Fine? Why Fine?

"In addition"

These may be the two greatest sentences I've ever read.

In addition to being naked, Monn had nacho cheese in his hair, on his face and on his shoulders, police said. He also had a strong odor of alcohol and was semi-incoherent.

Big Day

Remarkable events today in Lebanon.

Jeff's latest installment of his running series "Creating new terrorists: Chimpy McHitlerBurton's smirky rodeo ride through history continues" has several links worth reading including this post at Daily Pundit which features this comment by Steven Den Beste.

This is the payoff. This was always the most important reason for the invasion of Iraq. I am a bit surprised by how fast it's beginning to happen, but I never doubted that any of this would eventually take place. It was always the goal of what we did.

But it is not really the Iraqi election that set this off. It was, in fact, the US election that did it. The entire region held its breath because it needed an answer to this question: Will the Americans see this through? When Bush won, the answer was "yes". Now they know that there will be four more years of American pressure, and they know that 4 years is a long time and a lot can be accomplished in that time.

If Kerry had won in November, turnout in the Iraqi election would have been low and none of the rest of this would have happened. A Kerry victory would have been treated in the region as an indication that the Americans had given up.

Michael Ledeen also makes an appearance in the same thread.

How long do you think it will be before the Iranian students start singing "So you wanna have a revolution?"

Maybe Condi could play it at her next recital.

There's lots of other stuff worth reading at the Daily Pundit thread where SDB has set up shop. Since he was one of the most important minds that rounded out my thinking on Iraq it's great to hear from him again.

Also, Captain Ed has a real nice ode to the men who made it their policy to change the status quo.

After watching nothing but stagnation for decades and an Arab populace that appeared resigned to oppression all along, one has to ask: what changed? Why now? The answer, history will show, will be two men: George Bush and Tony Blair, with John Howard of Australia playing the unsung hero.

One more, The Cool Blue Blog sees not only dominoes but checkers too.

UPDATE

Steyn's latest should be read in full and probably deserves its own post (especially because it's tomorrow's column and doesn't account for today's events in Lebanon) but I'd just like to excerpt this paragraph that cracked me up.

Just so. Left to their own devices, the House of Saud - which demanded all US female air-traffic controllers be stood down for Crown Prince Abdullah's flight to the Bush ranch in Crawford - would stick to their traditional line that Wahhabi women have no place in a voting booth; instead, they have to dress like a voting booth - a big black impenetrable curtain with a little slot to drop your ballot through. Likewise, Hosni Mubarak has no desire to take part in campaign debates with Hosno Name-Recognition. Boy Assad has no desire to hand over his co-Baathists to the Great Satan's puppets in Baghdad.

Radio Free Europe 2.0

The fact that the U.S. feels it has to beam it's own Arabic station into Europe to counter Al-Jazeera's influence on the Muslim population there says more about Europe's problems than anything else.

LGF links to this piece in the London Times on the Islamization of the Netherlands that makes clear the need for something--anything--to counter the radical tripe that's preached in many of Europe's mosques.

The Mick

No matter what happens at the Oscars tonight, this will be my favorite moment.

 

I'll be following things over at The Daily Shower because, well I don't know why exactly but Marc is wearing a backless and frontless dress.

Tearing 'Em Down

The Big Pharaoh reports that the Lebanese have torn down a statue of Papa Assad. This link is in Arabic but there's shots of the downed statue. BP then expresses the obvious allusion.

This reminded me of another statue that fell in April 9, 2003!

The rest of his post is about the Coptic Christians in Egypt, but I'll scan for a report on this statue thing in English.

UPDATE

That was easy enough; from Lebanon's The Daily Star:

A statue of the late Syrian president Hafez Assad in the southern village of Qana was destroyed Sunday in the latest anti-Syrian act since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The metallic statue of Assad's head and torso in the middle of a water fountain was felled from a stand hailed "the eternal leader" and was left lying damaged on the ground.

Internal Security Forces and State Security personnel came to the scene to investigate the incident.

