"Expert": Bush from a Cow Town

This will please our readers: The "Berliner Festspiele", one of the many not too interesting cultural festivities in Germany with no apparent goal ("The Berliner Festspiele bring together a seemingly endless variety of arts and culture under one roof") on October 16 had organized a lecture on the important topic of

The War on Terror, the Rule of Law, Civil Liberties and Human Rights

A topic that as lecturer certainly deserved only the best of the best. Luckily, the organizers found this noted expert of international law:

Bianca Jagger

This former rock star groupie (Mr. Jagger moved on to other venues in the meantime) is a reliable source of wild and incoherent anti-American bile, which makes her a prime target for invitations from the German left. Her original credentials seem to be more or less gone, as P.J. O'Rourke already observed in Nicaragua 1990: " "Here we had a not very bright, fortyish, discarded rock-star wife, trapped in the lonely hell of the formerly cute...". (And then he went on to a scathing attack on her political teachings. Read the book!)

The "Berliner Festspiele" proudly presented Mrs. Jagger's accomplishments in seemingly neutral terms: "For many years, Ms. Jagger lectured at colleges and universities in an effort to inform the American people of the tragedies occurring in Central America." Also, she made it a flourishing business to lecture the American people of the tragedies occuring in case they reelected George W. Bush. Which didn't hurt her at all in the eyes of the organizers of the "Berliner Festspiele", of course.

In her lecture Mrs. Jagger preached the expected sermon, according to Berliner Morgenpost: "Europe a paradise of enlightenment ... Bush is a sheriff from a cow town...".

I guess this makes Mrs. Jagger a likely recipient of next years "Peace Award of the German Book Trade". After all, there aren't that many anti-American peace activists available who haven't already been honored by German cultural institutions...

To add some flavor to our posting on Bertelsmann of last week: the Jagger event's moderator was Manfred Lahnstein, a former Bertelsmann top executive. Lahnstein - who also happens to be a former German finance minister and member of the SPD - sits on the board of the "ZEIT Stiftung", a foundation closely linked to the Bertelsmann group. ZEIT Stiftung has financed the Jagger lecture.

Comments

[Assistant Village Idiot]

I reiterate that plug for O'Rourke, and would add his "Eat The Rich" as the clearest, funniest economics text every written.

[Pamela]

Why I take Bianca Jagger's opinion seriously:

1) She managed to get Mick to marry her, pregnancy notwithstanding. Speaks well for family values. Daughter Jade is a media whore, but we all have to start somewhere.

2) Father was a diplomat from the Dom. Republic. Safe to assume manipulating the morons at US State Dept is ingrained.

3) What mag was it? Ran a piece on her skin. How perfect, how fragile, how the only cosmetic good enough for her eyes was gold dust.

Yeah. I most certainly take into consideration someone's political opinion just because.......

Gawd, I hope she's as poor as she is arrogant and dumb.

[Dan Kauffman]

"Bush is a sheriff from a cow town...".

Which translates into a lone gunman singlehandedly
trying to protect the weak and defenseless from total anarchy and destruction.

That is one of the most enduring and valorous achetypes of the American West.

Sounds like a complement to me.

[Vic]

Interesting that she mentions "cow town". Earlier in the week Col. Lawrence Wilkerson - Colin Powell's chief of staff while he was Sec. of State - described in great detail Bush's "cowboyism" that he observed first hand. Read the account here.

Any wagers on how many member of the Bush administration will be indicted this week? My guess is two: Rove and Libby. But in my opinion their bosses had knowledge of, or were themselves involved in, the criminal activity.

[LC Mamapajamas]

Vic, "Any wagers on how many member of the Bush administration will be indicted this week? My guess is two: Rove and Libby."

My guess is that the grand jury did not find a crime.

[LC Mamapajamas]

Allow me to augment that previous comment:

My guess is that the investigation did not find a crime related to the Valery Plame case. Who will be indicted? Probably no one.

