John Bercow and the mother of all parliaments.

 

"“An address by a foreign leader to both houses of Parliament is not an automatic right. It is an earned honor, Bercow told MPs on Monday.

 

“Before the imposition of the migrant ban, I would myself have been strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall. After the imposition of the migrant ban, I am even more strongly opposed… 

 

“I feel very strongly that our opposition to racism and to sexism and our support for equality before the law and an independent judiciary are hugely important considerations in the House of Commons,” he added."  usatoday

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Smug.  Pretentious. Self-congratulatory,  Vertically challenged = John Simon Bercow

In 1775 the colonists in North America did not wish to reject their king, however repellent George III may have been.  No, what they objected to was the smug assertion of authority over the colonies by the Westminster Parliament and resulting taxation without representation as well as most of the other grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence.  Some attitudes never seem to change.

Is it not correct that the UK wants a special trade agreement with the United States?  Both Teresa May and Bercow have now offended the head of state and head of government of the US.

Is this the way to obtain that agreement?  pl  

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/02/07/trump-address-uk-parliament/97582218/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bercow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

Comments

[Sam Peralta]

Col. Lang

The biggest "crime" perpetrated by Donald J. Trump is he is not PC.

He has offended all the smug and pretentious people on both sides of the pond including our Borg media, the establishment of both parties and those of our punditry and twitterati who have convinced themselves that their "morality" however duplicitous is the only way. The European establishment too is firmly in PC land. They are going to be reeling in a few months if Geert Wilders & Le Pen win their elections.

IMO, Trump's biggest sin is that he defeated the Borg's very own Queen despite every attempt by the media to upend him. I hope he recognizes that he does not owe them anything and executes his office with complete disregard to their hypocritical "norms".

[iowa steve]

Quite the laffer to hear the British government lecture the US on racism and sexism.

[Freudenschade]

Col.,

perhaps the beginning of the UK's journey back to the EU? We'll see whether so-called Trumpism in the British isles and the content is real.

[Edward Amame]

I just checked around online. This story went up on the Guardian about a half hour and has over 2000 comments already.

[William Fitzgerald]

I don't recall any American presidents addressing the Houses of Parliament but, as W.R. Cummings used to say here, "I could be wrong, as always". The question I'd have about such an event is, to what end? The administration isn't even three weeks old and hasn't (yet) made America great again, saved the world, or cured cancer. Also, the prospect of listening to a Trump speech probably would have the MPs recalling having their nannies administer doses of castor oil.

WPFIII

[William Fitzgerald]

Oops! I just read the USA Today article and observed that Clinton and Reagan and an assortment of other leaders have been invited to do it.

[MRW]

"In 1775 the colonists in North America did not wish to reject their king . . . Some attitudes never seem to change.”

Thank you.

[Eric Newhill]

Bercow is a typical smug and profoundly confused virtue signaling air head ass. There sure are a lot of them these days. Many of us are wearying of them and their postures.

He's against sexism, but pro-Islam? How does one carry those competing thoughts in one's head. It must be dizzying.

Independent judiciary? Muslims in his country are calling for Sharia law and courts.

Where is the racism he refers to? I think the majority of the citizens of the impacted countries are classified as "Caucasians?" When did Islam become a race?

Lemmings with delusions of grandeur having something to do with moral superiority.

As long as it doesn't hurt the US, IMO, Trump should make an example of these fools.

[Jack]

For all the NeverTrumpers who believe Trump is racist due to his stance on illegal immigration, here's a short video.

https://twitter.com/Chemzes/status/828244148931194881?s=03

[Walter]

I will be on a constituent conference call with Tulsi Gabbard today ( she is my Rep), do you guys have any questions you would like me to ask her?
Walter

[Prem]

Bercow started out as a member of the Monday Club - a sort of British John Birch Society, but rather more right wing.

So, now he's overcompensating. His wife is also a godawful self-publicist and loud liberal. She wears the trousers in that marriage.

[Origin]

Perhaps, it is properly framed negotiating by insult considering the targeted audience?

