They're fine with Abner Mikva, who spanks Hillary:Senator Hillary Clinton should probably be forgiven for not remembering the course on the state Constitution that she would have had to take as an eighth grader in Illinois. But had she remembered it, she would have known that Senator Barack Obama was not ducking his responsibility in the Illinois Senate when he voted ''present'' on many issues.
Unlike Congress and the legislatures of most other states, each chamber of the Illinois Legislature requires a ''constitutional majority'' to pass a bill. The state Senate has 59 members, so it takes 30 affirmative votes. This makes a ''present'' vote the same as a no...
...
In the Illinois Senate, there can be strategic reasons for voting ''present'' rather than simply no. A member might approve the intent of legislation, but not its scope or the way it has been drafted. A ''present'' vote can send a signal to a bill's sponsors that the legislator might support an amended version. Voting ''present'' can also be a way to exercise fiscal restraint, without opposing the subject of the bill.
It's noteworthy that Mikva spent a year as White House Counsel in the Clinton administration.
This doesn't change my view of Obama as demagogic and unqualified, but fair is fair.
And it seems to be working: the product is currently sold out.
The Kindle™ wireless reading device from Amazon has many appealing features and I'll think seriously about it if and when I can afford it. Not mentioned in the pitch is that the buyer pays $399 for the privilege of being subjected to Amazon's digital rights management. Customer reviews are positive on balance, but there is a definite body of negative opinion.
Harvard Law graduates with a sense of aggrieved entitlement.
Such is the harvest of 30+ years of "affirmative" action and the concomitant encouragement of victimology and identity politics.
There's no such thing as an ideal meritocracy, but a serious effort to construct a society along meritocratic lines would yield a far better result than the mess we have now.
*********
The idea that electing Obama would dissipate the mess is ridiculous on its face. The mess might even get worse: that is, it might get worse faster than it already is.
This first stanza is perfect IMO:‘Though logic choppers rule the town,
And every man and maid and boy
Has marked a distant object down,
An aimless joy is a pure joy,’
Or so did Tom O’Roughley say
That saw the surges running by,
‘And wisdom is a butterfly
And not a gloomy bird of prey.'
Wisdom is a butterfly, and not a gloomy bird of prey. Noted, with thanks for the insight.
The situation in the financial markets is too serious for playing the blame game, but I'm pretty sure where the buck will stop after, hopefully, we get through this. (Hint: it won't be at the Democratic Congress.)
Last year I commented at Dinocrat:It’s a good thing that the current Treasury Secretary is a hardened Goldman Sachs capo.
Even if Paulson and Bernanke bring us through, I wonder if the Europeans and Asians, with OPEC concurrence, will form their own ratings agencies without whose blessing no American instrument will be acceptable in global financial markets.
Addendum 20081111. Indeed the Europeans are considering forming their own rating agencies. They're also realizing that that may be unnecessary if they take over the American ones: if European regulation of rating agencies is stricter than US regulation, the American entities will have to comply. And the Yanks still take the blame when something goes wrong.
Addendum 20081112. Given the bailout's incompetence (yes, incompetence), special-interest feeding frenzy, opaqueness and stonewalling, and possible malfeasance, it is no longer unthinkable that the US financial position could collapse completely.
On one side of the aisle, we have people who threatened to fire a civil service actuary if he gave his professional opinion about the costs of Bush's prescription drug benefit. On the other side, there are people who want to restore the "Fairness" Doctrine. Given a pretext and irrespective of the merits, neither would hesitate to unleash the full power of the state against an American entity that they disfavored.
The rest of the world might establish a nonAmerican rating entity in order to get proper warning of US default or reduced creditworthiness.
Recent Dilbert strips during this Lenten season feature a character named Jesus (pronounced 'hay-soos') who does things like turn coffee into wine, etc.
I've read that strip for decades, but IMO recently it's frequently crossed the blurred line between mockery and nastiness. Consider this exchange between Scott Adams and a commenter on his blog:Scott,
So when do you plan to start mocking Islam (pronounced hey-zeus)? Or do you only mock religions that won't threaten you with a fatwa?
[Is there some sort of contest for dumbest question of the century and no one told me? -- Scott]
Maybe I'm eluded by the sophisticated banter of the enlightened intelligent elite that guides and rules us.
Though I'm an agnostic and skeptic, I'll give William Blake the last word:Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, Mock on, 'tis all in vain.
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a Gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back, they blind the mocking Eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of light
Are sands upon the Red sea shore,
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright
According to CBS exit polls:Ohio Democratic voters hold mostly negative views on U.S. trade with other countries: Eight in ten say trade takes jobs away from their state. In Texas, 58 percent say trade takes jobs away, while a quarter say U.S. trade with other countries creates jobs.
Since Texas presumably benefits greatly from the two-way commerce with Mexico, it's astonishing that trade is so unpopular there.
Last year I remarked:Will the world's financial traffic reroute around America the way the Internet routes around censorship? My guess is that we're not at that point yet, but if it happens it will happen faster than people expect.
Perhaps the global economy too, at some point? Not that we are imminently becoming a backwater--but if it happens, it could happen faster than people expect: for example, our global competitors might sign trade agreements with partners we spurn out of protectionism.
We are in the fifteenth year after the Gore-Perot NAFTA debate. The quality of American leadership and, I am inclined to believe, the sagacity of the electorate have declined.
Afterthought. The sagacity of the electorate may not be to blame. Surveys show that people think that the country is moving in the wrong direction. IMO that's correct and the biggest single--not the only--reason is the corrupt incompetent hypocritical pharisaism of the Republican party. Since the malfeasance is deliberately disguised and hidden, one can't expect John and Joan Public to formulate policy prescriptions. It's understandable that they look to themselves when the leadership has repeatedly demonstrated it cannot be trusted.
From National Review's mission statement:Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by the Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.
Even more true today, perhaps, than in 1955.
Afterthought. On the other hand, this obituary is considerably less than heartbroken.
Even the BBC sounds skeptical:Rwanda has urged foreign governments and Interpol to ignore Spanish arrest warrants for 40 Rwandan army officers on genocide charges.
...
Spain's high court has accused the officers of involvement in mass killings in the early 1990s.
Spanish courts can prosecute war crimes even if the offences took place abroad.
...
But Rwanda's foreign ministry said the judge had never visited Rwanda or the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some of the killings are alleged to have taken place...It adds that he has not tried to liaise with Rwanda's judicial authorities to seek the officers' arrest.
...
During a 100-day period in 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed, mainly ethnic Tutsis at the hands of radical Hutus.
The genocide came to an end when Tutsi-led rebels under Paul Kagame took control.
But the judge said that, after taking power, the army under Mr Kagame carried out mass killings of Hutus in Rwanda and in refugee camps in what was then neighbouring Zaire.
...
In 2006, French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere issued indictments against nine close aides of Mr Kagame, sparking a huge diplomatic row.
So why--this question is not meant as commentary on that war--don't these heroic European jurists indict Russian officials for the destruction in Chechnya?
Because they know full well that such indictments would expose them to a case of Litvinenko's disease.
That's why the investigations of Putin's alleged money laundering won't come to anything, and why things like this will continue.
Dinocrat commenter staghounds on a McCain speech:“I will not sign a bill with earmarks in it, any earmarks in it. ”
That is a base-turning-out promise...
I agree, but here, here, here and here, with many worthwhile links, Instapundit notes that the GOP is determined to keep going in the opposite direction.
