About Chloe, Soccer and Slovakia

I looked a little bit into today's papers. Actually I receive each morning NY Times and Washington Post on my eMail. Later in the day, in a coffee shop usually, I read the printed papers and I can tell you there is a difference, to have the real pages in front of your eyes. But now I'm still in front of my laptop, so I can see what I've got in my eMail.

Let's see. Maureen Dowd has an op-ed in NYT. We need Chloe! she says, it's actually about Michael Chertoff, the US secretary for Homeland Security, he is today's target for Ms. Dowd. There was an event hosted by the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, in DC, and Mr. Chertoff met there with some fictional counterterrorism experts from Fox TV Series "24" - the producers, the writer and three actors. This offered Ms. Dowd the opportunity to make some comments, on the homeland security set, Mr. Chertoff, flanked by the actors who play the beautiful technogeek Chloe and President Logan, seemed a little fuzzy ... Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction or Does It Matter?

As the US Soccer team walked off the field of the World Cup, people here in the States start to have patriotic remorse mixed with selfish relief. No more soccer games to watch: free at last! Well, US is probably the only country which is different regarding soccer. Here is what John Tierney says in today's NYT.

As for the Washington Post (WaPo), they analyze the way things go in Slovakia, a country having one of the fastest growth rates in Europe; foreign investors have flooded in, unemployment has dipped, and the capital, Bratislava, is hopping. Given that, one may wonder why Mikulas Dzurinda steward of Slovakia's revival, was soundly beaten in the last elections by his leading leftist critic, Robert Fico (who has pledged to soak newly rich businessmen and corporations and roll back key reforms).