FRIENDLY FIRE DRONES ON

It was inevitalbe that we would hear of our drone aircraft, which for the past several years have been raining down fiery death and injury to thousands of innocents in Pakistan and Afghanistan, would kill American GI's in a high tech version of "friendly fire". The two American soldiers blown to bits today in Helmond Province, Afghanistan, by a errant drone missile fired by a confused joy stick jockey at a computer game board in Nebraska made the front pages of every American paper today because they were Americans. But those same members of the free press are obvious to the endless foreigners who meet the same fate.

Afghans have gone on the rampage in recent days, even killing members of the UN mission in Mazar-i-Sharif, ostensibly over reports of the Koran burning by Christian Florida pastor Terry Jones. Even President Obama weighed in last year when Jones first threatened to burn the Koran, saying his actions jeopardize the safety of American soldiers. The US agonizes over the exercise of free speech, however misguided, by Pastor Jones, while it spends trillions of borrowed dollars to fight three criminal wars in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

President Obama and his American war party conducting these self destructive wars should get this straight: They don't hate us for our freedom to burn the Koran. They hate us for our freedom to burn their people

NAME THAT BUDGET BILL

The compromise hatched between Republicans and Democrats yesterday prevented a governmental shutdown at midnight, but did nothing to slow America's slide to irrelevancy on the world's economic stage.

The GOP majority in the House has used their 13 weeks of power to do the opposite of what they campaigned on: creating jobs. Not only has Job 1 not been created, their $38 billion in budget cuts has insured tens if not hundred's of thousands jobs will be lost in the rush to defund critically needed infrastructure projects and services to the needy. President Obama, who called the cuts "painful", at least reduced them from the original GOP target of $100 billion, or the $61 billion in the GOP House passed budget version, and he kept funding for Planned Parenthood's reproductive services to women while keeping the government operating.

But cutting back investment on job training, education, health care services, infrastructure, and environmental protection at a time when the reverse in needed to stimulate an economic resurgence is a recipe for failure. On a positive note, the real GOP agenda of starving government to pay for obscene tax cuts for their super rich base was a smashing success.

If Congress wants a truthful name to attach to the budget being hammered out next week, I offer: "The 2011 US Banana Republic Budget Bill".