What if Arabs played hockey?

Do you think warmongers like Senators Graham, McCain, and Lieberman, and neocons like Bolton, Wolfowitz, and Kristol keep pushing for increased action in Libya as a way of defending bloated defense budgets?  Create artificial demand to maintain or increase funding.
NHL playoff hockey is 10 times more exciting than NBA playoff basketball. 
No deficit reduction plan can be taken seriously that does not include some level element of tax increases.  The Ryan plan is a joke.  More tax cuts and history shows that more tax cuts don’t create jobs.  If you don’t believe me, look at this century.
Oil is a global commodity traded in dollars.  If the US was to produce more, it would not change the price significantly.  Just because we pull more out of our lands does not mean the price will drop back to 2009 levels.  After all, oil companies are sitting on granted leases and not exploring.  Why?  Bad business.  Oil goes up because more traders believe the price will go up and that is what they are betting on.
Unemployment rate sits at 20% in the Construction Sector.  With so many homes and building sitting in inventory and no major infrastructure projects coming thanks to spending cuts, the nation won’t see unemployment rates below 6% anytime soon.
New premium pay television series Game of Thrones (HBO), The Borgias (Showtime), and Camelot (Starz) have one thing in common: gratuitous sex and violence.  I am not saying it’s a bad thing, but after Rome and The Tudors, clearly the executives at these networks figured out how to make history and fantasy, a little more, well….fantasy-friendly.
Meanwhile on AMC is The Killing, a serial drama that covers the investigation and key principals following the murder of a high school girl in suburban Seattle.  Every character seems to have some secret or some mysterious past and each week, the show peels back just enough to keep you guessing.
Royal wedding this week; give it the royal flush.
Last year was Tunisia, last month was Egypt, last week was Bahrain, today is Yemen and Libya, tomorrow is Syria, and next week is Lebanon, next month is Iran, and next year will be Turkey.  The season of Arab and Muslim unrest will not be ending anytime soon.  Stay tuned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Secular American Jew and a Love for Israel

As many of you know, I have dedicated many postings to the State of Israel on a range of topics including: it’s history, the present day government, the Jewish-Palestinian question, and the region in general.   Growing up in a liberal conservative Jewish household (the oxymoron is quite common as American Jews were almost exclusively political liberals and the conservative branch of Judaism the most common) and attending Hebrew school as a kid you obviously build an affinity for the State of Israel.   I do not remember the Six-Day War of 1967, but I have vivid memories of celebrating Israel’s 25 th anniversary in 1973 and the Yom Kippur War later that year.   As a ten year old attending Yom Kippur services I saw the worried looks on my parents and the other adults at the shul as members of the congregation would periodically step outside to get news reports from car radios and transistor radios (We still drove and used electrical appliances during the high holidays, though several fam
Read more

September 10, 2001 was a Monday

Where were you on September 10, 2001?   What were you worried about?   What occupied your thoughts, worries, hopes, and dreams?   What were you excited about?   What were you interested in? September 10, 2001 was a Monday. Cindy and I were still laughing about the recent visit from the Three Amigas: Leah, Roseanne, and Valerie, and the adventures of Sedona, a certain screen door, a forgotten carrot cake, and breakfast for champions.   We were also dealing with a 1995 Chevy Blazer that seemed to be on its last legs, surviving our first Arizona summer, thinking about what to remodel in the house, dealing with the concept of a Home Owners Association, thinking that my best shot at a World Series game maybe with the fledgling Arizona Diamondbacks, and looking forward to a visit from Scott, Lori, and the boys. But what about America?   We knew nothing about a tiny town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville; Guantanamo Bay was the setting for A Few Good Men, and we still taped shows and listene
Read more

Sunni and Shia: So who are the bad guys again?

Baby faces vs. heals?   Cowboys vs Indians?   Good guy always where the white hat.   “Dig is he a good guy or bad guy?”   Bad guys always, looked, well, bad. You’re either with us or you’re against us.   Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are the axis of evil. Americans, for the most part, have a pretty simple outlook on conflict: just tell us who the bad guys are and we’ll know who to root against.   We tend to lump similar races and peoples into larger buckets, mostly due to the media’s inclination to treat us like potential Jeff Foxworthy competitors.   But the world is anything but simple and as I have written previously, the Middle East is as confusing and confounding place as you can find.   During the Iran and Iraq war of the 1980’s most Americans took the position that “…as long as they kill each other, I’m good.”   When civil war ravaged Afghanistan, we joined the side of the Mujahedeen because they were fighting the Soviets and the Soviets were our archenemy, a position they occupie
Read more