Random (and Possibly Sick) Thoughts About This Week's News

During this past week there have been many questions/comments about the news going through my mind which were much too short to expand into a post. I thought it would be entertaining to put them all together in a post as a little change of pace. Some are serious, others are nearly serious and one or two might generate a snort:

• Senator Mike Crapo plead guilty in a Virginia court to drunk driving-it got me thinking.  If former Governor Mike Dukakis ever ran for president again, wouldn't the Senator from Idaho make a great unity pick for running mate?  Dukakis-Crapo; its what the politicians do once they get into office and what the public gets.

•  Now that Al Gore has sold Current TV to the American-hating oil-interest-owned Al Jazeera do you think he will ever show his global warming-hoaxer face out in public ever again?

• Do you think that any of the Tax-loving progressives who believe that paying taxes is patriotic will call out "ManBearPig" for rushing his network's sale in order to save money on taxes?

• New Definitions I learned this week;  
• Israel Lobby=Jews
• Neo-Con=Dammed Jews
• Jewish Lobby= Rich Jews Who Control the Government

• The reason for the First Amendment of the Constitution was not to protect the government from religion-- but to protect religion for government. In other words any judge who rules against a company trying to negate the abortion provisions of Obamacare do not know what's in the Constitution.

• The Second Amendment which says, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" doesn't mention hunting.  Why then do the anti-gun forces talk about hunting?

• Am I getting old?  I got a piece of junk mail with a subject "You will be able to pick up girls easy!" I thought it was something for my bad back.

• I asked my friend Fausta (an expert on Latin America) who would die first Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro?  She told me that Fidel is already dead its his body-double who is suffering from cancer (I don't think she was serious).

•  Am I the only guy in the world who, after seeing what Kathy Griffin tried to do to Anderson Cooper on New Years, briefly considered self-castration just in case I met the comedian? 

• I really hate staying up late on New Years, so I used the DVR to tape this year's ball drop.  Next year I will play it at 9PM and maybe my wife will let me go to sleep early.

• I got a lot of complaints/nasty comments from the British about a parody post put up earlier this week called Will Jimmy Carter Call Great Britain an "Apartheid State," Because of it's Occupation of the Malvinas? (A Metaphor For.....I Can't Remember). Don't you think a country who's heir to the throne told his mistress his life's desire was to be her tampon,  should have a better sense of humor than that?

• Did the Vice President of the United States really tell brand new Sen. Heidi Heitkamp's during her swearing in, "Spread your legs, you're gonna be frisked!" ?  I wonder if he wants to be someone's Tampon also?
  

• Being Jewish I have never read the book of Revelations--Does it mention a Senator Barney Frank?

• During the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency unemployment was under 6%, much of it was below 5.5%. For all most of Barack Obama's presidency unemployment was over 8%.  Can someone please explain to me why it is Bush whose term is considered an economic disaster?

That's it for now.  Talk to you all tomorrow.

Newsbusted: Sean Penn Says He's Never Been Loved (Except by Hugo Chavez)

Sean Penn has had a long career as  an actor, screenwriter and film director and hater of anything American.  He is also known for his marriages to pop icon Madonna and actress Robin Wright. Sadly the movie star feels very unloved. In a  special report in today's Newsbusted Anchor Jodi Miller tells us that Sean Penn feels he has never truly been loved, except of course by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Other news items covered in the latest installment of Newsbusted the twice-weekly faux news feature from Newsbusters.org (embedded below) include; the head of Wikopedia wants his own Wikopedia page changed, Philadelphia public schools installing condom machines, the cost to make a penny, and much, much more.

Please make sure you watch the video below because something bad always happens to the people who don't.  Last week NY Jets coach Rex Ryan forgot to press play and the Jets announced he will be back next year (if you don't know why that's bad you don't know football).

Oh and if you cannot see the video player below please click here.

Chuck Hagel: "Let The JOOOOOOOSE Pay For it!"

There has been much push-back from the proponents of Chuck Hagel's appointment as defense secretary intimating that his opponents were trying to slime a good man with false charges of Antisemitism.  Some are saying the "neo-cons" (another way of saying Joooooooooooose) are being unfair because of what they see as Hagel's "even-handed" approach on the Middle East.  Others pull their response straight from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" saying the powerful Jewish Lobby which controls everything done in congress is just upset because the former Nebraska Senator said that there is a powerful Jewish Lobby that controls everything in Congress.

 Another indication of Hagel's early less-than-warm feelings toward Jews came in the late 1980s when, as the president of the USO, he sought to defund the popular USO facility in the Israeli port city of Haifa - a favored destination for the sailors of the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet.

He said to me, ‘Let the Jews pay for it’,” said Marsha Halteman, director for military and law enforcement programs at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which led the battle to keep USO Haifa operational.

Hagel’s campaign to close the storied USO port struck many observers, including the U.S. Navy and congressional leaders, as misguided. Those same critics argue today that Hagel’s animosity toward the Jewish state leaves him unsuited to be the nation’s next defense secretary.

“He essentially told us that if we wanted to keep the USO [in Haifa] open—and when I say ‘we’, he meant ‘the Jews’—he said the Jews could pay for it,” said Halteman, who recalled being taken aback by the comment.

“I told him at the time that I found his comments to be anti-Semitic,” she said. “He was playing into that dual loyalty thing.”

At the time the Haifa facility was one of the most popular USO facilities in the world, for example in 1989 the year Hagel was trying to close the facility:

 more than 45,000 sailors attached to the U.S. Sixth Fleet visited the hilly Mediterranean city. 

The sixth fleet and congress vehemently argued against the closure:

The backlash was so vociferous—including from the Navy and from Congress—that not only did the closing get reversed but [Hagel] had to expand the base,” said the source.

