Alan Greenspan, on his last day in office, presided over a 1/4 point interest rate increase.
USA Today has two opinion pieces about Greenspan’s tenure: one glowing, the other not so rosy.
From Yahoo News:
SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc.’s fourth-quarter profit nearly doubled, but fell well below the high expectations for the online search engine leader.
The Mountain View, Calif-based company said Tuesday that it earned $372.2 million, or $1.22 per share, for the final three months of 2005. That represented an 82 percent increase from net income of $204.1 million, or 71 cents per share, in the previous year.
If not for a donation to launch its charitable foundation and stock compensation expenses, Google said it would have earned $1.54 per share. That missed the average estimate of $1.76 per share among 31 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.
Google released its results after the stock market closed Tuesday. Company shares plunged $59.16 — 13.7 percent — in after-hours trading after gaining $5.84 to close at $432.66 Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. At one point, the stock was down more than 19 percent in late trade.
As expected, Brokeback Mountain, led the pack with eight Oscar Nominations, including nominations for best picture, best director(Ang Lee), best screenplay (Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana), best actor (Heath Ledger), and best-supporting actress (Michelle Williams), and best-supporting actor (Jake Gyllenhaal).
Capote was also nominated for best picture. I have been consistently disappointed that other awards have overlooked this remarkably well-written and crafted film.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman who played Truman Capote and has won all the other major acting awards, was also nominated for in the best actor category, which I expect he will win again. In addition, Catherine Keener was nominated for best-supporting actress for her role as Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird.
Capote also got nominations for best director (Bennett Miller) and best adapted screenplay (Dan Futterman).
I’ve also seen Crash and I liked it but found it a too contrived to be considered a great movie. I’m surprised that it got a nomination for best picture.
SAG gave Crash their award for best ensemble cast, which makes sense. It was truly an ensemble movie with a much larger cast than Brokeback Mountain. The cast of Crash was almost universally excellent.
I still haven’t seen Munich or Good Night, and Good Luck which were also nominated for best-picture Oscars. I will plan to see them before the awards show in March.
Check out The Complete List of Nominations for the 78th Academy Awards.
The Bush Administration is using the AIDS epidemic to funnel even more tax dollars into faith-based organizations.
President Bush’s $15 billion effort to fight AIDS has handed out nearly one-quarter of its grants to religious groups, and officials are aggressively pursuing new church partners that often emphasize disease prevention through abstinence and fidelity over condom use.
Award recipients include a Christian relief organization famous for its televised appeals to feed hungry children, a well-known Catholic charity and a group run by the son of evangelist Billy Graham, according to the State Department.
The outreach to nontraditional AIDS players comes in the midst of a debate over how best to prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The debate has activated groups on both ends of the political spectrum and created a vast competition for money.
Conservative Christian allies of the president are pressing the U.S. foreign aid agency to give fewer dollars to groups that distribute condoms or work with prostitutes. The Bush administration provided more than 560 million condoms abroad last year, compared with some 350 million in 2001.
Secular organizations in Africa are raising concerns that new money to groups without AIDS experience may dilute the impact of Bush’s historic three-year-old program.
“We clearly recognize that it is very important to work with faith-based organizations,” said Dan Mullins, deputy regional director for southern and western Africa for CARE, one of the best-known humanitarian organizations.
“But at the same time we don’t want to fall into the trap of assuming faith-based groups are good at everything,” Mullins said.
$15 billion over three years is $5 billion a year.
25% of that $15 billion is $3.75 and that is taxpayer money going to faith-based groups. Faith has done nothing to add to the body of knowledge about HIV/AIDS that has built up over the last 25 years.
At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, religious groups used HIV/AIDS to condemn homosexuals, calling it God’s punishment for homosexuality. There is no scientific basis for such a belief and all they did was hold up progress toward effective treatments and a cure.
AIDS has always been primarily a heterosexual disease. It is ironic that now the same religious fanatics that once claimed it was a gay disease and God’s punishment are now being given billions of dollars to fight the disease among heterosexuals.
Among those winning grants were:
_Samaritan’s Purse, which is run by Graham’s son, Franklin. It says its mission is “meeting critical needs of victims of war, poverty, famine, disease and natural disaster while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
_World Vision. The 56-year-old Christian organization is known for its TV appeals — some with celebrities such as game show host Alex Trebek — that asked people to support a Third World child.
_Catholic Relief Services. It was awarded $6.2 million to teach abstinence and fidelity in three countries; $335 million in a consortium providing anti-retroviral treatment; and $9 million to help orphans and children affected by HIV/AIDs. The group offers “complete and correct information about condoms” but will not promote, purchase or distribute them, said Carl Stecker, senior program director for HIV/AIDS.
_HOPE. The global relief organization founded by the International Churches of Christ recently brought comedian Chris Rock to South Africa for an AIDS prevention event. AIDS grants support HOPE in several countries.
_World Relief, founded by the National Association of Evangelicals. It won $9.7 million for abstinence work in four countries.
Most of the money in Bush’s initiative goes to treatment programs, earning the administration praise for delivering lifesaving drugs and care to millions of HIV-infected patients.
For prevention, Bush embraces the “ABC” strategy: abstinence before marriage, being faithful to one partner, and condoms targeted for high-risk activity. The Republican-led Congress mandated that one-third of prevention money be reserved for abstinence and fidelity.
Condom promotion to anyone must include abstinence and fidelity messages, U.S. guidelines say, but those preaching abstinence do not have to provide condom education.
But what if those who get preached to about abstinence don’t practice it?
From this policy one can only conclude that the Bush Administration’s view is that they deserve to get AIDS.