<h level="4">Mo' Money</h> <a href="http://www.arabnews.com/">ArabNews</a> reports that at the end of November, the <a href="http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=10851">US Congress helps itself to hefty raise</a>. <bq>Congress does have a history of being generous to itself: In 1975, the annual congressional salary was $44,600. In 1990, it was $97,500. As of January 2002, that salary will jump to $157,105. Simply put, their salary has increased 48 percent in the last decade, and increased 13 percent since 1999, according to the Congress Disbursing Office?s Quarterly Report.</bq> I presume that's for the bang-up representatin' they've been doing for us in the last couple of months. <h level="4">Mo' Oil</h> Just to get a rise out of all of those who think that oil has nothing to do with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, here's a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011128-11.html">press release from the White House</a>. <bq>These facilities represent the culmination of years of effort. They are examples to the world that the United States, Russia, and Kazakhstan are cooperating to build prosperity and stability in this part of the world.</bq> <h level="4">Mo' Evildoers</h> Forgot to mention this, but, as expected, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,591892,00.html">Bush's</a> simplified rhetoric didn't go over as well with the U.N. as it does with a public more amenable to <i>simplified</i> issues. <bq>But to talk ... as though everyone needs to change except the United States, was both insulting and alarming. It is insulting because Mr Bush leads a party and a nation that until September 11 have been cavalier, to put it mildly, in its support for the UN, for multilateral agreements and even, in some perspectives, for the fight against terrorism. It was alarming because, beneath its apparent multilateralist shell, Mr Bush's speech was still conspicuously unresponsive to any agenda other than that of the US itself.</bq>