KING ABDULLAH: SLEEPLESS IN RIYADH

Oil prices, driven by ratcheting tension over the Iranian seizure of fifteen British sailors, bored through $66/barrel today closing at a 6 month high-- Adding to the upsurge in regional anxiety, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia chastised the American occupation as illegal imploring other Arab leaders to patch up political animosities or continue being dictated to by foreign powers like the US-- Are these comments just designed for Arab Leaguers and will tomorrow then beget business as usual or is there a rift developing between the Sunni Saudi Royalty and Lame Duck Bush??--

State Sec Condi Rice on Monday called on Arab Governments to"begin reaching out to Israel,"-- Not exactly the warmest of rejoinders from the Saudi King to the posturing Secretary but lest his pointed remarks missed their target he added point blank "It has become necessary to end the unjust blockade imposed on the Palestinian people as soon as possible so that the peace process can move in an atmosphere far from oppression and force."-- This sounds like the attempted 'Redirection' the Bush crew sought by swinging toward the Sunni side of the mayhem ledger in Iraq in order to lessen the Iranian influence among the Iraqi Shia, is not progressing as smoothly as planned--

Ann Coulter and Robert Kagan, mahogany-foxholed at the AEI, proclaim, as do many in mainstream media, undeniable success so far for Bush's Surge but Iraq's unceasing plethora of record setting car bombs last month proclaim something else entirely-- Now March's rate is on track and tempo to surpass February's record high bloodmark and the adaptability and persistence of these sectarian antagonists to continue expansion of their mayhem in the face of The Surge may be one reason the Saudi King feels confident enough to challenge Bush so publicly on the legality of his occupation-- Bush is not winning and cannot win and King Abdullah knows it-- Is Abdullah's plea for Arab unity a call to arms against the dictates of foreign occupation??-- Has Abdullah lost faith in the Bush's war policy??-- Does Abdullah think the Surge is succeeding??-- Reports from the Washington Post indicate Abdullah will cut and run from the state dinner the White House had planned in the King's honor sometime in April-- Lame Duck, anyone??--

That the Saudis themselves give aid and comfort to the Sunni insurgents is a given subject neither the administration nor the hometown media wish to breach to the general public or to the mal-informed demie majority in congress, but more Americans, by a long shot(no pun intended), have been killed in Iraq by the Saudi-aided Sunni insurgents than by the Iranian-aided Shiite killers-- A fact not too likely to be bandied about on 'Hardball' and certainly one not conducive to a fresh Sunni-American alliance, restoration of Baathist participation or victorious strategy-- 'There are no good options' has been the omnipresent shibboleth to the Realist realm of America's failing Foreign Policy but the word 'no' has not gained penetration into the inner sanctum of DC's omnipresent denial--

Seymour Hersh's article , 'The Redirection', paints the Saudi Kingdom as scared to death of Iran's sudden influential ascendancy into the great Middle Eastern Void created by the Neocon Shock and Awe and the utterly stupid dissolution of the Iraqi Army by Rummy's Boy Wonder Paul Bremer-- Iraq, as a country, has been murdered and Pandora herself must be keeping Abdullah sleepless in Riyadh-- Hersh described a Saudi/ American/ Israeli consort aiming at taking down Iran with massive aerial bombardment-- Uncertainty over who would fly the mission and pull its deadly trigger, considering the lack of political coin nabob Bush and slithery Olmert merit from low polls and lack of trust on each's home-front, might have gummed up the best laid plans of desperate men but the US Aircraft Carriers still continue to practice and maneuver in or near the Persian Gulf with one more carrier recently dispatched to join the others--

Fifteen sailors from Lame Duck Tony Blair's Royal British Empire managed to get themselves captured in disputed waters further roiling the region-- Blair upped the volume button on his professional outrage yesterday which only accentuated his ministerial weakness before replicating The Rose Garden and setting up camp-- One million dollars apiece and a covert state-of-the-art arms-for-hostages deal facilitated by clandestine repo campaign operators conjunct then wondrous ally Israel was the Ayatollah's ransom, yet Senor Reagan disavowed his own ban on negotiating with terrorists and then not so reluctantly paid it-- The hostages came home on Inauguration day and then it was Morning in America, again-- Five Iranians considered some kind of embassy personnel by Iran and captured inside Iraq and held still by the US merit potential bargaining chip status-- Latest word from Britain comes in concialtory tones seeking quick resolution to the problem a gambit Ahmadinejad did not immediately embrace--

The downward manipulation of oil prices last fall in vain effort to derail the demies from their electoral victory-by-default cost Ahmadinejad and his oil coffers a thinned out profit or two-- So expect this tempest to linger for a while barring, of course, a botched raid by Brit Commandos-- Turnabout may be fair play except that the immediate health of the American economy finds itself jeopardized by surging oil prices, surging corn prices, surging foreclosures, delinquencies and defaults plus downward spiraling housing sales, housing prices, housing starts and new housing permits to mention a just a handful of many convergent threats-- Waiting.......

