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The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a depressing new benchmark today, as it slid 427.47 points and closed below 8,000 for the first time since 2003, at 7,990. But the Dow wasn’t alone in its late-day decline: The S&P 500 dropped 6.1 percent and the Nasdaq composite index fell 6.5 percent. The steep drops came late in the afternoon as it seemed increasingly unlikely that Washington would bail out Detroit’s ailing auto industry. As if that wasn’t bad enough news for the car giants, GM and Ford saw their stocks fall to $2.78 and $1.27, respectively. The financial industry didn’t fare much better, dropping a full 9 percent over the course of the day. Citigroup alone dropped 22 percent, to $6.40. “It’s painful,” S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt told The New York Times. “A lot of people have pulled a lot of cash out. They’re sitting on the side. It’s all I hear all day: ‘Where can I hide?’”
After being something of a dubious asset during the primaries, Bill Clinton is doing everything he can to stand out of the way of his wife’s potential Secretary of State appointment. Politico reports that Bill is “open to giving up foreign sources of income if she becomes secretary of State,” while The Wall Street Journal says he “has offered to submit future charitable and business activities to strict ethics review.” According to the Journal’s report, Bill would allow White House counsel and the State Department’s ethics chief to review all donations to the Clinton Foundation, which includes his presidential library, and he would allow the same before agreeing to any paid speeches. Politico says an official announcement of Hillary's appointment can be expected in the next week, but the Journal says Clinton “hasn’t decided to take the secretary of state job even if the vetting hurdles were cleared.”
Politico is reporting that Barack Obama has appointed former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to secretary of Health and Human Services. Daschle was also considered for health care czar, but Obama preferred him with a “secretary” before his name. “Of all the proposals that Obama wants to enact, health care requires the most input and tough negotiations and shepherding,” an official told Politico. “No one knows the House and Senate like Tom Daschle.”
Two weeks after he lost the presidential election to Obama, McCain can rejoice in a sliver of good news: He has won Missouri. The secretary of state’s office reports the Republican leads President-elect Obama by 4,355 votes—out of 2,923,496 cast. With 3,159 provisional ballots left to be counted, it looks as if McCain has the last undecided state in the bag. “Assuming the state certifies the count, it will place the overall electoral vote at 365 for Obama and 173 for McCain,” the Kansas City Star's Prime Buzz blog reports. Not that all this makes much difference for Obama, who is still 62 days away from inauguration, or even for McCain, who is said to be gearing up for a Senate reelection campaign.
As Obama suits up for the White House, everyone is trying to influence his agenda. Even Al Qaeda. “If you still want to be stubborn about America's failure in Afghanistan, then remember the fate of Bush and Pervez Musharraf, and the fate of the Soviets and British before them,” said Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s number two, in a taped message. He then added a lyrical flourish, “And be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them." Al-Zawahiri went on to say that Obama “was the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X and compared Obama, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice, to “house slaves.”
There's a group of students in California that Smokey the Bear is none to pleased with. According to Los Angeles police, ten 18 to 22-year-olds are responsible for the wildfire that torched the tony town of Montecito, destroying 210 homes and threatening scores more. Among the affected were Oprah Winfrey and Rob Lowe, whose homes escaped damage, and Christopher Lloyd, who wasn't as lucky. The students, who face charges of negligence and recklessness with fire, said they thought they'd put out the bonfire that started it all. Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said, "It appears this was the result of carelessness."
The AP officially called the Alaska Senate race for Democrat Mark Begich, spelling an ignominious end to the career of Ted Stevens (on the day of his 85th birthday, no less). The Anchorage Daily News looks back at Stevens' career, which is the longest of a Republican in American history. In fact, Stevens was there at the beginning, leading the charge to make Alaska a state. His penchant for earmarking made him a popular target, but he was "a social moderate and results-oriented compromiser with friends among Democrats." Stevens was, writes the Daily News, "the hard-working politician who wrote the laws shaping modern Alaska." In 2000, the Alaska Legislature proclaimed him "Alaskan of the Century." After being convicted of corruption this year, it seems unlikely that he will be so lucky in the 21st.
Mitt Romney, a native son of Michigan, has some tough love for his home state on the op-ed page of today's New York Times: "Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." Romney's father turned GM around as its chief in the 1950s. A "managed bankruptcy," says Romney, is the only way to turn it around again. It will allow American automakers to address "their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands." Generous retiree benefits up the price tag of American cars by over $2,000. It would also allow for an overhaul in management. "New faces," Romney writes, "should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations." And, lest you doubt Mitt's credentials: "I love cars, American cars."
All signs point towards Eric Holder as Barack Obama's Attorney General, although it is not expected to be made official for some time. So who exactly is Holder, whose profile is so much lower than some of Obama's other choices? A June profile from The American Lawyer says that Holder, the first black U.S. attorney for Washington D.C. and the first black deputy attorney general (under Clinton), first met Obama in 2004 at a dinner meant to welcome the new senator to Washington. He and Obama hit it off, and Holder served during the campaign as 'the utility infielder for Team Obama, playing a variety of positions: surrogate, fund-raiser, strategist, and source of wisdom in the ways of Washington." Since his deputy attorney general stint, he has run a lucrative private practice in Washington, representing clinets like the NFL, Merck & Co., and Chiquita. The darkest spot on his record? He oversaw Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich.
