DOWN IN Houston only hours after Enron's Andrew Fastow had been indicted on 78 counts for economic misdeeds, there was the very free-wheeling Ken Lay, once lord of all he surveyed in this oil town which Enron has almost destroyed. Mr. Lay came sailing into the Café Griglia as if the newspapers hadn't just reported that government prosecutors were zeroing in on him. He worked the tables like he was running for office and behaved as if he were still the most popular guy in town. I think if I had done to Houston and the economy what Ken Lay has done, I'd stay safely in Aspen.
Of course, the rumors have it that Uncle Sam is trying to put together an airtight game plan - first, they nail Fastow, then, they get Ken Lay.
But-but-but I thought George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were protecting their "Kenny Boy," to hear the unbiased media tell it.
Kevin Spacey believes that America's troops can oust Saddam Hussein in less than two weeks. But he thinks the country's military brilliance is being misused for political ends. "We have a job in Afghanistan we haven't finished," the two-time Oscar winner told us Monday night during a party to launch Triggerstreet.com, a Web site that gives undiscovered screenwriters the chance to pitch him scripts.
"We have [fewer] troops in Afghanistan at this moment than we had in Kosovo. There's no clear victory in Afghanistan. There's a clear victory in Iraq in about 11 days. I think the [U.S. armed forces] can pull it off. And President Bush knows it." [Gee, you wouldn't be parroting what your butt buddy Clinton told you while you two were visiting England recently, would ya, Kev?]
Spacey blamed last week's Republican rout of the Democrats on "our having had Iraq 24 hours a day for five months. There's not a single domestic issue that anyone in this country was paying attention to."
Republicans "left the impression that if you questioned whether [an invasion] is a good idea or not, you're unpatriotic," said Spacey, who worked on Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign and wrote speeches for Illinois congressman John Anderson's 1980 presidential campaign.
With Saddam waiting to see if the U.S. will blink, said Spacey, "I hope that wisdom will prevail, that we'll find a a way to diplomatically solve what is no bigger a crisis than the missiles of October [i.e., the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis].
"If we did what [Bush] is talking about doing, we'd go down a road from which we would never recover and which would start a chain reaction around the world. I live in the hope that it won't happen."
PUTIN GOES WILD: TELLS ISLAMIC RADICALS TO COME TO MOSCOW FOR CIRCUMCISION , 'NOTHING ON YOU WILL GROW AGAIN'
Russia's media expressed shock over a remark by President Vladimir Putin at the Russia-EU summit in which he urged Islamic radicals to come to Moscow for special circumcision!
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A reporter for LE MONDE asked whether the Russian military's use of land mines in Chechnya was killing innocent civilians as well as Islamic terrorists.
"If you are a Christian, you are in danger," Putin charged. "If you decide to become a Muslim, this won't save you either, because they think that traditional Islam is also hostile to their goals."
Putin continued: "If you are determined to become a complete Islamic radical and are ready to undergo circumcision, then I invite you to Moscow. We are multi-confessional. We have experts in this sphere as well. I will recommend to conduct the operation so that nothing on you will grow again."
Kremlin aides later explained that Putin was both "exhausted" and "sick and tired of Chechnya."
The comments did not appear on the Kremlin's Web site, which carried an otherwise complete text of the news conference.
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