He’s the f#$%ing President!

By Roger Hanney
American news journal (and birdcage liner) Newsweek set its political journalists to work pre-election with a project to gather off-the-record insights in the hope of printing them post-election.

Of all the gossip and innuendo collected, perhaps the most revealing quote came from Barack Obama as he spoke with some disdain of the debate circuses leading up to Election Day.

When he was preparing for the Democratic primary debates, Obama was recorded saying: ‘I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me ‘ answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f’ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective”.

It’s great to know that Obama sees both the media carnival and feel good, low-impact ‘environmentalism’ for what they are, but perhaps even better to know that he drops the f-bomb occasionally.

Better than the G20 joke!
BBC’s correspondent at George Bush’s G20 summit has reported that Russia’s Vladimir Putin and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy were having an intense but amiable discussion over the weekend.

Speaking of Georgian President Tsakashvili, Putin said, ‘I am going to hang Tsakashvili up by his balls.’

‘Hang him” asked Sarkozy. ‘By his balls.’

‘Yes,’ said Putin. ‘Bush hanged Saddam Hussein, why shouldn’t I hang Tsakashvili”

‘Because,’ said Sarkozy, ‘then you just end up where Bush is now.’

‘Ah,’ said Putin, ‘one point to you.’

And this is the discussion taking place at Bush’s summit. Sort of puts the joke that Kevin Rudd may have told in his own home in perspective.

Maybe somebody should tell Malcolm.