Czech PM Says AC/DC Was Behind "Road To Hell" Comment (Reuters)
Can't make this shit up:

"Ousted Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek says he was inspired by the rock group AC/DC when he mocked U.S. President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plans as a "road to hell."
Topolanek criticized Washington's anti-crisis spending in a speech to the European Parliament on Wednesday.
"AC/DC played here (in Prague) last week. And their cult song 'Highway to Hell' might have led me in that very improvised speech to use the phrase 'road to hell'," Topolanek was quoted by daily Lidovy Noviny as saying on Friday."

The Toxic Assets We Elected
By George F. WillTuesday, March 24, 2009; A13

With the braying of 328 yahoos -- members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group -- still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.
TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."
Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is China, whose premier has rightly noted the unsustainable trajectory of America's high-consumption, low-savings economy. He has also decorously but clearly expressed sensible fears that his country's $1 trillion-plus of dollar-denominated assets might be devalued by America choosing, as banana republics have done, to use inflation for partial repudiation of improvidently incurred debts.
From Mexico, America is receiving needed instruction about fundamental rights and the rule of law. A leading Democrat trying to abolish the right of workers to secret ballots in unionization elections is California's Rep. George Miller who, with 15 other Democrats, in 2001 admonished Mexico: "The secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose." Last year, Mexico's highest court unanimously affirmed for Mexicans the right that Democrats want to strip from Americans.
Congress, with the approval of a president who has waxed censorious about his predecessor's imperious unilateralism in dealing with other nations, has shredded the North American Free Trade Agreement. Congress used the omnibus spending bill to abolish a program that was created as part of a protracted U.S. stall regarding compliance with its obligation to allow Mexican long-haul trucks on U.S. roads. The program, testing the safety of Mexican trucking, became an embarrassment because it found Mexican trucking at least as safe as U.S. trucking. Mexico has resorted to protectionism -- tariffs on many U.S. goods -- in retaliation for Democrats' protection of the Teamsters union.
NAFTA, like all treaties, is the "supreme law of the land." So says the Constitution. It is, however, a cobweb constraint on a Congress that, ignoring the document's unambiguous stipulations that the House shall be composed of members chosen "by the people of the several states," is voting to pretend that the District of Columbia is a state. Hence it supposedly can have a Democratic member of the House and, down the descending road, two Democratic senators. Congress rationalizes this anti-constitutional willfulness by citing the Constitution's language that each house shall be the judge of the "qualifications" of its members and that Congress can "exercise exclusive legislation" over the District. What, then, prevents Congress from giving House and Senate seats to Yellowstone National Park, over which Congress exercises exclusive legislation? Only Congress's capacity for embarrassment. So, not much.
The Federal Reserve, by long practice rather than law, has been insulated from politics in performing its fundamental function of preserving the currency as a store of value -- preventing inflation. Now, however, by undertaking hitherto uncontemplated functions, it has become an appendage of the executive branch. The coming costs, in political manipulation of the money supply, of this forfeiture of independence could be steep.
Jefferson warned that "great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities." But Democrats, who trace their party's pedigree to Jefferson, are contemplating using "reconciliation" -- a legislative maneuver abused by both parties to severely truncate debate and limit the minority's right to resist -- to impose vast and controversial changes on the 17 percent of the economy that is health care. When the Congressional Budget Office announced that the president's budget underestimates by $2.3 trillion the likely deficits over the next decade, his budget director, Peter Orszag, said: All long-range budget forecasts are notoriously unreliable -- so rely on ours.
This is but a partial list of recent lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement. Such political malfeasance is pertinent to the financial meltdown as the administration, desperately seeking confidence, tries to stabilize the economy by vastly enlarging government's role in it.
georgewill@washpost.com

Thoughts About Depressed Americans
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On March 20, 2009 @ 11:43 pm In Uncategorized 218 Comments

