What Is This World Coming To?

Iran said it successfully test-fired short-range missiles during drills Sunday by the elite Revolutionary Guard, a show of force days after the U.S. and its allies condemned Tehran over a newly revealed underground nuclear facility that was being secretly constructed.

English-language Press TV reported the Fateh-110, Tondar-69 and Zelzal were test fired in a missile defense exercise, but did not give specifics on range or other details. All are short-range, surface-to-surface missiles.

Gen. Hossein Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guard Air Force, told reporters Iran tested a multiple missile launcher for the first time. Press TV showed pictures of at least two missiles being fired simultaneously and said they were from Sunday’s drill in a desert in central Iran. In the clip, men could be heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” as the missiles were launched.

“The message of the war game for some arrogant countries which intend to intimidate is that we are able to give a proper, strong answer to their hostility quickly,” the Web site of state television quoted Salami as saying. He said the missiles successfully hit their targets.

Salami told reporters Iran had reduced the missiles and their ranges so they could be used in quick, short-range engagements. He also said Iran would test medium-range Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 missiles on Sunday night and long-range Shahab-3 missiles on Monday, during the drill set to last several days. The Revolutionary Guard controls Iran’s missile program.

Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil’s central bank and aides to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president.

The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world’s leading international currency.

Mr Lula da Silva, who is visiting Beijing this week, and Hu Jintao, China’s president, first discussed the idea of replacing the dollar with the renminbi and the real as trade currencies when they met at the G20 summit in London last month.

An official at Brazil’s central bank stressed that talks were at an early stage. He also said that what was under discussion was not a currency swap of the kind China recently agreed with Argentina and which the US had agreed with several countries, including Brazil.

“Currency swaps are not necessarily trade related,” the official said. “The funds can be drawn down for any use. What we are talking about now is Brazil paying for Chinese goods with reals and China paying for Brazilian goods with renminbi.”

More from Financial Times

President Barack Hussein Obama, pressuring lawmakers to urgently approve a massive economic recovery bill, turned his first prime-time news conference Monday night into a high pressure sales pitch.

Wagging a finger at his critics, he said the recession left America so weak that  “only the federal government” can “jolt our economy back to life.”  Then he turned on the pressure, saying that failure to impose his plan “could turn a crisis into a catastrophe.”

The unemployment level during the Depression was 33%.  The unemployment level during the OPEC recession of the 1979’s topped 10.8%.   The unemployment level today is 7.3%

Evidently, America is suffering from a crisis of economic confidence.   They don’t think that things are going to turn around any time soon and therefore they aren’t investing any money.  (I wonder what makes them feel that way?)

Anyway, to boost confidence, President Obama went on national TV to tell the country that his “plan is not perfect”  but without it, we’re totally doomed.

“No plan is.  I can’t tell you for sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope, but I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis as well as the pain felt by millions of Americans.

Howzat again?   “This plan isn’t perfect, and I don’t know if it will work.  But ignore the plan’s critics. Let’s do it anyway.  Look into my eyes. . . . ”

“So my bottom line when it comes to the recovery package is: send me a bill that creates or saves 4 million jobs.”

(At a cost of a quarter-million or so per job. Great plan)

“At this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life. The plan that ultimately emerges from Congress must be big enough and bold enough to meet the size of the economic challenge we face right now.”

How about throwing more money at it than exists on the face of the earth in the largest national spending spree in the history of mankind?  That big?  That bold?

Now that America has proved itself righteous and color blind by electing Barack Obama to the White House based on his two year Senate career (and his color) how is the rest of the world reacting?

Was Vice-President elect Joe Biden’s prediction about an Obama ‘test’ really a gaffe?

The morning after the election, Israel launched its first airstrikes against targets in Gaza in nearly six months.  Hamas fired thirty-five rockets into Israel from Gaza.

Iran issued a ‘warning’ to the US military in what Reuters characterized as “a message analysts said seemed directed at the new U.S. president-elect more than neighboring American troops.”

The Russians announced that they will place short-range missile systems along the European Union’s eastern border.  They waited to find out whether they would be facing a President John McCain or a President Barack Obama before announcing the decision.

Worldnetdaily is reporting that Hamas is composing a congratulatory letter to the president-elect.  Obama is already beginning to heal America’s broken image.  (Sigh.)