Cheat Sheet

No 60 Senate seats for the Democrats this year: Senator Saxby Chambliss has trounced Democrat Jim Martin in a runoff vote in Georgia. The Republican led Martin 59 to 41 percent with 81 percent of precincts reporting, and the Associated Press has handed the incumbent the win. The “margin will narrow somewhat as heavily Democratic precincts continue to report, but it still will be a decisive victory for Chambliss,” Politico’s Josh Kraushaar reports. Chambliss’ victory comes after he fell short of the 50 percent necessary on November 4, forcing the runoff vote. Turnout was light Tuesday, around 20 to 25 percent—a factor that helped Chambliss—and Martin’s hitching himself to President-elect Barack Obama’s coattails was not enough for a victory. The last Senate race to be decided will be Franken-Coleman in Minnesota, where a recount is expected to be finished Friday.

Senator Mel Martinez’s retirement announcement Monday is sparking even bigger news—a possible return to politics for Jeb Bush. W.’s brother, once governor of Florida, is “seriously considering” seeking Martinez’s Senate seat when he retires in 2010, two sources tell The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder. “He is receiving a lot of encouragement from both in and out of the state,” a longtime Bush adviser said. “He is going to take his time and approach this very methodically.” The younger Bush is said to be weighing whether the Senate would be the best platform for his favorite causes: education, immigration, health care, and energy. “If he decides to run,” Ambinder reports, “Republicans expect the field to clear for him.”

Remember a few weeks ago, when GM said it would need $12 billion from the federal government to stay afloat? Turns out that was fuzzy math. Today the embattled auto giant upped the ante, asking for $18 billion. As if requesting $6 billion more wasn’t enough, GM added that it will need an immediate $4 billion infusion to stay afloat until the end of the year. The urgent request has some wondering whether GM’s best option may be bankruptcy. President Frederick “Fritz” Henderson is not among them: “There is not a Plan B,” he said, adding that the company is solely focusing on securing help from Washington. Ford, meanwhile, doesn’t need any money immediately but asked for a $9 billion credit line should the recession last longer than expected. All this comes amid more bad news—GM sales fell by 41.3 percent in November, to 154,877 cars and trucks, while Ford’s declined 30.6 percent, to 123,222.

So what exactly is Ford offering in exchange for the $9 billion bailout it’s requesting? For starters, CEO Michael Mulally would reduce his salary from $21 million to one single dollar. Ford is also going to sell all five of its corporate jets, presumably forcing Mulally to fly the Detroit to D.C. route on commercial. The company will speed production of electric cars and roll them out in 2010, and invest $14 billion in improving fuel efficiency over the next seven years. Ford also warned that, though it is in better health than its rivals, its fate was entwined with General Motors and Chrysler, and the collapse of any one would jeopardize the entire industry.

There may be hope for Al Franken yet: A flurry of last-minute Senate vote recounting in Minnesota’s Ramsey County has turned up 171 uncounted ballots from pro-Franken Maplewood. “The ballots apparently had been uncounted because of a ballot-counting-machine malfunction on Election Day,” the Star Tribune reports. The former Saturday Night Live star turned Democratic Senate hopeful gained a net 37 votes from the ballots, with 91 of the total, with Republican incumbent Norm Coleman picking up 54 votes and the remaining 26 going to other candidates. The final recount is expected to be finished on Friday.

Three decades after director Roman Polanski fled the United States to avoid sentencing on child molestation charges, he is seeking a dismissal of the case. Lawyers for the Academy Award winner filed a formal request in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, saying “a recent HBO documentary about the case, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, ‘revealed a pattern of misconduct and improper communications between the Superior Court and the district attorney’s office in violation of the rule of law and without the knowledge’ of the director and his defense,” the Los Angeles Times reports. The Polish-born, France-based Polanski was convicted on charges of unlawful intercourse with a 13-year-old girl in 1977 but fled to France before he was sentenced, fearing deportation or prison. He has since continued directing films in Europe, including The Pianist, for which he won a best director Oscar.

Bad news for Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid—aka, “Chemical Ali”: He’s just received another death sentence. Al-Majid avoided his first death sentence, for murdering tens of thousands in the Kurds with chemical weapons in the 1980s, with legal wrangling. The crime this time is his brutal suppression of a Shiite uprising after the first Gulf War. After that war, a Shiite and Kurdish uprising captured 14 of the country’s 18 provinces, but tens of thousands of people died as the Baath Party took them back over. Another defendant was sentenced to death in the trial, while four were given life sentences, six were sentenced to 15 years in prison, and three were acquitted.

The Dow leapfrogged 270 points, to 8,419.09, and the S&P and Nasdaq gained almost 4 percent, a day after the indices’ worst drops since October—and more gyrations are yet to come: Based on volatility figures, US “stock swings will be more than triple the average over the next seven months as investors contend with a global recession and the worst returns since the 1930s,” Bloomberg reports. Today’s rebound came after GE’s announcement that it will maintain its dividend and the Fed’s extension of the terms of three emergency loans. “We are in very volatile times,” Scott Richter, a money manager at Fifth Third Asset Management, told Bloomberg Television. “It could go another three to six months before we truly bottom because the recovery has been prolonged.”

In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India is ratcheting up tensions with Pakistan another notch: The Indian foreign minister has demanded that Pakistan arrest and hand over 20 fugitives wanted under Indian law. It’s the first concrete demand India has made of Pakistan since the attacks, which the fugitives are not believed to have been related to. Fugitives on the list include Dawood Ibrahim, India’s most powerful and most-wanted gangster, and Masood Azhar, a suspected terrorist who was freed in exchange for hostages in 1999.