Glenn Reynolds remarksSometimes I think they'd rather be a porky minority than a porkless majority.
A similar thought has crossed my mind. I prefer Instapundit's phrasing, which is a tweak or two away from a mot juste--something like "Better to be a corrupt minority than an honest majority."
McCain is saddled with Bush's underperforming record and with continuing Republican parasitism. Maybe, without being explicit about his own party, he needs to make the case that Obama's messianism will yield an extrapolation of how Republicans have governed.
Dr. Helen notes reports that children are telling their parents how to vote, usually with Obama in mind. She wonders why.
Maybe the parents attribute to childhood a pure wisdom to which soiled adults no longer have entree.
Let's amend the Constitution so no one over 35 can be elected President. Then we can all live in the paradise described in 'Lord of the Flies'.
I blame George Bush. Ever since they took Congress in 1994, the Daddy Party has governed like Hollywood's caricature of the American father. It shares responsibility for the infantilization of politics.
I've paid attention to the Patriots but don't consider myself a fan (or knowledgeable about football). In fact, I hadn't intended to follow the team this year, but the prospect of a historic perfect season pulled me in.
The season was historic, all right. Ouch.
Congratulations to the New York Giants and their fans for a well-deserved Super Bowl victory.
Afterthought. The probability that a team will have a 16-0 regular season is far lower than the--unit--probability a team will win the Super Bowl. I knew this all along. Nevertheless, I'd prefer a Super Bowl victory to a perfect season. Why?
Thompson withdrew.
In the 1976 Republican primaries, Ronald Reagan was completely written off but doggedly kept going--and then he won North Carolina and almost the nomination. His sustained commitment in 1976 was the springboard for the successful run in 1980.
Freddie is pathetic.
Apparently, like Condi Rice a year or so ago, he thought he'd show a little leg and be nominated by acclamation.
This is the principled standard-bearer of conservatism? One more reason to write off the Republicans.
What's next for Freddie--joining Trent Lott's lobbying firm?
********
Full disclosure. Viewing them as high-risk high-payoff contributions, I made two small donations to Thompson. That my eyes were wide open doesn't mean I'm happy the money was wasted.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide. --Dryden
Yes, he was warped. Yes, he said vile things--but he sprayed the venom at large; he did not inject it into individuals. He did not leave damaged friends and a family with maimed souls.
RIP. Perhaps somewhere somehow, by means impossible to imagine or verify, the clashing elements of his makeup are now harmonized.
The S&P 500 is the most commonly used metric of the broad US market. (Arguably, the Dow Jones Industrials have too few stocks to accurately reflect the overall market.)
When George Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001, the S&P 500 stood at 1343. Today it closed at 1333. Never mind what happened to the dollar that the index is valued in.
As we enter an election year, the market is lower than when Bush took office seven years ago. For six of those years, there was a Republican Congress.
According to Winston Churchill,It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
I came across that years ago--while browsing in a book of quotations. I was taken aback...and then laughed...and then resumed reading.
So maybe there's some hope for me yet.
Presumably Sir Winston would also approve of posting quotations on one's blog. I haven't decided whether to collect such here or to make this a series. Anyway, here goes.
Peter Woit laments that the drunken colossus of our political system has accidentally squashed funding for high-enery physics:This seems to be how US democracy works these days: you need to pay to not get screwed, and we haven’t been paying…
Attributed to Wang Yang-ming (see also here and here):To know and not to act is not to know.
September 1, 1939 (W.H. Auden):Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
John Derbyshire::Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.
Since Bush was inaugurated, the US stock market has not kept up with inflation, while the value of the dollar has plunged. As the 2008 campaign begins, those who claim all is well and those who call for "change" have not confronted the real change that has been happening.
A fraction of a typical American stock's market value is its book value, but most of the market value represents the price investors are willing to pay for the company's future growth. So the world's valuation of America's future has not kept pace with inflation--with valuation in a sharply lower American dollar.
None of the presidential candidates is sounding the alarm about this. In particular, Obama spouts charismatic babble about change, new kind of politics, experience is unnecessary, blah blah blah. Actually, the foregoing sentence is not completely fair because, whether you agree or not, Obama's site has some thoughtful policy proposals, but the sentence is not completely unfair either.
While I can't picture Obama going eyeball-to-eyeball with Putin, Barack's supporters worry me at least as much as the candidate himself. Having roused the tiger's passion, after riding it to the Oval Office President Obama may find it difficult to persuade it to allow him to govern rationally.
Afterthought. Can I picture Hillary going eyeball-to-eyeball with Putin? Maybe. Depends on which Hillary shows up.
As 2008 approached, I was resigned to an unwelcome but competent Clinton presidency. Certainly on paper Hillary is more palatable than Barack. Yet now that the campaign is unfolding,
I am astonished by how dislikable that woman is.Consider the image at right (from TPM). What's with the red dress and Chinese collar? Is Hillary trying to evoke Madame Mao Tse-tung for radical voters? Or is the dress a gift from a Chinese Clinton...supporter?
Though I've hesitated to express the speculation that her hairstyle is intended to send a coded message to a constituency, apparently similar thoughts have occurred to others.
And there are other such things about Senator Now-The-Fun-Part-Starts, a number of which I possibly don't notice consciously.
Years ago I thought that many of the female guests on Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street Week obviously did not dress to advantage. I finally realized that the standards of their circle had evolved to a point which was strange to my Main Street sensibility. Conceivably that's what may have happened to Clinton--but, come to think of it, it doesn't matter to me whether the dissonance is intentional or accidental.
Peggy Noonan on Hillary:There's something about her that makes you look, watch, think, look again, weigh and say: No.
Right now, my first sentence notwithstanding, that pretty much says it all.
Afterthought.During the 1992 campaign Hillary's pose as the All-American Modern Spouse was effective, but since then she has been unable or unwilling to maintain it. Perhaps she is moved by anger to send her non-mainstream signals. The privileged 60s boomers dressed distinctively when they fabricated anger about the terrible terrible world that the Great Generation created. There is also her resentment from decades of living with Bill. Maybe she thought the election was in the bag and started acting out the payback she wanted. The cause is far less important than the consequences.
Afterthought soon before the NH Primary polls close. Recent Hillary photos look like Ms. All-American Wholesomeness is back. It's too late--and not necessarily just for NH.
Afterthought with 66% of vote counted. Well, maybe it's not too late...
It's astonishing that the Bhutto assassination's effect on the campaign was imperceptible.
*********
An Instapundit reader notes that the 2008 campaign has kicked off with two populist demagogues taking the lead.
Be careful what you wish for...
The voters want change? They may get it.
They demand excitement? They may get it.
They want to complain about the economy? They may get one to complain about.
The stock market was down sharply today. The S&P 500 closed at 1447. When George W. Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001, the index stood at 1343--separated from today's close by 7 or 8%. Today's dollar-denominated close, not to put too fine a point on it...
Accordingly, even without a recession or other negative events, there's an appreciable chance that on Election Day and Inauguration Day the market will have meandered below where it stood when Bush took over eight years earlier. Surely electoral strategists are well aware of this possibility, but such a trifle may not merit the attention of George W. Bush, the Great Syncretist, Liberty's Apostle to Islam, and BIG Thinker.
The insider-trading indicator is strongly positive and I'm sticking with it. Uneasily.
The blogosphere has pointedly noted environmental hypocrisy: all the private jets at the Bali conference, for example. Glenn Reynolds often says that he'll take it seriously as a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis.
