Reality check

OK, let's pay attention here, folks:

I said this before: the US dollar is falling in value against the yen, the euro and the pound. It will continue to fall and accelerate its fall. The reason is the US debt and the trade deficit, which presently stands at about 3 trillion US dollars and will grow to roughly 11 trillion in ten years or so at the current rate of taxation. The wild card, however, is that inflation actually drives that figure above and beyond the present, real, value of the dollar, hence the final figure in ten years will be something else, although much higher due to the "miracle of compound interest." Notice, also, that wages are relative, as are various tangible products, so "value" and "worth" are relative terms. Go here to see what your $2,000 stipend from SSI will be worth in 2042.

Our savings dollars aren't going to be worth spit, no matter what savings/retirement scheme you subscribe to.

Terri Schiavo, dead yet? No. Tom Delay? I wish.

What the Schiavo/Delay mess has shown us clearly (and maybe the rest of thinking America) is the crass and utterly craven deceitfullness that the Repugs operate by. I've said it before and I'll say it again: we cannnot argue with these madmen, they must be destroyed. They do not respond to reason, they are hell bent on an agenda of world domination on the one hand by the ultra-fundamentalists and on the other by the mega-corporations, with the Shrub sitting right smack in the center of the whole mess, grinning like Alfred E. Newman. Liberals have for too long operated on the assumption that conservatives think. Well they don't. Today they only react, and today they are reacting to the scenarios that propagandistes like Rove have laid out. Admittedly, Rove probably didn't have a thing to do with Schiavo; Delay and his buddies picked up on it like dogs after shit. They smell their own vomit and go after it.

Now, I said this before in a previous post, and it bears repeating:

This goes to my argument that this bi-partisan shit has got to stop. We keep hearing from Dems that they want to sit down and parlay with the Repugs. They just don't seem to get it through their thick heads that the Repugs don't want to bi- anything. They want to dismantle government, period, and if that means throwing grandma out of her retirement home, or turning this country into Sao Paulo, so be it.

Wake up! Carthage must be destroyed!

This is related to reports that are emerging that Italian journalist Guiliana Sgrena was targeted by a Special Forces assasination team because she was bringing out proof of American banned-chemical (CBW) use in the assult on Fallouja.

Calipari, the deputy head of SISMI and an experienced Iraqi expert, was accompanying freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad International Airport when their Toyota Corolla was fired on by well-trained U.S. sharpshooter assassins. Calipari was on the phone to the office of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome, where his wife also works, when he was shot in the head. Sgrena and the driver, a Carabiniere officer, were injured in the attack.

Pentagon officials claim the car was speeding past a checkpoint and that shots were fired only into the engine block. The Italians claim the interior light in the car was on, the car was traveling at only 30 miles per hour, and prominently displayed the Italian flag. Italian intelligence officials also believe that the Americans identified the Italian vehicle because National Security Agency systems had intercepted Calipari's cell phone signals and triangulated its specific location.

Robert Fisk has reported on the rise of people killed at blockades, and attributes most, if not all, of them to the rise of "nervousness" on the part of the soldiers, being pumped full of tales of wave after wave of incoming "terrorists" by Rumsfeld and his cronies, so another journalist being shot at in Iraq is not that farfetched.

Now, I'm close to the military community, and I have inquired about the possibility that Delta units may be targeting foreign nationals, or others, on specific orders from the powers that be.

On the one hand, such as when reports circulated early in the war that oil pipelines were being blown by Special Forces units, I was pooh-poohed by people who should know. On the other, I have been assured that, on a case-by-case basis, there are Delta and other units that are perfectly capable, ready and willing to take out just about anyone. Period.