UN Security Council Meets On Palestine, But No Vote For At Least Weeks

By Kenneth R. Bazinet

Do not be fooled by today’s closed-door meeting at the United Nations Security Council: It will be a long slog before any votes or vetoes are cast in the Palestinian statehood issue.

The UN Security Council will not set up a committee to review Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s application for statehood (formally presented last Friday) until then end of this week, at the earliest.

So while the UN Security Council is meeting privately to discuss the future of Palestine, we are talking weeks, perhaps months, before a vote is taken, the CBC reports.

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Report: FEMA May Have Funds To Last Through Thursday

FEMA may have enough money to fund itself through Thursday, according to a report from the Associated Press.

The AP cites an aide for Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who says FEMA still has $114 million, enough to fund it beyond the Tuesday deadline lawmakers originally believed.

Currently, disaster relief has been at the center of disagreement between the Democratically controlled Senate and the GOP controlled House. Senate Democrats initially requested $6 billion aid, but the House would only allocate $3.65 billion coupled with offsets among DoE programs.

The Senate is expected to vote on a bill Monday evening that would allocate the $3.65 billion, but exclude the offsets.

Carville Stings Tea Party

Democratic strategist James Carville called out the Tea Party on Monday in an effort to raise some last-minute money for House Democrats.

In a fundraising memo released this morning, the “Ragin Cajun” called Tea Partiers “global-warming-denying, Social-Security-cutting, clean-air-hating, job-cutting, [and] Wall-Street-protecting.”

“That’s why I’m asking you to drop whatever you’re doing right now and support Democrats’ $1 Million Rapid Response Action Fund before the big FEC deadline hits,” Carville wrote, referring to the end of the current fiscal quarter on Friday.

Obama, Leading Republicans Take To The Web

President Obama and a trio of House Republicans are in California today to advance their jobs proposals across the social media spectrum.

Obama will be in Mountain View this afternoon for a 2:00 pm ET town hall event sponsored by the online professional networking site, LinkedIn. There, the president is expected to continue lobbying for his jobs bill, the American Jobs Act. Log on to whitehouse.gov at 2:00 pm ET for all the action.

Meanwhile, just six miles down the road in Palo Alto, House Republican leaders will participate in an online discussion hosted by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

In an interview with Politico’s Mike Allen, the so-called “Young Guns”  — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) — said the purpose of the event is to broadcast their message to a wide array of Americans, and to let them know that “Washington is listening.”

Tune into Facebook at 6:00 pm ET to watch the event.

House Republican Calls On Obama To Stand Against China's One Child Policy

By Mike Hothi

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) blasted the Obama administration Friday for indirectly aiding China’s one-child policy by continuing to fund the United Nations Population Fund, which he claims tolerates human rights abuses within China.

“[The Population Fund] are not part of the solution, they are enabling the problem,” Smith said during a press briefing with other Republican lawmakers as well as a Chinese activist who says she was coerced into following China’s controversial policy. “I believe that they and those in China who have committed these atrocities against women need to be held to account for their crimes against humanity.”

Smith added that the policy amounts to “state sponsored rape.”

During the previous administration, the White House denied federally allocated funds from reaching the Population Fund to protest China’s policy.