Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

I also heard a clear call for the UN to decide if it was going to be a serious organization for the resolution of world problems, or if it was going to continue to be a group of irrelevant talking heads that do nothing and paralyze themselves into inaction by an unwillingness to condemn the evil in the world. Invoking the League of Nations (with the camera pointing at the French delegation…nice touch) was brilliant. Because today’s UN is about as ineffective and irrelevant as the League was. The only difference is that we’re members of the UN.
The bone he threw with regard to UNESCO notwithstanding, I think Bush threw the gauntlet down to the UN — either act like the organization we helped start, or we’re going to take our ball, go home, and start building our own coalition (if not act unilaterally from now on). And he did it in a way that any person with average intelligence ought to be able to recognize, even the French with their vaunted “simplisme”.
The UN is on notice — get on the stick, or you are irrelevant and will be ignored and bypassed.
It was a brilliant speech. It cut to the heart of the issue and used forceful language. And all I could think of was “thank God it’s not Clinton or Gore up there.” (Or Bush 41, for that matter. The son has definitely outpaced the father.)
My only complaint is that he can’t pronounce “nuclear” for shit. And he needs to decide if it’s eeRaq or eyeRaq or earRaq. But that just makes him more accesible to the common man, I suppose. (And at least he doesn’t say SADdam like his father did.) And if all I have to complain about is his dialect, I guess it was indeed a brilliant speech 🙂

is “either help us, or get the fuck out of our way.”
At least that’s what I heard the President tell the UN. Even when he talked about seeking further resolutions, I didn’t hear him say we’d sit idly by if the UN refused to grant them. In fact I rather believe he said regime change was going to occur either way.

For all the bad press about his Presidency, General U.S. Grant was personally honest and a man of moral clarity in military matters. (His somewhat innocent belief in the honesty of the men who surrounded him was what gave his administration the black reputation it suffers.) Prior to the Mexican War, he wrote to the woman who would one day be his wife: “If we have to fight, I would like to do it all at once and then make friends.” Which sounds like what we have in mind for the Middle East; smack the crap out of them, take out their tinpot dictators and their theocratic oppressors, and then do a lot of democratic nation-building.

And he also had the right idea about how you fight the enemy. You fight the enemy totally, giving him no chance to mess you around, and when he cries “Uncle!” you make sure he means it:

                                   Hd Qrs. Army in the Field
Camp near Donelson, Feby 16th
Gen. S.B. Buckner,
Confed. Army,
Sir:  Yours of this date proposing Armistice, and appointment of
Commissioners, to settle terms of Capitulation is just received.  No
terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be
accepted.
I propose to move immediately upon your works.
I am Sir: very respectfully
Your obt. sevt.
U.S. Grant
Brig. Gen.

That’s what “Stormin’ Norman” needed to tell Saddam in ’91, and it’s what Tommy Franks needs to tell Saddam now. And then execute. “Faster, please.”

Grant quote from Shelby Foote, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville, p. 215; Grant’s message to General Buckner is from p. 212 of same. This is the message that earned him the moniker “Unconditional Surrender”.

ALL THESE WERE HONOURED IN THEIR GENERATIONS
AND WERE THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES
THERE BE OF THEM
THAT HAVE LEFT A NAME BEHIND THEM
THAT THEIR PRAISES MIGHT BE REPORTED
AND SOME THERE BE WHICH HAVE NO MEMORIAL
WHO ARE PERISHED AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER BEEN
AND ARE BECOME AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER BEEN BORN
AND THEIR CHILDREN AFTER THEM
BUT THESE WERE MERCIFUL MEN
WHOSE RIGHTEOUSNESS HATH NOT BEEN FORGOTTEN
WITH THEIR SEED SHALL CONTINUALLY REMAIN
A GOOD INHERITANCE
AND THEIR CHILDREN ARE WITHIN THE COVENANT
THEIR SEED STANDETH FAST
AND THEIR CHILDREN FOR THEIR SAKES
THEIR SEED SHALL REMAIN FOR EVER
AND THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT
THEIR BODIES ARE BURIED IN PEACE
BUT THEIR NAME LIVETH FOREVERMORE
Ecclesiasticus xliv

Regular bloggage will resume tomorrow.

Billy McKinney is still despicable. But we’ll see tomorrow what the results of the runoff in Georgia are.
HMM: I just found the current counts:
STATE HOUSE DISTRICT 44
9 of 23 precincts reporting.
Democrats Votes Pct.
John Noel 1,269 96
Billy McKinney (i) 48 4
Absentee ballots not included.
This was as of 10:27 PM EDT (about an hour ago). Looks like Billy may be on the way to a good old-fashioned skunkin’.

Young Sarah Kopelovich has suddenly found out the hard way that the people she thought were her staunch allies and supporters were really just fair-weather friends shilling for her vote.
But many Jews have been bathing in the cool waters of the right for years. We knew that the “liberal” statist “caring” left was not our natural political home, and we’ve been trying to say so ever since so many of us (alas, not nearly enough of us) voted for Ronaldus Magnus.
Jews in America would do well to cut loose their ties with the Democratic Party. It is no more representative of us than, well, as Sarah would likely observe, the Nazis. You’re hardly alone, Sarah. Come on in. The water’s fine.
And we’re proud of you, too.
(Via PejmanPundit.)

Jed Babbin on why the EU is NATO’s greatest enemy.

The Palestinians just keep betting on the wrong horse.

In this article on the reliability (or lack thereof) of CAIR polls, Howard Fienberg makes this interesting observation:

[CAIR] also continues to insist that, “There are an estimated seven million Muslims in America,” based on its 2000 survey of mosques, while a STATS investigation in November estimated the number is closer to about two million, give or take a few hundred thousand.

Huh. Imagine that. A pressure group overstating its numbers.
(Link to stats.org is in the original)
UPDATE: Stupid me. In my haste to make sure the population article was linked, I forgot to link the polling article 🙂

We appear to have escalated to an Orange level (“High”) alert, according to Fox News. Ashcroft was just on Fox talking about it.