Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

Hopefully the blog will run a bit faster. We went from a P233 running Linux Red Hat 7.2 to a Celeron 500 running the same.

I will be moving the blog (and other things) to a new machine sometime this weekend. The address won’t change but there may be downtime involved.
Not that I get that many hits 🙂

This isn’t a “clash of civilizations” so much as two clashes within civilizations — in the West, between those who believe in the values of liberal democracy and those too numbed by multiculturalist bromides to recognize even the most direct assault on them; and in the Islamic world, between what’s left of the moderate Muslim temperament and the Saudi-radicalized death-cult Islamists.

More rampant moral clarity can be found by reading the rest of Mark Steyn’s article in the National Post from yesterday.

The “international community” banged their collective spoons on their U.N. highchairs, demanding that the United States work with and through them. Bush ignored their pleadings even as the din of their tantrums became near-deafening. Then, slowly, he turned to the U.N. and squished it.

Read the whole thing. It’s brilliant.

“[W]ithout America there would be no Israel.”
And trying to bring down an American jetliner by detonating your shoes was going to destroy America how?
I wish I had kept the link I had where someone was comparing the terrorist mentality to a dream world, wherein all you had to do was commit the acts of 9/11 and you automatically won (even if, in reality, you didn’t), which explained why there weren’t any follow-ons to 9/11 — in their minds, al-Qaeda had already won and America was already destroyed.
The problem with that is, if they really are living in a dream world, they probably won’t stop dreaming.

…what a putz.

‘Cuz Sally and I will be in Florida and we can really give folks a ribbing about their incompetent election system.
Well — I’ll give them a ribbing. Sally is non-political (a good thing for a liberal these days:).

I am constantly amazed by incessant idiotarian attempts to divert attention from Iraq by drawing comparisons between Israel and Iraq. A guy named “Mike” has been commenting over on Rachel Lucas’s blog today and says among other things

Israel is no France.
The common points of ‘rogue’ between Israel and Iraq are pronounced. Iraq refused investigators, so does Israel. Iraq defies Security Council resolutions, so does Israel. Iraq wants weapons of mass destruction, Israel has them.
Israel has no “Great Satan.” Guess again.
“…Let them be aware in Washington, Moscow, Damascus and China that if one of our ambassadors is shot, or even a consul or the most junior embassy official, we might start World War Three just like that!” — Sharon.
Drop your ear a little closer. NO ONE in the MidEast is our ‘friend.’

Hmm. Let’s take that one step at a time, even though I usually avoid discussions of Israel.
Israel is no France. Thank God. We’ll just leave it at that.
Israel is not a “rogue” state. Israel is a client state of the United States (not an ally; they’re not big enough to be an ally. They’re a client). Last time I looked, Israel did not support terrorists. I don’t know what inspections Israel is supposed to have refused. I know of no UN inspection regimes that have been ordered for Israel and then rebuffed, but I do know of one that Saddam rebuffed. We were reminded of it this morning by our President.
And of course Israel has WMD. If you were sitting on a slip of land next to the sea with 200 million kill-crazy Arabs just dying (sometimes literally) to push you into the water, wouldn’t you want something like that up your sleeve, just in case? Israelis are no more anxious to have a rerun of the Holocaust than anyone else–well, anyone else who has his head on straight, anyway.
Later on, in another comment, “Mike” says that Israel has never renounced first use. Well, guess what, Mikey. Neither has the U.S. However our enemy the USSR did piously renounce first use while keeping us squarely in the crosshairs anyway.
The guessing again on Israel having no “Great Satan” is somewhat silly. I don’t see Sharon calling the US or anyone else a “Great Satan” in there. I see him being his usual bellicose self and writing checks he might be able to cash. But there’s one small difference between Sharon and someone like, say, Saddam Hussein. Sharon can be forced to call elections if the Knesset votes no-confidence. So exactly how far do you really think Sharon can go? (The quote, by the way, is from a 1982 Amos Oz interview of Sharon. It would be one thing if he’d said it in 2002. Something he said 20 years ago is pretty much irrelevant, particularly in the wake of not one but two intifadehs.)
As far as Israel being our friend…of course it isn’t. Nobody is our friend. The only country that comes even close to being our friend is England, and England has its own interests. Any student of our nation’s foreign affairs throughout its history is fully aware that while the United States has allies and clients, IT DOES NOT HAVE FRIENDS. Israel is however a valued client of the United States, giving us a toehold in the area that we wouldn’t have if it didn’t exist. And if you don’t think that the relationship has been valuable, then I would suggest you re-read the history and think again. Israel is the only country in the region that is developed, has industry (including an enormous technology infrastructure), has pushed back the desert and made it bloom, and has actually followed through on its guarantees of access to the holy places of three religions. In short, if Israel did not exist, it would probably be necessary to invent it. (And I might add that Israel was always quite friendly about providing the U.S. with captured Soviet military equipment it took from its neighbors.)
What, if anything, did the Paleostinians accomplish in that land in nearly 2000 years?
Nada. Not a damn thing. After 1400 years of Arab stagnation, an Islamic culture suddenly flowered 600 years ago, but failed in its early promise because of fratricidal violence over succession issues. By and large they still live in the Bronze Age, and if it weren’t for the West and its technology, they’d still be riding camels, burning cow dung for fuel, and writing in ink on parchment. The heirs of the people who invented algebra are now technological parasites. And they have military dictators, religious fanatics, and fat towel-headed billionaire “princes” lording it over them and inciting them to more and more violence.
So where really is the moral equivalence?
It doesn’t exist. Israel, even with its faults, is clearly preferable to the Arab world. And most especially preferable to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
I may return to this, I have a few more things to say on the subject. As Drudge says, “Developing…”

Billy McKinney got skunked; 65-35.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Naturally it was the fault of Uncle Toms who preferred a Klansman or member of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, or some mumble to that effect. I love what his opponent, John Noel, had to say about that (click the link).

This from the end of the Fox News story on Bush’s speech:

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Del., said in a Philadelphia speech Wednesday that if the Bush administration takes a “world be damned, here we go” attitude, “that is not in our interest.”

Fuck you, Joe Biden. By the way, who did you plagarize that from?
Talk about a guy with little or no moral authority to hold office.
Democrats delenda est. November’s coming.