George Galloway goes to Washington

Posted by ben tillman on May 18, 2005, 12:23 PM | #

How refreshing!

I doubt if anyone ever dealt with the US Senate in this manner.

Preston Brooks took a somewhat more direct approach….

http://alpha.furman.edu/palmetto/k-12/sumnerbrooks.htm

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3729/is_199901/ai_n8833731

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 18, 2005, 12:52 PM | #

Ben,

You’ve got to see the entire testimony here. This was like a school headmaster caning a couple of errant kids.

That’s the sort of licking a US Senator won’t forget in a hurry.

Posted by Arcane on May 18, 2005, 04:57 PM | #

Funny how you guys endorse a Communist when he agrees with you on some things. The Red-Brown Alliance is back!

Posted by Geoff Beck on May 18, 2005, 05:00 PM | #

If Galloway can embarrass the US Senate, that’s great; but I equally despise both parties.

Posted by Geoff Beck on May 18, 2005, 05:02 PM | #

It take that back, I despise the US Senate more - I don’t have to live in the same country with Galloway and he can’t tax my income or send me to fight Bush’s imperial wars.

Posted by Guessedworker on May 18, 2005, 05:17 PM | #

Arcane,

Galloway is harmless, except to the Labour Party and any neocon who happens to stroll innocently by.  For the rest of us he is free entertainment - and pretty good entertainment, too.

Don’t tell me you think attacking Sadaam because he flouted UN resolutions on WMD inspections was worth the lives of so many American servicemen?

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 18, 2005, 05:38 PM | #

Funny how you guys endorse a Communist when he agrees with you on some things. The Red-Brown Alliance is back!

May be you need to get a sense of humour.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 18, 2005, 05:40 PM | #

GW,

Arcane assures us that Iraq will settle down after about 15 years.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 18, 2005, 05:43 PM | #

Arcane,

Incidentally, do you think John Derbyshire of National Review is also part of this “Red-Brown” alliance?

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 18, 2005, 06:17 PM | #

Oh and the best part, Galloway says to Christopher Hitchens:

You are a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay.

Posted by Arcane on May 18, 2005, 07:39 PM | #

Phil,
Derbyshire thought it was good entertainment, as opposed your position, where you actually agree with the guy and consider him on your side. You’d probably cheer for Joseph Stalin if he were still around and opposed the war in Iraq, I suppose.

Galloways says the day the USSR fell was the “saddest day” in his life. Do you feel the same way?

Posted by Arcane on May 18, 2005, 07:49 PM | #

From an interview:

“I am on the anti-imperialist left.” The Stalinist left? “I wouldn’t define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back. If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe.”

George Galloway

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 18, 2005, 07:54 PM | #

where you actually agree with the guy and consider him on your side.

Your cartoonish ultra-neocon partisan behaviour is getting more ridiculous by the minute.

Posted by Arcane on May 18, 2005, 08:00 PM | #

Ah, that’s right, launch ad-hominem attacks. I’m not a neocon, much less an ultra-neocon, but that doesn’t matter to you, because the truth is useless to you.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 18, 2005, 08:13 PM | #

launch ad-hominem attacks

Thats interesting. You say I would applaud Joeseph Stalin and then accuse me of launching ad hominem attacks!

My characterising you as a Neocon is fairly accurate. It is Neocons who get so ideologically enraged at any hint of opposition to the War. May be you should be venting your fury at 57 percent of the American electorate that thinks this war wasn’t “worth it”.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 18, 2005, 08:25 PM | #

I should add: we could with a few more George Galloways setting up parties that eats into the Labour vote and then splits it so badly that Conservatives suddenly become far more relevant. So is Galloway good the Tories at the moment? You bet.

So when Galloway trains his Guns he’s training them at Tony Blair. And nothing suits me better.

Posted by Arcane on May 18, 2005, 11:34 PM | #

Is Galloway good for the Tories? Maybe. But the Tories did fine in the last election with no help from Galloway. They will have a real chance in the next election.

The question is… is Galloway good for Britain? I believe the answer to that is NO.

So, I guess if you want to align yourself with Bolsheviks, that’s ok.

