SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: The Luckiest Investor In America? “Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who has been vicious in his attacks on opponents of Obamacare, is accused of insider trading in the days before the October 2008 market crash.”
Archive for 2011
November 20, 2011
TRACY QUAN: Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Open Relationships, and Divorce. “As a life-long student of infidelity, I believe we can learn a lot from Demi Moore’s decision to divorce Ashton Kutcher—and the murky spin surrounding their recent troubles. It’s hard to believe a woman as accomplished as Demi would end her six-year relationship over a casual misadventure—given that Demi recently told Fox News “we all live in the gray” rather than the black and white.”
IN THE MAIL: Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Softly, Softly: Beijing Turns Other Cheek — For Now.
The cascade of statements, deployments, agreements and announcements from the United States and its regional associates in the last week has to be one of the most unpleasant shocks for China’s leadership — ever. The US is moving forces to Australia, Australia is selling uranium to India, Japan is stepping up military actions and coordinating more closely with the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea, Myanmar is slipping out of China’s column and seeking to reintegrate itself into the region, Indonesia and the Philippines are deepening military ties with the the US: and all that in just one week. If that wasn’t enough, a critical mass of the region’s countries have agreed to work out a new trade group that does not include China, while the US, to applause, has proposed that China’s territorial disputes with its neighbors be settled at a forum like the East Asia Summit — rather than in the bilateral talks with its smaller, weaker neighbors that China prefers.
Rarely has a great power been so provoked and affronted. Rarely have so many red lines been crossed. Rarely has so much face been lost, so fast. It was a surprise diplomatic attack, aimed at reversing a decade of chit chat about American decline and disinterest in Asia, aimed also at nipping the myth of “China’s inexorable rise” in the bud.
The timing turned out to be brilliant. China is in the midst of a leadership transition, when it is harder for important decisions to be taken quickly. The economy is looking shaky, with house prices falling across much of the country. The diplomatic blitzkrieg moved so fast and on so many fronts, with the strokes falling so hard and in such rapid succession, that China was unable to develop an organized and coherent response. And because Wen Jiabao’s appearance at the East Asia Summit, planned long before China had any inkling of the firestorm about to be unleashed, could not be canceled or changed, premier Wen Jiabao was trapped: he had to respond in public to all this while China was off balance and before the consultation, reflection and discussion that might have created an effective response.
Wow. Some actual smart diplomacy, it appears. But beware: “Longer term, the conviction in the military and among hard liners in the civilian establishment that the US is China’s enemy and seeks to block China’s natural rise will not only become more entrenched and more powerful; it will have consequences. Very experienced and well informed foreign diplomats and observers already warn that the military is in many respects becoming independent of political authorities and some believe that like the Japanese military in the 1930s, China’s military or factions within it could begin to take steps on critical issues that the political authorities could not reverse. Islands could be occupied, flags raised and shots fired.”
ANN ALTHOUSE has photos and video of the Recall Walker rally in Wisconsin yesterday. The unions haven’t given up.
UPDATE: Russ Feingold: Our Opponents Are Like Hitler. Remember when he was supposed to be some sort of hero of decency or something? Now he sounds increasingly like Richard Trumka.
Plus this: “Our recall procedure requires an election with an opposition candidate, and what’s the point of going through the collection of all these signatures unless the governor can be ousted? Who will oppose Scott Walker? The only candidate with a real chance, it seems, is Russ Feingold, but Russ says he’s not running. That’s what he’s saying now, before the signatures are collected. I happen to believe that if there is a recall election, Feingold will run. But that is a subject for another post.”
CHANGE SAME: Obama’s ’08 rhetoric backfires. “Barack Obama’s crusade against political apathy, which helped drive voters to the polls in 2008, is backfiring four years later as Americans grow increasingly frustrated with the sputtering economy and gridlock in Washington.. . . A growing number of Obama’s 2008 supporters now feel the president has failed them, analysts said. Americans’ trust in the political system has never been lower and more voters than ever feel their voices aren’t being heard in Washington. When the president once again admonished a predominantly black audience to ‘put on [their] marching shoes’ in September, members of the Congressional Black Caucus reacted angrily.”
