Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Successful lawyers and high school sweethearts Fred Mwangaguhunga and Notoya Green got two things right from the start – entrepreneurship and love. In the 12 years they dated before tying the knot, the kindred soul mates kept their long-distance love afloat throughout their college years, then once reunited in their hometown of New York City, they even managed to stay together while enduring the tedious strains of full-time law school. By the time they were both practicing attorneys, they were already co-owners of a successful laundry delivery business and experts at balancing careers and love. A few years later, Mwangaguhunga founded popular urban celebrity gossip websiteMediaTakeout.com, which quickly became a multi-million dollar business. Two years after the couple took their vows, they received news of their next big challenge – raising triplets. Green left her post as a family law attorney to take on her biggest job offer yet – being a devoted full-time mom of three. That’s when her popular parenting blog, TripletsInTribeca.com, was born. The dynamic duo just celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary, and while Mwangaguhunga continues to work determinedly to further the growth of their family empire, Green says her most rewarding work is still being done at home." (Essence.com)

"Take Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. In September, Mr. Blair was called to Claridge’s hotel in London to mediate a renegotiation of the proposed acquisition of Xstrata by Glencore, according to British news reports. Mr. Blair, who negotiated peace in Northern Ireland, put his skills to good use, apparently earning himself roughly $1 million for three hours of work.That’s not a bad hourly rate, and it’s in addition to the reported $4 million a year he is paid by JPMorgan Chase to be a senior adviser and 'provide briefings on political trends.' You’ll be happy to know, by the way, that Mr. Blair was able to save the Xstrata deal. Wall Street likes former politicians for lots of reasons. Perhaps like Mr. Blair they are good negotiators or mediators when a deal needs to be done ... . Al Gore shows that you can use Wall Street to become superrich and do it in the name of a cause, all while building your own franchise. Mr. Gore is a co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management and a senior partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He’s also a senior adviser to Google and a member of Apple’s board, where he has options on about 98,000 Apple shares, according to the company’s last proxy statement. Apple, by the way, is trading at about $580 a share. You do the math. Mr. Gore’s efforts are part of his mission to alert the world to global warming and embrace the environmental causes he firmly believes in. It’s unclear what the former vice president does at Kleiner, but Generation Investment is focused on investing in sustainable companies ... Sometimes it’s not for a cause, but simply for the money. Mr. Gore’s former boss, Bill Clinton, is most widely known in his post-presidential period for his work with the Clinton Global Initiative. But the former president has also made millions working in finance. Mr. Clinton was an adviser to Ronald W. Burkle’s investment firm, the Yucaipa Companies, and made at least $15 million in that position.Mr. Clinton’s job was apparently to promote Yucaipa and enhance Mr. Burkle’s reputation, and as Mr. Burkle put it to BusinessWeek after the two had a falling out, 'When Clinton left the presidency he had to make money, and there were certain limits on how he could do it.' Until March of this year, Mr. Clinton also served as a paid adviser to another private equity and financial consulting firm, Teneo Capital. It’s no surprise that the former president recently said that private equity was 'good work.' It was for him." (NYTimes)

"Israel's assassination of Hamas military commander Ahmed al-Jaabari in a missile attack has shattered the short-lived and fragile calm in the Gaza Strip, and could be another step in the transformation of the basic balance of power within Hamas -- and even the broader Palestinian national movement. The attack is the most significant escalation since Operation Cast Lead, the offensive Israel launched in Gaza in December 2008, and which cost an estimated 1,400 Palestinian and 13 Israeli lives. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that Jaabari's killing was the first strike in 'a widespread campaign' to 'protect Israeli civilians and to cripple the terrorist infrastructure' -- and indeed, the IDF hit a number of targets across Gaza in the hours that followed, killing at least eight Palestinians. It's possible that these developments are laying prelude to another Israeli ground intervention in Gaza. On Nov. 11, Israel's Home Front Defense Minister Avi Dichter declared, 'Israel must perform a reformatting of Gaza, and rearrange it' -- but gave no indication of what that dire-sounding phrase might mean in practice.It is impossible to know how the conflict will unfold in the days ahead, but what is clear is that the outbreak of violence is the result of a swirl of events that are reshaping power structures within Hamas and its relationships with regional forces, including with Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. During most of the period since Cast Lead, the Hamas rulers in Gaza have refrained from attacks against Israel and tried to prevent other militant groups from launching attacks as well. But as 2012 has progressed, that policy has changed -- largely due to internal transformations within the group itself." (ForeignPolicy)

"On Oct. 19, Lebanese Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan was assassinated on a narrow side street near Sassine Square in downtown Beirut. The attack involved the detonation of a moderately sized vehicle-borne improvised explosive device as al-Hassan's car passed by the vehicle in which the device was hidden. The explosion killed not only al-Hassan and his driver but also six other people and wounded about 90 more. Al-Hassan, the intelligence chief for Lebanon's Internal Security Forces, had been a marked man for some time prior to his death. He was the security chief for former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, who was assassinated in February 2005 in an attack that most believe was conducted by the Syrian regime and its allies in Lebanon. But more recently, as Stratfor noted in February 2012, al-Hassan played a critical role channeling support from the Gulf states and the West to the Syrian rebels through Lebanon. This involved smuggling arms from Lebanon to Syria destined for opposition forces, providing a haven for Syrian defectors in Lebanon and allowing Syrian rebels to use Lebanese territory as a staging ground for attacks in Syria. His part in the Syrian opposition movement clearly made him a prime target for Syrian intelligence and indeed the Syrian regime had previously attempted to assassinate al-Hassan -- one such plot was thwarted in early 2012 by Jordanian intelligence, which caught wind of the plot and passed a warning to Lebanese authorities.
Al-Hassan was doing dangerous work in a dangerous place, and he knew he was a marked man." (STRATFOR)

