I’m surprised it’s that high, actually. It’s probably because I have a lot of friends, and I check several times a day. I almost never manually update my status, and the answers to most of the other questions were “no.”
By the way, vanilla friend requests from people I don’t know are generally ignored. If you want to be my Facebook friend, tell me who you are and why.
According to Die Welt, Venezuela has agreed to allow Iran to establish a military base manned by Iranian missile officers, soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Venezuelan missile officers. In addition, Iran has given permission for the missiles to be used in case of an “emergency”. In return, the agreement states that Venezuela can use these facilities for “national needs” – radically increasing the threat to neighbors like Colombia. The German daily claims that according to the agreement, Iranian Shahab 3 (range 1300-1500 km), Scud-B (285-330 km) and Scud-C (300, 500 and 700 km) will be deployed in the proposed base. It says that Iran also pledged to help Venezuela in rocket technology expertise, including intensive training of officers.
I would note that it would appropriate to think of the Senate design of NASA’s new (unneeded) rocket as being essentially a space transportation earmark for Utah (among other places). While it doesn’t explicitly steer the funds to that state, they will inevitably go there if NASA does exactly what Orrin Hatch demands — design a new heavy lifter that utilizes ATK solid boosters manufactured in that state. So it’s an excellent example of a disastrous transportation earmark.
I agree with the commenter here, it is absurd that any legislator should be allowed to vote after losing an election. I don’t understand why there should be such a long delay to seat the new Congress, or why they should be allowed a post-election session. I assume that this is a relic of the long travel times in the late eighteenth century, but there’s no excuse for it now. Perhaps we need a Constitutional amendment to fix this.