Oregon is clearly facing a financial crisis unlike any we've seen for some time. Risky loans, loose financial regulation and oversite, and increasingly inter-dependent global markets have causing now WORLDWIDE instability that has shook the very foundation of the US economy. Ben Westlund, who has said that protecting Oregon's financial assets(one of the largest funds in the world) is "job one," does not want to debate his plans for investing the State's fund because the contrasting style and substance is too revealing. Embedded is a video clip of Ben and Allen Alley at the Willamette Week interview. The clip clearly contrasts the empty political ramblings of Ben Westlund with the business experience of Allen Alley.
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With William Kristol's new gig at the New York Times we continue to see those who have been consistently wrong about the invasion and occupation of Iraq fail upwards. But what about those who were right? People like Scott Ritter. Ritter was trying to tell America that Iraq was little if any threat before the invasion but could not get on television or in the major newspapers to do so. Well nothing has changed. Those who have been wrong, like Bill Kristol, are seen almost daily but to read what Scott Ritter has to say you must go to place like Truthdig. If you want to know what's going on in Iraq that is what you should do. In The Five Iraqs Ritter points out that not only the Bush administration but those running to replace it are still clueless as to what is going on in Iraq.

.....nothing the surge has accomplished so far remotely approaches a solution to these enormously destabilizing realities: a largely disaffected Sunni population which finds the current Shiite-dominated government of Iraq fundamentally unacceptable; a decisively fractured Shiite population torn between an Iranian-dominated government on the one hand (controlled by the political proxies of the ...