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...

Lame Duck Advice For Obama

Paul Krugman
EJ Dionne Jr
Gail Sheehy

"The lame-duck session of Congress that kicks off this week will test whether Democrats have spines made of Play-Doh and whether President Obama has decided to pretend that capitulation is conciliation." - EJ Dionne Jr

"The obvious point is the contrast between the administration’s current whipped-dog demeanor and Mr. Obama’s soaring rhetoric as a candidate. How did we get from “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” to here" - Paul Krugman

President Obama is back from his goodwill tour of Asia, just in time for the next session of Congress. Because not much is expected to be accomplished, it's being called a lame duck session. Republicans are vowing to be tough, but they don't have any clout until next year, so it's all hot air working with smoke and mirrors... Two more years of misdirection, talking about tax cuts when there are no new strategies for starting up new businesses and creating new jobs. The top 1% of our richest people are taking in over 23% of our profits, with more families falling below the poverty line, and extending the Bush tax cuts will allow them to keep on taking in more. Almost makes me want to watch Sarah Palin's Alaska to get my mind off of things...

But we will have two more years of everyone being frustrated, our problems grow larger and more in-your-face, while the lame ducks in Congress waddle around looking for grubs. Even a mild mannered man such as Paul Krugman is telling Obama to man up and change his self-defeating attitude. I think that Obama needs to start spending his weekends traveling around the country, talking to people and listening to their concerns, spend a few more weekends in the VA hospitals, volunteering in soup kitchens and free clinics, visit a few old politicians with Alzheimer's... In short, lose the aloofness and become engaged with more common activities for the next two years, and it will guarantee him four more.

On the other hand, Obama needs to spend more time with Hillary Clinton, and even Bill Clinton, learning how to be more diplomatic, to have some grit behind those eloquent speeches. Instead of letting Nancy Pelosi twist in the wind, he should be supporting her, making sure that her term as Minority Leader will be just as successful as when she was Speaker of the House, and she was the most successful Speaker in over the last 60 years...

I would encourage more media coverage and interviews with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, let them put their feet in their mouths at every opportunity. After a good year, well over 127 hours of Mitch's one-note message, the public will be chewing their own limbs off to get away from McConnell. Boehner will be drinking himself to death in front of our eyes, and then we will be crying out for the sanity of a Michael Steele. They even make George W Bush look good...

To facilitate this Republican meltdown, host weekly meetings with both Democratic and Republican leaders. Then, host other meetings with the incoming freshman Congressmen. The idea is to host weekly meetings so there is a constant flow of ideas going around, or at least the attempt made of doing so. Since Obama used to teach Constitutional law, he could have something interesting to talk to the tea party folks, help dispel some of the more vicious and obviously made-up rumors about his administration. When Boehner and McConnell try to bully their fellow Republicans into not attending these meetings, at least they will look like the jerks more interested in partisan in-fighting.

Probably the biggest mistake Obama has made, is to let the grass roots anger at the government be transferred over to him. I'm not talking about the racist, personally vicious attacks; those were going to happen anyway, because we have a long way to go towards becoming an actual enlightened democratic nation. No, I'm referring to the undirected anger that caused people to form tea partys, and constitutional parties, that was cleverly owned by conservatives manipulators like Dick Armey, who now is considered their savior. If Obama had confronted that kind of anger in the beginning, used it to make a national dialogue, let the anger vent, there would have been no rallies against Obamacare or whatever the imagined culprit was. That anger had the chance to be transformed into something more useful; as it is now, it's still a destructive force threatening to alienate the political process even more.

Maybe we need an Aung San Suu Kyi of our own, someone who has been to the ninth Buddhist hell and back, and still has been able to heal and transcend her personal situation. Someone who inspires more than a few mama grizzlies, someone who can raise a daughter that won't get pregnant before she's 18, someone who makes you proud to be an American. Oh well, maybe in some future generation...

