Three top journalists in three days have written that the US should stop propping up the Israel government — because it has no intention of negotiating peace with the Palestinians, which is probably reciprocated.

But more than that, these journalists are recommending that the US stop giving Israel $3 billion of military aid each year, the first time that recommendation has been made in print in the 17 years since Secretary of State James Baker was such an advocate.

Tom Friedman suggested the US “just get out of the picture … I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us.”

Joe Kein wrote the US “should start putting a hold on all economic and military aid to Israel … until the Netanyahu government comes to understand that Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and Palestine, and that if you actually want peace, you don’t build illegal settlement colonies in the Palestine capital.”

Glenn Greenwald asked in Is using aid to Israel as leverage becoming a mainstream idea? He states: the US “single-handedly enable Israeli behavior with our massive amounts of military aid, diplomatic protection, and weapons supplying, which means Israeli behavior is rationally perceived by much of the Muslim world as being one and the same as American behavior. Muslim anger towards Israel will inevitably translate into Muslim anger towards the U.S. for as long as we continue to flood Israel with aid and cover.

“For so long, it’s been an unchallengeable given that we are required to continue to lavish Israel with aid and diplomatic protection even if they do things that our own government believes (or at least claims to believe) is directly harming the United States. Perhaps Friedman’s implicit (if unintended) call for that to change — and Klein’s explicit call that it change — signals a long-overdue erosion of that taboo.”

This has been an excellent week for common sense.

The Daily Beast is reporting that US President Obama is set to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending a further 34,000 troops into the Black Hole.

If this proves true, at a time when most everything at home is falling apart, Obama is spending his nation’s energy on his fight with the Taliban and in doing so he continues the long and pathetic tradition of American presidents kicking ass abroad while ignoring withering conditions at home.

The timid Healthcare reforms explains why.

It is far easier to flex military muscle on foreign lands than it is to grapple with the impossible ideological divide on domestic soil.

But maybe this is a trial ballon. Maybe we can all still cling to his promise of Change we can believe in.

With abortion and gay marriage, the Catholic hierarchy is dancing on the head of a pin.

Vocal Catholics, stalwarts of their ultra-conservative tradition, fight rear guard actions as the army of the enlightened moves on.

With all the moral issues so prevalent to day — all the social inequities, all the globe-threatening travesties, all the human-debasing debacles — why fight your trench warfare over two cherry-picked ‘personal’ issues of so little consequence to the vast majority?

Poverty, north-south divide, slow destruction of the planet, rich vs poor, have vs have not — these are moral issues that affect great swaths of the planet’s population and about them we heard hardly a hierarchical peep from Catholics.

If political leadership lives in a ‘bubble,’ what can be said of these tone-deaf prelates who prattle on with their medieval mind-sets while the planet and society cries out for moral leadership?

In Time’s article, Powerhouse Priests Spar Over What It Means To Be Catholic, you discover why the pews are empty. Talk about a pyrrhic victory. Sure, abortion and gay marriage affront traditional Catholic tradition. We get that. Honest.

This Catholic pout is like when you’re reading a book you stop when you don’t understand a word. OK, you’ve missed something but do you need to cheat yourself of the rest of the story?

The Catholic church has become a laughable enclave of tired old white men who just can’t give up their red shoes.

Can anything come of the Copenhagen talks on climate change, the successor to the expiring Kyoto Conference?

No, says Time, not when the world’s only superpower is not taking a leadership role.

The magazine compares these talks to the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round of negotiations to increase global trade by reducing trade barriers between countries. Eight years later nothing has come from these negotiations, largely because the west is intent on protecting its own markets with trade subsidies that punish the developing world.

Same message this time. The countries that provide most of the pollution that causes global warming are loath to give up their ‘most favoured nation status.’

All they seem to be doing is inviting the developing countries into their big smog-filled tent to pretend to talk about doing something to address an issue for which they, themselves, are largely responsible.

But what should we expect? Many Western countries (Canada, US, for example) aren’t getting any leadership within their own borders, why would we expect any on the world stage?

How do you kick an issue like global warming under the rug? Same way you did it with Doha — just drag it out and party on.

