Jim's Rant For The Day.  Smoked ChessBoard.

While getting a haircut yesterday the girl cutting my hair told me a story about her brother. She has told me before that he spent time in prison and grew up in trouble with the law. She said his first time in jail occurred twenty years ago when he was eighteen. He and two drinking buddies went to an old Seven Eleven to replace some dead beer. Two had to go use the outside restroom in the rear and told the third one to go buy the beer. They accidentally opened the door to the storeroom and discovered it was unlocked and contained lots of beer. They brought the car around and loaded thirty-one cases. They then pulled around the front and picked up the confused buddy. In all of the impromptu confusion, the buddy had filled out his personal contact information on a raffle! Within two hours they were singing to the detectives.

A lot is happening in Iraq this week. Is Maliki part of an elaborate con trying to get “Emergency Powers” to stop the elections there? Is the Parliament preparing to dump Maliki? Is the West in cahoots with the “Militants” as a cover to start war with Syria? Or is this a true genuine civil war in Iraq and a revolt against the West's puppet government? These are all good questions for which I do not have a clue as to the answers.

But what I do know is this. First, the U.S. will never lower itself to put troops on the front line next the Iran's troops that Iraq called into the country. Secondly, for you chess players, there comes a time when the king is backed into a corner and has only two squares left the he can move into. I think we are there now.

In this real life chess game it is most unclear as to how things have happened and what is really going on. It is as if the entire chess board is covered in smoke except those two corner squares. No matter how we got here today, there are only two moves for the U.S. One is to force Martial Law as we go into the collapse. The other is to create a nuclear war to focus the blame elsewhere for the collapse here. There are no other moves left.