GOLDILOCKS

Throughout most of 2006 as oil prices fluctuated wildly and gasoline prices rose steadily until manipulated downward at the ingress of Autumn in a vain bid to aid repo-men and their bid for re-election, vast majorities in the economic/financial punditry professed a flatulent notion that no matter how high the oil vector went the larger economy would be immune to damaging effects basically of any kind-- Apparently oblivious to the ridiculous canard that simply removing the volatile energy sector (and food) from CPI statistics in a dishonest effort would make the true inflationary impact of high energy prices seem.....well, less inflationary, economists from vaunted Academia and Wall Street sold out to the rosy scenario and began courting Goldilocks-- 'Let us pretend the negative repercussions of such simply don't apply' went the delusional credo-- Innocuous paeans extolling the mindless resilience of spendthrift consumers, who armed with cheap and easy credit continued to reserve space in the debtors dungeon for their own children, peppered the financial blather-sphere with phony optimism and forced denial--

However as 2006 approached its finality the delinquencies of sub-prime mortgage debt began like termites to make their presence felt-- Their numbers were too large to ignore but that didn't stop the Goldilockians from trying-- Chipping away at Wall Street's false paradigm until even the Fed had to finally acknowledge the problems in the sub-prime sectors-- How could so many sub-primers come a cropper at the same time??-- How could so many hit the default button at once??-- Certainly, since energy prices and their integral function in the economic life of nearly everyone on the planet had been surreptitiously extracted from the fundamentals of CPI measurements due to their 'volatility', the rising cost of fuel and heating oil couldn't be the culprits-- An extra $30 to $50 a week in added commuting costs shouldn't have any major effects on the ability of sub-primers to meet their monthly payments even in those areas where mortgage interest rates were reset and monthly payments nearly doubled, say the professionally addled optimists...... proponents of just another Big Lie--

Now as the sub-prime fiasco becomes evident to nearly all, the Denialists diligently create new fictions to obviate concern that the collapsing netherworld of lying deadbeat mortgage holders, who were used by crooked financier sharpies to enrich themselves ultimately at the expense of the entire financial system, will spread to the second tier of mortgage chicanery and thereby further infectious foreclosure eventually leading to a full blown insurgency of contagious bankruptcy-- Mortgage company insiders everywhere have been and continue to dump their own stocks onto a delirious market whose frightened minions continue to be greased by rising oil prices and military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf--

Each new tank of gas diminishes the dollars of every mortgage holder...... even the primers-- It is not as if even the A+ rated credit risks were not counseled by smooth-talking real-estate sweeties into buying bigger castle-taffy than they could actually afford even with their high salaried jobs-- Many millions more may have overbought, after all, rising home prices no sky could ever limit were bound to continue ad infinitum -- pure common sense to herd mentality at every class level-- The Banks were going to make you rich if only you would reach for the sky!!!!!!-- Who could resist such spiel frothing from the mouths of boomer salesmen-- Hell, even dime a dozen Biff Loman bought it--



Rampant foreclosures damage more than just the person losing his, perhaps, misguided dream of home ownership-- If all the foreclosures were congregated in the same neighborhoods perhaps the damage might be palliated or confined-- However lower-middle and average middle class neighborhoods are speckled with houses the troubled 'owners' were driven from by a foreclosure lenders knew would eventually arrive en masse-- These houses deteriorate in upkeep, lawns go to seed and weeds take over-- Graffitti may begin to appear--The unkempt look adds to neighborhood devaluation and prospective house buyers even of foreclosed properties begin to look elsewhere-- Prices fall and so too assessed valuation--

Property taxes on foreclosed units go uncollected and municipal coffers feel the effect immediately-- Education budgets suffer shortfalls as well as street repair crews and every other kind of city maintenance services-- Priority emergency services feel the same pinch and are forced to triage the area in support of those neighborhoods who pay the higher property taxes-- Squatters and even crackheads begin to occupy the foreclosures and before too long the area is enveloped in major blight-- In fact the speed at which this deterioration can take effect would surprise most observers-- Not to worry it can't spread upward goes Wall Street's pablum-- Business investment as well as big ticket orders grew much less than experts expected in February and Fed chief Bernanke feigns the inability to see any connection to the sub-prime troubles, the oil price crises, the vain hope of dumbing down the dollar and faltering consumer demand for credit-- There are no consequences for cheating!!!-- There are no consequences for lying!!--The down cycle has been abolished!!-- We are in a new business paradigm!!!!! ......... hardly!!-- Who said that??__


The CPI fiction will obviously continue as the DC Government literally cannot afford to acknowledge the real cost of living-- The phantasmal solution to foreign oil addiction in the minds of those incapable of reading the true scale of the problem is now for bettor and worse corn-based ethanol-- Speculators have grabbed this tail of sudsidies by the dog and it now seems almost certain the remaining topsoil across the our once vaunted Breadbasket in the midwest will be burned in the gas tanks of suburban SUVs--

