“And now it is time for Germany’s most disturbing home video, ‘Fat Man In A Sprinkler’…”

P.S. I didn’t realize Marilyn Monroe’s mouth was in Big Book Of British Smiles.

teddy!

Now is ze time on Sprockets ven ve all dance.

Thatcher is a dope. Always was, always will be. In fact, she and Major were so good, that it took Blair and Brown really screwing the pooch for Britain to even consider the Tories again.

What about 99 Luft Balloons?

Republicans today are all stupid and crazy because Zombie Reagan ate their brains.

Good evening, I have returned.

She royally screwed up the British economy and the British people. I certainly hope someone remembers to drive a stake through her heart when they bury her.

But even that was after Zombie Nixon ate their ethics.

yay!

He is risen!

They never had any of those. I think he ate their souls.

I found this to be a particularly telling example of conservatism as show-for-the-rubes (virulent anti-communism, people under its yoke striving for freedom) while the leadership attempts to make deals to protect and advance each other’s interests.

Not that that scenario reminded me of anything that happened this weekend, or that I would ever compare Dick Armey to a Frenchman. Zut alors!

And once I came across the Caligula/Marilyn Monroe quote from Francois, I simply had to share the entire story with all of you.

I don’t think we have leaders on the world stage anymore who would comment on another’s lips, do you? Except perhaps Li’l Kim of North Korea.

And even Kim would only do so after shooting off a…er, missile.

I just can’t picture Maggie with Marilyn’s mouth. Hopefully this is the millennium when dentistry will finally reach the British Isles.

Teddy, congrats on the San Francisco flagship station dumping the most fu*ked up man in America. Michael Savage. Savage makes Glenn Beck look like the rock of Gibralter.

-G

They do say that the eyes are the gateway to the soul.

In private Bush sometimes referred to the Russian president by the nickname of “Poutin’,” or was it “Puddin’?”

Well, now, that deserves a toast.

It will probably be the next millennium before it gets to Greece or Russia.

Until then I guess they’ll just have to keep plugging those gaps with cigarettes.

I thought he called him pooty-poot. It always amazed me that W claimed to see Putin’s soul. I bet Putin’s had lotsa laughs over that one.

This chink in Mrs Thatcher’s armor is going to hurt commentariat everywhere — what female leader will steely American woman politicos be compared to going forward? Merkel? Meir?

And vodka or retsina bottles.

The Iron Curtain Lady.

-G

Given that the available evidence does not support the proposition that he actually has one.

You knew Dubya must have had a special place in his heart when he invited Vlad to Kennebunkport a couple years back for franks ‘n’ beans.

State dinners ain’t what they used to be…

Palin.

The Bachmann-Palin Overdrive!

…”the man who said Thatcher had “the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe”

That man woke up with a hangover.

The brain bleach is to your right.

Looks like I owe you a partial beverage.

Nah, you’re okay. I was referring to Michael Palin. All the best British gals are guys.

Good one.

I will always believe that visit was at GHWB’s invite, and that it was about the Carlyle Group’s interests in Georgia and other former Soviet satellites. W was merely a bystander, but he got to pick the menu. “What shall we have to eat when Daddy’s friend stops by, sonny?”

Bachmann-Turner Diaries Overdrive.

-G

With lots o’ French’s Freedom mustard. No Poupon those franks, Grey or otherwise.

and served with a helping of fart jokes no doubt

Ugh. I figure Putin for a borscht-belt fan.

A diplomacy staple.

Putin on the ritz.

-G

Nah. He saves those for the formal state dinners. I am sure he has a whole stock of even more puerile and crass jokes for these intimate family dinners.

“Did you make a yummy noise?”

At first I thought it was a preview of Tom DeLay performing on Dancing With The Stars.

Mitterand said that? Must have been a bad Beaujolais. Of course, Maggie crashed and burned Auld Blighty just like Junior Oedipus would emulate on such a higher level of magnitude three decades hence…So her rather grasping protectionism of a tottering tattered empire might be viewed with a somewhat jaundiced eye.

;>)

Lady Thatcher is, of course, unable to respond to these new allegations due to ill health. But it will be fascinating to see if her actions are defended by her successors in the Tory party. Or if everyone will let her hang out to dry. I can’t imagine anyone letting the Reagan myth be so tarnished here.

But then there’s Will Bunch, mythbuster.

I can see how Thatcher and Reagan got along – after all, they both ginned up the base with the “government is the problem” talk.

Ya probably outta see somebody about that eye…

The undead tend to congregate together.

