Hypocrisy alert: Shrub cares about diplomacy

Now, at the end of his reign, George W. Bush wants to hire 1,100 new diplomats:

The additional positions are part of an $8.2 billion request for State Department operations for the 2009 budget year that Bush will submit to Congress on Monday, according to documents described by officials.

That request would be $690 million, or 9.1 percent, above the current level for department operations, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the public release of the spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

Other significant proposed increases include a 41 percent rise in spending for new embassy construction, from $670 million to $948 million, and a nearly 20 percent boost for worldwide security spending, from $968 million to $1.16 billion.

And, where was this concern for diplomacy five years ago, in February 2003?

McCain the diplomatic simpleton

The Schmuck Talk Express™ says he won’t talk to the Irans and North Koreas of the world unless the talks would guarantee a U.S. win in whatever was under discussion.

Idiot. The whole give-and-take of diplomacy on controversial issues is that, unless your diplomacy is W’s diplomacy of the gun barrel, there is no 100 percent winning and 100 percent losing. And, his claiming that Kissinger always conducted his diplomacy this way is ludicrous. We all know just how much of what he wanted Kissinger got from Le Duc Tho.

I know that McCain is voicing aloud what passes for foreign policy of most Republican contenders for the presidential nomination. He’s theoretically smarter than the ilk of Rudy (I’m not really a dictator, I just play one in New York) Giuliani and Mitt (I have as many positions as Brigham Young had Mormon wives) Romney, which makes his willful knuckle-dragging stance all the worse.