Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Neither bulls nor bears seems particularly inspired at the moment, although the edge still goes to the latter and to the downside target given here previously:  _____.   A descent to that Hidden pivot would become an odds-on bet if its midpoint sibling at 985.60 is exceeded on a closing basis.  Alternatively, the futures would need to touch _____ on a rally Monday night or Tuesday to turn the minor trend bullish. A more important midpoint resistance would come into play thereupon, and with its breach a potential run-up to ______. 

Americans owe a debt of thanks to Najibullah Zazi, since he has made it far more difficult for Islamic terrorists operating in the U.S. to buy the supplies they would need to make conventional bombs.  Acquiring nail-polish remover and hydrogen peroxide in industrial quantities at a suburban Colorado beauty supply store, Zazi told the check-out clerk that he had many girlfriends. His thick, black beard alone should have been enough to arouse suspicions.  “Oh, that?  I am playing the role of Mr. Abraham Lincoln on the stage of your community college.” Looking more like a fugitive from Guantanamo than Honest Abe, Zazi is destined to become the poster boy for a War on Terror that President Obama has been too gutless to prosecute. Now that his picture has appeared in all the newspapers, every American who works behind a counter will be on the lookout for swarthy, bearded guys with heavy accents who would buy their beauty supplies by the carload. Or rent U-Haul trucks. Or pay cash for motel rooms.  If terrorists want to continue to buy their supplies locally, they’re going to have to recruit accomplices who look more like Robert Redford, not some, bearded, wild-eyed sociopath right out of a South Park cartoon.  Zazi and his lawyer have also helped to fix in our minds the flimsy lies and evasions to which the terrorist will resort when caught red-handed.  When he was undergoing daily grillings by the FBI, Zazi told the Denver Post that investigators would never have let him go at the end of each day if they had thought he was guilty.  “I am just an airport driver,” he said, sounding like Hyman Roth in The Godfather when he told reporters he was just a retired investor with a pension. Zazi attorney Art Folsom, simply doing his job,