CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS IN MIAMI BEACH. The mayor is outraged, but lots of southern mayors have been outraged at civil rights progress over the years. I’m just glad to see the state of Florida leading the way against the purblind prejudices of petty polities.
Archive for 2012
January 13, 2012
JODI KANTOR’S NEW BOOK ON THE OBAMAS yields more revelations: Book Depicts Cranky Obama On Baghdad Visit: The then-candidate “didn’t want to take pictures with any more soldiers.”
Devastating quote: “Look, I was excited to meet him. I wanted to like him. Let’s just say the scales fell from my eyes after I did. These are people over here who’ve been fighting the war, or working every day for the war effort, and he didn’t want to take fucking pictures with them?”
UPDATE: Oops! My mistake. The quote isn’t from Jodi Kantor’s book but from The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Story of America’s War in Afghanistan. Thanks to Jim Treacher for pointing out the error.
I THINK IT’S KINDA SMALL: The E.J. Dionne Vote in South Carolina.
THIS IS HOW FAR IT’S SUNK: Newt hits Romney for speaking French, despite his own apparent fluency. This is just stupid.
UPDATE: Reader Alex Blinder isn’t buying the whole narrative: “So let me get this straight. When Romney’s firm makes an investment and it turns out badly, he is a ‘vulture capitalist.’ When Obama uses taxpayer money to prop up political cronies and donors, and they fail, he is a benevolent capitalist who is ‘winning the future’.”
It’s kinda like how travel on corporate jets is evil, but travel on taxpayer-funded jets is fine.
MICHAEL TOTTEN COULD USE SOME HELP. I donated.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Time Has Come To Address The Cost of Legal Education. Ya think?
SPENGLER ON BAIN: PRIVATE EQUITY AND CREATIVE DESTRUCTION.
Want to see what America would look like without private equity? Move to Detroit and contemplate the ruins of a city ruined by the placid conformity of auto industry executives. The economic impact of the corporate takeover business can’t be measured by the outcome of takeovers as such. Private equity transformed the way American business thought about the world. If managers did a lousy job, outside investors could raise money (a lot of it from trade union pension funds as well as university endowments) and kick them out.
Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry should be ashamed of themselves for bean-counting Bain Capital’s record on job creation. Any investment firm operating over decades of rapid employment growth will be able to show that the companies it bought added jobs over time. That’s what the academic studies on private equity show in any event, as Jordan Weissmann reports at The Atlantic. More relevant is the alternative. We’ve been there, done that, and don’t want to do it again. Corporate America in the 1950s and 1960s coasted on the postwar monopoly enjoyed by American companies after the destruction of European and Japanese industries. Detroit in the late 1960s had African-American neighborhoods stretching for miles with well-kept single-family homes and manicured lawns; by the end of the 1970s it had turned into a moonscape. The rust belt still hasn’t recovered from the laziness of American capital a generation ago.
Private equity takes money from institutional investors who otherwise would passively invest in public securities, and gives them the chance to exercise direct ownership of companies whose management fails to exploit their potential. It creates competition where no competition existed before.
Read the whole thing.
January 12, 2012
MARK MECKLER: NYC Gun Charges Dropped. Now I Can Speak Out. “Strangely, now that the case against me is over, the authorities refuse to return my firearm. There is no law that allows them to confiscate a weapon in this manner. They simply say ‘no’ when you ask for your weapon back. This is apparently their ‘policy.’ It is done regularly in New York.”
Too bad you can’t file a RICO suit against a government entity.
AT AMAZON, it’s the Automotive Outlet Sale.
NEW TRIALS FOR four convicted in racial torture-slayings.
DEBUNKING GINGRICH AND PERRY: What Really Happened In Gaffney, SC?
DISAPPOINTMENT: Some expected more from team Obama’s fundraising haul. “’Quite frankly, I expected a little more,’ said one Obama donor.”
PISSING ON THE TALIBAN: I’m sure that Greenwald has got his panties in a wad over this, but I have to say I can’t seem to work up any outrage. And I agree with this: “If Karzai delivers more moral lectures, have the president of the United States give a speech about Afghan sexual culture, including the treatment of young boys by older men, and the treatment of women by all Afghan men. And then suggest, ever so sweetly, that Karzais not really in a strong position to lecture us.”
My take, to quote the un-bearded Spock, is that it is easier for civilized men to act like barbarians than for barbarians to act like civilized men, and plenty of events in Afghanistan illustrate this.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Never mind Karzai’s faux indignation or the Afghan penchant for child molestation and violent gender inequality. Help me out here. Has CAIR ever lodged a protest about the Taliban setting off bombs in marketplaces packed with civilians, or jihadis sawing off the heads of captives? The pissing, by comparison, is piddle. Claims by a CAIR representative that this video might endanger US soldiers is laughable considering that the Taliban is actively trying to kill and maim as many Americans and Afghans as it possibly can.”
CAIR is a bunch of pro-terrorist stooges. Everyone knows that. Okay, maybe not “a bunch,” as their membership is minuscule and I’m pretty sure their money comes mostly from abroad.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK, SOME ADVICE FOR ROMNEY:
If I were Romney, I’d highlight one company per week that government regulations have either forced overseas or out of business.
I’d start with Gibson Guitars.
I’d be downright belligerent about the administration working hard to kill jobs.
Second, the Keystone Pipeline project.
We could do one a week and never run out of examples. Force the administration to defend their actions.
Not a bad suggestion.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: WHY ARE SMART PEOPLE USUALLY UGLY? The answer: They’re not.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I will be your girlfriend at facebook for 10 days for $5.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Election Day Tea Party… Because winning the White House isn’t enough. “The Tea Party has shifted from organizing massive rallies to rallying for massive electoral change. The Election Day Tea Party is a nationwide get-out-the-vote effort that debuted in 2010 with resounding success. (Just ask former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.) The goal is to first identify the close races where grass roots efforts can tip the balance and and then guide Tea Party resources to those contests that will ultimately determine control of the Congress.”
ANGELINA JOLIE “disappointed” in Obama.
A LIST OF 2012 PREDICTIONS from the Kurzweil crowd.