What Caught My Eye Today

Stock Market - Time to party likes its 1999...or maybe 1997. The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted below 7,000 and kept driving lower all day, finishing at 6,763 — a loss of nearly 300 points. Mind you, if you don't like bad news, I'd skip forward to the next time, because it only gets worse from here. It took only 14 trading sessions for the Dow to fall from above 8,000 to below 7,000. For the year, the Dow has lost 23% of its value. Both the Dow and the S&P have lost more than half their value since the market peaked in October 2007. In that time, about $11 trillion in wealth has vanished, according to the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 index, which tracks nearly all stocks traded in America. Okay, let's look on the bright side. There must be one around here someplace. Oh, dear God, there isn't one! We're all gonna die!...Whew, I needed to get that out of my system. So what's next?

Cuba - So much for brotherly love. President Raul Castro abruptly ousted some of Cuba's most powerful officials, remaking the government in the biggest shakeup since he took over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro a year ago. The changes replaced some key Fidel loyalists. Several ministries were consolidated in response to President Raul Castro's calls for a "more compact and functional structure" for the often unwieldy communist bureaucracy that oversees nearly all public activity on the island. Plus, it's a lot harder to be an egomaniacal dictator when you have all those annoying bureaucrats getting in your way. The most sweeping leadership shakeup in years was dropped on Cubans almost as an afterthought — at the end of the midday news, following the weather and sports. Well, of course they buried the story. I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but it's a lot harder to seize power when you are accountable to the people you are supposed to be governing. Best to consolidate your power, and then blindside them when there is nothing they can do to stop you. Duh.

Obama Cabinet - This would be funny, if it wasn't so embarrassing. Another Obama administration nominee has tax troubles. This time, it's Ron Kirk, the president's choice to be U.S. trade representative. Kirk owes an estimated $10,000 in back taxes from earlier in the decade and has agreed to pay them. Wow, that's awfully big of Kirk to go out on a limb and offer to pay taxes he should have paid years ago. The former Dallas mayor is the fourth nominee by President Barack Obama to run into tax problems. A third of the Senate voted against Tim Geithner's confirmation as treasury secretary after it was disclosed that he had to pay more than $34,000 in back taxes and interest on income he made while working for the International Monetary Fund. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle then withdrew as a nominee to become Health and Human Services after it was disclosed that he failed to pay $128,000 in taxes. Nancy Killefer, Obama's pick for chief performance officer, also bowed out amid tax problems. Seriously, how hard is it for these folks to pay their taxes? What, you can't spring for the $50 it takes to buy a copy of TurboTax?

Louisiana - I didn't report on President Obama's address to Congress last week, pretty much because he didn't really have anything new to say, at least in my opinion. Anyway, as is tradition, the opposition party--in this case, the Republican party--gets some airtime to respond to the President's statements. In this case, that honor was bestowed upon Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. At the risk of stating the obvious, things didn't go so well for the lad. Widely panned for his national TV address, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal offered his first defense of the speech, saying he sticks by the message, while acknowledging shortcomings in his delivery. The address has been the target of political commentators, comics and bloggers who called it amateurish and out of step with the American public. Jindal defended his positions despite criticism from political commentators — both Democratic and Republican — that the speech was too simplistic and offered few new ideas for battling the country's economic woes. The governor said it was difficult to follow Obama, known for his impressive oratory, and said he tried to slow his pace because of past complaints that Jindal's rapid-fire speaking style is tough to follow. Let me see if I've got this straight. Dude is panned by pretty much everybody, and his main line of defense is that it is difficult to follow the likes of Obama. I'm thinking he needs to come up with something a bit more substantive than this. Still, in Jindal's defense, this was his first time on a national stage. Surely, he learned something from this experience. Despite the repeated criticism over the last week, the Louisiana governor refused any suggestion he might hire a speechwriter. Or maybe not.

Vatican - Another week, another story out of the Vatican. This time, though, I think they got it right. Pope Benedict XVI formally rescinded the promotion of an ultraconservative priest who came under fire for suggesting that God punished New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina. The Austrian bishop had questioned whether the "noticeable" increase of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina - which devastated New Orleans in 2005 - was a result of pollution caused by humans or the result of "spiritual pollution." Wow. This guy must have a set of brass ones to say something like that out loud. He also has characterized "Harry Potter" novels as satanic. Sure he did. If you're going to diss an entire city and hundreds of thousands of people who had their lives turned upside down, why not talk smack about a make believe wizard while you're at it. The bishop's promotion was one of two recent controversial decisions by the Vatican that led to unusually open criticism of Vatican policy. The other involved lifting the excommunication of a bishop who had said that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust. Lifting the excommunication of that bishop and three fellow members of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X had been part of the pope's effort to reach out to ultraconservatives. And obviously part of the pope's parallel effort to offend everyone else.