There's a definite pecking order among Gaia worshippers. The Important People fly in on private jets to give speeches to the Significant People, who arrive in their high-end SUVs and learn what sacrifices Gaia requires of the Little People. It brings to mind classical brahmin-controlled India or pharaonic Egypt under the priesthood.
But that will be as nothing if and when significant life extension occurs.
Picture the high priests of Gaia urging that the technology be forbidden--and using it themselves. Picture televangelists (and mullahs, perhaps) condemning it as diabolical because it evades God's judgment and man's just reward in heaven--and using it themselves.
My first reaction[1] is that Condoleezza Rice should resign. She's been blundering around in over her head, and, in view of subsequent events, this is definitive:Let me just say that we have an unfolding story in Pakistan. There appear to be authoritative sources, Pakistani television, saying that a state of emergency is going to be declared. We’ve not heard from President Musharraf, to my knowledge, yet.
I just want to be clear that the United States has made clear that it does not support extra-constitutional measures because those measures would take Pakistan away from the path of democracy and civilian rule. And whatever happens, we will be urging a quick return to a constitutional order, we will be urging that the commitment to hold free and fair elections be kept, and we’ll be urging calm on all the parties.
If she doesn't have the grace to resign, Bush should fire her.
Fat chance of either.
[1] I say 'my first reaction' because it's not clear who is responsible for the assassination. The above comments presume that it isn't Musharraf's people. It would be nice if we had an intelligence service capable of making that determination--correctly.
Follow-Up. From Andrew McCarthy at NRO:It is the new way of warfare to proclaim that our quarrel is never with the heroic, struggling people of fill-in-the-blank country. No, we, of course, fight only the regime that oppresses them and frustrates their unquestionable desire for freedom and equality.
Pakistan just won’t cooperate with this noble narrative.
...
For the United States, the question is whether we learn nothing from repeated, inescapable lessons that placing democratization at the top of our foreign policy priorities is high-order folly.
The transformation from Islamic society to true democracy is a long-term project. It would take decades if it can happen at all. Meanwhile, our obsessive insistence on popular referenda is naturally strengthening — and legitimizing — the people who are popular: the jihadists. Popular elections have not reformed Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Neither will they reform a place where Osama bin Laden wins popular opinion polls and where the would-be reformers are bombed and shot at until they die.
We don’t have the political will to fight the war on terror every place where jihadists work feverishly to kill Americans. And, given the refusal of the richest, most spendthrift government in American history to grow our military to an appropriate war footing, we may not have the resources to do it.
But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they’ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.
Like Instapundit often says, read the whole thing.
IMO without the Internet Hillary Clinton's campaign likely would have successfully maintained its image of inevitability, and the Iraq situation likely would have been pushed toward collapse like Vietnam was.
That's not to say that Hillary won't be nominated. It's not to say that the Iraq occupation will be salvaged. And it's definitely not to deny that Iraq may have been an even more dubious strategic decision than Vietnam.
Nevertheless.
Added December 26, 2007. In particular, I don't think that the antiwar spin after Tet would have succeeded--even given the idiotically unrealistic expectations the Johnson administration had created--if the Web had been available. Now Instapundit links to a warning that a Tet is coming in Iraq.
Instapundit responds that a Tennessee student Rachel Davis was suspended from high school for defending herself against assault. As of this writing, 141 out of 450 people in an online poll believe that the suspension was justified.
A California high school teacher replies thatThe principal at my own son's school expects--and I kid you not--that students will curl up on the ground into a fetal position and hope that someone else goes running for help.
This insane outlook is not confined to otherworldly educators; it is pervasive.
Nicholas Sarkozy opposes firearms ownership and declares that you may not shoot dead a home invader who turns out to be unarmed.
Tony Martin...John Howard...
No wonder that Islamists take us for pushovers.
I haven't pulled a trigger since basic training long ago. I don't own a gun, but the right to purchase one is very important to me.
Afaic the right to self-defense is a fundamental human right. IMO a government which denies this right is, or will ultimately become, a despotism. A populace that consents to such government powers deserves to be serfs. I'm skeptical that such a civilization will survive, and I'm pretty sure that it won't progress.
A primary inadequacy of Bush's war leadership is his failure to articulate the nature of the struggle. (That failure may well be rooted in a failure to conceptualize the nature of the struggle, which in turn may well be rooted in his mental laziness. But I digress.)
The Israelis would never be that naive, right? Wrong, according to the JPost Pasionara (caveat lector! although her current column is plausible, she often gets carried away):While the soldiers and general public view the (Hizbullah) war as a failure, one sector of Israeli society sees the war as a great triumph. For Israel's legal establishment, the war was a great victory. It was a war in which its members asserted their dominance over Israel's political and military leadership.
...
Mazuz effectively asserted that international law prevents victory in war when he argued, "The laws of war, or international humanitarian law doesn't concern itself with relations between two states, but with the relationship between civilians and states. That is, it places the two warring states on one side of the divide and the citizens of the two states on the other side, and the goal of international law is to protect the citizens of the two states and to say: You're big kids. You want to fight, go fight, you have rules… and the rules aim to minimize as much as possible the consequences of the war."
By so arguing, Mazuz demonstrated that he views the goals of legal advisers as different from and indeed in conflict with the goals of political and military leaders. The goal of the latter is to defend the country from its enemies and to win wars. As Mazuz and Mandelblit see things, lawyers are tasked with protecting enemy populations from the IDF.
The distinctive way that legal advisers define their responsibilities has had an enormous impact on the military and the political leadership of the country. It is not that the internalization of the lawyers' approach has made the IDF or the Israeli government any more moral or law abiding than they have always been...
What has changed is the focus of military and political leaders in conducting war. Before the advent of legal dominance, commanders and political leaders devoted themselves to winning wars. Today they concentrate their efforts on avoiding criminal indictments.
(HT: Instapundit and National Review) This brings to mind the Internet rumor that during the overthrow of the Taliban, a Predator-drone operator had Mullah Omar targeted, but the commander (Franks?) insisted on checking with a military lawyer before giving permission to fire. By the time the lawyer okayed the attack, Omar was gone.
See the previous post for a link about the fence.
Suppose the American people finally resort to installing a Putin and he goes after our elites the way Vladimir goes after his enemies. If the Enlightened People think I'll go in the streets on their behalf, they should think again.
For perspective: IMO America is in decline and we are heading for stagnation or, at some point, collapse. However, the decline is not irreversible.
Afterthought. Maybe the best realistic 2008 outcome is a caretaker who will minimize our decline until, heaven willing, the country produces another real leader. (Reagan restored the country for a generation, but time and entropy happen to us all.)
When I read that Congress sabotaged the border fence, I hit the roof:It’s important to me that a Presidential candidate have an executive track record. The lack thereof has been my primary reservation about Thompson and one of my primary reservations about Obama.
However, when the government reminds me of a bordello, I’m not going to seek out the candidate with the most experience in brothels.
Right afterwards, I saw this: Fred Thompson: Lazy as charged
By: Roger Simon
Dec 19, 2007 01:35 PM EST
WAVERLY, Iowa — When is retail politics not retail politics? When candidates refuse to get off their big buses and go do it.
Fred Thompson rolled into this small town on the Cedar River in north-central Iowa on a giant brown bus Tuesday. He also had a van, an entourage of guys with earpieces and a press aide.
...
