Jim Bunning back down

Welcome to Viandragaulz News: For five days, retiring Sen. Jim Bunning. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) publicly urged Bunning to end his stand, while McConnell, who has a long-standing feud with his fellow Kentuckian, ducked a question Tuesday on whether Bunning was "speaking for the Republicans." But the newest Republican senator, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, said Bunning had done the right thing in holding up the measure. "I don't think it's about party, it's about good government," said Brown, who was elected in January vowing to promote fiscal discipline. "The perception in Massachusetts and other parts of the country is that Washington is broken. And if it takes one guy to get up and make a stand, to point out that we need a funding source to pay for everything that's being pushed here, I think that speaks for itself." Democrats made a steady procession to the microphones Tuesday to lament the doleful effects of Bunning's action in their states. Drafting behind those comments, party aides went granular, blasting out a stream of damning numbers -- aid for the jobless cutoff, highway workers furloughed, bridge projects halted -- tailored to individual regions and congressional districts. The result: Bunning on the local news, Bunning in the hometown newspaper. "If there were ever an emergency, this is it," Reid said. "It's not about the legislative process or Senate rules. It's about the rights of individuals to survive in America. . . . They've gone too far." Bunning said Tuesday night that his efforts had been worthwhile in shedding a spotlight on growing federal deficits. "Neither side has clean hands," Bunning said. "What matters is that we get our spending problems under control." ad_icon Click here! If consumers of political news didn't know much about Bunning before, they certainly do now. They've heard about his record of controversial comments, the push into retirement he got from McConnell and other Republicans, and the skipped December votes on health care and other issues he has steadfastly refused to explain. Videos of Bunning brushing off reporters -- ABC News on Monday, CNN on Tuesday -- have gone viral. Coverage back home has been similarly rough; the Louisville Courier-Journal editorialized Tuesday that Bunning was "raging -- and cussing -- at the dying of the spotlight. If only he could exit stage right now." Asked Tuesday about cutting a deal with Bunning, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "I don't know how you negotiate with the irrational." Beyond this narrow debate, Bunning gave Democrats a chance to make broader arguments -- Republicans are obstructionists, and Senate rules are undemocratic -- that they hope will soften the ground in the health-care fight. Scott Lilly, an expert on spending issues at the liberal Center for American Progress, said Bunning's move couldn't have come at a better time for Democrats. "I think they were in desperate need of a poster child, and he just sort of stepped up to the line and offered himself up," Lilly said. . James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) publicly urged Bunning to end his stand, while McConnell, who has a long-standing feud with his fellow Kentuckian, ducked a question Tuesday on whether Bunning was "speaking for the Republicans." But the newest Republican senator, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, said Bunning had done the right thing in holding up the measure. "I don't think it's about party, it's about good government," said Brown, who was elected in January vowing to promote fiscal discipline. "The perception in Massachusetts and other parts of the country is that Washington is broken. And if it takes one guy to get up and make a stand, to point out that we need a funding source to pay for everything that's being pushed here, I think that speaks for itself." Democrats made a steady procession to the microphones Tuesday to lament the doleful effects of Bunning's action in their states. Drafting behind those comments, party aides went granular, blasting out a stream of damning numbers -- aid for the jobless cutoff, highway workers furloughed, bridge projects halted -- tailored to individual regions and congressional districts. The result: Bunning on the local news, Bunning in the hometown newspaper. "If there were ever an emergency, this is it," Reid said. "It's not about the legislative process or Senate rules. It's about the rights of individuals to survive in America. . . . They've gone too far." Bunning said Tuesday night that his efforts had been worthwhile in shedding a spotlight on growing federal deficits. "Neither side has clean hands," Bunning said. "What matters is that we get our spending problems under control." ad_icon Click here! If consumers of political news didn't know much about Bunning before, they certainly do now. They've heard about his record of controversial comments, the push into retirement he got from McConnell and other Republicans, and the skipped December votes on health care and other issues he has steadfastly refused to explain. Videos of Bunning brushing off reporters -- ABC News on Monday, CNN on Tuesday -- have gone viral. Coverage back home has been similarly rough; the Louisville Courier-Journal editorialized Tuesday that Bunning was "raging -- and cussing -- at the dying of the spotlight. If only he could exit stage right now." Asked Tuesday about cutting a deal with Bunning, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "I don't know how you negotiate with the irrational." Beyond this narrow debate, Bunning gave Democrats a chance to make broader arguments -- Republicans are obstructionists, and Senate rules are undemocratic -- that they hope will soften the ground in the health-care fight. Scott Lilly, an expert on spending issues at the liberal Center for American Progress, said Bunning's move couldn't have come at a better time for Democrats. "I think they were in desperate need of a poster child, and he just sort of stepped up to the line and offered himself up," Lilly said. held his fellow Republicans hostage. He stood his ground, angry and alone, a one-man blockade against unemployment benefits, Medicare payments to doctors, satellite TV to rural Americans and paychecks to highway workers. "Enough," the Kentucky Republican thundered repeatedly, his face red, as he stood in the way of Washington spending more money he said it didn't have on an extension of popular programs. Finally, as supporters and critics yelled at each other outside his Lexington office, he capitulated from the well of the Senate on Tuesday night.