"Crystal Ball Senior Columnist Alan Abramowitz points out in the chart below that how a state voted in 2008 was predictive of how it voted in 2012. The correlation between President Obama’s margin in 2012 and his margin in 2008 across all 50 states and D.C. is .96. In other words, you can closely predict Obama’s margin in 2012 almost perfectly from his margin in 2008; his drop from 2008 to 2012 was fairly uniform, and limited the number of electoral votes he lost from 2008. The biggest outliers are Utah, where Obama did substantially worse than expected in 2012, and Alaska, where he did substantially better than expected. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism probably explains why Obama underperformed in Utah, and Sarah Palin’s absence from the national ticket might explain Obama’s uptick in Alaska. To see the change in the Democratic coalition over the years, first look at Appalachia. The mountainous region stretching from New York in the north all the way to Mississippi in the South was at one time a decent source of votes for Democratic presidential candidates: Southern Democrats Jimmy Carter (in 1976) and Bill Clinton (in 1992 and 1996) — the last two Democratic presidents before Obama — did reasonably well in the region in their victories: Carter won more than two-thirds of the 428 Appalachian counties in 1976, and Clinton won close to half (see chart below). In this election, the region was unkind to Obama; he won only 7% of Appalachian counties in his successful reelection bid last week. In fact, Obama lost every county in West Virginia, the only state wholly contained in Appalachia.  Obama’s failures in rural Appalachia are worth noting, but even more so are Romney’s setbacks in the nation’s 50 most populous counties.
Romney won only six of the nation’s 50 largest counties (as measured by the Census Bureau). This was a significant drop-off from the last two winning Republican presidents, George W. Bush in 2004 — who won 16 of these 50 counties in 2004 — and George H.W. Bush in 1988 — who won a majority of these counties, 29-21, in his victory over Michael Dukakis." (SabatosCrystalBall)

"I was recently at a tony wedding party—it was really fun! Hooray for love!—and all the women there were talking about, among other things of course, their dresses. It was all 'Oh I got this at a sample sale' and the like. Everyone wanted to be clear that she hadn't paid full price. Many of them even hadn't. It was as if buying retail was a crime. And it was slightly scandalous (as if it were, like, 1890) that one somewhat New York-famous guest was wearing sneakers. They looked like Vans, people thought. But I pointed out that they were in fact Bottega Veneta sneakers—so, expensive, suede, woven vans—which retail for $560. So that was actually okay, I think. This party took place the same weekend as Laurel Touby and Jon Fine's 'Housewarming and Art Party.' 'Three long years ago,' the invitation went, 'we invited our friends to a Housebreak party at our new apartment. With the assistance of giant Sharpies, spray paint, and sledgehammers, many of you played an invaluable role in the earliest stage of our renovation.' Among the invitees to this housewarming were novelist (etc.) Kurt Andersen, Flavorpill's Mark Mangan, Craigslist's Craig Newmark and enduring New York guest list names like Felix Salmon and Daniel Radosh. Not so fancy really This is what their apartment looked like three years ago. This is what it looks like now. As she told the New York Times in a profile in today's Home section, she bought the apartment for $3.9 million (actually, $3,905,000, according to city records, to be precise), from Natalie and Steven Judelson, lawyers who now make artisanal sea salt in Amagansett, and then "renovated and furnished it for an additional $2 million." Touby describes the apartment as being "in the heart" of Silicon Alley; it is not, it is really located somewhere near the left ear of Silicon Alley. Touby bought the pad with the money she received from the sale of the company Mediabistro, in 2007. Estimates as to her actual take-home varied at the time; New York solidly put it at $12 million, as she owned 60% of the company, so that's a minimum, though that doesn't count any of the traditionally tasty post-sale executive retention fees." (Choire Sicha)

Beyond Elegance, an exhibition of multimedia works by Todd James and Alexis Ross

An exhibition of multimedia works by Todd James and Alexis Ross presented by Andy Valmorbida and PM Tenore sponsored by VistaJet, Bombardier and RVCA Artist Network Program took place at 560 Washington Street. Among the crowd: Andy Valmorbida, Indira Cesarine, Julia Chiang, Ondine de Rothschild, Jeffery Deitch, Paper magazine's Kim Hastreiter, Mike Heller, Nicky Hilton, Michael Karfelnikoff, KAWS, Anouk Lepere, Nemo Librizzi, Joshua Liner, Elizabeth Loomis, Barry McGee, Nicole Miller, Niarchos, Stavros Niarchos,  Terry Richardson, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, Amy Sacco as well as Cameron Wilklevoss &Tyler Wilklevoss -- known, collectively, as "The Winklevii."

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"In 2008, long before stress tests and Dodd-Frank, then-Senator Barack Obama excelled in the rich enclaves where much of New York’s financial class lives. Obama made staggering gains among one-percenters in the wealthiest areas of western Connecticut, where as many as one-quarter of adult males work in the financial sector. In New Canaan, where Brian Williams owns a home and the median income exceeds $175,000, Obama lost by just 6 points after Kerry lost by 22 points four years earlier. Nearby Greenwich, where you can find Mel Gibson, Regis, and Madoff's kids, voted for Obama by 8 points. The shift among New York executives in western Connecticut was just the most striking example of a broader movement toward Democrats in affluent communities across the northern half of the country. The national exit poll showed Obama winning 52 percent of voters making more than $200,000 per year, compared to Kerry’s 36 percent four years earlier. Obama’s advances among affluent voters underpinned his victories in Virginia and Colorado, where strong showings in the Denver and Washington suburbs allowed Obama to win these traditionally Republican states. After Dodd-Frank and Occupy Wall Street ignited a fight about 'class warfare,' the Republicans nominated an establishment candidate from the northeast with strong ties to the financial industry. Many believed that one-percenters would return to their Republican traditions, even though the polling data suggested that Obama was holding relatively firm among affluent voters. Nonetheless, the elite backlash against the Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain Capital, Romney’s fundraising successes on Wall Street, and the decline of Obama's Wall Street donor base seemed to lend anecdotal credibility to the assumption that Romney would perform well in rich suburbs. Romney's fundraising success on Wall Street was indeed a harbinger of Romney's electoral gains with New York's financial class. This time around, Obama finished worse than Kerry in most wealthy towns in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and especially those closest to New York City. Obama won Greenwich in 2008, but fell 19 points to lose by 11 in 2012. In New Canaan, Obama lost by 29 points last week, even though he only lost by 6 points in 2008. These tiny towns aren't populous enough, however, to move the needle .." (TNR)

