International Herald Tribune : If you loose, blame someone else

Politicus: A lethal ridiculousness in the European Union - Europe - International Herald Tribune

Quote : "Neither Chirac nor Schroder will die from an overload of coherence" !

Switch the subject to the Budget and when it collapses, as it did, blame Blair.

From June 14th

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"There is a French maxim saying nothing kills as surely as ridiculousness. It probably goes back to the royal court at Versailles where the wrong ruffle, or faulty flounce, or stocking hue (not peach, you fool, but apricot! ) first meant hilarity, then dead men walking.

Much the same rule seems to pertain to European politics in 2005. Ridiculousness continues to look lethal.

I'm thinking of a separation from reality these days that overwhelms the acceptably contradictory and becomes grotesque - the equivalent of generals ordering their vanquished armies to defend destroyed fortifications to the death.

This is not insisting that politics should survive without contradictions and maneuvering, which, like digressions, are often the best part of the story.

But after the rejection of the European Union's constitution in referendums in France and the Netherlands, and Gerhard Schr�der's mortifying defeat in a regional election in Germany's biggest state, there is a degree of political slippage, a mortal skid, really, whirling Schr�der and Jacques Chirac at the heart of Europe in the direction of the absurd.

The two men met twice in six days, and after both acknowledged that Europe was in crisis, they came up with the command-like conclusion that the EU's summit meeting in Brussels on Thursday should be about its budget for the year after next."