Relentless attacks from Democrats and withering support from Republicans, worried that the Hall of Fame pitcher was turning the party's message of principled objection to raging obstructionism, ended Bunning's stand. He had forced about 2,000 federal employees into furloughs and imperiled jobless benefits for millions.
And he had forced some in his own caucus to distance themselves. Early next year, Bunning will conclude a Senate career studded with impolitic comments, and he appears long past taking any direction or advice from GOP leaders.
The resolution emerged after several hours of uneasy negotiations Tuesday, during which the staff ofSenate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) dealt with the staff of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which dealt with Bunning's staff. Having demanded three amendment votes on the extensions bill, Bunning settled for one Tuesday and the promise of more later in the week. Bunning's amendment, which failed with only 43 votes in support, called for the $10 billion package of temporary extensions to be offset with the end of a lucrative tax credit for paper companies on a wood byproduct called "black liquor." After that vote, senators immediately approved the extensions bill, 78 to 19. "I'm grateful to the members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle who worked to end this roadblock to relief for America's working families," President Obama said in a statement upon signing the measure into law late Tuesday. Even after the agreement, feelings remained raw on both sides. "It came about because Republicans realized they were wrong," Reid said. Bunning, 79, was similarly hostile, saying that he would be watching Democrats during the vote on his amendment Tuesday night "and checking off the hypocrites one by one." He remained defiant as he read a letter from a constituent who applauded the fight even though both his sons were unemployed. The Republicans had tried sending the gentlewoman from Maine to the floor to try and coax Bunning down. "Senator Bunning's views do not represent a majority of the Republican caucus," said Sen. Susan Collins. "It's important that the American people understand that there is bipartisan support for extending these vital programs. This is not a partisan issue." Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) publicly urged Bunning to end his stand, while McConnell, who has a long-standing feud with his fellow Kentuckian, ducked a question Tuesday on whether Bunning was "speaking for the Republicans." But the newest Republican senator, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, said Bunning had done the right thing in holding up the measure. "I don't think it's about party, it's about good government," said Brown, who was elected in January vowing to promote fiscal discipline. "The perception in Massachusetts and other parts of the country is that Washington is broken. And if it takes one guy to get up and make a stand, to point out that we need a funding source to pay for everything that's being pushed here, I think that speaks for itself." Democrats made a steady procession to the microphones Tuesday to lament the doleful effects of Bunning's action in their states. Drafting behind those comments, party aides went granular, blasting out a stream of damning numbers -- aid for the jobless cutoff, highway workers furloughed, bridge projects halted -- tailored to individual regions and congressional districts. The result: Bunning on the local news, Bunning in the hometown newspaper. "If there were ever an emergency, this is it," Reid said. "It's not about the legislative process or Senate rules. It's about the rights of individuals to survive in America. . . . They've gone too far." Bunning said Tuesday night that his efforts had been worthwhile in shedding a spotlight on growing federal deficits. "Neither side has clean hands," Bunning said. "What matters is that we get our spending problems under control." ad_icon Click here! If consumers of political news didn't know much about Bunning before, they certainly do now. They've heard about his record of controversial comments, the push into retirement he got from McConnell and other Republicans, and the skipped December votes on health care and other issues he has steadfastly refused to explain. Videos of Bunning brushing off reporters -- ABC News on Monday, CNN on Tuesday -- have gone viral. Coverage back home has been similarly rough; the Louisville Courier-Journal editorialized Tuesday that Bunning was "raging -- and cussing -- at the dying of the spotlight. If only he could exit stage right now." Asked Tuesday about cutting a deal with Bunning, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "I don't know how you negotiate with the irrational." Beyond this narrow debate, Bunning gave Democrats a chance to make broader arguments -- Republicans are obstructionists, and Senate rules are undemocratic -- that they hope will soften the ground in the health-care fight. Scott Lilly, an expert on spending issues at the liberal Center for American Progress, said Bunning's move couldn't have come at a better time for Democrats. "I think they were in desperate need of a poster child, and he just sort of stepped up to the line and offered himself up," Lilly said.