Democracy's Living Saint Is Freed, Netanyahu Derides Obama's Policies, Cantor Becomes New Tokyo Rose

James Traub
Michelle Goldberg
Sefi Rachievsky

"President Obama went to India, South Korea, then Japan. He’s going to keep traveling until he finds his birth certificate." –David Letterman

"Wall Street hands out new bonuses. Poor people, get prepared to be trickled down on." –Stephen Colbert

"I finally read former President Bush's memoir, and I've got to say, the book was way better than the presidency." –Jimmy Fallon

Now that she is free, where can she go? Outside at night to see the stars, or down to the food bazaar. Most important of all, she can have human contact and interaction. Thousands of people were in front of her house as her guards took down the barbed wire that blocked the road to her house, then cheered as she came outside to address them. If she goes right back into political organizing, she may be arrested again, depends on how quickly the old generals die off... She is the closest thing we have to a living saint for democracy, bless you, and breathe deeply...


In a few more years from now, George Bush may decide to take up a few causes on the world stage, maybe even the same causes his wife is championing. Cindy McCain donated her time to be on another ad for gay rights and against bullying children that can lead to their suicide. No comment from her husband's Senate office... Jimmy Carter is in the Middle East, this time taking up the cause of Corporal Gilad Shalit, who had been taken prisoner by Hamas in a cross-border raid a few years ago. Jimmy has been able to open up a dialogue with Shalit's prisoners, and has delivered a letter from Shalit to his parents, the first communication from him in over 2 years. President Carter has been able to do what the whole Israeli government has failed to do. Benjamin Netanyahu was in charge of getting him free, and we have seen how serious he is about making peace with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu spent his whole time last week in New York, deriding the Obama administration. Yeah, that's gonna win you a lot of friends. It's bad enough that you thumb your nose at both us and the Palestinians, just to see how much bad boy behavior you can get away with, but you will end up alienating the only friends you have left in the world. If you drive the US away, and we stop selling you arms and nuclear toys, who will help you when Iran gets trapped into the corner and begins to lash out in all directions? Just because Obama is a nice, friendly guy, suddenly all of the bullies think it's OK to make fun of him? Perhaps it's time to send a few top Republicans, along with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to jail for treason... Not only does the US back Israel both economically and militarily, but we sometimes do goodwill actions like this: "A missile fired from an American warship in the Mediterranean killed Muhammad Jamal A-Namnam, 27, in Gaza City Wednesday, Nov. 3, DEBKAfile's exclusive counter-terror sources report. Namnam was an operational commander of the Army of Islam, Al-Qaeda's Palestinian cell in the Gaza Strip. He was on a mission for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – AQAP to plan, organize and execute the next wave of terrorist attacks on US targets after the air package bomb plot - in Sinai." Again, Benjamin Netanyahu has never been a friend of the US. He has acted condescending towards every administration for over the last 20 years, dating back to when he was Israel's Ambassador to the US. He is a right wing wacko who has previously stated that Palestine will never have a state while he is in power, and he has sponsored assassination attempts on Arab leaders he has considered his enemies. He is less fanatical than many other factions in Israel's Knesset, but he still is a slithery snake, who would rather lie to you and then laugh at you because you believed him...

But Benji does have friends in Congress, most notably Eric Cantor, who would like to be the Voice of America. In a private meeting that leaked like a garden hose, Mr Cantor promised: "US opposition leaders don't usually tell foreign heads of state that they'll help the foreign leader provide a check on the American president. And they certainly don't announce it to the press.


But that does seem to be what Eric Cantor just did with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. As Ron Kampeas at the Jewish Telegraph Agency put it, he couldn't "remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the president." (Josh Marshall, TPM) Maybe Mr Cantor can be called the New Jerusalem Rose, or the New Jerusalem Artichoke might be more appropriate...

Friday Rant: Free Aung San Suu Kyi, G20 Friction Blues, Filling In The Trenches

Paul Krugman
Eugene Robinson

"Why don't they fight back?"