"The sex scandal that brought down David Petraeus, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, this week has everything – compromising emails, a relationship with his admiring biographer, a second femme fatale and a shirtless agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Everything but substance. The US has lost a widely admired – perhaps too admired – intelligence and military strategist while General John Allen, commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, has also been drawn into the investigation. And for what? One affair and some flirtatious emails. It is hardly the Cuban missile crisis. Mr Petraeus’s relationship with Paula Broadwell, reportedly after he left the army as a four-star general and took charge of the CIA, did not change how he did his job or was regarded by colleagues (until it was revealed by the FBI). The FBI did not judge it to be a security breach. Had he been a business leader, it would until recently have remained his own affair.
Now corporations are increasingly acting like the military. No matter what their formal policies, they treat executive adultery as prejudicial to 'good order and discipline' and evidence of poor judgment. As this scandal broke, Chris Kubasik, Lockheed Martin’s chief executive-in-waiting, was dismissed for having an 'improper' relationship and Marillyn Hewson replaced him. There has been a rash of such cases since Harry Stonecipher was fired for alleged poor judgment in having an affair as Boeing’s chief executive in 2005, although he hadn’t broken its code of conduct. In May, Best Buy pushed out Brian Dunn, its former chief executive, for becoming overfamiliar with an employee and then Richard Schulze, its chairman, for not telling the board. Perhaps such inquisitions are appropriate in the military, where fidelity and unity are matters of life or death. But they do little for shareholders or customers, and not much for employees, in the corporate world. If two consenting adults wish to have a relationship that doesn’t affect colleagues, let no board of directors put them asunder." (FT)

"One of the questions that always pops up after an election is whether the winning party’s coalition signals some enduring trend that ought to frighten the losing side. It’s usually wrong. As Jonathan Last points out, people were saying something like this in 2004 — Republicans had a kind of hammerlock on the hearts and souls of middle America that turned out not to exist. But I do think the larger trends point toward a future that will tilt the center of American politics leftward for quite a while. Republicans will win elections again, but the heyday of Reaganesque conservatism has probably passed for good Ryan Lizza has a well-timed deep dive into the GOP’s frantic, uncertain response to the rising Latino electorate in Texas, which is Ground Zero in the party’s demographic panic. Nonwhites already constitute a majority of the state’s citizens. Republicans continue to dominate because Mexican-Americans are disproportionately either too young to vote yet or not registered, but both these facts could change fairly quickly. (The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News crunch the numbers and find that Democrats are shaving five and a half percentage points off the GOP’s margin every four years, and the state is poised to turn blue in twelve years. A comprehensive campaign to register Latino voters could hasten that date.) This poses two problems for the Republican Party. First, while the GOP’s restrictionist immigration policy has particularly alienated Latino voters, they, and nonwhites in general, have more liberal views about the role of government in general. It’s likely that Republicans could defuse some of the outright hostility felt by Hispanic voters by, say, embracing comprehensive immigration reform and putting Latinos on the national ticket. But the growth of the nonwhite electorate is such that Republicans need not just improvement among nonwhites, but continuous improvement merely to keep their head above water." (NYMag)

"Statistician Nate Silver was called the breakout star of the Nov. 6 election when his New York Times-based FiveThirtyEight blog accurately predicted the voting outcome in all 50 states. Now Silver soon could be called something else: a Hollywood player. One high-level talent agency source says that Silver, who does not have entertainment representation, is attracting strong interest from the industry. This person believes Silver could try his hand at everything from box-office analysis to a correspondent gig on a television news program, not to mention radio shows and public speaking. Silver, 34, tells THR he has been approached with offers from TV producers, is pondering a follow-up to his best-selling book The Signal and the Noise (which hit No. 2 on Amazon post-election) and has been courted by Los Angeles-based talent agencies. He hasn't made any major new commitments since the election and says his literary agent -- Sydelle Kramer of New York's Susan Rabiner Agency -- is fielding the inquiries. 'I have to make sure that I make good choices and that if I put my name on it, it's a high-quality endeavor and that I have time to be a human being,' says Silver." (THR)



"The big lunch yesterday was Audrey Gruss’s Hope for Depression Research Founation New York 'Hope' Luncheon Seminar at 583 Park Avenue, featuring Chuck Scarborough as main speaker. Mrs. Gruss started this organization a few years ago and it has become a very popular one for the simple reason that Depression afflicts many of us. One for the books. Then last night there were three book signings last night. A unique one was a celebration held at the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The host was Andrew Solomon, the distinguished journalist who writes about politics, culture and psychology. He’s just published 'Far From the Tree; Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.' On a cold Tuesday evening in the Egyptian Temple of Dendur, built by Petronius, the Roman governor of Egypt, commissioned by Emperor Augustus around 15 BC and now standing in its own wing at the Met, Andrew and his partner John Harbich who are very popular here in New York, drew quite a crowd. And there were drinks, food, music and dancing. The Temple, incidentally was dedicated to Isis, Osiris, and two deified sons of a local Nubian chieftain, Pediese and Pihor. Sons, parents, children; get it? Andrew did, that we can be sure of." (NYSocialDiary)

"It is amazing that gay marriage has become mainstream—and recognized in nearly a dozen states—over such a brief period of time. But it is not that amazing when you consider the power of Witchcraft. According to a mathematician-blogger (and we all believe whatever they say now), the trend to acceptance of same-sex marriage started exactly when two young Wiccan ladies became a couple on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Once Willow and Tara were just a normal part of a California town overrun by demonic forces and trampires, all the "Millennials" suddenly realized (because of the magic spell broadcast on television) that is was just fine to be a long-term witch couple on the teevee. It was the first lesbian relationship to be part of a regular television series, which is weird? And then, again because of the power of sorcery, exactly 12 years later gay marriage became legal on three out of four state ballot measures. It also won the support of the president and vice president, although it will take a more popular television series with more powerful witches to make same-sex marriage legal on the federal level." (TheAwl)

"Today is a day many Wall Streeters have stayed up nights dreaming about since they were 12, wearing pinstripe pajamas while they read Barron's under the covers: Goldman Sachs partner day, the biennial rite in which Lloyd Blankfein and Gary Cohn tap new initiates into finance's most notorious and sought-after high priesthood. The partnership process at Goldman has long been the subject of breathless speculation. The financial press has called it'coveted,''exclusive,' and'one of the most prestigious and lucrative cliques on Wall Street.' And much has been made about the legendarily tough vetting technique known as 'cross-ruffing,' which sounds like an interrogation tactic but is actually a reference to the brutal game of contract bridge. The 70 new partners who were named today are no doubt beside themselves with joy. Those who didn't make the cut, though, should take solace in this: Being Goldman partner is, in most important ways, highly overrated. For starters, Goldman's "partners" are no longer partners, in any legal sense. For many years its partners actually co-owned the business and voted on major decisions. The firm's capital was, in a non-metaphorical way, their capital. But in 1999, Goldman went public, and as a public corporation, control was transferred to shareholders, a board of directors, and a management committee composed of top brass. Goldman's former partners were given the new official title of 'Participating Managing Director,' even though most people at the firm still use the holdover 'partner' term because it sounds fancier. So, what does being a Participating Managing Director get you? First, more money." (NYMag)