Just as the rate of fatness has become more weighty in North America in recent years, so has the argument that fat people can lead healthy lives — just not slim lives.

No doubt there is solid evidence to prove this. Certainly there have been a number of books written and organizations formed to expressly push this point in order to de-stigmatize the over-weight in society.

But their message sounds a lot like the nay-sayers of global warming: experts over-whelmingly agree that the way we are headed is bad for the planet and we have to do something about it, or else. All the dissenters do is deflect and confuse the message and provide a hook for the recalcitrant to hand their hat.

Man-made inspired global warming is bad for the planet. Period. Yes, the negative affects can be kicked down the road for awhile but eventually, we’re going to pay for our bad behaviour.

It’s hard not to conclude that the same case can be made for the over-weight. Sure, you can profess that some fat people can be as healthy as the healthy slim, but experts over-whelmingly agree that the way the over-weight trajectory is headed is bad for society and we have to do something about it, or else.

This NY Times article, Heavier Americans Push Back on Health Debate does a good job of putting this dilemma into focus.

Domestic protection against foreign policy decision — from BAGnewsNote.

Thank God President Obama is taking his time making a decision on troop escalation in Afghanistan. It allows him the time to get it right. It’s allowing time to grasp a greater clarity of realities:

The increasing damage it is doing at home — not just one insane guy on a killing spree but a military installation and its nearby town doomed to depression, repeated across the country.

The increasing havoc it is causing abroad — “What have the Americans done in eight years?” asked Abdullah Wasay, 60, a pharmacist in Charikar, a market town about 25 miles north of Kabul, expressing a view typical of many here. “Americans are saying that with their planes they can see an egg 18 kilometers away, so why can’t they see the Taliban?”

The escalating costs of war — conservative say the US can’t afford healthcare reform but that annual price tag of $80 billion is a fraction of wars that are costing the US. So far, it’s almost $1 trillion — $700 billon in Iraq, $230 billion in Afghanistan and all this is borrowed money so has a daily interest payment attached to it, too.

The unsupported war — in a recent poll almost 60% of Americans said they were NOT in favour of the war in Afghanistan, the war that may soon have an escalation.

The reason for the war — to get al-qaeda? Apparently, there are less than a 100 in Afghanistan and anyway, the terrorist group doesn’t need a locale, it just needs an internet connection. And the Taliban? The Taliban poses no threat to Americans at home. There is no reason reason for this war, never mind continuing it.

Keeping his promise — he hasn’t delivered on most the vast majority of his campaign promises. Maybe there is still a chance for this one.

And to stop a lot of this — innocent Afghans dies in Nato Air strikes.

So, it’s good that Obama is taking his time making a vietnam-proportions decision. It might give him an opportunity to read up on his campaign literature — the reason people voted for him.

Take a year off before going to university, do something interesting or even menial but read and think and consider your options, that’s the message in this article Advice for the college-bound: Wait from the Washington Post.

Author Gwyeth T. Smith might also have added: ‘And save yourself the risk of taking a degree that you’re too young to realize you don’t want … or won’t get you anywhere.’

The gap-year is a great idea. Personally, I took 8 of them.

He comes off as wooden and manipulating as his reputation but his office continues sending out staged photos of Canada’s Prime Minister in the hopes that the feel-good pics will be picked up by newspapers and even blogs.

The Globe and Mail has a few of them with comment, but the one the sticks indelibly in the mind is the picture of him shaking hands with his 8 year-old-kid as he left him off at school.

But this image is a close second, not so much for the shot but for the skin-scrawling caption that accompanies the photo. You know he’d be dinning down on seal meat ever since Governor General Michaelle Jean was so widely-celebrated for her snack of seal heart. But this?

“The Prime Minister said, ‘I really enjoyed eating seal meat and look forward to having it again,’ ” an e-mail from a PMO spokesman informed reporters.

This visual pablum does little more than speak about a man who has the sensitivity and compassion of a Machiavelli.

Would you want to relax and have a beer with this man? No, he’d take a sip and be gone.

American Muslims are expecting blowback from the insane travesty in Fort Hood.

Photos like this will help to mitigate the rage.

Thanks from BAGnewsNote.