Over a beer earlier this week with a Republican Senator, I couldn't help but asking how he was doing.  Had the GOP retained its majority, he would have been the chairman of one of the Senate's most powerful committees.  Starting next month, he would be just another minority schmuck.

"Sure, it's a disappointment," he said.  "It's the dream of your life for a guy like me.  So I have a choice.  I can be bitter - or I can have fun.  I choose fun."

I frowned.  "How are you going to have fun?" I asked skeptically.

He smiled.  "Come on, Jack, you know how the Senate works.  It's not like the House, where the minority is lower than dirt, and treated like subhuman Moslem Dhimmis.  Harry (Harry Reid, incoming Senate Majority Leader) has no majority at all.  Hell, it's 51-49, with the 51^st being Joe Lieberman and we've got Cheney as a tie-breaker.  We can screw them any time we want and Harry knows it."

Something extraordinary has happened.
 
On August 31, PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told an audience of Fatah members that Egypt had offered to give - give, as in cede sovereignty to - the PA some 1,600 square kilometers (625 square miles) of land in Sinai adjacent to Gaza, thus quintupling the size of the Gaza Strip. Egypt even offered to allow all the so-called "Palestinian refugees" to settle in the expanded Gaza Strip.
 
Then Abbas told his Fatah followers that he rejected the Egyptian offer.

On Monday (9/08), Israeli Army Radio substantiated Abbas's claim.
 
According to Army Radio, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi proposed that the Palestinians establish their state in the expanded Gaza Strip.
 
In his speech to Fatah members, Abbas said, "They [the Egyptians] are prepared to receive all the refugees, [and are saying] ‘Let's end the refugee story.'" "But," he insisted, "It's illogical for the problem to be solved at Egypt's expense. We won't have it."
 
In other words, Sisi offered Abbas a way to end the Palestinians' suffering and grant them political independence. And Abbas said, "No, forget statehood. Let my people suffer."

Three years ago (November 2003) in The Chinese Christian Crusades, I told you about the program of Chinese Christians to evangelize the world's Moslems.

The program is called Back to Jerusalem  -- referring to the lands between China and Jerusalem (Central Asia and the Middle East) which are overwhelmingly Moslem.  Getting back to Jerusalem and the birthplace of Christianity means Chinese missionaries in these lands preaching the Gospel and saving Moslem souls for Christ.

Now the largest Christian movement in Africa has decided to do the same. 

From the other direction:  across the Moslem lands of North Africa and into Saudi Arabia itself.  The Saudis are about to find themselves inside an African-Chinese Christian sandwich.

Powerful investors across the world have woken up to the possibility that Scotland may vote to break up the United Kingdom next week (9/18), with some already preparing defensive action that risks a potentially dangerous flight from sterling and Britain's bond market.

Japan's biggest bank, Nomura, has advised clients to slash financial exposure to the UK and brace for a possible collapse of the pound after polls showed the independence campaign running neck and neck, warning that the separation of England and Scotland after more than 300 years would be a "cataclysmic shock."

Stephen Jen, head of SLJ Macro Partners and a Chinese-speaker from Taiwan, said Asian investors are flabbergasted by the sight of an ancient and successful union tearing itself apart for no obvious reason. "It is totally bizarre. They simply don't understand it, and nor do I. Until a week and half ago everybody thought there was a zero probability of Scotland voting Yes," he said.

"We have always assumed the United Kingdom would stay united, but now everything we thought about the UK has suddenly been tested, and will have to be repriced."

Simon Derrick, from Bank of New York Mellon, said the UK is leveraged to global financial cycle and has become a magnet for the "carry trade", sucking in funds from Japan, the Middle East and other regions searching for yield.

Mr. Derrick said a 15% plunge in sterling is "quite conservative" given the dangers of a messy divorce. "We think the high $1.40s against the dollar is entirely feasible. People always underestimate how far sterling can fall when the tide turns," he said.