Further, Romney's ill-considered comments yesterday also served to remind his British hosts of something else he said about them only two short years ago, a caustic observation which was remarkably obtuse and terribly deroguatory:

"England is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions."
- Mitt Romney, Without Apology (St. Martin's Press, 2010)

(Incidentally, it should go almost without saying that England is NOT an island. Rather, England is part of the island of Great Britain, which it shares with Scotland and Wales. Together with Northern Ireland, they comprise the United Kingdom.)

Finally, I'd just like to note that contrary to what's being said and then repeated today on Fox News and white-wing talk radio, the bust of Sir Winston Churchill was NOT returned to the British when President Obama took office in January 2009.

Rather, it was relocated within the White House from the Oval Office to its residential wing, and presently sits at the entrance to the Treaty Room, where Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt had spent countless hours discussing the joint coordination of war policy and military efforts in the Second World War, during the two weeks in January 1942 that the British Prime Minister spent at the White House as the First Family's personal guest.

So, if you hear anyone spreading that particular lie, please don't hesitate to correct them publicly -- preferably accompanied by a sharp smack upside their heads, followed by a condescending rhetorical question, i.e., "What the Hell's the matter with you phuquing wingnuts?"