Can I kick it? No, you can't.

Over the weekend, in a story that was little reported, former KGB honcho and current Russian president Vladimir Putin hung out at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport. He was there to discuss the placement of a US missile defense system on European soil. Apparently where we want it and the Russians will tolerate it is a point of dispute.

Fortunately, when Chimpy McFlisghtsuit met Putin the first time, he reported that "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul."

Sure, Putin assassinates political enemies and members of the press, but he's a good guy. You can't get to be a big shot at the KGB if you aren't a real people person.

All of this aside, this isn't really what motivated me to write today. The whole shindig was hosted by former President George H.W. Bush (Those words sound so nice. Former President Bush.), and like any good effete Ivy League Easterner, he knows how to make people feel comfortable. Here's how he explained it to a local radio station:

"What the President wants ... is the ambiance and the background and the life out here just as it is when our family is here . You sit down, no neckties, in a beautiful house looking over the sea and talk frankly without a lot of strap-hangers and note-takers."

"Strap hangers?"

The elitist arrogance of this family never fails to show itself, no matter how much they pretend to be cowboys. The former president and his son are from Milton, Massachusetts and New Haven, Connecticut respectively. They have not hung from straps all that much. You know who does that sort of thing?

People with jobs. People who go to work every day to make ends meet. People who ride the bus or the train to get to their place of employ, because they actually don't have a limo driver to haul their hungover DWI-having asses to the office.

If the former president was from New York instead of Massachusetts, he might have referred to working scum as "bridge and tunnel types." Fortunately, he had an equally denigrating term to use for people without trust funds.

This entire family has not one clue as to what 98% of the people in this country have to deal with on a daily basis. Anyone recall Barb's analysis of the refugees' situation in Houston after Katrina?

"So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this is working very well for them."

Yeah, living with 20000 others in the Astrodome has got to be an improvement over living in an apartment or home without a sloop for your yacht.

This is more proof to me that there is no god, or at least that there isn't one who gives a damn about the goings on around here. These people of faith, American royalty, who hold such disdain for the poor and those who work, and who make no effort to hide their true feelings...

If there was a god, it should have taken down that whole boat and snuffed out Putin in the bargain.

"Strap-hangers." Fuck you, your highness.

Monday, July 02, 2007