IT'S PRETTY SAD...:

Patrick's political pit (Scot Lehigh, April 1, 2009, Boston Globe)

THE First Rule of Holes goes this way: When you're in one, stop digging.

Yesterday, Governor Patrick finally put his shovel down.

He and state Senator Marian Walsh met the press outside his office, where Walsh announced that she wouldn't take the job as assistant executive director at the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority (HEFA).

Her withdrawal, the second exercise in damage control in recent days over the controversial, administration-engineered appointment, was done with the usual thank-yous and regrets and attempts at face-saving.

Still, the political pit Patrick dug for himself on this one reaches halfway to China.

Certainly this episode demolishes the notion that the governor has finally acquired a working political antenna. If this farce had a title, it would be: The Gang That Couldn't Keep Its Story Straight.

SO YOU HAVE IT BACKWARDS...:

Men can 'laugh women into bed' with GSOH, say psychologists (Kate Devlin, 31 Mar 2009, Daily Telegraph)

Men really can laugh women into bed, because a sense of humour makes them seem more intelligent, psychologists have found.

A new study shows that women think that funny men are smarter and more likely to be honest than more dour counterparts.

HAVING TAKEN THE MEASURE OF THE UNICORN RIDER.... (via Mike Daley):

Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will: The message from Israel's new prime minister is stark: if the Obama administration doesn't prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, Israel may be forced to attack. (Jeffrey Goldberg, 3/31/09, Atlantic Monthly)

In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

MARKETS REQUIRE ACCURATE DATA...:

My Manhattan Project: How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street. (Michael Osinski, Mar 29, 2009, New York Magazine)

I wrote the software that turned mortgages into bonds.

Because of the news, you probably know more about this than you ever wanted to. The packaging of heterogeneous home mortgages into uniform securities that can be accurately priced and exchanged has been singled out by many critics as one of the root causes of the mess we’re in. I don’t completely disagree. But in my view, and of course I’m inescapably biased, there’s nothing inherently flawed about securitization. Done correctly and conservatively, it increases the efficiency with which banks can loan money and tailor risks to the needs of investors. Once upon a time, this seemed like a very good idea, and it might well again, provided banks don’t resume writing mortgages to people who can’t afford them. Here’s one thing that’s definitely true: The software proved to be more sophisticated than the people who used it, and that has caused the whole world a lot of problems.

The first collateralized mortgage obligation, or CMO, was created in 1983 by First Boston and Salomon Brothers, but it would be years before computer technology advanced sufficiently to allow the practice to become widespread. Massive databases were required to track every mortgage in the country. You needed models to create the intricate network of bonds based on the homeowners’ payments, models to predict prepayment rates, and models to predict defaults. You needed the Internet to sail these bonds back and forth across the world, massaging their content to fit an investor’s needs at a moment’s notice. Add to all this the complacency, greed, entitlement, and callous stupidity that characterized banks in post-2001 America, and you have a recipe for disaster. [...]

At Lehman, I began a thirteen-year effort to streamline the process of securitizing home mortgages, as well as other forms of debt. That was 1988, around the time of the savings-and-loan crisis. Remember that one? Lenders had gone nuts with, what else, real estate, and as they went bust, the government was stepping into the breach. Mortgage securitization was the answer. Retail lenders could make the loan, take a fee, then sell the mortgage to an investment bank. The bank, after bundling thousands of the mortgages together, could, through a little software magic, issue bonds based on that bundle of loans. Now, an investor does not want a single person’s mortgage, much the same as you may not want to underwrite your sibling’s purchase of an overpriced McMansion. But when 1,000 similar loans are combined, and the U.S. government, through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, absorbs the default risk, you now have a nifty little AAA-rated piece of paper paying one or two points above Treasury bills. And if the value of the loans is in excess of the limit set by the government agencies, your savvy friends on Wall Street can create a class of subordinated bonds that will absorb all the defaults in the deal. With friends like these … [...]

CMOs became more complicated, my job was to make everything seem simple—to, in effect, mask the complexity that would’ve made the bonds difficult to trade. We invented a language for mortgage-backed bonds. I called it BondTalk. [...]

Up until that point, almost all my securitization work had involved prime mortgages—those mortgages given to people who had an extremely high probability of paying them back. When a client wanted me to enhance my software to include “subprime” debt, well, that was something new, and I have to admit, I was kind of excited. This would greatly enlarge my universe of clients, because the subprime market was then split among many smaller players, each of whom needed my software.

I quickly learned how fishy this world could be. A client I knew who specialized in auto loans invited me up to his desk to show me how to structure subprime debt. Eager to please, I promised I could enhance my software to model his deals in less than a month. But when I glanced at the takeout in the deal, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Normally, in a prime-mortgage deal, an investment bank makes only a tiny margin. But this deal had two whole percentage points of juice! Looking at the underlying loans, I was shocked.

“Who’s paying 16 percent for a car loan?” I asked. The current loan rate was then around 8 percent.

“Oh, people who have defaulted on loans in the past. That’s why they’re called subprime,” he informed me. I had known this guy off and on for years. He was an intelligent, articulate, pleasant fellow. He and his wife came to my house for dinner. He had the comfortable manner of someone who had been to good schools—he was not one of the “dudes” trying to jam bonds into a Palm Beach widow’s account. (Those guys were also my clients.)

“But if they defaulted on loans at 8, how can they ever pay back a loan at 16 percent?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” he confided. “As long as they pay for a while. With all that excess spread, we can make a ton. If they pay for three years, they will cure their credit and re-fi at a lower rate.”

That never happened.

CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING:

Why the Democrats Can't Govern: Look who's killing Obama's agenda now. (Jonathan Chait, 4/15/09, The New Republic)

The last Democrat who held the White House, Bill Clinton, saw the core of his domestic agenda come to ruin, his political support collapse, and his failure spawn a massive Republican resurgence that made progressive reform impossible for a decade to come. The Democrat who last held the White House before that, Jimmy Carter, saw the exact same thing happen to him.

At this early date, nobody can know whether or not Barack Obama will escape this fate. But the contours of failure are now clearly visible. In Obama's case, as with his predecessors, the prospective culprit is the same: Democrats in Congress, and especially the Senate. At a time when the country desperately needs a coherent response to the array of challenges it faces, the congressional arm of the Democratic Party remains mired in fecklessness, parochialism, and privilege. Obama has made mistakes, as did his predecessors. Yet the constant recurrence of legislative squabbling and drift suggests a deeper problem than any characterological or tactical failures by these presidents: a congressional party that is congenitally unable to govern.

George W. Bush came to office having lost the popular vote, with only 50 Republicans in the Senate. After his disputed election, pundits insisted Bush would have to scale back his proposed massive tax cuts for the rich. Instead, Bush managed to enact several rounds of tax cuts that substantially exceeded those in his campaign platform, along with two war resolutions, a Medicare prescription drug benefit designed to maximize profits for the health care industry, energy legislation, education reform, and sundry other items. Whatever the substantive merits of this agenda, its passage represented an impressive feat of political leverage, accomplished through near-total partisan discipline.

DEPARTMENT OF SUBLIME HEADLINES:

Anarchists Organize to Spread the Word (JENNIFER MARTINEZ, 3/31/09, WSJ)

OOPS, THEY DID IT AGAIN...:

Sebelius tax problems surface (AP, 3/31/09)

Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius has corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7,000 in back taxes after finding “unintentional errors” — the latest tax troubles for an Obama administration nominee.

The Kansas governor explained the changes to senators in a letter dated today that was obtained by The Associated Press.

EVEN JOE KLEIN THINKS W MADE US SAFER:

Terror's Next Wave? (Joe Klein, 3/31.09, TIME: The Swamp)

The Mumbai effort required no local infrastructure--no sleeper cells in India, nothing more than a few boats to ferry the attackers into Mumbai harbor, plus communications equipment and smalls arms. Similarly, and unlike the elaborate planning that preceded 9/11, Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists could sneak across the porous Mexican or Canadian borders and hit a shopping mall, a government building, a sports event, a school anywhere in the United States. The effect of such an attack--the immediate call to beef up security everywhere--would be staggering.

Our enemies may have increased motivation now that President Obama has focused on the Taliban safe havens in Northwest Pakistan, and has also decided to put increased pressure on Pakistan--especially its Army and intelligence services--to stop aiding the terrorists. Obama's low-key reasonableness has the extremists on the defensive and more likely to try to change the conversation with new attacks.

CRANK UP THE FAUX OUTRAGE MACHINE:

Guantanamo a 'lot of fun': Miss Universe (Pascal Fletcher, 3/31/09, Reuters)

A "relaxing, calm, beautiful place" may not be everyone's description of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States holds about 240 prisoners in a detention center that has drawn condemnation from around the world.

But this was the opinion of reigning Miss Universe Dayana Mendoza of Venezuela, who visited the U.S. naval facility in eastern Cuba this month on a trip organized by the United Service Organizations (USO) which supports U.S. troops. [...]

"It was a loooot of fun!," Mendoza wrote, describing how she and Stewart met U.S. military personnel and took rides around the camp, which is encircled by a barbed-wire fenced, minefields and watchtowers. She said they also visited a bar on the base and the "unbelievable" beach there.

"We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the(y) recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting," she wrote.

"I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful," she added.

THE RIGHT BLAMES "THEM," THE LEFT BLAMES YOU:

No, the economic crisis is not good for America: When even Time hopes the downturn will teach ‘childish, irresponsible, fat’ Americans a lesson, it’s clear recession porn has gone mainstream. (Sean Collins, 3/31/09, Spiked)

Time magazine’s current cover story is headlined ‘The End of Excess: Is This Crisis Good for America?’, and its author, the novelist and commentator Kurt Andersen, answers in the affirmative. [...]

Andersen blames people for taking on excessive mortgage and consumer debt; in other words, for living beyond their means. In doing so, he ignores systemic factors, such as government promotion of home ownership, the Federal Reserve’s lowering of interest rates, and the general expansion of credit facilities. Moreover, it is not a sin for people to want to take a bet on their own future success (especially when offered credit at very low interest rates): it is a personal financial judgment call. People should have the freedom to make their own decisions, including those that prove to be unwise ones.

But Andersen is not content to state that Americans took on too much personal debt; he has to add insults. He dredges up the stereotype of the fat American (‘we started living large literally as well as figuratively’), and he says we all acted like stupid, naive children (‘we all clapped our hands and believed in fairies’). We were warned by popular culture, but did not listen: ‘For 20 years we’ve had Homer Simpson’s spot-on caricature of the quintessential American: childish, irresponsible, wilfully oblivious, fat and happy. And more recently we winced at the ultra-Homerized former earthlings of Wall-E.’ It is here that Andersen reveals his bigoted prejudices against working-class Americans, and where I have to fight to control my urge to swear.

Andersen goes on. He believes that the Great Recession is a good thing, because ‘we will be chastened and begin behaving more wisely’. We will rediscover the ‘common good’. But to do so, we must go through ‘addiction recovery’, because ‘we are like substance abusers coming off a long bender’. He fully embraces the therapeutic outlook, but being a knowing, hip guy, he presents ‘a streamlined, secularised Three-Step Program for America’:

* ‘Admit that we are powerless over addiction to easy money and cheap fossil fuel and living large; [and] that our lives had become unmanageable’;
* ‘Believe that we can, individually and collectively, restore ourselves to sanity and normal living’;
* ‘Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and be entirely ready to remove our defects of character.’

So, after complaining that Americans are ‘childish’, Andersen treats us like children. His calls for us to reform are sickeningly patronising. He goes to great lengths to stress that he is ‘secular’ and ‘reality-based’, but he is as sanctimonious as any preacher telling us to repent.

In 1978, Susan Sontag published Illness as Metaphor, in which she criticised the notion that one’s character causes disease. Today, people like Andersen blame character for the economic crisis, a kind of Recession as Moral Fable. In Andersen’s world, there are no larger economic forces in play, no credit derivatives, no state intervention. Just immoral individuals who are getting what they deserve, and who need to reform.

NOT A PARLIAMENT:

Ben Nelson: a help or a hurdle? (LISA LERER, 3/30/09, Politico)

For organized labor, the most powerful politician in America right now isn’t President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden or even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Instead, it might just be the man in the middle: Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).

In a Senate where Democrats are just two votes shy of a filibuster-proof margin, the support of the party’s most conservative senator can pave the way to legislative success — or a long, slow legislative death.

The plain-spoken Nebraskan sees his role in the Senate as one of a mediator trying to bridge partisan divides. But in private conversations, labor leaders are more likely to view him as a hurdle.

WORDS WITHOUT MUSIC:

Is She Selling the Wrong Plan? (Reza Aslan, 3/31/09, Daily Beast)

President Barack Obama finally unveiled his administration’s Afghanistan strategy last week and in some ways the new plan looks a lot like the old plan: vigorously pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban militants holed up in the forbidding mountains and valleys of the Northwest Frontier Province, build up Afghanistan’s police and security forces, invest heavily in reconstruction projects, secure Kabul and help the weak federal government to extend its reach to rural areas, and reach out to Afghanistan’s neighbors to help secure and stabilize the country. [...]

Beyond all this, however, there is a glaring difference in emphasis, if not in policy, between Bush’s and Obama’s conception of “victory” in Afghanistan. This president appears to have no interest whatsoever in anything akin to “democracy promotion.” His outline for the war effort makes no mention of nation-building and contains no serious commitment to bolstering the country’s lagging democratic institutions. Indeed, Obama barely mentioned the word democracy when presenting his new strategy to the press.

MORE:
Jimmy Carter's Spirit of Notre Dame (Jeffrey Lord, 3.31.09, American Spectator)

So what did Carter say at Notre Dame, where he was invited by the university's president, the Reverend Theodore Hesburgh? What signal did he send that wound up getting him, the country and the entire world in such trouble over the next four years and well beyond that? More to the point, how does it compare with the direction already being signaled by President Obama as he approaches his own already controversial appearance at Notre Dame?

The most notable single sentence in Carter's Notre Dame speech was this one:

We are now free of that inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in our fear.

Carter went on to insist that it was time to govern with a "wider framework of international cooperation" because "the world today is in the midst of the most profound and rapid transformation in its entire history."

He also added this about the American approach to the Soviet Union in the Carter era: "Our goal is to be fair to both sides, to produce reciprocal stability, parity, and security." In other words, in Carter's view, a view widely held among leftward-leaning elites, both the United States and the Soviet Union had genuinely competing claims. They were morally equal to each other.

The speech was the lead story in the news the next day. By the time Carter left the White House after four years of promoting moral equivalence, the world was in murderous chaos. The unintended consequences of Carter's policies as enunciated at Notre Dame were both considerable and long lasting. Some would argue they are reverberating right up until today. [...]

If this approach of Carter's sounds vaguely familiar these days, it should. Carter's words at Notre Dame bear a striking resemblance to the substance if not the actual words of President Obama.

THE GIPPER'S WHOPPER:

Car Dealer in Chief (DAVID BROOKS, 3/31/09, NY Times)

Some companies are in the steel business, some are in the cookie business, but General Motors is in the restructuring business. For 30 years, G.M. has been restructuring itself toward long-term viability.

For all these years, G.M.’s market share has endured a long, steady slide. But this has not stopped the waves of restructuring. The PowerPoints have flowed, and always there has been the promise that with just one more cost-cutting push, sustainability nirvana will be at hand.

There are many experts who think that the whole restructuring strategy is misbegotten. These experts think that costs are not the real problem. The real problem is the product. The cars are not good enough. The management is insular. The reputation is fatally damaged.

But if you are in the restructuring business, you can’t let these stray thoughts get in the way of your restructuring. After all, restructuring is your life. Restructuring is forever. Restructuring is like what dieting is for many of us: You think about it every day. You believe it’s about to work. Nothing really changes.

THE NEOCONS' GREATEST CONTRIBUTION:

Contagious Crime: The source: “The Spreading of Disorder” by Kees Keizer, Siegwart Lindenberg, and Linda Steg, in Sciencexpress, Nov. 20, ­2008. (Wilson Quarterly)

Kees Keizer, Siegwart Lindenberg, and Linda Steg of the social science faculty at the University of Groningen attached annoying “Happy Holidays” flyers to the handlebars of bicycles parked in an alley with a big “No Littering” sign on the wall. No trash can was provided. When the alley walls were pristine, 67 percent of the bicyclists took the flyer with them to dispose of properly. When the same area was scribbled with graffiti, only 31 percent did.

The researchers conducted an experiment with an envelope, allowing it to protrude out of a mailbox with a five-euro bill visible through the clear window showing the address. When the mailbox was free of graffiti, 13 percent of passersby pocketed the money. When it was covered with graffiti, 27 percent did so. In another experiment, the research­ers partially blocked the en­trance to a parking lot with a temporary fence. Customers were ordered by the parking lot’s owner not to lock their bikes to the fence and to walk about 220 yards to an alternate entrance. When four nearby bikes were clearly not locked to the fence, 73 percent of the people walked the extra distance; when the bikes were locked to the fence, in violation of the posted order, only 18 percent ­did.

MORE:
Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety (George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, March 1982, Atlantic Monthly)

[A]t the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.)

Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, reported in 1969 on some experiments testing the broken-window theory. He arranged to have an automobile without license plates parked with its hood up on a street in the Bronx and a comparable automobile on a street in Palo Alto, California. The car in the Bronx was attacked by "vandals" within ten minutes of its "abandonment." The first to arrive were a family—father, mother, and young son—who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty-four hours, virtually everything of value had been removed. Then random destruction began—windows were smashed, parts torn off, upholstery ripped. Children began to use the car as a playground. Most of the adult "vandals" were well-dressed, apparently clean-cut whites. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for more than a week. Then Zimbardo smashed part of it with a sledgehammer. Soon, passersby were joining in. Within a few hours, the car had been turned upside down and utterly destroyed. Again, the "vandals" appeared to be primarily respectable whites.

Untended property becomes fair game for people out for fun or plunder and even for people who ordinarily would not dream of doing such things and who probably consider themselves law-abiding. Because of the nature of community life in the Bronx—its anonymity, the frequency with which cars are abandoned and things are stolen or broken, the past experience of "no one caring"—vandalism begins much more quickly than it does in staid Palo Alto, where people have come to believe that private possessions are cared for, and that mischievous behavior is costly. But vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers—the sense of mutual regard and the obligations of civility—are lowered by actions that seem to signal that "no one cares."

We suggest that "untended" behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other's children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.

At this point it is not inevitable that serious crime will flourish or violent attacks on strangers will occur. But many residents will think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify their behavior accordingly. They will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips, and hurried steps. "Don't get involved." For some residents, this growing atomization will matter little, because the neighborhood is not their "home" but "the place where they live." Their interests are elsewhere; they are cosmopolitans. But it will matter greatly to other people, whose lives derive meaning and satisfaction from local attachments rather than worldly involvement; for them, the neighborhood will cease to exist except for a few reliable friends whom they arrange to meet.

Such an area is vulnerable to criminal invasion. Though it is not inevitable, it is more likely that here, rather than in places where people are confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls, drugs will change hands, prostitutes will solicit, and cars will be stripped. That the drunks will be robbed by boys who do it as a lark, and the prostitutes' customers will be robbed by men who do it purposefully and perhaps violently. That muggings will occur.

DEAD MAN WALKING:

Party leaders stressed about Dodd (JOSH KRAUSHAAR, 3/31/09, Politico)

Interviews with a dozen Democratic state legislators, party officials and operatives in Connecticut indicate there is deep concern back home over whether the incendiary American International Group bonuses issue has delivered a mortal blow to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the five-term senator already facing tough scrutiny over his role as Senate Banking Committee chairman and his personal financial dealings.

Many of them describe a palpable fury among the party rank and file — anger that’s led some to wonder if the party would be better served with a different Democratic nominee in 2010— though they note that, at the moment, Dodd still retains the loyalty of Democratic activists and the political class.

CAPITALISM IS USELESS WITHOUT HUMAN CAPITALISM:

The Sickening State: The source: “The Health Crisis in Russia’s Ranks” by Murray Feshbach, in Current History, Oct. ­2008. (Wilson Quarterly)

The cause of much of Russia’s problem is demographics. Births fell by 50 percent between 1987 and 1999, and Feshbach predicts that this decline will produce an “echo” in a depressed birthrate starting in 2012 and continuing for decades to come. The most optimistic national estimates show Russia’s population falling to 136 million in 2020, down from 141 million today. Life expectancy in Russia is among the lowest in the developed world: for men, officially 61 years; for wom­en, between 72 and 73 years. In the Netherlands, by contrast, men and women typically live to be 77 and 82, ­respectively.

“Drugs and alcohol use, crime, illiteracy, and health ­problems—­in­cluding HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, psychological disturb­ances, and ailments related to ­muscular-­skeletal structures and central nervous ­systems—­are increasing marked­ly,” Feshbach reports.

An unusual child health census in 2002 showed that prenatal problems were rampant within the generation now approaching the prime conscript ages of 18 to 27. Only 30 percent of children are born healthy, Russian statistics show, with half lacking sufficient iodine or calcium during gestation—deficiencies that can lead to mental retardation and weak bones. Tuberculosis nearly quadrupled in the 15-to-17-­year-­old age group between 1989 and 2002. Mental disorders almost doubled in the decade be­fore 2002 among the same co­hort, and alcoholism went up by nearly a third in two years. Even cases of cancer and cerebral palsy increased ­dramatically.

Life expectancy, birth and death rates, labor productivity, and reproductive and child health re­flect the health status of the population, and that status is not good. For some groups within Russia, it is distinctly worsening, a situation the government was late to recognize. Russia, Feshbach concludes, has “a huge military arsenal and major ambitions—but very low human potential to realize these ambitions.”

BOY, THIS JUST ISN'T THE UR'S YEAR:

Vatican raps Obama medieval mystic (ANSA, 3/27/09)

The Vatican on Friday rapped the teachings of a medieval Christian mystic cited three times by Barack Obama as someone who wanted a better world.

''Few of those who expound on Gioacchino da Fiore (Joachim of Fiore, 1130-1202 AD) on the Internet know, or go to the trouble of finding out, what this character really said,'' said Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Pontifical Household.

According to the most ''vogueish'' interpretations, Cantalmessa said, the utopian mystic proposed a new liberal and spiritual Church able to move beyond dogmas and hierarchies.

This was a ''false and heretical'' view, Cantalamessa said, because believers must be guided not only by the spirit but also by the laws of the Church.

WHILE THE PALIN-HATERS GET STUCK WITH ROSEANNE BARR:

Angie Harmon: I'm Not Racist Because I Disagree With Obama (Hollie McKay, 3/30/09, Fox News)

Angie Harmon is not afraid to come out and say she doesn’t like how President Obama is handling the job — but she’s sick of having to defend herself from being deemed a racist.

"Here's my problem with this, I'm just going to come out and say it. If I have anything to say against Obama it's not because I'm a racist, it's because I don't like what he's doing as President and anybody should be able to feel that way, but what I find now is that if you say anything against him you're called a racist," Harmon told Tarts at Thursday’s Los Angeles launch of the new eyelash-growing formula, Latisse. "But it has nothing to do with it, I don’t care what color he is. I’m just not crazy about what he's doing ..." [...]

And in spite of the scornful opinions most of her Tinseltown counterparts have shared on Gov. Sarah Palin, Harmon remains a true fan.

DEPORT THE NATIVES AND THEN BUILD THE WALL:

Minding your business: Immigrants embracing entrepreneurship (Ann Meyer, 3/30/09, Chicago Tribune)

Many educated immigrants provide the United States with a competitive advantage and ultimately create jobs when they start businesses, said Vivek Wadhwa, a engineering professor at Duke University and researcher for the Kauffman Foundation

Immigrant-founded technology and engineering companies employed 450,000 workers in the U.S. and generated $52 billion in revenue in 2006, according to a Kauffman study released this month.

And immigrants are more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, which measures the rate of business creation in the U.S. About 46 per 10,000 immigrants started businesses in 2007, up from 37 per 10,000 the prior year, while the rate among all adults was 30 per 10,000 in 2007, the index found.

EXACTLY HOW WAS OUR ELECTING AN UNSERIOUS LEADER...:

Europe spurns the beloved Obama (Gideon Rachman, March 30 2009, Financial Times)

Europeans have long worshipped Barack Obama from afar. Now the beloved one is paying his first visit as US president to the old continent. Yet there is every indication that Europe’s leaders are about to stiff him.

Mr Obama is on a rapid-fire tour that will take him from the Group of 20 meeting in London to a Nato summit in Strasbourg, then on to a US-European Union meeting in Prague and, finally, a state visit in Turkey. But he will be lucky to return from Europe with much more than commemorative photos and some presents for the kids. (“I went to the G20 summit in London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”)

If you look at Mr Obama’s top priorities, you get a sense of just how little the Europeans are prepared to give him. More help in Afghanistan? Most Europeans will do the bare minimum. A co-ordinated fiscal stimulus? Sorry, Europe is out of cash as well as troops.

WHO KNEW THAT THE TOWN WAS POTEMKIN?:

A FRIENDLY CROWD: President's Audience Heavy on Supporters (Washington Post, 3/28/09)

While any member of the public with an Internet connection could submit a question for the event, the five identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room shared commonalities. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union; a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama in the Hispanic community during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama's 2008 campaign.

One of the questioners, Sergio Salmeron, became involved with the Obama campaign early in 2008, writing on his blog: "We need to mobilize towards changing the trend of '2 to 1 Latinos favoring Hillary over Barack.' Let's make a resolute commitment."

He was a volunteer canvasser for the Obama campaign, he told The Washington Post, and did voter registration work and translated materials for the campaign. A partner at Global Paradigm Strategies, Salmeron is a volunteer "member of the Democratic National Committee" and continues to be active with the Obama campaign's successor, Organizing for America, which is how he got the White House invitation, he said.

JUST HYGIENE:

Handwashing 'more effective at controlling MRSA than isolating patients' (Kate Devlin, 30 Mar 2009, Daily Telegraph)

A new study of intensive care units suggests that ensuring that staff keep their hands clean could be the best way to halt MRSA.

WHY DIDN'T HITCHCOCK THINK OF THAT?:

Twins Suspected in Spectacular Jewelry Heist Set Free: Saved by their indistinguishable DNA, identical twins suspected in a massive jewelry heist have been set free. Neither could be exclusively linked to the DNA evidence. (Der Spiegel, 3/19/09)

German police say at least one of the identical twin brothers Hassan and Abbas O. may have perpetrated a recent multimillion euro jewelry heist in Berlin. But because of their indistinguishable DNA, neither can be individually linked to the crime. Both were set free on Wednesday.

In the early morning hours of February 25, three masked men broke into Germany's famous luxury department store Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe). Video cameras show how they climbed into the store's grand main hall, broke open cabinets and display cases and made off with an estimated €5 million worth of jewelry and watches.

When police found traces of DNA on a glove left at the scene of the crime, it seemed that the criminals responsible for Germany's most spectacular heist in years would be caught. But the DNA led to not one but two suspects -- 27-year-old identical, or monozygotic, twins with near-identical DNA.

German law stipulates that each criminal must be individually proven guilty. The problem in the case of the O. brothers is that their twin DNA is so similar that neither can be exclusively linked to the evidence using current methods of DNA analysis. So even though both have criminal records and may have committed the heist together, Hassan and Abbas O. have been set free.

TODAY'S NEW VOCABULARY WORD (via The Wife)

carseat driver (n.) : someone who keeps correcting your driving despite not even being old enough to drive himself.

IF?:

Critics claim John Murtha is capitalizing on a corrupt system, but he's not apologizing (Dennis B. Roddy, 3/29/09, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

No one has tallied the amount Mr. Murtha has steered into his district, which sprawls well beyond the Conemaugh Valley and reaches the West Virginia border. Conservative estimates are in the billions of dollars, most of it lobbied from federal agencies or won through open bidding or, more controversially, steered home directly during his 35-year career.

Mr. Murtha, a 76-year-old Marine veteran schooled in the blunt-knuckle deal-making that defined politics here, is contrition-free when it comes to his success.

"If I'm corrupt, it's because I take care of my district," Mr. Murtha said.

JUST REMOVE THE HOUSE GOP THWARTING IMMIGRATION REFORM...:

GOP must call Obama’s bluff on immigration (JACOB MONTY, 3/29/09, Houston Chronicle)

Even in a year when total voter turnout increased dramatically, Hispanics managed to boost their share of the vote from 8 percent to 9 percent, giving Barack Obama a lopsided margin of 68 percent to 31 percent, the most for a Democrat since 1996. The numbers represented a sharp dropoff in Hispanic support for Republicans since the Bush-Cheney high water mark of 40 percent just 4 years ago.

What’s received less attention is the impact Hispanics had on down-ticket races. Latinos supported Democrats in races for the Senate and House by even slightly higher margins than they gave Obama. The Pew Hispanic Center, using exit polls published by CNN, has estimated that Hispanics’ share of the vote increased most significantly in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, where they helped elect two new Democratic senators and four new Democrats to the House. All four states were carried by Bush in 2004.

If Republicans don’t reverse these trends, Hispanic voting patterns could change the political landscape well into the next decade and beyond. Increasing numbers of Hispanic voters could play a critical role in the 2010 Senate races in Colorado and Florida, where they comprised 13 percent and 14 percent of the vote in 2008 and gave Obama 61 percent and 57 percent of their votes, respectively. Arizona, Colorado and Nevada will also be likely battlegrounds for the 2010 governors’ races, which will be critical in setting district lines for congressional and legislative races for the next decade.

Hispanics — entrepreneurial, family-oriented, suspicious of labor unions, strongly anti-abortion and supportive of traditional marriage — are a natural constituency for the GOP. Nevertheless, the extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric of many in the so-called Republican “base” has created a huge obstacle to the party’s appeals. For Hispanics, the Republican brand is tarnished if not toxic.

HE SKIPPED A STEP THERE:

The Price of Moving Closer to Hezbollah (Tariq Alhomayed, 3/30/09, asharq alawasat)

The reasons behind Britain's negotiation with the so-called political wing of Hezbollah have begun to be revealed. The available information indicates that the reasons for negotiations between Britain and Hezbollah are contrary to what had previously been announced. It seems that the main reason is London's desire to secure the release of the 5 Britons kidnapped in Baghdad two years ago, in return for the release of prisoners affiliated to Muqtada Al-Sadr's organization, as well as Hezbollah leaders held by the Americans in Iraq, rather than for the sake of Lebanon's stability.

Lebanon is the most plural society in the region, and the “March 14” coalition, the group of parties that leads the current government, essentially represents the Sunnis, the Christians, the Druze (a tribe and creed unique to the region), and the Left.

THE ECONOMICS OF NEWSPAPERS ARE SO SCREWED UP...:

The Inheritance: With a doomsday clock ticking for newspapers as we know them, no one has more at stake than fourth-generation New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who is scrambling to keep his family’s prized asset alive. Some see him as a lightweight cheerleader, others as the last, best defender of quality journalism. Talking to company insiders, the author examines the nexus of dynasty and character that has brought the 57-year-old Sulzberger to the precipice. (Mark Bowden May 2009, Vanity Fair)

In 2001, The New York Times celebrated its 150th anniversary. In the years that have followed, Arthur Sulzberger has steered his inheritance into a ditch. As of this writing, Times Company stock is officially classified as junk. Arthur made a catastrophic decision in the 1990s to start aggressively buying back shares ($1.8 billion worth from 2000 to 2004 alone). This was considered a good investment at the time, and had the effect of increasing the stock’s value. Shares were going for more than $50. Now they are slipping below $4—less than the price of the Sunday Times. Arthur’s revenues are in free fall: the bottom has dropped out of both newspaper and Internet advertising. He has done more than anyone in the business to showcase newspaper journalism online. It hasn’t helped much. The content and page views of the newspaper’s Web site, nytimes.com, may be the envy of the profession, but as a recent report from Citigroup explained, “The Internet has taken away far more advertising than it has given.” Layoffs have occurred in the once sacrosanct newsroom.