In general, I find this sort of appeal to the Establishment depressing, but especially in this case. If the Occupy movement, like Fairey, sees Obama as a “potential ally” then what does it say about the way that the president has in fact governed? Like Sen. John McCain, Candidate Obama cast a vote in favor of bailing out the big banks and financial institutions while running for president. He then upped the ante and has shown absolutely zero ability to conjure up an economic recovery plan that does not rely on fixes that were rusted-out by the time Richard Nixon took that final flight to San Clemente back in the 1970s.
Obama’s record on civil liberties and foreign interventions is indistinguishable from George W. Bush’s, whose exit calendar from Iraq he is fulfilling. Except that Obama has managed to lower the bar when it comes to killing American citizens and committing American resources without even the fig leaf of congressional approval. Who wants to support the Solyndra-style crony capitalism, or bizarre gun-running operations such as Fast and Furious? What part of record numbers of deportations of poor Mexicans and raids of legal-under-state-law medical marijuana dispensaries in California does Fairey and Occupants not understand? . . . But for god’s sake, who the hell is Fairey kidding? Obama as Guy Fawkes, a minority Catholic plotting to blow up the government who is only remembered in contemporary America because of a graphic novel and rotten movie that was a stupid anti-Thatcher allegory? Obama isn’t the solution, in part or in whole. Every bit as much as George W. Bush, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, you name it, he’s the problem.
All of it.
ROGER KIMBALL: How To Reform Primary Education.
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#OCCUPYFAIL: OWS Organizers Occupying Luxury Hotels. “Tents are not for me.”
It really is getting more and more like Animal Farm all the time, isn’t it?
AT OAK RIDGE, three of the world’s top 20 supercomputers.
Also, Big Ed’s Pizza.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: U.S.C. Shelves Plans for Tax LLM Program.
Launching master of law programs in tax seemed like a great idea when employers were confident that there would be a demand for the credential. But the legal market has changed dramatically since then, and the University of Southern California Gould School of Law is backing off a plan to add a tax LL.M. program.
“We started talking about it when things were going great in the legal market,” said Dean Robert Rasmussen. “Quite frankly, the demand was drying up and people coming out of the tax LL.M. program would not have had the same prospects as students coming out with a J.D. from USC. The recession hit, and we just didn’t feel comfortable saying, ‘Please give us $50,000 and a year of your life,’ unless we could improve their job prospects.”
Is this kind of thinking the wave of the future?
CHANGE: FDA Revokes Approval Of Avastin For Breast Cancer. “The government delivered a blow to some desperate patients Friday as it ruled the blockbuster drug Avastin should no longer be used to treat advanced breast cancer. Avastin is hailed for treating colon cancer and certain other malignancies. But the Food and Drug Administration said it appeared to be a false hope for breast cancer: Studies haven’t found that it helps those patients live longer or brings enough other benefit to outweigh its dangerous side effects.” Were costs a factor here?
THE HILL: Supercommittee slows to a standstill as clock ticks down. “A Saturday with minimal activity offered little hope that the congressional deficit supercommittee would be able to stave off an embarrassing failure to accomplish its assigned task. The 12-member panel has just five days to approve at least $1.2 trillion in budget savings, but the flurry of meetings and ‘shuttle diplomacy’ among members of the committee slowed to a near-stop on Saturday. No face-to-face meetings were held, aides in both parties said, while Republican members convened a single conference call in the morning.”
It’s not too late for my across-the-board cuts proposal. 5% year-on-year real cuts to start. Repeat until budget is balanced.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Yale Law Profs Akhil Amar & Ian Ayres: Law Schools Should Pay Students to Quit.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “Student loans are more than fire traps for millions of American families. Trust me, they’re the next subprime mortgage crisis.”
