While it was always a farce, just a way to kick the can down the road another six months, at least during those years there was some sense that something needed to change in Iraq.
Now it's just static and stagnant. We're there. We're staying. That's it.
It's gotta be weird returning from Iraq, from the war back to a country where the war barely exists. Its existence, at least any representation of it, is largely unacknowledged in our media. Sure they mention the war, but there's no confrontation with the reality of it or chronicling of the daily lives (and deaths) of the people who are there.
WASHINGTON — As the home foreclosure crisis sweeps across America, military and financial aid groups say they are hearing from a rising number of troops who say they are falling behind on their mortgage payments and struggling to keep their homes.
"The Army as a whole has seen an increase in soldiers and families seeking assistance for mortgage foreclosures," says Army Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman, citing data from branch legal offices trying to advise soldier.
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Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Escamilla was on his third combat tour in Iraq last year when he had to negotiate from the battlefield with his lender over disputed penalties for the adjustable-rate loan on his four-bedroom home near Fort Carson, Colo. His payment had ballooned from $967 to more than $3,000.
"Not only do I have to worry about staying alive, but now I got to worry about whether or not my family's going to get kicked out of the house," Escamilla says of the long-distance haggling last fall.
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After a USA TODAY inquiry last week to the parent company, New York-based Lehman Bros., a corporate officer notified Escamilla that all penalties would be removed and his payment adjusted down to its original amount, Escamilla says. "She was sorry for what happened," the soldier says.
Not everyone can rely on a press inquiry to fix things.
Eleanor Clift's if Hillary wins everyone who doesn't support her is going to sleep with the fishes article is pretty inane. Yes different people will have their pecking order in the Washington hierarchy changed depending on which candidate ultimately triumphs, but that's a sort of duh point which is less exciting than describing Clinton as a vengeful bitch.
I'm sort of tired of the whole journalist/blogger/citizen journalist discussion. Basically, it's very simple. Once upon a time we lived in the world where most of us, upon discovering something interesting, could tell a few friends and that's about it. We now live in a world where anyone can, potentially, broadcast a bit of information to hundreds of millions of people.
As for the Fowler situation specifically, it seems that if Fowler had merely "leaked" the information no journalist would be fretting about any ethical issues. Okay to be an anonymous source to a responsible journalist, not okay to broadcast yourself.
I suppose Tweety doesn't exactly have a functioning self-censoring filter, but given all the messed up race and gender stuff he says on the teevee I do wonder what he says aloud in private.
A bunch of people have complained that the RSS feed isn't working. Obviously that means there's a problem, but I don't know what it is. This feed appears to be working to me.
I went to see Destroyer last night, and was chatting with the person I went with about how the "kids" today are exposed to and access pop culture. Back in the pre-internet days you had mainstream radio and maybe you had a college radio station which played some other things. Perhaps an alt-weekly told you about stuff. But that was it. Aside from listening to what your friends had, other than going to record shops and buying random things you thought you might like there really wasn't any way to sample what was out there.
Obviously things are different now, with the internet, but still it's a mystery to me just how your typical suburban teen interacts with that universe.
63% think the Iraq war was a bad idea. Still, no harm no foul. We shouldn't fault the people who made that mistake. We should look forward instead, and look to those same people to continue to make wise and intelligent pronouncements about what we should do in the pages of our elite newspapers. That's the Washington way, after all.
Under pressure from Iraqi government troops and the American military, Moktada al-Sadr called on his followers to stop the bloodshed, unite with all Iraqis and focus their firepower on driving out the “occupation forces,” meaning the United States military and its foreign allies.
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In the statement Mr. Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, issued eight edicts in an effort to open the way for a negotiation with the Iraqi government, but also to shore up his own support.
He instructed his followers to “to wage open war against the Americans” but forbade them from “raising a hand against another Iraqi citizen.” He also urged the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police to stop cooperating with the Americans, and he asked the government to purge the militias within the ranks of the police and the army. He said he would oppose any American military bases in Iraq.
He also issued a “final warning” to the Iraqi government to end its crackdown or face an “open war until liberation.”
The story says this is an effort to calm the situation in Iraq. Perhaps it's that, too, but it's obviously not just that.
After months of wrangling with lenders over huge debts accumulated during the housing boom, prominent Sacramento-area home builder John D. Reynen filed Wednesday for personal bankruptcy protection.
Reynen, co-founder of Reynen & Bardis Communities, took the action to prevent San Francisco-based Bank of the West from seizing his house and other personal assets for a $26 million debt owed by his company, said Michele McCormick, spokeswoman for the builder.
... On Wednesday, McCormick characterized Reynen's personal bankruptcy filing as a necessity that allows the company to continue its restructuring efforts with its lenders. She said all the firm's creditors have agreed to equal shares of Reynen's personal assets as a condition of trying to work out a financial solution to his company's debts.
"However, the fly in the ointment is the Bank of the West action to personally take attachment to the personal assets of John Reynen," McCormick said.
In court filings, the bank asserts that John Reynen and company co-founder Christo Bardis personally guaranteed more than $750 million in loans to various lenders and have failed to pay them. That means lenders have the right to seize their personal property.
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Reynen's bankruptcy court filing estimates the number of creditors at 1,000 to 5,000 and puts his personal assets at between $50 million and $100 million. It estimates his liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion.
States are often pretty much powerless during downturns, given various ways in which there are constraints on their ability to borrow.
The finances of many states have deteriorated so badly that they appear to be in a recession, regardless of whether that's true for the nation as a whole, a survey of all 50 state fiscal directors concludes.
The situation looks even worse for the fiscal year that begins July 1 in most states.
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The situation is grim in Delaware, with a $69 million gap this year, and bleak in California, with a projected $16 billion budget shortfall over the next two years, the report said. Florida does not expect a rapid turnaround in revenue because of the prolonged real estate slump there.
By mid-April, 16 states and Puerto Rico were reporting shortfalls in their current budgets as the revenue those budgets were built on -- typically, taxes -- fell short of estimates. That's double the number of states reporting a deficit six months ago.
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