YEMEN BECOMING A LEMON – AT 12:17 P.M. ET:  Ah yes, I remember it well.  It was only months ago when Field Marshal Obama was touting Yemen as an American success story.  Now the place has all the internal stability of a Hollywood marriage.  From Reuters: 

(Reuters) - No sooner had Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi announced his resignation than his country's tenuous political fabric began to disintegrate.

Provinces across a nation barely held together by a complex web of tribal and religious alliances said they would no longer take military commands from Sanaa after the Iranian-allied Shi'ite Houthi group besieged Hadi's home and palace this week.

The emerging fragmentation of the Arabian Peninsula country has sparked fears of the "Somalisation" of a state which is home to a revitalised al Qaeda insurgency as well as a neighbour to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.

For Washington, Yemen's splintering would make it hard to carry out a counter-terrorism strategy against al Qaeda plotters who have targeted it and its ally Saudi Arabia and claimed responsibility for the Jan. 7 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.

Through Hadi, a supporter of U.S. drone strikes on al Qaeda, Yemen was a top U.S. ally in the Washington's fight against islamist militancy.

For Yemen's neighbours, especially Saudi Arabia, the rise of the Houthis resembles yet another fallen domino in capitals where allies of regional rival Iran have risen to power - including Damascus, Beirut and Baghdad.

COMMENT:  Won't you sleep better tonight knowing that Barack Obama is president?  Well...uh...you can get sleeping pills at Walgreen's.  That may help.

January 25, 2015