Overheard today on 10th Ave, some thin, balding guy in his late 30’s or early 40’s talking into a cellular phone:

“Okay but here’s the thing: I agree with you 100%, but right now we need the money and he’s got the fuckin’ gun.”

And on a lighter note: clowns!

News from Harper’s:
Bush was disturbingly disengaged (“like a blind man in a room full of deaf people”) during cabinet meetings, and that many high-ranking administration officials have no idea what the president wants them to do and that they operate on “little more than hunches about what the president might think.” – Former secretary of the treasury Paul O’Neill
The International Monetary Fund published a report warning that the United States’ budget and trade deficits threaten to destabilize the entire global economy.
Britain released plans for new emergency powers that will permit government authorities to ban public gatherings and to destroy or confiscate private property without compensation.
A large new study found that up to half of all plant and animal species on land could face extinction by 2050 because of global warming.