Holy Fromage, Batman!

Segolene Royal, perhaps the next (and first female) president of france. Now, I wait for the Pulp Fiction joke to hit. Wait for it...wait for it...

By the way, she's a...I'd better whisper it...Socialist. And next door to her is the Italian president who is about to be given his formal walking papers. And he will be replaced by a...wow, I'd better whisper this one, too...left-of-centerist. Germany has somewhat gone that way already. And not. Merkel (another first female, though this time it's a chancellor) is still ping ponging as she makes heads or tails of what she inherited and who she really is. The Poodle in Britain is on very shaky ground for now as scandals continue to rock his world and confidence from the public coninues to plummet. Fortunately, he's got the Parliament to diffuse any real indepth investigation of anything whatsoever so long as they're allowed to stand and pontificate about whatever they like for as long as they like. No offense to my friend(s) across the Big Drippy, but your politicians are almost as bad and windbaggy as ours. And they know bigger words. And can speak in complex sentences. you know, like:
"My Lords, Ladies, Provincials and Peons. Today is a day in which many threads of international and domestic issues provide fertile loam for the meandering tendrils of rootish conundrums, the answers to which this humble and lackeyish servant of the House of Whiteford-upon-Stratocaster-upon-Pokemon-upon-Widmer cannot ascertain without further canoodling and flippancy at the whim and genorosity of the Commoner's purse." They might even throw in a few henceforths and herewiths and to wits.
Translation: No comment.
And i say that you are almost as windbaggy as our pols. The truth is that yours are as windbaggy as our press liaisons. Our pols have no time to speak to any of their own, much less us Commoners. Exhibit #1: the Bush Townhouse meetings. He speaks, we listen. And we listen. And when we fall asleep we're awoken (my word) and escorted out, because as everyone knows only terrorists snore when the president pontificates.
Exhibit #2: the daily Scott McClellan Press Conference, in which he repeats what he said the day before and the day before that and the day before that and I begin to wonder why the press even bothers to show up and ask questions as if they're expecting to get the truth on anything.
What I do enjoy is the fact that almost all of our pols have discovered the Thesaurus. When a word like "fallacious" shows up in a speech or response to an attack by the other party and the Religious Right doesn't step forward to condemn that kind of dirty talk.
Anyhoo, Europe is leaning a bit to the dirty little commie side for a while as is South America. And it's mostly in response to Cheney's actions and attitudes. This will change eventually. It's a cycle after all. One side gets in promising all of these changes and hits the trifecta using the Commoner's dissatisfaction with the prevailing party. Then, this party gets that first wad of cash in the mail and discovers graft is good. It's a cycle.

update (8:00 PM): Trying to leave here on good terms is becoming a very iffy thing. I got chewed out via two way radio yesterday, because my boss couldn't find a particular piece of information in my office while i wasn't there. In short order, the problem was fixed, but that didn't stop him from berating me. This man's problem is that three of us are leaving within a two month period and he practices crisis management (he actually admitted that to me twice in the past three days and claimed that it is standard for the industry...which it most defi-fucking-nately ain't). I will continue to try and maintain a professional demeanor, but this morning I had to confront him during a closed door meeting with me and my lab tech on this and tell him that his approach to things he preceives as problems could use some tempering. He tried to get my tech to leave, but I said this involved my tech as well since my boss had attacked him in past as well. Do I even need to say that it went over like a sack of bricks? Do I even need to say that my tech wanted to crawl out the door within the first thirty seconds, but afterwards thanked me for forcing the issue? My boss is not a bad person. He does, unfortunately, suffer from fear of failure syndrome, blame everyone but yourself syndrome and short man's syndrome. He is a great salesman. He is, also, a lousy leader. He manages. So, today marked a new chapter in my short tenure here. I finally lit into him about his attitude towards his employees and his approach to problems that may not actually exist. The rest of the day was politeness. Yum. I can't wait to leave.