Stocks fell Friday after a Spanish region asked Madrid for financial aid, rekindling fears about Europe's debt crisis and prompting traders to cash in three days of gains.

The news that Valencia would seek a bailout interrupted a period of relative calm for Wall Street and raised the specter that the euro zone's fourth-largest economy would itself eventually need to be rescued.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 121 points. Bank shares, sensitive to signs of trouble in Europe, were among the biggest losers.

The euro slid broadly, setting a two-year low against the dollar. The single currency fell as low as $1.2143, its weakest level since mid-June 2010. Spanish benchmark bond yields hit euro-era highs. The yield on the 10-year bond reached 7.3 percent.

"Any time the euro lets go so does the market come under pressure," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont. "This morning the headlines and the news hit and boom, everybody is selling everything."

Apparently, according to some pundits, Mitt and Ann Romney went ballistic when an Obama aide pointed out that if Mitt was not the CEO, President and sole stockholder of Bain Capital from 1999-2002, then he lied on the Security and Exchange Commission form, which could be a felony.

Being even associated with the word felony sent the Romneys into high dudgeon, since they consider that they have double impunity: they are Mormons chosen by God and also endowed with the divine anointment of being extravagantly wealthy.

As I predicted, the Israelis have successfully transformed Wednesday's attack at Burgas airport in Bulgaria into a 'suicide bomber' attack. It's a rather transparent attempt to provide 'proof' that the bombing was the work of the Iranians or Hizb'allah in the absence of any actual evidence that Iran or Hizb'allah were involved. After all, everyone 'knows' that Muslims and 'suicide bombers' are one and the same, and everyone 'knows that' Iran and Hizb'allah are evil and want to destroy the Jews, so what more 'proof' is needed?

As I noted in my previous article, initial reports stated that the bomb was in the luggage compartment of the bus, and surely forensic examination of the bus could verify this. The only problem is that the Israelis have more or less taken over the investigation (as they always do), which in turn has resulted (as it always does) in statements of 'fact' without proof by the Israeli investigators.

In this case, it seems the Israelis have used the unidentified eyewitness report (from yesterday, probably made by an Israeli agent) that the bomb exploded after someone got on the bus, to affirm that it was a 'suicide bomber'. Apparently no one in the mainstream media finds it utterly preposterous to assume that just because the bomb exploded after someone got on the bus, that person must be the 'suicide bomber'. By that logic, all the other people already on the bus could also be suicide bombers. Unless of course all suicide bombers are required to blow themselves up immediately after they arrive at their target.

Are you ready for the next major global food crisis? The price of corn hit an all-time record high on Thursday. So did the price of soybeans. The price of corn is up about 50 percent since the middle of last month, and the price of wheat has risen by about 50 percent over the past five weeks.

On Thursday, corn for September delivery reached $8.166 per bushel, and many analysts believe that it could hit $10 a bushel before this crisis is over. The worst drought in the United States in more than 50 years is projected to continue well into August, and more than 1,300 counties in the United States have been declared to be official natural disaster areas. So how is this crisis going to affect the average person on the street?

Well, most Americans and most Europeans are going to notice their grocery bills go up significantly over the coming months. That will not be pleasant. But in other areas of the world this crisis could mean the difference between life and death for some people. You see, half of all global corn exports come from the United States. So what happens if the U.S. does not have any corn to export? About a billion people around the world live on the edge of starvation, and today the Financial Times ran a front page story with the following headline: "World braced for new food crisis". Millions upon millions of families in poor countries are barely able to feed themselves right now. So what happens if the price of the food that they buy goes up dramatically?

You may not think that you eat much corn, but the truth is that it is in most of the things that we buy at the grocery store. In fact, corn is found in about 74 percent of the products we buy in the supermarket and it is used in more than 3,500 ways.

Americans consume approximately one-third of all the corn grown in the world each year, and we export massive amounts of corn to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, thanks to the drought of 2012 farmers are watching their corn die right in front of their eyes all over the United States.

The following is from a Washington Post article that was posted on Thursday....

Nearly 40 percent of the corn crop was in poor-to-very-poor condition as of Sunday, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. That compared with just 11 percent a year ago.

"The crop, if you look going south from Illinois and Indiana, is damaged and a lot of it is damaged hopelessly and beyond repair now," said Sterling Smith, a Citibank Institutional Client Group vice president who specializes in commodities.

About 30 percent of the soybean crop was in poor-to-very-poor condition, which compared with 10 percent a year ago.

Conditions for both crops are expected to worsen in Monday's agriculture agency report.

