We're all collecting nuts for winter

I don’t get why Americans are so bewildered by the president of a big country beings so ridiculously mistaken, so lame-brained, so smug and such an all-around disagreeable schmuck.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn’t create his farcical personality from scratch, he simply based it on George W. Bush and Co.
Americans were nearly rolling in the aisles earlier this week when Ahmadinejad starting spewing his personalized brand of lunacy at Columbia University. We all wondered how Iranian citizens keep a straight face when he launches into craziness about the Holocaust being staged or women liking the way they’re abused in Iran.
It’s not so funny when Bush and Dick Cheney parade around the world that the problem of greenhouse gas emissions and “alleged” global warming needs more research before can decide whether to do anything about it.
And the lies, lies, lies. Like when Cheney and Bush made the media circuits for weeks telling people that Iraq was al-Qaida Central, and that we should all shudder in fear of Saddam Hussein’s finger being on the button.
How about the lies, lies, lies Bush and Co. told about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe? Lies about buying prescription drugs from Canada? What about his crazy talk about Social Security and the lies he told trying to persuade Americans that the checks would stop coming unless we listened to him? And the lies about Haliburton? The oil companies?
And what about the craziness? The craziness about stem-cell research? Craziness that somehow some forms of torture should be acceptable? Craziness that somehow things weren’t as bad in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as the media was making out? Cuba? About Guantanamo? About “Old Europe” and our fabulous coalition?
Ahmadinejad wasn’t trying to make Americans mad. He’s just been watching TV for lo the past few years and thought that we liked political leaders spewing hate, lunacy and making it clear that he was just dead wrong.
It smacks of global hypocrisy if we scold Iranians for keeping around their hi-level nutballs even though we don’t seem to be willing to let go of our own.
Dave Perry is editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at dlperry@aurorasentinel.com.