Holy shit, I just heard some crazy news of fallout from the Maddoff thing. Daaaag.

It's everywhere. I've been getting emails the past few days from various Jewish organizations practically begging for money because they lost huge amounts with him. A few charities have already had to shut down, and it looks like a few more might in the next few weeks.

I've found some great Dame Judi Dench pictures too.

I just heard about a pretty significant foundation closing down entirely.

I am free of work for the next nine days. Yay!

Today we had dim sum for lunch, and tonight I am sorting out some TWoP stuff and also goofing off. Saturday I will be cleaning, and then a friend and I are having delicious sandwiches and much beer. Sunday I am going to my mom's for beef stroganoff and birthday cake.

And then Christmas Eve & Day will be eating-fests as well, so I think I'll be eating a lot of salad on Mon & Tues.

Oooo, and now I'm getting drunk-dialed from Germany!

and to decorate a cake with swastikas

Yeah, see this is why I really don't buy the "ShopRite hates our baybeeeeez!" argument. Drop the neo-Nazi middle names and the swastikas and I'm sure they'd be perfectly happy to make you a "Happy Birthday Joycelynn" or even a "Happy Birthday Adolf" cake.

There's a chart of the major losses to Jewish groups here: [link] I'm not sure how many non-Jewish groups were invested with him -- I haven't heard very many reports mentioning non-Jewish groups.

Anthony Hopkins: [link]

Benecio del Toro: [link]

Anne Bancroft: [link]

James Coburn: [link]

Yeah, see this is why I really don't buy the "ShopRite hates our baybeeeeez!" argument. Drop the neo-Nazi middle names and the swastikas and I'm sure they'd be perfectly happy to make you a "Happy Birthday Joycelynn" or even a "Happy Birthday Adolf" cake.

Yeah, ShopRite offered to sell them a "Happy Birthday" cake and leave a space for them to write in the name, but they said no.

I'm not sure how many non-Jewish groups were invested with him -- I haven't heard very many reports mentioning non-Jewish groups.

Well, this foundation isn't Jewish, and the one I just heard about isn't, either -- although the donor is, and was friends with the Madoffs.

Actually the organization I work for was apparently named in some article, since they (Bernie and Ruth) have given us as much as $25K in past years.

Well, this foundation isn't Jewish, and the one I just heard about isn't, either -- although the donor is, and was friends with the Madoffs.

Ah. Yeah, I'd heard about JEHT. (It sometimes gets lumped in with "Jewish groups" in these articles, since the founder is Jewish.)

A whole lot of the people who had money invested with him were his friends. Something like 1/3 of the members of his country club had money in his fund. There have been some questions of conflict of interest with Yeshiva University, since he was a member of the board that decided how the endowment should be invested, and the decision was to invest a bunch of it in his fund.