Help Is On the Way
From China Daily 4-11-06 “Foreign Takeover Controversial”
“If China lets multinationals’ malicious mergers and acquisitions go ahead freely, China can only act as labour in the global supply chain,” said Li, worrying that Chinese brands and the innovation ability of the national industry would disappear gradually and core parts, key technologies and high added value of China’s leading enterprises might be completely controlled by multinationals.”
Apparently the sense this makes has not yet occured to American bankers who are looking everywhere for cover:
US investment giant Morgan Stanley has frozen talks on a merger with Wachovia bank but is pressing on with talks for CIC of China to end up with a big stake in it, a media report said on Monday.
Our country has been taken over by us, and I don’t mean We the People.
Facts can be pesky
My thoughts on Palin are as follows: she’s an inexperienced, shoved-into-the-limelight veep pick of an old man who is an unlikely and poorly-qualified presidential candidate himself. She’s got nothing much to offer besides admittedly-likeable aw-shucks persona that will resonate with the ignorant among us, and she’s been told to go into attack-dog mode right off the bat and trump up the ‘us vs. them’ idea to simply energize the uber-conservative Republican base. So much for standing off on the issues versus Obama/Biden.
(Wasn’t this election about the issues this time around? You know, because there are some big questions in need of answers?)
My thoughts on her debut speech are here, and I think everyone should understand the misrepresentation that she weaved into her rhetoric. Not that politicians don’t bend the truth from time-to-time, but just because she’s a newcomer woman and has five kids doesn’t mean she’s not held up to the same standards of accountability.
The biggest pass people are giving her is that she’s an attractive woman who tries, and largely succeeds, in identifying with the ‘everywoman’ via motherood, PTA and hockey-mom angles. That’s great when you’re trying to get elected to the school board, but it shouldn’t fly one bit when we’re talking about VP of the United States.
As y’all have talked about before, this election really is becoming an issue of smart vs. dumb.
The Power (and Limits) of Imagination
Observation offered last night courtesy of a dear friend in New Orleans: “It takes a lot of imagination to live in New Orleans because . . . there’s . . . not much here. Luckily I have a strong imagination.”
So What Have Those Animals Done for Us Lately?
WASHINGTON - Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.
New regulations, which don’t require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press.
The draft rules also would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.
Somehow it’s not surprising that those who show so little respect for human life (unless it’s unborn) would so blithely open the way for business interests to carry on with the “I’ll be dead by then” values that drive them. I suppose they feel they have now made some headway in conserving their right to lift the American economy, come Armageddon or high water. See here.
What would accountability look like post-Bush?
One-Way Gate of Praise
From the ticker: “McCain credits Bush for recent $10-a-barrel drop in oil price.” But of course he didn’t blame him for any of the rise in that price. The story notes that McCain believes it is the psychological effect of Bush’s lifting the ban on offshore drilling that did the trick–in spite of the fact that it would be almost twenty years before any oil from those wells hit the market. Funny that the recent news about gigantic oil reserves in Brazil didn’t prevent the rising prices of late.
Newt: There Are 3 Ways to Lower Oil Prices
I’m a moderate in my views, but I think Newt Gingrich makes some solid main points that not only punish the speculators who continue to bet on the rising price of oil, but also announce to the world that we are taking our energy economy into our own hands while we search for alternative fuels. This isn’t a typical supply-side cry for drilling in our country and glutting the market, but instead a phased solution that ultimately winds up cutting our oil dependence, foreign and otherwise.
Newt Gingrich: 3 Ways to Lower Oil Prices
The Fall of Detroit
Detroit is in the worst state it’s seen in years, and the bureaucracy that runs it is essentially a horde of criminals. I live 20 miles outside of the city border and used to work in the city itself. I’ve been watching this my entire life. The citizen migration rate out of the city is staggering, and the population has dropped below the 1M mark; it is the first American city in history to drop below a million citizens. By way of contrast, in 1950 it boasted 1.8M residents.
Half the housing stock is needed. Many parts of the city are literally a wasteland.