"IN THE sweaty heat of northern Mozambique, Vale, a Brazilian mining giant, is digging up coal at its mine near the village of Moatize. A 400,000-tonne mound sits ready to burn. The mine can churn out 4,000 tonnes an hour but the railways and ports cannot cope. Vale is working to improve a line through Malawi to take the coal for export. OAS Construtora, another Brazilian firm, has signed a deal with the miner to build part of a new port at Nacala, 1,000km (620 miles) to the north-east, to do the same. The continent is an important part of Vale’s future, enthuses Ricardo Saad, the firm’s Africa boss. He is not alone in his excitement about Brazil’s prospects. Relations with Africa flourished during the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He travelled there a dozen times and African leaders flocked to Brazil. His zeal was in part ideological: he devoted much of his diplomacy to “south-south” relations—at the cost, critics say, of neglecting more powerful (and richer) trade partners, such as the United States. Lula stressed his country’s 'historic debt' to Africa, a reference to the 3.5m Africans shipped to Brazil as slaves. Outside Nigeria, Brazil has the world’s biggest black population. Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s current president, is continuing those policies—though with more emphasis on how the relationship benefits Brazil. There are many ways that it can. Africa needs infrastructure and Brazil has lots of construction firms. Africa sits on oil and minerals in abundance; Brazil has the firms to get them out. Its agribusiness giants are also eyeing up Africa. If the continent’s economy continues to grow as it has in recent years, it will produce millions of customers much like Brazil’s new middle class. Brazilian businesses seem keen. In 2001 Brazil invested $69 billion in Africa. By 2009, the latest figures available, that had swelled to $214 billion. At first Brazilian firms focused their efforts on Lusophone Africa, Angola and Mozambique in particular, capitalising on linguistic and cultural affinity to gain a foothold. Now they are spreading across the continent." (Economist)

"On the Tuesday of this year’s spring-fashion week in New York, magazine editors rushed across the stone expanse of the Lincoln Center plaza for the nine A.M. Tory Burch show. 'It’s so early—she’s sadistic,' said one, clip-clopping past the central fountain, shooting arabesques of water into the sky. In the eight years since Tory, 46, opened her first shop, in a tiny storefront in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood (with a 'very, very advantageous lease,' according to a friend of Tory’s ex-husband Chris), she has become one of the biggest forces in American fashion today—no woman of her generation has created a more powerful brand. For this collection she sent models with a 'prairie girl' look of embellished white crochet dresses, embroidered patchwork jackets, and beaded bags with rope handles and fringes—'American-prep remix,' as she called it—down the runway for a show that lasted only 20 minutes, though she had been preparing for it for weeks, making sure everything was perfect. A devout music fan who currently dates the intense ex-C.E.O. of recorded music at Warner Music Group, Lyor Cohen (an O.G., or 'original gangsta,' in the rap business, he made his name road-managing Run-D.M.C.), Tory is hipper than you’d think. To accompany her show she picked Manu Chao, the mellow Franco-Spanish singer who is considered the Bob Marley of Europe and Latin America. She thought carefully about the models’ hairstyles, gluing messy, loose braids that resembled stalks of wheat onto her prairie girls, and then repeating this sheaf-of-wheat print on the dress she wore when she took a bow. Petite, standing five feet four and weighing 100 pounds, Tory, who has been described without a trace of irony as 'perfectly perfect' by a reporter for The New York Times’s T magazine, has an aquiline profile, a prim smile, and shoulder-length honey-streaked blond hair that she tucks behind her ear. In the wheat dress with a navy sweater and camel-colored pumps with sunbursts of crystals pinned to the toe that jiggled to and fro, she looked perfect, as always: America’s golden girl. As the audience filed out of the show, it was clear that the hour had been too early for Fashion Week’s semi-employed bloggers, lookie-loos, and photographers, in their ridiculous top hats, and shoes with itsy-bitsy ponytails on the heels, and T-shirts that say things like FUCK YOU, FASHION; this was a crowd of staid magazine editors, buyers in ties, and understated socialites. Notably absent was Tory’s ex-husband and the co-founder of her company, Chris Burch, a jovial 59-year-old with a welcoming, casual attitude that includes speaking in a garmento’s patois and losing his train of thought every few moments. With a crown of white hair and a heavy build that doesn’t quite obliterate the debonair good looks of his youth, 'Chris was super-handsome when he was younger, and all the girls loved him,' says a friend of Tory’s. These days, he’s partial to mandarin-collared shirts and pink pants—the 'pink party' he gives every summer at his beach house, in Southampton, draws preppies from around the area—and he adds eclectic touches to his wardrobe, like mismatching Havaianas flip-flops or black velvet slippers with letters spelling out words across both feet, like SM-ILE and HE-ART." (VanityFair)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"President Barack Obama has won re-election. However, in addition to all of the constraints on him that I discussed last week, he won the election with almost half the people voting against him. His win in the Electoral College was substantial -- and that's the win that really matters -- but the popular vote determines how he governs, and he will govern with one more constraint added to the others. The question is whether this weakens him or provides an opportunity. That is not determined by his policies but by the strategic situation, which, in my view, gives the United States some much-needed breathing room. At the moment, the international system is built on three pillars: the United States, Europe and China. Europe, if it were united, would be very roughly the same size as the United States in terms of economy, population and potential military power. China is about a third the size of the other two economically, but it has been the growth engine of the world, making it more significant than size would indicate. The fundamental problem facing the world is that two of these three pillars are facing existential crises, while the third, the United States, is robust only by comparison. Europe is in recession and, faced with a banking and sovereign debt crisis, is trying to reconcile the divergent national interests that were supposed to merge into a united Europe. China, dependent on exports to maintain its economy, is confronting the fact that many of its products are no longer competitive in the international market because of rising costs of labor and land. The result is increasing tension within the ruling Communist Party over the direction it should take." (Stratfor)

