2005.4.19=2[#109]:4703.3.11[#60+9/60]: [TV, Energy] New Pope. 1)US in Iraq. 2). 3)US Finance.

[TV Channels] http://tv4all.com/portal.htm [9 Energy Questions] http://tinyurl.com/7ee6n http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041011fa_fact http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052703_9_questions.html Fine cool: 8 up, 9 breakfast & emails responding [G] on R Hess with "Chang Hsue-laing & 3rd Communist-Nationalist Cooperation? #100", 11:30 here for [TV Channels]. Finish emails 2:04pm, for lunch, and then yester/today's mails at 3:58pm. Discover insufficient fund for new checking account for automatic payment of the refinanced residential mortgage since 3 months ago, so to Bk of Am and Amy helps me to refund and for last 3 months' statement, no R.. To FoodMaxx, to home, emails again, Mei home again cooking. Now Mei sleeping, Jyun computer outside, documents, 12:37am to finish, tv, bed 1:45. 1) US in Iraq: (1) "What I Didn't See in Iraq", by Jim McGovern, The Nation. Posted April 18, 2005. ""A congressman explains why his recent visit to the war-torn country only served to reaffirm his opposition to the occupation"": http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21786/ "" Our young men and women in uniform are performing their difficult duties extraordinarily well. Indeed, the only honest and direct responses I got from any American in Iraq were from the soldiers. They told me they had been instructed by their superiors not to share any complaints with visitors. What worries me almost as much as our misguided policy in Iraq is that so many of my colleagues and so many citizens have become resigned to the fact that the war will go on. "" (2) "Iraq's Catch-22", Robert Dreyfuss; TomPaine.com; April 19, 2005 ""Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone": http://www.tompaine.com/articles/iraqs_catch22.php?dateid=20050419 "" As Shiite Islamists and Kurdish warlords cobble together the latest interim Iraqi government, the regime of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and President Jalal Talabani is facing the ultimate Catch-22. And it's one that poses an almost impossible problem for Bush administration officials looking for an exit strategy for Iraq. The Catch-22 is this: To gain legitimacy in the eyes of Iraq's population, and to avoid being seen as puppets, the new government has to distance itself from the U.S. occupation forces. Doing so, however, is impossible, since the newly elected regime wouldn't last a week without the protection of U.S. forces. So they are stuck in a fatal embrace. "Nobody wants to be in the picture frame," says David Phillips, a former U.S. adviser on Iraq policy and author of Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco . "Being seen with Americans is a political liability for Iraqi politicians." "" 2) US Finance: "Riding the Real Estate Tsunami", Mike Davis; TomPaine.com; April 19, 2005 ""Mike Davis is the author of Dead Cities and the forthcoming Monster at the Door: the Global Threat of Avian Influenza (New Press 2005). This article first appeared on TomDispatch and is reprinted with permission": http://tinyurl.com/czu5v "" The great American housing bubble, like its obese counterparts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Australia, is a classic zero-sum game. Without generating an atom of new wealth, land inflation ruthlessly redistributes wealth from asset-seekers to asset-holders, reinforcing divisions within as well as between social classes. "" "" The current housing bubble is the bastard offspring of the stock market bubble of the mid-1990s. Housing prices, especially on the West Coast and in the East's Bos-Wash corridor, began to rocket in the second half of 1995 as dot-com profits were ploughed into real estate. The boom has been sustained by sensationally low mortgage rates, thanks principally to the willingness of China to buy vast amounts of U.S. Treasury bonds despite their low or negative yields. Beijing has been willing to subsidize American mortgage borrowers as the price for keeping the door open to Chinese exports. Similarly, the hottest home markets—Southern California, Las Vegas, New York, Miami and Washington, D.C.—have attracted voracious ant columns of pure speculators, buying and selling homes in the gamble that prices will continue to rise. The most successful speculator, of course, has been George W. Bush. Rising home values have propped up a stagnant economy and blunted criticisms of otherwise disastrous economic policies. "" "" The bubble has already burst in San Francisco, and the April 11 issue of Business Week headlined fears that a general deflation—perhaps of international magnitude—is nigh. What will life be like in the United States (or Britain or Ireland) after the home-equity ATM shuts down? The business press, as always, reassures passengers that they are headed for a "soft landing," a slowdown rather than a crash, but even a mild jolt may be sufficient to end the current anemic recovery and throw all the dollar-pegged economies into recession. More ominously, some eminently respectable Wall Street economists—like Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley—have been warning of a dangerous negative-feedback loop between the foreign-subsidized housing bubble and the huge U.S. trade and budget deficits. ("The funding of America," he has written, "is an accident waiting to happen.") At the end of the day, American military hegemony is no longer underwritten by an equivalent global economic supremacy. The housing bubble—like the dot-com boom before it—has temporarily masked a mess of economic contradictions. As a result, the second term of George W. Bush may hold some first-class Shakespearian surprises. ""