That's the question I've been hearing from the Democratic Party's stunned and dispirited base. For the past month, I've been on a book tour that has taken me to Asheville, N.C., Terre Haute, Ind., Austin and elsewhere. Everywhere I go, supporters of President Obama and his agenda ask me why so many Democrats in Washington don't stand up for what they say they believe." - Eugene Robinson

The sentence of Aung San Suu Kyi ends this Saturday. These people are hoping that she will be released a bit early, and are gathering in her support. Now that Myanmar has had its election and the old generals are in civilian office, they are hoping to be able to use their Swiss bank accounts, which were frozen as sanctions against them as long as they were in the ruling military junta... As a convicted felon, Ms Kyi can no longer run for political office, and they won't re-arrest her as long as she leaves home for shopping and other innocent activities.


We are not hearing entirely good news from South Korea and the G20 meeting of the wealthiest nations. President Obama's personal charm works well enough, but the current global economic recession still has people pissed off at the US, which started the whole mess. The Chinese are unhappy to get into a pissing contest with a Black man, but feels that the US has been hypocritical in its recent attacks on them.

Two things are at issue. One, many european countries like Britain, Germany, and Greece have adopted to cut their deficits by adopting draconian measures to lower their governments spending, much like the Republicans would also like to do. After all, these countries have conservative rulers and can only think inside of a narrow box to find solutions. The US has taken the opposite approach, by spending to stimulate the economy first, then cut back government costs when it's more feasible. So far the US approach has worked pretty well, except for the jobs part. The companies it bailed out are recovering at a faster rate than imagined, and our deficit this year will be 20% lower than it was last year. If it can sustain that rate, we should be in good economic shape in five years. But, since there are opposing approaches towards the same goals, there is friction and disagreement between the US and everyone else. Plus, add the fact that economists love to lecture others for hours on end, and you end up with some tedious and boring resentments.

Second, the FED just decided to buy up a lot of debt and printed up the money to do it, so there is suddenly a lot more dollars floating around the world, and other countries resent it, as it devalues their goods. This is the same strategy that China uses to stabilize their currency, and now they don't want the US lecturing to them about it when the US just did the same thing to stabilize the dollar. So, the G20 conference will be full of shifting alliances, lots of lectures, and very little problem solving. What it does do is provide a stage where countries can rant and clear out their resentments, and everyone feels better afterwards, which we call progress...


Back at home, the local political parties are filling in the trenches, and trying to reflect on why their candidate won/lost. Has the past two years of constantly slandering Obama's persona and just saying no to every piece of legislation and political appointment worked out well? There is still a disconnect, with many of the freshman class of Congressmen saying they are looking forward to bipartisan solutions, yet John Boehner and Mitch McConnell won't be appeased until Obama kneels in front of them and does as they say: keep the Bush tax cuts.

"Matters become clearer once you reach the section on tax reform. The goals of reform, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson see them, are presented in the form of seven bullet points. “Lower Rates” is the first point; “Reduce the Deficit” is the seventh.


So how, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates, with deficit reduction literally at the bottom of the list?" - Paul Krugman

The recent bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission on the budget should be the beginning of a dialogue, and their suggestions should be debated by everyone, before anything is adopted. The best thing to come out of the tea party movement is that a lot of people were studying up on Constitutional law and economic theories, bringing complex subjects into rallies and websites, and entering into our national debate this election cycle. Hopefully, the educational trend will continue, and we will see more than just conservative filters of our problems, because we've seen how it leads to wacky and crazy people all channeling Michele Bachmann, as if they were all pods from the same alien creature who almost, but couldn't quite fit in as human...

