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‘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.

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.)