Having squandered billions during the newspaper’s fat years—buying up all that stock, buying up failing newspapers, building a gleaming new headquarters—Arthur is scrambling to keep up with interest payments on hundreds of millions in debt, much of it falling due within the next year. To do so, he is peddling assets on ruinous terms. Arthur recently borrowed $250 million from Carlos Slim Helú, the Mexican telecommunications billionaire, who owns the fourth-largest stake in the Times Company. Controlling interest is held closely by the Sulzberger family, which owns 89 percent of the company’s Class B shares. These shares, not traded publicly, are held by a family trust designed to prevent individual heirs from selling out, and ultimately to shelter editorial matters from strict concern for the bottom line. The family owns about 20 percent of the Class A shares, which is about the same percentage owned by the hedge funds Harbinger and Firebrand. The third-largest Class A shareholder is T. Rowe Price, with 10 percent. Slim comes next, with 7 percent. Given the current state of the investment and credit markets, Slim would appear to have the inside rail should the paper ever be sold, a prospect once unthinkable. It is now very thinkable. Among the other prospective buyers whose names have surfaced in the press are Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York; Google; and even, perish the thought, the press baron Rupert Murdoch, whose Wall Street Journal has emerged as journalistic competition for the Times in a way it never was before. (Murdoch has publicly dismissed reports of his interest in the Times as “crap,” which has served only to heighten speculation.) This quarter, for the first time since Times Company stock went public, in 1969, the fourth- and fifth-generation Sulzbergers who hold shares (there are 40 of them in all) received no dividends. As recently as last year they divvied up $25 million.

Beyond these professional trials, Arthur has personal ones. He has separated from his wife of more than three decades, Gail Gregg, a painter, and embarrassing speculation about his sleeping partners has surfaced in the tabloid columns. His son, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, is now working as a reporter at the paper, as his father and grandfather once did, but, for the first time in five generations, the heir apparent’s inheritance is in doubt.

While the crushing forces at work in the newspaper industry are certainly not Arthur’s fault, and many other newspapers have already succumbed to them, the fate of The New York Times is of special importance: it is the flagship of serious newspaper journalism in America. The Times sailed into the economic storm that began in 2001 in good financial shape, bearing the most respected brand name in the profession. It was far better equipped than most newspapers to adapt and survive. What is increasingly clear is that the wrong person may be at the helm. Arthur Sulzberger’s heart has always been in the right place, but he assumed leadership from his father uniquely ill-equipped for this crisis—not despite but because of his long apprenticeship. To their credit, the Sulzbergers have long treated the Times less as a business than as a public trust, and Arthur is steeped in that tradition, rooted in it, trained by it, captive to it. Ever the dutiful son, he has made it his life’s mission to maintain the excellence he inherited—to duplicate his father’s achievement. He is a careful steward, when what the Times needs today is some wild-eyed genius of an entrepreneur.

The Sulzbergers embody one of the newsroom’s most cherished myths: Journalism sells. Arthur says as much at every opportunity, and clearly believes this to his core. It encapsulates his understanding of his inheritance and of himself. But as a general principle, it simply isn’t true. Rather: Advertising sells, journalism costs. Good journalism costs more today than ever, while ads have plummeted, particularly in print media. This is killing the Times, and every other decent newspaper in America. Arthur has manfully tied himself to the wheel, doggedly investing in quality reporting and editing even as his company loses more and more money. Few investors or analysts consider this to be sound business practice.

THAT'S MORE LIKE IT:

Obama to shake-up GM, Chrysler (MIKE ALLEN & JOSH GERSTEIN | 3/30/09, Politico)

In surprising findings to be outlined at the White House on Monday, President Obama has concluded that neither GM nor Chrysler as they now exist deserve more bailouts. But the White House is sparing them for a month or two, and is promising American consumers that the government will stand behind warranties if the automakers fail.

Most remarkably, the administration demanded that GM CEO Rick Wagoner resign so the company could remake itself “with a clean sheet of paper.” And he did, effective immediately. The administration also said GM has been given a “goal of replacing a majority of the board over the coming months.”

The administration found that both carmakers had failed to prove their “viability” as required under the terms of the massive government loans they’ve already received, and determined that neither should receive another bailout.

“We have unfortunately concluded that neither plan submitted by either company represents viability, and therefore does not warrant the substantial additional investments that they requested,” a senior administration official told reporters on a conference call Sunday night.

MORE:
Balancing Banks (James Surowiecki April 6, 2009, The New Yorker)

Not long ago, many of America’s biggest banks made terrible bets on overpriced real estate and suffered huge losses. While the banks insisted that they were fundamentally healthy, economists and politicians declared many of them to be insolvent. Government regulators, though, allowed the banks to stay in business. The banks hunkered down and cut back sharply on new lending, and the resulting credit crunch made an already weak economy worse.

That sounds like the story of what just happened to the U.S. economy, but actually it’s the story of what happened at the beginning of the nineteen-nineties, after banks found themselves sitting on billions in worthless loans to Sun Belt developers and other commercial builders. And, if you tweak the details a bit, it’s also the story of what happened in the early eighties; that time, it was loans to developing countries that got the banks in trouble. In other words, while the current banking crisis is exceptionally severe, it’s not exactly new. It’s the third major banking crisis in the past thirty years, which is at least a couple of crises too many. And that’s forcing the Obama Administration to confront two huge tasks at once: rescuing the economy from the current meltdown, and figuring out how to prevent the next one.

The rescue effort, surprisingly, may be the easier of those tasks; although recurrent financial turmoil is hardly a confidence-booster, the fact that the U.S. economy—unlike, say, Japan’s—has recovered well from previous banking disasters offers hope that the government’s strategy will work. Many economists and pundits have argued that the only solution is to nationalize the weakest big banks, wiping out shareholders and management.

BETTER KHAMENEI:

States of Mind: a review of The Road to Democracy in Iran (Boston Review Books) by Akbar Ganji (Negar Azimi, 3/24/09, The Nation)

Ganji recently published a slim volume born of his time in prison. Immodestly called The Road to Democracy in Iran, it opens -- chillingly -- with the words "Today, June 29, 2005, is the nineteenth day of my second hunger strike." The book is not a collection of prison notes, however, but rather a sketch of a future Iranian state, one that would have the most basic human rights principles at its core. This is not Ganji's first prison manuscript. In 2002 he penned the opening notes of his six-part "Republican Manifesto," in which he lamented the trampling of individual rights in contemporary Iran and made his best case for a secular democracy. Ganji's touchstones are Karl Popper and Immanuel Kant. He may owe more to the Age of Reason than to the Koran.

Like many Iranians of his generation, Ganji was at one time an ardent follower of the late Ali Shariati, a fiery and charismatic figure who put forward a reading of Shiism that evoked Marxism and shades of revolutionary Third Worldism. Shariati flourished in the heady climate of early 1960s Paris, as France's turbulent war with its Algerian colony raged. He collaborated with the Algerian National Liberation Front in its revolutionary struggle, was coddled by Marxist scholars, translated Sartre into Farsi and cavorted with Frantz Fanon. He returned to Iran in 1965 and soon thereafter began delivering rousing lectures to budding revolutionaries at Husseinieh-e Ershad, a blue-domed religious institute in central Tehran that has since become inextricably tied to Shariati's image. Shiism, Shariati told his listeners, has a core set of values that stands to resolve many of society's ills. He distinguished this original Shiism from the pernicious faith he saw propagated by the clerics around him, what he contemptuously referred to as "Safavid Shiism," after the Safavids, who established Shiism as Iran's state religion in the sixteenth century. Cassettes of Shariati's lectures were distributed en masse, and Shariati, inadvertently or not, became a primary intellectual architect of the Islamic revolution to come. He was arrested in 1974 -- accused of being everything from a Wahhabi to a Communist to a SAVAK collaborator. Upon release he traveled to England, where he subsequently died of a heart attack (his supporters believe he was eliminated by the shah's secret police).

The Road to Democracy in Iran testifies to Ganji's movement away from Shariatism toward a firm belief that religion cannot possibly survive as the foundation of a modern democracy. Nor can culturally specific conceptions of rights, whether African, Confucian or Islamic in nature. "We are not relativists," he writes. Rather, a chastened Ganji insists that democracy can only be rooted in a universal recognition of the most basic human rights -- perhaps most prominent, the right to shape one's fate. Ganji goes on to ponder the role of the intellectual in bringing about this brave new order ("We must struggle"), but in the same breath he warns that "human rights will not be achieved through academic polemics." He decries the more fundamentalist readings of religion, though he stresses that modernity and religiosity are not mutually exclusive. (Kant's dictum of religion existing only within the confines of reason seems most fitting here.)

THERE'S JUST ONE "R" THAT MATTERS...'RITHMETIC:

Killing Opportunity (Nat Hentoff, 3/30/09, Washington Times)

President Obama's huge stimulus bill includes about $100 billion for education. And he insists his criteria for supporting reforms is not "whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works."

Applauding, Randi Weingarten, powerful head of the American Federation of Teachers (1.4 million members), calls Mr. Obama the "education president." However, when congressional Democrats recently doomed the Opportunity Scholarship Program for poor children in the District, the education president didn't say a word.

Of the 1,700 students, starting in kindergarten, in this private-school voucher program, 90 percent are black and 9 percent are Hispanic. First the House and then the Senate inserted into the $410 billion omnibus spending bill language that will eliminate the $7,500 annual scholarships for these poor children after the next school year. It could only be reauthorized by the same Democratic-controlled Congress and the anti-voucher D.C. Council. Fat chance!

A DEVASTATING REBUKE TO THE RIGHT...:

Mortgage Defaults, Delinquencies Rise (JAMES R. HAGERTY, 3/30/09, WSJ)

Defaults on home mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration in February increased from a year earlier.

A spokesman for the FHA said 7.5% of FHA loans were "seriously delinquent" at the end of February, up from 6.2% a year earlier. Seriously delinquent includes loans that are 90 days or more overdue, in the foreclosure process or in bankruptcy.

WHERE ART THOU?:

The gods are stupid (Spengler, 3/31/09, Asia Times)

A man came to the caliph claiming to be a prophet, goes a 9th-century joke. "By Allah, you are a stupid prophet!" exclaimed the caliph. "That," the prophet replied, "is why I was sent to people like you." That God might send a stupid prophet to a stupid people is one thing. But what if the prophet were sent by a stupid god? Stupid is, as Forrest Gump said, as stupid does, and what I mean specifically by stupid is not getting the joke.

To avoid confusion, I want to make clear that I do not believe in stupid gods, but only in the one and unique God of the Bible. [...]

We go looking for love in all the wrong places because it is terrifying to love the God of the Bible. Simply to evoke this fear is to put the fear God into us, as it were, and I found cold shivers shooting down my spine while reading the new English translation of a 20th-century classic of Hebrew literature, From There You Shall Seek, by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik (Ktav Publishing: New York 2008).

Divine love, we flatter ourselves, is a comforting thing, a warm emanation of a beneficent presence in the universe. The Bible's lovely pastoral, the Song of Songs, teaches us divine love by a sort of analogia amoris, an analogy between the love between God and his congregation and the love of bridegroom and bride. That this love is interlaced with fear and withdrawal is the central theme of Soloveitchik's book. It is far beyond my competence to review it, although I recommend it - with trepidation. It is not hard to grasp even from a layman's reading why its author dominated the Modern Orthodox branch of Judaism for decades as the Rav of Yeshiva University in New York.

All of us in some sense are unhappy lovers, even God's congregation in pursuit of its union with God as in the Song of Songs, Soloveitchik argues.

The Song of Songs is not only an idyll but also a complaint, Soloveitchik observes. The bride and bridegroom cannot be united. Despite their love which is as strong as death, they hesitate or hide from each other at the crucial moment. A few excerpts from Rabbi Soloveitchik's summary:

"You are beautiful, my beloved, your eyes are doves," he sings (Song of Songs 1:15), hidden among the ancient, glorious hills. He sees her, but cannot be seen. He is very, very close to her, but also immeasurably distant ... their love cannot be realized, their yearning cannot be fulfilled completely. But why? Why must he flee from her at the moment that she pursues him? Why does he not look and see that she is made with longing and yearning? ...

"Where has my beloved gone?" Her entire self pleads, "If you meet my beloved, tell him this: that I am faint with love” (Song 5:8). She sobs in her agony, loneliness and suffering. Suddenly her lover appears from the obscurity of the dark night, knocking on his dear one's door ... Nevertheless the beloved refuses to rise from her bed and open the door to her lover (Song 5:3) ... Yet, after a moment the beloved leaps off her bed, her hands dripping myrrh on the handles of the bolt. She opens her abode to her lover .... The door opens - but the lover is not there. "I rose to let in my beloved .... But my beloved had turned and gone! (Song 5:5-6).

Soloveitchik's commentary on the Song of Songs helps explain why Jewish literature has no interest in romance in the usual sense of the word. One will ransack Jewish fiction without finding an Isolde, a Juliet, an Anna Karenina or an Emma Bovary. The canonical Jewish joke on the subject concerns an elderly Jewish couple. "Let's to go the theater!" says Sadie. "I don't want to go to the theater," counters Abe. "It's boring."

"What do you mean, 'It's boring'?" Sadie protests. "Theaters are for entertainment. Entertainment is the opposite of boring. If it was boring, why would they have theaters?"

"I don't care," Abe replies. "It's boring."

"Why is it boring?"

Abe sighs and explains: "When he wants, she doesn't want. When she wants, he doesn't want. And when they both want, it's over."

Like most Jewish jokes, this one works on several levels, but the truly esoteric level might be this: the cosmic drama of divine love is infinitely more absorbing than any earthly affair. The ruddy lad and the Shulamite maiden search for each other, leaping across hills like a hart, and wandering the streets of Jerusalem at night, but shun the moment of consummation. When he wants, she doesn't want; when she wants, he doesn't want.

In the Christian reading of the Song of Songs, eg, in the sermons of St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), the lover hides behind the lattice to gaze at the beloved because love remains trapped in the body. The lattice, explains St Bernard, represents corrupt and sinful flesh, in which love may dwell imperfectly. Only when the soul sheds the body can it find true union with God. Rabbi Soloveitchik's account, which draws on Jewish traditional sources, offers less comfort: union with God would annihilate the soul, which draws back from the divine presence, whereas as God himself must withdraw from the world in order to allow creation to exist.

There is a reason that there are stupid gods who send stupid prophets to people like us. We flatter ourselves with the stupid gods of our own creation, because such gods are far more manageable than the terrifying, all-consuming love of the God of Creation.

MORE:
Pope Benedict XVI and the Jews (David Rosen, 3/29/09, THE JERUSALEM POST)

In December 2000 in an article entitled 'The Heritage of Abraham: The Gift of Christmas" published in L'Osservatore Romano, he wrote: "Abraham, father of the people of Israel, father of faith, has become the source of blessing, for in him 'all the families of the earth shall call themselves blessed.' The task of the Chosen People is therefore to make a gift of their God - the one true God - to every other people. In reality, as Christians we are the inheritors of their faith in the one God. Our gratitude therefore must be extended to our Jewish brothers and sisters who, despite the hardships of their own history, have held on to faith in this God right up to the present and who witness to it..."

In this same article, the then Cardinal Ratzinger addressed the question of anti-Semitism and the degree to which Christianity has been associated with it. He stated: "Down through the history of Christianity, already strained relations deteriorated further, even giving birth in many cases to anti-Jewish attitudes which throughout history have led to deplorable acts of violence. Even if the most recent loathsome experience of the Shoah was perpetuated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology which tried to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic roots in the people of Israel, it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians."

THIS CONDEMNATION of anti-Semitism includes a description of Nazism that not everyone would share. The pope repeated this idea when he visited the site of the extermination camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 2006.

In describing the intentions of Nazism, he declared: "Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down the principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are eternally valid. If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to Himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone - to the men who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world. By destroying Israel, by the Shoah, they ultimately wanted to tear out the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention..."

While many would argue with Pope Benedict XVI's analysis, there surely can be no more powerful an argument for Christians to avoid all anti-Semitic prejudice than the one he provides in these statements.

It is significant to condemn anti-Semitism as evil and it is remarkable to condemn it as "a sin against God and man" as did Pope John Paul II (words that have been reiterated by Pope Benedict XVI himself). However to describe anti-Semitism as an assault against the very roots of Christianity means that for a Christian to harbor such sentiment is to attack and betray his or her own faith - a message of enormous pedagogical importance in the struggle against hatred directed toward Jews and Judaism.

THE LOUISIANA BOBBY AND W MADE:

Louisiana sees shift in cleaning out corruption: The state ranks third in corruption convictions per capita, but since Hurricane Katrina, people don't want to tolerate it anymore, officials say. 'It's no longer a spectator sport.' (Howard Witt, March 29, 2009, LA Times)

Ranked according to corruption convictions per capita from 1998 to 2007, Louisiana is No. 3. (Only Washington, D.C., and North Dakota ranked higher -- and those results were skewed because of their small populations.)

The jobbery here is so much like elevator music -- ubiquitous and inevitable -- that the state Legislature declined to pass a law in the last session that would have cut off state pensions for public officials convicted of corruption. Why, the legislators reasoned, should they have to pay twice if they get caught stealing from the public purse?

In the last six years, the U.S. attorney for the New Orleans district has issued 236 corruption indictments, and many more may be on the way.

Prominent scandals under investigation by the FBI include a federally financed New Orleans housing agency set up to rehabilitate houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina that allegedly spent millions but did little or no work, and a City Hall contract to install a network of crime-surveillance cameras that the New Orleans inspector general says resulted in $4 million in mysterious overpayments for a system that mostly doesn't function.

"I am absolutely certain we have increased the paranoia level on the part of those who would abuse the public trust," said U.S. Atty. Jim Letten, who cemented his reputation as a corruption fighter as the prosecutor who sent former Louisiana Gov. Edwin W. Edwards to prison. "If you're a corrupt public official, we want you to be nervous. You will never know if the businessman or woman you are trying to shake down is wearing a wire."

Law enforcement officials believe that the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when 80% of New Orleans flooded after the city's crumbling levees failed, was a turning point. Residents and businesspeople returned to New Orleans determined to cleanse their hobbled city of the mildew of decades of public corruption.

Suddenly victims started picking up their phones to report attempted shakedowns or sliding incriminating documents over to law enforcement, officials say.

And in 2007, Louisiana voters elected Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal on a reformist anti-corruption platform -- and Jindal promptly pushed through a package of legislative reforms including expanded whistle-blower protections, new limits on lobbyist gifts to lawmakers and prohibitions against state officials taking state contracts.

"The average person out there understands now that public corruption has adversely affected his or her quality of life, whether it's the crumbling streets they drive on, the dismal state of the public school system, the crime rate or the lack of jobs," Letten said.

"The tolerance of corruption was partly a belief that it was a way of life, that it was so entrenched and endemic that it was untouchable and unreachable," Letten added. "Now the average citizen believes that something can be done about it."

AS LONG AS HE DOESN'T CHANNEL THE KENNEDYS:

Obama's domino theory: The president sounds like he's channeling Cheney or McCain -- or a Cold War hawk afraid of international communism -- when he talks about the war in Afghanistan. (Juan Cole, Mar. 30, 2009, Salon)

This latter-day domino theory of al-Qaida takeovers in South Asia is just as implausible as its earlier iteration in Southeast Asia (ask Thailand or the Philippines). Most of the allegations are not true or are vastly exaggerated. There are very few al-Qaida fighters based in Afghanistan proper. What is being called the "Taliban" is mostly not Taliban at all (in the sense of seminary graduates loyal to Mullah Omar). The groups being branded "Taliban" only have substantial influence in 8 to 10 percent of Afghanistan, and only 4 percent of Afghans say they support them. Some 58 percent of Afghans say that a return of the Taliban is the biggest threat to their country, but almost no one expects it to happen. Moreover, with regard to Pakistan, there is no danger of militants based in the remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) taking over that country or "killing" it.

The Kabul government is not on the verge of falling to the Taliban. The Afghan government has 80,000 troops, who benefit from close U.S. air support, and the total number of Taliban fighters in the Pashtun provinces is estimated at 10,000 to 15,000. Kabul is in danger of losing control of some villages in the provinces to dissident Pashtun warlords styled "Taliban," though it is not clear why the new Afghan army could not expel them if they did so. A smaller, poorly equipped Northern Alliance army defeated 60,000 Taliban with U.S. air support in 2001. And there is no prospect of "al-Qaida" reestablishing bases in Afghanistan from which it could attack the United States. If al-Qaida did come back to Afghanistan, it could simply be bombed and would be attacked by the new Afghan army.

While the emergence of "Pakistani Taliban" in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is a blow to Pakistan's security, they have just been defeated in one of the seven major tribal agencies, Bajaur, by a concerted and months-long campaign of the highly professional and well-equipped Pakistani army. United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates replied last summer to the idea that al-Qaida is regrouping in Pakistan and forms a new and vital threat to the West: "Actually, I don't agree with that assessment, because when al-Qaida was in Afghanistan, they had the partnership of a government. They had ready access to international communications, ready access to travel, and so on. Their circumstances in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) and on the Pakistani side of the border are much more primitive. And it's much more difficult for them to move around, much more difficult for them to communicate."

As for a threat to Pakistan, the FATA areas are smaller than Connecticut, with a total population of a little over 3 million, while Pakistan itself is bigger than Texas, with a population more than half that of the entire United States. A few thousand Pashtun tribesmen cannot take over Pakistan, nor can they "kill" it.

WHY?:

Dozens killed or injured in stampede at Ivory Coast football match (Amy Fallon, 30 March 2009, The Guardian)

At least 22 people have been killed and 132 wounded in a crush at a World Cup qualifying match in an Ivory Coast stadium.

Fans at the Félix Houphouet-Boigny arena pushed against each other shortly before the game between Ivory Coast and Malawi, setting off a panic that led to the stampede, interior minister Desire Tagro said on state television.

"They started pushing to get in because the match was about to start and every one of them wanted to get in," Tagro said.

GIVE THEM LONG ENOUGH AND THEY CIRCLE AROUND BACK TO THE TRUTH:

Does Dark Energy Really Exist?: Or does Earth occupy a very unusual place in the universe? (Timothy Clifton and Pedro G. Ferreira, March 23, 2009, Scientific American Magazine)

In science, the grandest revolutions are often triggered by the smallest discrepancies. In the 16th century, based on what struck many of his contemporaries as the esoteric minutiae of celestial motions, Copernicus suggested that Earth was not, in fact, at the center of the universe. In our own era, another revolution began to unfold 11 years ago with the discovery of the accelerating universe. A tiny deviation in the brightness of exploding stars led astronomers to conclude that they had no idea what 70 percent of the cosmos consists of. All they could tell was that space is filled with a substance unlike any other one that pushes along the expansion of the universe rather than holding it back. This substance became known as dark energy.

It is now over a decade later, and the existence of dark energy is still so puzzling that some cosmologists are revisiting the fundamental postulates that led them to deduce its existence in the first place. One of these is the product of that earlier revolution: the Copernican principle, that Earth is not in a central or otherwise special position in the universe. If we discard this basic principle, a surprisingly different picture of what could account for the observations emerges.

Most of us are very familiar with the idea that our planet is nothing more than a tiny speck orbiting a typical star, somewhere near the edge of an otherwise unnoteworthy galaxy. In the midst of a universe populated by billions of galaxies that stretch out to our cosmic horizon, we are led to believe that there is nothing special or unique about our location. But what is the evidence for this cosmic humility? And how would we be able to tell if we were in a special place? Astronomers typically gloss over these questions, assuming our own typicality sufficiently obvious to warrant no further discussion. To entertain the notion that we may, in fact, have a special location in the universe is, for many, unthinkable. Nevertheless, that is exactly what some small groups of physicists around the world have recently been considering.

If you wonder how thoroughly the Copernicans/darwinists have been routed in the culture wars, we went to the Museum of Science in Boston today and saw an IMax film called greatest places. It ended by saying that Earth has incredible diversity of life, maybe the greatest diversity of any planet, in fact, may itself be the greatest place in the Universe.

TOM HAS HIM THERE:

TS Eliot rejected George Orwell's Animal Farm because of its 'Trotskyite' politics (Stephen Adams, 29 Mar 2009, Daily Telegraph)

Animal Farm concerns a group of talking pigs who take over a farm, purportedly for the benefit of all its inhabitants, but end up running it for their own selfish ends.

Its plot sees the pig Napoleon, based on Stalin, forcing out his rival Snowball, who genuinely works for the good of the farm. Many commentators have concluded that Snowball was based on Stalin's rival Leon Trotsky, who was expelled from the Communist Party in 1927.

In his dismissive letter, Eliot wrote that Orwell's view "which I take to be generally Trotsykite, is not convincing".

He argued: "We have no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the current time."

He went on: "After all, your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore are the best qualified to run the farm – in fact there couldn't have been an Animal Farm without them: so that what was needed (someone might argue) was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs."

DOUBLING DOWN ON DUBIOUS:

Rudd on the road to disaster (Henry Ergas, March 30, 2009, The Australian)

DURING the 1979 oil shock, the great French political scientist Raymond Aron noted that in crises, governments usually had little to fear from Oppositions but everything to fear from themselves. Only rarely did governments display the intellectual rigour to adapt to the new circumstances. Their tendency, catastrophically evident in the presidency of Valery Giscard d'Estaing, was to retain commitments that were even more economically costly than when first made. Emerging difficulties then led to half-baked populism, with all its long-term costs.

Kevin Rudd could teach Giscard d'Estaing a thing or two.

Rudd's errors are not merely the odd concession to economic folly, they go to the core of our economic prospects. [...]

Ultimately, all government spending must be paid for from taxes that have high economic costs. To claim that Keynesian multipliers create magic puddings that can make this all come good is nonsense on stilts. A dollar misspent is a dollar misspent, and reduces incomes by at least that amount. The employment "created" by that dollar, when it could have been used for more worthwhile alternatives, is part of the waste, not a benefit. The quality of public expenditure is therefore crucial and on this count alone the Government's record is distressingly poor.

ISN'T THAT LAST BIT A TAD SELF-REFERENTIAL?:

Tiger returns to winning at Bay Hill (ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 30, 2009)

With those familiar back-nine heroics and a putt most everyone knew he was going to make, Woods holed a 15-footer for birdie to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational for his first victory since returning from knee surgery.

Woods closed with a 3-under 67 for a one-shot victory over hard-luck Sean O'Hair, matching his largest comeback on the PGA Tour.

"It feels good to be back in contention, to feel the rush," Woods said. "It's been awhile, but God, it felt good."

BUT I JUST KNOW HE'S LISTENING TO US:

Obama to sign lands bill before 5 days of comment (Stephen Dinan, March 30, 2009, Washington Times)

President Obama on Monday will sign the omnibus land conservation bill - yet again breaking his vow to allow five days for public comment before he affixes his signature to legislation.

The bill passed the House on Wednesday, but the White House didn't post the measure for comments until Friday, leaving just two weekend days and parts of Friday and Monday for the public to register comments - short of the president's five-day pledge. The bill was posted for only several hours before the White House announced that Mr. Obama would sign it, indicating the president had made up his mind well before many comments could have been submitted.

DON'T IT MAKE YOUR BLACK SWAN WHITE (via Bruno Behrend):

Risk Mismanagement (JOE NOCERA, 1/04/09, NY Times Magazine)

VaR DIDN’T GET EVERYTHING right even in what it purported to measure. All the triple-A-rated mortgage-backed securities churned out by Wall Street firms and that turned out to be little more than junk? VaR didn’t see the risk because it generally relied on a two-year data history. Although it took into account the increased risk brought on by leverage, it failed to distinguish between leverage that came from long-term, fixed-rate debt — bonds and such that come due at a set date — and loans that can be called in at any time and can, as Brown put it “blow you up in two minutes.” That is, the kind of leverage that disappeared the minute something bad arose.

“The old adage, ‘garbage in, garbage out’ certainly applies,” Groz said. “When you realize that VaR is using tame historical data to model a wildly different environment, the total losses of Bear Stearns’ hedge funds become easier to understand. It’s like the historic data only has rainstorms and then a tornado hits.”

Guldimann, the great VaR proselytizer, sounded almost mournful when he talked about what he saw as another of VaR’s shortcomings. To him, the big problem was that it turned out that VaR could be gamed. That is what happened when banks began reporting their VaRs. To motivate managers, the banks began to compensate them not just for making big profits but also for making profits with low risks. That sounds good in principle, but managers began to manipulate the VaR by loading up on what Guldimann calls “asymmetric risk positions.” These are products or contracts that, in general, generate small gains and very rarely have losses. But when they do have losses, they are huge. These positions made a manager’s VaR look good because VaR ignored the slim likelihood of giant losses, which could only come about in the event of a true catastrophe. A good example was a credit-default swap, which is essentially insurance that a company won’t default. The gains made from selling credit-default swaps are small and steady — and the chance of ever having to pay off that insurance was assumed to be minuscule. It was outside the 99 percent probability, so it didn’t show up in the VaR number. People didn’t see the size of those hidden positions lurking in that 1 percent that VaR didn’t measure.

EVEN MORE CRITICAL, it did not properly account for leverage that was employed through the use of options. For example, said Groz, if an asset manager borrows money to buy shares of a company, the VaR would usually increase. But say he instead enters into a contract that gives someone the right to sell him those shares at a lower price at a later time — a put option. In that case, the VaR might remain unchanged. From the outside, he would look as if he were taking no risk, but in fact, he is. If the share price of the company falls steeply, he will have lost a great deal of money. Groz called this practice “stuffing risk into the tails.”

And yet, instead of dismissing VaR as worthless, most of the experts I talked to defended it. The issue, it seemed to me, was less what VaR did and did not do, but how you thought about it. Taleb says that because VaR didn’t measure the 1 percent, it was worse than useless — it was downright harmful. But most of the risk experts said there was a great deal to be said for being able to manage risk 99 percent of the time, however imperfectly, even though it meant you couldn’t account for the last 1 percent.

“If you say that all risk is unknowable,” Gregg Berman said, “you don’t have the basis of any sort of a bet or a trade. You cannot buy and sell anything unless you have some idea of the expectation of how it will move.” In other words, if you spend all your time thinking about black swans, you’ll be so risk averse you’ll never do a trade. Brown put it this way: “NT” — that is how he refers to Nassim Nicholas Taleb — “says that 1 percent will dominate your outcomes. I think the other 99 percent does matter. There are things you can do to control your risk. To not use VaR is to say that I won’t care about the 99 percent, in which case you won’t have a business. That is true even though you know the fate of the firm is going to be determined by some huge event. When you think about disasters, all you can rely on is the disasters of the past. And yet you know that it will be different in the future. How do you plan for that?”

One risk-model critic, Richard Bookstaber, a hedge-fund risk manager and author of “A Demon of Our Own Design,” ranted about VaR for a half-hour over dinner one night. Then he finally said, “If you put a gun to my head and asked me what my firm’s risk was, I would use VaR.” VaR may have been a flawed number, but it was the best number anyone had come up with.

Of course, the experts I was speaking to were, well, experts. They had a deep understanding of risk modeling and all its inherent limitations. They thought about it all the time. Brown even thought VaR was good when the numbers seemed “off,” or when it started to “miss” on a regular basis — it either meant that there was something wrong with the way VaR was being calculated, or it meant the market was no longer acting “normally.” Either way, he said, it told you something useful.

“When I teach it,” Christopher Donohue, the managing director of the research group at the Global Association of Risk Professionals, said, “I immediately go into the shortcomings. You can’t calculate a VaR number and think you know everything you need. On a day-to-day basis I don’t care so much that the VaR is 42. I care about where it was yesterday and where it is going tomorrow. What direction is the risk going?” Then he added, “That is probably another danger: because we put a dollar number to it, they attach a meaning to it.”

