North Waziristan the Next Campaign, Haiti May Be Too Little Too Late, More Tea Party Profiteering

Dana Milbank
E J Dionne Jr
Ross Sorkin

'Sorry' still seems to be the hardest word on Wall Street" - Dana Milbank

"Put "Wall Street" with "liberal" and: bang! About the only more unpopular combination I can think of is high-cholesterol broccoli." - E J Dionne Jr

"But if we learned anything in this crisis, it is that most of the sophisticated financial professionals in the world were no better at predicting the market than some amateur investors" - Ross Sorkin

President Obama will be asking for an additional $33 billion to help deploy the 30,000 troops and 56,000 private contractors in Afghanistan. This is above the already budgeted sum for the Pentagon of $708 billion. The cost of wars is putting us deeper in debt than any stimulus package, ans we haven't heard any grumbling about it at all over the past nine years. If we had vetoed President Bush's desires and said no to invading Iraq and Afghanistan, our debt would be several trillion dollars lighter. And people wouldn't be so harsh in their criticism of the Bush administration, and maybe, just maybe, the Republicans wouldn't be such negativeoids and actually have tried to work together. Nahh, never happen...

After Hillary Clinton went to Islamabad, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen went to Pakistan to speak to the Pakistani military. The US wanted to follow the campaign into South Waziristan with one into North Waziristan. The Pakistani Army feels that it is too stretched out to successfully wage a military campaign there. The US threatened to send in commando units along with the CIA teams that already have been sneaking across the border.

What they have agreed on is that they will go into North Waziristan, but mainly looking to root out al Qaeda, which is thought to have its main governing council there. Pakistan has a better relationship with the Afghan Talibans, and wants to help facilitate peace talks. The US has increased the number of drone strikes during the last two weeks, and is why you are hearing of more civilians being killed by those boys and their joysticks in their control trailers miles away... The civilian government of Pakistan has agreed to let the military have its way and will be debriefed before making any more public statements, meaning that Zardari lost that skirmish, too.


the price of compassion...

Bill Clinton is our special envoy to Haiti, and he has written an opinion piece in today's Washington Post, on what we can do to help Haiti recover. What pisses me off is that he could have done something to help Haiti when he was president, helped build their economy and infrastructure so that they could withstand the earthquake a little bit better (buildings having rebar in them, not as many would have fallen) and be able to bounce back. As it is now, it's like starting from scratch and rebuilding a nation from nothing. The danger is when the thousands of people who are in shock, out walking around each day ata fast pace but have nowhere to go, what may happen when their grief and sepair turns to anger and agression if we have not acted quickly enough to provide enough food staples. Even then, we can give them everything but their pride. Again, if you give money to a charity for Haitian relief, make sure that it an established one like the Red Cross, as so many scam artists pop up to take advantage of your good nature and other's misfortune.

Our whole foreign policy towards South America and the Caribbean is old fashioned and reeks of economic imperialism, and we have pretty much ignored the region except for Cuba and Columbia. Of course, that might have been a good thing and let many countries solve their own problems. We will end up sticking our noses on the politics of the region under the guise of humanitarian aid as we invade Mexico,Venezuela, Peru, or Argentina...

One of the problems affecting the global economy has been emerging countries specializing in only a few products for export, and no longer making items like their own clothes, importing Levis a and Nikes, and losing any self-sufficiency they once had. Thinking outside of the box, we could let some of the Dominican cigar companies come over and rehabilitate enough land to grow tobacco and they can enter the fine cigar market. Or, we could rehabilitate the land and let Haiti become the official source for US medical marijuana, and to hopefully expand into other exportable drugs as they become legalized... This would guarantee an income in the billions, and we use our military to keep them from being attacked by the Mexican cartels...


well, bagging tea is an industry...

I knew this would happen sooner or later, a Florida lawyer has gone and trademarked the Tea Party name and now doesn't want to share: "Fred O'Neal is pressuring activists in the state to rechristen their local Tea Party groups -- and in doing so, he's become the latest figure to be charged with co-opting the movement for personal gain." O'Neal has been writing to a couple of other groups and telling them that he has registered the name and that they need to change their name. No announcement yet how much he would charge to let someone use his name, or how much he would charge to let them join his group, which so far seems to consist of two members - himself and his business partner.

"O'Neal is just the latest figure to provoke charges of seeking to profit off the Tea Party movement, whose core supporters pride themselves on their idealism. As we've reported, numerous conservative activists have raised concerns about the financial arrangements for the upcoming National Tea Party Convention -- where Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are scheduled to speak -- and have questioned the motives of the event's organizer, Nashville lawyer Judson Phillips. And the Tea Party Express, a group created by a team of well-connected political consultants, has been slammed by some Tea Party groups as an inauthentic creation of the organized Republican party."

Rest in Peace Teddy Pendergrass