Or, on a lonely Friday night, I can burrow in and turn on the television to CSPAN, and watch Michele Bachmann trying to cuddle up to Rand Paul and Marco Rubio in true tea party solidarity on the Senate floor. Will they accept the Queen's advances and pick up her weapons of choice, or will they deny her, try to ignore her as if she wasn't even there? After all, Dick Armey gave the incoming Republicans words of advice this morning, to stick to their principals and not be enchanted by the bright, shiny objects that the leadership will dangle in front of them. This, coming from a "former Republican House majority leader, lobbyist, and, yes, D.C. insider." (the Caucus, NY Times) It's going to be an entertaining winter, especially if you are as easily amused as I seem to be...

Beavis And Butthead In Kabul, Palestinians Need Reconciliation, Boehner Polls

Dana Milbank
Doyle McManus
Mark McKinnon

"The lesson there is that I had to set aside an ideology... I felt like the captain of a sinking ship,... this was one ugly way to end a presidency." - George W Bush

"‘Decision Points’ by George W. Bush has dropped, and it's like 'War & Peace' without the peace. Here's the very first page: 'In the last year of my presidency I began to seriously consider writing my memoirs.' Right away he’s got you hooked. Did he write them or didn’t he? You won’t know until you read the book. Maybe the rest of the pages are blank. If there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that we can’t believe something is there just because Bush says it is." – Stephen Colbert

"A company in China is selling a President Obama blow-up sex doll. Don't get too excited. It turns out most of its positions are very unpopular." - Jimmy Fallon

I never planned on reading George W Bush's memoirs, but after reading excerpts from it online, and watching interviews with him, I have changed my mind, and become 186th on the waiting list at the library. But I have revised my opinion of him, and wouldn't mind sitting down and having a beer or cup of coffee with the man. But, if I had to choose, I'd still pick Laura Bush over George as the more fun one to have a conversation with, and I'm still glad that Barack Obama is president right now instead of George.

One area that the GOP ought to consider getting rid of the expenses, is the Congressional junket, where your representatives hitch a free ride and go for an investigative holiday, where they often stick their big butts in other people's business and flout their importance to minor US executives. Case in point: the NY Times reporting on Kirsten Gillibrand, Lindsey Graham,Joe Lieberman, and John McCain on a trip to Kabul where they hope to meet with Hamid Karzai. "Four United States senators visited Kabul on Wednesday, the first such visit since the midterm elections returned a Republican majority to the House of Representatives." This really sounds as if it was planned at a local bar over a few drinks. Beware the hijinks that Joe and John can concoct whenever they get together; they're the Beavis and Butthead of the Senate:

"After briefings with American diplomats and military officials, the delegation held a news conference to announce plans to meet with President Hamid Karzai and to deliver a dual message: that the United States remained committed to Afghanistan and that improvement on fighting corruption was critical." Hamid Karzai has no intention of meeting with these guys, so they are using a press conference to force the situation. In case this doesn't work, they want everyone to know what they were going to tell him, you know, how important using the phrase 'fighting corruption' is to a US Senator:

“In an increasingly partisan time in Washington, there remains on certain critical matters of foreign policy a bipartisan consensus, and this is one of them,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent. “Support of success for the new Afghanistan.”

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and former presidential candidate, said the members of the delegation planned to forcefully raise the issue of corruption with Mr. Karzai. “We will bring up a couple of recent events that are very disturbing,” Mr. McCain said. He did not elaborate." Karzai is having trouble enough, covering up the voter fraud from the last election as well as the corruption charges leveled at his aide. Good thing for him his aide also was a stooge for the CIA, which is like a Get Out Of Jail Free card:

“Every time there is a corruption case,” Mr. Lieberman said, “it makes it harder for us in Congress in a budget-difficult environment to sustain the support we need here. That’s why it’s in our interest and President Karzai’s interest to fight corruption.” No, what Joe is really saying here is, look at how important we are back home. If Hamid wishes to keep his custom made hat and capes financed by the US, then he'd better see us, and suck our toes... too bad this isn't Israel, then I'd be treated like a King...