Why are so many Americans so depressed about things these days? It is perhaps not just the economy.
I think the answer is clear: all the accustomed referents, the sources of security, of knowledge and reassurance appear to be vanishing. Materially, we still enjoy a sumptuous lifestyle in comparison with past generations—and the world outside our borders. America remains the most sane and successful society on the planet.
But there is a strange foreboding, a deer-in-the-headlights look to us that we may be clueless Greeks in the age of Demosthenes, played-out Romans around AD 450, or give-up French in late 1939—with a sense it cannot go on. Why? Let us count the ways.
1) About Broke. The collective debt is simply staggering, $1.7 trillion in borrowing this year alone. $3.5 trillion is our annual budget, and by 2012 what we all owe will be well over $15-17 trillion. (No fears: the President promises to triple the Bush deficit, but by the end of his “first” term “halve” the deficit, as if tripling and then halving it is not increasing it.)
Today while President Obama railed against AIG bonuses (imagine damning the bonuses you signed into law to the execs from whom you took over $100,000 in campaign donations!)—the congressional budget office “found” another trillion or so dollars in anticipated deficits that Team Obama lost.
So after Obama, the next President will campaign on “I promise a $1 trillion annual surplus for eight years to pay off the last eight, so we can then start over paying off the old $11 trillion shortfall.”
The rub is not just that we are inflating—no, ruining—our currency. And the problem is still more than the fact that we are destroying the lives of the next generation, whose collective budgets will be consumed largely with health care for us baby-boomers, and interest payments on our debts. (If I get to be 87, can we keep asking 500 or so Chinese to put off false teeth to lend me their money for a hip replacement?)
I think instead the worst element is a sort of ill-feeling about ourselves, an unhappiness as we look in the mirror and see what we are doing to our dignity in this, the hour of our crisis.
We are starting to fathom that when times got iffy, we lacked the resilience of the proverbial Joads and the grit of that tough Depression-era generation, and certainly we seem different sorts from those who built and flew B-17s amid the Luftwaffe.
Instead, this generation has gone quite stark raving mad the last seven months, hysterical, and decided we would simply borrow, charge it, print money, blame, accuse—almost anything other than roll up our sleeves, take a cut in our standard of living, pay off what we owe, admit that we lived too high on the hog, and find a certain nobility in shared sacrifice.
So again, here we are reduced to begging the Chinese to subsidize our life-styles, while 500 million of their own poor make their American counterparts of the lower classes here seem like well-heeled grandees.
2) Fides? We have almost destroyed the concept of trust: we don’t think there is any accuracy in AIG statements; don’t really believe GM will make it on its own, or that Goldman-Sachs is honestly run.
All our icons—Ford, General Electric, Citibank, Bank of America—in a mere generation imploded by their own hands, and now we don’t have any real idea of what went wrong, and believe their captains don’t either.
When Barack Obama says the economy will soon grow at a 4.6 annual rate, I simply don’t believe him. I don’t believe Sec. Geithner’s reconstruction of when he knew about the AIG bonuses, or that he simply forgot to pay his payroll taxes.
If Chris Dodd were to say that gravity exists, I could be sure we would float into the stratosphere. If Barack Obama said he was against renditions, I’d assume he had merely renamed them “transfers.” I do know that as we run up more trillions in debt the next four years, Obama will be in perpetual campaign mode with the same tired mantra “The Bush deficit mess I inherited” to screaming and adoring crowds.
3.) A Certain Coarseness. We also are wearied by a certain crassness in American society in ways we have not seen before—or at least since the mid-19th century. Sorry, I don’t want my President joshing about the Special Olympics on Leno. I don’t want him on Leno at all in his perpetual PR mode. I don’t want him drawing out his picks for the final four on TV. I don’t want him paid for rewriting/revising/ condensing/whatever his earlier book while he’s supposed to be President, or ribbing Gordon Brown about his tennis game in patronizing fashion, or giving the British a pack of un-viewable DVDs after they, in exchange, offered a tasteful gift of historic importance.
I was always an advocate of informality, of casualness, but now when on a plane, in a restaurant, at Starbucks, I am struck by the rare well-dressed person who does not crowd. How odd the extra-polite woman, who conducts herself with charm and grace at the counter, or the gentleman who opens doors, says excuse me, and whose intelligent conversation I enjoy listening in on—like a dew drop to someone thirsting in the desert. In contrast, when the punk walks by, with radio blaring, mumbling obscenities, flashing the ‘I’ll kill you’ stare,” it all leaves me in depression.
Worse still, on the opposite end of the scale, is the master of the universe who elbows his way onto a plane while he blares on the telephone and blocks the aisle. I feel creepy after walking through an electronics store and seeing some of the video game titles and covers.
In short, I don’t want to hear any more Viagra or Cialis ads, no more douche commercials—please no more talking heads about penises that are enlarging, hardening, stimulated on the public air waves.
The sum of these foul parts is smothering us. I don’t want to know that there is a new sex clinic opening in Fresno, or hear another ad about how I can skip out on my credit card debt, or that some sort of food is stuck to my intestinal walls like spackle and paste unless I buy some gut cleansing product.
