Saturday, December 29, 2007

Bush In Mouth Disease

Aren't you proud to call this man the President of the United States? Watch this and you will realize why he is a worldwide joke.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Bhutto Assassinated

The world just became a whole lot more dangerous.
Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday outside a large gathering of her supporters where a suicide bomber also killed at least 14, doctors and a spokesman for her party said.

While Bhutto appeared to have died from bullet wounds, it was not immediately clear if she was shot or if her wounds were caused by bomb shrapnel.

President Pervez Musharraf held an emergency meeting in the hours after the death, according to state media.

Police warned citizens to stay home as they expected rioting to break out in city streets in reaction to the death.

Police sources told CNN the bomber, who was riding a motorcycle, blew himself up near Bhutto's vehicle.
Where was the security? Why was anyone allowed to get so close in a place where suicide bombings are common? I have written extensively on my view that Pakistan is the most dangerous nation on earth. Today's events just prove my point.

The United States is in bed with a dictator in Pakistan. The same dictator that has made deals with the Taliban to keep them from trying to topple him. Was it these deals that led to the assassination of Bhutto? Who stands the most to gain by having her out of the way? At first glance it would have to be Musharraf.

We should all be paying close attention to this situation or we may find our military dying in yet another country.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Home Prices Post Record Drop

Hey don't worry, the fools who caused this mess all walked away with millions while the average homeowner has been clobbered.
Home prices fell 6.7 percent in October, compared with a year ago, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller 10-city home-price index, a record drop as housing markets continued to deteriorate.

It was the largest drop in more than 16 years and marked the 10th consecutive month of price depreciation and 23 months of decelerating returns.

"No matter how you look at these data, it is obvious that the current state of the single-family housing market remains grim," said Robert J. Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets in a release.

Case-Shiller's 20-city index fell 6.1 percent. Shiller noted that 11 of the markets in the 20-city index posted a record fall.

Some economists are beginning to lower their expectations for housing markets, predicting a longer and deeper price slump than they had previously forecast.

Several factors are hurting markets: Inventories are high with an 11-month supply of homes already for sale; a spike in foreclosures has added to the supply; and there are many vacant homes on the market, which tend to have very motivated sellers, depressing prices more quickly.
This is the result of deregulation and greed. Unfortunately greed will always be present which is why we need more oversight not less. This idea that industry will police itself is insane and the proof as they say is in the pudding.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Bush To Travel To Repair US Image

I thought this was some sort of joke.
President George W. Bush's diplomatic passport will acquire a slew of new country stamps during his final year in office as he tries to rebuild the U.S.'s international standing and create a foreign-policy legacy beyond Iraq.

The president plans trips to the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America, which would make 2008 his busiest year abroad. While his major domestic initiatives may get stalled by a Democratic majority in Congress and the gridlock caused by election-year politics, he still has an opportunity to exert his influence overseas.

``When it comes to foreign policy, he's not a lame duck; he can do a lot,'' said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as director of policy planning at the State Department until June 2003.

Bush, 61, came into the White House promising a humble foreign policy and eschewing nation-building and foreign entanglements. That changed after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he adopted a style supporters hail as visionary and critics call cowboy diplomacy.

While the president will strive to strengthen alliances, it won't come at the expense of continuing to prosecute the war on terror, said Jim Jeffrey, the deputy White House national security adviser.

``We want to be well-perceived in the world,'' Jeffrey said in an interview. ``But more importantly, we want to formulate policies that will protect the American people.''
This moron thinks anyone will take him seriously? He is one of the most hated men in the world today. Who would listen to a word that comes out of his lying mouth? If he really wants to repair our imagine in the world he should retire and go read "My Pet Goat" for the remainder of his miserable life. That is a better outcome than the hundreds of thousands that are dead as a result of his lies.

Bush as a diplomat is like Amy Winehouse as a drug counselor.

Americans Fall Behind in Credit Card Payments

The Economy is fine, it really really is. The President told me so.
Americans are falling behind on their credit card payments at an alarming rate, sending delinquencies and defaults surging by double-digit percentages in the last year and prompting warnings of worse to come.

An Associated Press analysis of financial data from the country's largest card issuers also found that the greatest rise was among accounts more than 90 days in arrears.

Experts say these signs of the deterioration of finances of many households are partly a byproduct of the subprime mortgage crisis and could spell more trouble ahead for an already sputtering economy.

"Debt eventually leaks into other areas, whether it starts with the mortgage and goes to the credit card or vice versa," said Cliff Tan, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and an expert on credit risk. "We're starting to see leaks now."

The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP. That represented more than 4 percent of the total outstanding principal balances owed to the trusts on credit cards that were issued by banks such as Bank of America and Capital One and for retailers like Home Depot and Wal-Mart.

At the same time, defaults — when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt — rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Serious delinquencies also are up sharply: Some of the nation's biggest lenders — including Advanta, GE Money Bank and HSBC — reported increases of 50 percent or more in the value of accounts that were at least 90 days delinquent when compared with the same period a year ago.
With the new bankruptcy laws, getting out from under the crushing debt will become even more elusive.

This is once again the result of bad economic policy. How can you sustain economic growth when so much of this nation is swimming in debt? The simple answer is that you can not and this will ripple through the entire economy.

The United States has become that family everyone knows that drives the big car and lives in the big house but actually has nothing. It is all borrowed or leased. We are now the world's biggest debtor nation. Our middle class is actually the working poor with a credit line.

We are in for a world of pain now that the smoke has cleared.