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Turbulent times in year of tiger:soothsayers

HONG KONG — US President Barack Obama's fortunes will sink further and nuclear threats will grow, but the world economy will bounce back in the turbulent Year of the Tiger, Chinese soothsayers predict. "Obama will start going downhill this year. He will not be able to achieve much," said Peter So, one of Hong Kong's celebrity feng shui masters peering into the future as the Lunar New Year rolls around on Sunday. Chinese fortune-tellers study the changing balance of the five elements they believe form the core of the universe -- metal, wood, water, fire, and soil -- and in the Chinese zodiac the tiger is seen as the mother of fire. In feng shui, a person's element can be calculated by using the exact time and date of his birth. Obama, born in the summer of 1961, needed the support of water and did not go well with fire, So said. "Unfortunately, there is too much fire and no water for Obama this year." He predicted that already strained Sino-US relations would deteriorate further in the second half of 2010, with Obama's good fortune running out. Other leaders could also be in for a hard time, according to their place in the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese Zodiac -- Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. Monkey is the least favourable animal sign this year as it is in a direct clash with the tiger, according to the soothsayers. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who was born on the Day of the Monkey in the Year of the Monkey, is expected to experience a particularly rough 2010, Raymond Lo, a Hong Kong feng shui expert, told AFP. Others born in the Year of the Monkey include Akio Toyoda, chief of troubled Japanese auto giant Toyota, and Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang, who has been dogged by growing public discontent. The tiger's link to fire could also be a warning of renewed nuclear threats from rogue regimes such as North Korea and from terrorists, Lo said. Adding to the possibility of troubled times is the fact that metal is the dominant element this year. "Unfortunately, this means the year 2010 will not be peaceful as there will be lots of international conflicts," Lo told AFP. Each element is further divided into the yin and the yang strands, the two complementary qualities representing nature's passive and active side. Lo said that metal this year belongs to the yang strand and is a symbol of loyalty to friends and justice. "However, these seemingly positive qualities can be destructive to international relations as state leaders may take sides and make military alliances." But the disputes were unlikely to result in violence, he said. On the positive side, fire symbolises the driving force of the economy and lifts hopes that a long-term recovery will be in sight, feng shui masters said. "Fire stands for optimism and a speculative mentality, which means that there will be lots of activity in the stock market this year," said Lo. "We've got to remember that the financial crisis was triggered by the absence of fire and prevalence of water, which symbolises fear." Feng shui master Alion Yeo predicted that stock markets in Hong Kong and China would be up at the beginning of the year. "But it will experience significant fluctuations around August before the market rebounds for a sustainable recovery towards the end of the year," he said. The experts believe that the Year of the Tiger will also be favourable to industries connected to metal, such as banking, machinery, high tech, and cars. While they had varied predictions on what sort of natural disasters the world will see in a year dominated by metal and fire they all agreed on one thing -- an abundance of traffic accidents.