The price of corn rockets skyward never mind that it is one of, if not, the most expensive of all grains to raise with regard to energy/oil inputs-- Voracious water and nitrogen feeder as well as a highly skilled soil depleter-- The race is on for new acreage to grow corn and take advantage of the rising in price, now double that of two years past-- Food costs can only follow the upward price trend but not to worry there either, since the CPI doesn't include food in its fictional measurement so the inflationary effect will be minimal.....in faux theory only!!-- The cost of raising the energy-intensive corn, defending it against pests, harvesting it, transporting it to market, then to the ethanol plants and then back to the ethanol stations to be pumped into your SUV tanks guarantee way beyond reasonable doubt that the ethanol outcome to this meandering mega-energy process will be anything but inexpensive-- Corn could become too expensive to process-- As food prices and energy prices rise and housing payment resets rise into falling house prices only an idiot, or maybe a ringleader from a Federal Reserve Circus that considers as part of GDP all the treasure(almost $10billion/month) being pumped down the rathole, Shock and Awe fashioned out of Iraq, would suggest that the 'larger economy', whatever that is, could avoid the hostility of such destructive side-effects--

There is a convergence of negative forces merging toward a financial storm of a magnitude higher than any of DC's leaders can summon the courage to face-- Denial is currently the coin of the realm--Throw the gigantic debt/deficit/trade-imbalance, the extreme paucity of American Savings, and the defeat in Iraq into this mix of rising food and oil prices and falling housing prices and it becomes a rather drastic firestorm-- Who knows what the demies are currently hoping to accomplish by their transparent charades while the repos seem intent on mere political survival(Live to be bribed another day!)-- Neither side has the best interests of our country at heart-- Foreclosures will number in the millions, and living arrangements for most all of us are about to confront a very new paradigm-- Not one major world oil producer increased its oil production while country after country, some with gigantic populations increased their demand for oil-- This formula does NOT compute !!!--

The inexpensive oil that fueled indulgent affluence for almost a century and bred such dreams that single individuals could or even should attain ownership of an entire house, with multiple cars, boats and whatnot is clearly gone-- Can we maintain our mobility and eat it too???--Can you spell trainwreck!!!!?-- ....... G.... O.... L.... D.... I.... L.... O.... C.... K.... S.......... NOT!!!!

THE CONVERSATION: 1984 & BIG SISTER NIXON

The new "1984" rendition portrays Hillary cunningly morphed into a less than telegenic, baby-boomers' Big Sister Nixon, droning cold empty platitudes about 'ideas' and 'conversations' to row upon row of her bench-seated, moronic, addled subjects all clothed in monotonous penal grey listening in various states of open-mouthed stupefaction until a sledgehammer-wielding female jogger being chased by giant gestapo-like super-Gothic-goons liberates the dust-coated drudges by smashing the over-sized iconic image with the heroine-hurled peen-- White light intense and mystical fills the screen until fade-out ends the political ad with a small leaf attached to a colorful capital O obviously supporting Obama while evoking the original Apple computer logo--

The blatherworld was agog with buzz from the phony to the ecliptic as inveterate detectives of every stripe sought solution to the mega-mystery-- Would the culprit be a has-been-esque Joe Klein or viperish repo-men in less than swift boats??-- Pundits proud of their tech-savvy pounced all over each other to be first in line to pronounce the old, stale, staid broadcast media ad formats DOA-- This revolutionary parody instantaneously altered campaign tactics everywhere for all time went the prattle and who knows maybe it has-- Vested interests in the corporate media echelons comfortably office-ed atop the wide world's skyscrapers cringe at the thought of important ground breaking political ads launched into the cyber-sphere free of charge!!!-- A world may be leaving them behind kind of fear that ripples up the spine sending wild fury to frolic like pin-balls inside atrophied over-comfortable brains-- Free radicals, almost,.......... sort of---

Most of the campaign funds raised by the grasping political candidates, who grovel over and over the rubber-chicken circuits, the boring stifling money-hunts called 'teas' or the perpetual glad-handing $1000 photo-op ordeals of modern campaigns, not to mention puckering up to the extended palm of ever-present AIPAC, enriches coporporate media coffers venue-ed by television advertising-- The candidates' payoff comes once they have established their fund-raiser, cash-cow bona fides to the satisfaction of corporate parameters, whose time-tested techniques enable these obsequious office hunters with state of the art Madison Avenue truth-stretching, bio-buffing, digital enhancing no-questions-asked blarney-- No one practiced this ambitious degeneration more skillfully, more smilingly or more ruthlessly than Big Sister Nixon's, of late, sometimes husband, Bill--