[LondonBob]

Bercow is an arch neocon with a passion for aggrandisement, often of the financial sort. His former Conservative Party colleagues loathe him with a passion. Thought this article was a good riposte.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/02/john-bercow-consistently-voted-iraq-war-hes-colossal-hypocrite-not-hero/

John Bercow consistently voted for the Iraq war. He’s a colossal hypocrite, not a hero.

The Twitter-cheering for John Bercow, the transformation of him into a Love, Actually-style hero of British middle-class probity against a gruff, migrant-banning Yank, could be the most grotesque political spectacle of the year so far. Not because it’s virtue-signalling, as claimed by the handful of brave critics who’ve raised their heads above the online orgy of brown-nosing to wonder if Bercow is really promoting himself rather than parliamentary decency. No, it’s worse than that. It’s the lowest species of cant, hypocrisy of epic, eye-watering proportions, an effort to erase Bercow’s and Parliament’s own bloody responsibility for the calamities in the Middle East that Trump is now merely responding to, albeit very badly.

Bercow, you see, this supposed hero of the refugees and Middle Eastern migrants temporarily banned from the US, voted for the bombing of Iraq. He green-lighted that horror that did so much to propel the Middle East into the pit of sorrow and savagery it currently finds itself. As his profile on the They Work For You website puts it, ‘John Bercow consistently voted for the Iraq War’. On 18 March 2003, he voted against a motion saying the case for war hadn’t been made, even though it hadn’t. On the same day he voted for the government to ‘use all means necessary’ to ensure the destruction of Iraq’s WMD.

As everyone knows now, and as many of us knew back then, Iraq’s WMD capacity had been vastly exaggerated by the black propaganda of the New Labour government, by myth and misinformation cynically whipped up to the end of providing Britain’s leaders with the thrill of an overseas moral crusade against evil. Bercow voted in favour of these lies. And he voted for the use of ‘all means necessary’ to tame Saddam’s regime. We know what this involved: Britain joined the bombing campaign and courtesy of an ill-thought-through war by Western allies, Iraq was ripped apart and condemned to more than a decade of bloodshed. And refugee crises. Bercow was one of the authors of this calamity, one of the signatories to the Middle East’s death warrant, and now we’re going to let him posture and preen against Trump’s three-month ban on certain Middle Eastern migrants? What is wrong with us?

Bercow isn’t alone. Harriet Harman says she was ‘horrified when [Trump] announced this ban on people from Muslim countries’ and says he shouldn’t be allowed to address parliament. Ms Harman voted for the bombing of Iraq, and Libya, and Syria (they lost that vote). She voted for the military action that contributed to the unravelling of those Muslim countries and to a surge in refugees, and now has the gall to cry crocodile tears over Trump’s treatment of those refugees. Please. Do not insult our moral intelligence.

There’s also Yvette Cooper. She’s raged against Trump’s temporary ban too. She voted for the Iraq War (and against an investigation into it) and she voted for military action in Libya. Just look at Libya now; it is an unspeakable mess; hundreds of thousands of people have fled. Most starkly, most shamelessly, Alastair Campbell has been cheering Bercow for keeping the migrant-mistreating Trump out of our morally pristine parliament. Someone has to say it: Campbell is arguably responsible for more death and destruction in the Muslim world than Trump is ever likely to achieve. His spin cost lives, his spin made refugees. Trump’s misleading statements and rash orders pale into insignificance in comparison with the carnage Campbell helped to unleash.

This is what was truly despicable about Bercow’s anti-Trump posturing and parliamentarians’ cheering of it and the Twitterati’s fawning over it: this very house that doesn’t want Trump to address it, these green benches and the self-satisfied Trump-bashers sat on them, gave the go-ahead to actions that contributed to immense instability in the Muslim world. That media types are lapping this up shows how completely they have retired their critical faculties in the Trump era. In their mind Trump is evil and everyone who hates Trump is good. It’s a new infantile moral code, fashioned by an at-sea political and media set desperate for some sense of clarity in the era of Brexit and political upset. And now they have that clarity: Trump is fascism, anti-Trump is decency. It’s the morality of the nursery, eschewing complexity and analysis and muddying historical truth.

