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8. november 2004
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Swat the UN on the nose
Damn, I wish this was real and not something from Scrappleface's great imagination:
U.S. President George Bush, during a surprise visit to United Nations headquarters today, rolled up a copy of The New York Times and swatted U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan across the nose with it.
That'll be the day.
On a somewhat related but more serious note, Rob Salkowitz asks:
Do you believe that the United States will still be a member of the United Nations by this time next year? By the end of the Bush presidency? By 2015?
I'd say triple yes, almost certainly, but I hope that is as long as it lasts. The UN has a lot of good institutions (and some very bad ones) but its system of governance is hopelessly outdated post-cold war.
We need a United Democracies, where membership is limited to true democratic states, and where aspiring and improving democracies can gradually join.
9:08:08 PM 
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No Clinton in '08
With the election over, and the defeat more or less digested, quality leftist blogger temporarily turned rabid attack dog Joshua Micah Marshall returns to sanity and explains why Hillary Clinton never should, and probably never will, run for president (if you stopped reading TPM in disgust over the last months, feel free to go back now).
It's obviously true that Hillary is extremely unlikely to make it. She is a very divisive character, sometimes but certainly not always well-deserved, and are about as likely to carry "red states" as Edward Kennedy. Clinton built up some good security creditentials but blew it to give support to Kerry-turned-Dean in the campaign. Being a senator has no doubt helped her build wider alliances, but being a New York State senator is not exactly helpful for someone who struggles with a "too liberal" image. Maybe she'll one day be senate leader for the Democratic party.
Totally unrelated, and no doubt thoroughly sexist, I have to say she is the most attractive woman Bill Clinton ever did.
6:50:06 PM
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Hope and fear
Here are two items I found from Dean's World that I wanted to pass along to y'all (hey, it's the language of the future, the next 4 years at least).
Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar writes that the reelection of George Bush offers hope.
I believe that Mr. Bush's re-election ushers in a period of hope for the international community. Leaders all around the world can also play their part in defending our democracies and way of life. We have another four years before us, and Western leaders can now join the allied effort to build a safer and freer world. It is true, primitive anti-American feeling and unfounded hostility will make things more difficult for those leaders who have flirted with these tendencies. But the world is now presented with a clear opportunity.
He should know!
Meanwhile, Intel Dump has the full story on maybe 4,000 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that are missing from Saddam Hussein's arsenal.
Apparently, the thousands of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles formerly owned by the Hussein regime's military have gone missing — and no one really knows where they are, whether they've been destroyed, whether they're on the global black market, or in use today by Iraqi insurgents looking to bag an American Blackhawk helicopter.
Let's hope we don't find it out the unpleasant way.
6:38:35 PM
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Mrs Arafat: they want to bury him alive
Suha Arafat made a harsh attack on Palestinian leaders in a phone call she made to al-Jazeera:
Palestinian officials have said the caretaker leadership was frustrated at the lack of information about Mr Arafat's health, which was being filtered by his wife.
But Suha Arafat said the leaders coming to see her husband were "a clique of those who seek to become inheritors".
"I appeal to you to be aware of the scope of the conspiracy," Mrs Arafat told al-Jazeera. [...]
"They are trying to bury Abu Ammar [Arafat's nom de guerre] alive," she added. "Abu Ammar is well and he is coming back to his homeland."
The frantic search for the money Yasser Arafat stuffed away obviously continues.
2:40:03 PM
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© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.12.2004; 07:25:17.
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