Friday, January 28, 2005

You've gotta--just gotta--watch this!

Puhleeze click here for a quick movie capturing our Orwellian--or should I say, Domino's--future.

I dare anybody

to check these photos of the children of Iraq and still support our invasion of their country.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

How the world sees us

This essay is right on on the subject of the fantasy of Bushies (of many Americans, too, alas) that the US is a respected nation with ideas and ideals that are emulated by the world. Not so, citing facts and figures.

One significant omission: I believe that increasingly even the youth of foreign lands are rejecting the compulsive consumerism of America. Maybe not consumerism, but the American style, because of their distaste for the government that fosters it.

This could get ugly

For more than a year, I've been posting on the subject of the prospect that the nations (Japan, China and Europe, chiefly) that have been purchasing and holding assets in dollars, including our federal debt instruments and stocks in American companies, would tire of doing so as the value of the dollar against other currencies declines. The Bush administration has telegraphed that it wants the dollar to decline so that foreign nations will be able to afford our products, thereby causing increasing sales of US goods abroad. This may benefit the corporations that export, but the decline of the dollar has a distinct downside for American consumers, namely, that the cheaper dollar can buy fewer imports (cars, computers, everything, actually), so that price inflation begins to take hold in the US, coupled with interest-rate increases as the US must increase the interest rate on its debt in order to attract buyers on the instruments.

It looks like the dollar is losing out to the euro lately in terms of foreign holdings. Will the nightmare of inflation, increasing interest rates and less purchasing by consumers then follow, causing a catastrophic decline in the condition of the US economy?

If I were a betting man, I'd say, buy euros.

I wish I'd said that

For a quick take on Bush's plans for the world as announced in his inaugural address, check out this article, the opening line of which reads, "After listening to his inaugural speech, anyone who thinks President Bush and his handlers are sane needs to visit a psychiatrist."

Monday, January 24, 2005

Tough duty

That US Army. A bunch of toughies, strong sense of justice and discipline. Why, after court martial conviction for "shooting a female civilian interpreter in the head" one soldier was sentenced to three years, a second soldier to eighteen months, in the stockade. Three whole years, eighteen whole months!

Sign me up!