Hu's in Washington

Short shrift again today, Bush. I'm busy working on the final proofs of "The Real Bush Diaries" and I've made myself a promise to get the job done by the end of this week. I've had a front cover specially designed: I think you'll be pleased. A kind of updated Warhol panel of images of your good self. I also have a back cover specialist (did you know there was such a person? News to me!) working on the blurb. All in all, we should have a good, professional job. It weighs in at 533 pages, and should be available in a month or so. Quite a tome! I'll keep you posted. By the way, you might be wondering where the "Real" came from. Some one came out of left field a few months ago with a book usurping the title we've been using from the start, in November 2004. To avoid the confusion and other potential unpleasantness, we added the "Real" to make it clear whose the real Bush Diaries were.

Anyway, listen, enough of this nonsense. For today, just a few words to note that your Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, had his priorities straight in paying his first respects to President Bill Gates before heading off to Washington (D.C., that is) to visit you. It does seem to me a bit of an irony--all the pomp and circumstance for the man who presides over a country that rides roughshod over human rights, jails journalists and critics with little semblance of a trial, supports such regimes as the North Korean dictatorship with military technology, and makes a mockery of international copyright laws. It also owns a huge chunk of our future in the form of massive loans--now amounting to $2 billion a week, as I read in the Los Angeles Times. Ah, well, I guess that's realpolitik for you. Got to make nice with the guy who lends you so much money. Not much leverage there to take the moral high ground, Bush. Have a good meeting, though.