Posted by stari_momak on May 19, 2005, 01:47 AM | #

There is a purely aethetic aspect to this. Galloway’s opening statement is pure rhetorical gold. I imagine there are names for the techniques, cadences, repetitions or phrases, etc that he used. I lack any education in rhetoric, but I imagine this was an exemplar performance.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 19, 2005, 04:31 AM | #

So, I guess if you want to align yourself with Bolsheviks, that’s ok.

Your arguments never seem to go much further beyond mud slingling and smearing. But then we are silly to expect any better from you having seen your comments here in the past two months.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 19, 2005, 04:46 AM | #

I should add the following: it is amusing how you always keep venting fury at this blog on us and keep smearing us. But it wasn’t people like us that let in those Moslems that voted for Galloway.

It was the do-gooders in Blair’s cabinet and people like that before Tony Blair going back half a century that have been doing it to this country. So, the only way we aren’t going to get more Galloways is by not letting in more Moslems which is partly what this blog argues, and with great regularity I might add. You on the other hand can’t find a moment’s precious time to speak of the treachery of crooks like Blair but have sufficient time to throw mud at us.

So the question really is: what is the source of your hatred and animosity against us? What is it here that you despise so much?

Any reader can read my innocuous comments on Galloway and then read John Derbyshire’s comment and see that there is no essential difference. Derbsyhire says,

The US Senate is full of pompous bores, stuffed up to the nose holes with a conviction of their own terrific importance, whose idea of debate is to drone their way through a speech some minimum-wage staffer has written up for them. This was like watching an alley mongrel let loose in a room full of pampered, overfed lap dogs.

All I said was that I thought Galloway’s performance was entertaining and that Galloway caned these Senators who are not used to this kind of a confrontation. In essence, only someone coming here with a microscope and a vendetta and willing to split imaginary hairs could have argued that Derbyshire merely enjoyed it whereas I agree with Galloway.

So your sole reason for being here is you keep engaging in mud slinging. What is your motive we ask and what is the source of your animosity against us?

Posted by ben tillman on May 19, 2005, 10:31 AM | #

Derbyshire thought it was good entertainment, as opposed your position, where you actually agree with the guy and consider him on your side….

We do not agree with “the guy”; we agree with what he said about Iraq, the US Senate, and Senator Coleman—all of which is true.  The traitors in the US Senate and elsewhere in the government deserve much worse than Galloway’s reprimands, but so far this is the harshest punishment they have received.  Bravo, Mr. Galloway!

The question is… is Galloway good for Britain?

You are disoriented.  That is not “the” question; that is “a” question, one which is very uninteresting compared to the other issues implicated by this thread.

So, I guess if you want to align yourself with Bolsheviks, that’s ok.

Very amusing coming from someone who has aligned himself with Bush and his Bolshevik foreign policy apparatus.

Posted by Andrew L on May 20, 2005, 02:03 AM | #

The idiot is as Guilty as all hell,Leftoid cover ups and deflection, Its there in black and white , up to his eye balls.Mafia type 1.

Posted by Effra on May 20, 2005, 07:56 AM | #

Using the guilt-by-association logic so popular with leftists and troto-neocons (cue a song: ‘Two of a Kind’) we can conclude that Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is a Bolshevik.

Well, he opposed the war in Iraq because that notorious bolshy subversive George Washington would have been against America going to war without just cause. So is George Galloway. Now Galloway, according to the neocons, is a ‘fascist’ because he supports Saddam Hussein, who is an ‘Islamofascist’, and who modelled himself on Stalin, who was a Bolshevik!

And then these globalist warmongers accuse US of conspiracy-theorising…

Posted by Andrew L on May 20, 2005, 05:52 PM | #

ooo no, don’t tell me Saddam was a Jew, that realy stuffes my theory.

Posted by Svigor on May 22, 2005, 04:38 PM | #

Oh and the best part, Galloway says to Christopher Hitchens:

You are a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay.

LOL!
Where’s the transcript (me and streaming video do not mix)?  I must’ve missed a lot of good stuff here, when did he talk to Hitchens?

Posted by Svigor on May 22, 2005, 04:43 PM | #

Oh, Arcane, I for one am all for cooperation between left and right against Iraq II, aid to Israel, foreign adventurism, big government, and anything else of use to my race.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 22, 2005, 04:47 PM | #

Svy,

The transcript of his testimony has been mysteriously removed from the senate’s web site. Hmmm….....

