Via Laura Rozen an article in Ha’aretz: Netanyahu departs for U.S. in bid to increase pressure on Iran

Opposition leader and Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday will embark for the U.S. on a visit aimed at increasing financial sanctions against Iran to get it to drop its nuclear program.

During his visit, Netanyahu is slated to meet a New York State financial official, asking him to withdraw or freeze hundreds of millions of dollars the state pension funds have invested in Iran.

Netanyahu will then arrive in Washington where he will meet for talks on the Iranian issue with Vice President Dick Cheney, Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, and Republican Party presidential hopeful Fred Thompson.

An interesting group of visits.

“Bibi” Netanyahu believes that military force is the only real solution to any problem. He and Cheney are a matched set. I’m not exactly surprised by the candidates he chose to visit. Nothing he has to say will advance the cause of peace in the Middle East.

Culture Ghost forgot to celebrate his fourth blogiversary™ on the 14^th, and I forgot to mention it until now.

CNN is reporting: Bloomberg drops Republican affiliation

WASHINGTON (CNN) — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg changed his party affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated Tuesday, a move that will surely increase speculation he is considering an independent White House bid.

But Bloomberg, who has repeatedly denied he is planning a run, said in a statement his future plans haven’t changed.

He wasn’t much of a fit for the Repubs anyway, so if he is interested in even statewide office, he had to get out from under the mantle of the GOP. He’s a billionaire, so running as an independent isn’t out of the question.

Update Yellow Doggerel Democrat in comments:

So it’s Tom Ravenel
Dragging Rudy through hell,
Not the sort he likes sharing a fetter with.
Rudy knows it’s no joke
Because this kind of coke
Is not really the kind things go better with.

– SB the YDD

Via CBS an Associated Press report: Politician Charged With Coke Distribution

(AP) South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury for distribution of cocaine.

The indictments accuse Ravenel and another man of distributing less than 500 grams of cocaine starting in late 2005.

…

Thomas Ravenel is the state chairman for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

Ravenel is Rudy’s kind of guy, just like Bernie Kerik. It’s a problem when you’ve been a prosecutor, you meet all of these people and it’s not always easy to remember where. Maybe he needs index cards to keep the good guys and bad guys separate. There was less than half a kilo of Colombia’s major export involved, so he wasn’t a major player, but when you’re the state treasurer people get nervous.

I took my Mother to the airport this morning so she could visit her newest great grandchild and the brain trust that is TSA apparently confiscated her jello and chocolate pudding. They were the individual-sized containers in her lunch bag, and they took them.

As her plane was an hour late taking off and they have changed her reservations on the fly, I’m already contemplating having to arrange bail before this trip is over. She has lived through the Depression, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, and now she is being asked to put up with the Shrubbery’s stupidity. I’m waiting to hear that she has beaten someone to a pulp with her cane. A wonderful woman, but there is a limit to her patience.