Stephen’s Posterous

Karl Rove, former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, says that the elections on November 3, should scare Democrats.

President Obama was said to have redrawn the electoral map by winning Virginia last year with 53% of the vote. However, on November 3, Republican Bob McDonnell flipped the state back to the GOP.

Mr. Obama carried New Jersey easily last year with 57% of the vote, but on November 3, Republican Chris Christie ousted Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine.

Mr. Obama carried Pennsylvania last year by 10 points, but on November 3, Republican Judge Joan Orie Melvin was elected to the state's Supreme Court. The trend is that suburban and independent voters moved into the GOP column.

A 5-point swing in 2010 could bring a big wave of change. Democrats currently have 60 votes in the Senate, and Republicans 40. With a 5-point swing away from Democrats last fall, the party would have started this year with 54 seats and the Republicans 46.

A 5-point shift in 2006 would have left the GOP in control of the House. In 2008, a five-point shift would have produced a Democratic loss of six House seats rather than a gain of 21.

The bad news for Democrats is that the legislation that helped lead to the collapse of support for their party on election day may inflict more pain on those foolish enough to support it as the health-care bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to vote on this week could sink an entire fleet of Democratic boats in 2010.

The bill is more expensive than advertised. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) pegs its cost at $1.055 trillion over 10 years, not the $894 billion Mrs. Pelosi claims.

In the House bill there is a $2 billion tax on those who already have health insurance, $20 billion in taxes on medical devices, $8 billion in taxes on anyone who buys over-the-counter drugs with money from their health-savings accounts, and $140 billion in higher taxes on drugs.

Mrs. Pelosi's bill will drive up premiums. A family of four with an income of $78,000 would pay $13,800 for insurance a year by 2016, according to CBO.

The CBO estimates the public option will have higher premiums than private plans, even though it will get a $2 billion, interest-free start-up loan from the government. The bill dumps $34 billion onto already strained state budgets by pushing more of the working poor off private insurance and into Medicaid.

The election results for November 3, were the first sign that voters are revolting against runaway spending and government expansion.

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The Financial Times reported that the rights to the Terminator film franchise will be auctioned in November 2009, by Halcyon, the production company behind the movie Terminator Salvation.

The rights will give the right to the buyer to make new Terminator films, TV programs and future films, but doesn't cover earlier Terminator films.

The sale will likely exceed $60 million, the price that the rights to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was sold for, according to Matthew Garrahan, Financial Times writer. 

The Terminator rights are not controlled by a big studio. Several buyers have expressed interest in Terminator including all of the big film studios with Sony Pictures being a leading contender.

The sale is being conducted by FTI Capital Advisors. Halcyon filed for Chapter 11 after due to a dispute with Pacificor, which is a hedge fund that lended Halcyon funds to buy the Terminator rights.

The rights to the franchise have changed hands numerous times and were sold to Halcyon for $25 million in 2007, by Mario Kassar, who produced Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

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The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy Blog wrote that two Yale undergraduates became the rage this fall when their Michael Jackson Medley went viral on YouTube.com.

Since posting the video three months ago, more than two million viewers have watched the video. The two young men have become celebrities at Yale.

Sam Tsu and Kurt Schneider filmed Sam Tsui six times singing different versions of the medley. Then they edited it into one song: Tsui and five of his clones simultaneously perform Michael Jackson songs like I’ll Be There and Smooth Criminal.

Sam Tsui is an ancient Greek major and Kurt Schneider is an math major. They have not made money with their YouTube videos, but they plan to monetize their success.

The two students are in the middle of writing and recording their own original songs and hope to put them up on the online music store iTunes within the next six weeks.

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Shoemaker Christian Louboutin has created a glass slipper that connotes both a Cinderella fantasy and Parisian decadence, says Elva Ramirez from The Wall Street Journal Blog, Heard on the Runway.

The shoe flute is packaged as part of the $500 Le Rituel gift set, which also includes a bottle of champagne. It will only be sold in select Neiman Marcus stores and online.

Drinking out of a lady’s shoe is a tradition that dates to the 1880s, when Russian counts celebrated ballerinas by drinking out of their toe shoes.

The tradition was later picked in Belle Epoque Paris on the stages of the Folies Bergere and other cabarets.

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An Abu Dhabi developer, Aldar Properties, is reportedly is in talks with the Italian car maker Ferrari to make Ferrari-branded luxury homes, according to a report in Maktoob.

There are no details as it is all preliminary. The Ferrari houses would be part of a Ferrari theme-park that Aldar Properties is currently building on on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, which is the site of this weekend’s Formula 1 race.