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 22, 2005, 04:51 PM | #

He talked to Hitch before walking into the Committee’s room. Hitchens was outside the room with a camera crew and Galloway looks at him and says: “You’re a drink soaked former Trotksyist Popinjay”.

You wont get the same effect reading the transcript. You’ve got to see the highlights Ive linked above. Sparks flying all over the place.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 22, 2005, 04:53 PM | #

Ok, I found one link to what looks like a transcript.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 22, 2005, 04:57 PM | #

He also called the Senators “lickspittle Republicans”. Pure entertainment.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 22, 2005, 05:08 PM | #

Here’s a link to the Christopher Hitchens - Galloway duel. I think its fair to say that Galloway won.

Posted by Svigor on May 22, 2005, 05:36 PM | #

Thanks Phil.  I dunno what they were thinking letting Galloway into the Senate!  I guess it was inevitable, once the accusations were made.

It’s really bad when they don’t know how badly they’re outclassed by the Brits when it comes to rhetoric.  Even I knew that.  Hell, most foreign politicians could whip an American one in an open forum, the trick is the Brits know English pretty well. 

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 22, 2005, 05:42 PM | #

the trick is the Brits know English pretty well.

Better than your President? 

Posted by Svigor on May 22, 2005, 06:02 PM | #

Err, yeah just a bit (Nukeyoolar anyone?).

Posted by Svigor on May 22, 2005, 06:55 PM | #

Lol, I remember the whole Bush-Putin “I looked into his soul” flapdoodle.  One of the eXile writers (Ames or Taibbi) put it well, saying something to the effect of, Putin is a hard-bitten political operator who made his bones dealing with gangsters and spies while Bush was being groomed at Harvard by daddy.  Putin would chew Bush up and spit him out in a second, but Bush “saw into his gentle soul.”

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 22, 2005, 07:06 PM | #

Bush is a piece of work.

Do you remember that Mahathir speech in which he said “Jews control the world by proxy”?

Right after that the media was hounding Bush for a comment. And Bush says, “We don’t agree with that comment. It is divisive”.

Not absurd, insane but “divisive”!

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 22, 2005, 07:13 PM | #

Don’t want to engage in Bush bashing, but this is a hilarious take on Bush.

http://www.exile.ru/transient/206/lead_bush100.jpg

Everybody’s asking me what’ll happen if we attack Iran. To get a quick preview, just do what this guy in my eighth-grade class did: put a firecracker in your mouth, hold it between your front teeth, and light the fuse.

Your friends won’t believe you’ll go through with it. So when it blows up in your face, you’ll expect them to be impressed. And you’ll be surprised, just like this guy in junior high was surprised, when all you get is a perforated eardrum and a reputation as the biggest dumbass in the school.

Right now, Bush is standing there with a lit match and a big firecracker labeled “Iran” in his mouth. Except it’s more like an M-80 or a whole stick of dynamite than a firecracker. Nobody believes he’ll be dumb enough to light it, to actually attack Iran. Even the Iranians don’t believe it; Khameini, their head Mullah, said last week “America is in no position to invade Iran.”

He’s right about that. Even the US Army brass admits we’re “overstretched.” We don’t even have enough troops to control Iraq; a war with Iran would mean calling up every National Guard unit we have. Even then, it would take years to get them combat-ready.

And this time the Brits won’t come with us. They’ve been making that clear, on the quiet. If we go in, it’ll be as a coalition of one.

So Khameini’s right; we can’t attack Iran. But that doesn’t mean we won’t. Khameini was making the same mistake everybody’s been making: assuming Bush and his cronies have a lick of sense.

The best way of guessing what Bush will do is asking, what’s the worst thing he could do to America? Whatever it is, that’s what he’ll do. I think he’s been possessed by bin Laden, because everything he’s done has been exactly what Al Quaeda hoped for. Right now, bin Laden is praying to Allah that we’ll be stupid enough to attack Iran. That would be the cherry on his halal sundae, the one thing that could actually finish us off as a Superpower.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 22, 2005, 07:34 PM | #

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/ATA/23440GB.jpg