They like what America stands for.'"
And it looks like they hope the next American President will stand for something other than global death and destruction and economic wreckage. Given the hostile reception he'll receive and room-temperature agenda, what, exactly, is the purpose of this trip? Condi's tagging along, is this a shoe-shopping junket?
Back to the article: "National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley made clear the trip was not expected to produce any breakthroughs, saying last week: 'I don't think you're going to see dramatic announcements on this trip.' Underscoring the low expectations, officials said the one issue they hoped could be resolved was a long-running dispute over an EU ban on imports of U.S. poultry."
Poultry. Chickens.
Oh yes, if there's one thing left on Bush's "to do" list, it's gotta be to straighten out that chicken problem. You can almost picture The Bush Crime Family cabinet meeting: Let's see what we've got on the checklist here...illegally invade and occupy a sovereign nation to depose a dictator we once installed and supported, check. Force American jobs overseas and obliterate the manufacturing sector, check. Roll back federal regulations on food, water, and air quality, check. Destory our image abroad, check. Ignore the genocide in Darfur, check. Authorize the torture of foreign prisoners, some of them children, check. Ignore the hurricane that wipes out major cities and leaves a wake of dead and homeless in "that part of the world" know as the Mississippi Gulf Coast, check. Ruin the American economy, then deny the recession, check. Refuse to adopt the Kyoto protocols to prevent further global climate change, check. Leave all children behind with worthless education "reforms," check. Ignore the mortgage crisis that is creating thousands of newly homeless citizens, check. Create a massive, useless Department of Homeland Security that sucks taxpayer money like an evil vaccum and spits out warantless wiretaps, check. Place CIA agents at risk of death by revealing the identity of one of their own out of spite and revenge, check. Give tax cuts to wealthy corporations at the expense of middle-class citizens, check. Allow our cronies in the petroleum industry to pillage like ancient Romans, check. Deny benefits to combat veterans and maimed and mentally disturbed troops we caused to become disabled, check. Encourage terrorism against the U.S. and our citizens abroad with our disastrous "destroy Islam" middle-east "foreign policy," check. Bully our allies into joining us on our global killing spree, check.
Okie Doke, so what's left here . . .. oh yeah - the chickens! According to the German newspaper The Spiegel, "US chicken farmers lose in the neighborhood of $200 million a year because of the ban -- against a total volume of goods crossing the ocean worth more than $600 billion. But the Bush administration has become fixated on fowl -- so much so that a high-ranking European official was recently heard to sigh: 'The entire summit is being called into question because of this trifle.'"
Psssst . . . Mr. High-Ranking-European-Official, the entire administration should be called into your courts and tried for war crimes. And some of them are headed your way for a visit. Just a thought...
