When you get a $173 billion dollar bailout from American taxpayers you don’t have to worry about making good financial decisions – especially when Congress and the Obama Administration aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing. Ever since AIG got their enormous taxpayer bailout, they have been dragging their feet on paying back the money. In Taiwan, AIG has flailed repeated in what should have been an easy sale of its local insurance unit, called Nan Shan. Most recently, AIG inexplicably chose the low bidder in a deal that Taiwanese regulators may have to reject for the second time.

Today’s Washington Post calls out Jane Harman for missing 43 votes this year alone. While Jane gives no excuse for why she isn’t showing up, she continues to collect her government salary and pension anyway. Jane announced she is leaving Congress after 33 days of her 2 year commitment but said she would serve until March 1st.

Susan Rice skips another UN meeting

At great personal risk to himself and his family, Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi, pushed the UN Security Council to take up the violence in his home country. Dabbashi said he could no longer support the regime of his boss Moammar Gadhafi and stepped out to condemn what he called “a genocide”. The dramatic event prompted the first UN meeting of the 15 member Security Council on the uprisings sweeping across the region since the beginning of Tunisia’s revolution, Egypt’s violence and the developing protests in Bahrain, Yemen, Palestine and Iran.

The United States was represented by Foreign Service officer and Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo. The Obama Administration’s appointed Ambassador, Susan Rice, skipped the Libya meeting and instead flew to South Africa to attend a UN panel discussion on global sustainability.

The Advocate’s cover story by Kerry Eleveld on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is riddled with inaccuracies, hype and spin. Eleveld’s piece and The Advocate’s continuous partisan political coverage contributes to the erroneous and dangerous assumption that all Democrats are good and all Republicans are bad on LGBT issues. Eleveld failed to quote one single dissenting opinion from the spin Clinton staffers spun her. While there is no question that Clinton has built on the changes made by Secretary Condi Rice for LGBT staffers at State (and should be applauded for that progress), the premise that the Bush State Department team was hostile and the Clinton team has done all it can do is flat wrong.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice announced to the UN’s Arab group that she will support their statement condemning Israel for its settlement construction after failing to convince the group to support her language. Rice previously offered the Arab group a plethora of U.S. government compromises in exchange for different language – language they rejected outright. The Arab group immediately responded to her acquiescence by announcing that they will turn the statement she is supporting into a legally binding and more serious UN resolution to be voted on soon. Rice’s failed UN engagement strategy highlights the dangerous slippery slope of bringing delicate foreign policy crises to the 15 member Security Council. Her actions also perilously miss the message of Egypt’s protesters who are demanding economic reform from their dormant and manipulative leaders.

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/janeharman

Former Representative Jane Harman was the second-wealthiest member of the United States Congress, with a fortune estimated at nearly $300 million. And yet she served only 33 days of a 730 day commitment after winning re-election in November 2010.

Now, California voters will be forced to foot the bill for a special election – at a price tag in the millions of dollars.

George W. Bush must be smiling. It started with Afghanistan, then Iraq, Tunisia and now Egypt. The Arab youth are defying Joe Biden and the rest of the American foreign policy “establishment” and proving that their demands are legitimate. Egyptian students, doctors, lawyers and the unemployed are showing that democracy is attainable for the Middle East and that Arabs, too, deserve to live in freedom and prosperity. Tunisia’s revolution was quick, Egypt’s was forceful and resolute. All eyes are on Algeria, Palestine, Yemen and Jordan whose youth seem to be simmering in the same way. Like it or not, George Bush was right and Joe Biden was wrong.

The idea that Jane Harman is quitting Congress because she is a frustrated moderate is absurd. Harman is worth an estimated $300 million and so she thinks she can dine and dash at taxpayers’ expense. She has been missing in action from our 36^th district for years. She didn’t hold a single public forum before the government healthcare vote despite her constituents’ pleadings and protests. She has consistently ignored the people of the South Bay and is only seen when there is an election at hand.

The Huffington Post may have been founded as the liberal answer to the conservative Drudge Report, a place for progressive wound-licking in the wake of George W. Bush’s re-election.

But on Monday, Arianna Huffington was distancing herself from the lefty label as she announced the sale of HuffPost to AOL for $315 million.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49006.html#ixzz1DJSx7nLn