Walking the Plank in Egypt, Gail Norton that Scurvy Swab...

Paul Krugman
David Brooks
Eugene Robinson
David Petraeus
Dana Milbank


"It would be disastrous if health care goes the way of the economic stimulus plan, earlier this year. " - Paul Krugman

September 19 is National Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Peter Pan: So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!..

It's a good thing that Madonna hasn't gone to Egypt lately to adopt some kids, she might have been arrested and sentenced to two years in jail, like the four Americans: "The couples, all Christians, were trying to adopt children from a Christian orphanage that allegedly provided them with false documents that certified the children were born to them.

The other seven defendants sentenced in the case on Thursday, were all Egyptians, including a nun connected to the orphanage, orphanage employees and a doctor who provided fake birth certificates. Four of the seven remain at large and were sentenced in absentia. The Egyptians were sentences to either two or five years imprisonment and their fines were equal to those of the Americans."

This presents a thornier problem than, say, being a hiker and crossing the Iranian border, or swimming across a moat to hang out with a national icon. If its true that the orphnage provided false documents for the infants, what American organizations are they tied to, and do these American groups knowingly participate in human trafficking? Maybe the ones that provided the false birth certificates are the same ones responsible for all of these Kenyan birther certificates that keep showing up?

Mr. Smee: But, Captain, wouldn't it be more humane-like to slit his throat?
Captain Hook: Aye, that it would, Mr Smee. But I have given me word not to lay a finger, or a hook, on Peter Pan. And Captain Hook never breaks a promise...
Despite the protests by pundits who have spent the last 20 years stuck in the cold war mentality, and till love Ronald Reagan's ill conceived star wars program, Russia immediately reacted to prove them wrong: " Russia will abandon its planned rocket battery in response to President Barack Obama's shelving of the U.S. missile defense shield in Europe, officials said.


Russian military sources said Moscow would table plans to both deploy truck-mounted Iskander missiles and locate nuclear-capable T-22 bombers in Kaliningrad, The Daily Telegraph in London reported Friday."




Peter Pan: Tinker Bell! I hereby banish you forever.
Wendy: Please, not forever.
Peter Pan: Well, for a week then...
One thing that both conservatives and liberals can agree on, because they point fingers at each other as being the source, is that there is too much corruption in our government and corporate environment. Perhaps we need to do what South Africa has done: start a hotline. "But the launching of an anticorruption hotline, run out of the very offices of President Jacob Zuma himself, is perhaps the best sign that Mr. Zuma is taking the issue of corruption, and the growing public anger over poor delivery of services by government agencies, seriously.


And the incredible volume of calls – 7,261 in the first three hours of the first day, Monday, and 12,000 on the following day, according to the South Africa Press Association – is an indication that corruption and good governance are not laughing matters, at least to South African citizens." Then, we have them publicized and investigated...

Maybe it would persuade someone like former Interior Secretary Gail Norton from accepting a job with a company that she was supposed to be regulating and now is under investigation: "Norton never was implicated in cases ranging from Interior employees illicitly having sex and using drugs to officials serving prison time for obstruction of justice.


But with a private-sector job in the oil-shale industry, Norton finds herself the target of a criminal investigation over her former agency's dealings with her current employer, petroleum giant Royal Dutch Shell." The scandal, involving prostitutes hired by the oil company, wild partying in federal offices, and doing drugs like cocaine during working hours, helped to convince her to resign. Of course, she then took a job with Shell oil, the company that was implicated in the wrong doing. Now, matters have finally gone to a federal investigation, and she is the first Bush cabinet member to be investigated at this level. She was a former Colorado attorney general, so you would think that she might be hip to the outcome of her inattention to these matters. Makes you want to say AAAARRRR!