Entries for October 2007

The Capitol Bobbles invite you to play their creepy Halloween game. Which one of the presidential candidates do you find the scariest?

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE CIARDIELLO FOR USN&WR

The excitable CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer has just added a new file in his computer. "I have it as 'Mark Penn Idea,' " he tells us. "I have this working page in my PC for when a new idea strikes me from his work because it is that explosive." Yes, that Mark Penn, Sen. Hillary Clinton's grand strategist, former President Bill Clinton's pollster, the CEO of public-relations giant Burson-Marsteller who just wrote Microtrends, which charts 75 emerging trends. "Oh, God, it's the Rosetta stone," chants Cramer. "His book is the start of many, many great stock ideas."

Cramer's endorsement of the soft-spoken Penn on Mad Money isn't just the product of their friendship born at the Harvard Crimson. Cramer believes Penn is the master of trend polling. "Mark Penn was the guy who had polling data in his trunk," he says of their Harvard days. "He'd be trying to push it in while trying to close the trunk." Cramer says the book gives him the confidence to buy into long-term stock swings. Some examples: The "Ardent Amazons" chapter describes the huge growth of women in jobs requiring brute strength, so he now recommends Under Armour. The "Sun Haters" chapter has him yelling "buy" of Schering-Plough, maker of Coppertone. "I'm trying to find themes that can be parlayed into money," says Cramer. "This is like manna from heaven."

Watch for the 2008 presidential race to strike a novel enviro-phrase: green-collar workers. Sen. Hillary Clinton is already using it in a bid to appear forward-thinking on what the global workforce will look like. "She believes these are the tech jobs for the 21st century," says an aide about new jobs linked to the environment. "She thinks that every 15 to 20 years or so, America has to find a new growth sector to keep the economy growing," adds the aide, "like President Clinton did with tech in the 1990s."

The skies of Baghdad are dotted with Goodyear-blimp-style balloons, or aerostats, that track the movements of militia thugs near U.S. bases. Lately, though, some have run into a spate of bad luck. One of the tethered blimps was blown away earlier this month by harsh winds, requiring jets to shoot it down. And despite the Kevlar coating, others have been picked off by the lucky potshots of rocket-toting insurgents. But some GIs suspect that even the good guys may want to pop them. Whispers hears that one blimp camera recently caught two sweethearts, both American soldiers, lip locked and more on the roof of a base building, resulting in disciplinary action for both.

Congressional investigations, Iraqi government probes, and a bad run of PR disasters have caught up to Blackwater USA, the security contractor under fire in the war. We're told that Pakistan political star Benazir Bhutto, targeted in a suicide bombing upon her return last month from exile, wanted Blackwater guards to handle her security. But they chose not to accept the offer, citing the bad publicity and the likelihood it would only increase attention and scrutiny on them.

Just in time for the early primaries and caucuses in January, Simon & Schuster is shopping a book for media outlets to serialize that declares Sen. Barack Obama won't win because he's caught between strategies to woo blacks and whites. A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win, by race and culture scholar Shelby Steele, helps to explain the candidate's bid to stay above politics. While we aren't allowed to quote from the early excerpts, a Simon & Schuster letter explains that Obama "walks in an impossible political territory where any expression of what he truly feels puts him in jeopardy with one much-needed constituency or another." Steele argues that Obama is in a pickle. With whites, Obama bargains, telling them: "I will not rub America's ugly history of racism in your face if you will not hold my race against me." To win blacks, the publisher's letter says, Obama must challenge whites on race and demand they back "black-friendly policies." Steele gives examples of who uses the dueling strategies: Oprah Winfrey and the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Gary Markstein/Copley News Service

Nothing says success better than a handmade Dominican Republic PG cigar and a tumbler of rich Brugal rum. But for the island nation's ambassador, Flavio Darío Espinal, the victory was short-lived. He called a party last week to celebrate President Bush's veto of expanding a child health insurance program that would have added up to $3 to cigars imported into the United States. But the fete came the day before the Democrats moved to revive their plan. "We are really worried," he tells us. The fear: The tax would kill the country's famous mom and pop cigar makers. Ditto in Honduras and Nicaragua. "You can't argue tobacco versus child insurance," concedes Honduran Ambassador Roberto Flores Bermúdez. "But that's not the issue. This hurts our workers." They're up for another fight, though. Espinal tells us that he's teaming with Bermúdez and Nicaragua's ambassador to lobby against the tax. "We do find receptiveness," says Bermúdez.

Better gas mileage is great, but Michigan Sen. Carl Levin is bigger on new fuel technology. And he shows it on the road. The Motowner, who used to drive a Ford Escape hybrid, now rides in a Chevy E85 Impala, which runs on a fuel mix of 15 percent gas, 85 percent ethanol. "I just drove it here from Michigan," he tells us. "Well, my wife did." The Democrat says, "I bought it because it's an E85," but he concedes that the fuel isn't easy to find. "You just have to know how and where to find it," adds Levin, who is a fan of spending money to develop alternative fuels.

"I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time."

Sen. John McCain, deriding Sen. Hillary Clinton for seeking $1 million for a museum dedicated to the Woodstock concert that occurred while McCain was a Vietnam POW in Hanoi

"Just look at what Osam, uh, Barack Obama said just yesterday, Barack Obama...."

Mitt Romney, confusing Osama bin Laden for the Democratic senator and presidential candidate

"I've likened it to walking down the street with no clothes on."

Jeri Thompson, wife of GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson, on the media scrutiny of her role

"In some ways, I'm 120 percent better than I was before. My wife has even said I was kind of a jerk sometimes, and now I'm not."

Bob Woodruff, the former ABC anchor severely injured in Iraq, discussing his long recovery and skull surgery

Sources: New York Times(3),Washington Post

 It's a good media party, the Heritage Foundation's Christmas fete, so it's something Whispers looks to be invited to. But before Halloween? Yup, the invite, seen above, arrived Friday for the December 3 shindig. I guess it's a sign of the times: In a season where the presidential race started a year early, it only makes sense for Christmas invitations to arrive about the same time Home Depot and Target offer their fake Christmas trees.