By “they,” Donohue meant everyone who wasn’t a risk manager or a risk expert. There were the investors who saw the VaR numbers in the annual reports but didn’t pay them the least bit of attention. There were the regulators who slept soundly in the knowledge that, thanks to VaR, they had the whole risk thing under control. There were the boards who heard a VaR number once or twice a year and thought it sounded good. There were chief executives like O’Neal and Prince. There was everyone, really, who, over time, forgot that the VaR number was only meant to describe what happened 99 percent of the time. That $50 million wasn’t just the most you could lose 99 percent of the time. It was the least you could lose 1 percent of the time. In the bubble, with easy profits being made and risk having been transformed into mathematical conceit, the real meaning of risk had been forgotten. Instead of scrutinizing VaR for signs of impending trouble, they took comfort in a number and doubled down, putting more money at risk in the expectation of bigger gains. “It has to do with the human condition,” said one former risk manager. “People like to have one number they can believe in.”

Brown told me: “You absolutely could see it coming. You could see the risks rising. However, in the two years before the crisis hit, instead of preparing for it, the opposite took place to an extreme degree. The real trouble we got into today is because of things that took place in the two years before, when the risk measures were saying that things were getting bad.”

But the even more telling thing is that when the "black swan" returns, as they generally do, since they aren't unusual, the tendency is to react to them as if they were sui generis anyway, Does Obama Have a Plan B? (Adam S. Posen, 3/29/09, Daily Beast)

[I]t is with some irony if not humility that we should approach Treasury Secretary Geithner’s Public Private Investment Plan presented on March 23. A number of major American banks have lost huge amounts of money, and clearly have insufficient capital if they are not literally insolvent. Why else would they be pushing so hard to change the accounting rules to avoid showing what they really have on their books instead of raising private capital? Why else is the US government taking so long to perform “stress tests” and trying to get expectations of overpayment for some of the bad assets on the banks’ books before the test results are out? In short, the US government is looking to shovel capital into the banks without sufficient conditions, hiding rather than confronting the actual situation.

That is just like the Japanese government in their lost decade, or the US officials during the 1980s before they really tackled the savings-and-loan crisis. In those cases the delay simply made the problem worse over time and in the end the government had to put more money into the troubled banks directly, taking over or shutting down the weakest of them. Whatever the political culture, it would seem we have not learned from experience. Or perhaps we cannot act on our learning. The universal barrier would appear to be the political difficulty of recapitalizing banks. That seems obvious, but the constraint it puts on good policy is enormous.

That is why the Geithner plan is so complex and jury-rigged, to avoid the need for public requests for more money for banks. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to succeed absent additional public money and more intrusive government action. The plan will buy some time and certainly some appreciation in bank share prices. Current shareholders will be getting a new lease on life with subsidies from taxpayers. For that reason alone, the plan certainly will cost the taxpayer more in the end than a more direct recapitalization with public control would have.

A year or two down the road we will know for certain whether it worked. By then the banks will either return to normal pre-crisis lending or they will be both too distrusted and too distrustful even to borrow from each other again. As we have seen over the last eighteen months, the latter is what near- insolvent banks do.

SILENCE IS GOLDEN:

Spies In The Sky (B. Raman, 3/26/09, Outlook)

There have been two more missile strikes from Predator (unmanned) aircraft on suspected terrorists in the South and North Waziristan areas of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. With these, there have been seven Predator strikes carried out by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the tribal belt of Pakistan since President Barack Obama assumed office on January 20,2009.

The first of these strikes carried out on March 25, 2009, targeted two vehicles--a pick-up and a car--which were moving on a kacha road (non-metalled country road) near the Makeen area of South Waziristan. Seven terrorists, believed to be Uzbecks and Arabs, were reportedly killed. While there is no doubt about their links with Al Qaeda, they seem to be low-level operatives of the organisation.

The second of these strikes targeted the house of a tribal leader by name Malik Gulab Khan in an area called Essokhel, 30 Kms from the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, on March 26, 2009, killing four persons. All of them are believed to be Pakistani supporters of the Taliban. There have been no local protest demonstrations against the two strikes indicating a lack of local anger over the deaths of these persons. This would indicate that the locals do not believe that those killed were innocent civilians.

DON'T MISTAKE OUR INCOMPETENCE...:

India's New-Found Irrelevance: Clearly, the new Administration in Washington has little time for New Delhi. India, however, needs to put its own house in order before crying hoarse over the changing winds in Washington. (Harsh V. Pant, 3/24/09, Outlook)

India is realizing it’s difficult to be out of the limelight after getting used to it. For the last eight years under the Bush Administration, India occupied a pride of place in the strategic calculus of the US. India was wooed as a rising power, it was seen as a pole in the emerging global balance of power, it was acknowledged as the primary actor in South Asia, de-hyphenated from Pakistan, and then it was given what it had long desired -- a de facto status as a nuclear weapon state. From a problem state that could never say yes, India emerged as a state that the US could do business with. It was all too good to last for long. And now one of the architects of the US-India strategic partnership during the Bush period, Shyam Saran, who was the Indian Prime Minister’s Special Envoy during the negotiations over the nuclear pact, is asking India to hedge its bets in light of what he views as Sino-US strategic convergence.

Clearly, the new Administration in Washington has little time for New Delhi. From a nation that was just a few weeks back seen as an emerging power that can provide answers to global problems, India is now viewed primarily as a problem that the Obama Administration needs to sort out. It is instructive that the only context in which Obama has talked of India yet is the need to sort Kashmir out so as to find a way out of the West’s troubles in Afghanistan. Most astonishingly, the Obama Administration has asked India to make the first move towards peace in the region by pulling back troops from its Pakistan border. This is just so that the US can get more Pakistani support when it decides to launch a bigger military offensive in Afghanistan in a few months time. The talk of a strategic partnership between the two democracies, meanwhile, has all but disappeared. The new Administration is so busy fighting day to day battles that it has little time for grand strategy.

GOOD PLACE FOR THE UR'S FIRST REGIME CHANGE:

U.S. Seizure Slams Market for Dollars in Venezuela (JOHN LYONS and JOSE DE CORDOBA, 3/29/09, WSJ)

Venezuela's economically crucial black market for dollars was all but frozen Friday following the money-laundering arrest of an owner of a small Florida financial firm, adding to tensions between the U.S. and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The arrest has reverberated through the Latin American country because the firm, Rosemont Finance Corp., serves as a key U.S. clearing house for dozens of black-market brokerages -- trading houses that exploit loopholes to sell dollars despite an official Venezuelan ban on private firms buying and selling currency at unofficial rates. The federal case has ensnared millions of dollars from these trades and the brokerages that relied on Rosemont.

The black market is a crucial cog in the nation's financial system and counts giants such as state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA among its key players. If the market remains shut down for long, it could add to problems in Venezuela's increasingly chaotic economy. Venezuela, the fourth-largest supplier of oil to the U.S., has already been hurt by the decline in crude prices, rampant corruption and overspending on social programs.

THE ROAD TO KANDAHAR IS PAVED WITH SKULLS:

Graveyard Myths (PETER BERGEN, 3/28/09, NY Times)

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan weighed heavily on the minds of Bush administration policymakers, who kept a “light footprint” lest Afghans rebuff American and allied soldiers as hated occupiers. But as it turned out, the Afghans were widely enthusiastic about being liberated from the Taliban. In an ABC/BBC poll conducted in 2005, a full four years after the fall of the Taliban, 8 in 10 Afghans expressed a favorable opinion of the United States — an extraordinary proportion in a Muslim nation — and the same number supported the American-led overthrow of the Taliban in their country.

And just last month, in a new poll by ABC and the BBC, 58 percent of Afghans named the Taliban as the greatest threat to their nation. Only 8 percent said it was the United States. And while only 47 percent of Afghans still had a favorable opinion of America, the Taliban fared far worse, with just 7 percent approval.

What Afghans want is for international forces to do what they should have been doing all along — provide them the security they need to get on with making a living. That means building up the Afghan Army and police, which are only about one-fourth the size of the security services in Iraq. This will not come cheap, but the cost of putting an Afghan soldier in the field is only one-seventieth that of sending an American. President Obama, who will travel to Europe for NATO’s 60th anniversary in early April, can ask those European countries that are reluctant to send additional troops to Afghanistan to instead contribute to a permanent fund to help pay for the expanded Afghan security services.

The United States should also focus on projects that will bring both security and economic benefits to Afghans. A key task is to secure the all-important road between Kabul and Kandahar, a once-pleasant freeway that has become a nightmarish gantlet of potential Taliban ambushes.

Afghanistan’s vast opium/heroin industry finances the Taliban and feeds rampant government corruption. The American Drug Enforcement Administration should make public the names of the top Afghan drug lords, including government officials, so that they can no longer act with impunity. And because Afghanistan’s court system is still incapable of handling major drug cases, Kabul should sign a treaty with Washington that would allow key heroin traffickers to be tried in the United States.

Measures like these would help return Afghanistan to something like the state it was before the Soviets invaded in 1979: a relatively peaceful country slowly building itself into something more than a purely agricultural economy.

THE TALE OF THE SHOE-MAKER:

Is outsourcing exploitation?: Just ask Indian shoemakers whether they would prefer to work for themselves or for an overseas company. (Xavier Rodrigues, 25 March 2009, Mercator.net)

Just imagine that company X, which employs 50 of these shoe makers (mochis as they are called here) goes out of business:

Each of these mochis would then have to set up his own shop as other thousands of mochis in the city do. He would be sitting in a corner protected from rain and sun with some rags as a roof. The “shop” is barely 3 by 3 feet and perhaps just 4 feet high. They are very efficient, working with both arms and legs (thus they need to be sitting on the floor), and don't charge much... perhaps Rs. 10 US$0.20) for a 15-minute job. Hopefully he will get enough clients so as to make 2,000 or 3,000 Rupees ($40 to US$60)in a month.

This is not really too bad, but the guys in the outsourced workshop are better off. It is true they still sit at the floor and work in a cramped space. But this is how they learned their job in the first place. Besides, those fellows have a stable job; they have accommodation (the workshop itself); their salary is secure and thus their children can go to school... The accommodation factor is very important, even though they may not get to see their family for the full week. Otherwise they would have to spend about four hours a day in jam-packed public transport and spend a few precious Rupees in the process.

I have used shoe manufacturing as an example, but a very similar line could be drawn for other labour-intensive manufacturing processes, or even for services where professionals work.

Contributing to those businesses as clients is certainly not cooperating with something against human dignity.

ACKBASSWARDS:

Syria Calling: The Obama Administration’s chance to engage in a Middle East peace. (Seymour M. Hersh, April 6, 2009, The New Yorker)

American and foreign government officials, intelligence officers, diplomats, and politicians said in interviews that renewed Israeli-Syrian negotiations over the Golan Heights are now highly likely, despite Gaza and the elections in Israel in February, which left the Likud Party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the head of a coalition that includes both the far right and Labor. Those talks would depend largely on America’s willingness to act as the mediator, a role that could offer Barack Obama his first—and perhaps best—chance for engagement in the Middle East peace process.

A senior Syrian official explained that Israel’s failure to unseat Hamas from power in Gaza, despite the scale of the war, gave Assad enough political room to continue the negotiations without losing credibility in the Arab world.

DO THEY THINK THEY'RE HEDGE FUND MANAGERS:

Senate bucks campaign transparency (Washington Times, March 29, 2009)

The transparency zeal that has gripped some Washington politicians in recent years has yet to engulf the Senate's campaign funding disclosure process, and the delinquency is to the detriment of the election process.

Opening up the government to greater public scrutiny has yet to apply to most Senate candidates. Few have voluntarily joined their House counterparts, presidential candidates and even most state-level public office-seekers, who are required by statute to electronically file their campaign finance information. Instead, most incumbents and challengers still, as allowed by Senate regulations, use 1970s-era paper filings to submit their campaign finance reports to the Federal Election Commission.

WE'RE GONNA NEED MORE DUBBLE BUBBLE:

Surprising insights from the social sciences (Kevin Lewis, March 29, 2009, Boston Globe)

Better thinking through gum

BECAUSE OF ITS association with the carefree attitude of youth, chewing gum can convey an immature or unprofessional air. New research suggests that it may be time to change that preconception. People who chewed gum while working through challenging mental tasks showed higher alertness and lower stress and anxiety (including lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone) than those who weren't chewing gum. Although the exact mechanism is unclear, the authors speculate that chewing gum may increase blood flow or metabolism.

Scholey, A. et al., "Chewing Gum Alleviates Negative Mood and Reduces Cortisol During Acute Laboratory Psychological Stress," Physiology & Behavior (forthcoming).

WHAT IF YOU KNOW WHO HOSTS THE TONIGHT SHOW...:

How Old Are You Really? Can You Pick Up a Pencil? (NEIL GENZLINGER, 3/29/09, NY Times)

Considerable attention has fallen lately on RealAge, a wildly popular online questionnaire that claims to calculate your body’s true age by factoring in your diet, medical history, exercise habits and less obvious indicators of longevity like how many close friends you have. Critics complain that the test is used by pharmaceutical companies to identify potential customers and bombard them with e-mailed ads.

No one, though, has warned about the danger inherent in the questionnaire itself: the mere act of slogging through its more than 85 questions could subtract years from your life. And the test gives short shrift to the adage “You’re as young as you feel” — few questions address what might be thought of as one’s mental age. Below, a more focused quiz that should save you precious hours:

BOY, PRINCETON'LL GIVE ANYONE A DEGREE THESE DAYS:

U.S. rallies for 2-all tie with El Salvador in World Cup qualifier (AP, 3/29/09)

Two goals down and 20 minutes from what would have been one of the worst defeats to a regional rival in years, the United States rallied for a dramatic draw. [...]

Ranked just 106th in the world, El Salvador built a 2-0 lead against the No. 17 Americans before a boisterous crowd of 30,500 at Estadio Cuscatlan on goals by Eliseo Quintanilla in the 15th minute and Crisian Castillo in the 72nd. [...]

Altidore entered in the 61st minute and beat backup goalkeeper Juan Jose Gomez, who entered two minutes earlier after cramps felled Miguel Montes for the second time. Altidore scored on a header from 3 yards off a cross from Hejduk, who made an overlapping run and took a feed from Ching, who had taken a headed pass from Clint Dempsey.

"The ball came to the back post, and I was just at the right place at the right time," said Altidore, who scored his three goal in eight international appearances. "I was just trying to put in on frame. When you are that close, you don't have to place it that well."

Hejduk scored his seventh international goal on an open 3-yard header -- his first goal in qualifying since a 1996 match against Guatemala in El Salvador -- after Landon Donovan's corner kick bounded off defender Marvin Gonzalez.

"Typically at that point I don't go up on corner kicks, but it was the dying moments," Hejduk said. "I made a near post run and then ducked to the far post and no one was with me. I don't know what happened, but the ball came to the back post and next thing you know it was on my head."

YOUR DEATH IS MY UTILITY:

Who Counts?: A conversation with Jean Bethke Elshtain (Interview by Agnieszka Tennant, March 27, 2009, Books & Culture)

In Sovereignty, you observe the following irony: "In our own liberal society at the moment, and in most of the Western democracies in general, we are pursuing a paradoxical project: We are most aware of those with physical and mental disabilities; we want to provide them access. Yet at the same time, our most enthused-about and ideologically fraught projects aim at creating a world with no such persons in it." How did we arrive at the point of convergence of such opposites?

These kinds of opposites have been embedded in the great Western project from the beginning. If you put a premium on certain kinds of developed capacities—let's say, those who can enact projects of freedom, who have achieved a certain level that we recognize as definitively human—and tethered to that you have philosophies that measure us by our capacity to engage in rational operations, then those who can never maximize their capacity and who lack certain capabilities are going to be a huge problem. You can see that in the social contract literature. John Locke doesn't know what to do with idiots and imbeciles, in the tender language of the day. Where do they belong? They can't sign the contract. They're outside of the rationally interacting universe. Once you set that in play, an ongoing devaluation of certain categories of people takes hold.

Because we want to be compassionate and we feel badly about this, we say we've got to make things fairer for these kinds of people. I don't want to negate the importance of those projects for access. But even as those go on, at the present moment we're rapidly aiming for a more and more strenuous norm of perfection, with the promise and the possibilities of eugenics—or positive genetic enhancements, as we're supposed to call it. We can get more people of an ideal type, where we try to tweak off the bad bits of the genome. That's why a number of ethicists from the Netherlands have said that if you're a parent of a child with disabilities in a liberal Western democracy, particularly if they're mental disabilities, you have reason to be worried—precisely because of the devaluation that's placed on such human beings. Think about what it says to an adult with Down syndrome that the society in which she lives aborts 90 percent of Down pregnancies, and that in an ideal world there wouldn't be any like her left. That says something about how she is valued. [...]

What do you say to the argument that allowing people with disabilities onto this planet places an undue burden on society?

That's the old utilitarian calculation. It's entirely illegitimate because it suggests that the strong and able-bodied have more right to the things of the earth than those who are weak and not able-bodied. If you believe in the moral quality of persons, that's obviously not an argument you can credit. In practice, it's also a very dangerous argument because it's been made historically for warehousing people or euthanizing people. The Nazi programs had prudential utilitarian reasoning as well. [...]

The idea of human dignity seems to have taken a beating lately. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker ridiculed it in his article "The Stupidity of Dignity" in The New Republic. His target was the President's Council on Bioethics report "Human Dignity and Bioethics," to which you contributed.

You're right, there's an assault on the very notion of dignity. Pinker knows, because it came up in the discussion when I was sitting next to him, that human dignity was very much in play for those who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, given what they took to be assaults on human dignity by the Nazi regimes and the Soviet tyranny. Hitler never defended human dignity; it was about race privilege, about being fierce beasts that go out and devour the weak.

MORE:
-REVIEW: The Origins of Power: Jean Bethke Elshtain's 'Sovereignty' (ADAM KIRSCH, June 18, 2008, NY Sun)
-REVIEW: Why Me?: The case against the sovereign self. (Alan Wolfe, June 9, 2008, Slate)

LET OUR PEOPLE GO:

Delay in Immigration Raids May Signal Policy Change (Spencer S. Hsu, 3/29/09, Washington Post)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at U.S. workplaces in recent weeks, asking agents in her department to apply more scrutiny to the selection and investigation of targets as well as the timing of raids, federal officials said.

A senior department official said the delays signal a pending change in whom agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement choose to prosecute -- increasing the focus on businesses and executives instead of ordinary workers.

WELL, THE LOYAL PART IS "CHANGE":

Krugman: the left's new anti-Obama (MIKE ALLEN, 3/28/09, Politico)

A stark image of Paul Krugman, the bearded New York Times op-ed columnist and Princeton economist, appears on the cover of next week’s Newsweek, with the headline “OBAMA IS WRONG: The Loyal Opposition of Paul Krugman.”

THE UR IS LUCKY WE DON'T HAVE A PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM:

Do the honourable thing, Mr Brown. Run away: An appalling speech in Strasbourg, embarrassments at home and abroad... this Prime Minister must sacrifice himself (Matthew Parris, 3/28/09, Times of London)

I've just read one of the worst speeches by a British prime minister it's been my misfortune to encounter in 40 years following politics. Wilson had folksy evasiveness; Heath, wooden principle; Thatcher, tin-eared persistence; Blair, slimy charm. In every case you could tell why they'd got the job, even when you hated what they were doing with it.

But this? This hole in the air encased in a suit of clunking verbal armour? This truck-load of clichéd grandiloquence in hopeless pursuit of anything that might count as the faintest apology for an idea? Words fail me.

They certainly failed Gordon Brown, addressing the European Parliament this week. No wonder everybody's now watching the MEP Daniel Hannan's riposte, uploaded on to YouTube - for the sheer, blessed relief of finding anyone still standing as the grey ash came bucketing down.

Where shall I begin? Shall I bother? Is he worth it?

DON'T BLAME YOU, DON'T BLAME ME, BLAME THAT FELLA BEHIND THAT TREE:

Markets again bet the worst is past: This is the fifth time U.S. blue-chip stocks have risen more than 10% since October 2007. The previous four rallies all gave way to more selling and new market lows. (Tom Petruno, March 28, 2009, Los Angeles Times)

Did they cancel Great Depression II? So soon?

That's one message investors might choose to take away from the sharp rebound in stock markets worldwide over the last three weeks.

The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index has pared its year-to-date loss from a stunning 25% as of March 9 to just under 10% at Friday's close. [...]

This shock-and-awe campaign impresses Jim McDonald, chief investment strategist at Chicago-based Northern Trust, which manages $560 billion for clients.

"We think that what the Fed and the Treasury have done has reduced the risk of the worst happening" to the financial system and the economy, McDonald said. Enough so, he said, that he shifted a chunk of Northern Trust's portfolio out of cash and into stocks and other investments this month, trimming his cash holdings to 11% of assets from 16%.

Also still mostly in the pipeline are the effects of the nearly $800-billion economic stimulus bill Congress approved in February. Ditto for this year's mortgage refinancing wave, with home loan rates at record lows.

At a minimum, if the financial and economic meltdowns have been arrested it makes sense that investors would have to think twice about sending stocks down further, after taking the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials to 12-year lows March 9.

Once a market bounce begins it can fuel buying by bearish "short sellers" who had borrowed stock and sold it, betting on lower prices. As they rush to buy shares to close out their trades they feed the rebound.

Short-covering helped drive the previous four rallies. But the effect wasn't long-lived.

The difference this time, however, is that even the short sellers have to wonder if they're overestimating how much more damage the economy and the stock market are likely to sustain.

Reports this week showed that sales of both new and existing homes rose in February, albeit from deeply depressed levels in January. Likewise, orders for big-ticket manufactured goods were up last month, the first increase since July. On Friday the government reported that consumer spending inched up in February, the second consecutive gain.

This week, though, has brought a spate of good economic news. Consumer spending rose marginally in February, the Commerce Department said Friday, as did consumer sentiment in a household survey by Reuters and the University of Michigan. The housing market also appears to have stabilized from its free fall, and an uptick in orders for big-ticket items is helping raise hopes of a future pickup in manufacturing.

During a meeting with President Barack Obama and other bank executives Friday at the White House, Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Ken Lewis and Northern Trust Corp. CEO Rick Waddell expressed cautious optimism that the economic downturn was either at or near the bottom of the cycle, according to people at the meeting.

Click on the image for state-by-state unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with year-over-year change in percentage points.

"There's growing evidence supporting the optimists' view, and I am surprised at that," said Robert J. Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research committee that is the official arbiter of when recessions begin and end. "I was sort of in the pessimists' camp until I started looking at things."

He points to one indicator in particular with a remarkable track record: the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits. In past recessions, it has hit its peak about four weeks before the economy hit a trough and began to grow again. As of right now, the four-week average of new claims hit its peak of 650,000 in the week ended March 14. Based on the model, "if there's no further rise, we're looking at a trough coming in April or May," he said, which is far earlier than most forecasts currently anticipate.

Stunning as such crises (the 1987 crash and the Long-Term Capital Management debacle) are, we tend to see them as inevitable. The markets are risky, after all, and we enter at our own peril. We take comfort in ascribing the potential for fantastic losses to the forces of nature and unavoidable market uncertainty.

But that is not the case. More often than not, crises aren't the result of sudden economic downturns or natural disasters. Virtually all mishaps over the past decade had their roots in the complex structure of the financial markets themselves. [...]

One of the curious aspects of worsening market crises and financial instability is that these events do not mirror the underlying real economy. In fact, while risk has increased for the capital markets, the real economy, the one we live in, has experienced the opposite. In recent decades the world has progressively become a less risky place, at least when it comes to economics. [...]

[B]reakdowns come about not in spite of our efforts at improving market design, but because of them. The structural risk in the financial markets is a direct result of our attempts to improve the state of the financial markets; its origins are in what we would generally chalk up as progress. The steps that we have taken to make the markets more attuned to our investment desires--the ability to trade quickly, the integration of the financial markets into a global whole, ubiquitous and timely market information, the array of options and other derivative instruments--have exaggerated the pace of activity and the complexity of financial instruments that makes crises inevitable. Complexity cloaks catastrophe.

Mapping the Market Genome (Rick Bookstaber, 2/28/09)

A market crisis occurs when there are highly leveraged investors in a market that is under stress. These investors are forced to sell to meet their margin requirements. Their selling drops prices further – especially because the market was under stress to begin with. So you get a cascade down in the price of that market. A shock that might have initially led to only a five percent drop gets amplified, and the market might drop multiples of that. We have seen this in various guises in the current crisis, from the banks' 'toxic waste', to the downward spiral in housing prices, to the deleveraging of the carry trade, to the quant fund crisis in August 2007.

And the dynamic gets worse. Many of those under pressure to liquidate will discover they no longer can sell in the market that is under stress. If they can’t sell what they want to sell, they sell whatever else they can. So now they move to a second market where they have exposure and start selling there. If many of those who are in the first market also are in the second one, and if the investors in that market are also leveraged, then we see the contagion occur.

Here are two examples of what I am talking about.

Example one is LTCM. The proximate cause of LTCM’s demise was the Russian default in August, 1998. But LTCM was not highly exposed to Russia. A reasonable risk manager, aware of the Russian risks, might not have viewed it as critical to the firm. So how did it hurt them? It hurt them because many of those who did have high leverage in Russia also had positions in other markets where LTCM was leveraged. When the Russian debt markets failed and these investors had to come up with capital, they looked around and sold their positions in, among other things, Danish mortgage bonds. So the Danish mortgage bond market went into a tail spin, and because LTCM as big in that market, it took LTCM with it.

Example two is what happened with the Hunt silver bubble. When the bubble burst in 1980, guess what market ended up being correlated almost one-to-one with silver. Cattle. Why? Because the Hunts had to come up with margin for their silver positions, and they happened to have large holdings of cattle that they could liquidate.

Could we have ever anticipated beforehand that we would see a huge, correlated drop in both Russian MinFins and Danish Mortgage bonds? Or in silver and cattle? There is no way these dynamics can be uncovered with conventional, historically based VaR type of analysis. The historical return data do not tell us much if anything about leverage, crowding and linkages based on position holdings.

This is not to say VaR is not of value. I think everyone who is involved in risk management understands the limitations of VaR, what it can and cannot do. It is sometimes put up as a straw man because it is not doing things it was not designed to do, things it cannot do, such as assess these sorts of liquidity crisis events and the resulting cascade of correlations that result.

But the proper use of mark up languages along the lines of XBRL can give us the data we need to address market crises as they start to form. What we must do is have a regulator that extracts the relevant data – in this case position and leverage data – from major investment entities. These would include, as a start, the large banks and largest hedge funds. With assurances of data security – the data would not be revealed beyond the regulator – a government risk manager would then be able to know what currently cannot be known: where is there crowding in the markets, where are there ‘hot spots’ of high leverage, what linkages exist in the event of a crisis based on the positions these investors hold?

For these reasons, the first recommendation in both my Senate and House testimony was “get the data”. How can we do that? Well, first, by legislative demands to require investment firms -- including large hedge funds -- to provide the data. Then by the proper application of a mark up language so it can be done in a consistent, aggregatable way.

To give an analogy for this, one that came out in the conference and that illustrates how far behind we are in financial markets, a mark up language for risk would do for the financial products what bar codes already do for real products. If we discover a problem with peanuts being processed in some factory, we can use the bar codes to know where each product containing those peanuts is in the supply chain, all the way down to the grocery store shelf.

Having the proper tags – the proper bar code, if you will – for financial products, ranging from bonds and equities to structured products and swaps will allow us to understand the potential for crisis events and system risk. It will help us anticipate the course of a systemic shock. It will identify cases where many investors might be acting prudently, but where their aggregate positions lead to a level of risk which they on their own cannot see.

MORE:
They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street (DENNIS OVERBYE, 3/10/09, NY Times)

The Physics of Money

Physicists began to follow the jobs from academia to Wall Street in the late 1970s, when the post-Sputnik boom in science spending had tapered off and the college teaching ranks had been filled with graduates from the 1960s. The result, as Dr. Derman said, was a pipeline with no jobs at the end. Things got even worse after the cold war ended and Congress canceled the Superconducting Supercollider, which would have been the world’s biggest particle accelerator, in 1993.

They arrived on Wall Street in the midst of a financial revolution. Among other things, galloping inflation had made finances more complicated and risky, and it required increasingly sophisticated mathematical expertise to parse even simple investments like bonds. Enter the quant.

“Bonds have a price and a stream of payments — a lot of numbers,” said Dr. Derman, whose first job was to write a computer program to calculate the prices of bond options. The first time he tried to show it off, the screen froze, but his boss was fascinated anyway by the graphical user interface, a novelty on Wall Street at the time.

Stock options, however, were where this revolution was to have its greatest, and paradigmatic, success. In the 1970s the late Fischer Black, then at the University of Chicago, and Myron S. Scholes and Robert C. Merton, both then at M.I.T., had figured out how to price and hedge these options in a way that seemed to guarantee profits. The so-called Black-Scholes model has been the quants’ gold standard ever since.

In the old days, Dr. Derman explained, if you thought a stock was going to go up, an option was a good deal. But with Black-Scholes, it doesn’t matter where the stock is going. Assuming that the price of the stock fluctuates randomly from day to day, the model provides a prescription for you to still win by buying and selling the underlying stock and its bonds.

“If you’re a trading desk,” Dr. Derman explained, “you don’t care if it goes up or down; you still have a recipe.”

The Black-Scholes equation resembles the kinds of differential equations physicists use to represent heat diffusion and other random processes in nature. Except, instead of molecules or atoms bouncing around randomly, it is the price of the underlying stock.

The price of a stock option, Dr. Derman explained, can be interpreted as a prediction by the market about how much bounce, or volatility, stock prices will have in the future.

But it gets more complicated than that. For example, markets are not perfectly efficient — prices do not always adjust to right level and people are not perfectly rational. Indeed, Dr. Derman said, the idea of a “right level” is “a bit of a fiction.” As a result, prices do not fluctuate according to Brownian motion. Rather, he said: “Markets tend to drift upward or cascade down. You get slow rises and dramatic falls.”

One consequence of this is something called the “volatility smile,” in which options that benefit from market drops cost more than options that benefit from market rises.

Another consequence is that when you need financial models the most — on days like Black Monday in 1987 when the Dow dropped 20 percent — they might break down. The risks of relying on simple models are heightened by investors’ desire to increase their leverage by playing with borrowed money. In that case one bad bet can doom a hedge fund. Dr. Merton and Dr. Scholes won the Nobel in economic science in 1997 for the stock options model. Only a year later Long Term Capital Management, a highly leveraged hedge fund whose directors included the two Nobelists, collapsed and had to be bailed out to the tune of $3.65 billion by a group of banks.

Afterward, a Merrill Lynch memorandum noted that the financial models “may provide a greater sense of security than warranted; therefore reliance on these models should be limited.”

That was a lesson apparently not learned.

Respect for Nerds

Given the state of the world, you might ask whether quants have any idea at all what they are doing.

Comparing quants to the scientists who had built the atomic bomb and therefore had a duty to warn the world of its dangers, a group of Wall Streeters and academics, led by Mike Brown, a former chairman of Nasdaq and chief financial officer of Microsoft, published a critique of modern finance on the Web site Edge.org last fall calling on scientists to reinvent economics.

Lee Smolin, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, who was one of the authors, said, “What is amazing to me as I learn about this is how flimsy was the theoretical basis of the claims that derivatives and other complex financial instruments reduced risk, when their use in fact brought on instabilities.”

BUT THE SEMANTIC CONFUSION IS THE POINT:

Pun for the Ages (JOSEPH TARTAKOVSKY, 3/28/09, NY Times)

Puns are the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: whatever comic force they possess never outlasts the split second it takes to resolve the semantic confusion. Most resemble mathematical formulas: clever, perhaps, but hardly occasion for knee-slapping. The worst smack of tawdriness, even indecency, which is why puns, like off-color jokes, are often followed by apologies. Odds are that a restaurant with a punning name — Snacks Fifth Avenue, General Custard’s Last Stand — hasn’t acquired its first Michelin star.

