Having returned a few days ago from nearly two weeks in Costa Rica -- pura vida, indeed -- I'm only now beginning to muster the interest in wading back into American news.

Traveling abroad has always been good for perspective on one's home country, of course, but in recent years the difference in tenor between life here in the States and elsewhere has grown noticeably more discordant.

As little as twelve years ago, you'd return from an extended trip abroad with the typical homesickness of the itinerant traveler: a new-found appreciation for the small familiarities of your native land, for the cleanliness of American streets and the friendliness of the American people.

With a few gifts for your friends and family, and the requisite jar of Nutella, you were usually glad to be home.

These days, the return is much more stark -- and it's not simply because one is returning home from a vacation.

There's no point in saying how terrible the American media is, how God-awfully tasteless the constant commercials for irritable bowel syndrome and erectile dysfunction and restless leg syndrome are, how bludgeoning the appeals to spend spend spend the money you don't have but still can borrow feel -- but when you first walk into an American airport after some time abroad, and face the full auditory assault of American television enfilading you from the widescreen TVs, it's clear (again) that whatever the television is saying or selling, it bears no real relation to actual life as it is lived by the vast majority of people in this world -- and you pledge, again, to stay as disconnected from that miserable electronic tether for as long you can.

And for a few days you do, until the echoes of another way of living and being start to dissipate into memory, and out of ill-formed habit you wander over to Atrios "just to see what is going on."

And there you find this:

Admiral Fallon is resigning as chief of Centcom sez CNN.

...ruh-roh:

Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon's caution was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way.

Thanks for nothing, Atrios.

Atrios (via Americablog) points to a key observation by Jon Markman on the Bush administration's tactics to delay the coming recession:

So the government is in the process of twisting the arms of Federal Reserve Board members to lower interest rates by as much as 2 percentage points over the next year, including potentially a whopping half-point cut next week. That will allow banks to go back to one of their favorite recession-delaying ploys: encouraging debt-strapped consumers to refinance their loans at lower rates.

If that doesn't work, the government has been making noises about creating something like a Marshall Plan for home foreclosures -- a giant bailout fund similar to one used during previous housing crises. Just for good measure, analyst Bove notes, the administration is engaged in other types of powerful job-creating fiscal stimuli as well, such as ramping up spending on defense, infrastructure and transportation construction. "The administration in power is not going to go into an election year in a recession," he insists.

While Atrios notes that "[the] general independence - and belief in that independence - [of the Fed] is thought to be rather important," I think that's less of the story than the fact that lowering the Fed rates, like invading Iraq to stabilize the Middle East and other fantastic schemes of our beloved Bush administration, won't work.

Bernanke, after all, has already been spotted by gossip columnists throughout New York cavorting with investment bankers and Wall Street honchos, cooing "I'm your bitch" while throwing real cash from his fabled helicopters.

But the last time the Fed cut rates, mortgage rates rose as the market priced in the inevitable inflation that Bernanke's happy printing press would produce. Cutting rates will hasten the foreign exodus from U.S. financial instruments that has already caused the dollar to tank more than 11% against the Euro this year; and as that happens, interest rates will rise. Asian central banks, after all, have greater influence over long term interest rates in the U.S. than the Fed.

Which is to say that it's no surprise that a government that has spent the last seven years ripping out the firewall between partisanship and government at every level -- from oil leases on public lands to data mining on American citizens -- would be twisting the Fed's arm to cut rates. And fairy tales aside, we haven't had a Fed chairman with the independence to stand up to a President's pressure for a political bailout in more than twenty years. The Fed will probably cut rates at the behest of the Administration and Wall Street and the investment banks, but little George Bush had better hustle out quickly after they do to declare "Mission Accomplished." Because the relief that provides will last about one news cycle before the rest of the world rushes to dump more of their American assets, sending interest rates soaring.

It's quite amazing that when a President issues only his 4th veto in six and a half years, it doesn't even warrant a headline -- never mind a red font or a siren -- on Drudge.

But I guess that's in line with the marching orders:

The White House sought as little attention, with Bush casting his veto behind closed doors without any fanfare or news coverage. He was discussing it later Wednesday during a budget speech in Lancaster, Pa.

Zeus Y.:

Jim Cramer screams about his poor financial buddies going down. “Lower interest rates, Fed. I don’t want my rich decadent friends to face their due. They have FAMILIES for Christ sake.” So far the American people are refusing to play ball with this rigged game....

These so-called financial elites are so crass and intoxicated with the latitude granted them by their CEO President, it looks like they won’t even bother to rig a few calls in the game or penalize the other team (the American public) unfairly. At this point, it looks like that won’t be enough, they are so far behind. They’re simply going to try to change the score [through inflation and central bank bailouts]. If this happens, I have no idea what is going to happen. Will we just accept it? No October Surprise and Crash because a few trillion dollars are simply pumped into the system and the interest rates are lowered? Woo boy.

Why don’t they just get it over with and say, "We need about a half-trillion dollar bailout for our buddies, from you, the taxpayer. If you don’t pay up, you won’t be able to buy a house, we’ll fire your asses, spiking unemployment (because we would have to cut back on costs, naturally), and we’ll generally make your life miserable. Pay up if you want "protection." It is not a “decreasing appetite for risk” that is gumming up the works; it’s a system that has been set up to have no consequence, which touts the myth of a risk-free profit that is bringing things down. After all, what risk is there in giving out fraudulent loans and then passing them off as AAA rated mortgage-backed securities? I get the profit from transaction fees and sale of the mortgage securities. Some other sucker can take the shaft.

Oops you mean I also used my ill-gotten gains to lend out money to hedge funds (looking for big interest) which are now collapsing and won’t be able to pay me back, but, but, but... The cannibalism of elites can be very ugly, but they always end up coordinating in the end and turning their appetites on the American tax purse. Internalize profits, externalize liabilities. If you have the right men in government, you can even commit open and outright fraud and produce nasty, shoddy work as Halliburton did in Iraq, by the government’s own assessment, and still get a quarter-billion dollar bonus. “Heckuva job ______ (fill in the blank). You’re one of us."

All the while that same taxpayer now has extreme strictures placed upon his or her ability to file bankruptcy and come out with a clean slate, even though two-thirds of bankruptcies are the result of real emergencies (failing health, lost job, or divorce), not the fabricated ones of the finance industry. The simultaneous mendacity, contempt, and dependence toward the American citizen is a force to behold. I think the best way we may have of calling their bluff, is simply saying, "no bailout". They have to take the pain even if that means pain for us. As a follow-up I think we should get real practical and creative about creating our own circle lending, our own markets (as with farmers markets, etc.) that cut out these non-productive, and indeed, life-draining, parasites. In the words that they not doubt use to condemn the homeless they pass on the way to their high-priced pseudo-profession. "Get a job, a real job!"