Friday Top Ten: More Mishegas


1)      Will lactose intolerant people be as indifferent to the milk cliff as nonsmokers are to increased tobacco taxes?
2)      Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Likud party are seeing its January 22nd election popularity waning at the expense of his former aide Naftali Bennett and the rightist Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party.  The 40 year old son of American immigrants, Bennett has called for unconstrained settlement expansion while opposing the creation of a Palestinian state.  Since Netanyahu will not have a majority, he will have to choose between a hard right wing coalition or the mish mash of center left parties to form a government.  The stakes are high and could set the peace process back 20 years.  Sadly, I see Netanyahu choosing his former aide, putting the Israeli government at odds with its patron in Washington.  What is even more disappointing is the clear shift in the Israeli electorate to the far right.  I just don’t see that being in Israel’s best long term interests.
3)      Congress has perennial favorability ratings between 10 – 20%, yet 90% of incumbents were re-elected in 2012, which by historical accounts is not far off from typical re-election rates.  I guess for most Americans their representative is OK, but it’s the others that are the poor ones.
4)      The 112th Congress is on the verge of becoming the least productive Congress since records were kept in the 1940’s.  Sounds like we have been living through a partial government shutdown for two years.
5)      What is the difference between a cult and a religion, and when does a cult become a movement, and a movement become a religion?
6)      Chicago hit the 500 homicide mark yesterday.  This is a developed society?
7)      Guns and taxes.  Poll results show people want to limit guns but can’t agree on how to do it.  Similar polls show that people agree to limit tax deductions and close loopholes but can’t agree on which ones.
8)      Soon to be former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown gearing up to make a run for the vacated Kerry seat is a self-proclaimed man of the people, a man for all seasons; and apparently a man for all opinions and all sides of every argument.
9)      Suffix world: Every controversy must end in ‘gate’, every disaster in ‘geddon’, and every impasse is now ‘cliff’. 
10)   From the worst idea bin (as reported by NBC): The latest proposal school protection idea comes from Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed America’s toughest sheriff, who wants to station his “posse” of volunteers outside of about 50 schools in Maricopa County. “Everybody else is talking about what their ideas are. They want new laws. This is immediate. I don't need a new law to send out my posse,” he told NBC affiliate, KPNX, on Thursday. “I feel like we should do whatever we can outside of the schools.”  These guys are the equivalent to Militia groups playing National Guard.

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