If this propagandistic juggernaut attempting to substitute perpetual campaign corruption for democracy and actual governing, the sorry current state of which is so damningly obvious, gets needled by freedom's practitioners at YouTube, so expletively-deleted what????-- Whine on!!!!--If the concerned citizen bloggers, pejoratively categorized as profane, vitriolic, acidic and even idealistic in the extreme at every opportunity by softened and nervous Broder-like insiders, continue to pilfer readership from the dwindling circulation of failing long-established print media, so expletively- deleted what???-- Whine on!!!!!-- The Baby Boomers' "old road is rapidly fading", to borrow from a once cherished boomer anthem-- Something is happening here and they don't know what it is, or, fearful of the admission, do they??-- The kindling of revolution may not be televised but the match may be cyber-struck by those still-decent American citizens--

Ariana Huffington has ferreted out the 'Hillary 1984' conjurer-- Not a repo-boater nor an al Qaeda symp nor an anonymous Rodham machine insider with ulterior motives-- Phillip de Vellis admitted to the dastardly deed done without Obama bin's input or anyone else's in a self penned blog at the Huff. Post today-- Incidentally, though, he did reportedly resign his position at Blue State Digital, a company created by members of............... Howard Dean's Internet Team????-- Oooooh!! The plot thickens.....-- Mr. deVellis did aver, "This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last. The game has changed." Maybe it has but expectations kept to a minimum are those best managed when challenged by extant reality--

The 1984 Ad is damaging to the Mrs. Clinton machine not because Hillary kind of does her best to sometimes embody the ambitious power-hungry iconography of the top-down crypto-fascist but the whole episode shows her tech-savvy not just slightly behind the curve...... not at all unlike her coldly-scheming event-lagging plan for Iraq-- In fact, her so-called tech-savvy platitudes at campaign hustings come across as matronizing attempts to co-opt geekish voters through pandering insincerity-- She was beaten to the punch by '1984' and immediate attempts to reply at YouTube appeared, with barely concealed anger, amateurish and hackneyed if not completely self absorbed--

The more face-time Hillary receives on YouTube whether by her own megalomaniacal devices or by Obama bin surrogates or by independent politicos or the not so swift repo-boaters, the more her candidacy looks like the Spotted Owl-- Over-exposure lends itself to mockery and if the mockery reveals a thin-skinned or an imperious response behind the political facade, if the smiles betray even a hint of dis-ingenuousness, if an unwillingness to admit mistakes surfaces publicly, or if genuine humor fails them, credibility issues trouble their endeavors and they may seem doggedly incessant--

While the flesh-pressing fund-raising shake-downs last week in El A were especially fruitful for her old-hat status-quo bid, her campaign flaks and hacks find themselves in the unenviable position of having to constantly react to new events which seem to catch them by surprise-- Supporters from the demie-wing of Washington's War Party once believed to be firmly in her pocket are suddenly defecting, some with unmitigated invective--

Mortified by Maureen Dowd's publication of Media Mogul David Geffen's financial support for Obama which took second stage to his searing castigation of co-presidents Hillary and Bill's facile and repetitious penchant for outright lying-- This from the magisterial New York Times' columnist whose readership's organ endorsed Hillary's senatorial bid seemingly without reservation knowing full well she would opt to go AWOL from those senatorial obligations and seek the presidency full-time........... a full two years in advance of 08's election day--

Thirty years of active and, to a large extent, successful feminism is riding on Hillary and her long-in-the-tooth sojourn through the political arena-- Her ascension to the status of presidential candidate is plainly not enough-- In order to validate the multilateral efforts of millions of women to advance feminist theology over the last thirty years, the iconographic Hillary must win!!............ even if those voting hold little affection if any for her real self-- Chinks, though, have begun to appear in her political armor-- Watch her 'evil-men' speech again.....and then again-- Victory, even though more and more improbable, will not, however, assuage her pain nor vindicate her means-- She is not the beginning but the culmination of the feminist era--

Re-doubling efforts after forgetting the aim is common to all fanatics which is one reason the 1984 ad resonated so Hillary, ......as it would have Bush-- The insider tales of ruthless shakedowns along the fundraising, phony photo-op-ing thirty-year climb are legion-- Masters of the 24-hour commitment, in this they are far from being alone, nor are they the first, but they are certainly among the best even if bragging rights are off limits-- Ambitious above all else, Theodore Dreiser could have penned her final act--

NEW WORLD ORDER: ALMOST, SORT OF

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi kowtowed to Israeli wishes and stripped any attempt to limit George Bush's authority to bomb Iran from a major military spending bill-- Bugling her retreat as if it would enhance bungling demie efforts to confront the administration on Iraq-- Fundraising demie presidential candidates feted recently by Aipac on special visits signaled to the whole party that they were going to hitch their political star to the Israeli ship and ride it right down to the bottom if necessary-- If the Israelis want Iran carpet bombed, so be it went the groveling!!-- There would be no challenges to the obviously failing orthodox in America's Foreign Policy even if utter and acute disaster be the outcome of the US' unholy alliance with this middle eastern pariah-- House demies buckled to the Aipac pressure and this bitter glaring failure will mark their souls--

