It's kind of like waking up in a strange man's bed with white powder all over your nose, but not really caring about your lost dignity because you managed to weasel your way into the Jane Hotel and hobnob with famous people. WWD reports that traffic to stores in Manhattan was up 50 percent thanks to the parties and celebrity appearances, even though the amount of revenue taken in wasn't up all that much.

Some consumers sought to connect, if not transact, with the designers making store appearances; others came to socialize and grab a drink, while a minority did actually shop. Several retailers told WWD that Fashion's Night Out, during which more than 700 stores stayed open until 11 p.m. and offered events, celebrities and designers, did lift the day's business. However, most emphasized the main purpose was to bring fun to the stores.

That's right. Since no one has any money anymore, stores are no longer for shopping, they are for getting drinks from Olsen twins, spotting Posh Spice, and watching André Leon Talley lounge around in his latest tent and host a game show. We can now close all the nightclubs, we have stores!

Our favorite quote is from Brooks Brothers bigwig Claudio Del Vecchio:

We do a lot of events, and we generally don't get a lot of business from them...The best thing about Fashion's Night Out is that a lot of people came out and are still looking at shopping in a positive way, even if they didn't shop.

Isn't that like discharging an anorexic from the hospital and saying, "well, she now has a positive view of food, even if she's still not eating." Everyone has a positive view of shopping. Who doesn't love shopping? We'd do it every day, if we could. The problem isn't that people don't like shopping, it's that they have no fucking money! No matter how many times you trot Oscar de la Renta out to sing with Barbara Walters, Bette Midler, and Sarah Jessica Parker, we're still not going to be able to afford the socks at his store. Until everyone can do something about that, all Fashion's Night Out is going to be is just what the fashion world doesn't need—another excuse to get drunk.

Reports the New York Times:

Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials.

(CIA Director Leon) Panetta scuttled the program, which would have relied on paramilitary teams, shortly after the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism center recently informed him of its existence. The next day, June 24, he told the two Congressional Intelligence Committees that the plan had been hidden from lawmakers, initially at the instruction of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Current and former officials said that the program was designed as a more "surgical" solution to eliminating terrorists than missile strikes with armed Predator drones, which cannot be used in cities and have occasionally resulted in dozens of civilian casualties.

Today's Times piece confirms what's been widely rumored of late—That Leon Panetta's June 24th disclosure to members of the Senate Intelligence committee had everything to do with Dick Cheney's rumored covert ops squads that Seymour Hersh had spoken of. Whether or not any of this was legal appears to be open for debate at this point.

CIA Had Plans To Assassinate Qaeda Leaders [New York Times]

The six foreign-born Muslim men living in New Jersey were charged with a comical plot to break into Fort Dix and shoot their way back out, or something. They were in fact just shiftless lazy bums who disliked America but not enough to do anything about it until an overzealous FBI "informant" earned his $1,500 a week by goading them, repeatedly, into planning this bizarre Fort Dix thing.

The informant berated them into picking a target, and he encouraged them to stick with the plan every time they had second thoughts, with was often, because they were lazy and disorganized "terrorists" who'd be utterly unable to finance, plan, arrange, and carry out a terrorist attack of any kind without an FBI informant holding their hands and browbeating them into halfhearted jihad.

So good work, US Government. You are keeping us safe by keeping the mildly disgruntled Muslim versions of the characters from Clerks off the streets, forever.

Eventually, Grigorian admitted he and Cheeta were still living in sin and turned in his partner. But it's all too easy to blame the human when a simian gets into mischief.

After all, the guy was probably just a patsy.
[Recordpub.com]