Romney: Adam and Eve looked slutty

Well, he kind of said that. Of course, wait a few minutes and Romney will probably say the opposite - that Adam and Eve weren't so bad after all. Oh wait, that's exactly what the Book of Mormon says. Read the rest of this post...

Do coffee shops discriminate against women?

Interesting. These are the kind of things you don't really think about that often, being a man. I'd never have imagined that men get served coffee quicker than women. Is this as surprising to the women out there?

From Slate (via Huff Post):

American economist Caitlin Knowles Myers.... with her students as research assistants, staked out eight coffee shops (PDF) in the Boston area and watched how long it took men and women to be served. Her conclusion: Men get their coffee 20 seconds earlier than do women. (There is also evidence that blacks wait longer than whites, the young wait longer than the old, and the ugly wait longer than the beautiful. But these effects are statistically not as persuasive.)

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84 percent of journalists say they would or already have used blogs as a primary or secondary source for articles

They like us, they really like us!

According to the Arketi Group 2007 Web Watch Survey, 84 percent of journalists say they would or already have used blogs as a primary or secondary source for articles. 100% of those (journalists) surveyed say they rely on the Internet to help get their job done. One-quarter of journalists say blogs make their job easier, while 18 percent say instant messaging makes their job easier.

Wow, we're bigger than chat. [/irony] Read the rest of this post...

Judge orders White House to hold e-mails

A nation of laws. Imagine that. Read the rest of this post...

Disgraced Citigroup CEO to receive $12.5M bonus

Well, fair is fair and he really tried hard. I'm sure the same considerations would be taken for anyone working at Citigroup. Just because Citigroup lost $64 billion during his tenure doesn't mean he should be deprived of tens of millions worth of bonus money. How else is he going to live in the lap of luxury and retire as one of the worst CEOs in recent years?

This year, thousands of Citigroup employees can expect bonuses based on their work in 2007, when the bank’s results have been less than stellar. One, however, will get a bonus based largely on his performance in 2006, which was a better year: Charles O. Prince III, who resigned under pressure as chairman and chief executive last week.

Mr. Prince, arguably the person most responsible for Citigroup’s enormous problems, can expect at least a $12.5 million cash bonus, compared with last year’s cash payout of $13.8 million.

And as he awaits his official retirement next month, Mr. Prince can rest assured that he will leave with $68 million, including his salary and accumulated stockholdings; a $1.7 million pension; an office, car and driver for up to five years — all in addition to the bonus. That is on top of $53.1 million he has taken home in the last four years, a period when $64 billion in the company’s market value has evaporated.

His $12.5 million bonus is based on a formula that adjusts the 2006 bonus for current stock performance, instead of simply awarding it on his performance during 2007, as with most everyone else. Pay experts say the unusual time-traveling maneuver effectively guarantees him a windfall.

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What the Iraq war could have bought us

From the Boston Globe via E&P;:

"If the Bush administration succeeds in its latest request for funding for the war in Iraq, the total cost would rise to $611.5 billion, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonprofit research group," the staff stated in an online introduction. "The amount got us wondering: What would $611 billion buy?"

Among the findings, from college tuition to free gasoline -- each posted with an accompanying photo -- staffers revealed the following:

• "U.S. drivers consume approximately 384.7 million gallons of gasoline a day. Retail prices averaged $3.00 a gallon in early November. Breaking it down, $611 billion could buy gasoline for everybody in the United States, for about 530 days."

• "In fiscal 2008, Medicare benefits will total $454 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation summary. The $611 billion in war costs is 17 times the amount vetoed by the president for a $35 billion health."

• "According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth. At the upper range of those estimates, the $611 billion cost of the war could have fed and educated the world's poor for seven years."

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Republican trickle down economics - it really works!

Interesting. A few decades after Reagan and we are finally seeing trickle down economics work. Who would have guessed?

As the housing market crumbles, homeowners are worried about mortgage payments and sellers are worried about slumping prices — but the companies that insure their loans are worrying about their very survival in the face of billions of dollars in claims.

Insurers like industry leader MGIC Investment Corp. are predicting they won't turn a profit for at least a year. The uncertainty has sent their stocks plunging and raised questions about what happens if so many loans go bad that the insurers behind them go out of business.

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Washington Post editorial in favor of ENDA

Someone must have locked Fred Hiatt in the closet while they published this one:

THE UNITED STATES took a step closer this week to fulfilling its promise of equal opportunity for all when the House passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire or fail to promote an employee because of the person's real or perceived sexual orientation. The 235 to 184 vote capped an effort started in 1974 by two New York members of Congress: Bella Abzug (D) and Ed Koch (D).

