{"id":236,"date":"2003-11-20T11:34:37","date_gmt":"2003-11-20T15:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=236"},"modified":"2003-11-20T11:34:37","modified_gmt":"2003-11-20T15:34:37","slug":"pay-your-own-bills-george","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=236","title":{"rendered":"Pay your own bills, George"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The White House packaged the visit for the viewers at home.<\/p>\n

How else to explain the same Bush advance geniuses who brought us the “Mission Accomplished” banner putting up a blue PowerPoint-ish backdrop for the president’s speech at Whitehall Palace that stuttered, “United Kingdom,” “United Kingdom,” “United Kingdom.” <\/p>\n

The people in the United Kingdom already knew he was in the United Kingdom. And the kingdom isn’t very united at the moment.<\/p>\n

Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, captured the spirit of the moment when he told NPR that the Republican National Committee should foot the bill for Mr. Bush’s extraordinary security, the largest police operation ever in Great Britain. All this, he harrumphed, “just so George Bush can use a few clips of him and the queen in his campaign advertisements for re-election next year.”<\/i><\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking the same thing for days. When I saw that insulting backdrop, as if we don’t already know George is doing the U.K., I took the thought seriously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpted: The White House packaged the visit for the viewers at home. How else to explain the same Bush advance geniuses who brought us the “Mission Accomplished” banner putting up a blue PowerPoint-ish backdrop for the president’s speech at Whitehall … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-3O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}