What are we up to now, about 17 attempts for non-binding resolution opposing a Surge that actually began weeks ago-- If the tragedy in Iraq, millions of ordinary people thrust into an hellacious refugee nightmare consequential to the US invasion, were it not so sorrowful, the Abbot and Costello demie circus now passing itself off as a political party would be laughingly hysterical-- This feeble ineffectuality is not being lost on the American people-- In the coffee shops across the country an atmosphere of anxiety deepens denial's contagion-- Americans see the proliferation of prosthetic devices coming home to roost right there on main street-- Americans see that the Government can't take care of its own wounded soldiers and that resonates disgust everywhere-- Americans see the signs of foreclosures widely peppering their neighborhoods up and down both coasts and spreading tentacles into the Midwest and the South-- Americans see the government's engineers admittedly and knowingly sending defective pumps to aid New Orleans in shoring up endangered levees-- Americans see the value of the dollar diminishing rapidly with each new tank of gas-- Triumph is not the order of the day--

And triumph today the demies once again....... did not-- Repo leader McConnell once again bested the hapless Harry Reed-- Repetition of failure ala Bush/Cheney......is there something in water in DC??-- The continuing saga of non-binding non resolute charades is the broken record on the eternal turntable of denial-- Iraq is beyond their control and Iran is off limits now as an issue with the veto threat of Bush and the campaign financial threat of AIPAC hanging over the demies like the proverbial sword of Damocles-- This leaves the frustrated demies rather threadbare on issues worthy of pursuit-- Oh now it appears they have a new word.........not resolution but resignation......not their own, but someone else's, anybody's-- Not just resignation but the call for resignation and the political possibilities the amplification of such call might engender in terms of sympathy-- Hey, even Harry gets it!!!--

Now the Hillary Clinton front page plan for Iraq in today's magisterial New York Times offered a couple of interesting quotes detailing why exhausted, overstretched American Troops would be staying in Iraq even after she ends the war-- Currently, that Iraq is fait accompli a failing state appears not to have gained any traction in her middle eastern paradigm-- If parts of Iraq turn into a failed state "that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and AlQaeda," she says, oblivious to the simple fact that Al Qaeda is not in Iraq because Iraq is failing but because American Troops are there and as for the insurgents, there weren't any....... before Shock and Awe showed up--

Now to the heart of the matter of why she would keep the troops there--" It is right in the heart of the oil region," she said, "It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel's interests." Oil and Israel, there it is!!-- That Hillary is and has been a lapdog for Israeli interests is inarguable, and certainly there is no reason to dispute the obvious that oil is unquestionably of vital interest to the US-- So much so that in the aftermath of Shock and Awe that outside of the airport, the oil ministry held the singular honor of being the only building defended by US arms-- During Israel's insane aerial war against Lebanon last summer Hillary claimed the soldier sons of Israel are all sons of America now-- Israeli and American interests are now synonomous in Hillary's mind..... a position identical to George Bush-- Such an overt alliance forfeits the ability to act as an honest broker for peace and stability in the region--

Hillary wants the troops out of the urban warfare but indeed not out of Iraq yet here the viceroy hedges a bit, “But what we can do (italics mine) is to almost take a line sort of north of — between Baghdad and Kirkuk, and basically put our troops into that region,"-- Almost???......... Sort of????-- Is this not just a little on the side of half-baked??-- Up near Kirkuk is where the Kurds live-- They call it Kurdistan even when no one else does and they have been rather quiet during the largely Sunni insurgency against American troops-- They quickly cleansed their territory of non-desirables while the US pulled down Saddam's statue in front of 300 Baghdad bystanders-- Now they wait for the inevitable challenge to their proclaimed autonomy--

In this northern region there are large fields of oil to which the Kurds, in payback for Saddam's sins against them, have virtually laid deed claim-- Recently the general tribes of this Kurdistan got wind of some oil bill, stalled, again, in the Iraqi Parliament, that would divest their oil reserves of Kurdish ownership and give its title to foreign oil companies making those Kurdish tribals none too pleased by this upsetting revelation--Now the strategists of real politik would likely wager dollars to dimes the Kurds would contest violently not to mention skillfully and asymmetrically anyone attempting such a hostile takeover-- The main reason, in the first place, the Kurds have been so placid during the mayhem in central Iraq has been their unchallenged claim to this oil-- The map lined borders of the old Iraq are no longer agreed upon by all parties but Hillary's new line would send exhausted American young men and women into this waiting cauldron still within reach of Al Qaeda-- almost............ sort of!!!