More than half of the country is experiencing drought conditions right now, and this is devastating both ranchers and farmers. Right now, ranchers all over the western United States are slaughtering their herds early as feed prices rise. It is being projected that the price of meat will rise substantially later this year.

For the last two years, the President's Budget Submissions for the Department of Defense have included purchases of a significant amount of combat equipment, including armored vehicles, helicopters and even artillery, under an obscure section of the FY2008 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the purposes of "homeland defense missions, domestic emergency responses, and providing military support to civil authorities." Items purchased under the section include combat vehicles, tanks, helicopters, artillery, mortar systems, missiles, small arms and communications equipment. Justifications for the budget items indicate that many of the purchases are part of routine resupply and maintenance, yet in each case the procurement is cited as being "necessary for use by the active and reserve components of the Armed Forces for homeland defense missions, domestic emergency responses, and providing military support to civil authorities" under section 1815 of the FY2008 NDAA.

A week ago, CNN viewers were treated to a classic piece of scaremongering courtesy of former AIPAC staffer Wolf Blitzer, who typifies how Israel's fifth column in the media manipulates U.S. public opinion in plain sight:

BLITZER: There's an ominous new warning coming in from the Pentagon. Iran's missiles are getting more accurate, apparently getting more deadly as well.

In a recent interview, George W. Bush fondly recalled his eight-year presidency as "awesome," but said he wasn't eager to get back into public life.

"I really don't want to be in the public eye anymore," the former president told the Hoover Institute's Peter Robinson in an interview posted to YouTube on Tuesday.

"Look, eight years was awesome," Bush explained. "You know, I was famous and I was powerful, but I have no desire for fame and power anymore."

"I don't want to undermine our president - whoever is president," he added. "And a former president can do that. And I think it's bad for the presidency itself."

"I have found that life after the presidency is awesome."

Bush left office in 2009 with a 22 percent approval rate, making him one of history's least-liked presidents, according to CBS News. In all, 73 percent said they did not approve of the way he ran the country for eight years.

Watch this video from the Hoover Institute, uploaded to YouTube on July 17, 2012.

Abandon hope of reading anything remotely original, all ye who enter here. That pre-emptive warning may be implicit in the byline above, but I make it explicit today because what you are about to enter is the tragically unlost Danteian tenth circle of hell that is Mr Tony Blair. If he bores the bejeesus out of this crazily obsessive student of his works, what on earth will another article about him do to those of you in better psychiatric health?

Before you tut, "No, not the bleeding Blair rant, not again," and shift to my friend Mark Steel, a final plea for your attention. There is something scintillatingly fresh to be said of him after all. Mr Tony, the Daily Mail reveals, has become besotted with deep sea fishing. "And we're not talking about him standing about on deck... dangling a rod over the side," a friend is quoted as saying. "Apparently, he gets strapped into one of those high-tech seats with a harness, like in Jaws."

Loss of power is a hateful thing to the average victim of undiagnosed narcissistic personality disorder, so no one will begrudge him the chance to replace the adrenaline rushes as he prefers. The difference of opinion only arises when the scent of rehabilitation brings him home. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, here he is encircling the upper echelons of public life once again - and if his dream of rehabilitation is to be harpooned, we're going to need a bigger boat.

Thrill-seeking tourists of all ages brave West Bank shooting range to be taught by settlers how to shoot terrorists.

Summer camp, warfare style: Like a frozen turkey plunged into boiling oil, a group of American tourists descend from an air-conditioned van into the scorching heat of the West Bank. Flashing smiles all around, they march into Caliber 3, a local shooting range.

"Move it!" the Israeli guide suddenly yells. "Destroy that terrorist," he orders them, and they charge, guns loaded, at cardboard targets.

Gush Etzion has become a hot destination in recent months for tourists seeking an Israeli experience like no other: The opportunity to pretend-shoot a terror operative. Residents of the nearby settlements, who run the site, offer day-trippers a chance to hear stories from the battleground, watch a simulated assassination of terrorists by guards, and fire weapons at the range.

The recently published report by an Israeli judge concluding that Israel is not in fact occupying the West Bank - despite a well-established international consensus to the contrary - has provoked mostly incredulity or mirth in Israel and abroad.

Leftwing websites in Israel used comically captioned photographs to highlight Justice Edmond Levy's preposterous finding. One shows an Israeli soldier pressing the barrel of a rifle to the forehead of a Palestinian pinned to the ground, saying: "You see - I told you there's no occupation."

Even Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, seemed a little discomfited by the coverage. He was handed the report more than a fortnight earlier but was apparently reluctant to make it public.

Downplaying the Levy report's significance may prove unwise, however. If Netanyahu is embarrassed, it is only because of the timing of the report's publication rather than its substance.