oh the more we get together

Yesterday I was getting a huge kick out of the news coming from the United Nations General Assembly. (Go ahead and say it; you think I'm odd.) The G.A. has been getting a lot of local press as well as national, because with all the Heads of State etc., wandering around, there's been a lot of traffic for people to complain about. (A New Yorker: "It's bad enough that George Bush has us in a ridiculous war, but now he's gone and tied up traffic on the FDR! It's outrageous!")

In case you've missed it, here's the run down on some of the things that have been going on: My fav is Hugo Chavez of Venezuela taking a turn at being a rapper (rappers are my aside theme this week, I guess). When he got up to address the General Assembly he said, among other things about the U.S. President, "The devil is in the house." The image that immediately came to mind was some guy in baggy pants waving his hand in the air with a mic right up to his mouth yelling "the devil is. in. the. hoooouuuuuussssse!" Who knew the U.N. was such a party?

In other news, the Prime Minister of Thailand was ousted in a non-violent coup by the military while he was here in New York. The poor man didn't get much backing from the U.S. or the U.K. who are all for democracy, and not all for coup d'etats, except sort of, sometimes, when the current guy in charge won't be missed at those late-night world leader poker games. I believe the incident has been called "regrettable." Former President Bill Clinton is also hosting his own little world leader get together to solve world problems with guest speakers such as the leader of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf. And probably enjoying a few rounds of poker as well.

Also the current U.S. administration breathed a sigh of relief when the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, didn't show up at the leaders' lunch, where there was the possibility that he might run into his arch-nemesis, George W. Bush. I didn't read whether or not Chavez was at the lunch. If he was, he probably avoided the evil Americans. Although the U.S. Ambassador to the U.S., John Bolton, brushed off Hugo's comments by saying they weren't worth talking about, he did manage to mention something about a "comic strip approach to international affairs." Indeed, Mr. Bolton, indeed.