As to the ongoing sectarian slaughter Hillary would delegate Americans to bystander status while the Sunni and the Shia continue to hammer and tong each other in the arts of murder-- “That may be inevitable,” she said. “And it certainly may be (if it may be, it cannot certainly be...mine) the only way to concentrate the attention of the parties.” American neglect of the situation, turning a blind eye to continuing sectarian cleansing has been boots on the ground fact for years, would somehow, at least in Hillary's mind, induce the Shia and Sunni warring zealots' obedience to the US??-- The Iraqi Security Forces are the most prolific death squads and ordinary Iraqis have given testament to this for years to anybody willing to listen-- Hillary may be leading in the demie primary polls but she still trails the real time events in Iraq-- Does this presidential contender believe the attention of these warring sects is lacking concentration-- Religious blood feuds for the unitiated have a way of excelling their focal points-- Wake Up, Mrs. Clinton!!!

They are just not listening to George, Hillary or the ineptitude of the demies-- And therein lies the frustration of the US and its unrecognized hubris-- People that should have kowtowed haven't-- While Hillary is lost in her potential power and messianic fantasia, "So it will be up to me to try to figure out how to protect those national security interests", Poor George put his..... hubris, that is, not national security interests,..... unwittingly on display across Latin America this week--Only the complicit media could spin positive this embarrassing sojourn not only through unquantifiably large anti-Washington DC protests but into an almost.....well, sort of,..... venture into irrelevancy as the newly elected rightist President of Mexico Senor Calderon felt compelled to mention the Lame Duck status of Mister Bush for all the world to hear and then compounded Bush's political weakness by pointedly refusing to jump on some faux bandwagon(coalition-of-the-mythic-willing) Bush trotted out to gain vague support against the rapid ascendance of the left throughout Latin America-- Talk about your Daddy's New World Order!!!!--Living on borrowed time and money, this American president has ......no!! ..........Foreign Policy-- ...........................Good Day!!!--

THE SURGE: MORTGAGE DEFAULT

Who is going to buy the houses being vacated by current record breaking rates of foreclosure??-- A blizzard of headlines delineating the rising crisis in the sub-prime mortgage market cast a wide net of massive anxiety across the media-sphere's morning editions and the weekend editions as well-- Waking up to the distinct if not tangible possibility of major cataclysm not only in the sub-prime arena but the larger economy as well is not a pleasant prospect but the smell of acute fear emanating from mainstream investors, lenders and ubiquitous Wall Street Bankers and Housing Market insiders in the form of hedged/camouflaged optimism spells unmistakable trouble-- Tuesday's Dow dropped nearly 250 points-- The reason given....sub-prime default --

What will a rising tide of default-- a surge, if you will-- do to all boats??-- Sorry, mocking the canard of a shallow and pandering cliche overused by toadying economic and financial pundits everywhere to defend the moral vagaries of reckless greed is probably cold comfort for those forced to watch their dreams run aground-- Entire neighborhoods in some regions are caving in to foreclosure-- The Mortgage Bankers Association sound more alarms when delinquency rate in the top prime-loan category reached its highest level in four years running at a clip of 2.5% for payments at least 30 days late-- Gasoline, technically not categorized as a flammable but rather as an explosive, suddenly priced at $3/gal adds fuel(pun intended) to the downward spiral--Retail sales in February barely climbed off the schneid to rise1/10th of a percent with sales of gasoline and autos included-- Even with volatile oil prices tumbling back into the $58/barrel region gasoline prices continue their upward surge--Whose monthly commuting expenses just dropped low enough to consider buying a new shirt much less a new housing upgrade??--

Once so cavalierly unnecessary in the irrational exuberance of alternative/experimental sub-prime loans and their relative ilk the virtues of which were once extolled by none other than Mr. Greenspan from his astute table at the helm of the Federal Reserve, income verification like closing the barn after the horse turns up missing, is now suddenly in spellbinding vogue-- If the sub-prime homeowner defaults he cannot get another loan-- not even if he claims monthly income of fifteen grand from his job as a parking valet-- to buy a second tier home-- Nooses as well as belts are tightening across the board -- Goldman Sachs the worlds largest mortgage securities firm by market value lost stock value Tuesday even after reporting 34% uptick in profits

Bubble speculators who profited quite handsomely during the housing price escalation-- surge if you will-- dump thousands of deposits as well as the multiple luxury houses they intended to purchase onto a market already leadening under the weight of rampant foreclosure -- The inventory of available houses has been defined as having a half-life of anywhere from 6 to 9 months-- Sub-primers cannot qualify for new purchase thereby preventing the second tier house-owner from selling his house in order to buy an available upgrade which then deprives a third tier house-owner of a buyer that would allow him to upgrade and so on up the food chain-- This is not a sellers' market, neither is it a buyers' market --A rising tide of default can indeed lift all boats into the shallows of despair-- It could easily become a squatters' market-- The potential economic impact (The market for mortgage backed securities is larger than the US Bond market) of this unraveling is as absolutely dramatic as the surprising shock accorded observers overwhelmed by the apparent speed of it--