"So, why did the FBI bother to investigate the e-mails in the first place? The latest salacious detail to emerge in the rapidly unfolding story provides some possible insight. According to The Wall Street Journal's sources, the FBI agent friend who first heard Kelley's complaints about the e-mails is now under investigation by the agency for questionable conduct, including sending shirtless photos of himself to Kelley. The Daily Beast's source says that when the FBI friend first showed the e-mails to fellow agents in the Tampa field office, they questioned if the matter was worth pursuing since there were no clear threats. It was a 'close call,' but they decided that the messages might constitute harassment and opened an investigation. The Journal reports that the agent was banned from taking part in the investigation over the summer after his supervisors started to worry that he'd become 'obsessed' with the case. The October the same agent reportedly leaked information about the scandal to GOP Congressman Dave Reichert, who then told Eric Cantor. 'I don’t know if it would have taken this course without Cantor,' said a person involved in the investigation. Even after learning of the investigation, Petraeus initially had no plans to resign. Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who served as Petraeus's executive officer in Iraq, tells the Washington Post, 'Once he knew it was going to go public, he thought that resigning was the right thing to do. There is no way it would have remained private.' Petraeus and Broadwell had attempted to keep their e-mails secret by saving them as drafts and then logging into each other's gmail accounts. The Associated Press notes that the trick is 'known to terrorists and teenagers alike,' so unsurprisingly it didn't fool FBI agents." (NYMag)

"Sunil Patel had never been published before he decided to go to Syria in August 2012 to become a war correspondent. Before his trip, the 25-year-old worked as a community-support officer for the London Police, lived with his mom and dad, and occasionally volunteered in Palestinian and Kurdish refugee camps. On one of his activist trips, Sunil befriended an ever so slightly more experienced freelance journalist from Canada who promised to take him into parts of Syria that were almost impossible for a foreigner to get to through legal routes. It was a foolish idea for sure, and he almost died several times during his trip, but we still think his story was worth the risk. And no, VICE did not send him there. He did this of his own accord, and we found out about it after the fact." (VICE)

"After the break Howard (Stern) came right back and had Sandra Bernhard come in. Howard said she is so connected to show business. Howard said she lives and breathes it. Howard said that he has heard a lot of stories from her and they always come back to her. Howard said the big scandal was with Arnold Schwarzenegger this year and the woman that he hit on initially was Sandra. Sandra said she was on the beach and Arnold got down on one knee to talk to her. She said it was very chivalrous. Sandra told Howard that she's on this new show called DTLA on the Logo network. She said that they're trying to reach out a little more other than the gay thing. She said she plays the mother of the lead character on the show. She said her son on the show is a gay man. She said that she tells him to pull his shit together on the show. She said Melanie Griffith plays her ex on the show. Howard asked how she's looking. Sandra said she looks great. Howard said he almost did a movie with her years ago. Howard asked if she shot this thing yet. Sandra said she did and the show airs this Friday on Logo. Howard said that Sandra was offered the part of Amanda in Sex and the City. Sandra said it was actually Miranda, not Amanda. Howard said that she turned the part down. Sandra said it wasn't enough money and she had no idea the show was going to be a hit. Howard asked if she pulled the hair out of her head when she watched the show. Sandra said she really didn't because she didn't see herself in that role. She said Cynthia Nixon was good in the role. Howard said she could have been a sexy friend. Sandra said she would have done something different on the show. Howard asked what they were offering her to do that. Sandra said it was $7,500 a week and she had done Roseanne and she was making a lot more than that. Howard said if she did that then she'd bring her price down. Sandra said that's what it was. She said that the show took a while to get its legs and they were making that kind of money for like 2 years." (Marksfriggin)

"It was a typically busy night on the Social Calendar. Fair weather, easy to get a cab. I went down to Archivia just before closing to pick up another copy of Tom Mankiewicz’  My Life As A Mankiewicz. I’m promoting this book because it’s such a pleasure, such an excellent diversion from all the angst in the air. If you love film and Hollywood and the last four decades of it all, this is a perfect gift for yourself, for your boyfriend, wife, husband, daughter, grandmother, son, nephew, grandfather. IF they just like the subject. Mank, as he was known to his good friends (or 'Tom' or 'Tommy') talks to you. He tells his story to you. I was halfway through the book before I realized that this champion screenwriter/director does great dialogue, and in this case it’s done to you, the reader. I was giving it as an early Christmas present to my friend Philip Carlson whom I was seeing last night at the ENCORES! Gala at City Center. Philip and I met in the mid-60s when we were both cast in a de Ghelderode play 'Christopher Columbus' off-off-off Broadway at the Judson Memorial Church in Brooklyn Heights. My only memory of it was meeting Philip. I wasn’t very good and managed to conveniently forget the whole experience. However it was one of those instant friendships with me and Philip. He went on to a career with a very successful off-Broadway play 'Until The Monkey Comes' and then signed a contract with Universal and moved to Hollywood with his first wife Patty, who was also an actress. He later quit acting and became an agent. He loves the business." (NYSocialDiary)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"I suspect that someone in the military with an axe to grind ratted out David Petraeus for having an extramarital affair. I am told that President Obama tried to talk Petraeus out of resigning, but Petraeus took the samurai route and insisted that he had done a dishonorable thing and now had to try to balance it by doing the honorable thing and stepping down as CIA director.  But why? Petraeus is retired from the military. If the affair happened back when he was on active duty, it is part of the past. And there is nothing illegal about civilians having affairs. So the surprise to me is that Obama let him go. But the administration's loss may be Princeton's gain." (Tom Ricks)

"That the essence of Team Obama’s reelection strategy was to capitalize on his strength with what National Journal’s Ronald Brownstein calls 'the coalition of the ascendant' had long been clear. Back in May, I wrote a cover story for this ­magazine laying out Chicago’s plan to focus ­laserlike on four key voting blocs: ­African-Americans, Hispanics, college-educated white women, and voters aged 18 to 29. At bottom, the Obaman theory of the case was that, despite the fragility of the recovery and the doubts many voters had about POTUS’s capacity to put America on the path to prosperity, the deft exploitation of coalition politics, together with the ruthless disqualification of Romney as a credible occupant of the Oval Office, could secure the president a second term. That in 2012, in other words, demographics would trump economics. And so it did, as a glance at the exit polls confirms. Contrary to the assumptions of the Romney campaign, the electorate that turned out last Tuesday was more diverse than 2008’s, not less. Nationally, the white vote fell from 75 to 72 percent, while the share made up by blacks rose from 12.2 to 13 percent, by Hispanics from 8.4 to 10, by Asians from 2.5 to 3, by women from 53 to 54, and by 18-to-29-year-olds from 18 to 19 percent. Obama’s claim on each of those groups was overwhelming: 93 percent of African-Americans, 71 percent of Latinos, 73 percent of Asians, 55 percent of the ladies, and 60 percent of the kids. And that all made the difference in the battleground states. Had it not been for Obama’s vast advantages with Hispanics, he would not have carried Colorado, Florida, or Nevada, and the same was true when it came to African-Americans in Virginia and Ohio. And had it not been for his margins with young voters and college-educated women, the races in Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire would have been razor-close rather than five-to-seven-point strolls in the park." (John Heilmann)