So the sum total of Thompson’s day in Waverly was meeting with a newspaper editor and saying nothing and then meeting about 15 people in a warm firehouse and saying nothing.
When he was supposed to go out and find voters in shops and diners, talk to them and answer their questions, he decided to skip it and get back on his luxury bus instead.
That’s not retail politics. That’s not Iowa. And that’s not laconic. That’s lazy.
Is Thompson running because his young wife wants him to?
Shades of John Kerry.
Follow-Up. I don't have time to post links, but the above article has been discredited as a hit piece. IMO Thompson should stay in the race and, without becoming a full-fledged supporter, I've made a small donation to his campaign.
Obama to Clinton: “Hillary, I’m looking forward to you advising me as well.” Zap!
It's unthinkable that Bill Clinton would ever lead with his chin the way Hillary did.
From the Jerusalem Post:US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reportedly said in Annapolis this week that her childhood in the segregated South had helped her to understand the suffering on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"I know what its like to hear that you can't use a certain road or pass through a checkpoint because you are a Palestinian. I know what it is like to feel discriminated against and powerless," Rice told a closed meeting of Arab and Israeli representatives, according to the Dutch representative at the summit, Franz Timmermans.
"Like Israelis, I understand what it's like to go to sleep not knowing if you will be hurt in an explosion, the feeling of terror walking around your own neighborhood, or walking to your house of prayer," Timmermans quoted Rice as saying, the Washington Post reported.
Rice described her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, during the era of segregation and the killing of four young girls in a bombing at a Baptist church in 1963. She reportedly said the bombing, which killed one of her classmates, helps her understand the fear of terrorism felt by Israelis.
I'd like to think that this report is inaccurate, but Rice was appointed by The Most Brilliant Man Harriet Miers Ever Met, who is the son of the man who selected Dan Quayle for the Vice Presidency.
Memo to Condoleezza Rice: Smarts, hard work, and sucking up will take you only so far. There comes a point at which real talent is essential.
Memo to the whole No Small Ball administration: If you manifestly lack the talent to achieve great things (and are mentally lazy to boot), you shouldn't try.
Just brainstorming:
If Mexico refuses to patrol their border, we should build and garrison the fence on their side.
Come to think of it, I'd be willing to expedite US citizenship for Mexicans and other Latinos who would serve a term guarding the border. Carefully screened and supervised Mexicans, that is: the work might be dangerous and the potential for corruption significant.
Monitor the real fence with a virtual fence.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a viable governor of California, but he is ineligible for the Presidency because he is not a natural born citizen.
Yet it's sometimes argued that the Clintons are circumventing (the spirit of) the Constitution's 22nd Amendment, which limits Presidents to two terms.
If the Clintons can do an end run, why can't the Schwarzeneggers?
If Maria is President, Arnold can run the US like Prince Albert ran the UK.
Which party's nomination should the Schwarzeneggers seek? It doesn't matter.
Not only is there California's bloc of Electoral College votes, but the whole country would flock to see "Pumping Iron with the Kennedys".
Afterthought (December 15, 2007). Mike Dukakis succeeded in skedaddling out of Massachusetts onto the national ticket while his financial mismanagement could still be swept under the rug. Schwarzenegger might not be as lucky.
Benny is often quoted to the effect that people who would give up liberty for temporary security deserve neither.
It's an obvious point once you realize it, so the trick is to keep people, perhaps including yourself, from realizing it. The populist demagogue proceeds by promising security in the language of challenge and renewal.
As for the GOP, the admirable Virginia Postrel quotes one Daniel Weintraub:PS to my Republican friends: I know CNN did a lousy job picking the questions and half of them came from people with links to Democratic candidates and causes. But they didn't pick the answers. The candidates still had their say. And in two hours of yakking, I don't think I heard a single sentence expressing confidence in the ability of individuals to pursue happiness on their own. Isn't that what the Republicans are supposed to be all about?
My gut reaction is that 'compassionate conservatism' is more dishonest, and ultimately more pernicious, than Clinton's and Obama's shticks.
(HT: Dinocrat) Investor's Business Daily editorializes:Others see in the dollar's slump a metaphor for America's future — one of decline and waning influence in the world.
To be sure, the dollar is down almost 40% against the euro since 2001. Against the pound, it's off almost 44%. It's even down against the yen, by nearly 13%.
But put in perspective, these declines are neither dangerous nor even undesirable. Over the long-term, the dollar is well within normal bounds. After years of rallying due to massive flows of investment into the U.S., the dollar has simply come down to Earth.
To say it has "collapsed" or "plunged" is simply wrong — as the chart above shows.
...
The weak dollar, by making U.S. goods more competitive overseas, will sow the seeds of future growth through booming exports, more domestic jobs and a new surge in investment from overseas to snap up bargains in the U.S.
That's not a cause for concern, but of celebration.
IBD tiptoed gingerly toward the obvious, but managed to ignore it completely by the end of the editorial. Let's let the dollar drop further so we can celebrate even more. Yaaay!!! George Bush is smart! Strategery!!
The dollar advanced because the world believed that America--the country that won the Cold War--the country that wired the planet--would lead humanity into the future. The dollar is declining because the world no longer believes that.
Afaic American decline is obvious, but it is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Nor is it accidental. Who benefits? On the left, there are obvious culprits: the trial lawyers, the social-service apparatchiks, the NGO nannystaters, the deathwish Greens, etc. I have no doubt that a similar rogues' gallery exists on the right.
People who can afford it are choosing to have several children, and sages in the media are sneering:In richest Manhattan, an alarming trend has risen from the primordial ooze that is hedge-fund money. This trend is flooding the chic nursery schools,clogging the fashionable secondary schools and sending many a billionaire from a sports car into a giant gas-guzzling Denali. Yes, the hot accessory of 2007 is children—but not just one or two. It seems that fashionable women in Manhattan just can’t stop popping them out...
But I believe (subscribing to the maxim that the rich are just like us, but with more money) that there is more to this boomlet than just showing off. Perhaps they are trying to keep their numbers up so their kids don’t have to venture to Second Avenue for a play date. Perhaps the loneliness and isolation of wealth in the face of global suffering is causing the baby blitz.
See also:It seems the rich are pumping out children (almost) like it’s 1899. Yes, the latest conspicuous consumption is conspicuous reproduction - uber-rich women giving birth to the beginnings of a softball team: three, four, five, even six, children.
Hey, what’s the biggie if they can afford it? Well, the question is, can the rest of us?
There’s something in this that stinks of what I call “show brats”: children as the latest fashion accessory. Less well-to-do people have them, too — they just have fewer of them, and are less apt, simply by virtue of income, to pass their children’s rearing off on “the staff.”
Is such writing the sign of a social conscience, or are very different attitudes embodied in the wannabe-hip NYC commentary?
I can't think of a better prognosis of a civilization's vitality than its people choosing to reproduce. Coming among many troubling cultural indicators, this news is extremely welcome.
I ran into Barack Obama at the supermarket and he asked for my support. When I declined, he asked if it was because he was black. No, I said, it was because it is irresponsible of him to run for President without executive experience, ideally as governor.
I got in the deli line behind Condi Rice, who told me she could never be bothered to run for President, but might accept the office if people asked her very very nicely. I said I wouldn't be asking her. Condi inquired if that's because she is black and female, and I replied that it's because she already seems in over her head running State. I did thank her for helping me realize how important an executive track record is.