How have the great comic writers regarded puns? Jane Austen puns once, in “Mansfield Park,” and it serves to impeach the moral character of the offender. Mark Twain’s first book, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” enamored reviewers with its punlessness. There are “no contortions of words,” said a London paper. “His fun is entirely dependent upon the inherent humor in his writings.” The 20th century’s finest humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, doesn’t use them. [...]

The true punster’s mind cycles through homophones in search of a quip the way small children delight in rhymes or experiment babblingly with language. Accordingly, the least intolerable puns are those that avoid the pun’s essential puerility. Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, was a specialist. He could effortlessly execute the double pun: Noah’s Ark was made of gopher-wood, he would say, but Joan of Arc was maid of Orleans. Some Whately-isms are so complex that they nearly amount to honest jokes: “Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred.”

Whately shows us that it is the punner himself who gives his art a bad name, by so frequently reaching for the obvious. Nothing vexes so much as a pun on a name, for instance. Yet even these can rise to wit if turned with finesse. Jean Harlow, the platinum-blond star of the 1930s, on being introduced to Lady Margot Asquith, mispronounced her given name to rhyme with “rot.” “My dear, the ‘t’ is silent,” said Asquith, “as in Harlow.” The writer Andrew Lang asked his friend Israel Zangwill if he would take a stand on an issue. Zangwill wrote back: “If you, Lang, will, I. Zangwill.”

BUT THE PUCK DOESN'T CURVE:

A hockey exhibit's cold, hard facts: Yes, Newtonian laws are in play on the ice. 'The Science of Hockey' exhibit in Santa Ana takes a slap shot at explaining them. (Billy Witz, March 28, 2009, LA Times)

The exhibit marries the twin passions of Henry Samueli, an engineering professor who made his fortune developing computer software and spent some of it buying the Ducks. Samueli has donated $2 million of the $2.9 million that has gone into constructing the 3,000-square-foot permanent exhibit.

"We want to use sport to inspire children to think of the science in everything," said Janet Yamaguchi, the museum's vice president of education.

The exhibit attempts to find the science in almost every aspect of hockey, from feeling the weight of uniforms to absorbing the 360 degrees of sound a goalie hears to learning about the physical properties of ice.

Of course, the three most popular displays figure to be the most hands-on: trying to shoot a puck past goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere, trying to skate with center Ryan Getzlaf and trying to stop one of winger Corey Perry's slap shots.

The three Ducks were hooked up with sensors and wires that monitored their movements, and then they were filmed extensively while shooting, skating and stopping shots on the ice. The results have been translated into life-size images that are projected onto a screen or wall.

Not that it's an exact science. During a recent tour, the shots that were fired by Perry, coming out of three spots in the wall, were easy enough for a sportswriter to turn away.

But these displays attempt to go beyond blown-up Wii games.

The "You Be the Shooter" display also explains the science of a slap shot, how kinetic energy is transferred from the body to the stick to the puck. "You Be the Goalie" is accompanied by a display that tests reaction times and explains how the brain processes what the eyes see.

A person's math skills, such as percentages and fractions, are tested while he's seated in the penalty box. Answer four questions correctly and the other team doesn't score a power-play goal -- perhaps the most plausible explanation of how George Parros, the Ducks' tough guy, might have earned an economics degree from Princeton.

PUTTING OUR BEST FOOT FORWARD, EH?:

Arrogant? Moi?: He might be amused by The Wire's success in Britain but he isn't surprised by it. After all, David Simon isn't one for modesty. Oliver Burkeman meets him (Oliver Burkeman, 3/28/09, The Guardian)

One irony of The Wire's global success is that there are now, presumably, plenty of middle-class Britons more familiar with the drugs economy, failing schools and corrupt politicians of Baltimore than they are with any part of inner-city Britain. So faithful is The Wire to the specific vernacular of its setting, indeed, that there may be Londoners or Mancunians whose knowledge of west Baltimore drugs slang exceeds that of dealers in Philadelphia or New York.

They will have a new opportunity to embellish their vocabularies next month with the first UK publication of The Corner, the 1997 non-fiction book that inspired The Wire. Written by Simon and his collaborator Ed Burns, a former Baltimore police detective, it is a forensic document of one year in the inner city, told through the prism of a single street corner, and the addicts and dealers for whom it's the frontline in the struggle to survive. The publication is part of a high-profile year for Simon in Britain: he will appear at this year's Hay literary festival, while BBC2 will give The Wire its first airing on mainstream television.

Simon purports to be amused by his British success - "It's hilarious to me that there are two people walking through Hyde Park right now, arguing about The Wire" - but it would be wrong to imply he's surprised by it. Modesty isn't part of the Simon repertoire. He freely describes The Wire as revolutionary television, capturing "the truth" about the "universal themes" of life in the era of unrestrained capitalism; you sense that, ultimately, he considers the global adulation only fitting. When people call The Wire Shakespearean, he demurs, but only because he considers it a Greek tragedy instead: Aeschylus updated, with urban institutions as the Olympian gods, destroying human lives on a whim. "It's the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no decent reason," he has said. (In a show loaded with symbolism, it's no coincidence that the coldest expression of pure capitalism in The Wire is the criminal mastermind of season two, The Greek.) You can watch The Wire, of course, as no more than a gritty soap opera, charting the lives of the alcoholic-but-brilliant detective Jimmy McNulty, the sociopathic kingpin Marlo Stanfield or the heartbreaking dope fiend Bubbles. But don't imagine Simon isn't also operating on another plane entirely.

It's part of the price of admission to Simon's worlds, both fictional and non-fictional, that you'll have almost no idea what's going on for the first few episodes, or the first few hundred pages. Turning on the subtitles will help you only marginally with the Baltimore-speak of The Wire; within the first few pages of The Corner, Gary McCullough, the real-life inspiration for Bubbles, is shown concluding that "the issue is 30 on the hype", no explanation provided. The soldiers of Generation Kill - Simon's Iraq war mini-series, based on a Rolling Stone journalist's book-length account of being embedded with the US marines during the 2003 invasion of Iraq - speak for minutes on end in impenetrable military lingo, and Treme, a show about the New Orleans music scene on which he's currently working, promises similarly opaque music jargon. This is quite deliberate. The key principle of Simon's storytelling was encapsulated in a remark that caused raised eyebrows when he uttered it, late last year, on BBC2's Culture Show: "F[***] the average viewer."

THE COGNITIVE CURVE:

Get Smart : a review of INTELLIGENCE AND HOW TO GET IT: Why Schools and Culture Count By Richard E. Nisbett (Jim Holt, 3/29/09, NY Times Book Review)

[Nisbett] grants that I.Q. tests — which gauge both “fluid” intelligence (abstract reasoning skills) and “crystallized” intelligence (knowledge) — measure something real. They also measure something important: even within the same family, higher-I.Q. children go on to make more money than their less-bright siblings.

However, Nisbett bridles at the hereditarian claim that I.Q. is 75 to 85 percent heritable; the real figure, he thinks, is less than 50 percent. Estimates come from comparing the I.Q.’s of blood relatives — identical twins, fraternal twins, siblings — growing up in different adoptive families. But there is a snare here. As Nisbett observes, “adoptive families, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are all alike.” Not only are they more affluent than average, they also tend to give children lots of cognitive stimulation. Thus data from them yield erroneously high estimates of I.Q. heritability. (Think: if we all grew up in exactly the same environment, I.Q. differences would appear to be 100 percent genetic.) This underscores an important point: there is no fixed value for heritability. The notion makes sense only relative to a population. Heritability of I.Q. is higher for upper-class families than for lower-class families, because lower-class families provide a wider range of cognitive environments, from terrible to pretty good.

Even if genes play some role in determining I.Q. differences within a population, which Nisbett grants, that implies nothing about average differences between populations. The classic example is corn seed planted on two plots of land, one with rich soil and the other with poor soil. Within each plot, differences in the height of the corn plants are completely genetic. Yet the average difference between the two plots is entirely environmental.

Could the same logic explain the disparity in average I.Q. between Americans of European and of African descent? Nisbett thinks so. The racial I.Q. gap, he argues, is “purely environmental.” For one thing, it’s been shrinking: over the last 30 years, the measured I.Q. difference between black and white 12-year-olds has dropped from 15 points to 9.5 points. Among his more direct evidence, Nisbett cites impressive studies in population genetics. African-Americans have on average about 20 percent European genes, largely as a legacy of slavery. But the proportion of European genes ranges widely among individuals, from near zero to more than 80 percent. If the racial gap is mostly genetic, then blacks with more European genes ought to have higher I.Q.’s on average. In fact, they don’t.

Nisbett is similarly skeptical that genetics could account for the intellectual prowess of Ashkenazi Jews, whose average I.Q. measures somewhere between 110 and 115. As for the alleged I.Q. superiority of East Asians over American whites, that turns out to be an artifact of sloppy comparisons; when I.Q. tests are properly normed, Americans actually score slightly higher than East Asians.

If I.Q. differences are indeed largely environmental, what might help eliminate group disparities? The most dramatic results come from adoption. When poor children are adopted by upper-middle-class families, they show an I.Q. gain of 12 to 16 points. Upper-class parents talk to their children more than working-class parents do. And there are subtler differences. In poorer black families, for example, children are rarely asked “known-answer questions” — that is, questions where the parents already know the right answer. (“What color is the elephant, Billy?”) Consequently, as Nisbett observes, the children are nonplussed by such questions at school. (“If the teacher doesn’t know this, then I sure don’t.”)

The challenge is to find educational programs that are as effective as adoption in raising I.Q.

BARRY? IT'S PAT...HOW DO THOSE WAIVER THINGIES WORK?:

Patrick aides directed hiring: Set Walsh's salary, wrote job description E-mails detail their level of involvement (Frank Phillips, March 28, 2009, Boston Globe)

Contradicting a series of steadfast denials, internal e-mails show that Governor Deval Patrick's top aides controlled the appointment of state Senator Marian Walsh to a high-paying job at a state authority, from setting her salary to crafting her job description.

They also provided the agency's talking points for the news media in an attempt to quell a public uproar.

RUDY, YOUR DESTINY IS CALLING:

How to Train a Governor (GAIL COLLINS, 3/28/09, NY Times)

This week, a survey taken by Siena College’s Research Institute found that Gov. David Paterson of New York had a positive job-approval rating of 19 percent. [...]

The most remarkable thing of all is that while Paterson certainly did mess up on that Caroline Kennedy-Senate thing, he achieved this political free fall without help from any big personal scandal. In a state capital where anybody who is anybody is under indictment, he managed to completely alienate the public just by being terrible at his job.

Who knew people were paying that much attention?

Old-timers in Albany say this is the worst legislative session they have ever seen, which is like a prisoner on a chain gang saying he really hates Mondays. Still, things are a mess. Paterson’s aides come and go, his commitments ebb and flow. He hasn’t been able to rescue the downstate mass transit system, and the budget is being put together in darkened rooms by people you would not trust to do your mortgage closing.

Meanwhile, the 32 Democrats who control the State Senate by one vote have discovered that a party with a one-vote majority is exactly as good as its weakest, dumbest and most venal member. This in a group where one guy is about to stand trial for beating up his girlfriend and several others give the impression of being willing to trade their vote for a television someone handed them from the back of a stolen truck.

WELL, ANY TIME HE DIVERGES FROM HIS PREDECESSOR HE DOES MAKE A MESS:

Obama Afghanistan Plan Breaks Old Ground (Bobby Ghosh, 3/28/09, TIME)

Did George Bush leave one of his old speeches in the Resolute Desk? As President Obama unveiled his Afghanistan-Pakistan policy Friday, it was hard to miss the echoes of his predecessor's "surge" strategy in Iraq. Indeed, says James Dobbins, the State Department veteran who served as President Bush's first envoy to Afghanistan, Obama's plan is "largely an extension of where the Bush Administration, in its last years, was heading,with some refinements and additions."

AND PEOPLE THINK PD JAMES WRITES FICTION:

Britain becoming only-child nation (Sarah Knapton, 28 Mar 2009, Daily Telegraph)

Latest figures show homes with just one child now make up 46 per cent of all families and could soon be in the majority of the current trend continues.

Currently there are some 3.43 million homes with only-children and 2.91 million with two youngsters. Families with three or more children are also in decline.

The change has been partially blamed on more women putting off pregnancy for their careers and so limiting the amount of time they have to safely conceive.

SUDDENLY, NEGOTIATING IN PUBLIC DOESN'T SEEM SUCH A GOOD IDEA:

Obama Administration Says Treaty Text Is State Secret (Grant Gross, IDG News Service)

The Office of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), part of President Barack Obama's office, has denied a company's request for information about a secretive anticounterfeiting trade agreement being negotiated, citing national security concerns.

The USTR this week denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Knowledge Ecology International, an intellectual-property research and advocacy group, even though Obama, in one of his first presidential memos, directed that agencies be more forthcoming with information requested by the public.

The USTR under Obama seems to be taking the same position about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as it did under former President George Bush, that the treaty documents are not open to the public. One of Obama's campaign promises was to make government more open and responsive to the public.

WHO WAIVES THE WAIVERER?:

Obama raised cash after leaving Senate: Bailout beneficiary gave maximum (Jim McElhatton, March 27, 2009, Washington Times)

President Obama continued collecting money for his 2010 Senate re-election campaign even after he resigned his seat from Illinois, including a maximum $2,300 donation the day after Christmas from a top executive of a Wall Street firm that had received a government bailout.

Four contributions - $4,800 in all - were donated to the Obama 2010 fund on Dec. 26, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

The money came from some of Mr. Obama's top presidential fundraisers: Bruce A. Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs, which received a $10 billion bailout last year; Steven Koch, vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston; and John Levi, a lawyer at the law and lobbying firm of Sidley Austin LLP.

WHO ELSE BUT KARL ROVE...:

In Dem war vs. Paterson, the GOP wins (Errol Louis, March 26th 2009, NY Daily News)

True to its reputation as a fractured, fratricidal bunch of hotheads, a crowd of left-leaning community activists and union leaders staged an ill-advised protest yesterday against Gov. Paterson, who easily ranks among the most progressive New York Democratic politicians of the past 50 years.

The rally, designed to pressure the governor into supporting a sweeping revocation of the harsh Rockefeller drug laws, was the latest chapter in a reckless, short-sighted organized campaign against the governor by Paterson's former grass-roots allies in the political clubs, neighborhood churches, advocacy organizations and union halls.

One speaker after another - including Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Rev. Calvin Butts of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons - hectored and lectured the governor, emphasizing that Paterson, as a state senator, felt so strongly about reform that he'd voluntarily been arrested on the same site a few years earlier when Republican George Pataki was governor.

ONE MORE RECIPE...:

Obama's Afghanistan proposal under fire (ALEX ISENSTADT, 3/27/09, Politico)

Russ Feingold, the liberal and often defiant Wisconsin senator, said today that that Obama’s plan “could make the situation worse, not better.”

Peace Action, a liberal anti-war organization, is organizing a coalition to petition Congress to oppose Obama’s Afghanistan plan.

“It’s a shame President Obama believes he can pursue the same militaristic strategy as his predecessors and produce a different result,” said Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action.

And Win Without War, another anti-war group, also slammed Obama.

“I regret that President Obama, in his desire to protect our nation from a genuine threat, has outlined a policy that will undermine our security, not enhance it,” said Tom Andrews, the organization’s executive director. “In short, the president’s policy is playing into the hands of Al Qaeda and the Taliban by providing them with a cause that unites and strengthens them."

The criticisms of the troop expansion in Afghanistan are similar to the liberal concerns over the slower than expected pace of withdrawal from Iraq.

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOUR 15 MINUTES ARE UP BUT YOU STILL HAVE FOUR YEARS TO SERVE?:

Everything Bad Is Good Again (GAIL COLLINS, 3/26/09, NY Times)

National Consensus Update: [...]

Barack Obama — Kinda boring. Did you see the news conference? Same thing over and over again. Not that we mind. In these troubled times, we like stability. Thank God we didn’t elect somebody who was all charisma and exciting speeches. [...]

[T]here appear to be only two constants in our ever-changing world. One is that Barack Obama is going to be on television every day forever. No venue is too strange. Soon, he’ll be on “Dancing With the Stars” (“And now, doing the Health Care, Energy and Education tango ...”) or delivering the weather report. (“Here we see a wave of systemic change, moving across the nation ...”)

JOE DELANEY WASN'T IN THIS FAR OVER HIS HEAD:

Learning the hard way: Barack Obama's Learning Curve (The Economist, 3/26/09)

[A]t home Mr Obama has had a difficult start. His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.

There are two main reasons for this. The first is Mr Obama’s failure to grapple as fast and as single-mindedly with the economy as he should have done. His stimulus package, though huge, was subcontracted to Congress, which did a mediocre job: too much of the money will arrive too late to be of help in the current crisis. His budget, though in some ways more honest than his predecessor’s, is wildly optimistic. And he has taken too long to produce his plan for dealing with the trillions of dollars of toxic assets which fester on banks’ balance-sheets.

The failure to staff the Treasury is a shocking illustration of administrative drift. There are 23 slots at the department that need confirmation by the Senate, and only two have been filled. This is not the Senate’s fault. Mr Obama has made a series of bad picks of people who have chosen or been forced to withdraw; and it was only this week that he announced his candidates for two of the department’s four most senior posts. Filling such jobs is always a tortuous business in America, but Mr Obama has made it harder by insisting on a level of scrutiny far beyond anything previously attempted. Getting the Treasury team in place ought to have been his first priority.

Second, Mr Obama has mishandled his relations with both sides in Congress. Though he campaigned as a centrist and promised an era of post-partisan government, that’s not how he has behaved. His stimulus bill attracted only three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. This bodes ill for the passage of more difficult projects, such as his big plans for carbon-emissions control and health-care reform. Keeping those promises will soon start to bedevil the administration. The Republicans must take their share of the blame for the breakdown. But if Mr Obama had done a better job of selling his package, and had worked harder at making sure that Republicans were included in drafting it, they would have found it more difficult to oppose his plans.

If Mr Obama cannot work with the Republicans, he needs to be certain that he controls his own party. Unfortunately, he seems unable to. Put bluntly, the Democrats are messing him around.

THE FAILURE TO NATIONALIZE LEHMAN DOES NOT AN OLIGARCHY MAKE (via Brad S):

Re-emerging As an Emerging Market (Desmond Lachman, March 29, 2009, Washington Post)

[I] still recall the shock I felt at a meeting in Russia's dingy Ministry of Finance, where I finally realized how a handful of young oligarchs were bringing Russia's economy to ruin in the pursuit of their own selfish interests, despite the supposed brilliance of Anatoly Chubais, Russia's economic czar at the time.

At the time, I could not imagine that anything remotely similar could happen in the United States. Indeed, I shared the American conceit that most emerging-market nations had poorly developed institutions and would do well to emulate Washington and Wall Street. These days, though, I'm hardly so confident. Many economists and analysts are worrying that the United States might go the way of Japan, which suffered a "lost decade" after its own real estate market fell apart in the early 1990s. But I'm more concerned that the United States is coming to resemble Argentina, Russia and other so-called emerging markets, both in what led us to the crisis, and in how we're trying to fix it. [...]

The parallels between U.S. policymaking and what we see in emerging markets are clearest in how we've mishandled the banking crisis. We delude ourselves that our banks face liquidity problems, rather than deeper solvency problems, and we try to fix it all on the cheap just like any run-of-the-mill emerging market economy would try to do. And after years of lecturing Asian and Latin American leaders about the importance of consistency and transparency in sorting out financial crises, we fail on both counts: In March 2008, one investment bank, Bear Stearns, is bailed out because it is thought to be too interconnected with the rest of the banking system to fail. However, six months later, another investment bank, Lehman Brothers -- for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from Bear Stearns in its financial market inter-connectedness -- is allowed to fail, with catastrophic effects on global financial markets.

HE WASN'T ALWAYS OVER-RATED:

Time for Honesty About the Great Derek Jeter (Allen Barra, March 26, 2009, NY Observer)

Though the New York press and Yankee fandom don’t seem to realize it, Jeter has been on a sharp decline over the last couple of seasons, and 2009 is going to determine a lot about how the next generations of fans remember him. Thirty-four—he’ll be 35 in June—isn’t old for a bottle of wine or even a first baseman, but it’s like dog years for a shortstop, and right now Jeter is acting like an old dog refusing to learn new tricks.

He just finished the World Baseball Classic hitting .276 and without an RBI or stolen base. If the starting assignment has been based on merit, Jeter would have sat out every game and watched Jimmy Rollins play. Jeter’s devotion to the WBC is admirable, but the truth is if he weren’t one of the most popular players in the history of the Yankees—and I don’t take that lightly since he’s been my daughter’s and my favorite player for the last 13 seasons—he wouldn’t be shortstop right now. I don’t know who would be, but Derek Jeter would be playing another position.

Let’s go ahead and say it: No major league team has ever won a pennant with a 35-year-old shortstop.

This will be Jeter’s 14th season (not counting 1995, when he only played 15 games), and judging from the blogs and radio call-in shows, Yankee fans are assuming that he is a walking Hall of Famer, but I don’t necessarily think that’s true.

THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES...THE GOP:

The Coming Democratic Civil War: Control of the president’s liberal-leaning agenda has been snatched by centrist Democrats in the Senate. They may just save his presidency. (John Avlon, 3/27/09, Daily Beast)

The most important debate in Washington today isn’t happening between Democrats and Republicans—it’s happening between centrist Democrats and liberal Democrats. Not just the budget, but control of congress in the 2010 elections could hang in the balance.

Late last week, 16 Democratic senators declared independence by forming a new centrist caucus. Led by Indiana’s Evan Bayh, Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln and Delaware’s Tom Carper, the group includes senators from every region and some of the party’s rising stars, including Virginia’s Mark Warner and Missouri’s Claire McCaskill. Together, their numbers are more than sufficient to deny liberals a rubber-stamp majority in the Senate. The center is flexing its muscle and now holds the balance of power. [...]

We’ve seen this movie before. A charismatic new Democrat president blessed with unified control of Congress gets his legs cut out from under him when the electorate decides that the combined package is more liberal than they’d like.

Americans actually like the checks and balances of divided government—that’s why we’ve voted for it almost two-thirds of the time since 1955. And Obama’s job is made more difficult by the fact that he is trying to create a durable center-left coalition is what is essentially a center-right nation.

Committed liberals hate hearing that last point, but consider the facts: Exit polls in 2008 showed that 44 percent of American voters are self-described moderates, while 34 percent call themselves conservatives and 22 percent describe themselves as liberal. These numbers were basically unchanged from four years before. Obama managed to win not just 90 percent of liberals, but 60 percent of moderates and 20 percent of conservatives, building bridges across partisan divides to win virtually all the swing states in the nation. That brought his victory total to 28 states, compared to Reagan’s first-term 44-state win in 1980 and Bill Clinton’s 32 states in 1992. President Obama has a mandate to govern from the center, not the far-left.

THE TRIUMPH OF IDEOLOGY OVER SCIENCE:

Savings Rate Continues to Be High (JEFF BATER, 3/27/09, WSJ)

Personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income was 4.2% in February, the Commerce Department said. It was 4.4% in January. The last time the saving rate exceeded 4.0% two straight months was August and September 1998, up 4.3% and 4.2%, respectively.

Saving money is healthy for households and the economy over time, a path to prosperity.

THE NATIVISTS' NATURAL ALLY, BIG LABOR:

A risky new push for immigration legislation: Advocates of legalization have crafted a plan that could alienate businesses and key Republicans, including Sen. John McCain. But it is designed to lure a powerful new ally -- organized labor. (Peter Wallsten, March 27, 2009, LA Times)

With their prospects in Congress sinking along with the economy, liberal advocates of giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship are launching a risky strategy to push lawmakers and the White House to take up their cause.

They are devising a proposal in which millions of undocumented workers would be legalized now, while the number of foreign workers allowed to enter the country would be examined by a new independent commission, and probably reduced.

It is a calculation designed to win a new and powerful ally, organized labor, which favors a limit on foreign worker visas. But it risks alienating businesses that rely on temporary workers and could turn off key Republicans such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who in the past has crafted his own compromise plan for legalization.

REFORMATION, NOT REVOLUTION:

The Monarch Who Declared His Own Revolution: King Abdullah, 85, is racing to reform Saudi Arabia. How much can he accomplish—and will it last? (Christopher Dickey, 3/21/09, NEWSWEEK)

For years the pace of reform in Saudi Arabia has reflected what seemed to be denial. Change has been almost imperceptibly slow, like a dune moving across the desert, even as the kingdom's festering problems nourished extremism. In the past few weeks, however, things have suddenly accelerated as the king has moved to show the ultraconservative Saudi religious establishment quite literally who's boss. He sacked the head of the feared religious police and the minister of justice, appointed Nora al-Fayez as deputy education minister, making her the highest-ranking female official in the country's history, and moved to equalize the education of women and men under the direction of a favored son-in-law who has been preparing for years to modernize the nation's school system. "Abdullah waited," says Robert Lacey, who wrote "The Kingdom," the classic 1981 study of Saudi Arabia, and is now working on a sequel. "He bided his time until it was appropriate for him to make the changes he wanted." Whatever the reason, the 85-year-old monarch has begun acting like a leader whose vision is becoming clear just as time is running short.

The question is how much he can accomplish before his death or dotage. [...]

Former CIA director Michael Hayden has credited the king and his men with providing some of the most productive and effective cooperation that the United States has with any country in the world. "Aggressive efforts by the Saudi security forces between 2003 and 2006 led to the death or capture of most Al Qaeda leaders and operatives within the kingdom," Hayden told a think tank late last year. "Financing networks were disrupted. The Saudi Interior Ministry undertook what is perhaps the world's most effective counterradicalization programs." Hayden added: "I am struck, maybe even surprised … by the degree of emotion in my Islamic counterpart's voice when he is talking about Al Qaeda and how un-Islamic Al Qaeda really is."

Abdullah essentially looks on his subjects with paternal indulgence, and his affection is reciprocated by much of the population. But such a personalized relationship between king and people provides an uncertain foundation for some of the reforms Abdullah now wants to push through. Speech is freer than ever before, but dissidents still risk being thrown in jail for speaking out publicly. Book fairs and poetry festivals have become gathering places for men and women, but they're also what one British expatriate in Riyadh calls "battlegrounds" where young hard-liners express outrage at the distribution of popular romances. The king has made history by meeting with the pope (after demanding and getting the acquiescence of Saudi Arabia's religious authorities), but Christian churches are still forbidden on Arabia's sacred soil.

Women are still forbidden to drive. They're required to keep their bodies covered (though they may expose their face if they like), and their choices in every aspect of life, personal and professional, are more limited than those of men. Saudi law treats women, at best, as second-class citizens. The fiery Princess Adelah, playing an ever more assertive role, is an inspiration to some. "She listens," says a young mother of two girls. "The king likes her a lot. She has become his public face."

And the old man himself? "I met him once," the mother says. "He's very quiet. I was with a delegation. We all shook hands with him." In puritanical Saudi Arabia, that's a serious gesture in itself. "He said we were all his daughters. And he actually listened and tried to solve each one's problem: 'Talk to this person or that person'." Still, change like that is hardly systemic. "Look, I would like to have a more effective role for women in society," says Adelah, who presides over numerous Saudi charities and whose husband, Faisal bin Abdullah, is the new minister of education. "We are finding it hard. We find lots of resistance. But we will not give up. These things aren't given to you. You need to pull them out of society."

SUPPOSE FOR A MOMENT....:

AN AMERICAN EXPORT TO JAPAN: The Culture of Death & the Death of a Culture (Michael Thomas Cibenko, 2/09, New Oxford Review)

For four years, from 1996 to 2000, I was employed as a teacher of English in Kumamoto Prefecture in southern Japan. During that time I met and married a Japanese woman, and our first son was born there. I vividly recall going with my wife to the clinic to verify that she was indeed with child. After confirming that she was, the first thing the doctor asked us, in a rather matter-of-fact manner, was whether we wanted to keep the baby. I remember with equal clarity my offense to the question as, in my mind, there really was no question about it. A baby had been conceived and, in accordance with natural law, that child would be nurtured and brought into the world. To this day, I don't know whether the doctor's question was a matter of protocol within the Japanese healthcare system, but it left a lasting impression on me.

The first time I saw my newborn son was from behind the large window of the post-delivery room in which there were some twenty-five little beds. But only two of those beds were occupied: one by my son and one by a baby girl who had been born the same day. Though filled with the joy of becoming a new father, I couldn't help but be struck by the image of this room with so many empty little beds. I didn't give the matter too much thought at the time, reasoning that perhaps it was just a "slow" time of the year.

Several weeks later, my wife and I received an unexpected sum of money from the prefectural government. At that time, it was roughly the equivalent of $3,000. When I asked why we were being given this money, my wife discovered that it was an incentive to encourage couples to have more children. This fascinated me because (as I confess with some embarrassment), until that time, I had been oblivious to the fact that Japan was facing a low-birthrate crisis. The subsequent research I conducted on this issue caused me further embarrassment, as the data is plain as day for anyone with eyes to see.

What also struck me was the stark contrast between our doctor's initial question and the cash "reward" we received. It seemed I was living in a culture that, on the one hand, did not wholeheartedly embrace the sanctity of new life but, on the other hand, recognized that there was a problem stemming from the lack of it. It was like some kind of cultural schizophrenia that can be likened to a race in which an official at the finish line holds out a prize, yet another official at the starting gate asks runners whether, in fact, they really want to run at all.

Once my eyes were opened to the reality of Japan's low birthrate, it was amazing how many more telltale signs I observed over the subsequent months and years. Though I primarily taught at a junior high school, I was also asked to periodically visit area kindergartens and nursery schools. Almost without exception, the schools I visited were ones that had been built to accommodate relatively large numbers of children. But the number of children actually present at any of these schools was far, far fewer than what had been anticipated. I visited one nursery school, for example, that had been built twenty years earlier to accommodate fifty children, but had an enrollment of only eight.

The starkest example I encountered was an elementary school that had been built for a student population of at least one hundred. There were several full-size classrooms, a large gymnasium, library, playground, swimming pool, and parking lot. But I was astounded to discover on my first visit that there was only one student. One student with one teacher. Not wanting to seem impolite, yet unable to suppress my curiosity, I asked the teacher why this large school remained open for a single student. He explained that, by law, the school had to remain open until transportation arrangements could be made to bus the boy to a neighboring village. There had been a time, he reminisced with obvious sadness, when the school was filled with the sounds of children at play and the teachers who instructed them. My mind flashed back to the birth of my son and the room full of empty beds.

I later attended an autumn festival in my village at which elders traditionally take turns calling out the names of babies born that year. But that portion of the festival was very short and somewhat awkward, as there were dozens of senior citizens but only three names to be called. I heard similar stories from other towns and villages in the area in which there were no names at all. I also recall a trip to the city of Fukuoka where I witnessed the bizarre sight of elderly women cuddling robotic dolls. It was explained to me that women buy these expensive dolls because they have no grandchildren to dote on. The dolls, which apparently sell in huge quantities, tell their owners how much they love them, and welcome them when they walk back into the room. The more I saw sights such as these, the more I realized that, despite all the beauty of Japan and her rich culture, something had gone terribly wrong. [...]

According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's annual report on world demographics, Japan's population peaked in 2005, and will plunge from its current 127 million to just 89 million in 2050 -- a decline of 30 percent. In terms of median age, Japan is currently the oldest nation on earth. The median age in Japan today is 43 years old, which, from the data I've read, is twice the age of many African nations. Japan will continue to hold this title through the year 2050, when the average age in Japan is projected to be 61 years old.

