Sarah Palin's Run for the White House

At this point, it looks like the cross hairs map will be Sarah Palin's political tombstone.

She played the hand she was given the best way she knew how. Palin grabbed that national attention and squeezed it for every penny it could get her.

Litigation­, major debt, a baby with down syndrome (who will need a level of care his whole life), and a teenage daughter with a baby. I haven't seen anyone say this, but her reason to step down had a lot to do with securing her family's future.

She got sucked into to the fox news world fringe. She continued to operate in a bubble since she became a national figure. Part of that means bringing a lot of hunting metaphor onto the national stage.

It doesn't reflect calls to violence the way some of her fringe peers do, but she is lumped in and the cross hairs map became symbolic.

Glenn Beck was her spokesman about her feelings on the massacre..­.. the guy uses calls to violence and violent overthrow of govt as a punchline to his brand of entertainm­ent. She continues to allow herself to be lumped in with them. That response and a facebook post is un-statesm­an like and amateurish­. It does not show good leadership.

I would not want my president, the leader of the free world to be calling on supporters to take out opponents with cross hairs. That's what happens in unstable countries or dictatorsh­ips not the U.S. We are above that.

The Future of the US - Flowers for Assassins?

Rose petals thrown for assassin of Salman Taseer as he heads to court. NYT

Rep. Anthony Weiner on 9/11 Benefits Debate

One of the best videos of 2010.

Richard Holbrooke Gone at 69

"Mr. Holbrooke’s signal accomplishment in a distinguished career was his role as the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton peace accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. It was a diplomatic coup preceded and followed by his peacekeepingmissions to the tinderbox of ethnic, religious and regional conflicts that was formerly Yugoslavia.

More recently, Mr. Holbrooke wrestled with the stunning complexity of Afghanistan and Pakistan: how to bring stability to the region while fighting a resurgent Talibanand coping with corrupt governments, rigged elections, fragile economies, a rampant narcotics trade, nuclear weapons in Pakistan and the presence of Al Qaeda, and presumably Osama bin Laden, in the wild tribal borderlands." NYT

Senator Ron Paul Defends Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and Freedom of Speech

Senator Ron Paul Would Like to Educate the Masses

Ron Paul is the Republican Congressman from Texas, is the ranking member of the monetary policy subcommittee, and when the next Congress takes over he’ll likely be the chairman of the subcommittee.

“I will approach that committee like no one has ever approached it because we’re living in times like no one has ever seen,” Paul said in an interview with NetNet Thursday.

Paul said his first priority will be to open up the books of the Federal Reserve to the American people.

“We need to create transparency there. To see what it is they are buying and lending, and who it is they are dealing with,” Paul said. MSNBC

I'm not really sure how much power these guys have in opening the Fed's books.  As a private bank, the Fed doesn't even share with outsiders, including the government, the owners of the Fed

... and he wants to show people the causes of business cycles and the monetary manipulation by central bankers. People can't even read. I don't know how he's going to get the public to grasp monetary policy much less make the Fed do anything.

Hopefully, Ron Paul won't mysteriously die or get assassinated or accidently start a war. He's a good man, Charlie Brown.

Mikhail Kordorkovsky Formerly of Yukos

This happens in the US as well, though more subtle.

“What must be going through the minds of the entrepreneur, or the senior manager, or simply an ordinary educated, creative person, watching our trial, and knowing that its result is absolutely predictable?” he asked. “The obvious conclusion is chilling in its stark simplicity: it is that the siloviki can do anything,” he added, using the Russian slang for the powerful bureaucrats in Mr. Putin’s circle.

“Millions of eyes throughout Russia and the world are watching this trial,” he said. “They are watching with the hope that Russia will still become a country of freedom, and law is above the bureaucrat. Where supporting opposition parties is not a cause for reprisals. Where special services protect the people and the law, and not the bureaucracy from the people and the law. Where human rights no longer depend on the mood of the czar, good or evil.”

“I am not a perfect person, but I am a person with an idea,” he added. “For me, as for anybody, it is hard to live in jail, and I do not want to die there. But if I have to, I will. The things I believe in are worth dying for.”

“Your Honor!” he said, looking directly at the judge. “Much more than our two fates are in your hands. Here and now the fate of every citizen of our country is being decided.”

When he finished, the courtroom erupted. As the crowd yelled “Freedom,” the judge banged his gavel and declared the trial over. At which point, Russia’s most prominent political prisoner was handcuffed and led back to his jail cell. NYT Bio

The Rent is too Damn High Party Leader in NY Gubernatorial Debate

Military to Cut Fossil Fuel Use In Half by 2020

Who would have thunk? According to Ray Mabus, the Navy Secretary said he wants 50 percent of the power for the Navy and Marines to come from renewable energy sources by 2020. That figure includes energy for bases as well as fuel for cars...

The military this year has pushed rapidly forward. After a decade of waging wars in remote corners of the globe where fuel is not readily available, senior commanders have come to see overdependence on fossil fuel as a big liability, and renewable technologies — which have become more reliable and less expensive over the past few years — as providing a potential answer. 

The 150 Marines of Company I, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, will be the first to take renewable technology into a battle zone, where the new equipment will replace diesel and kerosene-based fuels that would ordinarily generate power to run their encampment. 

NYT

Jefferson Thomas Member, Little Rock Nine Member Deceased

Jefferson Thomas, one of the so-called "Little Rock Nine," the nine students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, has died, according to Carlotta Walls LaNier, president of the group's foundation. He was 67.

Thomas died of pancreatic cancer on Sunday, the Little Rock Nine Foundation said in a statement. He was living in Columbus, Ohio. CNN