"Last night at the Plaza Hotel, The New York Landmarks Conservancy held its annual Living Landmarks Celebration. This year’s Landmarks were Daniel Boulud, Robert Caro, Peter L. Malkin, Liza Minnelli, James M. Nederlander, James L. Nederlander (son) and E. John Rosenwald. Mr. Rosenwald, who was the final honoree on the program, is a very well known Wall Street investment banker and an ardent philanthropic leader. He’s been active in business and the life of the city for many years now, and highly regarded. He comports himself with an ease of dignity and carriage that if you saw him on the street, and didn’t know who he was, you might think he was a prominent civic figure busily going about his day. Which he is. He has served on many boards of important New York institutions including the NYU Langone Medical Center. On the full moon of Sandy passing through last week, -- he told us last night when he took the podium to acknowledge his honor -- the East River, which is not actually a river but an estuary connecting the Harbor with the Long Island Sound, rose sixteen feet over its normal level. This was higher than the previous record of eleven feet in 1821! Last week the river spilled over the banks including the east side of Manhattan at 31st Street where the Langone Medical Center is located. The hospital’s subterranean floors were flooded with salt water, and so it lost its power." (NYSocialDiary)

"The British actor and director Kenneth Branagh, who last year turned in an Oscar-nominated performance in My Week With Marilyn as Sir Laurence Olivier, won’t have to just play titled nobility on film anymore. He’s been knighted by Queen Elizabeth at a ceremony just before the weekend. His Hamlet co-star Kate Winslet has received an honor, as well, named a Commander of the British Empire, while Alexander McQueen designer Sarah Burton has been named an Officer. (Neither of them are Dames yet.)" (Observer)

"A couple of weeks ago on a Friday, Daisy Soros asked me if I would come by that early evening for a reception she and her husband Paul were giving for a group of people involved in a 'fellowship' she and Paul had organized. I had no idea what 'a fellowship' was. Although Daisy and Paul Soros are interesting philanthropists to me because they fund ideas borne of personal experience. The Summer Swing dance that runs for a few weeks every Summertime over at Damrosch Park in Lincoln Center is an example. Dancing, says Daisy, makes people feel good. Why not something to make people feel good? Exactly. If you’ve never been, make a point next summer. You don’t have to dance; just watching everybody dance makes you feel good. It’s Joy, pure and simple. An important ingredient. Anyway, this particular Friday was a bit of a problem. I’m not enthusiastic about anything that intrudes on my self-appointed half day off. But I like Daisy because she’s friendly and fun, and direct; and she has a strong sense of what Need is. So I stopped by the Soros apartment on my way to dinner with friends, and this is what I saw."(NYSocialDiary)

Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and The Chain


fleetwood mac - the chain

jay


  I wish that President Barack Obama used Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" as his campaign anthem in 2012. Granted, it is more of a love song with lyrics like "Damn your love/Damn your lies" -- not so much the sort of thing one wants to bring out of the arsenal while campaigning in, say, sweet Virginia. Still, the theme -- The Chain -- somewhat mysterious, draws upon the connection and the parallels of the Obama campaign to the Clinton Presidential legacy. If rock bands and musicians are proprietary possessions of election campaigns, then Fleetwood Mac -- through "Don't Stop" -- clearly belong the William Jefferson Clinton.   Granted, as well: no red-blooded alpha male President or Presidential candidate wants to be intrinsically linked to any other. Damn logic on this one: Presidential propriety is the stuff of reptile brain stems and primal, roaring macho!   All that having been said, these gypsie-folk infused lyrics are quite wonderful and, in the best of all worlds, would have fit Obama's second and last Presidential campaign perfectly:

"And if you don't love me now/
You will never love me again/
I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain/
And if you don't love me now/
You will never love me again/
I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain"

The chain is, of course, the Democrat Party's legacy. The chain is the Democrat Party's promise to work on behalf of the struggling middle class first and foremost, everything else being secondary to that goal. It's the economy stupid, part 2.

No other President in recent political memory relied on another former President as the Obama campaign did on Bill Clinton in securing the securable working class white vote. And although the President lost out on getting  a majority of that fickle demographic to Romney, Bill Clinton made the case to those who would listen that Barack Obama was their man. That was enough. And who other than Bill Clinton could have made that argument in crucial districts in Ohio, in Virginia, in Florida and New Hampshire and, most worryingly, in Pennsylvania, where Romney threatened some mischief in the final days on the campaign? John Heilmann, one of the best writers on the contemporary political scene, from New York's Intel column:

On Hardball Tuesday night, New York's John Heilemann explained that the Obama campaign is capitalizing on Clinton's widely praised speech at the Democratic National Convention, in which the former president answered a question the Obama campaign had struggled with: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? "There's a lot of polling that suggested that the bump president Obama got out of the convention was almost all due to Bill Clinton," said Heilemann, adding that Clinton is in almost all the ads running in swing states, with video of the current and former president back-to-back at the end. "It's almost as if they're running mates. That's how powerful the Obama camp thinks Bill Clinton is as a champion of the notion that things in fact are on the right track."

Obama, like Gore and Kerry, comes from the stiff, cerebral Harvard Democrat variety. Obviously they care more about the working class than the Republicans do, but they have trouble getting across that message. Is it something in the drinking water up in Cambridge? Message notwithstanding, Obama, with regards to political optics, comes across as more appealing to the Starbucks voter than the Dunking Donuts coffee drinking voter. Hillary Clinton -- another of those Clintons -- exposed that fault line in the summer of 2008 primaries. Obama, for all his rhetorical talents, has had difficulty making an organic case as to why he understands the people who work 8 hours a day on their feet, who take showers before and after work, who sometimes work the night shifts to pay the rent and, in this Great Recession, have relied on their extended families for help. This is The Chain; this is the Promise.

Finally, if no red-blooded alpha male President or Presidential candidate wants to be intrinsically linked to any other, maybe it will take a woman to make my pervese wish of Fleetwood Mac's The Chain as Presidential campaign music come to fruition. And if that be the case, there is no other person in the world than Hillary Clinton, twice elected Senator from New York and our current Secretary of State, that can lay organic claim to Fleetwood Mac's The Chain. After all, it is an integral sonic element of the Clinton legacy.   I may still have my wish after all.