HOW'S THE BAY STATE VERSION OF THE UR DOING? (via AWW)

Deval Patrick tanks in new poll (Joe Dwinell, March 26, 2009, Boston Herald)

A wave of voter disgust at business as usual on Beacon Hill has swamped Gov. Deval Patrick, dealing the first-term governor a devastating credibility blow that leaves his re-election hopes shaken, a new 7News poll has found.

Patrick’s standing with voters is so weak that he is locked in a dead heat with his main political rival, scoring 30 percent to state Treasurer Tim Cahill’s 35 percent if the general election were held today - even though Cahill hasn’t even said he’s running.

THE PROBLEM ISN'T OWNING THE WAR...:

'Obama's war' - New troops and new plan (MIKE ALLEN, 3/26/09, Politico)

President Barack Obama plans to commit to sending 4,200 more troops and hundreds more civilians to Afghanistan in a speech at the White House on Friday morning, and also to embrace a new system of benchmarks to measure progress.

“He’s gone all in,” said an official briefed on the plan. “This is Obama’s war. He’s pushed all the chips to the center of the table.”

The 4,200 troops will be trainers to help expand the Afghan army. “We’ll see if we ultimately need to go beyond that,” the official said.

SUPPOSEDLY THE BEST PITCHING PROSPECT EVER:

Stephen Strasburg Is Ready To Bring It: Out-of-shape and overlooked coming out of high school, the San Diego State righthander now throws triple-digit heat to go with pinpoint control, making him the likely first pick in June (Lee Jenkins, 3/26/09, Sports Illustrated)

Erik Castro has a Wilson A2000 catcher's mitt, black with tan webbing, made of steerhide so supple it can absorb a 102-mph fastball and barely make a sound. Castro is a catcher for San Diego State, and on the night of March 13, as the Aztecs hosted UNLV, he dropped into his crouch and extended his A2000 into the light fog at Tony Gwynn Stadium. San Diego State junior righthander Stephen Strasburg, he of the 102-mph heater, aimed for the leather. As horsehide met steerhide, a string on the glove snapped. The webbing came unhinged. Castro, oblivious to the tattered piece of equipment dangling from his left hand, threw the ball back to Strasburg. The Aztecs ace fired again, and by the grace of God, the pitch was fouled away. "If not," Castro says, "I think I would have died." Chances are, his chest protector would have saved him, but his point is well-taken: Stephen Strasburg has killer stuff.

Over a 40-year career a major league scout of amateur talent will raise his radar gun perhaps a million times at high school and college games. And almost every time only two digits will pop up on his screen. So in the rare instance when he sees a third digit, it is like witnessing the elusive green flash that follows a perfect sunset. After Strasburg touched 101 in the first inning against UNLV, scouts behind home plate reacted with a torrent of hyperbole. Or was it hyperbole? "I've never seen anyone like him," said one. "He's a once-in-a-lifetime talent." "He doesn't need the minor leagues," added another. "He's ready for the majors right now." "The only pitcher I could even compare him to is Roger Clemens in his heyday," offered a third. "This is something you have to see to believe."

CHEECH & CHONG & BARRY:

Obama tries to defuse pot questions (Jon Ward, March 26, 2009, Washington Times)

President Obama responded to a surge of interest about legalizing marijuana in his online "virtual town hall" meeting Thursday, saying with a chuckle that it's not a way to improve the economy. [...]

"I don't know what this says about the online audience," said the president, laughing softly.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS NEW POLITICS...:

Obama Points Back to the GOP's Future: The president has made taxes and spending the big issues again. (KARL ROVE, 3/26/09, WSJ)

Federal spending will under Mr. Obama top $4 trillion this year. This translates into 28.5% of GDP -- a level exceeded only at the height of World War II. According to the president's plans, spending will thereafter slow for three years, but then grow faster than the economy for the next seven years and beyond. Spending rises by $3.1 trillion from 2009-19, including $911 billion for legislation signed during his first two months in office, including the stimulus bill and the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (and not including interest on the mushrooming debt). Mr. Obama is violating every tenet of his promise "to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day."

Americans are also worried about Mr. Obama's plans for $1.9 trillion more in taxes. These tax hikes won't just affect the "rich," as he claims. His cap-and-trade carbon tax will hit everyone who consumes energy -- that is, every American. Taxes on the top 5% of filers will result in lost jobs and wages for small businesses and less charitable giving. The administration claims higher taxes are required for deficit reduction. But its spending increases are half again as large as its tax hikes.

Nothing has deterred the administration from pursuing its staggeringly expensive agenda. Mr. Obama brushed off any concerns Tuesday night. He is quite openly using the economic crisis to launch a massive, permanent expansion of government financed by ever-more borrowing and ever-higher taxes. This may mean that his goal is to cause taxes to rise to European levels, transforming America into a European-style social democracy.

The dynamic he has set in motion could spur the emergence of strong competitors to Mr. Obama in 2012 who take a strong, principled stand against record-setting deficits, debt and taxes. It may also strengthen Republican chances in next year's midterm elections.

Democrats should, for example, be troubled by a new National Public Radio poll showing Republicans tied or ahead in generic matchups for Congress. And while the midterms are 20 months off, Republican gubernatorial hopefuls in Virginia (Attorney General Bob McDonnell) and New Jersey (former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie) are ahead in two states Barack Obama carried last year that vote this fall.

NOTHING SO CHARACTERIZES THE CULT OF REASON... (via Glenn Dryfoos):

The Civil Heretic (NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF, 3/29/09, NY Times Magazine)

FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Prince­ton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country’s most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming “out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,” as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors’ letter boxes and Dyson’s own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Dyson has discovered himself variously described as “a pompous twit,” “a blowhard,” “a cesspool of misinformation,” “an old coot riding into the sunset” and, perhaps inevitably, “a mad scientist.” Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred “carbon-eating trees,” whereupon the University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner looked through the thick grove of honorary degrees Dyson has been awarded — there are 21 from universities like Georgetown, Princeton and Oxford — and suggested that “perhaps trees can also be designed so that they can give directions to lost hikers.” Dyson’s son, George, a technology historian, says his father’s views have cooled friendships, while many others have concluded that time has cost Dyson something else. There is the suspicion that, at age 85, a great scientist of the 20th century is no longer just far out, he is far gone — out of his beautiful mind. [...]

Dyson says he doesn’t want his legacy to be defined by climate change, but his dissension from the orthodoxy of global warming is significant because of his stature and his devotion to the integrity of science. Dyson has said he believes that the truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won’t come to pass. In “Infinite in All Directions,” he writes that nature’s laws “make the universe as interesting as possible.” This also happens to be a fine description of Dyson’s own relationship to science. In the words of Avishai Margalit, a philosopher at the Institute for Advanced Study, “He’s a consistent reminder of another possibility.” When Dyson joins the public conversation about climate change by expressing concern about the “enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories,” these reservations come from a place of experience. Whatever else he is, Dyson is the good scientist; he asks the hard questions. He could also be a lonely prophet. Or, as he acknowledges, he could be dead wrong.

TAMP 'EM UP SOLID:

India's emerging power makes Chinese army worried: Pentagon (PTI, 3/26/09)

India's emergence as an economic, political and military power has left Chinese army worried, even as the two countries in the recent years have increased their economic and military cooperation, a report released by Pentagon said.

"The PLA (People's Liberation Army) remains concerned with persistent disputes along China's shared border with India and the strategic ramifications of India's rising economic, political, and military power," the Pentagon said in its Congressional mandated annual report on China's army.

The Indian military fears a ‘Chinese aggression’ in less than a decade. A secret exercise, called ‘Divine Matrix’, by the army’s military operations directorate has visualised a war scenario with the nuclear-armed neighbour before 2017.

“A misadventure by China is very much within the realm of possibility with Beijing trying to position itself as the only power in the region. There will be no nuclear warfare but a short, swift war that could have menacing consequences for India,” said an army officer, who was part of the three-day war games that ended on Wednesday.

In the military’s assessment, based on a six-month study of various scenarios before the war games, China would rely on information warfare (IW) to bring India down on its knees before launching an offensive.

WE OUGHT TO HELP THE TALIBAN TRUCK REINFORCEMENTS TO THESE "FIGHTS":

Taliban lose 130 in three day battle with Marines (Thomas Harding, 26 Mar 2009, Daily Telegraph)

Royal Marines have killed 130 Taliban fighters during a major three-day battle in Afghanistan in which a key enemy stronghold was destroyed, the Ministry of Defence has said.

A force of 700 troops from 42 Commando along with Danish and Afghan troops swooped on the Taliban base of Marjah in a helicopter air assault that took three waves to offload the men. [...]

Only two commandos were injured during Operation Blue Sword compared to an estimated 200 to 300 Taliban wounded. It is believed that the enemy dead included a Mullah regarded as a “high value target” by the military.

The Taliban were said to have been so determined to hold onto the stronghold that reinforcements were called for from the Pakistan border 160 miles away.

“This was a very successful, deliberate joint operation that demonstrated clearly to the enemy that the Task Force continues to operate where and when it chooses,” said Lt Col Al Lister, chief of operations for Helmand Task Force.

AND PASSING PRIVITIZATION NOW WOULD GOOSE THE HECK OUT OF THE MARKETS:

Retirement Math: How would personal Social Security accounts fare in the current market? (Andrew G. Biggs, 03.25.09, Forbes Magazine)

Obama's question deserves an answer. How would personal Social Security accounts have fared in the current market? Surprisingly, careful analysis shows that even individuals retiring today would have increased their total Social Security benefits by holding a personal account. Here's why.

First consider a plan in which workers could voluntarily invest four percentage points of the 12.4% Social Security payroll tax in a personal account. The account would follow a "life-cycle portfolio," shifting from 85% stocks through age 29 to 15% stocks by age 55. At retirement the account balance would be converted to a monthly annuity.

However, workers who chose personal accounts would also receive reduced traditional Social Security benefits. Those would be cut by the amount the individual contributed to the account, plus interest at the government bond interest rate. This benefit offset would compensate Social Security for the reduced taxes paid by account holders. Total Social Security benefits would increase if personal accounts returned more than the interest rate on government bonds.

To answer Obama, I simulated individuals who held accounts their entire lives and retired this year at age 65. A typical retiree would be entitled to a traditional Social Security benefit of $15,700 per year. For workers who chose personal accounts, this traditional benefit would be reduced by $7,800. However, the worker's personal account balance of $161,500 would pay an annual annuity benefit of $10,100. That's a $2,300, or 15%, net increase in Social Security benefits.

But we can go further. Using stock and bond data since 1871, I simulated 94 additional cohorts of account holders, retiring from 1915 through 2007. By holding personal accounts every single group of retirees would have increased their benefits, by between 6% and 23%, with an average increase of 15%.

WHAT PRESIDENT?:

Obama Asks Democrats to Preserve Budget Priorities (GREG HITT and NAFTALI BENDAVID, 3/26/09, WSJ)

Notably, Democratic leaders in both chambers are pushing packages that call for narrower deficits and less spending than proposed by the White House. And those levels could go lower, especially in the Senate, where moderate Democrats from conservative states will be an important factor in the debate on the floor next week.

Democratic moderates are pressing for even further spending cuts, especially in domestic programs. Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, one of those centrists, said more needs to be done to rein in spending. "This is a good direction, but I'd like to see it even lower," Mr. Nelson said.

Significantly, both the House and Senate decided to abandon a White House request for additional money for the Wall Street rescue. The two chambers also don't intend to invoke special legislative powers -- known as "reconciliation" -- that would allow climate-change legislation to avoid a filibuster in the Senate. That means any bill designed to control harmful emissions will have to attract 60 votes in the Senate, essentially ensuring any climate-change bill will require Republican support.

Still up in the air is whether legislation designed to expand access to health care, another major Obama administration priority, will receive those filibuster-proof protections. The House budget does provide such protection, and sets a Sept. 29 deadline for committees to act on a bill. The Senate budget, however, is silent on the issue.

HOW ABOUT AT LEAST DEDUCTING THE COST OF THE PREDATOR PROGRAM?:

Pakistan set to reap $35 billion windfall from terrorism (Chidanand Rajghatta, 3/26/09, TNN)

Terrorism pays. That may well be the message the United States and its allies send out to the world this week as they line up billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan despite the country’s military and intelligence agencies being implicated by American officials in acts and practice of terrorism.

Ignoring confirmation about the Pakistan’s continued support and use of terrorism obtained through electronic surveillance and informants, and even brazen affirmation by Pakistani officialdom itself, the Obama administration is set to lavish a bonanza that might eventually add up to more than $ 30-$ 35 billion over the next decade.

About half the windfall will come from the US and the other half from its allies such as Japan, EU, and Gulf countries.

WE'RE STARTING TO DOUBT THE DARTMOUTH ECON DEPARTMENT:

Geithner's Gaffe Briefly Hits Dollar (MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS, 3/26/09, WSJ)

Taking questions at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Mr. Geithner said he was "quite open" to the idea of a larger global-finance role for Special Drawing Rights, a melded currency used by the International Monetary Fund. Currency traders took the comment as implied support for a suggestion this week by People's Bank of China Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan that the SDR, or some other cross-border currency, take the dollar's place in central-bank reserves around the world.

The euro surged more than 1% against the dollar immediately after Mr. Geithner's remarks; the dollar also fell against the Japanese yen.

The event's moderator, former Treasury official Roger Altman, appeared to recognize the potential impact of Mr. Geithner's comments and later asked him to clarify his view about the dollar's reserve role. "The dollar remains the world's dominant reserve currency," Mr. Geithner then said. "I think that's likely to continue for a long period of time."

His new remarks calmed the markets.

PITY THE POOR FLATLANDERS:

That Grand Maple Flavor (Warren Johnston, 3/25/09, Valley News)

A spell of warm days and cold nights has the sap flowing for sugar makers in Vermont and New Hampshire, and that's good news for anyone who likes to cook with maple syrup.

This time of the year, it seems especially fortunate that we live in the one of the best places in the world to find fresh maple syrup: It will add an interesting layer of flavor to almost any recipe, particularly those that benefit from sweeteners.

And if you know a sugar maker or know how to tap a tree, you might use the maple sap to brew a pot of coffee or to make tea or even follow an old sugarhouse tradition and boil eggs and cook hotdogs.

Chuck Steak Goulash
(Miami Herald, 3/26/09)

• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

• Salt and pepper to taste

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 1 pound boneless chuck blade steaks, trimmed of fat

• 1 tablespoon butter

• 2 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced (2 cups)

• 2 tablespoons sweet paprika

• 1 teaspoon caraway seeds

• 1 (14-ounce) can beef broth

• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (optional)

In a shallow dish, combine flour, salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium. Dredge steaks on both sides, shake off excess flour and fry until well browned, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate.

Melt butter in skillet. Sauté onions until well browned, about 10 minutes. Stir in paprika and caraway seeds; cook 1 minute. Stir in broth. Return steaks to the skillet and cover pan. Reduce heat and simmer until steaks are tender and sauce is thickened, 45 to 55 minutes. Stir in parsley.

IT'S A COMPLETE CHANGE (OF NAME) FROM W!:

When a withdrawal is not a withdrawal (Gareth Porter, 3/27/09, Asia Times)

Despite United States President Barack Obama's statement at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, on February 27 that he had "chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months", a number of Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), which have been the basic US Army combat unit in Iraq for six years, will remain in Iraq after that date under a new non-combat label. [...]

Gates has hinted that the withdrawal of combat brigades would be accomplished through an administrative sleight of hand rather than by actually withdrawing all the combat brigade teams. Appearing on Meet the Press on March 1, Gates said the "transition force" would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units remaining in Iraq "will be characterized differently".

"They will be called advisory and assistance brigades," said Gates. "They won't be called combat brigades."

Obama's decision to go along with the military proposal for a "transition force" of 35,000 to 50,000 troops thus represents a complete abandonment of his own original policy of combat troop withdrawal and an acceptance of what the military wanted all along - the continued presence of several combat brigades in Iraq well beyond mid-2010.

Pecan-Crusted Chicken Breasts (From Carole Kotkin's Technique, 3/26/09)

• 2 slices white or whole wheat bread, dried

• 1/3 cup pecans or walnuts

• 2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

• Salt and freshly ground pepper

• ½ cup flour

• 1 large egg

• 2 tablespoons canola oil (divided)

• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (6 to 8 ounces each), pounded ¼- to ½-inch thick

• 1 tablespoon canola oil

• Lemon slices

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Pulse the bread, nuts, cheese and salt and pepper to taste in a food processor until fine bread crumbs form. Transfer to a shallow bowl. Place flour in a second shallow bowl and the egg in a third. Beat the egg with the olive oil and 1 teaspoon salt until frothy.

Season chicken with salt and pepper. Dip each breast into flour, then into egg mixture, letting excess drip off, and then into crumb mixture, pressing to adhere.

Heat oil over medium heat in a large, nonstick, oven-proof skillet. Add chicken and cook until lightly browned, 1 to 3 minutes. Carefully turn chicken over and put skillet in oven. Bake until golden brown and cooked through, 8 to 12 minutes. Serve with lemon slices.

AT LEAST IT WAS A DO NOTHING JOB....:

Obama aide had stint at Freddie:
Rahm Emanuel served on the mortgage giant's board during an accounting scandal that triggered reforms. (Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac, March 26, 2009, LA Times)

Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors.

One of those board members was Rahm Emanuel, now chief of staff to President Obama. Emanuel earned at least $320,000 for his 14-month stint at Freddie Mac.

Emanuel plays a critical role in addressing the nation's mortgage woes and fulfilling the administration's pledge to impose responsibility on the financial world -- the type of responsibility that appeared to be absent at Freddie Mac.

Emanuel, 49, is a veteran Democratic strategist and fundraiser who served three terms in the U.S. House after helping elect President Clinton and serving as his White House political director. The Freddie Mac money was part of $16 million that Emanuel earned in three years as an investment banker a decade ago.

Clinton appointed him to the Freddie Mac board in February 2000.

The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike most directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any of the board's working committees, according to company proxy statements.

DO THE MATH...:

Democrats vs. Democrats (PATRICK O'CONNOR & MANU RAJU, 3/25/09, Politico)

Among the targets of Americans United for Change is Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), who declared the ads “not very helpful.”

“The liberal groups need to understand that we are not elected to represent the president,” Pryor said. “We’re elected to represent our states, and we are trying to reflect the attitudes and values of the people who sent us to Washington.”

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) is also unhappy with the friendly fire. Bayh announced last week that a group of centrist Democrats had come together to negotiate as a bloc with the White House and party leaders on major legislation. He promptly found himself targeted by an ad accusing him of “standing in the way of President Obama’s reforms.”

“We literally have no agenda,” Bayh shot back. “How can they be threatened by a group that has taken no policy positions?”

But liberal groups that worked hard to elect Obama are unhappy with the prospect of having moderate Democrats like Pryor, Bayh and the Blue Dogs in the House trying to slow down his agenda.

IN FAIRNESS TO THE UR...:

Obama Stiffs the Arts: The arts world is fuming over Obama's underqualified "arts czar," and a humanities appointee who fudged his college degree on a résumé. (Judith H. Dobrzynski, 3/25/09, Daily Beast)

Memo to President Obama, from the arts world: This is not what we had in mind. [...]

[F]or the most part, it’s been politics as usual. With the nation’s economic woes front-and-center, no one expected Obama to focus on the arts right away. Appointments to the NEA and NEH chairs could be weeks or even months away; in the meantime, they have acting chairpeople appointed by Obama, both seen as adequate for the short-term.

But the three lesser appointments Obama has so far made in the cultural arena—a Chicago lawyer named Kareem Dale, a Hollywood fund-raiser named Jeremy Bernard, and an Obama Senate staffer named Anita Decker—have been strange at best and, at worst, deflating. None has much arts expertise; what they do have are political connections. Bernard, appointed to a key post at the academically minded NEH, never graduated from college, though he claims a bachelor’s degree on his résumé.

COMING SOON, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO JUMP THROUGH JUST ONE HOOP TO SEE UNDERBELLY:

Hulu to add British TV... for US viewers only (Brad Linder Mar 25th 2009, Download Squad)

Hot on the heels of the announcement that Hulu has hired a new VP in charge of international business, paidContent is reporting that Hulu has signed a deal to distribute several TV shows from the UK's Channel 4. But for now, they'll only be available to US viewers.

The deal covers several programs including Peep Show, Rude Tube, Queer as Folk, Green Wing, and Underbelly.

CAN'T WE JUST FAST FORWARD TO NOVEMBER 2012?:

No, he can’t: The wheels are already coming off Obama’s Trojan horse revolution. Will he, like Jimmy Carter, be seen as a one-term disaster? (Bartle Bull, April 2009, Prospect)

Barack Obama was always going to disappoint. When you promise almost everything to almost everybody—I’ll stop the fighting in Iraq but I’ll also keep going after al Qaeda there; I’ll make the economy grow more but I’ll spread the wealth around, and so on—you will inevitably let many people down. Human beings, even those who read fluently from teleprompters, simply cannot walk on water.

But few expected the wheels to come off the new administration so quickly. Just weeks into its existence, the Obama White House is in trouble. The US stock market has lost a quarter of its value since Obama’s election. While a Rasmussen poll in early March had his approval rating at 56 per cent, his net approval (the number of people who strongly approve of what he’s doing subtracted from the number who strongly disapprove) had contracted from 28 per cent the day after his inauguration to around 6 per cent for March—worse than Bush at the same time in his first term. The administration is in a fully fledged staffing crisis: having lost a record ten high-profile picks, it has scores of senior executive jobs unfilled—including every single treasury position below the department’s top job. The head of Britain’s civil service, Gus O’Donnell, has complained about the trouble he’s had finding key administration personnel ahead of the G20 conference in April. “There is nobody there,” he said. “You cannot believe how difficult it is.” Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner looks terrified before executives and television cameras alike. Five months after the election he has yet to deliver a plan for the banking system, much less restructure a single financial asset.

Even the sympathetic press is starting to speak of an “incompetence” crisis. Abroad, North Korea, Russia, China and Iran have all turned up the heat, as have Hamas and Chavez. At home, Obama’s Trojan horse agenda—using the economic crisis as an excuse to advance radical social change in areas unrelated to returning growth to the economy—threatens to pull his government into ideological quicksand when all the public really want are jobs. Centrist Democrats are deeply concerned about what Obama’s poor start means for the long-term, moderate Democratic majority whose possibility was glimpsed in the Clinton years. [...]

President Obama’s plan, then, represents a radical realignment of America’s political economy. His challenge today is to sell this big debt, big government revolution to a public that thought—or rather hoped—that it was electing a post-partisan centrist. [...]

Obama’s dismantling of President Clinton’s economic legacy is injurious. For moderate Democrats who recognise the national mainstream as the party’s best hope of a long-term majority, it is highly dangerous to be associated with such an ideological presidency. It is even worse when the ideology is the one least likely to work. Weakness and inexperience abroad is already causing a dangerous escalation in tensions. At home, the president’s policies represent a history-making, debt-fuelled arrogation of vast territories of private life and the economy. More war and less growth is bad leadership and bad politics.

MORE:
31.1 Million Watch Obama News Conference on Broadcast Nets (Media Bistro, 3/25/09)

Based on Nielsen Fast National data, 31.1 million viewers tuned in across the big four broadcast networks at 8pmET to watch President Obama's second prime time news conference of his presidency. That's down more than two million viewers from his first news conference February 24.

MAYBE THE UR OUGHTN'T HAVE BETRAYED THEM TO THE RUSSIANS?:

Czech PM destroys Brown's hopes of unity and upstages Wall Street trip (Philippe Naughton, 3/25/09, Times of London)

Gordon Brown found his G20 roadshow upstaged once again today, as the man who will officially represent the European Union at next week's London summit destroyed any last hope of a united continental approach to the economic crisis. [...]

[A]s Mr Brown was taking part in a breakfast debate hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Mirek Topolanek, the Czech Prime Minister, was astonishing MEPs in Strasbourg when he described Barack Obama's financial recovery plan - backed by Mr Brown - as "the road to Hell".

Ignoring an appeal made yesterday by Mr Brown to his EU partners for a unified response to ensure economic recovery, Mr Topolanek said that the American recovery package would "undermine the liquidity of the global financial market” and "the United States did not take the right path".

He also slammed the widening budget deficit and protectionist trade measures - such as the “Buy America" policies included in the stimulus bill - although Mr Obama has said he opposes protectionism in principle.

BOWLING WITH OBAMBI:

Top 10 Obama Gaffes (TIME, 3/25/09)

How can you not count his disastrous Inaugural Address?

I'LL HAVE WHAT HE'S HAVING:

Man survived both atomic bombings (BBC, 3/25/09)

Japan has certified a man aged 93 as the only known survivor of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both hit by atomic bombs towards the end of World War II.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on 6 August 1945 when a US plane dropped the first atomic bomb.

He suffered serious burns and spent a night there before returning to his home city of Nagasaki just before it was bombed on 9 August.

MUCH FUN AS WE HAVE DISSING EUROPE...:

Euro MPs in move to block Le Pen (BBC, 3/25/09)

Mr Le Pen, 80, heads the National Front (FN). As the oldest MEP, he is in line to chair parliament's inaugural session after June's European elections.

Under the rules, the oldest MEP - the "doyen" - chairs the session until a new parliament president is elected.

PURSUIT IS THE DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM, GUARANTEE THAT OF SECURITY:

Samuel Johnson's message to America: What a novel written in despondency says about the pursuit of happiness (Thomas Keymer, 3/25/09, Times Literary Supplement)

Rasselas is a book about happiness, and for all the famous despondency of its author it caught the mood of its time. It was published 250 years ago next month, but no early edition so well reflects the practical as well as philosophical importance that early readers found in Johnson’s theme as the first American edition, published in 1768 by Robert Bell, a radical Irish bookseller who had moved to Philadelphia following the bankruptcy of his business in Dublin. Bell’s Rasselas was a noisily transatlantic, democratizing affair (“AMERICA: PRINTED FOR EVERY PURCHASER”, screams the imprint), and his title page makes a further appeal to common readers with a tag from La Rochefoucauld: “The Labour or Exercise of the Body, freeth Men from Pains of the Mind; and ’tis this that constitutes the Happiness of the Poor”.

Never mind that the narrative to follow was conspicuously less sanguine than this about the blessings of poverty, and indeed about everything else. Bell’s choice of Rasselas as the inaugural publication of his New World career, and as a text that might open the way to felicity for even the humblest of his fellow colonists, was inspired. At a time when the pursuit of happiness was shortly to be defined by Thomas Jefferson as a natural individual right and a collective political aim, here was a work that directly addressed the most enduring, yet also the most pressing, of human concerns.

Johnson was quick to grasp the implications of Bell’s edition when he was sent a copy five years later, and expressed pleasure “because the Printer seems to have expected that it would be scattered among the People”. He would have deplored any attempt to find common ground, however, between Rasselas and the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, with its well-known insistence “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”. Duties, not rights, were at the centre of Johnson’s ethics, and as a staunch conservative (though also a vocal abolitionist) he became the foremost British polemicist against the American Continental Congress in the 1770s. Pieties about equality for all enraged him especially, and in his most scathing denunciation of congressional proceedings, Taxation No Tyranny, he demands to know, with thunderous frankness, “how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”. Yet Johnson and Jefferson may have been closer in their thinking about the pursuit of happiness, if not about equality or slavery, than either would have cared to admit.

Even before Rasselas, Johnson was writing about social as well as personal felicity as an imperative for the American colonies, no less than for the mother country. “Every society is intitled to all the happiness that can be enjoyed with the security of the whole community”, he declared in 1756, as war for colonial supremacy broke out between Britain and France, and “from this general claim the Americans ought not to be excluded.” For his part, Jefferson seems to have shared with Johnson the central insight of Rasselas that, although pursuing happiness was a necessary endeavour, obtaining it was something else. A standard formula about “pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety” is common to several documents in the swirl of republican rhetoric from which the Declaration emerged, but it was “pursuit” only that entered the text prepared by Jefferson and adopted by the Congress. No mention was made of secure possession, and, as historians of American independence have observed, to speak of pursuit alone was to render problematic our relationship to the happiness we seek, and to emphasize our distance from it.

In his recent book Happiness: A history, Darrin McMahon quotes the unsettling definition of pursuit that Johnson included in his Dictionary of 1755 – “The act of following with hostile intention” – and notes the etymological links with prosecution and persecution. Further connotations are called to mind by the alternative spelling, persuit, favoured in early editions of Rasselas, and in this context – “Yet what, said Nekayah, is to be expected from our persuit of happiness, when . . . happiness itself is the cause of misery?” – it becomes clear that perseverance, and persistent self-persuasion, must also form part of the quest. As Johnson implies in his final chapter, headed “The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded”, the pursuit may derive more meaning from the activity itself than from its prospects of reaching fruition.

LOWER TAXES, DON'T RAISE THEM:

The economics of the madhouse: We live in difficult times, but protectionism is not the answer (Philippe Legrain, March 2009, Prospect)

The failures of global finance have brought the world economy to its knees, threatening a rerun of the great depression. But such a terrible outcome is much more likely if policymakers follow Ha-Joon Chang’s suggestion that the world needs a dose of protectionism to see it through these troubled times.

Around the world, we are witnessing the devastating impact of globalisation going into reverse. What was once a virtuous circle of rising trade and booming economic growth has become a vicious spiral of collapsing demand and plunging exports. The question is: how to break this spiral? The answer, in my view, is coordinated government action to boost global demand, combining large fiscal stimulus packages, unconventional monetary policy measures, and the nationalisation and restructuring of zombie banks that are dragging the economy down with them. Most governments are scrambling to boost spending and cut taxes to stimulate demand.

Chang, in contrast, favours limited protectionism—in effect, a tax on imports. The immediate impact would be to reduce people’s purchasing power in a highly regressive way. And since Chang proposes that all governments agree to raise their import taxes, demand would be dealt a further knock by the fall in demand for our exports. Higher taxes and lower exports as a cure for the global recession? This is the economics of the madhouse.

Chang is surely aware of this. After all, even he concedes that an all-out trade war would be a bad thing. But the difference between limited protectionism and a trade war is a matter of degree: the former would involve fewer casualties, for sure, but it would not lead to economic resurrection. And history shows that limited protectionism is often a precursor to much larger conflicts.

UH-OH, THEY'RE ON TO HIM:

Crowds in S.F. protest Iraq war, bank bailouts (Heather Knight,Steve Rubenstein, March 22, 2009, SF Chronicle)

"It's really important for people around the world to see Americans standing up against this war," said Noel Juan, 52, of the Mission District, as he stood near a 10-foot cardboard figure of Uncle Sam wearing President Obama's likeness.

"Obama has rebranded this war and made it cool for people to wave the flag again," Juan said. "But all the things people hated about Bush are being continued with a slightly different flavor."

Richard Ivanhoe and Cathy Bellin of San Francisco enjoyed the protest from a metal table at Justin Herman Plaza, taking in the "1, 2, 3, 4, we don't want your racist war" chants while snacking on blueberry muffins and coffee.

"My heart goes out to the Iraqi civilians," Bellin said. "The election of Obama doesn't mean we don't have to be here. The war is still happening."

IMPORTING THE SUPERIOR CULTURE:

Noel's Chicken Adobo (Gretchen McKay, 3/25/09, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

* 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into small pieces
* 3 cloves garlic, minced

* 1 shallot, finely chopped

* 1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

* 1 bay leaf

* 6 tablespoons red or white wine vinegar

* 1/2 cup chicken broth

* 1/4 cup soy sauce

* 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

* 1 red bell pepper, cut into bite-sized strips

* 1 cup coconut milk (shake can before measuring)

* 1/2 to 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

In a deep nonstick pan, combine chicken, garlic, shallot, black pepper, bay leaf, vinegar, chicken broth and soy sauce. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook until chicken is mostly cooked through, about 10 minutes. Transfer mixture to a bowl and remove chicken pieces from the sauce.