While America has been fixated on the Palins, the new issue of Outside magazine has a chilling story from the Alaskan wilderness. When Robert Hale (aka, Papa Pilgrim) first arrived in McCarthy, a town of 50, he presented his 15 children as the picture of wholesomeness. The children bathed clothed because, Hale boasted, they had never seen a naked body. By the time writer Mark Kirby arrived in 2005, however, “Alaska state troopers arrested Robert Hale on 30 counts of physical and sexual assault, coercion, and incest.” His alleged abuses included raping and beating his daughter and then forcing her to wear a ski mask to hide her wounds; he banned his children from even talking to anyone he thought might undercut his authority. Kirby writes of the children’s escape and Papa’s meeting with the law.
After weeks of international press attention, the Somali pirates have apparently suffered a setback. The Indian Navy has sunk a pirate "mother ship" in the Gulf of Aden. The crew of the Indian warship reported seeing hands on deck of the Somali ship with automatic weapons and RPGs. Upon radio contact, the Indian Navy said the pirates threatened to blow them up, so they retaliated out of self defense. "From what we see in photographs," said a senior Indian officer, "the pirate vessel is completely destroyed." The retaliation comes as pirates claim to begin negotiations over the Saudi oil tanker they seized on Saturday, which contains over $100 million of oil. Two motorboats were seen fleeing the sinking pirate ship.
Days after Eliot Spitzer emerged from an undisclosed location to write an article in The Washington Post, Ashley Dupre, the call girl who ended his political career, has granted a long interview to People. Some excerpts: Dupre says Client No. 9 was “strictly business”—aka, short on talk. She says she had no idea that he was the governor of New York. Dupre says she ran away from home at 17; was raped, which caused her to “disconnect with sex, with real relationships”; and had actually quit the business and started a relationship with one of her clients, which ended at the beginning of this year. To Silda Wall Spitzer, Dupre says, “I’m sorry for your pain.” Diane Sawyer will interview Dupre on 20/20 on Friday.
The Roots might plant themselves in an unexpected location next year—stage-right of Jimmy Fallon on NBC. Last weekend Questlove, the leader of the hip-hop ensemble, announced the group's plans to finish touring and commit to a "new creative endeavor," as the house band for Fallon when he replaces Conan O’Brien on the Late Night show in March 2009, reports The New York Observer. The video with the news has since been taken down from MTV.com, but a representative from Island/Def Jam confirmed it. Fans aren’t optimistic about SNL-alum Fallon’s ability to fill Conan’s big shoes, but we’ll take The Roots over the Max Weinberg 7 any day of the week.
Last night, it seemed like the whole of Australia turned out for the premiere of Australia, a movie The Times of London says the country has been awaiting with “anxiety bordering on neurosis.” Bad news, Aussies: David Stratton, film critic for The Australian, says, “It’s not the masterpiece that we were hoping for.” The World War II story ranges from cattle drives to aborigines, but the film relies too heavily on Aussie stereotypes. There’s also a shower scene involving Hugh Jackman, which is probably someone’s idea of a good time. Stratton, the critic, adds that Australia may very well be a hit back in the States, where no Australian stereotype goes unrewarded.
Word on what experts are calling a "milestone in medicine": Doctors have successfully repaired a woman's windpipe by transplanting a segment of a new trachea built from her stem cells. The patient, Claudia Castillo, suffered from long-term tuberculosis, and the only other option was a left-lung removal, which carries a high mortality risk. The new trachea was built by taking the windpipe of a donor, killing off its natural cells, and then filling its collagen structure with cells from Castillo's windpipe and stem cells. One surgeon said the transplanted segment was "almost indistinguishable" from the patient's normal trachea. Another said, "Surgeons can now start to see and understand the very real potential for adult stem cells and tissue engineering to radically improve their ability to treat patients with serious diseases."
For those interested in the Freudian interpretation of Hitler's evils: According to a new document that records a conversation between the doctor who saved Hitler's life in World War I and his priest, Adolf Hitler lost a testicle in the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Said a friend of the doctor, "Hitler was injured in the abdomen and lost one testicle. His first question to the doctor was: 'Will I be able to have children?'." Rumors of Hitler's, eh, amputation have long been rumored—an American World War II song began "Hitler has only got one ball, the other is in the Albert Hall"—but never been confirmed. Fun bonus fact: The medical term for a man with one testicle is "monorchic."
President Bush may be planning preemptive war-related pardons for his administration before his term ends, but that, apparently, won’t save his vice president. Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on separate charges stemming from alleged prisoner abuse in federal detention centers, CNN reports. A grand jury in Willacy County, Texas, indicted the two men; a lawyer for another lawmaker indicted, Democratic state Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., called the county’s district attorney, Juan Angel Guerra, a “one-man circus.” “In the March 2008 Democratic Primary, 70 percent of the Willacy County voters elected to remove Juan Guerra as Willacy County District Attorney,” Michael R. Cowen said in a statement. “Now, with only a few weeks left in his term, Mr. Guerra has again chosen to misuse his position in an attempt to seek revenge on those who he sees as political enemies.” A Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said simply, “The vice president has not received an indictment.”
Will she? Won't she? Politico and The New York Times both report that Hillary Clinton is not sure she wants to be Barack Obama's Secretary of State, even as all indicators point toward his offering her the position. Politico reports one Clinton insider saying that she is "torn" between serving Obama and "[helping] pass health care and [working] on a broad range of domestic issues.” Her hesitancy has nothing to do with the intense vetting of Bill's records. According to The Times, Clinton is "flattered" at the offer, but "Mrs. Clinton likes being her own boss and is reluctant to give up the independence that comes with that." Another obstacle: Federal employees are prohibited from accepting political donations, and Clinton still has $7.6 million worth of primary debt on her hands.
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