How to instantaneously re-flate falling prices in time for Spring home sale season baffles with false hope even the best of all the major players-- Warnings unheeded for too long reap the proverbial feast of consequences-- Downgraded mortgage securities could lead a stampede for the exits on Wall Street while failure to downgrade deserving mortgages opens the possibilities of fraud-- Disintegration, it hardly needs to be mentioned, always occurs when integrity is loosed of its moorings-- In between damned if you do and damned if you don't; and in between a rock and a hard place is a fleeting moment of paralytic splendor and mental peace-- a stop-frame that cannot last-- Decisions will have to be made despite their difficulty-- Faking it is not an option-- Miraculous intercession will not avail itself--As D.R. Horton CEO Don Tomnitz bluntly stated to a Citigroup conference eager to hear his assessment of the luxury home business, “2007 is going to suck.”

Still IED's from angry home owners foreclosed upon have yet to surge in San Diego-- It could easily be worse-- It could be Iraq, but before that....The Dollar............

NO BALLS; TWO STRIKES: FALL GUYS

The frank admission that The FBI broke the law by violating the Patriot Act brought damage control flacks out of their slumber-- Outrage?-- Who really cares???-- Lawbreaker in Chief has made it more than habit to sign new legislation into law only to absolve himself from the jurisdiction of those laws while the outraged and aghast demie lawmakers mutter impotently-- Mister Bush had the feigned audacity to pledge swift action to clean up the new mess at the beleaguered agency insistently giving a vote of confidence to Hooverian Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Alberto Butch Gonzales who promised the mistake makers a tolerance free zone and "ordered the FBI and the department to restore accountability."--To whom????--Duck and Cover!!!!-- Obviously that means more US Attorneys will be summarily fired as well as a few more wounded Platoon Sergeants over at Walter Reed-- The echoes of this Saturday Morning Massacre muster little but spin in DC but reverberate through the pre-revolutionary political climate beginning to stir in the heartland--

Here comes demie Harry Bulldog Reid stepping back into the batter's box with a count of 'no balls! and two strikes' and the bases empty-- He whispers at the umpire, "It's about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics," but when the Umpire inquires of Reed his vote on the war Harry requests another time-out pleading for a lighter bat-- As if the dual US/Israeli citizen Scooter Boy Libby's recent conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges somehow exonerates the votes of those demies in the War Party-- The Umpire suggests the resin bag or some pine tar might help him get a grip--

Prosecutor Fitzgerald's reticence to indict either Big Boy Darth Cheney or little boy George Decider is an explicit challenge to the US Congress to perform its responsibilities, something not even within earshot of nor amenable to either party-- The courageous Fitzgerald stepped up long ago allowing both Bush and Cheney to go oathless, testifying without the legal burden of raising their right hand and swearing on the Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but...... Obviously, the President needed a coach's help that day but NOW Reed can't find the resin bag and the big lumber intimidates him into further delay while culprit Rove, having mysteriously bulked-up in the off-season, it seems, and having miraculously escaped an earlier indictment for his role in the Plame Affair now attempts to regain his once formidable grip in the White House-- It is quite likely the truth about the Plame Affair will never come to light but at least we know where the demies' pine-tar is hidden--

All of which, of course, begs the question as to why a reported (Jason Leopold truthout.org) sealed indictment never made it all the way to Rove's office and why Scooter Boy complained to his Overlord that Rove's smear-men were trying to set him, Libby, up, to make him take the fall, a complaint that triggered The Prez quote later lined-through in Cheney's evidentiary notes-- Rove himself garnered at least some aspect of grace from Fitzgerald who allowed Rove a self-initiated second and third attempt at testifying before the grand jury within the same time frame as the mysterious disappearance of the reported sealed-indictment-- No wonder the Vice-president explodes so vehemently and so frustratedly at the press of late-- Iraq and his once impassioned drive toward world triumph is coming apart and from his bunker of denial he now witnesses his Boy Friday Scooter cornered by fate into taking the fall for Mr Cheney, himself, and Mr Bush and Mr Rove and the ragged remnants of moral clarity-- Obviously, an indictment of Rove, whom Bush has trouble functioning without, would have brought the entire White House down, further aggravating the undoing of Shock and Awe as well as markets and alliances across the full face of the globe--

Cheer up, Scooter!!!-- Your Waterloo occurred inside the mahogany foxholes of marbled air-conditioned DC and not in the blinding dust and searing heat of an Iraq gone rabid-- A shrieking mayhem your lies enabled, facilitated and promoted where so far 3500 American men and women in life's prime have already taken their ultimate fall-- More tens of thousands of servicemen and service women wounded in this hideous nightmare, many of whom maimed for life are shuffled into and out of derelict Hospital facilities plagued with cockroach infestations and free roaming vermin--Certainly actions on your part succeeded in silencing and marginalizing patriotic opponents whose valiant integrity challenged the fraudulent intel of your Project for A New American Century which centered on violent upheaval in the Middle East-- Those actions deserve to be pondered and reflected upon from your room (it can't be referred to as a cell) located inside the dormitory not a cell-block) of your Federal Prison should your conviction and sentencing be carried out before the speculative Pardon allows your escape-- Look on the bright side-- You can practice your backhand on the Michael Milken Memorial tennis courts or play backgammon over a mint-julep with Duke Cunningham and Black Jack Abramoff-- We are supposed to pity you????

