UN Refuses To Look for Origin of Cholera In Haiti, US Embassy In Kabul Gets $511 Million Facelift

Benjamin Sarlin
Josh Marshall
Warren Buffett

"The lame duck Congress started today. Not to be confused with before the election — that was a lame-ass excuse for a Congress." – Jay Leno

"Arizona just became the 15th state to approve medical marijuana. So I give it three days before they stop caring about the whole immigration thing." – Jimmy Fallon

I took yesterday off from blogging and went to the library to pick up an armload of books, including the new Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiiason, enough to keep me content over the next few weeks. It almost always seems like the days I take off are the ones when the most interesting things happen in the news... A lot of times international diplomacy means that you have to ignore the spontaneous protests from angry Haitians who are upset with the introduction and spreading of cholera in their country by the UN. , who has imported peacekeeping troops: "Tensions around the force have increased after health officials identified the cholera strain as coming from South Asia and found that the bacteria, which lives in feces, had contaminated a river where Nepalese troops had arrived in October shortly before the outbreak began." This means the Nepalese shit and peed in the rive, causing contamination to whomever used the water downstream.

Two interesting lack or response and responsibility by the UN guys in charge - one, that they do not see the angry protests as real, that they were paid for by some mysterious source from outside the country: “These are not genuine demonstrations,” said the spokesman, Vincenzo Pugliese. “They are using spoilers paid to create chaos.” I didn't realize that we had government officials from Iran working in Haiti, as this is the same lame excuse given to the Green movement by Ahmadinejad's cronies.. and two, the medical officials are refusing to investigate how the cholera was introduced for the first time in over a hundred years to a country that has no immunity from the disease. This makes no sense and stirs up all kinds of conspiracy theories against ethnic cleansing to signals pointing to we are entering the end days, begun by George W Bush... The US doesn't want to be embarrassed for its role in introducing the disease that has already taken the lives over 1000 people, so we are trying to misdirect the attention being paid to this area of questioning: "A full inquiry of the outbreak’s origins has not been undertaken.


“We are focused on treating people, getting a handle on this and saving lives,” said Daniel B. Epstein, a spokesman for the Pan American Health Organization, the branch of the World Health Organization operating in Haiti.


Dr. Jordan Tappero, an epidemiologist with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is leading medical investigators in Haiti, said by telephone that it was unlikely that scientists would pinpoint where the outbreak began, and that he did not think mounting an all-out effort to find the answer “is a good use of resources.” Pitiful, really...

In the last few days, pundits have reported that the US military is planning on revamping its role in Afghanistan, and may be there at least until 2013, then 2014, next week it will report that our work really won't end until at least 2020... I'm not sure if the plans to extend the war is just an excuse to finish building the new American embassy in Kabul, just like we stayed in Iraq until our embassy there was finished... and then pretty much abandoned. The US announced that it was going to spend $511 million of your taxdollars to expand the US embassy in Kabul, so John McClain will be more comfortable next time he visits. Let's hope that Rand Paul continues to examine our defense spending... Whom are we trying to impress the most here, that we can build the best building to hand over to the Taliban? Or is this a game we like to play with the Russians, to see who can leave the most impressive stuff behind? Part of that $511 million must go to a better indoor pool and sports facility, so that the next time our hired mercenaries get drunk and wander around naked in the firelight, there won't be so many pictures being taken...

When she lost her primary to Joe Miller, I thought that Lisa Murkowski was tilting at windmills when she announced that she then would run as a write in candidate. Today, the Alaskan Elections Dept declared that she was the winner of the Senate seat, someting that had not been done since the early 1950's....: "The Alaska Republican’s victory comes after election officials counted and opened more than 100,000 write-in ballots over the course of seven days in Juneau – a long, litigious and laborious process. Murkowski won 92,715 of those write-in votes outright, while Miller received 90,448 votes, according to the latest numbers from the Alaska Division of Elections.


An additional 8,153 votes were counted for the senator but challenged by Miller’s campaign. A federal court was expected to determine the fate of those challenged ballots, but Murkowski’s lead is great enough that the court’s decision would not affect the outcome of the race." Of course, the dour Mr Miller, with his fondness for being surrounded by militias, did not concede the race and asked for a recount... unless some cooler head gets him to change his mind and pretends to act graciously... The Miller campaign believed they had it won, that there weren't enough intelligent people in Alaska who could spell Murkowski correctly, so I guess the joke backfired on him like black powder exploding from a patriot's musket...

Link to Willow Palin talking like a 16 year-old on Facebook, including calling people faggots, fatties, and disgusting... pretty tame but shows that she, too, is an up and coming white trash candidate: "The web site reports that Palin's teenage daughter wrote the comments on Sunday night, when her mother's television show "Sarah Palin's Alaska" premiered on TLC. According to TMZ, a classmate of one of Palin's children published a Facebook update claiming that the show "is failing so hard right now."


Willow Palin reportedly unloaded on the student, calling him "so gay" and "such a faggot." She later demanded that the student "quit talkin shit about my family." According to screenshots obtained by TMZ, the 16-year-old called another commenter on the Facebook thread a "low life loser" and lashed out at multiple others, writing, "Sorry that all you guys are jealous of my families success and you guys aren't goin to go anywhere with your lives." Pretty tame stuff, by Internet standards, but it makes you wonder about Sarah Palin's standards as a mother and adult. We already know that she doesn't hold education very high for her children, as she let Bristol drop out of high school to have a baby, then go on Dancing With the Stars to make some money, honey...