February 13, 2003

FRANCO-VILE SENTIMENT SPREADS IN CONGRESS

A wave of anti-France anger swept the nation's capital yesterday as lawmakers vowed to get the French fried and talked of cracking down on their wine and bottled water in response to that country's stand against getting tough with Iraq.

"The feeling is that we've been a public punching bag for too long by a third-rate nation like France and the only question is what we should do about it,"said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), who's been getting thumbs-up from colleagues after lambasting the French.

The anger grew yesterday after France - joined by Germany and Belgium - shot down a compromise and again blocked the NATO alliance's 16 other members from planning to help defend Turkey, which would serve as a base for U.S. forces in an Iraq attack.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) is mulling plans to target French mineral waters like Evian and stamp bright orange warning labels on any
French wines clarified with bovine blood [Ewww. What's up with that?--J.T.].

"There's been some concern about bottled Evian water and whether they meet the same standards as U.S. firms," said Hastert spokesman John Feehery. Hastert wants to retaliate for a French crackdown against genetically modified U.S. farm imports.

A growing number of lawmakers are also talking about moving U.S. troops from Germany - which is siding with France - to Poland, which backs the U.S. stance on Iraq.

My esteemed fellow blogger Tacitus doesn't think this will hurt the French, but I'm not so sure.
The French economy is more dependent than you would think on their exports to us and our tourism.
Boycotting the wine and water is a very good start and knowing my fellow Americans and how mad we are at this Franco-German betrayal, I think that a complete moratorium on things French and German will surely follow once we get it started with the little things like their wine.
Thank God that we now make some excellent wine here in America and then there's Australian wine and even Spanish (I had a glass of a pretty good Spanish Cabernet/Merlot just the other night.)
While I buy Ozarka Water, which is from springs right here in Texas, the bloody company is owned by Perrier! Drat!
That EU ban on GM foods is crazy and not based on anything substantive (I think it's a ruse to protect their insane EU Common Agricultural Policy) and they've influenced the African countries to follow their "lead," so that countries there stricken by famine, like Zimbabwe, will turn down our food aid for no good reason other than that it's GM.
As for moving our troops to Poland from Deutschland, it's an excellent idea: they'd be more welcome, it would be way cheaper to do and Poland is in a more strategic place.
So, I think that the (Republican) Congress is definitely headed in the right direction all the way around.