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1.) Latest fashion trend: Bashing the French government — Some rich French fashionistas don’t particularly like the new French president’s economic agenda — or, at least one really famous one doesn’t. TheDC’s Monique Hamm reports:
“Fashion mogul Karl Lagerfeld did not have kind things to say about French President Francois Hollande and his tax plans for the country in a recent Marie Claire interview. ‘This idiot will be as disastrous as Zapatero,’ Lagerfeld said, referring to Spain’s former prime minister Jose Luis Rodrigo Zapatero, who was in charge during the country’s economic collapse. Lagerfeld, the creative director of Chanel, spoke out against Hollande’s well-known distaste for the rich and his plan to tax French millionaires 75 percent on their income. ‘Hollande hates rich people, he wants to punish them, and as a result they’re all clearing off and no one wants to invest.'”
Why stop at 75 percent? If you’re already in for the penny, might as well go all the way and raise tax rates on the rich to 100%. That should really get the economy booming — and by booming TheDC Morning is referring to the booming engines of private jets ferreting French millionaires and billionaires out of the country.
2.) The U.S. and Iran have a plan [UPDATED] — The New York Times reported something about Iran, then secretly updated the report after the White House denied it, reports TheDC’s Gregg Re:
“The White House scrambled late Saturday to deny a New York Times report claiming Iran has agreed to meet directly with U.S. officials to discuss its nuclear program, sending New York Times editors rushing to quietly but substantially revise their initial reporting on a key foreign policy issue for the second time in as many months. According to the Times, which anonymously quoted senior administration officials, Iran told diplomats it wanted to wait until after the November presidential election to put plans for the meeting in motion … Within hours, White House officials responded the report was mostly inaccurate.”
Sounds like the New York Times still may be on to something. TheDC Morning fears, however, that President Obama may be willing to involve the U.S. in months of fruitless negotiations that only serve to allow Iran to get closer to nuclear weapons capability.
3.) Dumb Obama attack attacks Obama back — President Obama has hit Mitt Romney for investing overseas, specifically in China, and keeping funds in the Cayman Islands. It seems like the silly attack has boomeranged back, reports TheDC’s Neil Munro:
“President Barack Obama and his supporters continue to slash at Gov. Mitt Romney for keeping some of his private-sector wealth overseas, even though the president’s Illinois pension is also invested in Chinese companies and a fund in the Cayman Islands. … The president’s overseas wealth is part of the pension he earned from his six years in Democratic-run Illinois legislature. The pension, which is worth between $50,000 and $100,000, is managed by the Illinois State Board of Investment. … One of the board’s funds, Advent International Group VI-A, is based in the Cayman Islands. …The pension fund has also invested in a series of Chinese companies, including government-run companies.”
Since when did the Democrats become so xenophobic?
4.) George McGovern, RIP — Richard Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign rival has passed away, The AP reports:
“George McGovern once joked that he had wanted to run for president in the worst way — and that he had done so. It was a campaign in 1972 dishonored by Watergate, a scandal that fully unfurled too late to knock Republican President Richard M. Nixon from his place as a commanding favorite for re-election. The South Dakota senator tried to make an issue out of the bungled attempt to wiretap the offices of the Democratic National Committee, calling Nixon the most corrupt president in history. A proud liberal who had argued fervently against Vietnam War as a Democratic senator from South Dakota and three-time candidate for president, McGovern died at 5:15 a.m. local time Sunday at a Sioux Falls hospice, surrounded by family and lifelong friends, family spokesman Steve Hildebrand told The Associated Press. McGovern was 90.”
5.) “The Lizard King” quote of the day — From “The Lizard King: The Shocking Inside Account of Obama’s True Intergalactic Ambitions By An Anonymous White House Staffer,” edited and introduced by Daily Caller writers Jamie Weinstein and Will Rahn:
“When we got to the hotel I helped Axelrod to the elevator before checking into my room. It had a terrace and, after grabbing a little Scotch bottle from the minibar, I sat outside and watched the sunset. I turned on Friends. The hotel phone rang. It was the president. ‘I’ve got a few lines I want to share with you, from a poem I’m writing,’ he said. ‘Just give me you honest opinion, okay? Don’t sugarcoat it. Just pretend I’m not the president, but keep in mind that I already have a hundred or so pages of it already written.’ He cleared his throat. My heart raced. ‘Fascist infantry in the hills / but don’t worry they will never find us / and if they do, then the fight will bind us / together,” Obama said. “This is for the poem I’m talking about, if you’ll remember. Now what do you think?’ I went blank. I felt like I was watching my life from the outside, looking in, wondering what was going to happen next, what I would do or say that would get me out of this moment. But I had nothing.”
It is unquestionably the funniest book of the year — and your TheDC Morning facilitator isn’t just saying that because he co-wrote it. BUY … IT … NOW.
6.) Tweet of Yesterday — Eli Lake: If u look Iran’s recent behavior–save for what their leaders say, the terrorism & the centrifuges–u could see this breakthrough coming.
VIDEO: GOP Sen. Ron Johnson says Obama admin “purposely misled” the public for weeks on Libya attack