The bill's passage in the House is a victory not only for gay men, lesbians and bisexual people, but also for all Americans who believe that people who work hard and play by the rules should not lose their jobs or be denied one simply because of who they are.

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Security contractors in Iraq kill civilian. In other news, sky is blue.

I'm a close observer of the news. I read papers and blogs far more than any reasonable person should, especially for issues I understand and want to stay absolutely on top of, like Iraq. But I still don't have a good handle on how and why events or issues that have been ongoing for a long time bubble up into a full-blown media narrative; sometimes it's a combination of things and sometimes it just seems random.

Today we have another story of allegedly unprovoked security contractor violence killing an innocent civilian in Iraq. Regardless even of whether this specific incident is true, this kind of thing happens *all the time.* It's a problem exacerbated within contractors because of the lack of accountability and oversight, but it's also by no means limited to contractors, simply because when every car is a potential danger, normal driver behavior can start to look awful threatening. And with rules of engagement sometimes fuzzy (again, especially for contractors), people start to err decisively on the side of "shoot first, ask questions later."

To some extent, on a micro level, this is understandable: self-protection is an overwhelming instinct, and the vast, vast majority of troops and contractors have no desire to hurt others unless necessary. The problem lies in the definition of "necessary," which is surprisingly malleable depending on the circumstances. But when people talk about our presence being an irritant rather than a salve, these kinds of events are part of what they're talking about. Read the rest of this post...

DRAFT The rich and famous prefer the euro

Definitely it seems that something is changing between the dollar and the euro. We've already seen "enemy" countries, like Venezuela and Iran, prefer to conduct their transactions in euros instead of dollars, and even supermodels such as Gisele Bündchen who wants to sign contracts only in euros because of the instability of the American coin. But changing attitudes about which currency is now the favorite are becoming more high profile: One of the most famous rappers in United States, Jay-Z, walks in his last video through the streets with tickets of 500 euros. Not 500 dollars, they are clearly bills of 500 euros. Besides, he does it in a Rolls-Royce, very European.

Maybe these facts can be symptoms of the new financial world situation, and the dollar can be stopping being the currency of world reference. The average citizen pays much more attention to people like Jay-Z (known also as the boyfriend of Beyoncé) than to Alan Greenspan. America needs a change in currency policy because, although a weak dollar helps exports (because it lowers the price of American goods for foreign buyers), it will eventually bring negative consequences to the economy in general because a weak dollar, an unstable dollar, makes America less attractive to foreign investment. Considering the warnings (Greenspan predicted real probabilities of recession in US), the foreign inversion is the best guarantee against of a financial crisis. Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good Morning.

Another week begins.

What's on the agenda? Read the rest of this post...

Fear tactics and race baiting not working for Howard this time

The recipe for success, both for John Howard as well as other so-called Coalition of the Willing members, is falling flat in 2007. Accusing anyone who is Arabic used to be very well received by the media and the general population but after so many false charges and failures, the public around the world has become wiser. John Howard, prepare to spend more time with Tony Blair very soon.

Australian authorities dropped terrorism charges against a Sydney medical student on Monday, with a judge condemning police and intelligence agents for "grossly improper" behavior in the case.

Izhar Ul-Haque, 24, had been charged with receiving weapons training in 2003 from the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is listed as a terrorist group in Australia. The case was dropped after police interviews with him were ruled inadmissible in court.

New South Wales Supreme Court judge Michael Adams said intelligence officers from the secretive Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had kidnapped and falsely imprisoned Ul-Haque during their investigations.

"It was a gross interference by the agents of the state with the accused's legal rights as a citizen, rights which he still has whether he be suspected of criminal conduct or not, and whether he is Muslim or not," Adams said.

The development is a further blow to Australia's tough stand on national security after prosecutors in July dropped charges against an Indian doctor, saying they made a mistake by publicly charging him with supporting terrorism.

The case is also a blow to conservative Prime Minister John Howard, who won elections in late 2001 and 2004 on the back of his tough stand on national security. But his government is struggling in the polls ahead of elections on November 24.

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Asian stock markets dive on subprime lending problems

The US subprime failure is managing to drive down global markets. Japan's Nikkei has now lost it's 2007 profits, falling to numbers last seen in 2006. Isn't it interesting how not a single bank regulator anywhere in the world saw the subprime problems?

When we eventually come out of this, maybe we need to look at a less cozy relationship between regulators and those who are regulated. We don't need open hostility, but we certainly can't afford friends regulating friends as we have today. It's doesn't work well in finance, on corporate boards, in the media or elsewhere. The friends or status quo always come out OK (see the Merrill Lynch and Citigroup CEOs) though it just never serves everyone else very well. Read the rest of this post...