Is there a secret subtext behind The Devil Wears Prada? Was it a deeper relationship than that of a boss and an assistant?
Wherever you look, people whom you'd hope would have some inside knowledge of the American near future, seem to be losing their minds.
Sure, Governor Blago might have always been a hoodlum numbskull but how else to explain super lawyer Marc Dreier suddenly gambling an insanely lucrative legitimate career to try to con hedge funds out of as much as $380 million? And just yesterday seventy-year-old Wall Street legend Bernard L. Madoff stands accused of one of the most egregious white collar crimes in history -- bilking his investors of as much as $50 billion.
Do they know something we don't know? It's as if the risk of getting caught was outweighed by their panicked desire to get as much as they could before it's all gone.
It's as if the architect of the Titanic, minutes after they brushed the iceberg, said, "Don't mind me, I'm just going out for a smoke," when really, knowing what he knew about the ship's chances, stole into a lifeboat and set off alone into the dark cold waters.
Grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk refused to submit a urine sample for a drug test at the Chess Olympiad in Dresden and is now considered guilty of doping. [...]
Professional chess player Vassily Ivanchuk, born in Berezhany, Ukraine in 1969, has been a grandmaster for the past 20 years and is currently ranked third in the world. The man with black hair and bedroom eyes is known as "Big Chucky" by his fellow chess players. Why? Because, after losing a game, he goes into the forest at night and howls at the moon to drive out the demons. Because he walks around in shorts in freezing temperatures. Because he likes to sit in dark rooms. Because he usually looks at the ceiling instead of the board during a chess match. Because he tries to fold the oversized winner's check handed out after a tournament down to pocket size. And because he, as World Champion Visvanathan Anand says, lives on "Planet Ivanchuk."
We've been waiting to hear who will be the new Secretary of Energy. Even though my boss announced to the executive team this morning that he was not going to Washington, I remained confident that someone besides the normal business as usual, green on the edges, let's not be too concerned about climate change if it endangers our economy, fire burning neo-neanderthal would get the nod. (my em and I like that phrase!)
And it looks like we are not going to be disappointed.
According to Huffington and everyone else, it will be Steven Chu:
A Chinese-American, Chu is a professor of physics and molecular and cell biology at the University of California-Berkeley and has been the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2004, where he has pushed aggressively for research into alternative energy as a way to combat global warming.
It is the oldest of the Energy Department's national laboratories, but does only unclassified work. In recent years under Chu, it has been at the center of research into biofuels and solar technologies. Chu has been a strong advocate for the need to engage scientists in the search for ways to combat global warming by replacing fossil fuels with other energy sources such as biofuels and the sun.
So, the Republicans are saying that if the Democrats don't agree to destroy the unions, they will block any loans to Detroit, and allow the auto companies to fail. And even that might not be enough to stop them because this wrecking crew seems have decided that the country needs to understand that if they vote for Democrats the Republicans will make them pay by ushering in another great depression.
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Republicans spent the last eight years like drunken sailors on their first shore leave after years at sea. They wantonly drained the treasury of billions and billions of dollars on harebrained schemes to induce "birthpangs of democracy" around the world, chasing phantom enemies and enriching their defense contractor contributors. They created a lobbying culture so corrupt it finally collapsed of its own weight. They deregulated the financial industry so thoroughly that it created an elaborate ponzi scheme that has just about destroyed the world economy.
They have no standing to lecture anyone about responsibility, fiscal or otherwise, and no right to obstruct the cure for the problem they created.
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Our Lady of Guadalupe, also called the Virgin of Guadalupe (Spanish: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe or Virgen de Guadalupe) is a 16th century Roman Catholic Mexican icon representing an apparition of the Virgin Mary. It is perhaps Mexico's most popular religious and cultural image. Guadalupe's feast day is celebrated on December 12, commemorating the traditional account of her appearances to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City from December 9, 1531 through December 12, 1531.
[...] The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said that "...one may no longer consider himself a Christian, but you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe."
Nobel laureate Octavio Paz wrote in 1974 that "the Mexican people, after more than two centuries of experiments, have faith only in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery"[
La música es una antígua composición indígena-colonial mexicana e interpretada por Linda Ronstadt.
[...] But more important, it is finally dawning on some in Washington--if not exactly those packing their bags and shredding their files in the Bush White House--that Pakistan has played us for fools ever since September 11, 2001.
The world has become a more dangerous place because the Bush Administration took its eye off this particular ball in order to fight the war of choice in Iraq. It is up to the President-elect to let the Pakistanis know that the days of American carelessness are over. It is up to the Pakistanis to make clear that they truly want to be our ally in the struggle against violent Islamic extremism.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky will run for the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama should that seat ultimately come to a special election, her office confirmed to the Huffington Post.
Schakowsky is widely considered one of the most liberal members of the House of Representatives. She was a cosponsor of a resolution seeking articles of impeachment against vice president Dick Cheney and was one of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq War. She was also an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama's candidacy, both for Senate in 2004 and president in 2008.