In the checkout line, I told Fred Thompson he had my good regard but not my support. When Fred asked if the issue was his Southern accent, I said I'd just had that discussion with Barack and Fred should get a replay from him.
On my way out, Hillary Clinton demanded my vote. I raised the executive-experience issue and she snarled that she had a successful governorship and Presidency to her credit. Then she shouted that junk food would be illegal when she had something to say about it, grabbed my shopping bag, and threw it in the trash. Mike Huckabee was nearby, smiling during Hillary's tirade. He looked like he wanted to chime in but decided not to.
I really wanted to get home, but John Edwards came up to me in the parking lot. I said, "Look! What happened in the mall? An ambulance just drove in there," and he ran off.
All this time Jeb Bush had followed me around without saying anything, but he nodded effusively every time I mentioned experience. Mike Dukakis was collecting shopping carts in the parking lot, so I called him over and introduced him to Jeb. As I got in my car, a babbling Al Gore pointed at it and tried to block my way; he barely jumped aside as I ignored him and drove off.
I founded it after reading "Mankind 'shortening the universe's life'" (here).
In Peter Woit's post, commenters WB and anon. come to the edge of the crucial conceptual chasm, but unfortunately they shy away from--anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it re the Templeton Prize--the bold cognitive leap which I take herewith:
The Multiverse is an All-Nurturing Overmother Who shelters Gaia and her sister worlds. Negative thinking releases cosmic cognitive pollutants that threaten not only Gaia but also her sisters and the Overmother Herself.
Toni Vernelli is on the right track, but stronger measures are needed.
Think globally multiversally, act locally.
Afterthought. Although biology and, arguably, computational science are ascendant, traditionally physics has been first among the sciences. Perhaps, like some civilizations, a science decays from within before it is overthrown from without.
Here.
Afterthought. Consider this extract about Clinton and the Spitzer proposal for driver's licenses for illegals:First she was for the idea and supported Governor Spitzer who wanted to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Then she was against the idea. Then she was for and against the idea and then finally she said it should be decided on a state-by-state basis.
(LAUGHTER)
This is the only time in her career that she’s ever decided anything should be decided on a state-by-state basis.
You know something? She picked out absolutely the wrong one.
(LAUGHTER)
Right? I mean this is one of the areas that is given to the federal government to deal with under our Constitution, the borders of the United States, immigration...
Is this a coded way of asserting that state and local governments cannot take action against illegals?
Qualified: Giuliani and Romney.
Arguably qualified: Clinton, Thompson, McCain, maybe even Richardson.
At least the field is better than the Three Stooges of Bush, Gore and Kerry.
Help might be on the way.
The AP reports:WASHINGTON (AP) - A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.
This guy should be fired and barred from working for the government, and any government contractor, ever again.
I doubt that even J. Edgar Hoover at the height of his power would have dared go this far.
Kerr's speech is here. Note the chummy interplay with the moderator.
Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address is here.In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Yes, there's a war on. Yes, technology changes things. But Eisenhower spoke when the threat--the external threat, that is--was far greater than it is today.
I didn't read Morris's book, but some time ago I perceived a similarity between Hillary Rodham C and Richard Milhous N.
Afaic the similarity is pretty obvious...I'm just linkin' to my thinkin'...
I remarked at Dinocrat that I’m a global warming skeptic, not a global warming disbeliever.
I view anthropogenic global warming as...a great issue for aging boomers who ‘had issues’ in the 60s and continue to have issues today. Al Gore has written:
We have the opportunity to become the Greatest Generation, responding to our climate debate – but only if we take urgent action to limit global warming.
***********
Given the demagoguery, looniness, and civilizational deathwish among alarmists, it’s hard to keep an open mind about anthropogenic global warming. I support research on climate modelling and measurement, and I support research on reversible climate engineering. For example, Gregory Benford seems to be thinking constructively.
Linking to a news report on geoengineering, Instapundit warnsBe cautious.
Indeed. That's why my comment above specified reversible climate engineering.
Via Instapundit and Volokh, I see thatWASHINGTON, Nov. 7 — The House on Wednesday approved a bill granting broad protections against discrimination in the workplace for gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, a measure that supporters praised as the most important civil rights legislation since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 but that opponents said would result in unnecessary lawsuits.
The bill, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, is the latest version of legislation that Democrats have pursued since 1974.
Golly, who but a bigot is against nondiscrimination in employment?
I do not believe that this issue is serious enough to warrant federal intrusion into the private sector. Similarly, I oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment's intrusion on the states. The number of Republicans and Democrats who crossed party lines in both pieces of legislation is roughly comparable.
Afaic ENDA, like the FMA, is grist for a partisan constituency, an episode in the culture wars, and pork for lawyers.
I don't view either the so-called religious right or the so-called progressive left as qualified to govern the most advanced society of the 21st century. Nevertheless I concede that these factions may dominate our governance. If so, the odds that America will not remain the center of gravity of human progress will become a near-certainty.
A plague on both their houses.
Dinocrat warns:The massive build-up of unrecycled liquidity in a few exporting nations is one of the preeminent financial dangers of our time, and so far almost no one seems to be talking about it.
A scenario: You notice that public- and private-sector mismanagement has made the US economy wobbly, so you convert your large trove of dollars into a currency that you expect to hold its value against the dollar. You use that currency as collateral for sustained cumulative shorting of the US stock market, converting the proceeds of the short sales into the robust currency. When your selling precipitates a market break, US equities and the dollar crash together and your short-covering yields a dual profit.
IMO this kind of financial warfare is not in China's interest at present, but perhaps some oil producers would find it to their advantage and maybe there are hedge funds that bet on such a double-crash scenario.
On 19 January 2001, the day before Bush was inaugurated, the S&P 500 closed at 1342.54. As I write twenty minutes before today's close, it is at 1482.93. In recent years the annual standard deviation has been about 10%; historically it's been more like 20%.
There seems to be at least a one-in-eight chance (my estimates for various scenarios range from one-in-eight to seven-in-twenty) that Bush will leave the White House with the market lower than when he took office eight years before--lower in terms of a dollar which has plunged under his stewardship.
It's the economy, stupid. If the average citizen endures a recession or worse, it would intensify nostalgia for Clintonian prosperity--but how suitable is Hillary to cure a sick economy? Romney, on the other hand, has strong executive experience in the private, nonprofit and government sectors. Mitt's economic credentials are stronger than Giuliani's, and he seems a better choice than Rudy or Hillary to lead a turnaround. But if the Bush-Rove-Delay-Lott economic chickens are home to roost in 2008, how can a Republican, no matter how well qualified, be elected President?
Afterthought. Heaven forbid that the foregoing clears the way for a demagogue. A demagogic President would compound the damage while blaming Bush for the consequences.
This is disgraceful: Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Gisele Bundchen wants to remain the world's richest model and is insisting that she be paid in almost any currency but the U.S. dollar.
Like billionaire investors Warren Buffett and Bill Gross, the Brazilian supermodel, who Forbes magazine says earns more than anyone in her industry, is at the top of a growing list of rich people who have concluded that the currency can only depreciate because Americans led by President George W. Bush are living beyond their means.
Conceivably the damage that the Bush-Rove-Delay-Lott Republicans have done to America's standing in the world economy will eventually eclipse Bush's incompetence as a war leader.
This should be an election issue but, in the political big leagues, the straight talk required is probably perceived as electoral suicide.