At some point, we need to say enough is enough, and try to find some sense of honor and decorum in these times of crisis. My god, the entire country has become some sort of Rousseauian nightmare, as if the Berkeley Free Speech Area circa 1970 is now the public domain, as if the culture of the Folsom cell block is now the national ethos.
4) What is good/bad? We are depressed and listless and angry also because I think that we fear we have lost all sense of calibration. We can’t tell what is good and what is god-awful. Where does a Paris Hilton or Britney Spears come from? What can they do? What determines a modern poem’s line break?
Is there any transcendence in the rap album of the month? A Marxist folk singer like old Peter Seeger always had more talent in his little finger than the sum total of Madonna. How did a modern-day Cleon like Barney Frank become the national spokesman of populist outrage against Wall Street.
One, just one, novel of a Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe even, is worth more than what has been written collectively in the last ten years. T. S. Eliot in a day could write better poetry than what has been composed in all the creative writing departments in the United States over the last twenty years—and we are going to give more billions under Obama to “education.”
At some point, again, we need to establish criteria of excellence, regardless of ideology, politics, or of fashion. We honor actors like De Niro and Pacino because we instinctively feel they are talented and are at least shadows of the old breed; a David Petraeus seems like a Matthew Ridgway come to save us in Korea.
We yearn for an ex-President Truman or Eisenhower—and instead get Jimmy Carter. David McCullough sells books because he is talented, can tell a story, is reliable, has a sense of what is the essence of history—and won’t lecture us about his own agenda at a conference on transvestites in the Union Army. I allow that a perpetual adolescent Sean Penn can act (sort of), but a Jack Palance or Richard Boone of the second-tier could exhibit more stage presence, more auctoritas in a split second of exposure than Penn could achieve in a month at the dais.
(5) Yes/No/Sorta/Maybe We sense we are trimmers and redistributors, and wouldn’t dare build a new dam a transcontinental railroad, a new 8 -lane freeway.
Instead we would sue, file reports, argue, quit, delay—anything other than conceive a majestic idea and finish it, sighing, “It is not perfect, but damn good enough and will do.” Instead, here in California we are simply destroying agriculture by drying up its sources of water-giving life—a once brilliant farming that was the sum total of millions of brave lives from 1880 to 2000 who took a desert and fed the world.
Instead, ensconced in the Berkeley Hills or Woodside, our elites demand of better others to save for them not people, but a smelt, a minnow, or a newt-like creature that must have the entire Kings or San Joaquin River as it dumps its precious cargo out to sea.
So as scare snow melts, it goes out to the ocean, gratifying a lawyer or professor in Palo Alto that rivers flow as they did in the 19th-century, as millions of acres go fallow, hundreds of thousands lose jobs, and we feel so morally superior to those of the past who really were our moral superiors.
It is easy to dismiss our ancestors as illiberal, or with the caveat “Oh, but if we were as poor as they were, we’d have to prove just as tough”, but we still sense they were different in the sense of far better. When I drive up to see those Sierra dams poured in the 1920s, one wonders how they made such things with only primitive machines, and in contrast, are amazed with our sophisticated tools, we do so much less.
This self-congratulatory generation can hardly, as we are learning, build a Bay Bridge again. Yet when we see on the Internet pictures of a new aircraft carrier we are stunned in amazement—we did that? We built such a powerful, sophisticated ship? We—at least someone— can actually still do things on rare occasion like that?
The American people are, to be frank, nauseated by the archetype of a John Edwards, who never created anything other than a legacy of bankrupting doctors in order to enrich himself. I’d prefer one gall bladder surgeon to fifty Botox experts, a good Perkins engine mechanic to 1,000 deconstructionists at the MLA, one competent chemist to fifty government attorneys.
For the present I think that we have enough social service bureaucrats, enough consultants, enough PhDs that will lecture how race/class/gender has made us, our air, our dogs even, so unfair. We simply are thirsty for the unapologetic doer, who never says he’s sorry for himself or his country or his ancestors, but instead thinks and plans how he can build something better and leave it for others–the age old agrarian commandment “make sure you leave a better farm than you inherit.” Where are they all, in the grave?
We all seem to stare at the rare genius under a semi, working on the transmission, or someone on a catwalk riveting a girder, or a teacher who can wade into an unruly class and say “damn it, we are going to learn calculus one way or another”.
My complaint against Hollywood actors is not that they are talentless, though many are; or that they talk in the same tones as women did sixty years ago, but that they have no imprint, no trademark of individuality. In short, to paraphrase Orwell, “If it paid better, they’d be fascists.”
I think we responded to Mickey Rourke’s brief renaissance, not because he survived while being drug-addled, or was punched out, or reckless, but because he showed, as a torn-cat, a certain dignity, a certain courage of being so very different from the norm. Yes, at this point we are so desperate for talent and singularity we will take eccentricity bordering on nihilism.
So there you have this rant.
Why are Americans hesitant, bewildered after the arrival of the Messiah?
Not for the reason our President attests about high unemployment or shaky GDP or the lack of national health care. We simply are ashamed of our profligacy; we don’t trust those who should be trusted; we put up with the crass and honor the mediocre and ugly; and we fight and bicker over the distribution, never over a share in the creation.
Hope and change, indeed.

Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/thoughts-about-depressed-americans/
Click here to print.

Special Olympics bowler: I can beat the president!

Mar 20 01:59 PM US/EasternBy COREY WILLIAMS
Associated Press Writer

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) - The top bowler for the Special Olympics looks forward to meeting President Barack Obama in an alley.
"He bowled a 129. I bowl a 300. I could beat that score easily," Michigan's Kolan McConiughey (KO-lahn Mc-KAHNA-he) told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
The athletic-minded president made an offhand remark Thursday on "The Tonight Show" comparing his weak bowling to "the Special Olympics or something." He quickly apologized and told the Special Olympics chairman he wants to have some of its athletes visit the White House to bowl or play basketball.
McConiughey, who is mentally disabled, is just the bowler for the job. He's bowled five perfect games since 2005.
The 35-year-old McConiughey has been bowling since he was 8 or 9. His advice for Obama? Practice every day.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

NYT Columnist: People Only Want Info That Confirms Prejudices
By Noel Sheppard
Created 2009-03-19 18:18

"[T]here’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber."

I hardly ever agree with anything New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof writes, but his piece [1] on Wednesday was astoundingly provocative and an absolute must-read.
His basic premise is that with the demise of print media and our reliance on the Internet as an information source, we Americans are mostly surrounding ourselves with folks that think like us and, therefore, aren't really being challenged to defend our views on the important issues of the day.
Before casting this aside as so much liberal elite twaddle, consider the following:

One classic study sent mailings to Republicans and Democrats, offering them various kinds of political research, ostensibly from a neutral source. Both groups were most eager to receive intelligent arguments that strongly corroborated their pre-existing views.
There was also modest interest in receiving manifestly silly arguments for the other party’s views (we feel good when we can caricature the other guys as dunces). But there was little interest in encountering solid arguments that might undermine one’s own position. [...]
Almost half of Americans now live in counties that vote in landslides either for Democrats or for Republicans, he said. In the 1960s and 1970s, in similarly competitive national elections, only about one-third lived in landslide counties.
“The nation grows more politically segregated — and the benefit that ought to come with having a variety of opinions is lost to the righteousness that is the special entitlement of homogeneous groups,” Mr. Bishop writes.

Fascinating. But there's more:

One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.
The result is polarization and intolerance. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor now working for President Obama, has conducted research showing that when liberals or conservatives discuss issues such as affirmative action or climate change with like-minded people, their views quickly become more homogeneous and more extreme than before the discussion. For example, some liberals in one study initially worried that action on climate change might hurt the poor, while some conservatives were sympathetic to affirmative action. But after discussing the issue with like-minded people for only 15 minutes, liberals became more liberal and conservatives more conservative.
The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me, and we’ll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected “news” acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.

Interesting. Does that mean the information superhighway is actually narrowing our horizons rather than broadening them?

No Másk Eleven-year-old Dru Lechert-Kelly of Portland, Ore., is an admirer of Barack Obama: "He said he would try to change the world and make the economy better," the boy explains the Oregonian. "Also because somebody told me he has a Wii all hooked up to a huge flatscreen in the White House. That's cool."Dru, a fifth-grader at Llewellyn Elementary, wanted to pay tribute to the president in his school talent show. At a rehearsal Tuesday, the Oregonian reports, "he wore a navy blue suit, white shirt, red tie, black shoes and an Obama mask purchased at a costume shop. The choreographed routine ended with Dru on the floor in the splits":After Thursday's performance, the "crowd went wild," Dru said. But so did some of the adults in the audience."I talked to the parents who are coordinating the talent show, and they feel it's inappropriate and potentially offensive," Llewellyn Principal Steve Powell said.When asked what was offensive about Dru's skit, Powell refused to discuss it."I won't say why it's inappropriate," he said. "I'm not saying anything to The Oregonian. Why? Because I don't want to."

