Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Has Egypt seen more history than any other nation on this planet, except maybe China? I wonder how this ranks in its history?

2) PROGRESS! This is good news for the Obama re-election campaign as well as John McCain's presidential aspirations...

3) Tom Brokaw weighs in on Keith Olbermann.

4) Wal-Mart wants to open a store in New York City, which most sane people oppose. So you KNOW who leads the group that WANTS Wal-Mart...the Shrieking "NO MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO, IT DEGRADES NOO YAWK" Harpy herself...

5) I'm no Yankee fan...in fact, I hate the rat Republican bastards...but I have to tip my hat farewell to a class act, Andy Pettite. He's one of the few players who refused to lie when confronted with steroid allegations. Well, maybe "not lie" is not completely true, but he admitted to using them. That counts for something.

6) Iran to world: Ayatollah you so!

7) As if the Middle East and Africa was not enough...comes Southeast Asia.

8) Why the right wing in this country is flipping out over democracy in Egypt.

9) The Navy is pleased to announce it could not locate any enemy submarines in a field in Japan.

10) Finally, Facebook is seven today. See? Even they can't fix their own privacy settings.

Fat Bastard

Shorter K-Lo:

How can we blame Obama for the mess in Egypt? I know, let’s ask a fascist!

He's Irked!

Shorter Irky Irksome:

Barack Hussein Obsama is to blame for the spread of freedom in Egypt

Yes. He BLAMES him!

A Breather

Look, with all the shitty news that's out there today...from the economy to Egypt to the woes of the New York Mets ownership...I thought I'd give you and more important, me, a break and post something truly amusing.

 

Apparently, a Chinese foreign ministry (former) official is claiming that extraterrestrials now live among us.

 

Um, yea. You read that correctly.

 

And here is one of those ETs:

Jerry Wills is an accomplished healer, explorer, and musician with the band UFAUX who recently participated in a world webcast in which Mr. Wills discussed his identity as an extraterrestrial from the Tau Ceti star system (12 light years from Earth) left here as an infant as part of a project of the Council of Worlds for the betterment of Earth.  Mr. Wills has consented to an in-depth exopolitical interview with ExopoliticsTV and Alfred Lambremont Webre.

In this 4-part video interview, Mr. Wills, who is 6 feet 8 inches tall, talks about how he was adopted by a human family, how he dealt with his unusual abilities growing up, how he was visited regularly by an extraterrestrial delegation that briefed him on his extraterrestrial identity and his mission, how during these visits he was told to watch for specific signs during the 18-year period preceding 2012 as to whether the earth and the human population would veer toward peace or war, and how these visits stopped on the day of September 11, 2001, Mr. Wills’ birthday and the date a regularly scheduled visit was of the extraterrestrial delegation to occur. 

I'll let you click thru to watch the interview, but, um, it's a doozy...

 

Reasons For Concern

It really looks like the entire South Asia/Middle East/Northern Africa is about to go up in flames:

 

1) King of Jordan Dismisses His Cabinet

 

2) Poland warns Belarus: Change or risk overthrow

 

3) Turkey: Mubarak Should Leave Now

 

4) India: Raja's arrest does not affect credibility of PM, govt: Congress

 

5) Pakistani soldier killed in border clash with Afghanistan (Roundup)

 

6) Report: Russia to retaliate against Ireland over spy claim

 

7) ANALYSIS-Palestinians expect a boost from new Egypt

 

8) Qatar men linked to terrorism attacks

 

9) Tunisian Interior Minister Says Security Services Spark Unrest

 

10) UPDATE 1-W.African currency zone worried about Ivorian fall-out

 

11) Sudan's protests triggered by long-term economic, political frustrations

 

12) Mubarak Fails to Quell Protests as Turmoil Spreads to Yemen

 

13) How leaders of Bahrain, Jordan, Syria and Yemen plan to keep control

 

14) Unrest in Egypt Risks Spreading Into Algeria, Standard and Poors Forecasts

 

15) African Unrest Puts Europe's Gas at Risk as Oil Gains

 

And then there's Egypt...

 

Look, a few of these, and I think with a little diplomacy and a lot of patience, we might see a peaceful resolution that enhances stability, in the short-term at any rate. What this kind of instability does is makes US foreign policy become a hodgepodge, because not only are these nations troublesome, but any tinpot dictator worth his salt, like Muammar Qaddafi, is going to start rattling sabres, looking to cut a deal with the US that will blow up in our faces eventually like Saddam Hussein did.

 

In the meantime, it only takes a spark...

 

This. Is. Scary.

Simple Evidence

This is your country under global climate change.

 

Any questions?

"Intellectual" Heavyweight

Shorter K-Lo:

Conservatism is as queer as a three-legged stool

 

What It Always Boils Down To

Shorter Dennis Prager:

White men are an oppressed minority, so why am I not getting laid?

Self-Immolation

OK, it looks like 2012 will be the year of overreaching. The hemmorhoids in the asshole of progress, the Teabaggers, are painting bullseyes. Again. Already.

Leaders of more than 70 Tea Party groups in Indiana gathered last weekend to sign a proclamation saying they would all support one candidate — as yet undetermined — in a primary challenge to Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Republican who has represented the state since 1977.

