STRAUSS-KAHN VS. THE MAID

does anyone even remember the name of the maid? i dont. and maybe that's the point. whenever you have a he said, she said; you attack the credibility of the witness/accusser/victim.

she doesnt sound very credible by some lights. that doesnt mean she wasnt raped. she lied to get asylum in the US. a black mark on her credibility. but how many of us, faced with a pretty unpleasant options or worse in africa would lie to get into the US. i probably would. you?

she is associated with a dirt bag. not good. but she didnt get to meet the nice friends that my kids did at their private, santa monica school.

it looks like the case will fall apart. there is physical evidence but he will claim consensual. i travel alot and stay in nice hotels. i have never had consensual sex or an other kind with the maids. the man is a predator. i listened to an interview of a frenchman on npr and he said he looked at DSK while he was being arraigned and he looked guilty to him. this is a man who believes woman are there for the taking.

if not today, maybe one day he will get his karmic

HARD COVER BOOKS; RELEASE WINDOWS

and now for something of world import; the future of hard cover books. i am a reader. i prefer paperbacks. they are smaller, lighter and softer than hardcovers and thus better for travel and reading in bed. however publishers release first in hardcover, with silly retail prices that are heavily discounted and print paperbacks a year later

so i just read a review for a new book, in the case, The emperor of all maladies. i went to amazon, where else would one go? and they show the book available in hardcover with a $30 retail price for $17.40. however you can also get it in Kindle version for $14.99. but NOT in paperback.

now i don't know what the point of having a retail price of 30 and selling it for 17.40. the nominal retail price is silly. but with the simultaneous release in electronic version the horse is out of the barn. people prefer different formats; hard cover, paperback and electronic. give the people the choice. in fact maybe they could bundle physical and electronic?

what do you think?

PAKSITAN KNEW

how could bin laded be in pakistan for 5 years without the ISS, their intelligence service knowing about it? very unlikely. however, we should not be surprised. pakistan was never a willing ally of ours, neither is it a functioning state.

after 9/11 we showed up in pakistan with a big stick and a big carrot and told them they were our new partner and ally. it wasnt their idea. the ISS has been complicit with the taliban and bin laden and we had to have known this. pakistan is a failed or semi failed state.

you lie down with dogs, you get fleas, etc.

we have a pretty untenable situaiton know with a corrupt afghan government who we dont trust and they dont like us and a failed, conflicted pakistan.

no idea how we navigate thru this; what a mess

BOEING HAS BEEN NATIONALIZED?

who needs fiction when we have reality. boeing has decided to build a new production line for the dreamliner in south carolina, which is a right to work state. the NLRB has said this is illegal because it is punishment of unions in washington for striking in the past. WOW.

its not like they are shutting a line down in washington. they are building new capacity elsewhere. at least its in the united states! there is a reason all the foreign car manufacturer's plants are in the southeastern part of the country.

this is not union busting on boeing's part; its exercising good business judgment

the fall of the empire continues

INTERNET GAMING; LEGALIZE AND TAX

the US just indicted 3 companies and 6 people for bank fraud in connection with running internet poker sites in the US. they are all offshore and no one has been arrested.

the market in the US is 5 billion, worldwide it is $30 billion

they are probably guilty. but that is maybe not the point. we live in a global, internet world. gaming is legal and taxed when land based. lets do the same with the internet.

these companies would submit to taxation in exchange for not being subject to arrest. if we taxed them at 20%, thats $1 billion a year. not much with a trillion dollar deficit but its a start. if we legalize, the market probably increases by 4 times; this will probably cannibalize land based casinos but they can buy into the internet market.

this is much easier than figuring out what to do in libya. Qaddafi is dropping cluster bombs on civilians, so chicken shit obama handing it off to NATO is working just fine

LIBYA FUCK UP; CLUELESS IN GAZA

the literary allusion is to eyeless in gaza, by aldous huxley, which has nothing to do with gaza but i have always loved the title

anyway, while we will see what happens in tunisia and egypt, the latter way more important, the pusillanimous pussy footers are fucking up big time in libya.

in egypt, the army was professional, with a 20 year relationship with the american military. in libya a very different story. while it was important for us not to be very visible in egypt; when kadafi started murdering people and bombing people we should have enforced a no fly zone.

it is probably too late and it will be bad and he may hold on

MICHELLE OBAMA IS RIGHT ON DIET!

the likelihood of me agreeing with anything with name obama on it is low. however michelle obama's initiative for healthier eating for kids, and presumably everyone is a no brainer. we are experiencing a healthcare crisis as regards health and paying for it.

so much of healthcosts are lifestyle driven. take obesity and type 2 diabetes, totally lifestyle driven

the right is attacking her under some odd big brother theory. they are wrong

we all need to get our act together and eat better, exercise more

my first and probably last pro obama endorsement