And both called Nancy Reagan “Mommy.” I confess, I have no idea why.

Reagan followed the Thatcher model to a T: bust a union early, then go to war over an island to distract from a high-profile failure.

The scene when Ronnie and Maggie are reunited.

If I’m not careful somebody could poke it out with something.

;>)

If she was so unhappy about German unification, then what wall was her buddy St Ronnie talking about?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that part of Thatcher’s concern was that the last time Germany was reunited in the 1870s, Europe was involved in three major wars in the next seventy years. Mix that fact with a tendency toward nationalism, and you get an attitude like Thatcher’s.

Over on this side of the pond, I’m sure the Germany problem looked a lot smaller than the Russian problem. Something to do with the relative size of their nuclear inventories. It’s also probably easier to see that Germany has changed a lot from the authoritarian society it was back in the early Twentieth Century if you’re not living next door to it.

What’s remarkable is that despite both Thatcher’s and Mitterand’s objections, reunification happened anyway.

Well, I doubt you have to worry about that.

Beck proves that even the smallest pinprick can be dangerous.

Time for me to toddle off to bed. Take care all.

Quick drive-by OT — Did anyone else notice the not-particularly-subtle phrase “call a spade a spade” come up an awful lot in the Joe Wilson ‘You Lie!’ coverage and commentary? Haven’t seen anybody commenting on this anywhere yet. So I just did a quick Google search and it came back with 582 matches in the past week.

That’s pretty damn disturbing.

I also noticed it.

Proof of Ronald Reagan’s mighty will!

And both called Nancy Reagan “Mommy.” I confess, I have no idea why.

Motherf*ckers in the figurative and literal sense, I suppose.

;>)

Good beat, easy to dance too.

I suspect most zombies are too discerning to be either Republican or Tory, though.

Nighters. Think I will head out too. Splendid evening to all.

Proof of Ronald Reagan’s mighty will

And Helmut Kohl’s, I suppose.

The U.S. had a huge influence on European affairs back then, thanks to our leadership in NATO. I think that’s another way our influence has diminished in the last decade.

waving g’nite to the leaving sleepyheads

I studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, on a Jugdenferienwerke basis during the Falkland War period.

Traveling around Europe then was quite bizarre then, and difficult. We were trying to get into East Germany (seems weird to type that right now) and our bus was held up for 2 hours. We never got in, as one of our mates was from [whoops, needed editing] South America; CHILE!, let alone Argen-frikkin-TINA! It was so maddening.

That was the same reason we couldn’t cross to get to Prague. Still have never been to Hamburg or Prague to this day.

I loathed both Reagan and Thatcher then, and I still loathe them today. Feh.

Oh, you must have been referring to Mozart the obscure composer in that thread the other night. I thought you were talking about Shecky Mozart the popular standup comedian. Sorry for the confusion.

Naughty ratfood!

It’s nice to see the Iron Curtain Lady show her fear, though. But even Andrew Sullivan, admirer of all things Thatcher, calls this her Mad Thatch period. For what reason, I do not know. But if he is fallen out of love with her, I wonder if she has any defenders left.

I think your story is an example of how our experience and our parents’ were so different. To them, after what they’d been through in the WWII, something like MAD seemed like a sensible idea. To those of us who grew up with it, MAD meant living with the threat of complete destruction, and with a world that appeared to be permanently divided, for no good reason that we could see.

Silly me, I always assumed “Mad Thatch” was something coined during her beach holiday.

The release of this information from former Soviet files makes me realize that history is never written when we think the book is closed; there will be secrets revealed about the last eight years, for instance, that may startle both supporters and opponents of BushCheneyCo — in 2029.

Beyond veterans of the Falklands War, probably not too many. She inspired an episode of Doctor Who back then, a wicked piece of satire called “The Happiness Patrol”. Basic plot is that the Doctor landed on a planet ruled by someone who insisted, no matter how awful things were, the worst thing to be was a killjoy. Wherever her defenders are, I don’t think they’re in labor or the arts.

Will they, or won’t they be revealed?

If the Citizens United case in front of SCOTUS is decided in favor of CU, corporate money will flood elections, and the electorate in 2029 will never hear a damn thing, except for puppies and ice cream, about the Bush years.

Secrets? In the Cheney administration? Perish the thought, Teddy.

;>)

teddy – what did you do when you were away? was it vacation or business?

Oh, I didn’t say anything about their being an electorate in 2029.

