Very Succinct Indeed

"Let's be clear: we have lost this war. We have lost because the initial, central goals of the invasion have all failed: we have not secured WMDS from terrorists because those WMDs did not exist. We have not stymied Islamist terror - at best we have finally stymied some of the terror we helped create. We have not constructed a democratic model for the Middle East - we have instead destroyed a totalitarian government and a phony country, only to create a permanently unstable, fractious, chaotic failed state, where the mere avoidance of genocide is a cause for celebration. We have, moreover, helped solder a new truth in the Arab mind: that democracy means chaos, anarchy, mass-murder, national disintegration and sectarian warfare. And we have also empowered the Iranian regime and made a wider Sunni-Shiite regional war more likely than it was in 2003. Apart from that, Mr Bush, how did you enjoy your presidency?
— Andrew Sullivan

Words of Prophecy

Prediction:

"Usury will destroy our society, but meanwhile there is no escape from it. We are coming near the end of its maleficient action, not through awakening to its evils but because it is reaching the end of its resources ... The modern world is organized on the principle that money of its nature breeds money. A sum of money lent has, according to our presnent scheme, a natural right to interest. That principle is false in economics as in morals, It ruined Rome, and it is bring us to our end."
— Hilaire Belloc, Usury, 1931

News Item:

Citigroup the nation’s largest bank, reported a staggering fourth-quarter loss of $9.83 billion on Tuesday and issued a sobering forecast that the housing market and the broader economy still had not bottomed out.



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