The Obama administration [Friday] jettisoned the Bush-era term "enemy combatant" but maintained a broad right to detain those who provide "substantial" assistance to al-Qaeda and its associates around the globe.The disclosure came in a court filing by the Justice Department in response to orders by federal judges, who sought clarity on the government's legal justification for holding about 241 detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. . . .The filing also revealed that the Obama administration sees the president's detention power as global and not limited to a battlefield in Afghanistan, as some human rights groups have advocated. . . .Legal scholars and those representing detainees said that dropping the term "enemy combatant" was important but that the rest of the legal arguments may not change much about the nation's detention policy.Robert M. Chesney, an expert on national security law at Wake Forest University, said the changes would affect detainees "at the margins.""They've changed the label, but the substance has changed only a little bit," Chesney said.

In case you think the Obama administration has gone soft on terrorists, blogger Lyle Denniston notes that in another case Eric Holder's Justice Department has asserted that "aliens held at Guantanamo do not have due process rights." (Hmm, "aliens" seems like such a harsh word . . .)Just between us, they're still enemies, and they're still combatants. But if calling them something else will enhance America's security by confusing the civil liberties weenies for a while, that is a good thing. The president is shrewdly employing what evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker calls the "euphemism treadmill," described in a 2001 MIT press release about a Pinker speech:

Why have the San Diego and Boston city councils recently banned the word "minority" as derogatory, when its literal meaning is neutral? He suggested this exemplified a "euphemism treadmill," in which a word for an emotionally charged concept is replaced, in hopes of redefining people's attitudes toward the concept. But instead, the new word becomes tainted, prompting the search for yet another fresh word, and so on.Pinker said linguists had already noted the process with concepts as diverse as toilets ("lavatories, bathrooms, restrooms"), disabilities ("crippled, handicapped, disabled, challenged"), and old folks ("elderly, golden agers, senior citizens"). Thus, "Negro" became "black," which led to "African American"; "Oriental" became "Asian"; "Hispanic" became "Latino." This shows that changing a word is not enough to change attitudes, and indicates how far we have to go in achieving racial progress, he said. "We know we will have achieved equality and mutual respect when terms for ethnic minorities stay put."

From: Dan Proft <->Date: Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 2:31 PMSubject: excerpt of 2A debate in IL HouseTo:-

>>

Notes from today’s Illinois House Executive Committee meeting on HB 12, the “One gun per month purchase limit” bill…

NRA: …The 2nd Amendment says that the right to bear arms will not be infringed upon. Can’t say one book a month, and due to the same constitutional rights you can’t say I gun a month. ….
Rep. Arroyo: How many people are killed with books each year?
NRA: (Now he is yelling) That is not the issue. Guns are not the problem. All these laws do is restrict the rights of law abiding citizens and violent criminals ignore these laws anyway… they are still able to get guns… the problem is the Chicago public schools system that only has a 47% graduation rate.
Rep. Arroyo: You are not answering the question…How many kids do books kill each year…
NRA: Well, Mein Kampf killed about 6 million people.

http://stonezone.com/index.php

Mr. T!

http://www.everythingisterrible.com/

Orwell University

"Some students at Alveda King's speech Tuesday night did not expect a strictly literal interpretation of the advertised 'life affirming choices' speech," reports Central Michigan Life, student newspaper of Mount Pleasant's Central Michigan University:The niece of Dr. Martin Luther King spoke out strongly against abortion at her "Can the Dream Survive?" presentation in Warriner Hall's Plachta Auditorium. Some students were surprised to learn that was the topic of her lecture. Several of the about 650-person audience walked out."I felt a little misled personally," said Flint senior Detrone Turner, who said he thought the speech was going to be about increasing diversity.

-And of course the best way to increase "diversity" is by refusing to listen to anyone you disagree with.