The powers-that-be have a track record of turning down large, entrepreneur-originating initiatives of $200M for new, progressive charter schools. Invariably, the Detroit Board of Education sees the gesture as a white man’s attempt to infiltrate and overthrow the black power structure, not as one to provide a viable option to an otherwise horrible and floundering educational system.
People are starting to talk about Detroit in an urgent fashion, and not just because of Kwame Kilpatrick’s ridiculous troubles. Here’s a spot-on video of Newt Gingrich saying what nobody in Detroit wants to hear — and what I bet nobody will listen to in my lifetime.
Why so pessimistic? Because I’m an analytical person, and I see no data whatsoever that suggests this trend is anywhere near being reversed.
The Unforeseen — Recommended
Cindy and I saw this documentary at the Angelica in Dallas yesterday. It’s great for those who have an Austin connection–and great for those who don’t. If it’s not showing in your area you might want to add it to your Netflix list.
One of the things I like best about this documentary is the inspiration it offers for those who want to confront the economically powerful. It very clearly makes the point that everything that stimulates the economy is not therefore positive in nature: a train wreck generates the need for clean-up hires and for orders for new train cars to be built. Here you will see the problems that result when short term ambitions collide with trans-generational values. And the film is very well edited: it shows a vast range of desires and the human weaknesses–and courage– that attend the fight to realize them.
Looking to the Court to Give Them Balls
This is an interesting example of the way Congress has tacitly accepted the power of an administration it can and should confront:
Congress has never gone to court to demand the testimony of White House aides, and any ruling by Bates — even simply agreeing that he has the authority to issue a ruling — could alter the Capitol’s political system of given and take.
Normally, such disputes work themselves out. Either it becomes politically untenable for the White House to refuse congressional demands or Congress backs down. Congress also has the power of the purse. It can withhold money for White House projects, refuse to pay Department of Justice salaries or confirm the president’s nominations until the president cooperates.
And then there’s the ultimate option: If the House really feels wronged by the president, it can vote for impeachment. It takes the same simple majority that approved the contempt measure against Miers and Bolten.
Nevada Test Site Oral History Project
Courtesy of the National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office.
In December 1950, President Harry S. Truman approved the establishment of a continental nuclear proving ground 65 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. Between 1951 and 1992, 1021 nuclear detonations took place at the Nevada Test Site — one hundred explosions were in the atmosphere and 921 were underground. It is estimated that the test site employed 125,000 during the Cold War. The photograph [above] shows the De Baca test, detonated on October 26, 1958. Five days later the U.S. and U.S.S.R. agreed to a nuclear testing moratorium which stayed in effect until the Soviets resumed testing in 1961. In 1992, a second nuclear testing moratorium went into effect. Subcritical tests and other national security programs are ongoing at the 1375-square-mile Nevada Test Site.
it’s only — a year — a-way!
Y’all. We’re a year away from clusterflockstock.
Think carefully now
From questions 2-10 of my application to the Illinois State Police for a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card:
4. Are you addicted to narcotics?
5. Are you mentally retarded?
6. Are you subject to an existing order of protection which prohibits you from possessing a firearm?10. Are you an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?
An answer of yes to any of these questions would have obliged me to provide detailed documentation.
Lesbians
I kind of expected this to happen sooner, to be honest:
Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term “lesbian”.
classroom hothead…or not?
Over here, the subtle implication is that the teacher in the following video handled the situation poorly. I don’t see it that way. Yes he got angry, yes he raised his voice, but the students were being utter shitheads.
With everyone more or less having a camera today via his cellphone, is it really fair to try and make examples of incidents that have been happening (unrecorded) in our schools for decades? Especially when the students are outright trying to incite the teacher?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AwN2nc4zOI[/youtube]
I eagerly await the hivemind’s judgment.
