Fashionistas you have arrived 3-25-03 - 10-3-03

[W.W.L.D.]

Winnipeg — Saskatchewan's government has tried everything to get the U.S. border opened to its beef: pleading, cajoling and even threatening a ban on foreign beef.

Now a researcher for the ruling New Democratic Party has resorted to name-calling, in a memo that described U.S. President George W. Bush as "Shrub."

Titled, "Re: petition to President Shrub," the bulletin on NDP caucus letterhead was distributed this week to members of the legislature, candidates for Saskatchewan's coming election and MPs in Ottawa. Media outlets received the memo by mistake.

"We were just appalled," said Elwin Hermanson, leader of the opposition Saskatchewan Party, who received the bulletin yesterday. "On the stupid meter, this seems to go off the scale."

The memo encourages recipients to distribute copies of a petition that Premier Lorne Calvert launched on Tuesday as a protest against the U.S. beef ban. It explains the shrubbery reference as a "dismissive nickname for President Bush."

The government distanced itself from the memo, promising a review of how it got drafted and whether there should be disciplinary action against the caucus staffer who wrote it.

(Even so, this is a pretty weak-ass insult)