As the prospect of a deadly confrontation between Iran and the United States increases, the fate of 78 million Iranians remains absent in the calculus of war on both sides. Invisible in the current war discourse, Iranians are caught between a repressive government with a reckless and dangerous foreign policy, and an outside world largely uninterested in their voices and their lives. "We are trapped. We live under the heavy shadow of war," a resident of Tehran told me.
[snip]
The United States and its allies are using elaborate economic sanctions to drain the resources of the Iranian regime, ignite domestic revolt, and force the government to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Sanctions are, however, chocking the Iranian people. While the government continues enriching uranium, sanctions penalize the Iranian people through dizzying increase in the price of food, gasoline and other basic items in ordinary people's basket of consumer goods. Food inflation in Iran is currently at 50%, more than double the official inflation rate.

Go read the whole thing. It's not very long. Then look around the United States and around your town or city at the results of continuing and deepening economic collapse, and try to imagine the effect of $200 a barrel oil on that economic situation.

As Gloria Steinem once said...

"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off."

According to NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, attorney Ray Boucher has mapped out at least sixty locations of where suspected priests reside in California.

"Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse," Boucher told NBC Los Angeles. "They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers."

One of the alleged victims, Dan Smith, graphically detailed his incident with a local priest when he was a child.

"He would rape me and then say this is what God's love feels like," Smith told Los Angeles NBC.

US President Barack Obama will Monday roll out a populist election-year budget, challenging Republicans to support his job creation drive and to finally agree to hike taxes on the richest Americans.

Obama will use his annual spending plan to flesh out his pledge to build a new economy in which every American gets a "fair shot" and the rich pay what the president calls a "fair share," senior officials said.

His proposal will be seen as a highly political document, given its timing as Obama gears up his reelection fight and the fact it follows spending guidelines from a deficit control agreement with Republicans in September.

The budget is also unlikely ever to come into force, as Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has said there will be no vote on a budget proposal this year, due to the already agreed spending guidelines.

...

Sixty-one people interviewed, fifty of whom will appear on camera.  Supposedly there's a substantial portion devoted to the extramarital stuff.  Wouldn't surprise me if that is the case.