Wipe out pan, add the oil, and heat over medium-high heat. When oil is hot, add chicken and saute for about 11/2 minutes per side. Add bell pepper and saute until softened, about 3 minutes.

Return sauce to pan. Add coconut milk and red pepper flakes and simmer until sauce is heated through and the flavors blend, 3 to 5 minutes. Serve at once.

"LIKE PREDECESSOR":

Handling Of 'State Secrets' At Issue: Like Predecessor, New Justice Dept. Claiming Privilege (Carrie Johnson, 3/25/09, Washington Post)

Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House.

The first signs have come just weeks into the new administration, in a case filed by an Oregon charity suspected of funding terrorism. President Obama's Justice Department not only sought to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that it implicated "state secrets," but also escalated the standoff -- proposing that government lawyers might take classified documents from the court's custody to keep the charity's representatives from reviewing them.

OR YOU COULD DUNK COOKIES IN YOUR PUDDING:

Five-Minute Tiramisu (Recipe from Elaine Magee, The Recipe Doctor)

1 1-ounce box Jell-O [...] Cheesecake Instant Pudding

1½ cups cold nonfat milk

2 tablespoons cold espresso or extra-strong coffee

1½ cups light whipped topping

12 [...] ladyfingers

1 tablespoon dark rum or ½ teaspoon rum extract

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat pudding mix into 1½ cups cold milk and espresso with a wire whisk until blended and thickened; about 2 minutes. Fold in ½ cup of the whipped topping.

2. Spread a heaping ¼ cup of the mixture into the bottom of four individual dessert cups. Lay about 2 ladyfingers (broken in half if necessary to fit) over the top of pudding in each dish.

3. In small bowl, blend 1 cup whipped topping with rum and spoon one-fourth of the mixture into each of the serving cups, on top of the ladyfingers.

4. Top the rum-spiked whipped topping with the remaining pudding mixture, about ¼ cup for each dessert cup.

HOLD ONTO YOUR CHAIR:

Benny Goodman Rides Again (WILL FRIEDWALD, 3/24/09, WSJ)

In 1940, the aspiring lyricist Alan Bergman was 15; he had a family friend who worked for NBC, and he was able to sneak into a rehearsal by Benny Goodman and his Orchestra. "I heard Benny call something called 'Benny Rides Again,' which they were apparently playing for the first time. I just absolutely fell out of my chair! It was the most amazing thing I had ever heard in my life. I had never heard music like that before -- no one had."

Mr. Bergman describes the Goodman Orchestra of the early '40s as "Benny's all-time greatest band," and he's not alone in this opinion. To more casual fans, the Goodman band that played the historic Carnegie Hall concert of January 1938 had more sheer star power. But the ensemble of the immediate prewar period was something else again. This is shown in a seven-CD collection of that band's essential recordings, "Classic Columbia and OKeh Benny Goodman Orchestra Sessions 1939-1958" (www.mosaicrecords.com), released just in time for the Benny Goodman Centennial.

As Loren Schoenberg writes in the set's excellent liner notes, Goodman's intention with this band was nothing less than "the reinvention of the jazz orchestra." So the clarinetist hired and encouraged a staff of brilliant young, forward-thinking composer-orchestrators. Although Goodman had no shortage of star soloists in this period -- such as trumpeter Cootie Williams and drummers Dave Tough and Sid Catlett -- the real stars of the band were arrangers like Mel Powell, and especially Eddie Sauter.

NOT EXACTLY PRIME MINISTER'S QUESTION TIME:

Barack Obama shows his anger over AIG bonus criticism (Ewen MacAskill, 3/25/09, guardian.co.uk)

In a press conference dominated by his handling of the recession, Obama was asked why, after being informed of the bonuses, he had waited several days to inform the public.

The CNN White House correspondent, Ed Henry, who asked the question, also suggested that the New York attorney-general, Andrew Cuomo, was doing a better job of dealing with AIG than the White House.

Obama gave a general answer and Henry asked again why he had taken a few days to inform the public. The normally cool and controlled president replied sharply: "It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

The exchange was unusual, both because it is rare to hear US journalists ask Obama hard questions and rare to see Obama in a testy mood. Much of the rest of the press conference was so carefully choreographed, with a long opening statement, it seemed at times like an extended political broadcast.

Obama was taking a risk in holding a prime-time press conference amid mutterings of overexposure.

I VOTED FOR WHAT?:

GOP revisits Obama campaign pledges (MANU RAJU & MARTIN KADY II, 3/25/09, Politico)

Senate Republicans are trying to create a wedge between President Obama and candidate Obama in a growing campaign to undermine his ambitious agenda.

On Tuesday morning, the National Republican Senatorial Committee unveiled an ad titled “Change We Can Believe In?” that attacks Obama for flip-­flopping on spending, taxes and earmarks and his handling of the lavish bonuses for AIG.

These attacks represent a new front for Senate Republicans, who are building a financial and political infrastructure for the 2010 midterm elections, which they believe will be a referendum on President Barack Obama’s agenda.

BECOMING A CARICATURE:

COME INTO MY PARLOR SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY:

Democrats in Congress Are Ready to Pare Budget (DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and CARL HULSE, 3/24/09, NY Times)

Alarmed by rising deficit predictions, Congressional Democrats prepared Tuesday to pare spending in President Obama’s budget and limit some middle-class tax cuts even as Republicans stepped up their criticism of the plan as irresponsible. [...]

The Democrats’ budget does not provide for Mr. Obama’s signature middle-class tax cut, called Making Work Pay, of $400 for individuals earning $75,000 and $800 for couples with incomes up to $150,000 after 2010.

“We show what our numbers would accommodate, and they would not accommodate Making Work Pay,” said Mr. Conrad.

HANDS OFF MY THRIFT STORE:

COLBERT'S THE FUNNY ONE:

How Jon Stewart Went Bad: There is a virtual ban on criticism of him in the press. Uncritical praise corrupts absolutely. (Tucker Carlson, 3/24/09, Daily Beast)

Cynics might assume that the fury was a pose. Humor requires ironic detachment, and nobody as funny and sophisticated as Jon Stewart could possibly be getting that mad on TV over something so abstract. A fair assumption, but wrong. Stewart really was enraged. It was all entirely, strangely real.

I know this from my own run-in with Stewart, on CNN’s Crossfire a few weeks before the 2004 election. Stewart spent a couple of segments lecturing Paul Begala and me about how we were somehow “helping the politicians and the corporations,” a charge that baffled me then (I’ve never particularly liked either one), as it does now.

Unlike most guests after an uncomfortable show, Stewart didn’t flee once it was over, but lingered backstage to press his point. With the cameras off, he dropped the sarcasm and the nastiness, but not the intensity. I can still picture him standing outside the makeup room, gesticulating as the rest of us tried to figure out what he was talking about. It was one of the weirdest things I have ever seen.

Finally, I had to leave to make a dinner. Stewart shook my hand with what seemed like friendly sincerity and continued to lecture our staff. An hour later, one of my producers called me, sounding desperate. Stewart was still there, and still talking.

PITY THE POOR VOTER WHO WANTED TO PUNISH THE GOP...:

Are Independents Hedging Their Bets?: If Republicans really have pulled even among independents, it's an ominous sign for Democrats. (Charlie Cook, March 21, 2009, National Journal)

In the new National Public Radio poll conducted by the Democratic polling company Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and its Republican counterpart, Public Opinion Strategies, 42 percent of the 800 likely voters surveyed March 10 to 14 said that if the next congressional election were held today they would vote for the Republican candidate; an identical percentage of respondents said they would vote for the Democratic one. For several years, Democrats held a substantial lead on this question. [...]

[V]oters who call themselves independents gave GOP candidates the edge by 14 points, 38 percent to 24 percent.

THE SHIP BE SINKIN':

Poll of change: Obama’s job approval slipping to ‘50-50’ (Joe Dwinell, March 24, 2009, Boston Herald)

The honeymoon is over, according to a national poll out today as President Obama’s job approval stumbles to about 50 percent over the lack of improvement with the crippled economy.

The sobering numbers come as the president backpedals from two prime-time gaffes - one comparing his bowling score to a Special Olympian and another awkwardly laughing about the economy, which prompted Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” to ask “are you punch-drunk?”

Pollster John Zogby said his poll will show Americans split on the president’s performance. He said the score factors out to “about 50-50.”

NOW THAT'S A MAGIC BULLET:

Specter deals blow to card check (Mark Murray, 3/24/09, NBC First Read)

Did the campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act (a.k.a. "card check") end before it truly began?

It looks like it after Sen. Arlen Specter (R) signaled today that he would vote against cloture on the measure, denying Democrats 60 votes to break a GOP filibuster on the legislation -- even if Al Franken gives Democrats a 59th vote. Specter was the only Republican to vote for cloture on the legislation in 2007.

Oat scones (Allison Boomer, March 25, 2009, Boston Globe)

1 cup old-fashioned oatmeal (not quick-cooking)
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons butter, cut up
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
Extra unbleached all-purpose flour (for shaping)

1. Set the oven at 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In large bowl, stir together the oatmeal, whole-wheat and all-purpose flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar.

3. Using a pastry blender or two blunt knives, cut butter into the flour mixture until the texture is crumbly.

4. In a bowl, beat the eggs and buttermilk. With a rubber spatula, stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture with a few quick strokes.

5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Shape it into a flat cake. With your hands, press the cake into a 6-inch round that is about 1-inch thick. With a long chef's knife, cut the round in half, then cut each half into 3 triangles. Transfer the triangles to the baking sheet.

6. Bake the scones for 20 minutes or until they are lightly browned.

ONE SAD BY-PRODUCT OF ALL HUMOR BEING CONSERVATIVE....

Triumph of the Geeks and Tough Guys (Tina Brown, 3/24/09, Daily Beast)

One of the many bummers of our ongoing miseries at the moment is that they have deprived Obama devotees of their expected post-electoral nirvana. Stem-cell research is restored, torture is stopped, diplomacy is back, high-speed rail is on the way! But where are the balloons and high fives and Yes We Did parties? Buried under an avalanche of toxic assets.

Obama is the only person walking around with a big smile on his face. That onset of wild laughter on 60 Minutes about how humorous it is that no one in America, I mean no one, wants a bailout for the auto companies was one of the more surreal presidential performances lately. Why has Obama suddenly turned into the Paris Hilton of teachable moments?

JUST ANOTHER REASON TO AVOID THE QUACKS:

Miami vets get procedures with unsterile equipment (MATT SEDENSKY, 3/24/09, Associated Press)

A Veterans Affairs hospital here has notified thousands of patients that their colonoscopies were performed with improperly sterilized equipment, officials said Monday.

AND THE UR AIN'T NO W:

Split Districts of ’08 Key To GOP Rebound Hopes (Greg Giroux, 3/24/09, CQ)

Republicans are more likely than not to make gains in next year’s elections, if only because the past says it will be so.

Since the Civil War, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 and George W. Bush in 2002 are the only elected presidents who saw their own parties pick up additional House seats in the first election after their moving into the White House. In every other such midterm, when the energy and enthusiasm has been with the motivated outsiders, the party locked out of the White House has gained more strength in the House. [...]

And so the road toward a GOP return to power begins in the 49 congressional districts where the most people split their vote; they were the places that were carried by John McCain at the top of the ticket but that also elected a Democrat to the House. [...]

Republicans, who now hold 178 House seats, need a net gain of 40 to win a majority.

BUT HE MUST BE BETTER THAN W!:

Murky report for W.H. transparency (JOSH GERSTEIN, 3/23/09, Politico)

[L]ast month, the White House asked government workers to submit suggestions for greater openness — through a website inaccessible to the public.

That’s a bit like Obama’s transparency push, eight weeks into his presidency — lots of major promises and some fairly significant actions, mixed in with a few flat-out dodges.

It’s left open-government advocates grateful for what they’re getting from Obama — who is, in their view, miles ahead of the Bush administration — but also left some feeling let down that his often lawyerly actions are falling short of his soaring words.

“What the president said on his first day in office was obviously promising and positive, but there comes a point — I don’t think that we’re there yet, but we’re getting close — where you have to ask whether the reality matches the rhetoric,” David Sobel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said during a conference on transparency last week at American University. [...]

Ironically, White House officials did not respond to questions about the transparency drive or the request for openness suggestions.

IS LESS THAN 10% EVEN A CORRECTION?:

Home-Price Measure Shows Monthly Rise (REX NUTTING, 3/24/09, WSJ)

U.S. home prices rose 1.7% in January compared with December, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported Tuesday. It was the first monthly increase in a year.

Home prices are down 6.3% in the past year and are down 9.6% from the peak in April 2006, the agency said. In December, the year-over-year decline was 8.8%.

YOU LOST US SOMEWHERE:

About-Face: Whittaker Chambers, Lionel Trilling and the anti-Communist turn (Adam Kirsch, 3/23/09, Nextbook)

In The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism, the historian Michael Kimmage offers a rich and detailed account of one of the great intellectual dramas in 20th-century American history: the left’s romance with Soviet Communism, and its painful disillusionment. It is a story that took place long ago, in the Depression Thirties and the war-torn Forties, and it may seem like ancient history to a generation that has grown up after the fall of the USSR. Yet you only have to look at the ideological debates of the last few years to see how central that history remains to American politics, and especially to American Jewish politics.

When Bush administration figures like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle urged America to fight Islamic fundamentalism and build democracy in Iraq, and when Jewish liberals, in turn, denounced those figures as neoconservatives, they were reenacting some of the same battles the New York intellectuals fought seventy years ago, when the combatants were called anti-Communists and anti-anti-Communists. Indeed, as Kimmage notes, the label “neoconservative”—which in the last decade has become almost a kind of anti-Semitic code word—was coined in 1943 by Dwight Macdonald, a charter member of the New York intellectuals, to describe former leftists who had abandoned their radical aspirations. [...]

[I]n the mid-1930s, both Trilling and Chambers underwent a crisis of conscience about Communism. Like many radicals, they were troubled by the show trials in which Stalin eliminated many of his fellow Bolsheviks. It was becoming increasingly hard for anyone paying attention to deny that Stalin, like Hitler, was a totalitarian dictator. Yet in the late 1930s, the so-called Popular Front, which united liberals and Communists in a common crusade against fascism, had blinded many American leftists to the true nature of the Stalin regime. For Trilling and Chambers, it now became imperative to repent of their former error, and to convince those who still believed in the USSR to do the same. Even more than the Soviet Union itself, their target was the Popular Front mentality so common among literary and intellectual people—the belief that Communism was just an advanced form of liberalism, rather than liberalism’s greatest enemy. [...]

Kimmage recounts the well known story of how Hiss—a member of Chambers’s old spy network, who had risen to become a leading member of the New Deal establishment—was denounced by Chambers as a Communist and a traitor. The ensuing trials, in which the disreputable, unattractive Chambers testified against the well-connected, personable Hiss, polarized the country. To the anti-Communists, Hiss was a perfect example of the way liberalism, fellow travelling, and active support of the USSR all bled into one another. To most liberals, by contrast, Hiss was the innocent victim of Chambers’s ideologically motivated denunciations. Even after Hiss was convicted, the left remained convinced of his innocence. Not until the end of the Cold War and the opening of the Soviet archives was it established beyond a doubt that Hiss was indeed a spy.

In the aftermath of the trial, Chambers became a hate-figure to the left and a hero to the right. The spectacle of the liberal elite rallying around Hiss helped to galvanize the nascent conservative movement; to this day, Kimmage shows, when a gutter polemicist like Ann Coulter writes that liberals are traitors, she is drawing on tropes from the Hiss case.

IT'S ALMOST ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU SORRY THAT EVEN THE UR CAN'T PREVENT AN UPTURN:

Twilight of the Autocrats: Will the financial crisis bring down Russia and China? (Joshua Kurlantzick, March 16, 2009, American Prospect)

Gansu is one of interior China's most forlorn provinces, one that has gone largely unnoticed by the outside world. When I worked in rural Gansu two years ago, I met few people who had ever left their hometown. In one tiny village, ethnic minority Muslims were eking out a living as farmers in the dusty, arid climate and sleeping in simple stone huts that looked like they'd been built centuries earlier. Most villagers had never met a foreigner before.

Then last fall, Gansu suddenly hit the news. Some 2,000 people rioted in one district, torching cars, smashing up the local Communist Party offices, and attacking policemen with iron rods, chains, and axes in protest of a local government decision that might have forced some of them to resettle.

Gansu isn't the only Chinese province that has erupted in social unrest lately. Taxi drivers have gone on strike in several Chinese cities, people who lost money in illegal fundraising have protested in Beijing, and demonstrators have gathered across the country to demand unpaid back wages. Protest has even spread to the Pearl River Delta, the manufacturing center that abuts Hong Kong, traditionally one of the most prosperous parts of the country. In some years, the Delta's factories have produced 5 percent of all manufactured goods made in the world. But orders for the Delta's products have dried up, and angry factory workers, many owed back pay, have taken to looting warehouses. As these protests turn violent, they could provoke a violent response; Chinese factory owners are increasingly hiring thugs to hit back at demonstrators.

The protests hint at something even bigger than China: The economic downturn has created a profound threat to the autocratic regimes of the world, from China and Russia to Venezuela and the Persian Gulf states. Already, the Russian police have been placed on alert to crack down on demonstrators. Several of Russia's prominent human-rights activists have been killed in recent weeks. Protests, once rare, have spread from eastern Russia to the heart of the Kremlin itself.

Modern autocracies are very different from those of the past. Rather than ruling by strict ideology, ruthless internal police, and tight control of information, authoritarian regimes like Beijing and Moscow have remained in power primarily by making an implicit bargain with their most critical middle-class citizens -- you might not have freedom, but you will have money. As long as the broad middle class, which is where the most dangerous dissent would take hold, is gaining ground economically, the regime is safe.

So while in the West, leaders worry that the global economy faces a second Great Depression, such an economic crisis poses a major threat to some of the world's most resilient autocracies. A strong economy was their only backstop. Now, starved of the growth that keeps them in power and unable to repress their people as old-fashioned dictators did, these autocracies may have nothing left to fall back on.

WIN FABULOUS PRIZES!:

We'll be running an NCAA Basketball pool through Facebook again this year. I think you can just join if you're a Facebook user, but can send invites if needed: BrothersJudd Group

WHAT CAN HE CONCEIVABLY HAVE TO SAY THAT ANYONE NEEDS TO HEAR?:

White House Cheat Sheet: Obama In Primetime (Chris Cillizza, 3/24/09, Washington Post: The Fix)

Over the past five days Obama has conducted several one-on-one interviews -- one with Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show", another with Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes" -- and hosted a series of town hall meetings on the west coast in which he addressed the AIG brouhaha but tonight will be his toughest audience yet in his recent push to quell anger over the bonuses and return the focus to passing his budget blueprint.

Expect Obama to follow the outline utilized in his first prime-time press conference on February 9 -- introductory remarks designed to frame the context for those watching at home followed by a dozen (or so) questions from reporters. (In his first press conference Obama took 13 questions -- five of which centered on the economy.)

Obama likely will filibuster a question or two, spending considerable time expounding on his economic policies in order to limit the total number of questions asked.

OBAMA'S CHINA:

OBAMA'S CHARTER-SCHOOL CHALLENGE (Ryan Sager, 3/24/09, NY Post)

A new, wide-ranging report from the RAND Corp. last week serves to underscore what we know about charters: They help kids, improving their performance on average and providing some shining success stories all without taking away from traditional public schools.

The RAND study looked at charters in Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, San Diego and the states of Florida, Ohio and Texas. Its most striking finding: Charter-school kids graduate high school and attend college between 7 and 15 percent more often than their traditional public-school counterparts.

That higher graduation and college-attendance rate comes on top of modest test-score bumps that charters have long been shown to produce.

What's more, charters do all this not by "skimming" the brightest students from traditional public schools, as their critics like to contend but by taking in students who are below average and doing a better job educating them.

With charters doing such a good job, what reason could there be for capping their growth? Other than the obvious: Democratic (and, yes, plenty of Republican) legislators doing the unions' bidding.

That Obama is implicitly challenging the unions' power is why school reformers have enjoyed the president's tough talk on topics such as the need for merit pay, moving failed teachers out of the classroom, lengthening the school day and year, etc. On charter "caps" like New York's, Obama was particularly blunt: "That isn't good for our children, our economy or our country."

To be clear: The president's rhetorical support of school reform alone has helped to shift the education debate, putting teachers unions on notice: Even under a Democratic president, they can't safely stick to the status quo. It's also given the cover of the president's enthusiastic support to state and local legislators who'd like to come out strongly in favor of charters.

But it's not enough.

At first, the Advance Path Academy looks more dreary than dramatic: Long institutional tables with computer stations fill a warehouse that previously served as a hide-out where kids smoked marijuana while ditching classes. The 160 students in the academy, mostly juniors and seniors, are divided into two shifts, each shift sitting at the computers for four hours a day. On one wall hangs a blue cap and gown, a constant reminder of the goal. On another is a chart listing all the students, with gold stars representing the number of classes passed.

Green Dot contracts with education company AdvancePath Academics, which provides similar programs in the Glendale, Sacramento and San Bernardino public schools. At Locke, AdvancePath remodeled the warehouse, supplied the course work, which is aligned with California's curriculum, and paid for the computers. Students take their "classes" and some of their tests on the computers, pacing themselves and organizing their time as they wish. Most take one course for four hours a day until they pass. Others split the time among several courses. They consult one of the four teachers when they're stuck; the teachers also grade most of the tests and papers and walk the aisles, prodding students who spend too much time chatting or gazing off into space.

You'd think this would be the educational model least likely to work for these students. How are teenagers who struggled to pass classes taught by flesh-and-blood teachers going to master course work by reading computer screens? The answer comes in conversations with them. One after another, they tell nearly identical stories: They flunked because they seldom went to class. They hid amid the rows of portable buildings, or on rooftops or in closets.

Besides, they say, they weren't learning anything. Instead of instructing them, teachers would hand out work sheets and then ignore them. They didn't get to ask enough questions. With the computer, they're in charge. If they don't understand something, they can click a few steps back. There's always a teacher willing to answer as many questions as they have, working one-on-one or in small groups.

The four-hour school day helps too. Many students hold part-time jobs to help their parents, or have children of their own. Some simply can't stand being in school for a full day. Others do their classwork on home computers, and within weeks pass classes they flunked in years past. Suddenly, they discover their own quick-mindedness. Many have passed eight classes this academic year, more than one a month. For the first time, they also understand the direct correlation between effort and success. The harder and longer they work, the faster they rack up credits.

HAVE YOU THANKED A FOUNDING FATHER TODAY?:

House bonus bill is buried by the Senate (Alexander Bolton, 03/23/09, The Hill)

President Obama and Senate Democrats have buried a bill passed last week by the House that would have heavily taxed executive bonuses at bailed-out firms.

Despite the public outcry over $165 million in bonuses awarded at troubled insurer AIG, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) showed little inclination Monday to bring the explosive issue to the floor this week or next. Instead, Reid is likely to delay action on executive compensation until late April, after the Senate returns from a two-week recess starting April 4.

PREACHING TO THE CHOIR:

Obama seeks filter-free news (JONATHAN MARTIN, 3/24/09, Politico)

At a time when his Washington honeymoon is turning into a hazing, President Barack Obama and his team are launched on a strategy to sail above the traditional White House press corps by reaching out to liberal commentators, local reporters and ethnic media.

The highest-profile moments in the new approach have been well-noted, such as the president giving an interview to progressive radio host Ed Schultz and Obama calling on a reporter from the liberal-leaning Huffington Post at his first news conference.

But those moves are only part of a much larger strategy aimed at communicating directly with audiences the White House believes are more sympathetic to the president’s agenda — and one in which much of the work is being done by Obama’s top advisers.

AND WE SHOULD FOLLOW THEIR EXAMPLE OF LETTING THE AUTO INDUSTRY SINK OR SWIM:

Don't Fear the Swedish Model: Bo Lundgren, Sweden’s minister for fiscal and financial affairs, stared down a financial crisis in the 1990s and lived to tell the tale. In a Daily Beast interview, he says the US could learn a thing or two from his famed solution. (Benjamin Sarlin, 3/24/09, Daily Beast)

Before today’s news, The Daily Beast called Bo Lundgren, who, as minister for fiscal and financial affairs, conceived and implemented the famed "Swedish model" in the 1990s. Lundgren said the American fears of a Swedish planet are largely misguided.

"I'm a market liberal. My party that I used to lead, the Moderate Party, is the conservative party in Sweden and the parallel to the Republican Party in America," Lundgren said. "When I nationalized the banks, it wasn't because I wanted to: It was crisis management. Their owners had been wiped out, the banks were black holes, they had no equity left, and there was no alternative but to take them over."

He added that foreign observers often confuse Sweden's socialized income distribution and government services with its privatized business environment, leading to inaccurate claims that their government is fundamentally different than other free-market economies. One example of Sweden's privatization chops: The government is refusing to bail out the famed car company Saab this week, as officials say they don't think running an auto manufacturer is within the state's job description.

"From the market liberal's perspective, don't be afraid of Sweden being a socialist example because in this respect we are not," he said. "Governments shouldn't interfere in business life other than to build the legal framework within which our businesses have to work. They should otherwise leave businesses alone and that's what we mainly do."

JUST ANOTHER POLITICAL PARTY:

Hezbollah Spends Millions to Rebuild Stronghold (AFP, 3/24/09)

Salam Hassoun is thrilled by the new flat Hezbollah has built for her to replace the one Israeli bombs destroyed during the 2006 summer war on the Lebanese Shiite movement.

The war ravaged Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold that includes the teeming neighbourhood of Haret Hreik, where a mammoth Hezbollah-orchestrated reconstruction drive is underway.

The deafening explosions of Israeli bombs have been replaced by the grinding cacophony of earth-movers and cement mixers contracted to rebuild 241 of the 282 buildings destroyed in the bombing.

The project, dubbed Waad (pledge in Arabic), has won the heart of Hassoun but has also raised a storm of political dust between Hezbollah and the government, whose authority in the southern suburbs has lagged for decades.

"I used to dream of an apartment where the living room was separated from the dining area and where the kitchen would be much bigger, and Waad gave me that," Hassoun told AFP during a Hezbollah-organised tour of Haret Hreik.

"May God protect (Hezbollah chief Hassan) Nasrallah. He has kept his promise," she said from her ninth-storey flat in one of several spanking new towers.

NO ONE ACTUALLY BELIEVES IN THE COPERNICAN PRINCIPLE:

American Capitalism Besieged (Robert J. Samuelson, March 23, 2009, Washington Post)

Schumpeter, one of the 20th century's eminent economists, believed that capitalism sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Its chief virtue was long-term -- the capacity to increase wealth and living standards. But short-term politics would fixate on its flaws -- instability, unemployment, inequality. Capitalist prosperity also created an oppositional class of "intellectuals" who would nurture popular discontents and disparage values (self-enrichment, risk-taking) necessary for economic success.

Almost everything about Schumpeter's diagnosis rings true, with the glaring exception of his conclusion. American capitalism has flourished despite being subjected to repeated restrictions by disgruntled legislators. Consider the transformation. In 1889, there was no antitrust law (1890), no corporate income tax (1909), no Securities and Exchange Commission (1934) and no Environmental Protection Agency (1970).

We have subordinated unrestrained profit-seeking to other values. "We've gradually taken into account the external effects (of business) and brought them under control," says economist Robert Frank of Cornell University.

WHO'S WRITING THE NEXT CONTRACT?:

The 1966 Election's Warning to Obama (Jeffrey Lord, 3.24.09, American Spectator)

IN RETROSPECT, 1966 TURNED OUT TO BE a rare moment in American political history. It was in fact the beginning of a realization by everyday Americans that massive government spending programs, the backbone of the New Deal, Truman's Fair Deal, JFK's New Frontier and LBJ's Great Society, must finally be paid for -- by them. In the cost of their groceries, their gas, their housing and everything else from clothes to college educations to steadily rising taxes.

They were furious.

The day after the election, shell-shocked Democrats looked around at the sight of what would become an ongoing political nightmare, a nightmare that, however momentarily suppressed, still haunts today. Serious damage had been done to the underlying political foundation of their party as it had existed since the 1930s. After three decades of campaigning successfully on the idea that government could be an endless cornucopia of programs with no visible negative economic consequence to average Americans, failure was abruptly at hand. No longer could Democrats simply assume success by campaigning with the famous strategy of FDR aide Harry Hopkins: "We shall tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect."

Across the board in 1966 Republicans were victorious. Forty-seven new House members were on their way to Washington, along with three new U.S. Senators. Eight new Republican governors were headed for state capitals, along with over 700 new GOP state legislators.

UNLIKE THE HOME STAR TREK COMMAND CONSOLE...:

The Thunderbirds garage (Sri Carmichael, 24.03.09, Evening Standard)

DEEP beneath Tracy Island, somewhere in the Pacific, International Rescue's rocket-powered craft lie ready to emerge from their hidden hangars.

But this sort of hi-tech subterranean concept is no longer the sole preserve of the Tracy family and their fleet of Thunderbirds - you too can park futuristically, if you have £50,000 to spare.

The garage, which pops up" from underneath a garden, has become the latest home-improvement craze. It uses a hydraulic platform and can be hidden under a water feature, flowerbed, or patch of gravel - or a second car.

TRIANGULATION IS HIS ONE PATH TO RE-ELECTION:

The Toxic Assets We Elected (George F. Will, March 24, 2009, George F. Will)

The tale of two political figures was written one day last week when Pelosi went down into the well of the House and pitched the bill to heavily tax the bad people at AIG who received big bonuses. Using the tax code to exact punishment for political reasons is both bad policy and bad law -- why not put gun-shop owners and cigarette manufacturers in the 100 percent bracket? -- but it hurtled through Pelosi's branch of the government with nary a hearing and few discouraging words, and only the mildest suggestion from the president that the bill was really a dumb idea.

The pressure for the legislation was great. In just a day, Charlie Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, went from opposing the idea to introducing the very bill he had earlier denounced. Rangel had all the stock phrases ready -- stuff about shattered dreams and greedy executives, which is all true enough -- but he was right when he first said that the tax code should not be used as a "political weapon." With such an about-face, it's a miracle he did not wind up in traction.

As for Obama, around the time this extremely ill-considered piece of legislation was flying through Congress and Pelosi was waxing very hot indeed on television, the cool president went on the Jay Leno show. His appearance was historic, we were solemnly told, but it also turned out to be useful for him to get out of town. The most toxic asset in Washington was fast becoming Congress, where the Democratic leadership was threatening to send him an awful bill that could be very hard to veto. With friends like these . . .

WHO'D HAVE DREAMT THEY UNDERSTAND NEWTONIAN PHYSICS?:

Komodo Dragons Kill Apple Picker: The apple picker from Indonesia fell down from a tree where komodo dragons were that attacked him. (Javno, 3/24/09)

Muhamad Anwar, 31, was picking apples on the island of Komodo in the eastern part of Indonesia, the GMA television channel reported. His fall would not have been so tragic had not two komodo dragons been waiting on the ground.

Their attack was, unfortunately, deadly. Police sergeant Kosmas Jalang said the big reptiles seemed to have been waiting for Anwar to fall from the tree.

AND YOU STILL AREN'T WATCHING?:

Underbelly nominated for writing prize (Australian Associated Press, 3/24/09)

THE writers of Underbelly, the screen dramatisation of Melbourne's infamous gangland war, have been shortlisted for Australia's richest literary awards.

Greg Haddrick, Felicity Packard and Peter Gawler, who penned the popular Nine Network television series, are on the shortlist for a $30,000 script writing prize in this year's NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

“For all its demotic language and popular appeal, this series is television drama at its literary best,” judges said.

