The Weekly Standard draws our attention to this study of parking tickets racked up by UN diplomats that go unpaid because of diplomatic immunity. The authors find a close correlation between the frequency of parking ticket violations and the level of corruption in the home countries (as measured by several international indexes of corruption). Egyptian diplomats, for example, racked up more than 16,000 unpaid parking tickets between 1997 and 2002.
Gotta love that UN. What was it Lyndon Johnson said about that august body? (Answer in comment thread.)
LBJ: "The UN couldnt pour piss out of a boot if you printed the instructions on the heel." Maybe LBJs second-finest hour, after his intructions to Rusk about how to dress down DeGaulle.
Thats almost as good as Garners "warm bucket of spit" appraisal on the worth of a VP. Them Texans do have a way with the English language, dawt they?
Steve, dont leave me hanging. What did he tell Rusk?
After DeGaulle removed France from the NATO alliance and ordered all US military personnel out of France, LBJ told Rusk to tell DeGaulle that the president wished to know whether all the Americans under the crosses in Normany should come home now, too. Rusk dutifully did so, upon which DeGaulle slapped his briefing book shut, got up, and walked out of the room.
And dont forget to mention that it was DeGaulle who first began the entire EURABIA process. It was his brain child, his little plot to carve out some section of the globe where France would be pre-eminent.
As for the United Nations, .... its the type of thing that only the Liberals could admire and love.
Wow. Thats probably the only time Ill ever get to see Mr. Hayward quote LBJ . . .
Steve is getting soft and flabby in his middle age. Pretty soon hell be quoting Jimmy Carter.
Lets see: "I lust after women in my heart." There. I did it; I quoted Jimmy.
Now where did I put that third donut?
Oh, I think ol Lyndon had his good points. Like Kennedy, he was a "muscled Liberal," meaning that he was an ardent anti-communist but a social "progressive." The old populist Left didnt hate America.
Steve Hayward -
DeGaulle didnt remove France from the NATO treaty, only from the existing military arrangements. Perhaps thats what you meant by "alliance."
Pierre Salinger once listened to a harangue from a UN official about how US papers ignored the UN, never covered the UN, didnt give the UN the credit it deserved. Salingers response was, "If I ran a newspaper, youd get exactly as much coverage as youre getting now."