I was visiting Mother in Virginia and celebrating her milestone birthday, the number of which I learned I am not to reveal.

Right-o! You didn’t!

Garrr, foolish me!

well that makes putting the candles on the cake difficult :) hippo birdies to the lovely mrs teddy mom

Thanks for this Teddy.
Geeze, there really is no such thing as too skeptical.

They won’t learn that puppies and ice cream was a favorite Cheney snack?

My brother and I very much wanted to visit Berlin the early-seventies summer we lived in Brussels due my Dad’s NATO assignment, but were told in no uncertain terms that our student railpasses didn’t go there and that we weren’t to spend our own money going, either. Apparently my father’s employer so briefed him, although we never thought what he was doing was that important.

My first memory of arriving in Belgium was an afternoon celebrating the Fourth of July out in the suburbs with a bunch of my Dad’s workmates’ families. I was not alllowed to sit in the car, but was also not required to return either. It didn’t seem to me to be the way to spend a summer in Europe, palling around with a bunch of Americans in their made-to-order ghetto.

My first memory of arriving in Belgium was an afternoon celebrating the Fourth of July out in the suburbs … It didn’t seem to me to be the way to spend a summer in Europe, palling around with a bunch of Americans in their made-to-order ghetto.

They shouldn’t be expected to let you pall around with a bunch of horse eaters now, could they? /snark

I have never gotten over that French epithet for the Belgians. It’s so rude.

One of our visitors provocateurs here used call a club a club. Must have been painful when no one bit.

Indeed

Speakers of the “language of romance”, and yet the French can deal out some truly nasty insults.

The Belgians were a great puzzle to me. I had three years of high school French and fully expected to be able to converse with people on the street, e.g. ask directions. But no, if you asked a Belgian to repeat something he had just said, he would change languages. And then demonstrate the facility he had in several, leaving me completely baffled.

This was amusing to my little brother who decided I couldn’t speak French at all. Until we took the morning train to Paris together, arrived at the Gare du Nord, and got directions easily in the Metro to the Eiffel Tower. I followed them flawlessly, much to the little brother’s dismay. It wasn’t until he asked me where we were headed that I realized that, for the first time abroad, I’d had an entire successful conversation with a total stranger in French.

I spent a lot of time in France that summer. They spoke the French I’d learned to speak. Not like the Belgians, whose French sounds like German, whose German sounds like Dutch, and whose Dutch sounds like Walloon. All of which they speak, but with the inflection and accent of the others.

As a Brit I’d like to correct an error in this article: Mrs T didn’t humiliate the faraway islands’ defence force, Mrs T. drove the aggressors (the Argentinians) out, WE are the faraway islands’ defence force.

@ DrDick. I’ll be around with the stake when the lady pops her clogs, for her wrecked National Health Service making me wait A YEAR (June 1996 to June 1997) for a scan of a prolapsed spinal disc. The wait for a scan last month: five days.

Traveling around Europe then was quite bizarre then, and difficult.

I’ve always thought the procedure entering East Germany as a West German was the pinnacle of paranoial mindset and red tape, but visiting the USA with ESTA, Form C 6059b and Form I 94W, and US-VISIT is catching up lately in that regard.

For once I’m afraid I might have to defend Thatcher a bit (but only partly).

I have a British uncle who’s now in his early 80s who spent his career in the UK’s Ministry of Defence, and I remember discussing this issue with him about 1980, so I think I understand the scenario Thatcher was so afraid of. The USSR had apparently proposed to allow German reunification, but the terms would be that NATO would have to withdraw all troops and Germany would have to be strictly neutral. However, the concern of the hawks (like Thatcher) was that the USSR would try to subvert the unified country, that the communists would advance electorally, that the reunified country would turn hostile to the West and fall under the Warsaw Pact’s sphere of influence, or that fascism could re-ignite.

To people like Thatcher, the Russians were ten feet tall. She didn’t foresee the collapse of the east, and the 1980 Thatcher would be shocked to see a reunified Germany firmly anchored to the West and part of NATO.

I think that by the time Reagan was saying “tear down this wall”, things had changed, and the hawks could smell a Soviet defeat.

She didn’t foresee the collapse of the east

The quotes are from 1989, i.e. during the collapse of the east.

The USSR had apparently proposed to allow German reunification

I don’t believe that Ms Thatcher was somehow unable to conceive the fundamental differences between Stalin’s March Note from 1952 (which was a ploy from a position of Soviet strength) and the situation 1989 (where the Soviet Union formally abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine due to their lack of strength).