Weekend Wrap Up, What's on Digg's mind


·         Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan loves to chastise Israel for its treatment of Palestinians living in Gaza.  I could take him seriously if he wasn’t systematically trying to wipe out Kurds living in Turkey.

·         The next time the Muslim Brotherhood and it’s new government feel the need to criticize Israel for its handling of Gaza, perhaps they should look in the mirror and ask themselves about how they treat Egypt’s Coptic Christians.

·         If the Netanyahu government cared about Israel’s long term security, it would work out a deal with Fatah.  Alas, his Likud led RW government cannot see the inevitable.

·         Yes it is true that Social Security has not been a significant contributor to the current deficits and debt.  Nonetheless, it along with Medicare, are bridges we will be crossing very soon and wouldn’t it be novel for our government to deal with a situation before it becomes acute?

·         We are much better off without the likes of Mike Pence ,Allen West, and Joe Walsh in Congress

·         One sure thing from the impending compromise on the fiscal cliff: Liberals will be upset at the President for not punishing the rich enough, and Conservatives will be upset that spending wasn’t cut deep enough.

·         Nearly two weeks after the election we are still counting votes but is evident that the northeast House delegation will be 100% blue and the southern delegation nearly all red.  Hmm such political polarization, region against region; hmm when did we see this in the U.S.?  No kumbaya moments anytime soon.

·         Perhaps the most shocking congressional election result has to be the Arizonan delegation.  With Ron Barber’s victory in the 4th Congressional District, the Arizona delegation now has 5 Democrats (Kirkpatrick, Sinema, Grijalva, Pastor, and Barber)and only 4 Republicans (Salmon, Schweikert, Franks, and Gosar).

·         One thing that Mitt Romney did het right during the final debate is the growing al-Qaeda and related organizations threat in northern Mali.  Expect U.S. special forces operatives on the ground.

·         While many condemn Israel for creating ‘an open air prison’ in Gaza, the truth is that Gaza was an open air prison under Egyptian control before 1967.  It wouldn’t hurt to actually read a history book.

·         During last weekend’s 60 Minutes, author and historian David McCullough warned that we were raising  a generation of “historically illiterate”.  In other news, Breaking Dawn Part II and Skyfall both beat Lincoln at the box office this weekend.

·         I am usually guardedly optimistic in most things, but when it comes to the Middle East I am definitively pessimistic.  The al-Assad regime in Syria will fall, the questions are whether he is allowed to leave and seek asylum or he goes the way of Gadhafi or Mubarak,  and how bad the fighting, death, destruction, and despair will be in the void that follows.  Winning the war is the easy part, creating lasting peace is often beyond our reach.


 

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