Cheat Sheet

Barack Obama may have already filled the highest profile positions in his cabinet, but that doesn't mean there aren't any coveted spots left working for the President-elect. The best of the remaining posts include Secretary of Energy, CIA Director, Director of National Intelligence, Secretary of Labor, and Chief Technology Officer, all low-profile sub-Cabinet positions that could see a boost in importance given the financial crisis and Obama's priorities. Politico identifies the front runners for the positions, including Retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair for National Intelligence, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm for Labor, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt for Tech czar. But there's one long shot candidate who would likely make the biggest splash if appointed—The Governator. Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who seemed interested in the job atop the Energy department earlier this summer but has since backed off, might find himself in the White House after all.

One of the criticisms of the federal bailout scheme is that no one has offered relief to homeowners whose bad mortgages set off the crisis in the first place. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is considering buying securities that finance new homes, but mortgage lenders will have to set interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages at 4.5 percent. The cost of the program is unclear, but the government could raise money for it by selling bonds at 3 percent, allowing it to turn a profit, as the mortgages will yield 4.5 percent returns. The idea may lift the slumping real estate market. There has already been a rush to refinance since the rates slipped so low.

As if the people of Zimbabwe hadn’t suffered enough, on top of deprivation and the tyranny of Robert Mugabe’s government they are now suffering an outbreak of the killer disease cholera. According to the country’s main newspaper, the Herald, “The government yesterday declared the cholera outbreak...and the malfunctioning of central hospitals as national emergencies and appealed to the donor community for assistance to alleviate the situation.” The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the outbreak has claimed 565 lives, with 12,546 recorded cases so far. Cholera, a water-borne disease, is preventable.

Is Chris Matthews preparing to run for the Pennsylvania senate seat vacated by Arlen Specter, or is he just jockeying for a better salary? Politico reports that Matthews has, according to one associate, already chosen a home in Philadelphia in order to establish residency. Matthews’s $5 million annual MSNBC contract doesn’t expire until June, but has been advised that, if he is serious about pursuing his “boyhood dream,” then he should step down from the network immediately as to protect it from charges of bias. Some, however, think he is simply trying to get the network to up its ante when it comes to renewing his contract. “He’s trying to show, 'I have this alternative opportunity,'” said a friend.

If Barack Obama’s inauguration wasn’t already established as the most highly-anticipated, sit-down-don’t-move event of next year, the imminent arrival of Oprah on Capitol Hill has made it so. A live episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show will air from the Kennedy Center Opera House on January 19, one day before the swearing-in, reports Variety. The media mogul was unusually vocal (even for her) this election season, notably campaigning and bawling on a stranger in Grant Park during Obama’s acceptance speech. She later featured the tear-soaked man on her show.

Today Israeli soldiers attempted their first major West Bank evacuation since 2006. How’d that go? 250 settlers barricaded themselves inside the house they were trying to vacate, hurling rocks, eggs, and chemicals at the soldiers. Later, dozens of masked settlers surrounded the home of a Palestinian family in Hebron, throwing stones and setting its laundry on fire. The IDF had to declare the whole of Hebron a closed military zone, as to prevent the entry of more settlers, and used stun grenades and tear gas to combat the settlers. One police officer was wounded after settlers threw acid in his face. Later in the day, there were reports of Palestinians firing guns at the settlers.

The schedule for the 25th annual Sundance Film Festival was released today, and the films chosen are more emotional than some of the alienated, outsider tales of the recent past. "Audiences this year are going to be surprised," festival director Geoffrey Gilmore told The New York Times. "The range of emotions evoked by the films is going to be greater than in the past." The Greatest, starring Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon reeling from the death of their teenage son, was singled out as a "three-hankie, if not more" film. The rest of the slate leans heavily towards international fare. The festival runs January 15 to 25 in Park City, Utah.

Yesterday, when Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican congresswoman from Florida, received a telephone call from Barack Obama, she hung up, thinking it was a prank call. When he called back, she hung up again. Then, when Rahm Emanuel, with whom she had served in Congress, called to tell her that it was, in fact, the real Barack Obama, she hung up on him too. Eventually, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman convinced her that it was actually Obama, but only after he told her a story that only the two of them would know.

Look for a Republican showdown in Texas in 2010. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison filed papers today to establish a gubernatorial exploratory committee. If she runs, she will take on fellow Republican and incumbent Gov. Rick Perry, whom she has been taking shots at recently. “There is too much bitterness, too much anger, too little trust, too little consensus and too much infighting. And the tone comes from the top. Texans are looking for leadership and results,” she said in a statement. Perry, meanwhile, has been criticizing Washington politicians and the economic bailout. Hutchison could remain in the Senate while she runs.

Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, earned more than $18 million in just two and a half years when he left Bill Clinton’s White House, where he was an aide, to join big time Democratic donor and Wall Street dealmaker Bruce Wasserstein’s investment banking boutique, Wasserstein Perella & Company, as a consultant. He also benefited from the sale of Wasserstein Perella to a German bank, which provided him with an unusually large payout, The New York Times reports. Not only did the dalliance with banking make Emanuel rich, it provided him with strong ties to the banking sector at a time when the new Obama administration is planning a sweeping regulatory overhaul of Wall Street. Emanuel says his links with bankers will not lead to special favors. “I would say I’ve been as tough on my friends as others,” he said. “I call it like I see it.”

Indian authorities have put four Indian airports on high alert, reporting of an attempt to hijack one or more planes at Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore airports. The alerts come after a letter, which claimed terror groups might strike at the airports on December 6 and hijack a plane, was sent to an Indian news agency. The Defense Ministry reported that “credible intelligence” has indicated a plot to commandeer a jet at a provincial airport for an attack on a major city. Indian TV reported that the alert was issued after an email from Deccan Mujahedeen, the same group that claimed responsibility for the Mumbai attacks.

In the past few years, scientists who study the eternal signs of beauty have concluded that the perfect figure entails a golden ratio of .7 between a woman’s waist and hips. They further found that this magical formula was biological, not just societal, and was the ideal shape for maximum fertility. Now a new study by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan blows holes in that notion. She concludes a woman with a higher ratio’s genes—that is, a woman with a less slim waist—“may favor success in resource competition, particularly under stressful circumstances.” She notes that most societies prefer women with a higher ratio, and those that favor hourglass figures are countries generally “where women are economically dependent on men.”

A Russian warship will pass through the Panama Canal for the first time since World War II this week after joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan navy. The destroyer Admiral Chabanenko is making the journey, in a display of Russian naval power. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, though, denies the exercises are meant to provoke America. After passing through the canal, the ship will dock in at the Rodman naval base in the port city of Balboa for a six-day visit, during which Russian sailors will get their first exposure to Panama hats.

Ouch! Harvard’s money managers report that its once burgeoning endowment, which stood at $36.9 billion as of June 30, has taken a hit along with the rest of the market. The Wall Street Journal calculates the loss at $8 billion in the four months July 1 through October 31. In a letter to Harvard's deans, university President Drew Gilpin Faust blamed "severe turmoil in the world's financial markets" for the loss. Harvard said the actual loss could be even higher, once it factors in declines in assets like real estate and private equity. The university is planning for a 30 percent decline in total for the fiscal year ending June 2009.

Since he's become the punch line of hooker jokes, it's easy to forget that Eliot Spitzer was once the bane of Wall Street and his expertise might be handy right now. Relegated to the sidelines, the former New York governor has launched a new twice-monthly column for Slate. According to Spitzer, "we are simply rebuilding the same edifice that just collapsed": The trade and federal deficits "leave us at the mercy of foreign-capital inflows that may diminish"; a household savings rate close to zero has not permitted "long-term capital accumulation required for the investments we need"; middle-class income are stagnant; and our intellectual advantage might become a "third deficit" as China churns out engineers. Our responses to the financial crisis should not simply rescue existing companies, but create "a structure for more contained and competitive ones." The best policy, he writes, "is to return to an era of vibrant competition among multiple, smaller entities—none so essential to the entire structure that it is indispensable."

Conservatives in the Episcopalian Church, who differ from the mainstream of the church on issues including whether gay clergy should be ordained, have declared they will go their own way. They intend to found an independent province of the church in America while remaining within the Episcopalian tradition. Until now, dissenting conservatives have joined dioceses in Africa rather than condone homosexuality among priests. The New York Times reports that Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh will be named archbishop and primate of the new North American faction, which says it will attract 100,000 members, compared with 2.3 million in the existing Episcopalian Church.

YouTube has amended its rules for online nudity. The site already bars sexually explicit videos; the new rules will restrict content that contains nudity or is "intended or designed to arouse viewers" but does not cross into pornography. "Our goal is to help ensure that you're viewing content that's relevant to you, and not inadvertently coming across content that isn't," the company, which is owned by Google, explained in a blog post. As The Daily Telegraph reports, “YouTube relies on users reporting videos that might break its rules, but with 13 hours worth of footage uploaded around the world every minute, the site is almost impossible to police.”

Bill Gates had laid low so far throughout the financial crisis, but one of the world's richest men and leading philanthropists emerged yesterday with some advice for President-elect Obama: Spend more. In a speech at George Washington University, Gates said we need deficit spending to stimulate the economy and help the needy. He also said his foundation will increase its number of grants next year, despite declines to its $35 billion endowment, and called on Obama to make good on his campaign promise to double foreign assistance to $50 billion. Gates added that the crisis could stimulate innovation, much as the technology boom that birthed Microsoft followed the 1970s' economic woes. "Difficult times can launch great ideas," he said.