HONOR: WALTER REED???

So the United States Army is now scrambling to clean up Walter Reed Hospital and hide the blemish to its marred honor-- Bush is angry, so too is Gates and the entire US Congress professes momentary political outrage but it all seems to stem more from the besmirched public relations aspect of the sordid mess than the acute moral and mission failure of this wrenching ....... and tenured!!........disorder--

Make no mistake, this medical miscarriage belongs to both the White House and the US Congress-- The entire Government reeks of ignoble dereliction-- The decay of this institution(The Hospital) and its downward spiral into decrepitude happened on everybody's watch-- The majority of demies voted in favor of this Iraq War travesty now playing out at the once hallowed Army Hospital in shadows proximate Capital Hill and the White House-- Not once have the demies okay-ed Bush's huge requests for more war dough with specific prerequisites to pump up medical benefits for the wounded and the maimed-- Why???-- Too busy fundraising??-- Ubiquitous photo-op hopping politicians visiting the hospital to attend to 'the wounded', thereby buffing their bona fides and polishing campaign images, came and went for years without so much as a whimper of protest about the cock-roach infestations or the vermin running roughshod in the urine scented halls--

Tales of sordid conditions at the nation's Veteran Hospitals have circulated for an agony of years as benefits to the Hospitals and the Veterans themselves have been continuously scissored with nary any effective protest-- Money($2mil) was appropriated and set aside for a fictional victory parade should some miraculous intercession alter the course of the faltering war while veteran benefits, victim to fecund ingratitude, lost their political loyalty and urgency-- The magisterial New York Times who once fawningly lionized the gallant and gleaming Def Sec Rumsfeld at his deadly lectern now venomously excoriates him and a wider shade of blameworthy de-functionaries-- Excepting, of course, their own complicity in cheerleading the run-up to this mega-failed war and the Times ignores the fact that its own intrepid reporters and stalwart editors failed to ferret out the shameful multi-year run of the Walter Reed story and other beggared veteran hospitals on their own-- The Times also gives a pass to the pathetic ineptitude of the MIA-demies sidelined by paralytic fear, minority status and their unwillingness to endure the taunts of Bully Rove-- Rove's accusations that the demies didn't support the troops sent shudders and tremors through demie aspirations for re-election and cowed them into........well,..... not speaking up in favor of the volunteer troops-- Extremely few if any of the anti-Iraq War demies made this an issue in their campaigns-- The information was open-source and available--

The mere fact of volunteering for the most dangerous thankless job there is, for some disreputably insensitive reason, severs them from the benefits and concern accorded regular American citizens by both congressional stipulation and cultural ethos-- Nearly nobody went to bat for these young men and women from the inception of this hideously stupid and criminally naive attempt to........ 'rule the world'-- Ordered into battle under-armored, under-manned, under-missioned and under-trained for the tasks they inherited after the occupation cost Rumsfeld and his neocon architects some political status in the media but our volunteer soldiers bore the brunt of the real carnage and continue to do so-- For the most part, the only people in the corner of these kids has been the larger non-commissioned military family of those who have gone before and their immediate families whom the media treats for the most part as invisible non-entities from some vagabond culture not suburban-rooted enough to be real Americans--

The flag draped caskets of their voluntary sacrifices met with the abject disdain of media censorship on their return homeward--The television media caved in completely to the DoD Rumsfeld request/order not to televise returning coffins--The American volunteer soldiers wasted on the battlefront were never honored by the nightly news-- Many courageous and gutsy reporters volunteered for the most dangerous of front line duty and some met the ultimate fate but their deaths received meritorious obituaries across the full gamut of mediasphere-- Those wounded or maimed did not get shuffled out to Building 18 in mold riddled squalor--

No wonder Neocon youth made a pointed effort NOT to put any of their skin in this game, 'The most decisive Ideological Struggle of Our Century'-- The greatest Conflict in the History of Civilization, the grandiose canard of Neocon hubris, merited little if any real patriotism from the privileged sector in our society-- Yeah sure, they might have pricked themselves on occasion sticking the flag pins into their lapels-- Not exactly the terrain on which purple hearts multiply but it is highly doubtful they received their tetanus shots at Walter Reed-- The US Government failed to live up to its promises in reconstructing Iraq and now its failure to live up to its promises made to the all-volunteer Army reverberates across the political spectrum-- As usual everyone is looking for someone else to blame-- A day late and a three dollar bill shy, are the indulgent congressional investigations looking for real solutions or just more limelight???--