S&P have made it clear in their press release that this downgrade could be just the first step, with a further reduction to AA if certain policy changes are not made in Washington. Thisis no surprise: S&P had warned since April that if no long-term plan to halt America's soaring debt was put in place, then a downgrade would be the response. Politicians in Washington ignored that caution, and it will be interesting to see how those same politicians will react to the conditions S&P are setting out to avoid a further downgrade.
"The day I signed...I had way too much to drink. It was after 5 p.m. and I signed it (the contracts) and I didn't know what I was signing," [Mayor Martin] Resendiz wrote as a response to questions from lawyers for the firm. "My sister had to pick me up."
Today was a hot Friday in Ramadan, a day where traditionally people of faith fast during the day, and stay home out of the sun. Instead, in Syria, possibly 125,000 protesters, or possibly more, took to the streets. They marched, chanted, and prayed for change in their country. Those hopes were met with bullets more often than they were not.
The list of casualties today is likely to be between 15-30, not counting what happens tonight, and what happened today in Hama. Since Ramadan began last weekend, approximately half of the casualties in most of Syria have occurred at night. Regardless, today, and tonight, the Syrians are sending a clear message that the old ways will never return, and Syria will never be the same.
Meanwhile, still very little news out of Hama, and all of it bad. The city is under attack by at least 250 tanks, and their food, medicine, communication, and water supplies have been cut off. The people of the fourth largest city in Syria, a city larger than Boston, have no water. Tomorrow's forecast - 100+ degrees Fahrenheit.
And Yemen is heating up, Egyptians are still struggling with the military, the Libyan rebels still fight Gaddafi, and Bahrainis still protest. Ramadan is going to be a long, ugly, and important month.
We close with this live feed from an incredible and festive Lattakia, on Syria's coast:
Imagine if a politician on the forthcoming super-committee, free of the constraint that dissent from his party's line would kill any chances forre-election, who felt free to act on his/her intellect and conscience. Then we might see something get done in the interests of the United States as a whole, where a spending cut really does mean a spending cut.
Surely if the President can be trusted to govern wisely while constrained by term limits, then Senators can.
Yesterday we posted an extract from the video and transcript of President Ahmadinejad's 33-minute interview with EuroNews. That in itself was striking, with Ahmadinejad's dismissal of the strict house arrests of opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, "There are prisons in every country".
However, the full text --- now available from EuroNews --- is even more compelling for its presentation of Ahmadinejad's claims. Problems in Syria are "due to the interference of others". In Iran, "a completely free election" was followed by just treatment of opposition, in contrast to the situation in Britain where students "were beaten up in the streets of London" and in Europe where "no one [is] listening to them". And economic difficulties? The situation "is much worse in Europe" than in Iran.
In short, "freedom is at its highest level in Iran".
1520 GMT: Labour Front. An article by the Iranian Labor News Agency warns that "reform" of labour laws, reducing workers' rights, will not solve the problem of unemployment and that workers will not forgive MPs who sign the legislation.
1515 GMT: More Battle Within. Mohammad Karamirad says he and two other MP have filed a complaint against the President's right-hand man, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, and Vice President Hamid Baghei and that Parliament is checking it.
Karamirad restated the demand made by other politicians and clerics, including hardline MP Mohammad Ali Bozorgvari: President Ahmadinejad must distance himself from the two men.
We turn to a children's show this week on Iranian State TV....
A group of children were asked what kind of activities they perform on their own. A small boy named Farnood proudly replied, “When I go to the bathroom, I wash my pee-pee on my own.”
The shocked presenter took a few steps back from Farnood, covering up his taboo reply with a non sequitur, “What do you do?! You turn on the washing machine yourself? No, no, no.”
Saturday, August 6, 2011 at 10:13
S&P have made it clear in their press release that this downgrade could be just the first step, with a further reduction to AA if certain policy changes are not made in Washington. Thisis no surprise: S&P had warned since April that if no long-term plan to halt America's soaring debt was put in place, then a downgrade would be the response. Politicians in Washington ignored that caution, and it will be interesting to see how those same politicians will react to the conditions S&P are setting out to avoid a further downgrade.
