State of world affairs...

There have been several interesting developments around the world since I last wrote here.

First, Benjamin Netanyahu has been picked to be Israel's next prime minister - and, based on statements by Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak, I have a feeling that the coalition Netanyahu forms will be almost exclusively right-wing. Maybe now they can get somewhere. A lot of places around the internet are talking about how right-wing "Bibi" is, and how he will butt heads with Obama, or that he, in general, is a warmonger not interested in peace.
I disagree on the last one, he is opposed to pieces for peace, popularly known as "land for peace", which basically means Israel forceably removes it's people from land, then turns it over to the Palestinians.
This has been tried now for a several years (in fact he tried it when he was PM before, and then lost power because the right abandoned him) and we have seen where that has gotten Israel.
Rocket attacks from the land they gave the Palestinians, blatant disregard for ceasefires, suicide bombings and a government in Hamas that wants to destroy Israel.


Another interesting thing happened in the Middle East - Iran has enough material for a nuclear warhead! (link)
That probably means (based on how the UN and everybody else has been off on their estimates of Iran's capabilities to date) they have enough for several.
This just days after the UN announced that Iran was slowing expansion of their uranium enrichment program - I wonder why? (link)
To top it all off, Iran has also just recently put a rocket into space. (link)


On a similar note, North Korea is now pushing ahead (again) with a test for a missile supposedly capable of reaching the mainland USA. (link)


So, apparently Obama really wants to fix the economic crisis in the world, so much so that Hillary Clinton made this comment to the Chinese, "Our pressing on those issues [human rights and Tibet] can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis." (link)
So basically - we want you to give us more loans to help us out of our economic rut more than making sure you treat people correctly - as long as we get the money we don't really care where it comes from.
We care more about your looking out for future generations by cutting greenhouse gasses (which might slow global warming, assuming there is a connection, of course) than how you actually treat the current generations.
Finally, we are more concerned with you helping us fight tyranny in other countries than in fighting tyranny in your own.
You know, I am very much against Iran and North Korea, and I do see them as bigger threats to us - but does that really mean we should make friends with tyrants to defeat other tyrants? Haven't we tried that before, and then just had to deal with those tyrants that we were supposedly allied with (you know, Russia, Iran, etc.)?
Clinton did clarify that those issues are still important, but can't interfere with other issues.

Seems like a rather sad state of affairs to me.

4 strikes, you're out?

Yet another Obama person has just withdrawn their bid for some seat due to, you guessed it, tax problems.

First it was Bill Richardson.
Then there was Tim Geithner.
Then you had Tom Daschle.
Now we have Nancy Killefer - Obama's chief performance officer.

You know the saying, "Three strikes - you're out!" - well for some strange reason, Obama keeps getting away with nominating these people with all these tax problems. He had to have known about them, and he is still nominating them, and, when they don't withdraw, they are still getting appointed!

This is absolutely disgusting - someone needs to draw the line and say, you know what Obama, you may have won, you may have a Democratic majority in both houses, you may have a lot of stuff, but that does not mean you get to put in people who have all these issues, and have no one call you on it.
Sadly, I don't see a lot of people with the guts to take Obama on himself - I haven't seen anyone put any blame on him yet, and certainly the media isn't saying anything.