Pussy cat Friday and Syria

A city of nearly one million people sits almost empty. Except for sporadic gunfire the occasional barking dog and crying baby an eerie silence hugs the city. Dust and rubble blanket the streets as young men cling to doorways for protection tightly holding their automatic weapons. The silence is broken by the sound of incoming mortar fire. We've heard it so many times in the movies but this is real. We can't see the shells but from our rooftop camera we can see only the thick black clouds ascending over the skyline and know that another building has been hit. Hour after hour the shelling goes on, no time outs here.

Eighteen months the war has gone on with a body count now at 33,000. The men women and children who once peacefully frequented the shops have either fled or were killed. This is the slow suicide of a nation. Assad is slowly killing not only the people but himself in the process. A country is not made up of just one group or another it's a mix of races and cultures. And you can analyze all the politics and religious alliances until the cows come home but this is a matter of greed corruption and power. There is a tipping point with any group or population when enough is enough. It began with a simple street vendor setting himself on fire in an act of desperation and has spread to the entire region. But such is the case when there is an imbalance in the system. When there is too much or too little be it power or money or what have you, the system will always seek a balance. It's only sad to note the devastation this will leave when it all ends.

Bank fails later
UPDATE: Three more banks failed in MO and 2 in FL.
I gave up on the parking lot index as there's a lot of empty places here right now.