Everyone recovered from drinking too much to celebrate a holiday whose real origins nobody knows? Great! Let's have some Sunday links.
- As France votes, Sarkozy appears headed for defeat if polls are to be believed:
Buoyed by a tide of anger at Sarkozy’s inability to rein in rampant unemployment during his five-year term, Hollande was between four and eight points ahead in final opinion polls. A wide margin of victory in Sunday’s runoff would give the Socialist presidential candidate more authority to pursue his programme of adding growth-oriented policies to the austerity effort in France and Europe.
If a Socialist wins in France, you can expect Romney and Fox News' efforts to reconnect Barack Obama to "Europe" to go into overdrive.
- Photoshop disaster of the week: The guys over at J Crew seem to have gotten a llittle too excited.
- Vice-President Biden appears completely evolved:
“I am vice president of the United States of America. The president sets the policy,” Biden said by way of a disclaimer, then continued, “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction— beyond that.”
I think the President will finish evolving after the election.
- How's this for a new Catch-22? Being fired because of the debt you accrued to get the education you needed to get that very same job?
One major reason people pursue a college degree is to get a better job. But what if the debt accrued to finance an education itself becomes an obstacle to employment? That’s what happened to Latoya Horton.
“Years ago I went to college to study accounting, and like millions of other Americans I took out loans to pay for it,” writes Horton. “A few years later I got a temporary job in the accounting department at Bain & Co., and after 6 months of reliable work I was thrilled to be offered a full-time position.”
But then things took a turn for the worse:
...just a few weeks after starting in my new position the company fired me because my debt-to-credit ratio was too high. I later learned that 60% of employers now check credit reports, which typically include student debts. How are you supposed to pay off your student debts if you can’t get (or keep) a job BECAUSE of your debts? And what do my student debts have to do with my ability to do a job well anyway?
So, who else here is drastically uncomfortable with the idea of employers being able to check your personal finances before deciding whether or not to hire and fire you? If you can be fired for being in debt, what's next?
- Meanwhile, in Greece, actual Nazis. Not Godwin Nazis, but real, honest-to-goodness Nazis:
Evidently, Greece, which is holding their elections today, has a genuine Nazi Party and early exit polls indicate that it came in in sixth or seventh place with 6-8% of the vote. Three percent is needed to join parliament, so for the first time since the end of World War Two a European country will have the honor of Nazi representation. This is a result of the ongoing economic calamity in Greece and the severe austerity measures imposed by Germany. So, in an indirect way, Germany has brought back the Nazis. Poorly done.
"Golden Dawn"? Really? You can't name your own goddamn Nazi party better than something out of some sword-and-shield video game?
- Warren Buffett, a member of Augusta, has said he wants to see women become members. This is in the news (again) primarily because the CEO of IBM has traditionally been granted membership, but now, the CEO is a woman. What to do, what to do.