WEWS 5 in Ohio. "Fifty percent of Cleveland mortgages are underwater according to Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis. `In the Gulf of Cuyahoga County you can't clean up the foreclosure mess until we cap the gusher of foreclosures. There's no BP in sight trying to lower a cap on this gusher. It flows freely,' Rokakis explained."

"Rokakis heads to Washington Tuesday and hopes to talk with Obama Administration officials about potential solutions, so homeowners don't just walk away from their mortgage. He believes the treasury needs to start an incentive program to force mandatory principal reductions. This would reduce loans to their current values, instead of having a $150,000 mortgage on a house valued at $100,000."

"Rokakis would like the second component of that program to give bankruptcy judges the authority to reduce primary residential properties to their current value. It would be a cost to taxpayers, but Rokakis feels we're already footing the bill for these programs on the back end."

"`The taxpayer will pay just as they paid for TARP, just as they paid for the bank bailout. But when mortgages go bad and at record numbers, eventually those properties come back at a much lower number and banks reflect those losses. We're going to pay for those anyway. The difference is if we accept the loss now, we can save what's left of the equity and more importantly we'll save neighborhoods,' Rokakis said."

The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009," the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945...

The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted the US-led occupation of Iraq--a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on the basis of lies--Washington determined to make an example of the largely Sunni city. This is called "exemplary" or "collective" punishment and is, according to the laws of war, illegal.

The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the assault contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells to increase their effectiveness.

link

I can't think of anything much more disgusting than checking your grade with David Brooks every week.

Couple that with this dissection of Politico.

I know I nag about the press a lot, but I don't think it can be said enough. I do applaud CNN for starting to take a critical look at the other networks. If they carve themselves a niche in that area, we would all benefit.

Take a peek, always interested in reactions.

A loose network of Mexican-American women, some of whom may be illegal immigrants, have been responsible for helping numerous Afghan military deserters go AWOL from an Air Force Base in Texas, FoxNews.com has learned.

Many of the Afghans, with the women's assistance, have made their way to Canada; the whereabouts of others remain unknown. Some of the men have been schooled by the women in how to move around the U.S. without any documentation.

The Afghan deserters refer to the women as "BMWs" -- Big Mexican Women -- and they often are the first step in the Afghans' journey from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, to Canada, a diplomatic official told FoxNews.com.

via digby