RONALD REAGAN WAS TWENTY-SOMETHING YEARS OLDER, NO?:

British press watching Rudd-Obama visit (Mark Simkin, March 24, 2009, ABC News au)

Kevin Rudd has touched down in Washington to meet with the new US President, Barack Obama, but what sort of reception will he get? The Prime Minister should not get his hopes up, given the way British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was treated at the White House, reports Washington correspondent Mark Simkin for AM.

British reporters are furious at a series of perceived snubs, including a so-called "gift gaffe", during Mr Brown's visit to Washington last month, and say they will be watching Mr Rudd's meeting with Mr Obama closely.

The rumbling began before Mr Brown's visit when Mr Obama removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. [...]

Three weeks later, Mr Rudd is about to visit the White House and Tim Shipman, a Washington-based correspondent with the Telegraph, says the British press will be watching closely.

"I hear from White House sources that President Obama is very busy at the moment, obviously with the economic meltdown. He is personally quite tired but that only goes to show that you only have a new guy in town who is not used to jumping through some of these diplomatic hoops," Shipman said.

THE HOLLOW ARMY:

Congress isn't feeling much heat from Obama's 'army' (David Lightman and William Douglas, 3/23/09, McClatchy Newspapers)

President Barack Obama's army of canvassers fanned out across the nation over the weekend to drum up support for his $3.55 trillion budget, but they had no noticeable impact on members of Congress, who on Monday said they were largely unaware of the effort.

"News to me," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, a House Budget Committee member, of the canvassing. Later, his staff said that his office had heard from about 100 voters. [...]

"How many of these folks have read the budget?" wondered Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., a House Financial Services Committee member.

ACCOUNTABILITY VS UNTENABILITY:

Arkes - Kmiec Debate Available Online (P. Langdale Hough, March 23, 2009, MoralAccountability.com)

The Matthew J. Ryan Center at Villanova University has posted the video recordings of the Cicero Podium Debate between Professor Hadley Arkes (Amherst College) and Professor Douglas Kmiec (Pepperdine Law School). This event took place on February 13, 2009, and was a session of the conference “The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Legacy of Abraham Lincoln”.

FROM BIG MUDDY TO MUD SEASON:

Holy rollers: The Blind Boys of Alabama and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (TED DROZDOWSKI, March 23, 2009, Boston Phoenix)

The double bill of the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at Symphony Hall on Friday is a match made in New Orleans, where the two venerable groups met to record the Blind Boys' 2008 album. But the music they make together, insists Blind Boys tenor singer Jimmy Carter, comes from a higher place. "When I am singing, I am an instrument of God, and all of the music we make is carrying his message. I am his spirit. And when people hear our songs and tell me that we have touched their lives, well, that's what me and the rest of the band are all about."

If that seems a bit pretentious, consider the band's history, which Carter describes as a "mission." It began in 1939 when a group of students at the Talladega Institute for the Blind led by lion-voiced baritone Clarence Fountain banded together as the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. Carter joined five years later, while the group were touring the tent-revival circuit and performing on radio like their heroes, the Golden Gate Quartet.

"We were influenced by them and the Soul Stirrers and the Pilgrim Travelers," he explains over the phone from his 102-year-old mother's house in Alabama. "My voice was a little less scratchy back then, but it's still in good shape. The secret is getting plenty of rest." Even though these singing septuagenarians play 150 to 200 shows a year, Carter does get more sleep than he did during his first 57 years with the band — especially in the early years, when low-paying one-nighters in churches, tents, and community centers were the norm.

LIBERTARIANISM AT SEA:

High Seas Ditherers: Conservatives who oppose the Law of the Sea treaty only help their own worst enemies (Cmdr. James Kraska, February 2009, Foreign Policy)

The real threat to U.S. oceans interests is not the United Nations, but the relentless campaign by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace in conjunction with certain coastal countries, including close U.S. allies such as Canada and Australia, to unilaterally impose maritime rules to restrict international shipping on the oceans and aircraft overflight of the seas for purported environmental reasons. For example, a group of Western European states pushed for a ban on single-hull tankers from a vast area of international waters in the Eastern Atlantic, and in 2006 the European Commission suggested in a report that the navigational freedoms in the Law of the Sea Convention should be revised to expand coastal state jurisdiction over transiting vessels.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, describes this type of partnership between NGOs and some like-minded governments as "norming ... the idea that the U.S. should base its decisions on some kind of international consensus, rather than making its decisions as a constitutional democracy." He adds, "It is a way in which the Europeans and their left-wing friends here and elsewhere try and constrain U.S. sovereignty." The rules emerging from this process weaken the navigational freedoms the United States relies on to ensure submarines can transit through the world's choke points and ships serving as sea bases in coastal waters can launch military operations.

Similarly, less friendly countries such as China, Iran, and North Korea have sought to impose control over the ocean out to 200 miles off their coastlines by establishing security zones. Both types of proposed coastal-state regulations place at risk U.S. economic prosperity and national security by attempting to close off to U.S. ships and aircraft vast swaths of ocean, allowing coastal states at their whim to deny use of the global commons. These proposed restrictions by coastal states attempt to diminish or impair the right of freedom of navigation enjoyed by mariners for two millennia.

All of the countries mentioned above already belong to or have signed the convention, but are trying to change it through reinterpreting its terms. China, for example, is a party to the Law of the Sea, but denies that foreign warships have the right to enjoy high-seas freedom and overflight in the East China Sea. Beijing is patiently but steadily pushing to change standard interpretations of international law. By declining to become a member of the treaty, the United States has so far ceded the opportunity to influence and shape international norms, thereby yielding to states trying to popularize their restrictive approach to navigational rights.

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, when leading the opposition to the treaty as it was being debated in 2007, said "We know from international groups like the U.N. that many signers of these agreements do not act in the best interest of the United States or the world." He is correct, of course, but the United States' failure to ratify only empowers these states to set maritime rules without a U.S. seat at the table. DeMint's argument is akin to refusing to engage in debate on the future direction of the U.S. Constitution because one's political opponents have already staked out objectionable positions.

Furthermore, the treaty's critics badly misunderstand history in trying to paint the measure as somehow un-American. The United States has long championed freedom of the seas. President Thomas Jefferson built a navy to resist the Barbary pirates when European governments paid tribute to safely transit the Mediterranean. The War of 1812 was fought largely over the right of U.S. merchant ships to ply the seas freely, engaging in nascent global trade. Freedom of the seas was a feature of Wilson's Fourteen Points in World War I and was one of the war aims included in the Atlantic Charter by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.

During negotiations of the Law of the Sea Convention, U.S diplomats were successful in ensuring that these time-honored principles were incorporated into the treaty in 1982, advancing U.S. interests in naval power and fueling the trade globalization of the 1990s. This is a core U.S. national interest in the oceans, and the Law of the Sea locks in generous navigational provisions that apply throughout the globe -- both for naval vessels and merchant shipping.

THE BURSTING BUBBLE:

February existing home sales rise by 5.1 percent (Associated Press, March 23, 2009)

The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of existing homes grew 5.1 percent to an annual rate of 4.72 million last month, from 4.49 million units in January. It was the largest sales jump since July 2003.

Sales had been expected to fall to an annual pace of 4.45 million units, according to Thomson Reuters.

JIMMY AND COMPANY:

The Lobby Falters (John Mearsheimer, 3/26/09, London Review of Books)

Predictably alarmed, the Israel lobby launched a smear campaign against Freeman, hoping that he would either quit or be fired by Obama. The opening salvo came in a blog posting by Steven Rosen, a former official of Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, now under indictment for passing secrets to Israel. Freeman’s views of the Middle East, he said, ‘are what you would expect in the Saudi Foreign Ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship’. Prominent pro-Israel journalists such as Jonathan Chait and Martin Peretz of the New Republic, and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, quickly joined the fray and Freeman was hammered in publications that consistently defend Israel, such as the National Review, the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard.

The real heat, however, came from Congress, where Aipac (which describes itself as ‘America’s Pro-Israel Lobby’) wields enormous power. All the Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee came out against Freeman, as did key Senate Democrats such as Joseph Lieberman and Charles Schumer. ‘I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him,’ Schumer said, ‘and I am glad they did the right thing.’ It was the same story in the House, where the charge was led by Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Steve Israel, who pushed Blair to initiate a formal investigation of Freeman’s finances. In the end, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, declared the Freeman appointment ‘beyond the pale’. Freeman might have survived this onslaught had the White House stood by him. But Barack Obama’s pandering to the Israel lobby during the campaign and his silence during the Gaza War show that this is one opponent he is not willing to challenge. [...]

When pro-Israel forces clashed with a major political figure in the past, that person usually backed off. Jimmy Carter, who was smeared by the lobby after he published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, was the first prominent American to stand his ground and fight back. The lobby has been unable to silence him, and it is not for lack of trying. Freeman is following in Carter’s footsteps, but with sharper elbows. After stepping down, he issued a blistering denunciation of ‘unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country’ whose aim is ‘to prevent any view other than its own from being aired’. ‘There is,’ he continued, ‘a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government.’

THEY DESERVE TO CASH IN:

Counting the cash from love of Underbelly-style true crime books (Holly Byrnes, March 23, 2009, Daily Telegraph au)

The success of Underbelly and its TV and literary spin-offs has delivered local writers and producers a gangster-led economic boom.

As one of the godfathers of the original book Leadbelly: Inside Australia's Underworld Wars - which inspired last year's hit TV series - author Andrew Rule has banked more than industry kudos for the phenomenon.

With co-author John Silvester, Rule confirmed the pair has another Underbelly book on the drawing board - "a companion'' to the third TV series which Channel 9 has commissioned for next year.

That follows the sale of the first TV series to the UK - airing to critical acclaim on FX channel now _ and negotiations with a London publisher to distribute the 12 books by the pair using the Underbelly title.

GIVEN HIS POST-SEASON PERFORMANCES...:

Schilling Announces Retirement (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/23/09)

Schilling won a World Series with Arizona in 2001 and with Boston in 2004 and 2007. For his career, he has the 14th most strikeouts in baseball history. He leaves with a 216-146 record and 3.46 ERA.

LIKE AN ESPECIALLY BITCHY SLUMBER PARTY:

Manchester United are a bunch of spoiled brats (Peter Bills, 23 March 2009, Independent)

[They're] a bunch of spoiled brats who lose the plot when they lose a game. They can't handle defeat and so they can't call themselves great.

The best teams, the greatest of all, have a composure, a calm about them. Ryan Giggs epitomises such qualities; even in defeat at Fulham on Saturday, he went calmly about his business, trying to soothe the furrowed brows and petulant brats around him.

It is said that Ferguson was incensed with Rooney after the Liverpool defeat, hence his decision to drop him for the Fulham match. What he really thought about the child-like Rooney after his two stupid bookings which brought a red card at Craven Cottage, remains a secret.

Rooney completely lost the plot because United were losing the match. When they're winning, he's a bundle of joy, smiling, running, linking and jinking. But when things are going against United, he's like a dirty bomb waiting to explode. That's not the hallmark of a great player. He needs only to glance at Giggs to see what greatness is all about.

To have one player like that might seem an expensive luxury but Ferguson has two. Cristiano Ronaldo never fancied it from the start at Fulham, waving his arms petulantly, getting booked for a wild lunge at Danny Murphy and then arguing with the referee so repeatedly that he could also have got a second yellow.

JUST TEND THE GARDEN, CHANCE:

Kroft to Obama: Are you punch-drunk? (CRAIG GORDON & JONATHAN MARTIN, 3/22/09, Politico)

His remarks came in a“60 Minutes” interview in which he was pressed by Steve Kroft for laughing and chuckling several times while discussing the perilous state of the world’s economy.

“You're sitting here. And you're— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money—’ How do you deal with— I mean: explain. . .” Kroft asked at one point.

“Are you punch-drunk?” Kroft said.

IT'S UP TO THE AUSSIE "LEFT" TO MOVE THE UR TO HOWARD'S RIGHT:

Rudd's neo-liberal hat (Michael Stutchbury, March 24, 2009, The Australian)

AFTER some unsolicited advice on fixing America's banks, Kevin Rudd needs to give Barack Obama a good neo-liberal talking-to on free trade when the two leaders meet this week. The Prime Minister claims the US is "back in the game of providing global economic leadership". But there's little evidence of this from Obama or his new trade negotiator ina policy area of intense concern toAustralia. [...]

Rudd, of course, acknowledges what has become so mainstream a notion that a French socialist intellectual, Pascal Lamy, now cheerleads free trade as head of the World Trade Organisation. Even Brazil's left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has become one of Australia's important free-trade allies.

Australia cast off protectionism in the mid-'80s, embracing international competition as the best way to lift national living standards. The incoming Rudd Government was even more purist or neo-liberal, so to speak, than the Howard government, which was accused of chasing bilateral deals to the detriment of the WTO's multilateral Doha Round. And the WTO's very existence belies Rudd's claim that neo-liberals, whoever they may be, are "intrinsically suspicious of all forms of multilateral governance". Some American libertarians may be. And some who trail-blazed Australia's free trade conversion maintain that the WTO's horsetrading discourages unilateral "disarmament" of import barriers. But, by and large, it is the loopy Left that most seeks to undermine the global institution of free-trade rules. A social democratic rich nation calls for "fair trade" - which essentially seeks to restrict competition by imposing higher labour standards on poor nations - now robs the world of a free-trade booster shot just when it needs it most.

WELL, THAT IS STILL 4 TIMES A YEAR TOO OFTEN:

Econ board has yet to meet publicly (JOSH GERSTEIN, 3/23/09, Politico)

Six weeks after President Barack Obama appointed a blue-ribbon panel to help him dig America out of its economic crisis, the board has yet to hold an official public meeting.

The White House initially said that the 16-member Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, would meet “every few weeks.” Last month, a spokesperson told POLITICO the group would meet monthly. And more recently, the White House said the high-powered board, set up to address what Obama has called the worst economic emergency since the Great Depression, would gather only about four times a year, with the next session due in “late spring.”

WE'RE GONNA NEED A BUNCH MORE RESET BUTTONS...:

Obama tacitly honours Chirac's stance against Iraq war (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Mar 19, 2009)

In a letter described by [former French president Jacques] Chirac as 'very nice,' Obama wrote, 'I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world.'

HOW DO YOU FILL A GOD-SHAPED HOLE?:

Britain is 'uncomfortably haunted by memory of religion', says Archbishop of Canterbury (Daily Telegraph, 3/22/09)

[T]he Archbishop of Canterbury] dismissed ideas that Britain is "secular" or "religiously divided" were cliches and said: "I don't believe we are living in a secular society and I don't believe we are living in a deeply religiously divided society.

"I believe we are living in a country that is uncomfortably haunted by the memory of religion and doesn't quite know what to do with it and I believe we are living in a society which is religiously plural and confused and therefore not necessarily hostile."

He said church attendance may not be as high as it once was but although Britain may have become "secularised" it is not yet "secular."

"We are haunted, we need somewhere to put certain bits of our humanity and there's nowhere else except religious language and imagery," he said.

"The piles of flowers that you see on the site of road accidents are the most potent symbols of a society haunted by religion and not clear on what to do about it.

"The church is still a place where people have got the emotions that won't go anywhere else."

THE HUMANE ALTERNATIVE TO EXECUTION:

Hellhole: The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture? (Atul Gawande, March 30, 2009, The New Yorker)

The problem of isolation goes beyond ordinary loneliness, however. Consider what we’ve learned from hostages who have been held in solitary confinement—from the journalist Terry Anderson, for example, whose extraordinary memoir, “Den of Lions,” recounts his seven years as a hostage of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Anderson was the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when, on March 16, 1985, three bearded men forced him from his car in Beirut at gunpoint. He was pushed into a Mercedes sedan, covered head to toe with a heavy blanket, and made to crouch head down in the footwell behind the front seat. His captors drove him to a garage, pulled him out of the car, put a hood over his head, and bound his wrists and ankles with tape. For half an hour, they grilled him for the names of other Americans in Beirut, but he gave no names and they did not beat him or press him further. They threw him in the trunk of the car, drove him to another building, and put him in what would be the first of a succession of cells across Lebanon. He was soon placed in what seemed to be a dusty closet, large enough for only a mattress. Blindfolded, he could make out the distant sounds of other hostages. (One was William Buckley, the C.I.A. station chief who was kidnapped and tortured repeatedly until he weakened and died.) Peering around his blindfold, Anderson could see a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling. He received three unpalatable meals a day—usually a sandwich of bread and cheese, or cold rice with canned vegetables, or soup. He had a bottle to urinate in and was allotted one five- to ten-minute trip each day to a rotting bathroom to empty his bowels and wash with water at a dirty sink. Otherwise, the only reprieve from isolation came when the guards made short visits to bark at him for breaking a rule or to threaten him, sometimes with a gun at his temple.

He missed people terribly, especially his fiancée and his family. He was despondent and depressed. Then, with time, he began to feel something more. He felt himself disintegrating. It was as if his brain were grinding down. A month into his confinement, he recalled in his memoir, “The mind is a blank. Jesus, I always thought I was smart. Where are all the things I learned, the books I read, the poems I memorized? There’s nothing there, just a formless, gray-black misery. My mind’s gone dead. God, help me.”

He was stiff from lying in bed day and night, yet tired all the time. He dozed off and on constantly, sleeping twelve hours a day. He craved activity of almost any kind. He would watch the daylight wax and wane on the ceiling, or roaches creep slowly up the wall. He had a Bible and tried to read, but he often found that he lacked the concentration to do so. He observed himself becoming neurotically possessive about his little space, at times putting his life in jeopardy by flying into a rage if a guard happened to step on his bed. He brooded incessantly, thinking back on all the mistakes he’d made in life, his regrets, his offenses against God and family.

His captors moved him every few months. For unpredictable stretches of time, he was granted the salvation of a companion—sometimes he shared a cell with as many as four other hostages—and he noticed that his thinking recovered rapidly when this occurred. He could read and concentrate longer, avoid hallucinations, and better control his emotions. “I would rather have had the worst companion than no companion at all,” he noted.

In September, 1986, after several months of sharing a cell with another hostage, Anderson was, for no apparent reason, returned to solitary confinement, this time in a six-by-six-foot cell, with no windows, and light from only a flickering fluorescent lamp in an outside corridor. The guards refused to say how long he would be there. After a few weeks, he felt his mind slipping away again.

“I find myself trembling sometimes for no reason,” he wrote. “I’m afraid I’m beginning to lose my mind, to lose control completely.”

One day, three years into his ordeal, he snapped. He walked over to a wall and began beating his forehead against it, dozens of times. His head was smashed and bleeding before the guards were able to stop him.

Some hostages fared worse. Anderson told the story of Frank Reed, a fifty-four-year-old American private-school director who was taken hostage and held in solitary confinement for four months before being put in with Anderson. By then, Reed had become severely withdrawn. He lay motionless for hours facing a wall, semi-catatonic. He could not follow the guards’ simplest instructions. This invited abuse from them, in much the same way that once isolated rhesus monkeys seemed to invite abuse from the colony. Released after three and a half years, Reed ultimately required admission to a psychiatric hospital.

“It’s an awful thing, solitary,” John McCain wrote of his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam—more than two years of it spent in isolation in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cell, unable to communicate with other P.O.W.s except by tap code, secreted notes, or by speaking into an enamel cup pressed against the wall. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” And this comes from a man who was beaten regularly; denied adequate medical treatment for two broken arms, a broken leg, and chronic dysentery; and tortured to the point of having an arm broken again. A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam, many of whom were treated even worse than McCain, reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered.

And what happened to them was physical. EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement. In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.

On December 4, 1991, Terry Anderson was released from captivity. He had been the last and the longest-held American hostage in Lebanon. I spoke to Keron Fletcher, a former British military psychiatrist who had been on the receiving team for Anderson and many other hostages, and followed them for years afterward. Initially, Fletcher said, everyone experiences the pure elation of being able to see and talk to people again, especially family and friends. They can’t get enough of other people, and talk almost non-stop for hours. They are optimistic and hopeful. But, afterward, normal sleeping and eating patterns prove difficult to reëstablish. Some have lost their sense of time. For weeks, they have trouble managing the sensations and emotional complexities of their freedom.

For the first few months after his release, Anderson said when I reached him by phone recently, “it was just kind of a fog.” He had done many television interviews at the time. “And if you look at me in the pictures? Look at my eyes. You can tell. I look drugged.”

Most hostages survived their ordeal, Fletcher said, although relationships, marriages, and careers were often lost. Some found, as John McCain did, that the experience even strengthened them. Yet none saw solitary confinement as anything less than torture. This presents us with an awkward question: If prolonged isolation is—as research and experience have confirmed for decades—so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has?

Recently, I met a man who had spent more than five years in isolation at a prison in the Boston suburb of Walpole, Massachusetts, not far from my home. Bobby Dellelo was, to say the least, no Terry Anderson or John McCain. [...]

Bobby Dellelo is sixty-seven years old now. He lives on Social Security in a Cambridge efficiency apartment that is about four times larger than his cell. He still seems to be adjusting to the world outside. He lives alone. To the extent that he is out in society, it is, in large measure, as a combatant. He works for prisoners’ rights at the American Friends Service Committee. He also does occasional work assisting prisoners with their legal cases. Sitting at his kitchen table, he showed me how to pick a padlock—you know, just in case I ever find myself in trouble.

But it was impossible to talk to him about his time in isolation without seeing that it was fundamentally no different from the isolation that Terry Anderson and John McCain had endured. Whether in Walpole or Beirut or Hanoi, all human beings experience isolation as torture.

The main argument for using long-term isolation in prisons is that it provides discipline and prevents violence. When inmates refuse to follow the rules—when they escape, deal drugs, or attack other inmates and corrections officers—wardens must be able to punish and contain the misconduct. Presumably, less stringent measures haven’t worked, or the behavior would not have occurred. And it’s legitimate to incapacitate violent aggressors for the safety of others. So, advocates say, isolation is a necessary evil, and those who don’t recognize this are dangerously naïve.

The argument makes intuitive sense. If the worst of the worst are removed from the general prison population and put in isolation, you’d expect there to be markedly fewer inmate shankings and attacks on corrections officers. But the evidence doesn’t bear this out. Perhaps the most careful inquiry into whether supermax prisons decrease violence and disorder was a 2003 analysis examining the experience in three states—Arizona, Illinois, and Minnesota—following the opening of their supermax prisons. The study found that levels of inmate-on-inmate violence were unchanged, and that levels of inmate-on-staff violence changed unpredictably, rising in Arizona, falling in Illinois, and holding steady in Minnesota.

Prison violence, it turns out, is not simply an issue of a few belligerents. In the past thirty years, the United States has quadrupled its incarceration rate but not its prison space. Work and education programs have been cancelled, out of a belief that the pursuit of rehabilitation is pointless. The result has been unprecedented overcrowding, along with unprecedented idleness—a nice formula for violence. Remove a few prisoners to solitary confinement, and the violence doesn’t change. So you remove some more, and still nothing happens. Before long, you find yourself in the position we are in today. The United States now has five per cent of the world’s population, twenty-five per cent of its prisoners, and probably the vast majority of prisoners who are in long-term solitary confinement.

NONPAREIL:

More Satchmo (Colin Fleming, March 30, 2009, The New Yorker)

As a trumpet player, there was no one to touch Armstrong, but Bing Crosby was an apt vocal foil. The two had their summit meeting in 1960, resulting in “Bing and Satchmo” (DRG Records), previously unavailable on compact disk. “Dardanella” suggests how keenly these men must have listened to each other: Crosby’s sly syllabic upticks at the end of each line show how readily he had absorbed Armstrong’s methodology, while Armstrong’s vocal is a blend of full-on melody and smart, conversational tones, a Crosby staple. Throughout, Billy May’s arrangements have plenty of starch to them, but “Lazy River” borders on a kind of laconic grace, two voices whiling the day away before drifting home.

To hip musicians in Chicago, scat had been the rage for months. Bing and some of the other adventurous musicians in Whiteman's band heard it that very week from the master himself, Louis Armstrong. If mobster Al Capone ruled the city, Armstrong ruled its music. Whatever he played was instantly picked up by other musicians. The previous spring Okeh issued his Hot Five recording of "Heebie Jeebies," and it caused a sensation, selling some 40,000 copies thanks to his inspired vocal chorus - a torrent of bristling grunts and groans in no known language. Pianist Earl Hines later claimed he knew musicians who tried to catch cold so they could growl like Louis; and Mezz Mezzrow, the marijuana-pushing clarinetist, recalled, "You would hear cats greeting each other with Louis's riffs when they met around town…scatting in each other's face." Before Louis, scat singing could be heard on records by Cliff Edwards (Ukelele Ike) and Red McKenzie (Mound City Blue Blowers); Bing and Al had admired and imitated them in Spokane. But the ad libs on those records were often disguised by kazoo or comb. They had little of Armstrong's rhythmic thrust and none of his melodic ingenuity.

At the time Whiteman pulled into town, Louis was fronting the Sunset Café band, with Hines as his musical director. The place was run by Joe Glaser, a Capone acolyte who several years later would become Armstrong's manager, building the powerful Associated Booking Agency in the process. In Chicago he billed his star in lights as "The World's Greatest Trumpet Player." The Sunset was located on the main stem of black Chicago but served an integrated audience. Because its band played a good two hours after most others retired, the club became a second home to many of the best white musicians in town, among them Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Tommy Dorsey, and Frank Trumbauer.

Whiteman introduced Bing and Al (Rinker) to the Sunset and other hot spots in Chicago. One can only imagine Bing's initial response to Louis's irrepressible genius, especially if Mildred Bailey had primed him for an experience bordering on the Second Coming.

DID IT REALLY TAKE HIM A WEEK TO REALIZE THE LAW IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL?:

Obama Implies Rejection of Bonus Tax Plan (STEVEN R. HURST, Mar. 23, 2009, AP)

President Barack Obama wagered significant political capital on Sunday as he bucked a highly popular House measure to slap a punitive 90 percent tax on bonuses to big earners at financial institutions already deeply in hock to taxpayers.

Obama defended his stance by saying the tax would be unconstitutional and that he would not "govern out of anger."

UPON THIS ROCK:

Dreaming of President Petraeus and an American surge (Andrew Breitbart, March 23, 2009 , Washington Times)

When the going gets tough, the weak go on Leno.

I can't get out of my head that the leader of the free world gave the British prime minister 25 films on DVD that don't even work in U.K. machines.

I can't wrap my head around the fact that the commander in chief tried (for a minute anyway) to require injured warriors to pay to have private insurers take care of their treatment.

I can't believe the president would allow the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to dictate the terms of his budget - and Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, the symbols of government kowtowing to Wall Street - to be spokesmen for his financial bailout.

And did President Obama really produce a YouTube video to appease President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs of Iran?

Yes, he did.

These aren't beginner's mistakes. These are his core incompetencies.

The media that got him elected knows it is responsible for the gathering debacle, and so Jon Stewart, a so-called comedian and exemplar of the groupthink of the governing elite, is desperately hunting for scapegoats. Now that their secular savior is in charge, the "Dissent is Patriotic" bumper-sticker crowd is figuring out ways to stamp out criticism.

I admit, I am now officially freaking out.

The last time I felt this hopeless was when the Democratic Party and its cohorts in the media sold us on the false premise that we lost the war in Iraq. In the process, they also sought to demonize the very man that led us out of our peril.

His name is Gen. David H. Petraeus.

THE SAD THING FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION...:

Study Backs Bosnian Serb’s Claim of Immunity (MARLISE SIMONS, 3/22/09, NY Times)

Every time Radovan Karadzic, the onetime Bosnian Serb leader, appears in court on war crimes charges, he has hammered on one recurring claim: a senior American official pledged that he would never be standing there.

The official, Richard C. Holbrooke, now a special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Obama administration, has repeatedly denied promising Mr. Karadzic immunity from prosecution in exchange for abandoning power after the Bosnian war.

But the rumor persists, and different versions have recently emerged that line up with Mr. Karadzic’s assertion, including a new historical study of the Yugoslav wars published by Purdue University in Indiana.

Charles W. Ingrao, the study’s co-editor, said that three senior State Department officials, one of them retired, and several other people with knowledge of Mr. Holbrooke’s activities told him that Mr. Holbrooke assured Mr. Karadzic in July 1996 that he would not be pursued by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague if he left politics.

THE MARYLAND MEMBER:

Internal Affairs: Just where does East Bay Rep. Pete Stark live, anyway? (The Mercury News, 03/22/2009)

Republicans danced on tabletops last week after Bloomberg News reported that longtime Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, claims a Maryland home as his "principal residence," thereby snaring a tax break. [...]

A senior member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Stark saved $3,853 in state and county taxes on a Maryland waterfront home in 2007 and 2008. But Maryland officials are now reviewing Stark's eligibility for the tax break; new rules require that property owners who qualify for the residential tax credits must use their homes for voting, obtaining a driver's license and filing income tax returns.

Stark votes in California and has a California license plate. But he told IA his family spends 70 percent of each year in Maryland, where the kids attend school.

DEPENDS ON YOUR POINT OF VIEW, HEDLEY:

Former POWs mark 'Great Escape' anniversary (Allan Hall, 22 Mar 2009, Daily Telegraph)

Adolf Hitler ordered 50 recaptured Allied airmen to be shot as a deterrent to others seeking to escape after their spectacular bid for freedom from Stalag Luft III.

Only three men made 'home runs' to safety through a tunnel which, nevertheless, tied up tens of thousands of Germans, who would otherwise be fighting, in the search for the escapers.

Tuesday will be the 65th anniversary of the spectacular freedom bid and the men involved will be honoured by several prisoners who were in the camp that was formerly in Germany but now lies near the town of Zagan in Poland.

NOT TO THE MARINE IT WASN'T:

Cool dudes, secret basketball games and Michelle's toned biceps ... Welcome to Obamalot (David Rose, 22nd March 2009, Daily Mail)

Approaching the marine who stood at attention by the helicopter steps, wearing full dress uniform and gleaming white gloves, the President gave a salute. But then, before the marine could return it, America's Commander-in-Chief shook his hand warmly.
Barack and Michelle Obama

Oblivious to this departure from protocol, Obama's White House audience, long-serving but youthful veterans of his election campaign, cheered and clapped.

Jon Favreau, 27, the speechwriter who popularised the President's 'yes we can' catchphrase, seemed to speak for them all. 'That was so awesome,' Favreau said, shivering in his shirtsleeves as Marine One took to the air. 'That was so cool.'

HOW'S "ANYONE BUT HILLARY" WORKING OUT FOR THE GRAY LADIES?:

Friendly fire: NYT hits Obama (JONATHAN MARTIN, 3/22/09, Politico)

The leading liberal voices of the New York Times editorial pages all criticized—and, in some cases, clobbered—President Obama on Sunday for his handling of the economy and national security.

It's not unusual for Barack Obama to take a little friendly fire from the Times. But it's perhaps unprecedented for him to get hit on the same day by columnists Frank Rich, Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd—and in the paper's lead editorial. Their critique punctuated a weekend that started with a widely circulated blog post by Paul Krugman that said the president’s yet to be announced bank rescue plan would almost certainly fail.

The sentiment, coming just two months after the president was sworn in, reflects elite opinion in the Washington-New York corridor that Obama is increasingly overwhelmed, and not fully appreciative of the building tsunami of populist outrage.

WHO SAYS NO ONE EVER THOUGHT OF IT?:

Yankees Grass Is Now a Brand (JOHN BRANCH, 3/22/09, NY Times)

Yankees Sod.

A tuft for the windowsill? A pallet for the backyard? Officially licensed grass is about to be sold, in the form of sod or seeds, to fans who want a patch to call their own.

“It’s just capitalizing on what we have and what we’ve done,” said Rick DeLea, vice president of DeLea Sod Farms, which his grandfather founded in 1928 and has supplied turf for Yankee Stadium since the 1960s.

