WHO LOST SYRIA? ITS ABOUT TO BE US!

time and time again, nationalists who want to take their country back from dictators reach out the US and the west for help, with very mixed results. ho chi minh was a nationalist before he was a communist. we wouldn't talk to him; the chinese and russians did. here we have syria. a 2nd generation dictator and bad guy, assad, committing genocide against his own people. getting direct support from Iran and tacit support from china and russia. the UN goes in and calls for a cease fire when one side has all the weapons. and the syrians are doing what they must to defeat assad. without more support from the west and moderate arab states, al queda and the such will continue to come in and assad will fall but the outcome will be not what anyone would want nor what was and is possible. who are we afraid of? iran? china? russia? syria matters. aside from the humanitarian issues; the geopolitical are immense. it represents an opportunity to weaken iran's influence over syria, lebanon, etc. lets not blow it

A MODEST PROPOSAL: TRADE HAWAII FOR CHINSES HELD DEBT

this is not actually my idea. i was having lunch today with a friend and i was bemoaning the fact that we cant keep running billion dollar deficits. he agreed and suggested that we swap Hawaii for all US debt held by China. i just checked and it says they hold about $1.2 trillion. if we swapped with the Chinese, we cover our deficit for one more year, so we kicked the can down the road and don't have to make hard decisions for another year. and whats the downside? we can still go to Hawaii on vacation. the surf will still be there. we will get better Chinese food. what's the downside? upon reflection, i think we could sell Hawaii for more; maybe $2 trillion. what do you think? just saying.