Paris Hilton - Fausta's Blog

From the U.S. State Department website:

Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism are designated pursuant to three laws: section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act. Taken together, the four main categories of sanctions resulting from designation under these authorities include restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.

Designation under the above-referenced authorities also implicates other sanctions laws that penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with state sponsors. Currently there are four countries designated under these authorities: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria

In the news:
Colombia Intercepts Shipment of “War Materiel” Headed to Cuba (emphasis added)

Colombian authorities have intercepted a Chinese-flagged ship loaded with “war materiel” headed for Cuba.

Headline in Spanish: Autoridades Colombianas interceptan barco de bandera china cargado de armamento de guerra de largo alcance con destino a Cuba.

It was intercepted near the Port of Cartagena. The cargo includes long-range weapons systems.

According to El Tiempo, the ship did not have appropriate documentation — indicating that this was a clandestine shipment.

Capitol Hill Cubans point out,

Cuba was found to be in violation of U.N. sanctions — the most egregious violation of these sanctions to date.

Yet, Castro’s regime got away scot-free — despite a U.N. Panel of Experts documenting how the Cuban authorities lied and sought to conceal the weapons shipment.

Instead, the Obama Administration rewarded Castro’s regime with the normalization of diplomatic relations and eased sanctions for travel and trade with the Cuban military’s monopolies.

While everybody’s talking about Paris Hilton in Havana, the Communist regime’s importing long-range weapons systems; That’s today’s news in “smart diplomacy.”

I don’t blog in pajamas; I blog in regular daytime clothes. Aside from vanity (since I believe I look better fully dressed – you’ll have to trust me on this) the reason is that I won’t go out of the house in pajamas and it’s easier to dress for whatever the day brings from early on in the day.

There’s also a psychological aspect: since both The Husband and I are self-employed, dressing in casual-Friday style clothes really does a lot towards my having a professional frame of mind. (That is doubly so if you do video teleconferences, which I do.)

Otherwise you end up looking like The Dude in The Big Lebowski wearing pajama bottoms everywhere you go, and talking to your clients like they were your long-lost buddies.

Unfortunately there’s a fashion trend that emulates The Dude’s sartorial standards. I wish I had $5 for each man, woman and child I’ve seen wearing pajama bottoms in town. Listen to me, and listen well, please:

The only people who look good wearing pajamas outside the house are too young to be able to read, and I learned to read at age 3

And another thing: people can tell if you’re not wearing underwear and it’s not a pretty sight. That’s another reason why you look so awful in pajamas.

I believe it all got started in the 1990s when slinky dresses that back in the olden days would have been marketed as slips started turning up on the red-carpeted runways of the world. Then it was silk dressing gowns and trousers. I reacall that the late Princess Diana caused a stir when she showed up wearing that at an event. From silk tops and bottoms being the rage it was only a short leap of drawers to the shapeless flannel currently favored by the hoi-polloi.

This trend has been around for quite a while now, and it must be a “sticking-it-to-the-man” sort of thing because few things look sillier than a student at an Ivy League university going about town in $5 pajamas which should never see the cruel light of day.

Or maybe that’s all the money he/she had left for clothes after paying $50,000 a year for tuition, room, board, and expenses.

I doubt that very much.

Mercifully, I have been spared the sight of non-student adult men hanging around town in pajamas, but I have seen one or two at the shore going out in surgical scrubs, top and bottom. The last thing I want to see at the beach is an surgeon approaching. But that, too, is part of the outdoors pajamas trend.

I speculate that now that certain high-profile celebrities are in the clink, the next thing will be orange prison overalls. That should be ugly enough that it might push pajamas out of the outdoors scene.

All the same, pajamas should remain indoors.

Well, a lot of people don’t share my opinion. Outdoor pajama-wearing is such an international trend that I found this today at the Beeb: School puts stop to ‘pyjama mamas’

Nightwear has become an eyesore for the principal of one east Belfast primary school.

Joe McGuinness of St Matthew’s Primary School has written a letter to parents asking them not to wear pyjamas while they drop their children off at school.

Mr McGuinness’s letter said the trend was setting pupils a bad example and was also making staff uncomfortable.

He said as many as 50 women were gathering at the school gates in their nightwear every morning.
…
“The ‘pyjama mamas’, as they’re known, are the women who would leave their children to school in their pyjamas and, go about their business, go to the supermarket and go about their daily lives wearing their pyjamas,” he said.

“What Joe McGuinness is arguing, it shows a lack of respect and it is showing a very bad example to the children.”

I agree with the respect part: taking care on your clothes and grooming shows that, no matter how tough things are, you have retained at least a modicum of self-respect.

While you’re at it, sweatpants that have large print on the bottom do not look good, either. JUICY really isn’t.