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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

w00t!

Spice up your life!



The Spice Girls are back and they're making tons of money in L.A.! Here they are at the Victoria's Secret Pink Carpet, looking all over-the-top and washed-up. I'm sure they're all awesome but I love Posh Spice the most! Yes, even if she's a level 8 Thetan she's still the prettiest Spice Girl! If you check out her '97 photos, you'll hardly see any difference between then and now. She looks exactly the same except this time she's got bigger boobs!

Hawkish team that belies liberal image
An interesting article about Giuliani's team!

Rudy Giuliani was having breakfast at the Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan when he heard an aircraft had hit the World Trade Center on September 11 2001.

His breakfast companion was Bill Simon, the well-connected son of a Nixon-era Treasury Secretary, who was running for governor of California and wanted advice from his longtime friend.

“I’ve got to go,” said Mr Giuliani, leaving Mr Simon to finish breakfast alone as the mayor raced towards the burning Twin Towers.

Mr Simon’s minor role in the drama of 9/11 deepened a bond with Mr Giuliani that dated back to the 1980s, when they worked together as Mafia-busting federal prosecutors in New York.

Six years after that ill-fated breakfast, the duo are working together again but this time it is Mr Giuliani seeking advice from Mr Simon on how to get elected.

As policy director of the Giuliani presidential campaign, Mr Simon was given the job of building intellectual firepower behind his friend’s bid for the Republican nomination.

He has responded by assembling a stellar line-up of advisers whose identities provide important clues about what kind of president Mr Giuliani would be.

If Mr Simon’s aim was to assemble a team that would debunk the caricature of Mr Giuliani as a New York liberal, he has succeeded in spectacular fashion.

While the former mayor is known for his moderate views on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, his policy gurus are drawn mostly from the right.

On foreign policy, Mr Giuliani has a more hawkish group of advisers than any other Republican candidate.

The most prominent is Norman Podhoretz, a leading neoconservative who recently wrote an essay titled “The Case for Bombing Iran” and subtitled “I hope and pray that President Bush will do it”.

The chief foreign policy adviser is Charles Hill, a Yale scholar and former diplomat, who signed an open letter to Mr Bush days after 9/11 calling for Saddam Hussein to be ousted.

Mr Giuliani has promised to strike a balance between “realism and idealism” in foreign policy and distances himself from the neoconservative tag. But his choice of advisers signals that he would bring the same rugged uncompromising approach to international affairs that inspired his clampdown on crime in New York.

The Giuliani team has drawn parallels with the coterie of foreign policy hawks – nicknamed The Vulcans – that gathered around George W. Bush when he ran for president in 2000. As with The Vulcans, several Giuliani aides have ties to the Hoover Institution in California – a breeding ground for Republican officials in recent decades.

On economic policy, Mr Simon has recruited a heavy-hitting group of Reaganite conservatives who favour low taxes, small government and open markets. The most high profile is Steve Forbes, the media tycoon, who ran for president in 1996 and 2000 promising to replace income tax with a flat federal sales tax. Another is Michael Boskin, an economist at the Hoover Institution and advocate of using private accounts to reform the social security system.

While Mr Giuliani’s foreign policy and economic gurus have grabbed most attention, arguably the most politically symbolic members of Team Rudy are his legal advisers.

Chief among them is Theodore Olson, a former solicitor-general whose wife was killed in one of the hijacked planes on 9/11. Mr Olson is a leading light within the Federalist Society, a powerful network of conservative lawyers, whose membership includes at least three right-leaning Supreme Court judges. By surrounding himself with the great and good of the judicial conservative movement, Mr Giuliani hopes to convince Republicans that his moderate views on social issues would not influence his choice of nominees for judicial vacancies. ‘I’ve known Rudy Giuliani for over 25 years,” says Mr Olson. “And I trust his principles and his judgment.”

If Team Rudy succeeds in helping Mr Giuliani become president, many of them can expect prominent positions in his administration, with Mr Simon high on the list.


Word of '07: w00t!
This word is so stupid, but I use it anyway!

"W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness or triumph, topped all other terms in the Springfield-based dictionary publisher's online poll for the word that best sums up 2007.

Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, said "w00t" was an ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology.

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