INDOCTRINATION? What The Occupiers Believe, And Why They Believe It. “If the Occupiers are in any sense Marxist, then, they have absorbed their Marxism by some mysterious process of cultural osmosis, because it is impossible to imagine any of those nitwits taking time to work their way through ‘Imperialism’ or ‘What Is to Be Done?’ . . . To explain why the Bolshevik experiment failed so spectacularly would require that students be taught the errors of socialism, which would necessarily require an explanation of the superiority of the market economy to the socialist planned economy. And the left-wing orientation of today’s academic establishment — ‘Down With Capitalist Education!’ to quote a sign in a protest today by Cal State university faculty — pretty much prohibits any such explanation.”
#OCCUPYFAIL: Boston Herald: Occupiers Must Go.
Two months into the “Occupation,” the Greenway Conservancy Board has decided it is as fed up with the squatters on its land as most of the people who would like to once again enjoy the property their tax dollars have paid for.
Board Chair Georgia Murray outlined the group’s concerns in a Nov. 8 letter to Mayor Tom Menino — a letter not made public until the Occupiers took their case to court this week.
Murray wrote, “Although we have not sought until now to have the Boston Police Department enforce our rules with regard to Occupy Boston, we have always taken the position that the current use of Dewey Square Park is in violation of our rules.” Those rules prohibit — not surprisingly — sleeping in the park overnight and require permits for tents. All of that seems to have been lost on the Conservancy’s executive director, Nancy Brennan, who insisted earlier on making nice with the Occupiers, asking merely that they respect certain boundaries.
Murray on the other hand gave the mayor a real piece of the board’s mind, citing incidents of drug dealing, deteriorating sanitary conditions, a loss of income to vendors and to the farmer’s market.
Yeah, but on the other hand Occupy has the protection of the Democratic machine.
November 19, 2011
I FIND BRIAN LEITER’S TRAFFIC-JEALOUSY PATHETIC, but somehow pleasing.
UPDATE: Reader Kevin Kneupper writes: “Did this guy seriously name you ‘InstaIgnorance’ because you told people there wouldn’t really be a draft if Bush was reelected?”
Yeah, pretty much. But although the name’s coinage was of false provenance, he’s nonetheless sticking with the name he invented. I could make a snarky crack about how philosophers work, but that would be too easy. Still, as I’ve noted before, my upbringing left me with no awe of that profession. And certainly Leiter has never done anything to change my mind.
AT AMAZON, top 100 gift ideas.
#EUFAIL: Lenders Flee Debt Of European Nations And Banks.
UPDATE: Reader Allan Alexander writes: “There are many who are quietly applauding the downfall of the European socialist model. But there are outcomes other than a return to more limited styles of government. Specifically, I would say the risk of widespread totalitarian transformation is the highest it has been since the days of Marx and Lenin. It makes the Zombie Apocalypse look more and more like the preferred outcome….” I have been worried about Europe since before I started this blog, and that has been my chief worry. Fascism, remember, is a zombie that arises from the ashes of failed liberalism.
EUGENE VOLOKH: Court Grants Temporary Restraining Order Against Possible Removal of Occupy Boston Encampment. “The First Amendment analysis in the decision is quite thin: The court concludes that the plaintiffs have the requisite likelihood of success on their First Amendment claim because their encampment is symbolic expression. But the question isn’t just whether the encampment is presumptively protected by the First Amendment — it’s whether there are valid content-neutral city ordinances or state laws that permissibly restrict such camping.” It’s a Democratic constituency group, so they get the benefit of the doubt.
A FISH, A BARREL, A SMOKING GUN: Newt Gingrich Offers Advice to #OWS Goons: “Go Get a Job Right After You Take a Bath.” It’s an easy line, but it works.
MORE ON THE LIGHTSQUARED SCANDAL: Emails: Dem lobbyist for LightSquared sought meeting at White House.
GEORGE W. BUSH ANNOUNCES the “Miss Me Tour.”