Then and now
“White Noise”
Just so you have a bit of context, Phil Nugent’s father was a Klansman, and proud of it. Mr. Nugent himself, considerably less so. That makes the conclusion of his post, on the recent back-and-forth in the New York Times on whether Reagan’s speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, signaled to certain Southern whites that he was, politically, at least, one of them, all the more compelling:
Just for the record though, there are [. . .] those of us who just made it under the wire, generation-wise, and who if we had been born ten years earlier would have been confronted with the “whites only” and “blacks only” drinking fountains, and been forced to make a choice: whether to go with the flow, and, consoling ourselves with what we knew to be in out hearts, sully ourselves by drinking from the “whites” fountain and nodding our tacit approval of the system, or suck it up, drink from the “blacks” fountain, and likely get ourselves stomped, maybe from somebody black who didn’t appreciate our making a gesture that might end up making his life harder? It’s something I was spared by the hard work of thousands of people whose names I will never know, some of who gave up their lives in the process, and whose work David Brooks regards as less important, in the end, than making sure that nobody ever thinks the worst of some of the politicians who defined themselves as the opponents of those people. Because of them and the accident of timing that was my December 6 birthdate, I’ll never know for sure just how brave I was as a kid. And for that, as we wind up a week devoted to the tradition of giving thanks, I’d like to say to several people who’ll never read this: Thank you.
And for good measure: Mr. Nugent also has a nice post up on Todd Haynes and his new Dylan film . . . and Charles Nelson Reilly
“Dahling I love you/But give me Park Avenue”
If only the Douglases had thought about applying for farm subsidies . . .
A map showing the locations of recipients of farm subsidies. The largest dots=recipients of more than $250,000.
Link (via Matthew Yglesias)
“Rudolph the Rad Knows Reign, Dear”
Jim Henley reviews a Very Serious article appearing in Foreign Affairs:
Because the genre requires [Giuliani] to name-check every part of the world - perhaps to assure the alleged author that it exists, perhaps to reassure the FA reader that the alleged author has heard of the world - you get whole sections of “I see India out there tonight. Keep rocking, India! And lemme give a shoutout to my peeps in Germany!” Those passages read like the fellow who addresses the Mount Pleasant, PA Oddfellows’ Hall every year on “The State of the World Today.”
The rest of it reads like the fellow who addresses the Mount Pleasant, PA Oddfellows’ Hall every year on “The State of the World Today” after being maddened by bees.
(italics in the original)
link (via Kevin Drum)
Lift the Ban
I’m not holding my breath, but
Senate Democrats are seeking a major reversal of energy tax policies that would take billions of dollars in tax breaks and other benefits from the oil industry to underwrite renewable fuels.
another approach to climate change
At a luncheon keynote at the Gas and Oil Exposition in Calgary on Friday, speakers proposed a renewable energy source: Vivoleum. Gas and oil executives had begun participating in a Vivoleum candle-lighting ceremony when the invited speakers were abruptly ejected by conference organizers. I gather that the tribute video tipped them off…
DDT, tobacco, and the parallel universe
The piles of documents released as a result of litigation against Phillip Morris and Exxon are gifts that keep on giving for those of us interested in the process by which the Republican parallel universe has been constructed. Previous research has shown that the core proponents of global warming delusionism including Stephen Milloy, Fred Singer and Fred Seitz got their start as shills for PM, denying the risks of passive smoking. A string of rightwing thinktanks including Cato, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute helped to promote these hacks and the lies they were paid to peddle.
Now it’s turned out that one of the hardiest of parallel universe beliefs, the claim that Rachel Carson and the US ban on DDT were responsible for millions of deaths in the third world, arises from the same source.
Support the Troops
Troops don’t need bigger pay raises, White House budget officials said Wednesday in a statement of administration policy laying out objections to the House version of the 2008 defense authorization bill.
The Bush administration had asked for a 3 percent military raise for Jan. 1, 2008, enough to match last year’s average pay increase in the private sector. The House Armed Services Committee recommends a 3.5 percent pay increase for 2008, and increases in 2009 through 2012 that also are 0.5 percentage point greater than private-sector pay raises.
The slightly bigger military raises are intended to reduce the gap between military and civilian pay that stands at about 3.9 percent today. Under the bill, HR 1585, the pay gap would be reduced to 1.4 percent after the Jan. 1, 2012, pay increase.
Bush budget officials said the administration “strongly opposes” both the 3.5 percent raise for 2008 and the follow-on increases, calling extra pay increases “unnecessary.”
Three guesses (but one will probably suffice . . . )
How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow?