Rick Perry, suddenly the front-runner in the Republican nomination stakes, last month described Washington as a “seedy place” he didn’t care for.

Yet something similar, critics are beginning to cry, might apply to the manner in which he has raised chests of cash for his successive gubernatorial campaigns in Texas.

As he embarks on the task of expanding his fund-raising machine nationally, Mr Perry said this to reassure a group of potential evangelical donors at a private dinner near Austin last weekend: “I can assure you that there is nothing in my life that will embarrass you if you decide to support me for President.”

But it is precisely allegations of a barely disguised pay-for-play climate in Texas since Governor Perry took office in late 2000 that some analysts see as his biggest vulnerability as he reaches for the White House, even if, thanks to lax fund-raising laws in the state, there has been no suggestion of campaign criminality.

Netflix stock dropped nearly 9% on Friday as investors sold shares after news that the online video company would lose content from its most prominent supplier of new movies, Starz Entertainment.

The breakdown in talks between the two companies announced Thursday means that films from Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures controlled by premium cable channel Starz will not be available when the two companies’ agreement expires at the end of February.

Many on Wall Street apparently concluded that the loss of premium content from the studios behind popular hits such as “Tangled” and “The Karate Kid” will be a blow to Netflix’s previously surging subscriber numbers.

However, analysts were mixed on what the news means for Netflix. Ingrid Chung of Goldman Sachs pointed out that the company’s subscriber growth wasn’t affected by the recent loss of Sony content due to a provision in its deal with Starz. “Netflix now has six months to find content to fill the potential void and we view the lowered valuation as very compelling,” she wrote.

Anthony DiClemente of Barclays Capital said, “We believe Netflix has a clear indication for what content is worth and the fact that it is willing to let Starz expire suggests to us the company is staying disciplined.”

Wonder if Chris Johnson’s blockbuster deal with the Titans includes a No-Tweet Clause?

It’s not a bad idea.

Johnson’s incessant posts on his Twitter account served as an interesting sidebar to the final flurry of negotiations that led to the contract extension the two sides agreed to on Thursday — a four-year, $53.5 million extension, with $30 million in guaranteed money.

Somehow, I find it interesting that the two sides suddenly had a bargaining breakthrough on Wednesday, the same day Johnson angered some fans with a tweeting tantrum. Details of the contract were finalized on Thursday.

In an ill-advised tweet on Wednesday, Johnson told “these fake Titans fans” to mind their own business — or an abbreviation to that effect — and said he doesn’t “have a regular job so don’t compare me to you” if he is considered “greedy.”

We were at the recent media day for Bay Area college football — Stanford, Cal, San Jose State — and a few of us sat at a table designated for Luck. When I told him where to sit, he sat.

This is nothing about my dominating personality. Hardly. It’s about Luck — how young he is, how he listens to — even obeys — older people because he is polite and well brought up. All of this even though he’s the most famous college football player in America and also the best.

While we interviewed him, he tried earnestly to answer every question and, as he spoke, he would constantly shake his leg and wring his hands. None of this questioning and answering was easy for him. He’s still a college student, thank goodness. In a few years, all this will be boring and rote and he will lose his freshness and candor. They all do.

In a way, we have Andrew Luck at the most innocent, attractive moment of his career. I’ll present the group interview as a Q&A so you get a sense of how Luck speaks and who he is. Here goes.

Bono, the only child of Sonny Bono and Cher, was born a woman but legally changed his gender and name last year. The announcement Monday that he would join the highly rated ABC dance competition immediately made him one of the highest-profile transgendered people in the world.

It also brought to the surface prejudices about Bono and others who have changed their gender, judging from the “Dancing With the Stars” message board. In hundreds of comments, Bono was the most common subject.

“HUGE HUGE fan of this show since season two and eagerly await each season to get my dancing/entertainment ‘fix’!! But when I heard that Chaz Bono was going to be on, I was sick. Not that I have anything personally again her/him, I just don’t want that lifestyle choice continually flaunted in the media esp ABC,” went one typical anti-Bono comment.

But for everyone who vented disgust — or questioned whether Bono would dance with a man or woman — there were many who defended Bono and accused his critics of bigotry.

On August 30, 2011 10:07 announced

SONY audio division announced what it says is the world the first wireless headset provide digital surround sound ability.

SONY MDR stands-DS7500 features the company’s latest audio processing chip, the audio support up to 7.1 channel audio and dolby ProLogic surround sound support from stereo signal IIz copy.

Help buyers of 3 D TV line, SONY has redesigned the leather cushion of MDR stands DS7500 improve their flexibility-and this means that they don’t press weapons 3 D glasses into your head to watch in last meeting-this will be good news for those who use common glasses.

Headset weighs 325 grams and have a complete batteries offer about 18 hours listening to music of the time. The speaker with headphones reaction to provide a claimed that range from 5 to 25000 hz, but Hertz the decoder support including dolby digital plus dolby TrueHD, dolby digital, dolby ProLogic IIz dolby ProLogic, DTS master, audio, HD-DTS-HD, DTS 96/24, DTS-ES, DTS neo: 6,, mpeg-2, plain old AAC linear PCM in 7.1 or 5.1 channel changes.

The Algerian foreign minister said in a statement that Gaddafi’s wife, Safia, his daughter Aisha and two of his sons, Mohammed and Hannibal, crossed into Algeria by land.

The statement, reported by the Algerian state news agency, also said that Algerian authorities alerted the U.N. secretary general, the president of the U.N. Security Council and the head of the Libyan rebels’ Transitional National Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil.

The U.S. State Department said it had not independently confirmed the report, and it was unclear Monday night whether Abdel Jalil had been contacted. He was en route to Libya from Qatar.

The rebel council demanded the immediate extradition of the Gaddafi family members to Libya. Abdel Jalil has said that all top Gaddafi loyalists will face “fair” trials in Libya.

The first thing to understand is that Social Security is required to report annually what its financial status looks like over the next 75 years. Next, consider the laundry list of variables that have to be plugged into the equation,
which include population growth, longevity, immigration rates, inflation, wage growth, birth rates, size of the working population. The health of the economy is also factored in because this directly affects the number of people who have jobs and, therefore, the amount of “Social Security tax” collected.

Since all of these factors are unknowns, the folks who dutifully crunch the numbers every year have to estimate what each will be over the next 75 years. What’s more, this has to be computed three ways, producing “high cost,” “low cost” and “intermediate” scenarios.
The point is, reports about Social Security’s financial condition are based on educated guesses about events that will take place over the next seven decades. (You can bet that back in the 1990s no one was factoring in the Great Recession.)

Serena: I don’t know, I just remember I lost, and that was that. And then, I got really popular; a lot of people were telling me, ‘Oh, it was super cool,” [laughs] and that they’d never seen me so intense. So, yeah, it was awesome.

Reporter: Did you learn anything from that episode, and if so, what did you learn?

Serena: Um, I don’t know, I don’t think about it. Are you still thinking about it? Oh my god, that was like, two years ago. This is like, two years later.

For some perspective on Serena’s media strategy here, we’ll go ahead and replace “it” with “threatening to kill a line judge.”

Star-divide

“A lot of people were telling me, ‘Oh, [threatening to kill a line judge] was super cool’ and that they’d never seen me so intense. So, yeah, [threatening to kill a line judge] was awesome.”

“Um, I don’t know, I don’t think about it [the time I threatened to kill a line judge].”

“Are you still thinking about [the time I threatened to kill a line judge]? Oh my God.”

Saturday

6:40 a.m.

The rain begins in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., just outside Atlantic City. Waves are building and surfers are still in the water.

7 a.m.

“Sorry. No More Gas.” That is the message received by Staten Island motorists at gas stations that ran dry after long lines the night before. Nearby, most businesses sport taped windows except a supermarket with half-empty shelves.

In Manhattan, the scene is much the same—even Starbucks stores are closed. At one midtown store, the sign in the door reads, “Blame the weatherman, not us.”

7:30 a.m.

Irene makes landfall near Cape Lookout, N.C., more than 500 miles from New York City. The storm has been downgraded to a Category 1, but forecasters and government officials remind residents that it remains a very powerful storm. “Let’s stop thinking this is something that we can play with,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg says.

10:30 a.m.

Tom Mcauley says business has quadrupled at his Staten Island tree-trimming service, with his crew working from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. every night. “There are a lot of pre-storm jitters and anxiety,” he says.