Afterthought. During the Clinton-era Internet bubble, America was leading the world into the future; when the bubble burst, much of enduring value survived and continued to grow. During the Bush-era real estate bubble, America fabricated funny money; the aftermath is cruddy reposessed property.
After a period of encouraging indications from Iraq, this wake-up call was unwelcome but probably inevitable. I remain inclined to believe that the Iraq invasion was a gross strategic blunder: that is to say, it would have been a strategic blunder if we had a strategy. While General Petraeus may turn a looming defeat into a victory, it's a victory in a battle that should not have been fought at this time.
***************
Back when "Mission Accomplished" Bush was riding high, I would sometimes ask his supporters why we invaded secular Baathist Iraq when the enemy was Islamism. A typical response was that I didn't understand strategery guh-yuk guh-yuk.
Hear the wisdom of The Blessed Condoleezza: Let me just say that we have an unfolding story in Pakistan. There appear to be authoritative sources, Pakistani television, saying that a state of emergency is going to be declared. We've not heard from President Musharraf, to my knowledge, yet.
I just want to be clear that the United States has made clear that it does not support extra-constitutional measures because those measures would take Pakistan away from the path of democracy and civilian rule. And whatever happens, we will be urging a quick return to a constitutional order, we will be urging that the commitment to hold free and fair elections be kept, and we'll be urging calm on all the parties.
This tripe comes from America's top diplomat, who is a former National Security advisor and a former provost of Stanford University. What should our enemies and friends, and the American people, think?
Looking at the presidential line of succession, I go down to #5 (#6 if Bush is included) before seeing anyone likely to grow into the job.
Possible mitigations:
1. The military takeover in Algeria was not expected to block the ascendancy of Islamism there, but to date it has done so.
2. Bad leadership on our side does not mean that the enemy's leadership is superb.
3. An election is coming up. When I see a photo of Bush and Putin (or Bush and Vicente Fox, for that matter), I am embarrassed. I cringe. I might not feel that way with Hillary or Mitt in the picture, and I'm sure I wouldn't feel that way with Rudy. Thompson has yet to convince me that he wouldn't seem outclassed by Putin. Heaven save us from Obama and Edwards: like Gore and Kerry, they probably would be even bigger embarrassments than Bush. (And if we get another incompetent administration, embarrassment might be the least of my worries.)
Apparently Kausfiles was the pebble that triggered the Webalanche. Who tapped that pebble and who positioned all the dirt that is now sliding?
A Karl Rove hit job? It's true that Rove has left the White House, but it seems premature for the Republicans to go after Clinton this way.
Yet surely no diversity-celebrating Democrat would ever do such a thing...
(This post has speculated about the origin of the rumors, not about their validity or implications. Nevertheless, the possible Saudi connection warrants clarification. It's hard to see why the sexual allegation, whether or not it is verified, would be relevant to my voting decision.)
Afterthought. If Clinton were rendered toxic, Edwards' chances for a VP nomination would improve. The robotic Al Gore who blundered away the 2000 election couldn't have coordinated this kind of hit, but, come to think of it, I don't really know all that much about the upgraded model.
Second afterthought. And I was startled to realize that Obama's name never for a moment crossed my mind even though I've come to distrust him.
Victor Davis Hanson writes...My maternal grandparents lived to be 86 and 91; their two professional daughters, my mother and aunt, died at 66 and 49 respectively. My paternal grandfather lived to be 81, his son, my father died at 75. The older generation lived pretty much in one place, rarely if ever traveled, and set their schedule by the natural year. They worked within sight on their farmhouses, ate much of what they grew, and were up at 4 and in bed at 9 or 10.
My parents, in contrast, entered the rat race and all that entailed, and toward the end of their lives understood the toll it took. I don’t want to romanticize farm life; I found it brutal and dangerous, but the wear is of a different sort.
Even if a virtue is made out of necessity, it is still a virtue.
A critical question--no less critical for being obvious--for individuals and civilizations: how, if at all, can the indispensable time-tested virtues be created without the harshness and brutality of necessity?
Not surprisingly, Randstad is a business-staffing firm that deals in temps and contractors.Eric Buntin, managing director of marketing and operations for Randstad, said the survey indicated people had not changed their behavior as office layouts changed, becoming more open, so people heard colleagues talking and knew more about their home lives.
"If you were sitting in your office with the door closed no one would be able to hear you unless you were very loud but if you open the door then people hear everything, blurring the lines between personal and work lives," Buntin told Reuters.
"People are not taking into account that the workplace is very open now and they need to think about that interaction with their colleagues."
Are office layouts changing because of vast impersonal forces like encroaching Ice Age glaciation?
Randstad has announced thatRandstad Holding nv has fully completed the acquisition of the German staffing company Team BS as announced on September 14, 2007.
Sounds like a good fit.
Dinocrat comments that Socks was once a Clinton prop but has now become anti-Clinton ammunition.
The moral: there's more than one way to spin a cat.
This story started normally:Three Sentenced to Prison in Microsoft Fraud Case
The trio were involved in a scheme to purchase more than $29 million worth of software that was steeply discounted for academic institutions, and selling it to non-academic entities, in violation of the Microsoft agreement. These convictions were the result of "Operation Cyberstorm," a two-year undercover investigation into software piracy and related crimes by agents from FBI, IRS and REACT Task Force.
Fair enough, but the kicker is the last sentence:...A fourth defendant, William Glushenko, 66, pled guilty to a charge of misprision of a felony—knowing of a crime and failing to report it—and was given one year probation and 100 hours of community service.
What?! The Fifth Amendment protects people against self-incrimination, but not incriminating others is a crime?
There may well be legitimate extremes like misprision of terrorism, but at first blush this strikes me as inconsistent with a free society.
Oh yeah, I forgot: if you're innocent, you have nothing to fear.
A few years ago there was a push for 'transnational' control of the Internet. Is that President No-Small-Ball's next Big Idea? (Keeping my fingers crossed: sarcastic hyperbole about this administration can be hard to achieve.)
As it happens, the administration has just contributed to the transnationalist case:After a Marin County website was hacked to redirect users to a pornographic Web site, the GSA stepped in and obstructed every state and local website in the state of California
For the children of course:The General Services Administration, which shut down the sites, apologized for the inconvenience on Thursday and said it would try to find a more targeted solution for similar problems in the future.
"GSA is responsible for the integrity of all the .gov Web sites it manages," the agency said in a statement. "The potential exposure of pornographic material to the citizens and tens of thousands of children in California was a primary motivator for GSA to request immediate corrective action."
If I were reading this in Frankfurt, Tokyo, Beijing, Rio, etc., I wouldn't be feeling very supportive of the USA as a fiduciary for domain-name registration.
I know Doris Lessing primarily by reputation--a reputation which has just been enhanced--, but some time ago I came across this:"Great things have been achieved through feminism. We now have pretty much equality at least on the pay and opportunities front, though almost nothing has been done on child care, the real liberation.
"We have many wonderful, clever, powerful women everywhere, but what is happening to men? Why did this have to be at the cost of men?
"I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men.
"You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives."
Lessing said the teacher tried to "catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish".
See also her essay 'Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism'.
The NY Sun (HT: Instapundit) reportsWASHINGTON — Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden's September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the enemy's system.
The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden's first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech.
But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda's internal security division that the organization's Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised.
Shock and awe. Slam dunk. Mission accomplished.
Our elected officials understand that the aforementioned intelligence community needs to be fired pervasive power:
Saying that "we live in a dangerous world" and people "want to have security cameras," Mayor Bloomberg is making the case that New Yorkers need to get used to being watched.
