I heard on the news tonight that Miamii-Dade county had over 15,000 foreclosures in the past two months, and Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale) had over 12,000 in the same time period. Not good.

A wave of foreclosures in South Florida among borrowers with shaky credit will cause the property values of nearly 1.7 million homeowners to sink an average $13,000 in Miami-Dade County, and $6,400 in Broward, a new report says.

The report released Tuesday by the Center for Responsible Lending estimates the two counties will lose more than $17.2 billion in their tax base in the coming years resulting from some 35,000 expected foreclosures among subprime borrowers.

The state of Florida could lose $23.5 billion from its tax base, the economic spillover of an expected 98,000 foreclosures coming from subprime mortgages made in 2005 and 2006. Most of those loans came with adjustable interest rates that are now resetting, accelerating foreclosures, the center said.

More at the Miami Herald

Ahhhhh what was it Bur$atil told us?

Senior executives at News Corp. urged publisher Judith Regan to lie to investigators about ex-New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik in order to protect Rudy Giuliani’s presidential ambitions, Regan alleges in a lawsuit filed this week.

Judith Regan says News Corp. executives told her to lie about her affair with Bernard Kerik.

The lawsuit does not name the executives or cite any documents to back up her allegation. News Corp., which is led by Rupert Murdoch and is the parent company of the Fox television network and cable news channel, called the suit’s claims “preposterous” Wednesday.

But Regan says she was the victim of a smear campaign “to save the reputation of Kerik and, by association, Rudy Giuliani.”

Regan says she had an affair with Kerik that began in 2001.

The 70-page lawsuit was filed in a state court in New York just days after Kerik’s indictment on federal corruption charges in a case that has fueled criticism of Giuliani, his longtime patron.

Regan ran the News Corp.-owned imprint ReganBooks before her 2006 firing. She also appeared on a talk show on Fox News for several years.

More at CNN News

Fergie - Clumsy
(Eye candy… this girl is a looker!)

What kind of country have we become?

The International Atomic Energy Agency - the United Nations nuclear watchdog - has not been able to conduct an investigation into the events surrounding the Sept. 6 Israeli bombing of a Syrian military installation because neither the Bush administration nor Israel are cooperating.

A diplomatic source close to the Vienna based IAEA told Raw Story that both the United States and Israel have been approached by the organization requesting supporting evidence of a nuclear reactor which media sources have cited, based on anonymous sources in both governments, as the reason for the Israeli strike.

The source also explained that the satellite footage, which the IAEA obtained through commercial channels for lack of any “credible evidence,” does not show a nuclear reactor in the early construction phase.

Full article at Raw Story

From CNN.com:

The Times cited unidentified civilian and military officials in reporting for Wednesday’s editions that the killings of at least 14 of the 17 Iraqi civilians shot by Blackwater personnel guarding a U.S. Embassy convoy were unjustified and violated standards in place governing the use of deadly force.

Responding to the Times report, Anne Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said the company “supports the stringent accountability of the industry. If it is determined that one person was complicit in the wrongdoing, we would support accountability in that. The key people in this have not spoken with investigators.”

Anne went on to say that the company will withhold further comment “until the findings are made available.” Translated, this means investigators plan on spinning around in their expensive Herman Miller chairs until all of this blows over.

Sen. Kyl obviously ignores polls. A republican trademark (up until a poll favors their position, that is).

Harry Reid is back on his “bring’em home or no money for you” warpath. The House and Senate will be voting on a $50 billion measure for war operations this week and, if vetoed, “the president won-t get his $50 billion.”

Nothing to see here, folks. Just more hollow rhetoric by the dem leadership. Instead of meeting with a Bush veto, the bill will likely fail to get the required 60 votes for passage. Congressional Republicans said they would continue to back the president.

Bush will get his way again, of course. Unopposed dictatorships are like that.

“We don-t need members of Congress telling our military commanders what to do,” Bush said Tuesday regarding the passing a clean war spending bill by Christmas recess. “We need our military commanders telling us what to do so we can win the war against these extremists and radicals.”

Oh, and a Merry Christmas to you and yours.

If Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey wants to know what he is up against in restoring stability to the Justice Department, he is being urged by the department’s employees in Minnesota, as well as by prominent lawyers and law professors here, to consider an early visit to the United States Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis.

The 34-year-old lawyer who holds the job, Rachel K. Paulose, is routinely described by colleagues in Minneapolis and Washington as representative of much that went wrong at the department under Alberto R. Gonzales, the former attorney general. During his tenure, several United States attorneys were replaced with lawyers, like Ms. Paulose, who had relatively little experience as prosecutors or managers but were considered fiercely loyal to the Bush administration.

Full article at the NY Times

It’s going to be years before we know the true amount of suffering these men and women are going to go through.

From Yahoo News:

The number of Iraq war veterans needing mental-health care has risen sharply since the U.S. Defense Department began screening them a second time for emotional problems, U.S. military researchers reported Tuesday.

Initial screenings of veterans uncovered 4.4 percent who needed treatment for problems such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But six months later, a second screening found 11.7 percent were in need of mental health care, indicating that it might take several months for emotional disorders to emerge, the study suggested.