We'll skip the horrors of bomb blasts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the frustrations of the Iraqiya party walking out on another vote to form a government in Iraq, and settle in and talk about common, everyday human-right's abuses in Palestine. We have a long list of Israeli abuses, but even more sinister are the sins committed by both Hamas and Fatah political parties against their fellow Palestinians. It is something that both parties are going to have to confront and reconcile if they plan to move forward and represent if the peace process does actually move forward: "Hardly a month passes without Palestinian and international human rights organisations complaining of abuses being committed by one or both sides of the feud. Hamas can justifiably accuse the PA of suppressing its members in the West Bank to appease Israeli security demands, while Fatah can rightly accuse Hamas of repressing its members in Gaza. But neither security concerns, nor claims to represent the Palestinian resistance can justify human rights violations.


Hamas, just like the PA, has arrested people for engaging in resistance against Israel, although it argues that its case is different because it has no security agreements with Israel. But suppression is suppression regardless of who carries it out and it is clear that Hamas is trying to send a message to Israel that it, not Fatah, controls security.


All but a few Palestinian writers and bloggers have failed to hold both parties accountable for these abuses, focusing instead on exposing one while ignoring the other. But an activist or writer should be able to fully support Hamas or Fatah, depending on their own political standing, while remaining committed to human rights and holding a mirror to their own party.


Both parties are participating in a process of self-destruction as long as they continue to ignore the human rights of the people they are competing to represent." This just proves that any peaceful process is a long, arduous task, made more difficult when the people who are your leaders got there through guns and fighting instead of representation. Maybe the people of Palestine need a new set of leaders who are more accustomed to creating businesses and educating children than the ones they have now. Not that it would make Israel any more honest, but that they would have more legitimacy in the eyes of the world...

Barack Obama's recent poll ratings are between 43% and 45% favorable. Here are the recent poll ratings for his GOP Top Guns:

John Boehner


Date            Pollster                     Favorable           Unfavorable           Spread
11/08/10     AP/GfK                     35.0%                 27.0%                      8.0
11/07/10     USA Today/Gallup   34.0%                 26.0%                      8.0
10/30/10     CNN                         25.0%                 26.0%                     -1.0
10/26/10     Bloomberg                37.0%                 37.0%                      0.0
10/26/10     CBS/NYT                  7.0%                 14.0%                     -7.0
10/21/10     Rasmussen               32.0%                 40.0%                     -8.0
10/20/10     GWU                       18.0%                 15.0%                      3.0
10/18/10     AP/GfK                   34.0%                 32.0%                      2.0
10/17/10     Gallup                      27.0%                 31.0%                    -4.0
10/10/10     Bloomberg               29.0%                 32.0%                    -3.0
10/05/10     CBS                          8.0%                 15.0%                     -7.0


Mitch McConnell


Date           Pollster                Favorable           Unfavorable             Spread
11/08/10    AP/GfK                34.0%                  25.0%                       9.0
10/21/10    Rasmussen           33.0%                  35.0%                      -2.0
10/18/10    AP/GfK                33.0%                  33.0%                       0.0

ps: the table looked really good and the rows were all straight in draft mode. The editor in blogger has a lot of bugs in it, and they take way too long to get them fixed...

Obama-Boehner In Celebrity Deathmatch, Let Israel Build Houses And PA Collects The Rent, Balloon Boy Rides Again

Kathleen Parker
Dana Milbank

"Hundreds of people in Washington, D.C. reported seeing a UFO today. Aliens, if you’re searching for intelligent life, you’ve got the wrong town." – Craig Ferguson

"President Obama is in India. You know what they say — go where the jobs are." – Jay Leno

"Obama’s in India for two days and Republicans are already accusing him of being a Hindu." – Jay Leno

OK, so Barack Obama and John Boehner don't get along. We can put them in the ring like a claymation death match, make a little money on the side that goes to paying off the national deficit, and put it on television on Sat night to boost ratings. A win/win/win situation, in my books. Don't let them out until one of them achieves political nirvana...