...
During a demonstration of the surveillance control room in a police precinct in London's "square mile," which has a camera on every corner, Mr. Bloomberg said New York is "way behind" when it comes to cameras on subways and buses. He said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority "just has to get us this kind of technology."
Once upon a time we were warned that the USA lagged the Soviets in military and space technology. Today we are warned that we are behind the curve in constructing a police state.
Sheila Bair, the head of the FDIC, is a lawyer who apparently has never held a private-sector job (afaic "Senior Vice President for Government Relations of the New York Stock Exchange" doesn't count as such). However, she knows how to solve the housing crisis: if creditors track down debtors and offer them easier terms on their mortgages, all will be well. In particular, ARMs should not be reset and teaser rates should be made permanent.
Bair is "frustrated" that creditors are not getting with the program:For instance, for owner occupied housing where the loan is current ... just convert that subprime hybrid ARM into a fixed-rate mortgage. Keep it at the starter rate. Convert it into a fixed rate. Make it permanent. And get on with it.
Compassionate conservatism to the rescue!
The political class is running the country not by solving problems, but by offsetting them with new problems and aggrandizing power in the process. Unless we change course, the day will come when all reserves of societal capital are exhausted.
Apparently Gordon Brown is not calling one. While Labor's recent fumbling and slipping in the polls obviously have a lot to do with the decision, maybe Brown has decided to ram through the cession of additional UK sovereignty to the EU. The longer the furor about that has to die down, the better Labor's electoral chances will be.
Incidentally, a Tory pundit declares:Gordon’s colour now will be yellow
Why not tell Brown to keep his cotton-pickin' fingers off British sovereignty? (Its very well-wishers have called the GOP the Stupid Party. Apparently the syndrome extends across the Atlantic.)
Gateway Pundit (HT: Instapundit) criticizes the Biden resolution, which apparently has caused an uproar in Iraq.
Reasonable people can disagree about the resolution--I have qualms about some of the wording--, but it claims to be consistent with the Iraqi constitution. If Iraqi politicians are really atwitter about it, maybe, per some GP comenters, it's because they prefer to blame others for their troubles instead of solving their own problems.
However, the Senate parses the Iraqi constitution while routinely flouting ours. Do as we say, not as we do?
Afterthought. Maybe the Senate advocates a strong national government only when that's easy, e.g. enabled by a law-abiding or docile public. Would the Senate acquiesce to future US separatist agitation that invoked PC multiculturalism? De facto, maybe it already has.
According to Instapundit, the September 6 Israeli raid on Syria may be panicking Iran.
I too have made that small hop of the imagination. Heh.
IMO Alaska's Governor Palin might fill out into presidential timber along Reaganesque lines.
There's a blog pushing her for VP, but Glenn Reynolds says she should run for Ted Stevens' seat.
Viewing Palin as a potential POTUS, I have doubts about both suggestions. Re VP: most of the recent Vice Presidents who became President did not have successful administrations. Re Instapundit: Palin needs more than two years of executive experience before running for President; furthermore, the modern Senate has not been a viable launching pad for presidencies (though Clinton may change that).
On the other hand, national-level experience would help Palin if she seeks higher office. If the GOP had a clue, they would put Palin on their presidential farm team and help her acquire such experience.
Of course, if the GOP had a clue they wouldn't have lost Congress.
So the mortgage mess has put us at risk of recession or worse, and what does the establishment want? Cheap labor and cheap votes, of course!
According to the LA Times, immigration legislation is back:The first to come up is expected to be the "Dream Act," a bill championed by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) that would give conditional legal status to immigrants brought to the U.S. at a young age.
...
Durbin plans to attach the bill as an amendment to a defense funding measure scheduled to come before the Senate today, his staff said.
Durbin is putting this kind of amendment onto a military bill during wartime.
The Roman Republic used to appoint dictators to deal with emergencies. Eventually this practice led to autocracy, but it was viable for a long time. Maybe we need a Constitutional amendment authorizing the military to take power for a limited period, e.g. the balance of a presidential term, if in their judgment the security of the nation is at risk.
The foregoing is meant as brainstorming, not as a serious proposal. However, something is very wrong with most or all of our civilian establishments: political, business, academic...
Dinocrat:It is quite possible that the baby boom generation is the single worst generation of Americans that this country has ever produced.
There was considerable overlap between the subsets of the Great Generation respectively characterized as 'the best' and 'the brightest'. The boomers changed that.
I fear our best are no longer our brightest and our brightest sneer at our best.
The New England Patriots have been marketed as the epitome of family wholesomeness. To some extent I willingly suspended my capacity for disbelief and bought into the story.
I'm now a New Englander, but the reports about Belichick's somewhat messy divorce and Brady's kid didn't sit well with my Midwestern roots. Of course the full stories are not known, and my lack of approval is not the same as condemnation.
Then the taping thing--it's not worth the time to dig out links--came up and my attention was pulled back to the team. As the affair grew, I found the same link about the NFL commissioner as this poster did, and reached the same conlusion: Goodell's objectivity is in question and he should have recused himself from the affair. This was even before the Patriots' confiscated film was leaked to the media.
NFL football is a game, played for overly high stakes. To be good at the game requires a variant of martial virtue, but it does not necessarily make one admirable across the board. After my spasm of pro-Patriots indignation, I'm going to resume my resolution to ignore sports and focus on my business.
From the Washington Times (HT: Instapundit):Congressional Democrats are trying to undermine U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus' credibility before he delivers a report on the Iraq war next week, saying the general is a mouthpiece for President Bush and his findings can't be trusted.
"The Bush report?" Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin said when asked about the upcoming report from Gen. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq.
"We know what is going to be in it. It's clear. I think the president's trip over to Iraq makes it very obvious," the Illinois Democrat said. "I expect the Bush report to say, 'The surge is working. Let's have more of the same.'"
The timing of Bush's Iraq visit is partisan and provocative. Maybe he doesn't care because he has the votes he needs--but if the day comes when he needs every vote he can get, this occasion will not be forgotten.
The Democrats' statements are reprehensible, but it is Bush who has exposed the military, i.e. Petraeus, as a target for political mudslinging.
Addendum. From Iraq, on to Australia and the APEC meeting:"Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit," Mr. Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
...
Mr. Bush quickly corrected himself. "APEC summit," he said forcefully, joking that the confusion was because Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (though neither Australia nor the United States is an OPEC member).
The president's next goof went uncorrected, at least immediately. Talking about Howard's visit to Iraq last year to thank his country's soldiers serving there, Mr. Bush referred to them as "Austrian troops" - though the official text released by the White House and posted on whitehouse.gov fixed it to "Australian."
After his speech, Mr. Bush confidently headed out - the wrong way.
He strode away from the lectern on a path that would have sent him over a steep drop. Howard and others saved him, redirecting the president to center stage, where there were steps leading down to the floor of the theater.
The audience remained quiet throughout the president's remarks, applauding only when he was finished.
Did the audience applaud because they saw Bush heading toward the dropoff?
Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald notes:What an irony. When the leader of the free world comes to town, the first casualty is freedom. Parts of the city look like a war zone, wreathed in five kilometres of fencing wire. Helicopters buzz, jumpy police bark at motorists. Riot cars tear through the city; the new water cannon lies in wait. Some city workers are forced to shuffle like prisoners through a series of chook runs. Laws are passed to give police extraordinary powers to search, detain, confiscate. There is a fenced-off "restricted" zone and a wider "security" zone.
