Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This post is in: Excellent Links
Just read some outstanding news, via the Dailypundit.
Arab News cartoonist Mahmoud Kahil died yesterday after undergoing surgery at a British hospital.
An internationally known political cartoonist, Kahil was the technician in charge of the publications of the Saudi Research & Publishing Company, which publishes Arab News and 16 other publications.
This particular anti-semitic swine will not be missed.
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Earlier today, the Vodkapundit displayed the text of a letter to Yasser Arafat from Ingrid Newkirk. I thought it was a joke. Sully points out the actual link on the PETA website. Why did I think it was a joke? Here is the text:
Your Excellency:
I am writing from an organization dedicated to fighting animal abuse around the world. We have received many calls and letters from people shocked at the bombing in Jerusalem on January 26 in which a donkey, laden with explosives, was intentionally blown up.
All nations behave abominably in many ways when they are fighting their enemies, and animals are always caught in the crossfire. The U.S. Army abandoned thousands of loyal service dogs in Vietnam. Al-Qaeda and the British government have both used animals in hideously cruel biological weaponry tests. We watched on television as stray cats in your own compound fled as best they could from the Israeli bulldozers.
Animals claim no nation. They are in perpetual involuntary servitude to all humankind, and although they pose no threat and own no weapons, human beings always win in the undeclared war against them. For animals, there is no Geneva Convention and no peace treaty
This post is in: Excellent Links
Clubbeaux has fancy new digs. Go check em out.
And that is one mean looking harp seal.
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
And the position is not marching westward with their hands raised in surrender. Instead, I am talking about their indefensible position regarding Turkey. This op-ed in the Telegraph nails it:
What is sickening about French behaviour is not so much that they genuinely intend to deprive Turkey, a vital Nato ally, of the Patriot missiles. It is not as though they really mean to hold up the war until the desert is so scorching that our boys’ boots melt within minutes.
What is so cynical, and so French, is that they know they won’t push their position to its logical conclusion. They know that America and Britain are so overwhelmingly committed to removing Saddam Hussein from power that no other outcome is possible. They know that they will join up in the end, and in their hearts they accept that the world would be a better place without him.
And that means that they know that they have a diplomatic free hit. They can posture, and preen, and strike neo-Gaullist attitudes, safe in the knowledge that they will never have to make sense of their policy, or justify it to posterity. They have simply decided to play to the gallery of public opinion.
I was thinking of creating a special category for the French, but all I could come up with was ‘The God-Damned French.” If I can think of something more clever, I might use it.
Link via the Blogfather
Please note that all use of the term France and the French is to be interpreted solely as referring to the French government and their irritating policies, and not the idiot civilians who keep electing these jerks. That didn’t come out as gracious as I meant it to sound.
This post is in: The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs
Your tax dollars at work:
The White House Office on National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) rolled out the Bush administration’s plan for countering drug trafficking and substance abuse February 12. The top priorities identified in an ONDCP press release are stopping substance abuse before it starts, healing the nation’s drug abusers and disrupting the profit flow in drug trafficking.
The goal of disrupting the market is based on the belief that drug traffickers will get out of the business if governments can make it very difficult for them to earn profits.
Yes- that should do it. That approach has been so successful with booze, porn, cigarettes- oh wait. Nevermind.
In another statement released by ONDCP, Director John Walters said, “We must make drugs scarce, expensive, and of unreliable quality. Reducing the availability of dangerous substances will keep our children healthy and complement our efforts to reduce the demand for drugs.
Why do they make us keep proving they are idiots? And why do they keep pretending that we are idiots?
You can not win the drug war. Use has increased despite spending over 300 billion. If you want to do something sensible, rehabilitate people instead of incarcerating them. I am too sick and tired of arguing this to even present you with the links to the relevant research. You idiots know the truth- you just don’t want to deal with it. When you create a black market for something, and that something is a very valuable and desired commodity, you don’t win by attempting to shut down the supply side- all you do is increase the value of the commodity and make more incentives for OTHERS to supply the drugs. You will only win when you attack the demand side. Get it? Understand? Of course you do. Now go piss away another 30 billion dumping DDT on pot patches.
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
I know many of you don’t believe me when I state, repeatedly, that the positions France and Germany are taking is not going to reflect badly on us, but will, in the long run, diminish their stature to the point of them being essentially irrlevant. Maybe you will believe Kenneth Pollack:
Pollack called the Turkey issue “a no-brainer.” He said some in the U.S. administration must be thinking that NATO’s utility is ended. Built to deal with the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, if NATO cannot deal with such an obviously bad case as Iraq, that will build the case for doing without it, Pollack said.
“It is in NATO’s charter that it must provide for the threat to members, given that the threat is legitimate,” Pollack said. “Plus,
Turkey’s going to believe that racist Western Europe just doesn’t want Turkey to be a part of
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
Rep. Peter King (R- NY), got his dander up, which is unusual, as he is normally very laid back. At any rate, the target of his ire was the French:
King, a Republican on the House International Relations Committee, accused France of using its influence in the United Nations Security Council and NATO to hobble international cooperation aimed at disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
“We may have to restructure the alliance, form a new alliance which the French will not be a part of,” said King. “We cannot allow a second-rate country to have a veto power or obstructionist power over American foreign policy.”
The congressman argued that France also delayed successful military intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.
“France is posturing itself as a moral guardian, when they would have lost World War I, and they set a world record in World War II for the quickest surrender by a world power.”
King said he has had “all these French people calling me up and attacking me” since making similar comments in a BBC radio interview late Monday night, in which he said the French could go to Iraq “to instruct the Iraqis in how to surrender.”
King said he is not worried about offending French sensibilities because “they are yesterday’s people.”
The congressman’s family is so upset about France’s Iraq position that his wife and daughter recently canceled a planned vacation to Paris, King said.
A spokeswoman at the French embassy in Washington did not immediately return a call for comment.
He cancelled his trip to Paris? The horror of it all.