Global warming on the Titanic; balancing the budget on the backs of the people; cutting war budget; Barbour commutes life sentences to repair racist ignorance; rule of law in Russia; Voodoo is relative; new chairs flexing power

Global warming not real? We’re sailing on the Titanic

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A tornado fueled by an unusually warm winter air sliced through parts of northwestern Arkansas early on New Year's Eve, killing at least three people, injuring several others and knocking out power to thousands of homes and businesses.

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When it comes to balancing the budget, let them eat cake. Why do 98% of the people always have to pay the bill and the 2% who own most of the wealth get a tax break?

The budget woes of the US are not unlike those of some European countries, including Britain, where spending cuts are the new political reality. But the US has for years faced a special problem: the social security system that pays out billions to keep food on the table of its retirees is on a direct path to insolvency unless something drastic is done.
"This debt is like a cancer that will truly destroy this country from within if we don't fix it," Erskine Bowles, a co-chair of the deficit reduction panel and former chief-of-staff to Bill Clinton, warned as he unveiled the new proposals.

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Cutting Defense (War) budget only 50 to 60 billion? How about 400 to 500 billion?

Cutting Defense for Deficit Reduction Is Risky

Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe
The Brookings Institution
December 28, 2010 —
At a recent Brookings event on the U.S. defense budget and American power, Robert Kagan asks, "What does the liberal world order cost and what is it worth to us?" He says that saving $55-60 billion per year so that the defense budget can contribute its "fair share" of deficit reduction is too risky and that we're taking grave risks if we try to solve the budget deficit crisis by cutting the defense budget.

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Good Ol Haley of the White Citizens Council? Wonder if he thinks pardon will make amends enough to get him the nomination

JACKSON, Miss. – For 16 years, sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott have shared a life behind bars for their part in an $11 armed robbery. To share freedom, they must also share a kidney.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour suspended the sisters' life sentences on Wednesday, but 36-year-old Gladys Scott's release is contingent on her giving a kidney to Jamie, her 38-year-old sister, who requires daily dialysis.

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That dirty ol rotten Russian legal system. Wonder if this equates to life for $11

MOSCOW – Jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to six more years in prison Thursday following a trial seen as payback for his defiance of Vladimir Putin.
The outcome of the second trial exposes how little has changed under President Dmitry Medvedev despite his promises to strengthen the rule of law and make courts an independent branch of government

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Voodoo disappearing of baby sounds bizarre from here. But what about all the miracles daily prayed for here?

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – An American aid ?worker, Paul Waggoner, has been released from a notoriously overcrowded Haitian prison after a judge apparently cleared him of allegations that he kidnapped an infant from a hospital where he worked as a volunteer.

Frantz Philistin, a Haitian man whose infant son was treated at a hospital in Petionville in February had declined to take the body, saying he couldn't afford to bury it. Later, he began making accusations against Waggoner, at one point accusing him of putting the infant into a Voodoo trance to kidnap him and sell his organs.

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Foreign policy not prerogative of some faceless factotum trying to make his allegiances known
Guess we can read between the lines of new committee chairman's sentiments.

"Making underserved concessions to Syria tells the regime in Damascus that it can continue to pursue its dangerous agenda and not face any consequences from the U.S.," Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen R-Fla., the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. "That is the wrong message to be sending to a regime which continues to harm and threaten U.S. interests and those of such critical allies as Israel."