They are organizing early, they say, to prevent what happened last year, when several Tea Party candidates split the vote in Republican Senate primaries, allowing the most establishment of the candidates to win with less than 40 percent. [...]

In Maine, there is already one candidate running on a Tea Party platform against Senator Olympia J. Snowe. Supporters there are seeking others to run, declaring that they, too, will back the person they view as the strongest candidate to avoid splitting their vote. In Utah, the same people who ousted Senator Robert F. Bennett at the state’s Republican convention last spring are now looking at a challenge to Senator Orrin G. Hatch.

First, Orrin Hatch? Really? Granted, you can't get much more establishment than Orrin Hatch, but it's not like he's given the Democrats a leg up on a legislative agenda, and you might want to consider that he's got some credibility in the Senate. But I digress...

The intriguing bit in this clip is that the Teabaggers missed the point of the 2010 election cycle. It wasn't that Teabaggers failed in the Senate primaries, it was that they were soundly rejected in the Senate general elections, and many of the mainstream Republicans who did go on to win actually looked moderate by comparison.

Americans have long loved the dichotomy of a feisty and rancorous House (which is why Teabaggers succeeded there) and a deliberative Senate. As George Washington famously observed, the Senate was where legislation went to cool off, to make it less burny and more palatable to the American people.

The lessons of history are apparently lost on the Teabaggers. You can alter history, it's true, but you cannot reverse human nature, only amend it (or else the racism we see now on the right would be long gone), and there will always be an element of this dichotomy in Congress.

Now, admittedly, the Teabagger movement started after Republicans dropped their ball during the Bush administration....I mean, hell, it only took these assclowns thirty years to catch up to the fact that the Republicans were paying lip service to the whole "tax cuts are good" mantra, rewarding only the uberwealthy and protecting their interests at the expense of the middle and working classes. Four legs bad, two legs good, you see.

 

And it's conceivable we're seeing the start of the downfall of the GOP. The one thing we are not seeing, and will not see, is the rise of the Teabaggers as anything more than a bloated blockage of do-nothings intent on screwing the country more quickly.

 

Unless they grow up. Of course. But then they'd be....Republicans!

 

 

Balk Like An Egyptian

For the life of me, I'm not sure what to make of the whole situation in Egypt.

 

As a freedom-loving American who wants to spread the gospel of liberty, the uprising to me is a good thing. And as Jon Stewart pointed out, we managed to foment regime change without firing a shot or spreading shockandawwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

 

As a student of world history, the unrest in Egypt seems like the kind of fuse-lighting, like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. That there's this spreading sense of empowerment across the region--Yemen, in particular-- speaks to me that there may be a bit more here than meets the eye. It's a little hard to swallow the party line, that the fall of a Tunisian strongman has fomented this kind of unrest in Egypt.

 

There is precedent, of course. One need look no further than our own American revolution and the influences it had in bringing down the King of France. You'll note, however, there was more than a decade between the two events.

 

Whatever one makes of the differences in communications, and the instantaneity of information now as opposed to the 18th Century, people are still people and emotions are still emotions.

 

Still, as has been said often, no nation is more than three meals away from a revolution.

 

To flesh that out, starve a country and you will get pockets of revolution and starve them long enough, you will get a full-blown uprising. And for sure, Egypt has had problems feeding its people. And keeping the lights on.

 

And finding jobs for youth. And suppressing wages. You Republicans might want to keep a close eye on this.

 

Indeed, Egypt itself and Mubarak in particular have been a Petri dish for civil uprising, having survived the Bread Riots of 1977.

 

Obviously, the American government has had to tread carefully. I like the measured words that both Obama and Hillary Clinton have used over the past few days, and this measured response has not seemed to anger the people of Egypt unduly. I think they recognize that the Americans support more freedom but also have to contend with an ally who has now become troublesome.

 

Indeed, Mubarak's cabinet shuffle seems more about the US pressure than the upward pressure from the people he governs. That Mohammed El-Baradei's name has been bandied about as a successor to Mubarak speaks to me of an American wish expressed in backdoor channels. That particular linkage would go a long way toward res-establishing America's foreign policy credentials in the Middle East. El-Baradei, you might remember, was the UN weapons inspector who the Bush administration all but laughed at when he reported there were no WMDs in Iraq.

 

That he's being named so prominently in the US media (as opposed to, say, Boutros Boutros-Ghali) speaks to me of an encouragement to Baradei and a warning to Mubarak, but also as a signal that America has regrets over the shabby treatment Baradei received.

 

But...

 

The fly in the ointment, and wherever there is unrest, you should always look to the fly in the ointment, is the Muslim Brotherhood. So far, this transnational Islamist movement has made small noises in Egypt, mostly humanitarian gestures to primp its public image, like handing out food and water. Make no mistake, its agenda is to instill Sharia law as firmly as possible in Arab and other Muslim nations, and that they have expressed support for El-Baradei should be looked on with mild alarm.

 

I mean, really, how often are the US and the Muslim Brotherhood going to be on the same side of anything? Someone's being either misinformed or disingenuous.