In National and International News...

The Democrats sent me another preaching-to-the-choir email about ethically-challenged Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who's now facing fraud charges down in Florida that, technically, don't have anything to do with the charges against him that the Senate is investigating. Nonetheless, it's a day for ineffectual celebration among us politically-challenged Democrats. Exposed scandal makes us very happy — the bigger the dollar signs and the more racist, the better:

In what was probably the most lucrative lobbying scam in the history of American politics, the two of them [Abramoff and partner Mike Scanlon] reportedly made off with approximately $80 million from a host of Indian tribes that they fleeced, all the while referring to them as "monkeys" and "troglodytes" in private emails.

Come on guys, everybody knows you're supposed to call them Native Americans.

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Also, it looks like Israel is relocating some of its citizens out of the West Bank, hopefully in an attempt to help me not have to wake up to some irritating morning news story about people in that part of the world blowing the shit out of something. Having gone to a college that values "diversity," I'm almost proud to say that I know very little about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and I care even less. People at Columbia tend to be very passionate about the topic, to the point where some of the Jewish students on campus claimed that a Muslim, pro-Palestinian professor was "hostile" to them, and they tried to have his tenure revoked. You couldn't walk down College Walk without being accosted by protesters telling you how many Palestinian children the Israeli army killed yesterday and then a group of counter-protesters reminding you of how the Israeli army had to kill those Palestinian children because the Palestinians killed Israeli children first. This is what passes for academic debate at an overpriced liberal arts college.

Realizing that neither side really gives a shit about the children, I wish someone would take Solomon's split-the-baby-in-half approach: force everyone out of the damn area, salt the earth, and send the Israelis and Palestinians back to kindergarten so they can learn to share.

Now there's Israelis living in these West Bank settlements who, inexplicably, don't want to leave their no-man's-land for, say, a place with fewer suicide bombers. They're fanatical about some weird sort of Jewish Manifest Destiny, convinced that the Invisible Man In The Sky wants them to occupy the prime real estate that is Gaza. ("Look, I'll be honest, there's a bit of a crime problem outside. But you're in a secure, gated community that's divinely blessed, so you really are getting a good deal here. Let's draw up the papers, okay.") I mean, let's say you're living in the South Bronx and the government offers to pay you to move the fuck out of there. You don't come up with some sort of "God wants me to live in the projects" excuse — you thank God for getting you someplace else.

But like I said, I really don't sympathize with either the Palestinians or the Israelis, so that puts me in a good position to come up with another solution. This one's less radical than making the disputed territories into the world's nuclear waste dump, turning them from mostly uninhabitable to totally uninhabitable. Since both the Israelis and Palestinians believe that God left the land specifically for them, why don't we just lock them all in a room somewhere and have them ask God. I'm sure He'll eventually answer, right? It's not like He doesn't exist or anything.... He's probably just got a lot on his mind, like helping short-tempered NBA players make their jump shots or helping old ladies choose lottery numbers.