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"As of Wednesday afternoon, Obama held a 51.2% to 48.8% lead over Romney in the national two-party vote. That tracks pretty well with the projection from Crystal Ball Senior Columnist Alan Abramowitz, whose adjusted 'Time for Change' model projected that Obama would get 50.6% of the national two-party popular vote. (Abramowitz wrote about his model here.) While we expect Obama’s national popular vote lead will probably grow as all the votes are counted, we think the Abramowitz model -- which uses factors such as presidential approval and GDP growth to project the popular vote -- gave our readers a strong indication of the direction of this election over four months ago. Earlier this fall, we also featured a range of political science election models assembled by University at Buffalo-SUNY professor and friend of the Crystal Ball James Campbell. We reprint them here, (ABOVE), to see how they performed. As you examine the chart, remember that 51.2% is Obama’s current lead in the national two-party vote. Note that Campbell’s model performed exceptionally well." (Sabato)

"Last Monday night at the Hilton New York's Grand Ballroom, Rolex hosted Career Transition for Dancers' 27th Anniversary Jubilee, Jump for Joy, A Dance Variety Spectacular. Angela Lansbury was its host and they honored Liza Minnelli; with a performance by the incomparable Chita Rivera. The Career Transition For Dancers Outstanding Contributions to the World of Dance Awards went to Joni Berry, Michele Herbert, Gerald M. Appelstein, and Arthur Murray International (celebrating its 100th Anniversary). Career Transition For Dancers, with offices in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, has helped over 5,400 professional dancers nationwide identify their unique talents in preparation for establishing new careers when dance is no longer an option." (NYSocialDiary)

"Sometimes it pays to be one of Manhattan’s top philanthropists. Leonard Lauder, chairman emeritus of Estée Lauder, was allowed to skip the long voting line at Hunter College. Witnesses said he 'was able to cut in line ahead of Martin Scorsese and the other 1-percenters . . . if you donate you don’t have to stand in line.' The source said Lauder had made a Hunter donation on behalf of his late wife Evelyn, who was a student there when they met. But a source close to the mogul told us Lauder, 79, stood in line three times Tuesday for long waits. On his third try, 'He stood in line for over half an hour,' when a worker who had known Evelyn gave him a break and ushered him in. Also voting on the UES: Téa Leoni, Paula Zahn, Jim Chanos and Anthony Marshall’s wife, Charlene (or as Brooke Astor called her, 'that bitch'). Joan Rivers was spotted, in a huge fur, clutching an American flag at an East 60th Street polling station. 'People were being pushed in wheelchairs, when some guy said, ‘Is this a hospital or a voting station?’' a spy said." (PageSix)

"Howard (Stern) started the show talking about how pleased he was with America last night. He said he thinks they voted the right way. Robin said it was almost 50/50. She said half the country didn't vote for the guy. Howard said he thought Romney was going to win for a while there. Robin said that the exit polling was saying that Obama had the right kind of coalition to gain the electoral vote. Howard said that he knew he lost around 8 something last night. He said Bill O'Reilly was making excuses for him already. Howard said he was done in by Governor Christie. Howard said if that's the reason then we have a dumb country. He said you should be able to make a decision based on your beliefs. Howard said O'Reilly already knew around that time. Howard said maybe they need to get hugged by Chris Christie. Howard said the picture of him being bipartisan is way more powerful than going around the country saying you are. Robin said that they were talking about the Sandy thing and that had a decent impact. Howard said he thinks this proves that women are smarter than men. He said men get all macho. He said women went for Obama overwhelmingly. Howard said he isn't a democrat. He said he's an independent and he would vote for Christie if he was living in New Jersey. Howard said he voted for Pataki for two terms. He said he voted for Cuomo too. Howard said he voted for Senator Al D'Amato too. Howard said he really isn't a democrat. He said that you have to believe that the person can help the people. He said what's going on with the tea party is that the religious kooks go out and vote and they say some really dopey things. He said both of the guys who said that rape is god's will and things like that lost. Howard said that proves that women are smart. He said they won't stand for that." (Marksfriggin)

Ed Gavagan's Story




Just astonishing.

Congratulations Mr. President

via papermag

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The results are in, and Barack Obama will return for a second term as president of the United States. But as Joe Biden might say, gird your loins: A victorious Obama faces a world of trouble, from a China determined to challenge U.S. primacy in the Pacific to an Iran that shows few signs of buckling in the face of international pressure to an Arab world still very much in the throes of upheaval and chaos. America’s adversaries are looking for any hints of weakness. And its friends and allies will be demanding leadership from a U.S. president who has been consumed with his own re-election for the past 18 months. nSo what now? Foreign Policy asked 14 top analysts to peer beyond Wednesday’s headlines and examine the longer-term issues confronting the United States, from Europe’s debt morass to North Korea’s dangerous nuclear program, sagging U.S. competitiveness to worsening climate change. It’s a daunting list. Is Obama sure he wants the job?" (ForeignPolicy)

"Like 'pivot' and 'cloud computing,' 'big data' is one of those startup buzzwords that gets thrown around indiscriminately–partly because it means different things depending on the intel you’re trying to unearth and partly because it sounds like the kind of futuristic jargon that opens doors. Using machine learning to analyze big data? We can practically see the pitch deck already! As The Economist noted back in 2010, the deluge of large data sets unleashed by the digital age, 'makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.' In practice, however, the young science has been used primarily for the first example. But Nate Silver’s astounding record in predicting last night’s elections might change that and gives big data enthusiasts a concrete, laudable example of its potential on the national stage. As one New York Times staffer told'the King of Quants': 'Obviously a great night for the president, but also a great night for you and your forecast model, which is performing pretty much perfectly right now!' As Quartz’s Christopher Mims noted, there’s a difference between Mr. Silver’s use of statistics and the still nebulous definition of big data." (BetaBeat)

"David Geffen was feted by 66 VIPs including Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Ron Meyer, Candice Bergen, Graydon Carter and Jann Wenner on Monday after a debut of Susan Lacy’s 'American Masters' doc on the mogul. 'How do you follow Mike Nichols,' mused Barry Diller in a line of power players making toasts at La Grenouille. Diller said when his wife Diane von Furstenberg gets sick, he brings her medicine but Geffen 'brings her information.' An LA screening’s being hosted Tuesday by Tom Hanks, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Robbie Robertson and Cher. 'Even if no one else shows, it will be gridlock on the red carpet,' quipped a spy." (PageSix)

