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Will Ron Paul kill the caucuses?
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Leading Republicans, looking to put the best possible frame on a Paul victory, are already testing out a message for what they’ll say if the 76-year-old Texas congressman is triumphant.
The short version: Ignore him.
“People are going to look at who comes in second and who comes in third,” said Gov. Terry Branstad. “If [Mitt] Romney comes in a strong second, it definitely helps him going into New Hampshire and the other states.”
Not a Onion Newsflash.
Cai Guo-Qiang’s Gorgeous Daytime Fireworks Display
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Sarah Palin breathing
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Kim Jung-ll lived the high life, while his people starved
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The Atlantic Wire reports that for his dining pleasure, Kim shipped in first-class chefs so that he could sample the world’s finest cuisines. He was fond of sushi and shark’s fin soup, a controversial delicacy in North Korea. He did this while his people dined on scraps they found in the streets or in the garbage. The beloved dictator is also known to have fed his dogs very well, better than his people.
Kim Jong-Il developed a taste for fine alcohol by keeping a "royal wine cellar," of over 10,000 bottles and reportedly spent up to $720,000 a year just on Hennessey cognac. This, while the average North Korean earns about $900 a year.
Libya commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj to sue UK government
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A Libyan military commander has started legal action against the UK government, which he claims was complicit in his illegal rendition and torture.
Abdel Hakim Belhaj said he and his wife were detained in Bangkok in 2004, then transferred to Abu Salim jail, Tripoli.
He said he was held there for six years and often tortured.
The UK Foreign Office does not comment on intelligence matters, but says the government is holding an inquiry into claims of detainee rendition.
Kim Jong Il’s economic legacy, in one chart
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That’s one reason why reuniting two countries would be an unimaginably wrenching task. Remember, West Germany had to spend about $1.9 trillion to assimilate East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And that was an objectively easier situation (East Germany’s per capita income, for instance, was one-third that of West Germany’s, not a measly 5 percent). Beck estimates that bringing North Korea up to just 80 percent of South Korean standards could cost $2 trillion to $5 trillion over 30 years — to put that in perspective, South Korea’s entire economy comes to about $1 trillion.
Nearly a Third of Americans Are Arrested by 23, Study Says
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By age 23, almost a third of Americans have been arrested for a crime, according to a new study that researchers say is a measure of growing exposure to the criminal justice system in everyday life.
The study, the first since the 1960s to look at the arrest histories of a national sample of adolescents and young adults over time, found that 30.2 percent of the 23-year-olds who participated reported having been arrested for an offense other than a minor traffic violation.
That figure is significantly higher than the 22 percent found in a 1965 study that examined the same issue using different methods. The increase may be a reflection of the justice system becoming more punitive and more aggressive in its reach during the last half-century, the researchers said. Arrests for drug-related offenses, for example, have become far more common, as have zero-tolerance policies in schools.
The study did not look at racial or regional differences, but other research has found higher arrest rates for black men and for youths living in poor urban areas.
The US must be a nation full of criminals!
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Movie executives see record profits, salaries despite piracy fear-mongering
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Movie industry lobbyists like to say that online piracy costs their clients billions of dollars every year, and it’s getting worse — but that’s doesn’t quite seem to be the case, according to data released this week by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS).
The CRS report (embedded below) shows that the movie industry is doing very well, earning record profits and paying executives more than ever, even as it hires fewer workers than it did just a decade ago.
Although a recent National Crime Prevention Council ad campaign tries to make the point that piracy kills jobs, the CRS found that total gross revenues and box office receipts have doubled in the last 15 years. Grosses went from $52.8 billion in 1995 to $104.4 billion in 2009, while box office receipts went from $5.3 billion in 1995 to $10.6 billion in 2010 — yet hiring still went down.
One thing that has gone up, higher than ever, is executive pay. The CRS report noted that News Corporation paid CEO Rupert Murdoch $33,292,753 in 2011; Viacom gave CEO Philippe Dauman made $84,515,308; Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes took home $26,303,071; while Disney CEO Robert A. Lger earned $29,617,964. Sony CEO Howard Stringer was at the bottom of the bunch at $4.3 million, having taken a 14 percent pay cut due to losses.
Those salaries are quite hefty compared to the top earners just a decade and a half ago.
The news media and other candidates have been trying to ignore him since Iowa. They haven’t figured out that it’s not working. The best they can do is misquote him or try to put him down.
It’s not smart to mess with MIC.