The theme part is called Ferrari World. It is slated to have 216-foot prancing horse on the roof. The 200,000 square metre complex will feature 20-plus amusement rides.

Aldar’s venture with Ferrari is just the latest partnership between Abu Dhabi and the car maker. Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi-owned investment company, has a 5 percent stake in Ferrari and sponsors the Ferrari F1 team along with Abu Dhabi-owned airline Etihad Airways.

The car maker has been boosting its ties with the oil-rich emirate over the last couple of years in the face of declining sales amid the global recession as consumers, even the super-rich, cut back spending.

Ferrari has witnessed a 7-8 percent drop in worldwide sales in 2009. Ferrari said the Middle East has bucked the global downturn, with sales jumping 30 percent this year.

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Democratic enthusiasm for President Barack Obama's domestic agenda could wane after the results of the gubernatorial elections on November 3, 2009, in Virginia and New Jersey, according to Karl Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

Republican victories in either state will tell Democrats in red states and red districts that support for Obama's policies is risky to their political health.

The more significant is the open race for governor in Virginia.

The Washington Post poll released on October 26, 2009, showed 55% support for Republican Attorney General Bob McDonnell and 44% for Democratic State Senator Creigh Deeds.

Reaction against Mr. Obama and his policies plays a smaller role in the New Jersey governor's race where voters are concerned with whether they should keep incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine.

Neither major party candidate in New Jersey has offered a compelling or comprehensive agenda. At times the independent candidate, Chris Daggett, has appeared the only contender with an agenda to rein in property taxes.

Two other elections on the November 3rd ballot have national implications: the New York Congressional District 23 special election and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race.

The special election in New York's nominally Republican district 23 was brought about when the White House lured an otherwise unbeatable GOP Congressman, John McHugh, into giving up his seat to become Secretary of the Army.

The contest shows the danger of smoke-filled backrooms in the age of tea parties and town-hall angst. New York law says each party's 11 county chairmen in the district pick their candidate. The local GOP chieftains settled on Dede Scozzafava, a five-term liberal Republican state assemblywoman.

This led one of the disappointed nomination seekers, accountant Doug Hoffman, to mount a red meat campaign for the seat on the Conservative Party line.

With the GOP vote split, the lackluster Democrat standard-bearer, Bill Owens, is likely to win. If that happens, the combined vote of Ms. Scozzafava and Mr. Hoffman will signal what a GOP candidate chosen in a primary could get in the 2010 general election.

Finally, the Republican-endorsed candidate for Pennsylvania's Supreme Court, Judge Joan Orie Melvin, is mounting a strong effort against Democrat Jack Panella. A GOP victory would indicate trouble for Democrats in a state Mr. Obama carried by 10 points.

A year ago, Democrats crowed that Mr. Obama had reshaped the political landscape to their advantage. Voters have lived under Democratic rule for nine months, and many of them, especially independents, don't like what they're seeing.

The November 3, 2009, election will provide the most tangible evidence so far of how strong a backlash is building and just how frightened centrist Democrats should be of 2010.

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Scientists are finding that growing up without a father may change the way your brain developes.

Anna Katharina Braun, a German biologist, and others are conducting research on animals that are typically raised by two parents in order to understand how this may affect children being raised by a single parent. Dr. Braun believes that parents are the sculptors of their children's brains.

Dr. Braun's work focuses on degus, small rodents related to guinea pigs and chinchillas. Dr. Braun found that when a degu pup is deprived of his or her father, the  pups exhibit changes in nerve-cell growth in different regions of the brain.

This preliminary analysis indicates that fatherless degu pups exhibit more aggressive and impulsive behavior than pups raised by two parents. The degu pups without a father experienced significantly less touching and interaction than those with two parents because the mother did not change the frequency of her interaction with her pups.

A preliminary analysis of the degus' behavior showed that fatherless animals seemed to have a lack of impulse control.

The large number of single-parent households have researchers looking at the possible consequences for children. An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED) report found that 57% of children in the U.S. live with both parents, among the lowest percentages of the world's wealthiest nations.

The report found that children in single parent households have an increased risk of delinquency and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, as well as poorer academic performance.

The OECD also analyzed data from 122 separate studies and found that there was variability in the negative effects on children of living in a single-parent home. On average, the OECD found, the magnitude of the impact was relatively small.

Dr. Braun's goal for future research is to figure out whether degu pups' brains can be rewired by introducing a substitute caregiver, such as a grandmother, or whether other social and emotional enrichment can help "repair" the fatherless pups, she says.

The bottom line, says Dr. Braun, is that parents need to fuel their children's brains with talk, touch and sensitive stimulation that involves give and take.

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