President George Bush headed to Camp David for the second consecutive weekend of relaxation, causing some to question how dedicated a leader he is. According to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, the president "is exhausted after working twenty, perhaps twenty-two hours this week. That's a lot for him." The president may also be trying to distance himself from two gaffes he made on the international scene.
Earlier this week he met with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the first foreign leader to visit Bush in the United States. According to White House staffers the president met the prime minister with the statement "Jean, that's a girls name, isn't it?" oblivious to the correct french pronunciation, which sounds similar to the name John.
Bush also insulted the prime minister throughout the meeting by addressing him as "Hey Frenchy" and by frequent uses of the phrases "How's it going, eh?" and "Take off you hoser." The lines are from the movie Strange Brew, a comedy starring Canadian actors Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis. In the film the duo appear as a couple of beer drinking losers who get a job at a brewery. Bush once called the film "the most important movie ever made."
Things then went from bad to worse as Bush began a tirade against the "liberal scum that infest this planet like flies on a turd" unaware that Chretien is leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
After the meeting the press asked Chretien how things went. "That man in there is a buffoon," Chretien seethed, further adding that "if we could physically move Canada to another part of the world, we would."
Further international trouble occured on Friday, when a U.S. nuclear submarine inadvertently surfaced beneath a Japanese fishing trawler, sinking the boat. Coast Guards are still searching for nine missing Japanese, including four high school fisheries students.
On Friday afternoon, following the incident, President Bush called Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. According to reports, Bush enraged the Japanese leader by making the statement "We're sorry of course, but it's kinda cool how it happened, huh? Just like Godzilla!"
Following the phone call Bush was heard to bitterly complain that "it's hard to understand all that gobbledygook they speak. I thought we won that damned war; can't we send somebody over there to make them speak english?"