[Pat Patterson]

If Bush is a sheriff from a cow town then I suppose that makes Bianca Jagger a trollop from a banana republic? Hey, LC any good films lately?

[Vic]

LC - I like those odds. Tradesports.com puts a Libby indictment at 79% probability, and Rove at 69% No contract available so far for a Cheney indictment. Oh, and the probability of Harriet Miers being confirmed is at 29% today.

[Cousin Dave]

Isn't the Bush family from Midland? I don't know about right now, but back in the '70s and '80s, the Census Bureau had Midland as having one of the highest per-capita income averages in the nation.

[Solomon2]

ANTI-SEMITIC MATERIAL FEATURED IN THE IRAN PAVILION OF THIS YEAR'S FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR

Not only did the German delegation at the Fair not confront the Iranians, but, according to Matthias Küntzel, they handed out pamphlets encouraging better contacts between Germany and the Islamic world...

[Cousin Dave]

@Solomon2: You beat me to it. Several commenters on LGF, including one former German bookseller, are saying that the material the Iranians are selling is illegal in Germany and that anyone else selling the same material would be arrested. But the government looks the other way when the Iranians do it. The accusation states that this has been going on for some time, and the Frankfort police have received complaints and declined to take action.

[LC Mamapajamas]

Vic: "LC - I like those odds. Tradesports.com puts a Libby indictment at 79% probability, and Rove at 69% No contract available so far for a Cheney indictment. Oh, and the probability of Harriet Miers being confirmed is at 29% today."

So how good is tradesports.com at predicting US political situations? :D

Seriously, I've been thinking long and hard about this, and the fact that Rove has been smiling so much lately makes me suspect that this investigation is going to turn around and bite the Democrats on the butt.

Actually, I'm wondering if the WILL indict someone... say, Joe Wilson? After all, HE was the first to "out" his wife ;).

[Dan Kauffman]

"Any wagers on how many member of the Bush administration will be indicted this week? My guess is two: Rove and Libby"

See how easily those names roll of the lips and how few stop and think of what a total farce it is that they even know the relationship between these two men and the case under investigation?

Linda Miller went to Jail to protect her sources. Until Libby gave her permission to divulge his identity to the Grand Jury. Now Karl Rove had already given Matt Cooper his permission,

But wait, Grand Juries are secret inquiries and Fitzgerald does not have a reputation for Leaking which has the mainstream medias nose out of joint, imagine that an ethical prosecutor!

And if there were no indictments all the records would be sealed and no one would ever know, legally WHO the sources were.

So how is it we know their identities?

Why Cooper and Miller blabbed that information to anyone who would report it that's how, makes it easier to get book deals I guess.

Powerline has links to some good commentary on the subject.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012034.php

[Vic]

Oops, Cheney's back in the mix. Looks like he was behind the treasonous outing of an undercover CIA agent after all. Front-page story on this morning's NYTIMES.

Note from David: This is what your media source actually writes, Vic: "Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.

It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry."

From the NYT's report I don't see a problem for Cheney. Libby? Possibly, don't know - and the NYT doesn't seem to know either. It's all massive innuendo. But, please, keep us informed on any snippet of Ms. Wilson news that crosses your way. It's Watergate II, at least.

[Dan Kauffman]

That Joe Wilson's wife "worked" at the CIA was no dark secret, she went to work regularly and parked in the CIA parking lot, ever since she got pulled out of the field because Soviet and Cuban intelligence had broken her cover.

Lots of people have deskjobs with that agency.

Since the first articles the one person who has broadcast her former status as a covert agent the most has been.

Her husband.

I don't know about Watergate, I would say at most it equals Sandy Begers sneaking Top Secret one of a kind documents out of the Archives in his pants and socka and "losing" some of them?

[Vic]

Libby indicted on five counts. Too bad LC wouldn't wager. Investigation continues - hopefully Fitzgerald will nail Libby's boss(es). Remember the old German adage: "Der Fisch faengt vom Kopf an zu stinken."