I am from Chicago, and, so, having been disillusioned with politics at an early age I do not become involved. The only reason I vote is because they pay me.
... All over Chicago, there's mobsters laughing their fat asses off because Blagojevich made mistakes that only amateurs make ...
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"Americans voted for change. Barack Obama promised that he would have the most open and honest administration and transition in history," said RNC chairman Mike Duncan, on a conference call just now with reporters. "But that's not what we're getting. What we're getting is the same old politics out of Chicago."
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"If he really wants to be transparent, if he truly is wanting to do the right thing and move the country forward, he has got to talk about his relationship with Rezko and with the governor," Duncan said, later adding: "He's got to come clean and have a press conference where he talks about what they've done in the past, the help that they've done, conversations that they've done."
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In what is being called one of the most daring escape attempts in the history of law enforcement, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich today offered the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama to the FBI agent who took him into Federal custody this morning.
According to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the astonishing escape attempt occurred moments after Mr. Blagojevich was handcuffed by the agent, who was wearing a wire and captured the entire expletive-laden offer on tape.
"'You can be the [bleeping] junior Senator from [bleeping] Illinois if you let me out of these [bleeping] handcuffs,'" Mr. Fitzgerald read from a transcript. "'And if that mother-[bleeper] Barack Obama tries to [bleep] with me, I'll [bleep] him up.'"
According to Mr. Fitzgerald, "When I say 'bleep,' he didn't really say 'bleep' on the tape," adding, "I'm going to keep making that joke until one of you [bleepers] laughs at it."
Gov. Blagojevich has been charged with a laundry list of Federal crimes, including stealing his haircut from the dad on "The Brady Bunch."
DEARBORN, Mich. — By shunning government loans, Ford Motor Co.'s top executives say they hope to buff up the automaker's image and set it apart from its cash-starved Detroit competitors, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.
GM and Chrysler are in desperate need of government money and may not last until the end of the year without it. But Ford set up $23.5 billion worth of credit in 2006, and both Chief Executive Alan Mulally and Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. told The Associated Press on Tuesday they are confident that the borrowing, coupled with restructuring and new product plans, will get them through the recession without relying on the government.
Ford, he said, has cut its factory capacity to match demand, and it anticipates no further cuts will be necessary as long as the U.S. auto market doesn't worsen considerably. The company has announced the closure of 17 factories and eliminated 50,000 jobs since 2005, many through buyout and early retirement offers.
Ford wants to set up a $9 billion long-term line of credit from the government but would use it only if the U.S. auto market worsens or fails to recover. The company has said it has enough borrowed money to make it through 2009 without government help.
He said Ford would comply with all government conditions if it tapped the loans at a later date.
Ford also said he'd like to see the government keep gas prices stable with taxes or a floor on crude oil prices so automakers can plan their models better.
Gasoline prices peaked at more than $4 per gallon during the summer but now are well below $2 per gallon in many areas of the country.
"We plan our vehicles three, four, five years in advance," he said. "It makes life very difficult if the market gyrates wildly over the course of several months, and that's exactly what we've seen happen."
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That dissent is wholly justified given the realities on the ground. The Taliban, by one account, has a permanent presence in 72% of the country and is closing in on the capital, Kabul. Unlike Iraq, the militant groups here have a connection to the local tribal communities - they are not solely foreign fighters imposing their will - and they are determined not to make the same mistakes as Al Qaeda in Iraq, even loosening its doctrinaire extremism to accommodate the locals and multiple insurgent groups. The plan floated to "restart the surge" by enlisting tribal groups to fight the Taliban won't work with coalition forces targeting them at the same time:
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The response to additional troops in the region will clearly be additional violence. This is particularly the case if civilian casualties continue, increasing anger among the local population. The US plan appears to be to focus their troops in the Kabul region, which is incredibly ominous, suggesting that the countryside is being given up for the time being. And the supply lines connecting the region have been breached. [my ems]
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It seems to happen a lot. Democrat, Republican, it doesn't seem to matter: In Illinois, a governor will serve two terms in the governor's mansion followed by a single term in prison.
After an emotional, fiery debate over academic freedom and torture, Berkeley's city council passed a measure late Monday night imploring the U.S. to prosecute Berkeley resident and former White House official John Yoo for war crimes.
Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the legal memos justifying torture while interrogating terrorism suspects while he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney general for the Bush administration in 2001-03.
Yoo was not available for comment Tuesday.
A German cruise ship plans to evacuate passengers in Yemen and fly them to the next port of call Wednesday to avoid any possible encounters with pirates off the coast of lawless Somalia.
Several other cruise operators said Tuesday they were also shifting or canceling tours that would have taken clients past Somalia, as nations and companies around the world debated how to confront the piracy dominating the Gulf of Aden.
The European Union said its anti-piracy mission would station armed guards on vulnerable cargo ships — the first such deployment of military personnel during international anti-piracy operations in the crucial waterway.
Britain, France, Greece, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands will contribute at least 10 warships and three aircraft to the mission, with contingents rotated every three months.