Poking Bush with a needle from France

"The law in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under the bridges of Paris, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

Dick Bernard, a leading member of the Minnesota peace and justice movement, sent along that quotation from Anatole France, written around 1900, give or take a few years.

It could be a comment on Bush crowd’s idiotic "ownership society" con game. Its irony is more tasty for being (undoubtedly) over the heads of the jackass in the White House and many of his most ardent supporters.

There also is a savory irony in using the sharp needles of France – novelist, essayist, critic and poet and quintessentially French, even to the degree of adopting the name – to poke the Bushies’ distorted bubbles.

Here’s another of his pithy comments, entirely straightforward, which makes me think of our continuing dilemma and the election just past:

"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still foolish."