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Alexander mMcQuen "jenius" or just charismatic

Reading the reports of Alexander McQueen’s death you would think we had lost an Oscar Wilde or a Jimi Hendrix. “He was a genius,” says Katharine Hamnett. “What a terrible tragic waste.” “His brilliant imagination knew no bounds,” says Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman. I’m always skeptical when the word “genius” is bandied about by the fashionista — more or less everything is “genius” in their world, as in, “Love that belt, darling. It’s genius.” I oversaw an Alexander McQueen fashion shoot for Vanity Fair’s Cool Britannia issue in 1997 (styled by Isabella Blow) and the thing that really stood out was the cult of personality he had managed to create around himself. He wasn’t a conventional Alpha male, but he was one of those people who used his shyness as a weapon — a form of passive aggression. When he finally appeared on set, at least two hours late, he was surrounded by flunkies and skulked around at the edges of where the models were posing, radiating hostility. The impression he gave was that participating in a photo shoot for Vanity Fair — a privilege that would vastly inflate the amount of money he could extract from credulous advertising agencies — was a colossal chore, far beneath his dignity. He was a rock star. Everyone else was a groupie. As a mere employee of the magazine that was paying him tens of thousands of dollars to secure his services I wasn’t entitled to speak to him. Instead, all communication had to be relayed through some ghastly major domo — a sort of Osric figure. Nine times out of ten, I would pose a question — “Is it okay if we pin the dress at the back because, er, it doesn’t quite fit?” — and get no reply. At the time I resented this, but after I become a bit more worldly — several fashion shoots later — I realised that McQueen’s behaviour was inextricably bound up with his reputation. Had he been a little less prima donna-ish, he never would have become acclaimed as the Greatest Living Designer in British fashion. It took a while, but I finally realised that there’s no such thing as talent in fashion — at least, not in the sense in which it’s normally understood. Unlike literature or music, it simply isn’t clear which designer has talent and which hasn’t. One person puts together a collection in which the models appear in dustbin liners, another in which they’re sporting sackcloth, and who’s to say which collection embodies the “zeitgeist”? To the outsider, both collections look equally idiotic. Before I become involved in this world, I assumed that the reason I couldn’t tell which designers were good and which mediocre was because I lacked experience — I didn’t have any “taste”. But after working in fashion for several years, I realised that “taste” is just a euphemism for the collective wisdom of the fashion elite. And their standards change from week to week — sometimes day to day. Clearly, there were no hard and fast rules, no “canon” which the arbiters of fashion could refer to. So what dictated who was “in” and who was “out”? What prompted the grandees of the fashion world — Anna Wintour, Suzy Menkes, Grace Coddington — to declare one designer a “genius” and another “so ten minutes ago, darling”. It’s not just one thing, obviously. Up to a point, you can tell which designers possess some creative flair — and McQueen clearly had that in spades. Originality counts for something, too, provided it’s within the acceptable parameters. Technical skill — “craft” — is also something the Lord High Executioners of the Catwalk like to cite from time to time, pretending they know something about the stitching techniques used in Indonesian sweatshops. But, overwhelmingly, it’s about the charisma of the designer in question. How much force of personality does he or she possess? Typically, a top designer secures an audience with the high arbiters of international style before he unveils his collection and that is his chance to impose himself, to convince the panel of judges that he’s in possession of some supernatural connection to the sturm and drang of contemporary culture. How does he do this? Sometimes by being emphatic and stern-faced, like Karl Lagerfeld: “Achtung! Achtung! Pink is the new blue.” But it’s often more effective to be quietly confident, shy yet sure. You pronounce with total conviction that, for instance, skulls on scarves are going to be Next Big Thing, and the skull-faced Sybils nod along with great sagacity. The lower the volume, the more convincing the case. Not much to do with talent; mainly to do with personal charisma. So that’s my verdict on Alexander McQueen. Not a “genius”, unless by that you mean a gift for self-presentation. But someone who managed to survive at the top of a very competitive game for over 10 years through sheer force of personality.

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