A Small Town in Maine

President Bush's food tester is going to have a shitty Independence Day -- Vladimir Putin's coming to Kennebunkport!

The President invited Putin to the Bush compound to discuss how, exactly, we should commemorate the reignition of the arms race. This makes Putin the first world leader Bush has invited to his family's Maine estate, in addition to being the only current world leader who was clearly created by John le Carre.

Both Putin and Bush, of course, are nearing the end of their terms, and both are too busy ensuring that they'll live out their twilight years free from war crimes prosecution to focus on solving the various increasingly intractable differences between the ways each of their administrations would like to permanently fuck up the world.

While the White House communications office insists that the two aging dictators will attempt to solve crises in Iran, Kosovo, and the rest of Eastern Europe and the middle east, smarter observers know that they'll just half-heartedly try to kill one another while trading barbed threats couched in florid metaphors. Like this:  

He went on to say: "Let's not talk about having immaculate, white fluffy partners on one side, and on the other a monster who has just come out of a forest with claws and corns growing instead of legs."

In a response leaked to the press, Bush said, "ah, Vlad -- you know, we aren't so different, you and I... 'tis a shame indeed that I'll have to destroy you. I think, under different circumstances, we may have even been friends. Such is life!"

 Bush Reaches to Putin as Relations Continue to Slide [WP]