article-1026653-051672640000044d-553_468x303

Guess who’s getting a Medal of Freedom?

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will receive the highest civilian award in the US – the Presidential Medal of Freedom – next week.

In his last week in office, President Bush will award the medal to Mr Blair, former Australian PM John Howard and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

All three leaders had been “staunch allies” of the US, particularly against terrorism, said the White House.

I am enraged.  And he has 2 more weeks to keep doing this shit.  The Dear Leader has made everything in this country valueless. 

Blair to Get US Medal of Freedom [BBC]
60 Comments

Ah, the “Coalition of the Willing.” Fun times, when Murrica was completely taken in by blatant propaganda.

The medal given to Blair will have a brown nose cluster.

After all these years, Tony finally gets a reacharound.

He’s doing a bang up job as Middle East envoy, too.

Uribe’s the one everyone really ought to be pissed off about with his narcowar tactics.

Brown-nosers are one thing. Virtual dictators are another.

@Signal to Noise: Dictator, but probably not a war criminal like Blair. Still, it all makes me angry, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

And imagine when the pardons start coming down …

Does it come with an “I converted to Catholicism and all I got was this lousy medal” t-shirt? No?

@fupduk: Fupduk, you have a mudflap lady, a silver naked lady, yay!

@mellbell: WTF? Whats with that? Is he a big fan of Evelyn Waugh, or something?

flippin eck: Didn’t the Wonder Twins get theirs already? I mean, they’re anti-terrah and wingnuts in the finest fundie traditions of U.S. America. They’ve probably achieved sainthood status among the Bush crowd.

(P.S.: I heard a weird rumor (erm, rumour) that Kevin Rudd was in trouble Down Under. Anything to this?)

BTW: the Israeli mispronounciation of terwuh is slowing obtaining a place in my heart.

@Prommie: Cherie Blair is Catholic and he converted. Minor scandal when PM isn’t a member of the official Church of England. But kudos on the Waugh reference.

@Mistress Cynica: I don’t know what’s more cynical — that he waited until he was out of office to convert, or that converting while in office would have soured the public on him.

@mellbell:
I think the public had plenty of other reasons to sour on him, the least of which would be becoming a Catholic.

I’m so very very proud. So very proud. On so many levels. Deeply. Profoundly proud. Proud proud proud. Like the rest of the world I can only be grateful that Tone was a bust at the actoring and was forced to find another way to earn his crust.

Proud proud proud.

@mellbell: I’m not sure, but given the fact of an established church it’s possible that it might be unconstitutional for the PM to be anything but C of E. I think I’m going to choose to believe that is true.

And yes, those are Tone’s tits in my avatar.

Proud proud proud. It’s a proud day for us expat Limeys. We are coming together all over the country to bray at each other over plates loaded with scotch eggs with Branston Pickle.

TJ/

We’ve done it! We’ve successfully defeated the terrorists by exporting American values. It took years of painstaking cultural lessons, a few invasions and occupations, and even the loss of a kitteh, but the mission has now truly been accomplished. We’ve exported political snark.

BTW, big thanks to SFL for pointing out the painfully obvious fact that text embedding instructions are at the top of every friggin comment text box. I iz moran.

@flippin eck:
Does this mean that we will see Al-Stinqua and Al G’uaquar?

@ManchuCandidate: Do not make me ululate. You won’t like me when I ululate.

@Benedick: The Brits don’t have a Constitution. Just that dusty Magna Carta.

Prommie: I’m not saying that a Steve Guttenberg reference is wrong here. There never is a bad time to name check Guttenberg. But — what?

flippin eck: We need to help them with the whole snark thing. The beacon of cynicism and acerbic commentary must be allowed to shine around the world.

There’s a foundation of funny here. I mean,

“For God’s sake, could someone tell us where the wake is to be held?”

gets a curved grade here. We are talking about the death of a kitteh here. Throwing a rock of laugh at the IDF tank of stupid, in this instance, takes extraordinary skill. The whole “waiting on baited breath” vibe is a good first effort. Meanwhile,

“This is not the right time to die. It is a dilemma for the Arab leaders at this time because they are busy and have to leave the region to offer condolences”

is a little bit of a reach. You have to think through it a bit, which means it could kill, or it could bomb. (Usually, this is not a concern for your average Hamas freedom-fighter/terwuhist. But the distinction here is key.)

But:

“We are sad at this time and publishing this only increases our sorrow.”

He’s not even trying. Bring teh funny or GTFO.

@SanFranLefty: Why, the British Constitution is a living thing, manifested by the Queen in Parliament, or however that language works. Plus all the devolution to shut up the Scots.

DEVELOPING HARD: CNN sez Jeb’s not going for the Senate seat in 2010.

Whew.

@chicago bureau: “Thanks for dropping my name, Pop!”

@chicago bureau:

Yeah, relief, right? Then again, I’m not his father and I don’t love him.

@SanFranLefty: Given our fundamental decency we don’t really need one. Written constitution, such as.

But there is some kind of dance goes on around the head-of-state/head-of-church whosit. I know the PM isn’t the head but he is the head’s chief minister. I wonder what would happen were he not to be C of E? I’m guessing that Tone didn’t, as they say, go over to Rome, until he was out of office so there could be no question of embarrassing HRM. Those hats she wears not being quite enough to do the trick apparently.

I should imagine that parties have broken out all over the Home Counties at this news. Mayfair is most likely ablaze with lights. I can only guess at all the congratulatory speeches in the House tomorrow.