Already the Republicans are busy spending your tax dollars, coming up with ways that we can save money. This specific program would save us $25 million per year, if we hurried up and get rid of this unneeded emergence welfare program, as Jackie Calmes writes in the NY Times: "Of the few specific cuts that Congressional Republicans have proposed in their promised assault on annual budget deficits, one of the biggest by far would save $25 billion over 10 years, they claim, by ending an emergency welfare fund.


The Republican Study Committee, which includes more than 100 of the most conservative House Republicans, promoted the idea in a statement this week, saying, “With the national debt quickly approaching $14 trillion, Washington needs to get serious about cutting spending.” Well, seriously, the fund expired Sept. 30." Ohhhh, this does not bode well. I assume that these well educated people that make up the Republican Study Committee have been drinking the local, drug-infested tap water, and this is why their brains have turned to mush, enough to make such embarrassing statements in public. Really, they make Michael Steele look reasonable and intelligent...

Speaking of people that should go into a claymation death match is Israel's right wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His government announced another construction project in East Jerusalem, and then one in the West Bank. Obama suggested that it wasn't constructive to having the peace process move forward. Netanyahu struck back that the Israeli government sees no link between building houses and the peace process. I think Hillary jumped in there somewhere, and now Benjamin is waiting for his backup from the even further right wing...

Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian authority wants the UN Security Council to step in and make the Israelis stop being two-faced, and get things moving again. My idea might work out better. Let Israel build the houses, but let the PA get all profits from their sale, or collect the rents. Then, the construction of houses would stop, since Israel won't want to build as charity... One major reason why Israel is finding any excuse they can to grind negotiations to a halt, is because they will have to relocate at least 60,000 Jews who have settled in the Western Bank, and are considered squatters in the eyes of the international community...

Pentagon officials have looked at the contrail of the mysterious flying vehicle, and are now confident that it is just from an airplane. You know, an airplane that takes off from the middle of the ocean going straight up until about 1100 feet until squaring off... another theory is that it is a balloon, and wait, yes! There's a boy in that balloon! I don't know why the military has to consistently deny all extra-curricular activity whenever an anomaly occurs. Why not just man-up and say that this was a test that misfired, or that it is Sharron Angle's Second Amendment remedy taking a test run at Babylon...

Politico reports that: "... roughly half of the 80-plus Republican House freshmen — and a handful of the newly elected GOP senators — have promised to limit their congressional tenures, with some even promising support for new term limits legislation. The self-imposed limits typically range from six to 12 years..." Ah, starry-eyed, idealistic youth. We'll see what happens to them after their term is up, how they have changed their minds. The Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that states couldn't limit the terms of a federal official, so all term limits by members of Congress have to be done by themselves. Which explains why my House Representative decided to ignore his past promise and ran again for office...

Obama Plays Cowboy and Indians, Bachmann is Queen Of The Damned, Mysterious ICBM Launched Off Of LA Coast

Bob Herbert
Anne Applebaum
Eugene Robinson

"One of the most frustrating tendencies of mainstream leaders in the United States is their willingness, year after debilitating year, to embrace policies that have no hope of succeeding." - Bob Herbert

"Last week, voters made a powerful statement about leadership: They'd like some, please. So far, there's no evidence that either President Obama or the top Republicans in Congress were paying the slightest attention." - Eugene Robinson

David Rothkopf, in Foreign Policy magazine, sums up Obama's visit to India, and how he may have hit a homerun out of the park: "First, he went a long way toward establishing a truly special relationship between the world's largest democracy and the United States. He embraced an issue that was important to Indians and, despite the certainty of Pakistan's public unhappiness with the decision and China's less public but nonetheless undoubted discomfort with it, he showed courage and vision in doing so.


Second, he found an issue that could measure up to or even trump the Bush administration's nuclear deal with India, thus ensuring a strong sense of momentum in a relationship that must move forward if both countries are to rise to the challenges of the new century.


