“It” would be the Chinese economic machine… our visit to People’s Daily tells us that China’s Central Bank reports China’s foreign exchange (“forex”) reserves on hand (that’s “cash in the bank”) have increased to over $700 billion, with a 51% increase on a year to year basis. We can couple this with the (correct, in my view) observation of a key European Union official that China’s growth and development presented more opportunity than threat to the rest of the world. We talked about this in a recent post… is China’s development an actual threat, or do we just perceive it...

Our visit to Pravda tells us about a major fallen industrial oligarch… but with its usual twist, the oligarch we are talking about is none other than former MCI/Worldcom chief Bernard Ebbers, just convicted and sentenced to 25 years for fraud charges associated with pumping up the books of the failed telecom giant. Regardless of his philanthropic activities, the Worldcom bankruptcy, then the largest in American history, resulted in untold billions of dollars in lost value, including presumably by the usual widows and orphans who invest in “rock solid telephone companies”. Bernie’s books-cooking also helped bring an acceleration to an...

And nature, as we all know from our elementary physics, abhors a vacuum. But a vacuum seems to be what’s going on in… Fallujah! According to this from the Grey Lady, some eight months after a bloody siege cost the lives of over 1,500 Iraqis and quite a few American marines… once again, that troubled (and troubling) Iraqi city may, once again, be a power vacuum used by insurgents to carry out nasty shit attacks in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq. This is a chronic problem our military faces: the occupations of (First World) Germany and Japan involved an occupying...

I realize many of you may disagree with me on this, but I consider the blood of dozens of Iraqi children today who were blown up and killed by evil fucks in Baghdad who launched a suicide bomber at them while American military personnel were dispensing candy to be on the President’s hands. Period. Argument not to the contrary not accepted, this time. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind — none– that every single child murdered today would still be alive right now if Saddam Hussein were still in power. And would that mean the world in general...

Your talking dog is enjoying the mmm mmm goodness of watching the President and his principal advisor Karl Rove twist, twist, twist in the wind… evidently, the official line is “the President has full confidence in Karl Rove”. It’s unclear that the President has had a bowel movement since 1998 that was not orchestrated by his beloved “boy genius” advisor, Karl “Turdblossom” Rove, a master of getting a way with politicial and other dirty tricks who may have (finally) upped the ante a tad too much at… treason. Bless her heart, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter from the Buffalo, NY area has...

American Secretary of State Incompetetentalleezza Rice earns her moniker… particularly with her brilliant decision to be the first U.S. Sec. of State in over 20 years to fail to attend the “ASEAN” summit of East Asian and Pacific powers. Evidently, “Dr.” Rice has other, more important things to do… like… well… whatever they are. She refused to discuss the (asinine and insanely counterproductive and disrespectful-to-some-of-our-most-important-allies-in-the-region) move, instead saying “I’m here to take questions about the tsunami.” While visiting one stricken area in Thailand, the Secretary of State blessed the locals with an entire 41 minutes of her time (during which...

This week’s visit to Pravda gives us this lament about the fact that the United States is not making appropriate payments to the government of Uzbekistan for the use of the Khanabad air-base there where 1300 Americans are stationed to assist in operations in Afghanistan. Among other things Americans are not paying for is security or infrastructure for the base itself (now provided by Uzbeks) or environmental damage, according to an Uzbek foreign ministry spokesman. It is unclear from the Pravda article whether such requests for payment were ever formally agreed to (or even informally agreed to), or precisely how...

London barely had a full day to celebrate its seeming good fortune in being awarded the 2012 Olympic games at a meeting in its former Singapore colony, when out of nowhere, a group of coordinated bomb blasts in Central London’s transit system, including a bus and three underground train locations, resulted in at least 37 dead and hundreds injured in the U.K. capital. This comes, mind you, amidst presumably heightened security in Britain as G-8 leaders meet in Gleneagle in Scotland… including our own denizen of irrational security, Dear Leader himself, the President. Those of us who haul our rear...

On this, the President’s 59th birthday, let’s wish him a happy one, and hope he recovered from “that little accident.” Oh, and let’s take a quick look at a proper use of our nation’s courts’ use of their contempt power: the right and proper (and overdue) jailing of propagandist war criminal Judith Miller of The New York Times. It appears that the source everyone seems hellbent on trying to protect, even at the risk of a most uncomfortable jailing at an actual jail in the case of Ms. Miller, was none other than the President’s beloved key advisor, Karl “Turdblossom”...

In good old Singapore, in between canings for chewing gum, the New York delegation led by Mayor Mike Bloomberg desperately tries to get the bid for the 2012 Olympics, while we at home desperately hope that the security and traffic nightmare that may well bankrupt our public coffers goes somewhere else… like Paris. Said delegation got a huge boost from the arrival of America’s principal political rock star, our next President (and sharer of a birthday with Leon Trotsky and a talking dog) made her way to Singapore… i.e. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY and the world). Fortunately, plan A, the...