This Can Only End Well.

Rueters reports on an upcoming Putin/Chavez summit in Venezuela:

“Russia will cement energy ties with its closest Latin American ally, Venezuela, when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin travels to Caracas this week for a trip that could also lead to arms deals that worry Washington.

Venezuela, South America's top oil exporter and a member of the oil producers cartel OPEC, is seeking funds and technology to help develop its oil deposits and is also seeking loans to buy Russian military hardware.

"We should expect a lot of big arms and energy contracts. When Putin has travelled recently to centres like India he brought back a lot," said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the magazine Russia in Global Affairs.

"It is always a good chance for Putin to show to the United States that we have a lot a friends all over the world."

Clearly all American problems with these two statesmen stem from (as our President would like to believe) being too confrontational.

See Also: Compare this conversation with this one to see what appears to be two very different relationships and power dynamics.

"All The News That's Fit To Print"

Last week in The New York Times Maureen Dowd, Charles Blow, Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman used all of the following terms to describe those who do not support ObamaCare:

Bullying (x3)
Desperation
Threatening
Nefarious
Racist
Neanderthals
Disgusting
Fanatics
Paranoid
Lowlifes
Foaming-at-the-mouth
Nauseating
Insane
Toxic
Ignorance
Bigotry
Fear-mongering
Hate-mongering
Scare-mongers

Let no one mourn the death of old media.

"Unmanned Systems For An Unsafe World"

"Unmanned systems for an unsafe world." Such is the slogan used in a new set of Northrop Gruman advertisements plastered all over the Capitol South metro stop just steps away from the House office buildings. The ads feature pictures of unmanned helicopters, planes and other assorted fighting machines at work.

Below is a low quality camera phone picture of one of the actual ads in Capitol South featuring what appears to be an unmanned "Fire Scout" helicopter. Similar (but not identical) ads can be found on Northtrop Gruman's website.

We will not stoop to militaty-industrial-complex name calling, but the thought of America's last line of defense being Northrop Gruman robots is "interesting."

State Run Higher Education At Its Finest.

And Now For The Legal Challenges.

If ObamaCare passes today there will be numerous legal challenges to come. The Attorneys General of South Carolina and Florida have already weighed in:

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster says he and Florida Attorney
General Bill McCollum are ready to file a federal lawsuit if health care reform
legislation passes.

The U.S. House plans to vote on the plan Sunday.

McMaster said Friday that he expects attorneys general to join the
lawsuit. He and other GOP counterparts have denounced the legislation.

McMaster says he wants to challenge an exemption that would keep
Nebraska from paying for Medicaid costs.

He says even if that provision is dropped, he will sue over the
requirement for everyone to buy health insurance. McMaster says both provisions
violate state sovereignty.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/19/attorneys-general-south-carolina-florida-set-sue-health-care-reform/

Hard Hitting Ads On The Hill.

The Conservative 501(c)4 American Future Fund has launched a series of ads directed at members of Congress. The ads appeared today in the print version of Politico (a Capitol Hill Newspaper) and directly warn on-the-fence Democrats about the cost to their electoral future of voting for ObamaCare.

Several of them are shown below (click the image for a larger view):

And This Is News?

This gem came out yesterday:

Survey: Readers don't want to pay for news online.

The fact that there are still people creating business plans based upon the concept of pay-for-content web pages is truly amazing. A large cause of the early 2000's tech bubble was the misinformed notion that users of a free web page could be transformed into paying users. They couldn't then and they can't now.