Benedick: The House is out until next week. They are still on Christmas break. (And today is the last day of Christmas, for those keeping count and not observing the eight days of Christmas celebrated by Bob and Doug MacKenzie.)

Yes, I am a geek.

@chicago bureau: Is tonight 12th Night? Famous as night of mis-rule and merry pranks? Yes I’m too lazy to check a calendar.

BTW kids: the House of Lords has a friggin’ blog.

I have nothing left to say about this that is relevant or true.

@Benedick: I like Branston pickle on a sandwich with a good sharp chedddar.
@mellbell: Cynical? Mais non! It just took having his career and reputation destroyed forever to bring him to the One True Faith.

@chicago bureau: “I would like to put some of the comments on her post in a context that would have made a lot of sense to Greek political philosophers of old.”

Smell the tweed. Live the tweed.

@chicago bureau: Actually, I think it’s important to spell out the URL:
http://www.lordsoftheblog.net.
“I say, old boy, have you seen the latest post on the blog, what?”
/bad Peter Wimsey impression

@Benedick: Twelfth Night was last night, today’s Epiphany (which, as my mother would remind me, is a Holy Day of Obligation).

@chicago bureau:
Lord Beaverbrook?

Awesome.

Should we comment bomb them some day? Benedick can lead the charge.

@Benedick: You may need to bring back your old avatar in honor of Tony’s big honor.

@SanFranLefty: My new avatar is Big Tone seen at a more informal moment. I thought it might do us all good to see his tits. A happy coincidence, what?

@Benedick: No. Not a happy coincidence. Blair Bewbies = DO NOT WANT.

I must say, however, that Commonwealth heads of government can and do vacay in the nicest places. Tony used to head to the Caribbean. Hell, Canada City made some serious rumblings of taking over the T&C, properly.

Barry’s at least making an effort with the whole Hawai’i thing — which is better than recent history [Crawford, Martha’s Vineyard (niceish, but very waspy), Kennebunkport (ditto), and the scrublands of SoCal for Ronnie].

@Benedick: I guess I don’t have a big enough monitor (Praise FSM!) to have figured out who that was in your picture.

@SanFranLefty: How much do I love this place? Not only do we think it’s super good fun to consider comment bombing Lords of the Blog, but there’s enough smarts here that I bet many of us could wield the queen’s english and Burke’s Peerage and to go undetected, at least for a little while.

@flippin eck: Just string along six more clauses than necessary, and you’ll do fine.

@nojo: I say… watcher cock…! carry on… bloody good show… cheerybye…

@chicago bureau: He’s a fine figure of a man. Besides, I hear that as a special mark of distinction, Preznit Bunnypants is going to pin Tone’s medal to his left tit to show whose poodle he is.

@chicago bureau: Nope KRudd still has massive approval ratings. And he’s on holidays.

Last I heard of our PM, he was commenting on the cricket during the Boxing Day test.

When I heard about “Little Johnny” getting his Medal of Freedom, I thought, yeah that sounds about right. Because I have always equated the medal of freedom with a political favour with the validity of re-named French Fries.

If Tony Blair gets a fucking Medal of Freedom, I want to be appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for the last two weeks of his term.

check out the list of medal of freedom recipiants.
some are like no dime store monkeys.

@baked: Absolutely. It’s an insult to the people who were amazing and deserved the medal (i.e. civil rights leaders, Holocaust survivors, Rosa Parks, etc.)

@SanFranLefty: That’s exactly why I find news like this unnerving. Bush the sudden eco-warrior? What the hell is he really up to?

@SanFranLefty:
amen sister, and where are benedicks tits? i see a purple snowflake.
something must matter dammit!

@drinkyclown: I was meaning to ask our friend Dodgerblue about that. I heard a story about it last night on EnnnPeeeRrrr and nearly drove off the highway I was so shocked. I was totally trying to figure out “What’s the catch?” and figured Dodger would know.

@baked: I don’t see Dodger’s tits on my computer at home but I did on my computer at work. I think you have to clean your cache and history, so to speak, and re-log in, and you’ll see Blair’s man-boobs in all their glory.

@SanFranLefty: @drinkyclown: Bush probably thought Deep Blue Sea was a documentary, and wants to protect the super smart sharks so they can eat more darkies. You know its true.

@homofascist: My vote is it was either Bushie thinking “sharks R kewl!! lol”, or sudden concern over his legacy which will lead to history judging him as a corrupt, inept asshole who also saved the whales.

@drinkyclown: Either way. I am just happy to post that clip.

@drinkyclown: I’m thinking legacy, after Bush was assured by the Dark Lord that there are no minerals worth anything out there.

@SanFranLefty: You don’t want to see my tits anywhere.

@SanFranLefty: Sorry, I meant Benedict’s tits, not Dodgers. Apologies to both for confusion.

Apparently Barry was denied access to the US Taxpayer paid for Blair House because of “Furriner” Oz ex-PM John Howard.

@mellbell: As for our traditional obligations, I made a game time decision to run back home yesterday to take part in the King’s Day Buffalo Dance, which is part of our effort to keep the world running on track. (See image below.) Roads and weather were clear so there was no excuse for me not to be there. I love going back and participating in something that puts me in an unbroken line that runs back hundreds of years, and which is a family and community activity. Beats hanging around the office, too.

The traditional calendar has adapted somewhat to the Catholic calendar of saint feast days, although there are still things that are not subject to it.

http://www.indianpueblo.org/images/black_buff_knockout1.gif

Add a Comment
Please log in to post a comment