Third, he underscored that his administration was serious about turning rhetoric about rethinking multilateralism, and working with a new set of powers, into action. While working within the framework of the G-20 was a step in that direction, that process actually began two years ago under the Bush administration. Adjustments made in the structure of international financial institutions were another positive step, but frankly were rather underwhelming, leaving behind serious representational imbalances.


Admittedly, what the president said in his speech to the Indian Parliament -- "in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed U.N. Security Council that includes India as a permanent member..." Of course, he can't go and promise such things to every country he visits, but he has set the bar pretty high. In Indonesia, where things are more unsettled than Pakistan, there will be petty little officials who are just looking for some real or imagined slight, so that they can complain to the press. Makes you wonder who has more clout here, al-Qaeda or the tea party...

The above sentence by Bob Herbert is the opening paragraph of his opinion piece in the NY Times, which you may or may not be able to link to. I can link to it because I subscribe to the newspaper and that gives me automatic access. Let me know if you are not able to, and I'll have to find a fix for it. Bob continues, wondering: "I don’t know if it’s the drinking water or the rarefied air at the highest reaches of government that makes so many of our leaders go loopy..." The answer is - it's the drugs in the water, as verified by the FDA in samples taken in major cities around the country, they found significant amounts of prescription drugs along with illegal substances such as amphetamines. Denver has set up sites all around town where you can dump your out-dated prescriptions, and collects a few hundred pounds per year. No telling what is in the water supply that Congress drinks, plus what's been added by any number of merry pranksters... Unfortunately, prescription drug abuse alone cannot count for the behavior of a Michele Bachmann - who has been staying up late at night reading Alex Jones's web sites, and dreaming up an agenda for her self-described Tea Party Caucus. She may next be known as The Queen Of The Damned... 


The AP reports that an internal review of our military's policy in Afghanistan has begun: "The Obama administration has begun its review of whether the administration's Afghan war strategy is working well enough to start withdrawing U.S. forces in July, an official said Tuesday. The review is being conducted so the White House can measure whether Obama's 2009 order to commit 30,000 more troops has resulted in progress in the decade-old conflict. It will be presented to the president in mid- to late-December, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations." I doubt if Obama will then announce any changes before the end of the year, so this is pretty much a non-news item, unless you want to write into the analysts and add your armchair quarterback's ten cents... What do you think we should do there over the next 30 years?

But then the Pentagon has trouble explaining even the simpler, more empirical parts of life, such as whether a missile was launched off the coast of Southern California, and if not, what was that vapor trail that a CBS news helicopter caught on videotape? "The location of the missile was about 35 miles out to sea, west of L.A. and north of Catalina Island. A Navy spokesperson told KFMB it wasn't their missile. He said there was no Navy activity reported in the area Monday evening. On Friday night, Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, launched a Delta II rocket, carrying an Italian satellite into orbit, but a sergeant at the base told KFMB there had been no launches since then." This is usually where most missiles bearing satellites are launched, and they are done between 3-4 in the morning. I have fond memories from when I used to work all night along the Monterey Bay, watching the occasional launch in the predawn, as it arched up and winked out of sight, leaving our atmosphere... I'll even admit to seeing black helicopters flying past, in formation of five, at dawn's early light, taking the scenic coastal route while ferrying the Governor down to LA...

As to what this missile could be, launched in daylight: "When asked, however, what he thought it might be, the former ambassador Ellsworth said it could possibly have been a missile test timed as a demonstration of American military might as President Obama tours Asia. "It could be a test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine … to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that," speculated Ellsworth.


Ellsworth said such tests were carried out in the Atlantic to demonstrate America's power to the Soviets, when there was a Soviet Union, but he doesn't believe an ICBM has previously been tested by the U.S. over the Pacific. Officially, at least, the projectile remains a mystery missile..." ... One that will never be solved, as the military will ignore all future requests, knowing that it will soon drop out of the public's short term memory... Now, tell me, what is the Event?