Pretender-in-Chief Prepares to Make Second Most Disasterous Mistake

George W. Bush Is Going To Bomb Iran
by boloboffin | Dec 29 2006 - 10:33am

George W. Bush is going to bomb Iran. This is the purpose of the "surge". No amount of troops is going to fix Iraq; they couldn't if they tried. If Bush wanted to fix Iraq, he'd give them jobs. People who are employed in decent jobs can figure out how to live with their neighbors. More American troops in the Persian Gulf are not going to quell violence in Iraq any more than the ones already there are.
George W. Bush is going to bomb Iran. And there may be almost nothing we can do to stop it. Read more...

And when that happens...

Southern Iraq is thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian special operations forces working with Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades. Hostilities between Iran and the United States or a change in attitude toward US forces on the part of the Baghdad government could quickly turn the supply roads into a "shooting gallery" 400 to 800 miles long. Read more...

And then, as in Vietnam, our daily casualties will rise to hundreds per day. Is that when we will take to the streets?

Slippery, Slippery, Slidey

Dollar Declines; U.A.E. Selling U.S. Currency and Buying Euros

If your head has been up from the grindstone lately, you may have already heard countries announcing that they will be diversifying their reserve holdings (selling, dumping) out of the dollar, and buying euros (or copper mines or oil and gas contracts) with their reserve holdings. Looks like the announcing is over and the doing has begun.

No country wants to be the one to set off an avalanche of selling. They tiptoe across the financial dollar mountainside, taking baby steps and holding their breath, staring up at a gigantic overhang of hundreds of trillions of slippery dollars, about ready to go.

And even as they inch forward, above them they can hear the artificial dollar pumps going full blast, insanely adding more overhang by the hour.

It looks like Denver is in for another snow tomorrow. Avalanche season will soon be upon us.

Dollar Collapse

What happens when the dollar collapses?

Many things, most of them bad. When foreign investors and central banks stop demanding dollars, U.S. bond prices will fall, which is another way of saying that U.S. interest rates will rise. Mortgage and credit card rates will soar, bursting the housing bubble. Home prices in hot markets like California and New York will fall by 50% or more in a matter of months, bankrupting millions of over-extended homeowners. The U.S. government will respond by opening the monetary floodgates, printing as many paper dollars as necessary to keep the economy from collapsing. This surge in supply will send the value of the dollar through the floor. Prices for most things will skyrocket, and people whose life savings are in cash, bank CDs or dollar-denominated bonds, will be wiped out. Most U.S. consumer finance companies will be ruined, along with their stockholders.

Read and weep...

Denver is Closed

Yep, completely closed. About 24 inches deep in my backyard. No cars on York, no foot traffic. Beautiful silence.

Down the Path

Step 1
IRAN TO REPLACE DOLLAR WITH EURO FOR DEALS
December 19, 2006
TEHRAN: Iran yesterday announced it has ordered the central bank to use euros for foreign transactions and transform the state's dollar-denominated assets held abroad into the single European currency."The government has ordered the central bank to replace the dollar with the euro to limit the problems of the executive organs in commercial transactions," government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters.

Step 2
US Ponders "Show Of Force Against Iran"
December 20, 2006
The AP reports the Pentagon "is considering a buildup of Navy forces in the Persian Gulf as a show of force against Iran." Fox News' Special Report quoted unnamed senior Defense officials who confirm the administration may send a second aircraft carrier battle carrier group to the Persian Gulf. FNC notes analysts say a second aircraft carrier could "provide air support for additional US troops in Iraq should the president decide to 'surge' thousands more into the country as senior administration officials have told Fox he's become increasingly inclined to do."

Step 3

The Double-Down Fade

Perhaps Bush is waiting until after the holidays, when Congress starts up, to announce his New Way Forward, increasing the troops by oh, say 30,000. Although this lacks military purpose, it may be just to elicit a fund cutoff by the Democrats, so the Republicans can then say the Democrats lost the war when the whole area blows up after we leave and the Saudis move in. Remember, the big picture of the neocons is to destabilize the Middle East. That should do it.

Cornstarch

Microwave Weapon Approved for Iraq

Study these photos. If you ever see this on the back of a truck at a demonstration, run away.

The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.
You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.

From Wired, read more...

OMG, I'm Living in a Comic Book

Thanks to Ari Armstrong at www.freecolorado.com for the interview with L. Neal Smith, the author of Probability Broach, a graphic novel available free online at www.bigheadpress.com.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the story starts in my neighborhood. I actually live on the block where a body is discovered. How unfortunate is that!

Smith's imaginative work in a parallel libertarian universe is fantastic. Go and read...

Wait ... I'm getting ... a message ... from....

The Whole Truth

"9/11 was a criminal act of terrorism, not a violation of our entire nation’s security. Comparing it, as the Bush Administration immediately did, to Pearl Harbor was ludicrous: the hijacked airliners were not the vanguard of a formidable naval armada, an air force, and a standing army ready to engage in all out war, as the Japanese were prepared to do and did in 1941. 9/11 was a shocking event of unprecedented scale, but to characterize it as an invasion of national security was criminal. It was creating reality. It was also, and in the extreme, surreal, because the Bush Administration chose consciously to frighten the American people beyond any conceivable necessity. It adopted fear mongering as a mode of governance."

Please read the entire article at Commondreams.org...

No Grace

"This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all. We're going to help this government," said the US president, under heavy pressure at home to overhaul his strategy in the nearly four-year old war.