Indeed, it’s becoming clear that Trump-bashing is primarily a means of moral cleansing, of averting the public and historic gaze from your own sins and crimes and confusions by taking part in the Two Minute Hate of this ‘New Hitler’. Just say: ‘I oppose Trump, and therefore I’m good.’ Shame on everyone indulging this spectacle, clapping and tweeting as the politicians who started a decade of war berate a politician for passing a three-month travel ban.

[iowa steve]

Tell her to call Trump and say she should be hired at State instead of Abrams.

[Valissa]

The inevitable blowback...

John Bercow apologises to Lords counterpart amid Trump visit row https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/07/john-bercow-accused-of-hypocrisy-over-trump-stance
Bercow’s comments prompted a series of Conservative MPs to criticise him, with the government also making plain its displeasure.

“Anyone who knows the Speaker will know that he speaks his mind. But he doesn’t speak for the government,” the communities secretary, Sajid Javid, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“The government is very clear: President Trump is the leader of our most important ally, he’s elected fairly and squarely, and it’s manifestly in our national interests that we reach out to him and we work with him, and he visits us in the UK.”

John Whittingdale, a former culture secretary, said Bercow was seeking “as much publicity as possible” and should have instead talked privately to Theresa May.

He told Sky News: “It was a performance, it was John Bercow playing to the gallery and I think it was damaging to the national interest. I think it is regrettable that he did it.”
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Commons Speaker John Bercow should be stripped of control over Westminster Hall speeches after his attack on 'racist' Trump, says Lords counterpart Lord Fowler http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4198788/Bercow-faces-fight-job-amid-backlash-Trump-ban.html

The pompous, self-righteous name calling and attempted shaming (of Trump) only makes the moralizer look lame. I don't know why people think they will be able to successfully go against Trump simply by speaking some variation of 'You are really, really bad and I hate you and everything you do or say.'

[Old Microbiologist]

https://youtu.be/d-OE-MdBI40 Kevin Kline opinion of the British from "A Fish Called Wanda"

[Origin]

I want to complement the Committee and laud the value of free speech! I learned a great deal reading these comments and reviewing the links.

[Jack]

The hypocrisy of these people who have caused so much death and destruction is too much to bear. I find it amusing in a galling way to see all these faux attacks on Trump by both the liberals and conservatives who have caused so much carnage.

The backlash is only getting started in Europe who are now faced with a real consequence of their destabilization of the Middle East.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4199918/Most-Europeans-want-end-migration-Muslim-countries.html

[Jack]

Valissa

The best rated comments on the Daily Mail article you linked to say it all. Clearly DM readers are not on the side of the condescending speaker of the UK parliament.

[Harry]

Quite so. But remember that Bercow was desperate for that job for the money. That's pretty much all that had ever motivated that small minded, small brained, small man.

[Dabbler]

Ask her if she wouldn't rather be in Hanalei. :~)

[Bandolero]

Pat

I think a good FTA with Britain can be very much in the interest of the US, too.

What I think could be good in such an agreement is that it should be possible for Trump to pitch the City of London against Wall Street, thereby bringing a bit more competion in the financial industry of the US and Britain, shaking up the oversized status quo in the financial sector and consolidate overcapacities there.

So, I wouldn't see a US-British FTA as a favor to Britain, but as a good thing for both the US and Britain if it's done right.

[turcopolier]

Origin

Whose free speech is threatened? pl

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

History rhymes.

The USA may withdraw from Europe after the next fiscal crisis but the US military will never voluntarily leave England. The King and Queen reside in Buckingham Palace.

Today the Democrats are officially powerless. The anti-public school billionaire sister of Eric Prinz, Betsy DeVos, was confirmed. Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed as the next Justice of the Supreme Court with a straight majority vote. Environmental and consumer protections will be gutted. Maryland will be fracked. The sad part will be watching Chuck Summer and Nancy Pelosi acting as if they are not total losers for restarting the Cold War 2.0 with Russia and throwing the middle class under the bus. I don’t think Globalists will be pouring any more bribes down the Democrat money hole. Instead, rather than suffering eight whole yeas with the anti-Globalist Trump Administration, they will fund and corporate media will provoke a pink revolt.

[turcopolier]

VV

"the US military will never voluntarily leave England. The King and Queen reside in Buckingham Palace" Secret royalists? pl