More than 650 vacationers nearly had their trip spoiled this weekend when two small Somali pirate boats fired on their cruise ship. But the agile Nautica, carrying 656 passengers and 399 crew, outran the pirates, who fired on it eight times. The American-owned ship was travelling thorough the Gulf of Aden, amid a 32-day cruise from Rome to Singapore. According to a spokesman for Oceania Cruises, which owns the ship, it was going though a shipping lane set up to provide safe passage when the pirates attempted to steer it off course. One of the small boats got within 300 yards before firing on the Nautica, the largest cruise ship to be targeted by Somalia pirates. No one on board was hurt and the ship docked in Oman as scheduled and will continue on its journey, arriving in Sydney before New Year’s.

Last night, inside the New York Google headquarters death star, legendary conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (lately of the San Francisco Symphony) and a handful of product wizards from the Google and YouTube teams gathered together to announce the launch of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. The project is YouTube’s first high-gloss global user-generated initiative, and it is a truly elegant project. Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) composed the first ever Internet “Eroica” symphony, and has put up individual conducting videos for each part of the orchestra online. Musicians from around the world will submit audition videos, with the hopes of being one of the lucky hundred to earn a seat in the real symphony, performing at Carnegie Hall in April. How to get there? Practice, practice, practice—and have a high-speed DSL connection.

Venice today, Atlantis tomorrow. Floodwaters are finally receding in the Italian city after reaching levels not seen since 1986. At the flood’s peak, locals had to wade through 61-inch depths to get their morning cappuccino. The Italian government is currently undertaking a $5.5 billion project to build a dam to prevent similar floods in the future, but experts are concerned that climate change will continue to threaten the historic city with rising tides unless major global action is taken.

You can ignore all those rumors about Bill Clinton to the Senate for the time being. Clinton’s spokesperson has said reports that he is interested in taking over his wife’s seat are “completely false.” Hillary Clinton is expected to keep her seat until January, when New York Gov. David Paterson will announce her replacement. A special runoff election for the seat will then be held in 2010. Only two former presidents have ever moved to the Senate: John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson.

Someone tell Neil Strauss that his mini-me has been discovered: 9-year-old Alec Greven’s 46-page How to Talk to Girls was published by HarperCollins after he sold the book at a school fair. A few gems from Chapter Three: "It is easy to spot pretty girls because they have big earrings, fancy dresses and all the jewelry," snd "Pretty girls are like cars that need a lot of oil." And boys: "Comb your hair and don't wear sweats." Greven has also finished a children's book on the Watergate scandal [!]. He plans to remain single until middle school.

It seems, for sanity's sake, that you're best off ignoring most predictions of WMD attacks, but this one comes from a taskforce that was created on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. So pay attention: According to the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, the odds of a biological or nuclear terrorist attack in a major city by the end of 2013 are better than even. The commission says that a biological attack is more likely, but the chances of a nuclear attack are increasing. An attack can be avoided by the securing of unguarded stockpiles and weapons material, coordinated international efforts to discover and destroy smuggling rings, and the strengthening of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the IAEA.

Chicago police announced yesterday afternoon that they have arrested William Balfour, the main suspect in the murders of Jennifer Hudson's mother, brother, and nephew. Balfour, the estranged husband of Hudson's sister, was already in custody for a parole violation and was transferred to the Chicago PD. In a closed hearing last month, investigators presented evidence that Balfour had a gun matching the one used in the October murders.

As Sarah Palin contemplates how best to increase her national profile, Alaska's other leading lady, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, has some words of warning: Keep your hands off my Senate seat. Palin could challenge Murkowski in 2010, as a Senate seat would give her a national platform, a thicker resume, and a chance to beef up on foreign policy. "If she wants to be president, I don't think the way to the presidency is a short stop in the United States Senate," Murkowski tells Politico. If Palin lost, she would damage her chances at the GOP nomination in 2012. "I can guarantee it would be a very tough election," Murkowski says. Palin defeated Murkowski’s father, Frank, in the 2006 GOP Republican primary.

“Are we on the brink of a ‘great dying’ in the financial world, one of those mass extinctions of species that have occurred periodically, like the end-Cambrian extinction that killed off 90 percent of Earth’s species, or the Cretaceous-Tertiary catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs?” So writes Niall Ferguson in his new book, The Ascent of Money, which is praised in The New York Times today. Ferguson examines the root causes of the meltdown in his usual digressive style. Michiko Kakutani notes, however, that The Ascent of Money is “less ideological and less tendentious” than Ferguson’s previous tub-thumping volumes. Perhaps, she speculates, the Iraq war and the financial meltdown caused him to ease up a little.

At a time when broadcast television is losing advertisers, Showtime continues to add subscribers, increasing by 7 percent this year for its fifth consecutive year of growth. So what's the key to its success? "Pathology programming," says The Los Angeles Times. Entertainment chief Robert Greenblatt has focused the channel's programming around bad behavior: drug dealing (Weeds), serial killing (Dexter), sex addiction (Californication), and good, old-fashioned tyranny (The Tudors). The formula has worked to the tune of $400 million operating income for Showtime Networks, up 20 percent from last year.

Not only is the U.S. economy now officially in recession, but it has been so since December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. It's the first time in the postwar era that the euro zone, Japan, and the United States have all simultaneously been in recession. It also makes President Bush the first executive since Nixon to oversee two recessions. "We're going on 12 months already, and we're just getting started," one economist told Bloomberg. The chairman of the Institute for Supply Management said, "This may be referred to as the Great Recession." 1.2 million jobs have been lost so far this year, and the 325,000 that were probably lost in November are the most in any month since the last recession.