"(In case you've forgotten: 'There are 77.7 million Catholics in the United States. In 2008 they made up 27% of the electorate, about 35 million people. Mr. Obama carried the Catholic vote, 54% to 45%. They helped him win. They won't this year. And guess where a lot of Catholics live? In the battleground states. There was no reason to pick this fight. It reflects political incompetence on a scale so great as to make Mitt Romney's gaffes a little bitty thing. There was nothing for the president to gain, except, perhaps, the pleasure of making a great church bow to him. Enjoy it while you can. You have awakened a sleeping giant.')" (TheAwl)

"It was a lovely night at the Fountain house Fall Fette. Chairs of the evening included Byrdie Bell, Katie Zorn, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, Lil Phillips, and co-chair Melissa Berkelhammer. Committee members included Brooke and Edouard Gershel, Alison and George Brokaw, Beth Amorosi, Elizabeth Meigher, Charlotte Ronson, Ian Snow, Mario Maccioni, of the Le Cirque Restaurant Group, Graziano di Boni. Mark Gilbertson The event was a cocktail party at the Armani store and then a seated dinner at the Metropolitan club where the Fountain House awarded its scholarship fund." (HauteLiving)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"The 2012 presidential election could be effectively settled shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, when all polls will have closed in three of the biggest battleground states: Florida, Virginia and Ohio. Quick projections of a sweep of these competitive states by either President Barack Obama or Republican Mitt Romney probably would mean that candidate will win the White House. If there’s a split decision or if some of these races remain unsettled for hours, the election’s outcome could stretch into tomorrow. Challenges to ballot tallies -- like in Florida in 2000 -- could delay the call for days or weeks. Throw out the national polls, which show a close race. U.S. elections are won in the Electoral College, where each state receives votes equaling the total of their two U.S. senators and their number of House representatives, which are apportioned on the basis of population. The candidate taking the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 21, 2013, will be the one who garners at least 270 electoral votes. For Obama, early wins in Florida or both Virginia and Ohio probably would cement his re-election, given the other states he is heavily favored to carry that include New York and California. Early projections of victories in Florida and Virginia would get Romney off to a good start. An upset victory for him in Pennsylvania, where polls close at 8 p.m. EST, would signal he’s likely to defeat Obama nationwide." (Bloomberg)

"Anderson Cooper got his own October Surprise last week — his afternoon talk show is going out of business at the end of the season. The show, renamed 'Anderson Cooper Live' in September, was the victim of poor ratings and higher-than-normal costs. 'It was a very expensive show,' said one insider — $20 to $25 million a month, according to reliable estimates versus $10 to $15 million for an average show. The company producing the show — Telepictures, an arm of Time Warner — was actually losing money on it, unusual for a syndicated daytime show, according to sources, with little chance of getting into the black any time soon. The announcement last Monday came just hours ahead of Hurricane Sandy striking the East Coast and the news hardly made a dent. While some questioned the timing, it was, at least in part, dictated by the contracts local stations — like Ch. 5 here, which airs the show weekdays at noon — had with Cooper’s syndicator. Telepictures had to tell stations by Oct. 31 if Cooper would be back in fall 2013 — and to the surprise of many, the syndicator said, 'no.' 'The stations loved the show,' says the insider. 'It was a perfect lead-in to the early news. They were shocked.' It was Cooper, according to another source, who insisted that Telepictures announce immediately that the show was ending — not something that is customarily done in October, because the show still has seven months to run." (NYPost)

"Hang onto your handbags: the battle between the Burches is heating up. Tory Burch sued its namesake designer’s ex-husband, Chris Burch, today, accusing him of systematically stealing the fashion label’s secrets as he prepared last fall to launch C. Wonder, his own downmarket retail chain.Allegedly misusing his position as co-chairman of Tory Burch while developing C. Wonder, the suit charges that Chris Burch 'repeatedly asked for and was given full and complete access to competitively sensitive information about the company and its best-selling products.' A spokesperson for Chris Burch — who last month sued the Tory Burch label for allegedly blocking his efforts to sell his 28-percent stake in the company for upwards of $600 million — couldn’t immediately be reached to comment on the charges, filed late Monday in Delaware Chancery Court. Tory and Chris Burch started the company in 2004 and separated a year later before getting divorced in 2007.  According to the Monday suit, Chris Burch used competitive information at Tory Burch to knock off its distinctive fashions and accessories, such as large-buttoned sweaters and handbags and wallets that bear big, brass-lettered logos. In addition to familiar-looking merchandise, Tory Burch claimed it was surprised by the look of C. Wonder’s first store, which opened in Soho in October 2011. 'The store copied the Tory Burch brand image — from the lacquered front doors, to the store fixtures, to the furnishings, area rugs and wall treatments, to the packaging design, to the merchandising,' the suit alleged." (NYPost)

"Election Day is finally here! Campaign volunteers are going door to door across the country to get out the vote, lines are spilling into the street at polling places nationwide, and little children are running to find ballots wrapped in paper below a glistening Voting Tree. It's all very exciting, except for one thing: We pretty much already know who is going to win. Not for certain, mind you. But the polls are not ambiguous. The Real Clear Politics poll average has Obama winning 303 electoral votes. Nate Silver has Obama accruing 314.6 electoral votes and gives him a 91.6 percent chance of winning the election. Not only that, but, thanks to Hurricane Sandy/Chris Christie or something else (Pitbull?), Obama has the momentum. Nevertheless, Romney's White House hopes aren't completely toast. Here are five ways he can pull off an upset." (NYMag)

"Ten days ago, in Nashua, New Hampshire, Barack Obama gave what had become his standard, sluggish 2012 appeal to a passive crowd of 8,000 voters. A week later, up the road in Concord, though, the confidence of 2008 was back. The crowd of 14,000 had that old Hopey and Changey buzz. Standing stage left were the Davids Axelrod and Plouffe looking very happy to be on the verge of another victory. He closed the campaign with Jay Z, who is obviously now a socialist. What had changed in the interceding week? Had Sandy jolted Barack Obama back in line, even as it had, to borrow Nate Silver's observation,'blown Romney off course'? Mitt Romney campaigned in the state Saturday, too, making an appearance in Portsmouth. The corporation running the campaign, Romney Victory, is made up of a bunch of people, too. Many of them were at the rally with the realities of the electoral college mapped on their weary but still smiling faces. 'I've watched this go from a start to a movement,' Romney told the crowd of 2000. Campaigning in the state back in January (it seems like eons ago), Romney had been the fun candidate, the confident alternative to Rick Santorum; that's when he was just developing his shtick for breaking into patriotic hymns. Now he seemed practiced, tired. Then last night he held one final rally in Manchester at the local arena with Kid Rock." (TheAwl)