Woman calls 911 3 times over McNuggets
Fla. police say she called emergency number 3 times after store runs out
The Associated Press
updated 8:19 p.m. CT, Tues., March. 3, 2009

FORT PIERCE, Fla. - Authorities say a Florida woman called 911 three times after McDonald's employees told her they were out of Chicken McNuggets.
A police report says 27-year-old Fort Pierce resident Latreasa L. Goodman told authorities she paid for a 10-piece last week but was later informed the restaurant had run out.
She says she was refused a refund and told all sales were final. A cashier told police she offered Goodman a larger portion of different food for the same price, but Goodman became irate.
"This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn’t have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don’t want one," Goodman told police, according to The Stuart News. "This is an emergency."
Police say Goodman was cited on a misuse of 911 charge. A current phone listing for Goodman couldn't be found.
A McDonald's spokesman says Goodman should have been given a refund, and she's being sent a gift card for a free meal.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29498350/from/ET/?gt1=43001

Donors pledge $4.5bn for Palestinians

By Heba Saleh in Sharm El Sheikh
Published: March 2 2009 14:24 Last updated: March 2 2009 23:20

International donors at a conference in Egypt pledged $4.48bn over two years to support the Palestinian economy and rebuild Gaza after the Israeli offensive, but made clear none of the funds should end up in the hands of Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the territory.
In her first trip to the region since her appointment as US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton said urgent action was needed to break the cycle of violence and move towards a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians..
“The United States is prepared to engage in aggressive diplomacy with all sides in pursuit of a comprehensive settlement that brings peace and security to Israel, the Palestinians and their Arab neighbours,” said Mrs Clinton.
Mrs Clinton pledged $900m (€714m, £643m) of aid for the Palestinians of which $300m was earmarked for urgent humanitarian relief to Gaza. The aid includes budgetary, security and infrastructure support for the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, which was ousted from Gaza in 2007 by Hamas, the Islamist militant group.
Mrs Clinton stressed that the US had worked with the PA to put in place safeguards to ensure that the funds did not fall into “the wrong hands” – a reference to Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the US.
The European Union said it would give $554m and there were pledges from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries totalling $1.65bn.

>>
I can't believe tax dollars are going to these 9/11 celebrating assholes. Let the Ummah pay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Malacca

Interesting piece about this area in the Gartman Letter this morning, referencing a Foreign Affairs article by Robert Kaplan. Control of these straights has been crucial for power since the 15th century, and is no less true today.

SanFran Chron Columnist: Obama is 'Articulate, Zen-like, Brave,' There's 'Obamafied Bliss'
By Warner Todd Huston
Created 2009-02-27 10:58

Well, the San Francisco Chronicle's Mark Morford out does himself [1] with sycophantic, hyperbole over his Obammessiah, today, February 27. He so revels in hero worship for The One, it's amazing that the White House doesn't feel compelled to get an order of protection against this creepy columnist.
No one in the Old Media is more sold on The One and less credible for his girlish crush than Morford. He is a fount of mush as he wonders if he should be scared of today's problems or suffused with lust in his heart for Obama (if you'll remember the Carterism).
It goes something like this: Do you allow yourself, even now, to feel any sort of ongoing, relieved, merciful joy that Barack Obama actually is sitting in the Big Chair in the White House? That this elegant, articulate, Zen-like man whose integrity is rock-solid and whose ideas, while certainly not in perfect alignment with every ultra-lefty vision on the planet (clean coal? Please), are astonishingly ambitious and brave, is leading this nation during one of the worst economic times in its short and paroxysmal history?
One would expect such gushing from a teenage girl writing to a teen idol, not a grown man talking about a mere politician.
Seriously, Morford wasn't finished...
It's a bizarre choice indeed. The good news is, the Obamafied bliss is still out there, still swirling, still waiting to be supped like a fine digestif. At any given moment you can, if you so choose, pause in whatever it is you're suffering from and hear that voice and see his visage or perhaps merely hear some pundit say the words "President Obama" out loud, and you can still enjoy that delicious chill, that little jolt that says, "Oh my God, did we really do it? Is that lucid, impeccably centered man really the leader of the free world?"
Of course, he goes on to indulge in a little Bush and Cheney bashing, too. We can't have unthinking Obamagobedness without some BDS, after all!
Now we might remember Old Mark from his wonderfully descriptive depiction during the campaign of Obama as a "light worker [2]." Yeah, that guy.

I won't bore you all with any of the rest of this tripe as it is wholly empty of meaningful analysis, but I thought you'd all get a kick out of Morford's newest example of sycophancy for the new messiah.
By the way, I also find it amusing in a clinically psychological sort of way that our pal Mark has to have his picture on his article page twice. Once in the header and a larger one at the bottom of the piece. I don't know what that says, but I still find it amusing. It may be thus with other SFCers, but I still find it amusing nonetheless.

(Photo credit: San Francisco Chronicle)