.....
...But the clampdown on civil liberties is so over the top, the restrictions extending so far from the key venues, that some believe the Premier, Morris Iemma, has an ulterior motive in mind - to annoy the citizens of Sydney so much they will vent their anger on John Howard at the federal election.
Even if the qualifier is true, the use of his visit for partisan games is itself an indication that the American president is not respected.
Bernanke speaks:the mortgage market has become more like the frictionless financial market of the textbook, with fewer institutional or regulatory barriers to efficient operation. In one important respect, however, that characterization is not entirely accurate. A key function of efficient capital markets is to overcome problems of information and incentives in the extension of credit. The traditional model of mortgage markets, based on portfolio lending, solved these problems in a straightforward way: Because banks and thrifts kept the loans they made on their own books, they had strong incentives to underwrite carefully and to invest in gathering information about borrowers and communities. In contrast, when most loans are securitized and originators have little financial or reputational capital at risk, the danger exists that the originators of loans will be less diligent.
And this holds even more for derivatives.
The big financial houses that make big money from peddling toxic financial waste as portfolio vitamins don't want regulation--but if they must endure regulation, they want a lot of it because the costs will overburden their nascent competitors. (To rectify the financial system and economy, more lawyers should get paid more money...yeah, that'll do it.)
If sunlight is the best disinfectant, the first thing to do is to get all these instruments into the sunlight. After they are assessed, society can assess how the markets should be regulated in order to keep them reasonably free and efficient.
A very rough thought follows. For starters every piece of US-traded paper--CDO, CMO, OTC derivative, etc.--should be posted on a publicly accessible central database together with the most recent transaction price and rating. Confidentiality of buyers and sellers should be respected, but the rating agency/agencies should be revealed[1].
Let this data be swarmed over by think tanks and legions of rabid dissertation-seeking finance graduate students and tenure-hungry junior faculty. Even with modern computer processing, that's going to take time. Only after an overall picture emerges should regulation be structured.
Formatting requirements should be kept simple to minimize the reporting burden. The USA should take the lead--the mess is primarily due to the negative consequences of our financial innovation--, but we might wish to team internationally.
The danger is that such regulation will drive business offshore and, like Sarbanes-Oxley is said to have done, further erode American leadership of global financial markets. A way to offset that is to maximize transparency and minimize complexity. The goal is that listing in the database, by creating confidence, will add value to an instrument relative to a similar one that is unlisted offshore. Ideally, once the system is in place, participants will recognize its value and its mandatory nature will almost be beside the point; I'd like to say that it could eventually be relaxed, but, given the proclivities of Wall Street wise guys, I hesitate to do so.
Clarification. This post was begun in September 2007 but not published until late January 2008. I wanted to develop a more cogent formulation, but finally realized that It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
[1] Update May 12, 2008: During an interview, George Soros proposed something similar.
A legal working paper claims that judges consistently rule in a manner which expands the scope of the legal profession and the privileged standing of lawyers (HT: Instapundit). A speech by Dennis G. Jacobs, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to that effect is transcribed in the May 2007 Fordham Law Review (PDF here).
Are these two documents inconsequential--neither mentioned Warren Burger's bygone warning--or will society begin taking the issue seriously?
Two big legal fish have been hooked recently. Richard Scruggs (tobacco companies) has been indicted for criminal contempt:(Federal Judge) Acker feels Scruggs did not comply with an injunction in December, refusing to hand over documents from E.A. Renfroe, a claims-handling company working with State Farm, back to the company's attorneys.
Instead, Scruggs gave them to Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. Acker recommended to U.S. Attorney Alice Martin that she pursue criminal contempt charges, but she declined. That's when Acker enlisted the special prosecutors.
William Lerach (securities law) has left the firm he founded, which is dropping his name, to defend himself against plaintiff-kickback charges:Sources familiar with the matter said in June that Lerach and founding partner Melvyn Weiss had rejected an offer from prosecutors to plead guilty and serve prison sentences.
It remains to be seen whether all the above is the beginning of a trend. Skepticism is warranted: Burger's warning made no more difference than did Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex.
Addendum May 31, 2008. The worthy Professor Barton, author of the working paper mentioned above, has written another one, which "argues that the shared characteristics, thought-processes, training, and incentives of Judges and lawyers lead inexorably to greater complexity in judge-made law."
Dinocrat discusses an example of how China's prosperity is migrating inland from the coasts.
Currently China's growth is export-driven. There might come a point at which it is driven by a mandate to bring prosperity to the interior, thereby creating internal markets for Chinese products. Perhaps a Chinese version might emerge of the Turner thesis of the frontier's effect on the American character. (By titling a post 'The Wild West', Dinocrat comes to the verge of this hypothesis. Note that the upgrading of the Chinese interior goes hand-in-hand with urbanization, which was not the case in the USA.)
A growing China has an obvious interest in the energy resources of the Middle East. As it climbs toward its ancient place as the Central Kingdom, might it not 'accept' the obligation to 'assist' its fellow primal civilizations, i.e. might China not concoct its own version of Manifest Destiny? And wouldn't it be ironic if restoring Mideast Christianity were part of the pretext?
Victor Davis Hanson is usually thought-provoking:I Guess We Forgot the Laws of the Past
There used to be certain laws about mortgages, wisdom slowly acquired through past boom and bust cycles of American history. You got a fixed, usually 30-year mortgage. You paid 20% down. And you bought a house whose debt payments did not eat up more than 30-40% of your monthly income.
Tales of wild real estate riches and speculative profits, even if true, meant little, since a home was more than just an investment. Somehow all that was forgotten with no or little down payment loans, adjustable-rate or interest only schedules, and excess purchased square footage.
Apparently the idea was either to appreciate yourself into 2nd and 3rd mortgage equity, or to expect interest rates magically to go down and thus lower payments, or to buy and sell/buy and sell yourself into a mansion. So the house of straw is now tragically collapsing, and the old wisdom of the past being relearned.
From the abstract of "Do Households Benefit from Financial Deregulation and Innovation? The Case of the Mortgage Market" (Public Policy Discussion Paper No. 06-6) by Kristopher Gerardi, Harvey S. Rosen, and Paul Willen from the Boston Fed:The U.S. mortgage market has experienced phenomenal change over the last 35 years. Most observers believe that the deregulation of the banking industry and financial markets generally has played an important part in this transformation...This paper develops and implements a technique for assessing the impact of changes in the mortgage market on individuals and households.
Our analysis is based on an implication of the permanent income hypothesis: that the higher a household’s future income, the more it desires to spend and consume, ceteris paribus. If we have perfect credit markets, then desired consumption matches actual consumption and current spending on housing should forecast future income. Since credit market imperfections mute this effect, we can view the strength of the relationship between housing spending and future income as a measure of the “imperfectness” of mortgage markets. Thus, a natural way to determine whether mortgage market developments have actually helped households by decreasing market imperfections is to see whether this link has strengthened over time.
We implement this framework using panel data going back to 1969. We find that over the past several decades, housing markets have become less imperfect in the sense that households are now more able to buy homes whose values are consistent with their long-term income prospects.
The full text is available at the above link.
Excesses and malfeasances should be corrected and their recurrence should be disincentivized, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The possessions that pioneers loaded on their prairie schooners were important--not just for survival, but to create a new and better future. So, too, the lessons of history are important.
