Originally Posted by host

....and, last I looked...we're not considering the election of new leadership of just "any" country....it's about a country addicted to 13 million bbls a day of imported petroleum equivalents in an era of unprecedentedly high oil prices....a country with a bankrupt treasury and a wasted currency, struggling with record trade deficit, a still imploding housing valuation and underlying financial crisis, record military expenditures and the most inequitable wealth distribtuion in the community of post industrialized countries, as unemployment and home mortgage foreclosures are in the early stages of a rising trend....all wrapped around a belligerent foreign policy that has alienated oil rich Venezuala, Russia, and Iran....while relations with China begin to erode.