Xe?

The private military company Blackwater has changed its name this month. It now wishes to be called Xe (pronouced zi). Blackwater Airships is now Guardian Flight Systems, Blackwater Target Systems is GSD Manufacturing, and Blackwater Lodge and Training Center is the U.S. Training Center. The company also shed its bear-paw and crosshairs logo, for a stylized rendering of the name "Xe."

Company executives say the change is part of an effort to distance the company from various incidents during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Blackwater has come under fire for being mercenaries for hire which are not accountable to military or civilian law. They are currently fighting several lawsuits filed on behalf of workers killed in action, and have been accused of tax evasion by Henry Waxman.

Currently Blackwater has 20,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, trains over 50,000 personel for various countries each year, recieves over 90 percent of its funding from the US government, and has turned founder Erik Prince into a very rich man.

Eisenhower used his final presidential address to warn the country against the military industrial complex. Since then, the US economy has become intertwined with the US military, and everything Eisenhower said not to do, we have done. But not even he foresaw hiring private companies to supply and fight US wars.

I wonder what he, as both president and military general, would say about Blackwater? I doubt he would be very complimentary.

Will Nancy Pelosi please sit down!

Last night I watched Barack Obama's State of the Union Address that wasn't really a State of the Union Address and had an insatiable urge to reach through the TV and violently beat Nancy Pelosi with her Speaker of the House gavel.

Pelosi was noticeably staring at the teleprompters and planning her next standing ovation throughout Obama's speech. There were several instances where she was halfway out of her chair when Obama was only halfway through his sentence. When she did restrain herself long enough for Obama to finish a sentence, she was up and clapping a good 5 seconds before Vice President Joe Biden, and everyone else.

So why does this bug me so much? It shows what she considers to be the most important part of the night. Pelosi didn't listen to what Obama had to say with a thoughtful and critical ear, she didn't think about his plans for reform and change. It seemed that only thing Pelosi was concerned about was making sure Obama got more standing ovations than any other president.

She gave Obama a standing ovation every time he proposed a new plan. She gave Obama a standing ovation every time he said anything pro-democrat or anti-republican. She probably would have given Obama a standing ovation every other sentence no matter what he said.

It reminded me of an episode of Jeopardy where a contestant is more concerned with beating everyone else to the buzzer than whether or not they even know the answer.

It was political grandstanding at its worse and was the embodiment of everything that is wrong with politics.

Financial aid to Gaza Strip

Hillary Clinton is expected to announce that the U.S. will offer more than $900 million in aid to help rebuild Gaza after the Israel military strikes. The money will be distributed through the UN and other bodies and will not be distributed by Hamas. This is a dramatic increase from the $85 million promised by former President Bush.

This story is still new and details haven't been released, but let me see if I understand this correctly. We sell Israel weapons, help train their military, and now we are going to rebuild what they blew up? You can't give Wile E. Coyote the tools to catch the Road Runner, and then fix the mountain side every time he paints a tunnel on it. The Coyote needs to be told to clean up his own mess.

It seems the U.S. is trying to maintain good foreign relations with two countries that hate each other. If the Obama administration disapproves of Israel's actions, it needs to do more than just clear some rubble.