Interesting piece on the future of Mexico's PAN. Things don't seem that bad on the ground, since the winning PRI presidential candidate is from the pro-market neoliberal wing of the party and a PAN-PRI coalition with PAN as the junior partner might be easier to get things done than with the PRI in opposition.
After 12 years, swing voters wanted to give some one else a shot; thankfully (on economics, at least), it seems that Mexico got Bill Clinton rather than Barack Obama when they replaced their conservatives, incoming presidente Pena is more like Slick Willie both on economics and on sexual proclivities.
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This is the year of the Black Mormon. First, we have Utah's first Haitian woman congressional candidate in Mia Love and now we have young Jabari Parker. He's being compared to LeBron James as a basketball prodigy, and made news by cutting his school list down to 10, including BYU; he's going to be a senior this year and would prefer to stay close to home in Chicago.
One interesting aspect is that Parker might be one-and-done-for-now if he follows the Mormon pattern of spending two years on mission at 19. He'd likely be leaving $20M on the table if he spends those two years before being drink-legal (clown metaphor, bro) doing something other than terrorizing NBA defenders.
Both BYU and Kentucky (another one on his list) are used to losing freshman, but BYU normally expects to get theirs back.
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If you've got Yahoo e-mail, you might want to change your password.
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Interesting piece on setting the timing for Ramadan. Thing are moving towards an astronomical definition that can allow it to be firmly placed in advance, but since there is no one Islamic authority, things vary from place to place; we have an Orthodox-Western split on the liturgical calendar, but this makes Christians look like a focus of unity.
Keep that in mind in conversations about Sharia; there isn't one take on how to be Muslim, as this Ramadan-timing story shows, so we shouldn't assume a Taliban version when the S-word is bandied about.
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