The monument, which bears Lebanese and Syrian flags, was erected in June 2002, two years after the death of Assad who ruled Syria for 30 years.

A group of young people who were standing near the statue said those responsible for the incident aimed at stirring strife, adding that those people cannot be southerners as those along with Syrians have liberated the area.

I'm thinking this was a little more than a prank.

On His Terms

Rony Abovitz has a really good take on Bush's trip to Europe. Abovitz was critical of the U.S. for what he thought was an under-representation of U.S. leadership at Davos but after Bush's trip to Europe something clicked:

Bush is not a Davos Man, but he is not stupid. Bush is John Wayne, the rugged American cowboy, riding into town on his trusty horse, six shooter at the ready. Bush is also Dirty Harry - shoot first, ask questions later. If we know who the bad guys are, just blast away.

Now we are seeing Bush The Diplomat. Now that I've reset the world order, come and join my party. The water is warm, the beer is cool, and the music is good. Hey Russia - behave yourself or I'll slap you around a bit. North Korea and Iran - chill out or you're next.

[...]

The reality is that this is Bush's time, for good or for bad. The American presence is felt all over, and it permeates the global discussion. Bush did come to Europe, and it seems that in his own way, on his own terms, that he is extending an open hand. Perhaps this is a sign that even though he can be the lone wolf, the alpha male of the pack, that sometimes visiting with old friends can be a good thing.

These excerpts probably don't do Abovitz's post justice but I think you get the idea. My guess is that this is how Bush sees himself and his presidency.

UPDATE

(Via LGF.) And this post at Scylla & Charybdis explains why Bush can have the confidence in his policies that he does.

(This is another one of those "Whoa!" posts that knocks your socks up your ass...or something like that.)

Like Mike

As an extremely partisan Mets fan I was pissed when Mike Hampton didn't resign with the Mets after the 2000 season and enjoyed thoroughly as I watched his ERA balloon in Coors Field. Now that he's Brave it only compounds my dislike for him, but I can't knock a guy who puts up $25K for that little girl missing in Florida. Hampton lives in the same town that the girl does. 

Kill 'Em All Because We're All About Peace

QandO took Ted Rall's bait to find examples of violent and threatening posts on lefty blogs towards the right. They run down a good many examples of this obviously easy challenge. Because how hard is it to find such things on either side of the 'sphere. (It's easy to have blog-muscles.) But let's tack on this one found that was found by the Freepers.

If I had my way, I would see Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell strapped down to electric chairs and lit up like Christmas trees.  The better to light the way for American Democracy and American Freedom!

And those are only the last two sentences of a column-length call for the executions of Harris and Blackwell. Now the author may not necessarily be a blogger and he writes for an outfit that, at least to me, is about as obscure as Jeff Gannon's TalonNews but I think it would still qualify for inclusion under Rall's request.

And perhaps more outrageous is that the author calling for the execution of government officials is part of DemocraticTalkRadio which according to its website "was launched to spread the message of the Democratic Party and to provide an on-line home for grassroots Democrats everywhere."

Howard Dean call your office. But then maybe they're just following his lead. 

Mark On

Thanks to Malkin's tip yesterday morning I was able to tape Mark Steyn on C-Span. I'm watching it now and Steyn's as good as you'd expect. My referrers of people looking for "steynonline" shows that other people who may not know him the way that the blogosphere does found him interesting too.

This is the first time I'd ever seen or heard him. My first two impressions are that his hair (and beard) are redder than I expected and he has a weird accent that I guess is an amalgam of his time spent in here, in Canada, and Britain.

I was also surprised to find that he "barely graduated from high school." (That may not be exactly how he put it but it's the general idea.)

I think the video is available here. Probably worth your time.

Out of the Shadows

Last spring, on the recommendation of Jack, I picked up Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Until that point I'd was never really into science fiction at all. After Ender's Game I went off on a tear and read the entire Ender series.

So it is with great anticipation that I will read the first three chapters of OSC's latest Shadow of the Giant which he's been cool enough to put on line. I'm sure this means I will have to buy the book as soon as it comes out in next month.