‘He is plainly some crazed moral retard’. That stuck it to him. Or not. Yet on the night of 9/11, as I sat in a BBC Radio studio helping to dissect the bleak events of that day, it was the only response I could summon to the Al-Qa’eda ‘representative’ the Corporation had thoughtfully allowed on air. Make no mistake, I loathe such extremists. And such extremists had been around and preparing for a very long time. On that same radio show I was asked about the long-term ramifications of the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. War, I replied. War … 
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There are some people who can carry off this having a girlfriend in every town thing: sailors for one. There’s also a number who can’t, as Tiger Woods recently found out. Being of that age when the mid-life crisis moves one from simple envy of those who can to trying to work out quite how one can lead me to investigate. A-Rod for example: I believe he’s something to do with what we English call “rounders”, a game we give up at 11 years of age. But apparently his inability to move on and learn cricket properly hasn’t stopped him from … 
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Republicans already counting the seats they will pick up this fall should keep in mind Obama has a big card yet to play. Should the president declare he has gone the last mile for a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear program and impose the “crippling” sanctions he promised in 2008, America would be on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight to war. And should war come, that would be the end of GOP dreams of adding three-dozen seats in the House and half a dozen in the Senate. Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S. clash with Iran, with … 
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An invitation to a Vanity Fair dinner is not a bad one to have, though the very thought of having to communicate with famous and fabulous people makes me twitchy. Hollywood types really only like powerful people, and few of them are capable of polite conversation with individuals they don’t know. The conversation usually goes something like this: “Hello, I’m Mandolyna…” At this point the star usually produces an awkward smile, and walks away. But this night was going to be different, I said to myself. I was going to inquire and flatter the stars into a little dialogue. After all, … 
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Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan answered that he had placed his trust in a flawed theory when he was called before Congress to explain why he, Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, prevented Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation, a government regulatory agency, from doing her job of regulating over-the-counter derivatives. The efficient markets theory is that unregulated markets are efficient and rational. According to this theory in which Greenspan placed his trust, unregulated markets produce the best possible result. Any regulatory interference worsens the outcome. Greenspan blamed his own bad … 
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As you’ve no doubt heard by now, leading Oscar nominees Avatar and The Hurt Locker are directed by ex-spouses: James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, who were married from 1989-1991. What you might not know is that traces of each can be seen in the other’s movie. But first, the question of the female director. Although women have directed such solid films as Big, Clueless, and Sleepless in Seattle, Bigelow is only the fourth woman out of the last 170 Best Director nominees. Oscar nods are decided by members of each craft, and the old boys club of directors doesn’t see much … 
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“It was a dark and stormy night, but we were young and thought we could do anything. There was no looking back. None of that David Copperfield kind of nonsense. We were already men. We had our finger on what was going on between self and culture. We did away with the traditional architecture of the short story. It was bull—-t, so we dumped it. There was no beginning and no middle, just a lot of emotion, irony and mood. MMMooodd. It was Zen, man, and it never snapped shut. We said less, and it counted for more, and the suckers … 
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Readers ask if the financial crisis is over, if the recovery is for real and, if not, what are Americans’ prospects. The short answer is that the financial crisis is not over, the recovery is not real, and the U.S. faces a far worse crisis than the financial one. Here is the situation as I understand it: The global crisis is understood as a banking crisis brought on by the mindless deregulation of the U.S. financial arena. Investment banks leveraged assets to highly irresponsible levels, issued questionable financial instruments with fraudulent investment grade ratings, and issued the instruments through direct sales … 
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New York City is for the rich and the young. If you’re not either of those things, get out. Those who stay are doomed to sitting in a tiny apartment all alone and bitching about rich kids in love. This is what the majority of my friends do. They gripe about mythical trust fund hipsters who are into fashion and partying and other shallow pursuits. It reminds me of tough guys from the 50s using “pretty boy” as a derogatory term. You realize you just called that guy young and attractive, right? No group of flippant and successful kids sums up … 
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A month after Germany surrendered in May 1945, America’s eyes turned to the Far East, where the bloodiest battle of the Pacific war was joined on the island of Okinawa. Twelve thousand U.S. soldiers and Marines would die—twice as many dead in 82 days of fighting as have died in all the years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Within weeks of the battle’s end came Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Three weeks later, Gen. MacArthur took the Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri. That was 65 years ago, as far away in time from today as the Marines’ arrival at Da Nang … 
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