However, sources said Hagel refused to permit the USO, which was teetering on bankruptcy at the time, to fund fully the Haifa port.

“Chuck Hagel said the Haifa port is costing the U.S. too much [and] that if the Jews wanted one, the Jews should do the fundraising,” said one source involved in protecting the port’s funding.

A Jewish member of the USO’s board ultimately volunteered to secure funding for the port.

Only then did Hagel relent.

You notice, in all of the statements Hagel wasn't talking about letting Israel fund it, or that it would foster Israel/US military cooperation, no Hagel was laying it all on the Jews.  In his mind they are that nefarious group of rich Americans who control the US Congress (the banks and media too?). As a member of that nefarious group who isn't rich,  doesn't even control his own household, and loves his country the United States very much; I suggest that a bigot/hater such as Hagel has no place in Government.

It's A Miracle! The Washington Post "Gets it!"

By Barry Rubin

It must be a new year. The Washington Post has an editorial explaining that Israeli settlements are not the main problem in the Middle East.

The Post editorial is amazing since such sanity is so rare. It begins:

“Two mistaken but widely held notions regarding Israeli-Palestinian peace are that the settlements are the principal obstacle to a deal and that further construction will make a Palestinian state impossible.”

And then it continues by laying down a detailed, factual case that’s worth repeating:

• “Following the 1993 Oslo accords, Prime Minister Netanyahu's government, like several before it, has limited building almost entirely to areas that both sides expect Israel to annex through territorial swaps in an eventual settlement….”

• Almost all of the Jewish settlers live on only four percent of the West Bank, the sector that Israel has been seeking to annex as part of a peace plan that was first presented twelve years ago.

• Israel’s latest construction, which will connect Maale Adumim—a short walk from Jerusalem—with the rest of the city is hardly the destruction of any chance for peace which has been portrayed in much of the Western media and by some Western governments. The worst-case scenario would be that if this corridor determined the ultimate border between two states, Palestinian motorists might have to take a detour of about ten minutes.

• Those who “are really interested in progress toward Palestinian statehood…will press [Palestinian Authority leader Mahmud] Abbas to stop using settlements as an excuse for intransigence - and cool their own overheated rhetoric.”

One of the questions I’m most often asked is about Israeli settlements. It is ridiculously easy to prove they are not the factor preventing Israel-Palestinian peace. I favor the eventual dismantlement of almost all of them--but only if and when there is a comprehensive peace which results in the annexation of some--that would be in Palestine's territory. That is a long way off.

The problem with demonstrating that settlements are not the problem is that it is so hard to get those arguments to a big audience in the West. Many people also have a pre-1993 image of the situation in their minds.

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Briefly, here are two points that make the case. The first shows that the claims about settlements are contrary to the facts; the second that they are contrary with logic.

First, the day after the Israel-PLO agreement was signed in 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin made it clear that Israel’s interpretation was that it permitted continued construction on existing settlements. The Palestinian Authority did not object and that policy did not prevent it from negotiating over the next seven years. (Deliberate?) misrepresentations often make people think that Israel is establishing new settlements or expanding the size of existing ones. Both claims are untrue.

Second, if the Palestinian side wants an end to settlements that should be an incentive for reaching a peace agreement faster and thus getting rid of all settlements on the territory of the new state of Palestine. Notice that Israel—under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon no less—demolished all of the settlements in the Gaza Strip as, among other things, a sign of what could be gained by a peace deal.

Yet the Palestinian side has been in no hurry to make a deal. In theory, when it complains about settlements the response should be: So why don’t you compromise for peace and get rid of them rather than having them become “larger?”

But you don’t have to think this is a new idea. That was exactly what King Hussein of Jordan told the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s “legislative” body, on November 22, 1984. He explained:

“The years go by….The holy and cherished land is being swallowed up every day….How long shall we heed those among us who say: Leave it for future generations….? What makes them believe that the circumstances of future generations will be more conducive [when postponement is merely] giving the enemy more time….

In other words, your refusal to make peace makes things worse. “We thus enabled the enemy to exploit time in order to change reality on the land of Palestine in its favor….Brothers and sisters, because we will be harmed the most as a result of the continuation of the present state of affairs….experience taught us to renounce immobility…..”

Or, to put it bluntly, stop quarreling and using violence, and demanding too much and expecting to gain total victory that will wipe Israel off the map and just make a compromise two-state solution.

That was almost thirty years ago and the same points still apply! So let me summarize:

Most of what is said about settlements in the West isn’t true.

If you are really being so hurt by the existence and growth of settlements then make peace fast and get rid of them.

If you don’t want to make peace fast and get rid of them then settlements aren’t your problem; Israel’s existence is.

And that means you have an unsolvable problem and someone will reprint the above column about thirty years from now.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Tim Geithner Leaving Tres.: Wants To Start Preparing Taxes Early?

According to a few news sources Treasury Secretary Turbo Tax Tim Geithner plans to leave the administration at the end of January no matter what the status of the debt ceiling negotiations.

After giving in to Obama’s previous entreaties to stay as long as needed, Geithner has indicated to White House officials and Wall Street executives that he is unlikely to change his departure plans this time, increasing pressure on the president to name his successor at Treasury, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss the private talks.

It was just 29 months ago that the Treasury Secretary penned the now-famous essay "Welcome to the Recovery" In this fantasy piece Geithner detailed all the reasons why the economy had turned the corner. And we all pray that one day his dream will come true.

While no reason was given for Geithner's exit, the most logical reason is with the new income tax structure and Obamacare taxes he wants the extra time to prepare his returns accurately (we know how important that is to Tim).

The speculation about a replacement is centering around White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, but because of his lack of financial market experience some are saying Obama may go to those big evil corporations that make too much money for a replacement.