On a recent morning, Mr. DeLea swept his hand across a portion of the 80 acres of Yankees Sod on a vast hillside in South Jersey. Last fall, some of the secret blend of bluegrass was peeled in broad strips, hauled north on trucks and laid inside the new Yankee Stadium. But most of it was still here, greening under a late-winter sun.

“It’s going to be one of those ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ stories,” said David Andres, the energetic and entrepreneurial man who came up with the idea of selling sod and grass to fans.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF CHRISTINE:

The Rise And Fall Of Cristiano Ronaldo (Nathan Low, March 22, 2009, EPL Talk)

His head is nowhere near the pitch.

His attacking is indirect. His tantrums are ubiquitous. His emotions run completely unchecked.

Where he once out-smarted most defenders, most now out-muscle him, sending the winger downward again into the whining spirals which mar his ever-declining reputation.

His free-kicks sail well off course. His runs to the byline are rare. The extempore cuts and shifts are gone. The sleight and trickery are gone, replaced with forecast, boastful, and inconsequential step-overs and leg fakes before usually passing square or backwards.

John O’ Shea is in the side—presumably—to pass sideways. Ronaldo is not!

THE ECONOM ISTS NEED TO TEACH THE LAW PROFESSORS THE CONSTITUTION?:

W.H. dials back support for bonus tax (KENNETH P. VOGEL, 3/22/09, Politico)

But on Sunday, a top administration economist was much less enthusiastic, calling the bill “dangerous.”

“The president would be concerned that this bill may have some problems in going too far – the House bill – may go too far in terms of some legal issues, constitutional validity, using the tax code to surgically punish a small group of people,” Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden's chief economic adviser, told George Stephanopoulos, host of on ABC News' "This Week.”

FOR A DEAD PARTY...:

McInnis tells pals: "I'm in" governor race (Lynn Bartels, 3/22/09, The Denver Post)

Former Congressman Scott McInnis has been saying for weeks that it's too early to announce whether he's running for governor next year, but privately he's telling his friends: "I'm in."

McInnis made that clear when he schmoozed with fellow Republicans at a state GOP dinner and committee meeting over the weekend, and in talks in recent weeks.

"He told me he was in," said state Rep. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, after talking to McInnis on Friday night at the GOP dinner.

A WASTING RESOURCE:

Obama saturation (Jennifer Harper, March 22, 2009, Washington Times)

There are those who wonder if Mr. Obama is already overexposed, not 100 days in office. He is the first sitting president to Twitter, get cozy on the "Tonight Show" and be seen or heard on average every 10 seconds somewhere on the global airwaves. Could Obama fatigue be setting in?

I don't have it. Yet. A civility freak, I have a certain wistful naivete that makes me wish the esteemed Office of the President of the United States was not subject to the constant rude probe of news and celebrity hunters. I pine for a line between viable watchdog journalism and snarky commentary or personal invasion. Yeah, well. Dream on.

"For a president who ran more as a megastar than any kind of working politician, the dangers of overexposure are greater than average. Charisma alone rarely withstands the kind of scrutiny movie stars get these days," says Lisa Schiffren of National Review.

"And it is only diminished when paired up with the ordinary, run-of-the-mill celebs who come on late-night TV to hawk movies or other projects. To be sure, speech is Obama's talent. But, sooner or later, people will understand the limits of words. For now, enough."

BELIEVING IN HIS ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE...:

Obama struggles as communicator (Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, March 19, 2009, Politico)

Of all the pitfalls Barack Obama might face in the presidency, here is one not many people predicted: He is struggling as a public communicator.

The sluggish and unsteady response to the uproar over AIG bonuses highlights a larger problem of his White House: Obama’s surprisingly uneven campaign to educate people about the economic crisis and convince Washington and the broader public that he is in command of circumstances.

PIGOU IS WAY TOO HONEST FOR THE LEFT:

That First Step is a Doozy: The Obama administration is finding that greenhouse gas control is hard in practice, especially the very first step. (Kenneth P. Green Sunday, March 22, 2009, The American)

[R]eductions could be achieved in a number of ways. One could use regulation, as the EPA is preparing to do, requiring energy users to increase their efficiency. But regulations can only nibble around the edges of the issue, and it is well known that regulations are costly, economically damaging, and prone to creating perverse consequences.

Alternately, one could slap a tax on the carbon content of fuels and let the market sort out how it wants to cut emissions in order to avoid the tax. That is the approach that most economists (and policy wonks such as myself) agree would be the most efficient. Environmentalists dislike the tax for several reasons. They think it is politically unsalable and will not guarantee a given certain level of reductions: those stubborn energy-using humans might simply opt to pay the tax and keep emitting. Even worse, taxes are entirely too transparent. Environmentalists do not want people to see the cost of greenhouse gas mitigation too clearly, because the public might reject it as too costly.

Finally, one could use a mechanism called emission trading, or “cap and trade,” which ostensibly harnesses the power of the market to find least-cost emission reduction approaches and allows a great deal of obfuscation and special-interest politics into the process. This is the favored approach of environmentalists, the Democratic leadership, and President Obama. But the administration is already stumbling at the very first step, which suggests that it should take a deep breath and think things through.

THE EMPTINESS OF SECULARISM:

Thank God America Isn't Like Europe -- Yet (Charles Murray, March 22, 2009, Washington Post)

The stuff of life -- the elemental events surrounding birth, death, raising children, fulfilling one's personal potential, dealing with adversity, intimate relationships -- occurs within just four institutions: family, community, vocation and faith. Seen in this light, the goal of social policy is to ensure that those institutions are robust and vital. The European model doesn't do that. It enfeebles every single one of them.

Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. The nations of Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their "child-friendly" policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. They are countries where jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And with only a few exceptions, they are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest.

Call it the Europe Syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. Afterward, a few of the 20-something members of the audience came up and said plainly that the phrase "a life well-lived" did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and they saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.

It was fascinating to hear it said to my face, but not surprising. It conformed to both journalistic and scholarly accounts of a spreading European mentality that goes something like this: Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.

If that's the purpose of life, then work is not a vocation, but something that interferes with the higher good of leisure. If that's the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble? If that's the purpose of life, why spend it worrying about neighbors? If that's the purpose of life, what could possibly be the attraction of a religion that says otherwise?

FACE-OFF AT THE RAVINE:

Mutual respect between US and Japan: Semifinal matchup features two nations with storied baseball history (John Schlegel, 3/22/09, MLB.com)

The U.S.-Japan relationship in baseball has seen players exported and imported each way over the last few decades, from the current wave of Japanese players making their mark on the Major Leagues dating back to when some American players -- called gaijin, or foreigners -- began extending their careers in Japan.

Players such as Davey Johnson, now manager of Team USA.

The former third baseman was the first gaijin ever to play for the storied Yomiuri Giants, joining them in 1975 and '76.

"I really had a good time playing for the Tokyo Giants. Many tomodachis, many friends," Johnson recalled Friday as his team began preparations to play the defending Classic champs in the semis. "It was a great experience. I had a great teammate in Oh-san [Japanese home-run king Sadaharu Oh], and a great manager in Nagashima-san [former star third baseman and manager Shigeo Nagashima]. And I know the team playing there now is managed by a great third baseman, Hara-san, currently managing the Tokyo Giants.

"I'm looking for it to be a great ballgame. A lot of my tomodachis now are doing other things, Takada-san, managing the Yakult Swallows, so I try to keep up with what they're doing over there, and I talked to Hara-san and wished him luck and he did the same to me."

Johnson -- who struggled through '75 but led the Giants to the postseason in '76 -- and Hara shared common ground that goes beyond their resumes as managers in international competition.

That would be the dirt surrounding third base at Korakuen Stadium, where the Giants played before Tokyo Dome opened in 1988. Hara was the team's third baseman starting in 1982 until he retired in 1996.

"I really don't know [Johnson] well myself, but I understand he was wearing the Tokyo Giants uniform in Japan, so in that sense he was an "old boy" of the Tokyo Giants. I feel familiar with him," Hara said. "And Reggie Smith [who played for the Giants for two seasons after his 17 years in the Majors] is also a coach on the U.S. team, so those are two people that I respect that we have to play against. So I would like to be able to fight against them, and Japan to be proud of us."

During the tournament, Hara has mentioned several times his respect for the American game, since, after all, that was where it all began.

And Hara remembers the star who caught his eye -- Babe Ruth, who incidentally made appearances in Japan as a player, helping the early internationalization of America's pastime.

"At first, I read the story about Babe Ruth," he said. "And, of course, before that, Major League Baseball, I knew about that. I had some knowledge about that. And then when I read the Babe Ruth book, and I was so interested about that, that was when I was in grade school, a student, maybe second grade, maybe third grade."

More to the present issue, there is a rivalry brewing on the international stage. In the last 13 meetings between the clubs, Japan has won six times. But Team USA's four-game winning streak includes a victory in the 2006 Classic and two wins in the 2008 Summer Olympic games in Beijing.

WHO SMITETH THE SMITERS?:

SO SAYETH THE TELEPROMPTER (Kyle Smith, 3/22/09, NY Post)

The masters and lords of AIG have become like unto pharaohs, and the people who toil in the valleys of the taxpayer are like unto the Israelites who are building for these pharaohs Jacuzzis and Gulfstreams.

Now it is who point the righteous finger of blame. It is I who call out, "J'accuzzi!"

I castigate AIG for this decision, which I signed off on. Mine Apostle Geithner did approve the bonuses, but with great reluctance in his heart. Now there is great reluctance, across this fair land, to believe I know what I'm doing.

So I ask my faithful flock of Democrats in Congress to join hands with me in toiling to eradicate this scourge and pestilence from the land, as soon as they have cashed their campaign checks from AIG.

I wouldst ask thou to smite from thine memory the $100,000 in AIG checks I cashed long ago.

For today I am enraged and outraged at the bonus payments, which were for favors exchanged and prearranged.

I say onto my disciple Christopher Dodd that he has strayed and betrayed. For it was he who welcomed the moneychangers into the temple of government. Yea, he did rend and blaspheme the passage in the Book of Stimulus that did decree no big bucks for bailout Beelzebubs.

I shall pursue every possible legal angle to stamp the wrath of nullification on these contracts, which were legal and binding.

I vow to stop payment on these checks, which have already been cashed and deposited.

Sordid sinners shall not prosper. I will change the AIG wine back into water. I will change the golden calf back into lowly peasant beef, of the Arby's grade. I will summon the power of IRS transubstantiation, call forth the redemptive force of 100 percent taxation of the bonuses. Though mine own disciple Charlie Rangel questions how the thing canst legally be done.

THE FUTURE:

Seeing the future in an old rail line (Mark Bowden, 3/22/09, Philadelphia Inquirer)

I like people who think big. Working without pay out of a cluttered little office off the back porch of his house just outside Oxford, Stevenson and his partner are reimagining the future of this region. Using a mostly dormant rail line that here and there along its route vanishes into a tangle of multifloral rose, milkweed, and rusted debris, they envision a project that would solve a number of long-range problems for this rapidly developing tristate corridor, where exurban creep is slowly colliding like tectonic plates, southwest from Philadelphia, west from Wilmington, north from Aberdeen, and east from Lancaster.

"If you look at projected growth patterns through 2035 it looks like somebody vomited all over Chester County," said Stevenson, a man given to vivid metaphor.

The line itself was built in stages in the mid-19th century, interrupted by the Civil War. Celebrated by grand-opening jubilees in towns along the way - Concordville, Chadds Ford, Avondale, Kennett Square, Oxford - the Philadelphia and Baltimore Central Railroad was a symbol of a modern world whisking travelers out of horse-drawn wagons and into a new century.

The new century, of course, brought the car, which starved the railroad of passengers. By the time Stevenson was growing up in Oxford after World War II, rail traffic along the line was a distant memory. For teenage kicks, he and his buddies would drive a car up on the rails, deflate the tires - the width of an auto matched the width of a railcar - and zip up to Lincoln University.

He is a burly fellow with a great white beard who retired from his work as a railroad architect in 1996. Saranetz has a long thick mane of white hair and worked for many years in statistical analysis and computer modeling, commuting back and forth into Philadelphia from Media - "I had a three- to five-minute walk to the train station; I was spoiled." They teamed up two years ago. Where others see an abandoned weedy corridor, perfect, perhaps, for a bike or hiking trail, these two see a priceless opportunity. They have put together planning charts, projected costs, maps, and a plan of action that is just this side of dazzling in its vision, if not its prospects.

At the rejuvenated corridor's southern terminus, Aberdeen, the U.S. Army plans to add more than 5,000 civilian jobs over the next two years. Restoring freight and passenger service to the rail line would help concentrate this coming tide of humanity in a neat corridor, revitalizing townships like Oxford that have been in long decline, preserving the area's rural appeal, providing a strong tax base for schools and municipal services for communities up and down the line, and easing automobile traffic on county roadways that are already strained to their limits. Serving commuters from three states, it would qualify for attention as a regional improvement, always a plus when angling for federal dollars.

"Sure, it's a little pie-in-the-sky," said Stevenson. "When we first started proposing it, the reaction was, like, bring in the doctors and the white jackets."

I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but I hope to be proved wrong, and I love the idea of Stevenson and Saranetz hustling to beat the odds.

W IS A GOOD ENOUGH POLITICIAN...:

The Art of Political Distraction (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 3/22/09, NY Times)

Mr. Obama is hardly the first American president to grapple with a distraction, a diversion — an outright red herring, some might call it — that grew bigger than itself. Ronald Reagan had the Air Force’s $7,622 coffeepot and the Navy’s $435 claw hammer, as well as an ill-fated effort to save money by classifying ketchup as a school lunch vegetable. Bill Clinton had midnight basketball and a high-priced haircut from a Beverly Hills stylist aboard Air Force One. George W. Bush was blindsided by an executive branch decision to contract with Dubai Ports World, an Arab-owned company, to manage terminals in six American ports. [...]

Some distractions are cynical political maneuvers, manufactured by one political party to throw a wrench into the agenda of another. But the ones that pose the greatest political danger are those that seem to erupt spontaneously, crossing political boundaries by putting a president at odds with his own party.

That was the case in 2006, when the Bush administration was caught flat-footed by news of its own Dubai ports deal. Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat, picked up on it, accusing Mr. Bush of outsourcing port security. But the issue really took off when Republicans, fed up with the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq, turned on the president.

“It matched the meta-narrative that this administration can’t handle Iraq and the Middle East,” said Eric Ueland, who was chief of staff to one Republican critic, the former Senate majority leader Bill Frist. “A lot of elements combined, so that when somebody said, quite simply, ‘The Bush administration is turning ports over to a Middle Eastern government,’ you got a lot of resonance.”

THANKS, W:

U.S. missile strikes take heavy toll on Al Qaeda, officials say: Predator drone attacks in northwest Pakistan have increased sharply since Bush last year stopped seeking Pakistan's permission. Obama may keep pace as officials speak of confusion in Al Qaeda ranks. (Greg Miller, March 22, 2009, LA Times)

An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say.

The pace of the Predator attacks has accelerated dramatically since August, when the Bush administration made a previously undisclosed decision to abandon the practice of obtaining permission from the Pakistani government before launching missiles from the unmanned aircraft.

Since Aug. 31, the CIA has carried out at least 38 Predator strikes in northwest Pakistan, compared with 10 reported attacks in 2006 and 2007 combined, in what has become the CIA's most expansive targeted killing program since the Vietnam War.

Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign despite civilian casualties that have fueled anti-U.S. sentiment and prompted protests from the Pakistani government.

CZECH BALANCE:

Brussels ‘recreating Soviet bloc in Europe’: The outspoken Czech leader has warned of a ‘democratic deficit’ (Bojan Pancevski, 3/22/09, Sunday Times of London)

THE leader of the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, has warned that a “Europe of states” is in danger of turning into a “state of Europe”, legislating on almost every aspect of people’s lives but lacking in democracy and transparency.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, President Vaclav Klaus drew parallels between Brussels and the failed communist dictatorships of eastern Europe.

“My criticism is based on the sensitivity towards attempts to restrain freedom and democracy, and it does relate to the fact that for most of my life I lived in a political, social and economic system which was not free and was not democratic,” he said. [...]

He talked of a “democratic deficit” in the EU when he addressed the European parliament last month. In his interview, conducted by e-mail, he explained: “I see the democratic deficit in a growing distance between the citizens of the EU member states and the EU political elite, as well as in the shift of decision making from the member states’ capitals to Brussels.”

About 75% of legislation was made in the EU by unelected officials, he said. The Lisbon treaty would give the EU its own legal personality and would abolish important rights of veto: “This certainly is not a solution to the democratic deficit. It makes the democratic deficit even greater.”

YOU'D THINK THE CON LAW EXPERT MIGHT BE MORE CONCERNED...:

Obama Seeks to Soften the Punitive Legislation (JONATHAN WEISMAN and DAN FITZPATRICK, 3/21/09, WSJ)

The Obama administration wants to soften the impact of bills speeding through Congress that would impose heavy new taxes on Wall Street bonuses. But some potential allies in the Senate are reluctant to cooperate, fearing the political consequences of watering down the legislation.

Financial-industry officials launched a campaign Friday to fight back but are finding their hands tied: Anti-Wall Street sentiment following the American International Group Inc. bonus payouts is making it difficult to reach once-friendly lawmakers to make their case. Key senators and their staffers, nervous about appearing to support the industry, are refusing all meetings, and, in some cases, turning away phone calls. "Unless you have a pitchfork and a noose nobody's listening to you" on Capitol Hill, said one financial lobbyist.

The White House has yet to publicly criticize the bonus tax proposals. But administration officials say privately they are concerned the House and Senate bills could lead to an exodus of employees or whole companies from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, as well as other government-sponsored financial rescue efforts.

THE FIRST QUESTION IS, "WHY RESPOND TO A HAS BEEN UNDERLING?":

Obama criticizes Cheney's approach to terrorism in '60 Minutes' interview (Mark Silva, March 21, 2009, LA Times)

President Obama, rejecting former Vice President Dick Cheney's contention that he has put the nation at greater risk of terrorism, suggests in a "60 Minutes" interview that the previous administration's stance was an "advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" Obama asks. "It hasn't made us safer."

WE WIN:

Britain set to become most populous country in EU (Robin McKie, 3/22/09, The Observer)

Britain will become one of the world's major destinations for immigrants as the world heats up and populations continue to soar. Statistics from the United Nations show that, on average, every year more than 174,000 people will be added to the numbers in the UK and that this trend will continue for the next four decades.

By then, only the United States and Canada will be receiving more overseas settlers, says the UN

IDIOTS! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SAY IT'S THE KEY TO WEIGHT LOSS!:

'Wild, energetic sex is key to conception' (Denis Campbell, 03/22/09, The Observer)

"Couples who are trying to have a baby often mention that the sex becomes a bit of a chore, a bit mechanical and routine. That's the wrong thing to be doing," said Dr Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in andrology at Sheffield University.

"The sex should be as wild and thrilling as it was when they first met, when they weren't thinking about babies, to give them the maximum possible chance of having a baby," added Pacey, secretary of the British Fertility Society.

CAN'T SOMEBODY SHUT BARRY UP?:

Democrat anger at Obama overkill: Concern is mounting at the president’s tactics (Tony Allen-Mills , 3/22/09, Sunday Times of London)

“Stop, please stop, Mr O, we can’t take much more,” one angry viewer wrote on an Idol-related website. “Not again!” complained another. “It’s the same speech he’s been giving for the past year.”

There were dark mutterings that by commandeering evening programming only a few days after he appeared on Jay Leno’s popular late-night chat show, Obama was “just like Fidel Castro [of Cuba] and Hugo Chavez [of Venezuela] - always on camera, always giving speeches and lecturing”.

The barbed response to the prospect of yet another mass-media dose of Obama’s economic prescriptions underlined the dangers the president is facing as he struggles to sell his recovery efforts to a country seething with anger and anxiety over the costs, effectiveness and potential abuse of the government’s trillion-dollar bailout programme.

HOW'S THAT WORKING OUT NOW?:

The Joshua Generation: Race and the campaign of Barack Obama. (David Remnick November 17, 2008, The New Yorker)

Barack Obama could not run his campaign for the Presidency based on political accomplishment or on the heroic service of his youth. His record was too slight. His Democratic and Republican opponents were right: he ran largely on language, on the expression of a country’s potential and the self-expression of a complicated man who could reflect and lead that country.

ONLY GUMBY IS MORE "FLEXIBLE":

PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama rhetoric, reality clash (LIZ SIDOTI, 3/21/09, AP)

Barack Obama's optimistic campaign rhetoric has crashed headlong into the stark reality of governing.

In office two months, he has backpedaled on an array of issues, gingerly shifting positions as circumstances dictate while ducking for political cover to avoid undercutting his credibility and authority. [...]

For now at least, Obama's deviations have served only to invite occasional cries of hypocrisy from some Republicans and infrequent grumbles of disappointment from some Democrats. He has popularity on his side, and it seems people mostly are chalking up his moves to much-needed flexibility at a difficult time.

But the shifts could take a toll over time if they become a persistent pattern and the public grows weary. His overall job-performance marks could suffer and jeopardize his likely re-election campaign in 2012. People could perceive him as a say-one-thing-do-another politician and the Democratic-controlled Congress could see him as a weak chief executive.

Obama's moves and maneuvering for political cover run the gamut.

THE ANGLOSPHERIC DIFFERENCE:

Population: Some Boom, Some Decline: Wildly varying fertility rates among nations threaten global stability (Joseph Chamie, 18 March 2009, YaleGlobal)

India alone accounts for 21 percent of global population growth, followed by China, which contributes 11 percent. As a consequence, India’s population is expected to exceed China’s in about 20 years. [...]

In contrast, among the more developed regions, little demographic growth is taking place. Many European countries and Japan are entering a period of population decline, and these trends are likely to continue. In contrast, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US are projected to continue growing due to relatively higher fertility and international migration.

NUANCE TIME:

Obama's Turnabout On Vets Highlights Budgeting Nuances (Philip Rucker, March 21, 2009, Washington Post)

[T]he leaders of veterans service organizations warned the president that their goodwill would vanish if he pursued a budget proposal to bill veterans' private insurance companies for treatment of amputations, post-traumatic stress disorder and other combat-related injuries.

One Vietnam veteran summoned his deep voice to address Obama, calling the change "a dumb move." [...]

On Wednesday, trying to gain control of the situation, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel summoned the same group of veterans back to the White House. "We said, 'Look, don't give [Republicans] an opportunity to slam you,' " said one veteran, who detailed the conversation only on the condition of anonymity. "I really don't think there was malicious intent there. I think it was more a matter of a bad political judgment."

In the Situation Room, with Emanuel seated in the president's chair, they reached an agreement that would take the issue off the table. Emanuel called Obama, who was on Air Force One bound for California, who signed off. The veterans hurried to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the Capitol, where she stood and read a statement from Obama saying he would drop the third-party billing proposal. The veterans responded with a boisterous ovation.

The 48 hours between the Roosevelt Room meeting and Obama's reversal, described in interviews with leaders of veterans' groups and White House and congressional aides, illustrate the delicate dance required of a new president trying to change government and cut costs where efficiencies can be found without alienating key constituencies.

IT CAN'T BE MY FAULT, I WAS WORKING IN MY GARDEN:

Five Signs of a Flailing Presidency: The White House tries its hand at damage control. (Fred Barnes, 03/30/2009, Weekly Standard)

Bonuses for AIG executives are like the infamous Bridge to Nowhere--an issue that's broken through outside Washington. And we know it's become a major political problem for the president because he and his administration act as if it has. Here are five signs of this:

1. His allies are moving to protect the president. In a political emergency, this is the highest obligation of everyone in the administration. The president must be distanced as far as possible from decisions that led to the problem, even if he is made to look out-of-touch or actually incompetent. [...]

2. The president gets out of town. [...]

3. Top spokesmen dismiss the crisis as a distraction. [...]

4. Administration figures can't keep their stories straight. [...]

5. The president indulges in hyperbole. [...]

One more thing. If Obama is showing the effects of a political crisis, how can he josh about basketball and bowling and other light subjects with Jay Leno? When in trouble, play to your strengths, such as being a likeable, regular guy. It worked with Leno. "Mr. President," he said, "I must say this has been one of the best nights of my life."

NOTHING COSTS MORE THAN IT USED TO:

Natural Gas, Suddenly Abundant, Is Cheaper (CLIFFORD KRAUSS, 3/21/09, NY Times)

The decline in crude oil prices gets all the headlines, but the first globalized natural gas glut in history is driving an even more drastic collapse in the cost of gas that cooks food, heats homes and runs factories in the United States and many other countries.

Six giant plants capable of cooling and liquefying gas for export are due to come on line this year just as the economies of the Asian and European countries that import the most gas to run their industries are slowing.

Energy experts and company executives say that means loads of gas from Qatar, Egypt, Nigeria and Algeria that otherwise would be going to Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Spain are beginning to arrive in supertankers in the United States, even though there is a gas glut here, too.

IF ONLY WE HAD A PRESIDENT (via Glenn Dryfoos):

The Problem With Flogging A.I.G. (JOE NOCERA, 3/20/09, NY Times)

By week’s end, I was more depressed about the financial crisis than I’ve been since last September. Back then, the issue was the disintegration of the financial system, as the Lehman bankruptcy set off a terrible chain reaction. Now I’m worried that the political response is making the crisis worse. The Obama administration appears to have lost its grip on Congress, while the Treasury Department always seems caught off guard by bad news.

And Congress, with its howls of rage, its chaotic, episodic reaction to the crisis, and its shameless playing to the crowds, is out of control. This week, the body politic ran off the rails.

There are times when anger is cathartic. There are other times when anger makes a bad situation worse. “We need to stop committing economic arson,” Bert Ely, a banking consultant, said to me this week. That is what Congress committed: economic arson.

How is the political reaction to the crisis making it worse? Let us count the ways.

IT IS DESTROYING VALUE During his testimony on Wednesday, Mr. Liddy pointed out that much of the money the government turned over to A.I.G. was a loan, not a gift. The company’s goal, he kept saying, was to pay that money back. But how? Mr. Liddy’s plan is to sell off the healthy insurance units — or, failing that, give them to the government to sell when they can muster a good price.

In other words, it is in the taxpayers’ best interest to position A.I.G. as a company with many profitable units, worth potentially billions, and one bad unit that needs to be unwound. Which, by the way, is the truth. But as Mr. Ely puts it, “the indiscriminate pounding that A.I.G. is taking is destroying the value of the company.” Potential buyers are wary. Customers are going elsewhere. Employees are looking to leave. Treating all of A.I.G. like Public Enemy No. 1 is a pretty dumb way for a majority shareholder to act when he hopes to sell the company for top dollar. [...]

IT IS DESTABILIZING How can you run a company when the rules keep changing, when you have to worry about being second-guessed by Congress? Who can do business under those circumstances?

Take, for instance, that new securitization program the government is trying to get off the ground, called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility — or TALF. Although it is backed by large government loans, it requires people in the marketplace — Wall Street bankers! — to participate.

This program could help revive the consumer credit market. But at this point, most Wall Street bankers would rather be attacked by wild dogs than take part. They fear that they’ll do something — make money perhaps? — that will arouse Congressional ire. Or that the rules will change. “The constant flip-flopping is terrible,” said Simon Johnson, a banking expert who teaches at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Business.

PURE POLISHED POLYPHONY:

Music Review | Anonymous 4: Together Again, Sweet Voices Join in Medieval-Style Praise of Mary (ALLAN KOZINN, 3/21/09, NY Times)

The program was a rebirth of sorts. Mostly, it was drawn from Anonymous 4’s 1992 debut recording, “An English Ladymass.” As on that recording, the singers assembled a Mass in honor of the Virgin, using plainchant and polyphonic songs and motets from disparate 13th- and 14th-century anonymous British sources. (This was how it was done at the time; it wasn’t until Machaut, in 14th-century France, that composers began writing complete Masses and signing their names to them.)

From the opening “Gaude, Virgo, Salutata” chant sequence to the final “Ave Maris Stella” hymn, the performance had all the polish, dynamic suppleness and warmth of tone that have always been Anonymous 4’s hallmarks.

The purity of its blend was intact as well. The ensemble’s lively account of “Edi Beo Thu Hevene Quene” — a sweetly melodic devotional song in medieval English, the only vernacular piece to find its way into this Latin Mass — was especially pleasing, as was the graceful melismatic singing in “Salve Sancta Parens.”

The quartet closed the program with an appealing preview of “The Cherry Tree,” including another medieval English song, “Hail Mary Ful of Grace,” and an 18th-century American song, William Billings’s “Bethlehem.”

MORE:
-CONCERT: Anonymous 4 Thanksgiving (NPR)

BAN THE NATIVE TRUCKERS IF SAFETY IS THE CONCERN:

U.S. Moves to Patch Mexico Rift (CHRISTOPHER CONKEY, 3/20/09, WSJ)

The administration's move comes after Mexico earlier this week slapped tariffs on $2.4 billion in U.S. goods ranging from grapes to toilet paper. Mexico said its action was retaliation for a provision in a budget bill Mr. Obama signed earlier this month that effectively shut down a pilot program that had allowed some Mexican truckers to transport cargo beyond a 25-mile commercial zone inside the U.S. border. Mexico says the U.S. is failing to meet its obligations to cut barriers under Nafta.

Business interests ranging from Pennsylvania-based Hershey Co. to the USA Rice Federation are urging the White House to permit qualified Mexican truckers to drive on U.S. roads. Exporters affected by the tariffs say the government is causing economic damage by catering to unions that are more concerned with protecting jobs than improving safety.

"This is the Obama administration trying to appease the Teamsters union without taking into account the effect it's going to have," said John Crossland, chairman of the California Association of Winegrape Growers.

The results of the pilot program, while limited, suggest that Mexican truckers in it operated safely. A year into the program, the Transportation Department's inspector general and independent examiners reported no major crashes caused by Mexican participants. They said Mexican truckers passed inspections at a much higher rate than U.S. carriers.

THE COMPETITION IS FIERCEST...:

Battle of the west (Martin Kelner, March 20. 2009, The National)

I have an American friend who visits the UK on business from time to time, and, in between trying to give a boost to what is left of the British economy, he usually makes time to go along with me to a sporting event of some sort.

Our conversation naturally turns to the difference between American and European sports, and unsurprisingly his efforts to fire me with enthusiasm for baseball and American football meet with limited success.

While the Americans continue to regard “soccer” as a game for girls and asthmatics, I refuse to plunge myself whole-heartedly into their national pastimes. [...]

Unfortunately, he arrived in Britain too late for Liverpool’s victory over Manchester United, and I was picking him up from the airport when the England rugby team put five tries past France.

Our consolation was a pair of tickets for Monday night’s Premier League match between West Ham and West Brom.

If you are familiar with the character Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, try saying this in his voice: “Worst….game…ever.”

Some goalless draws can be quite diverting. Not this one. It was turgid, drab, beyond redemption.

GOETHE'S DEAD:

Our Two Cultures (PETER DIZIKES, 3/22/09, NY Times)

Few literary phrases have had as enduring an after­life as “the two cultures,” coined by C. P. Snow to describe what he saw as a dangerous schism between science and literary life. Yet few people actually seem to read Snow’s book bearing that title. Why bother when its main point appears so evident?

It was 50 years ago this May that Snow, an English physicist, civil servant and novelist, delivered a lecture at Cambridge called “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” which was later published in book form. Snow’s famous lament was that “the intellectual life of the whole of Western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups,” consisting of scientists on the one hand and literary scholars on the other. Snow largely blamed literary types for this “gulf of mutual incomprehension.” These intellectuals, Snow asserted, were shamefully unembarrassed about not grasping, say, the second law of thermodynamics — even though asking if someone knows it, he writes, “is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?” [...]

Yet “The Two Cultures” actually embodies one of the deepest tensions in our ideas about progress. Snow, too, wants to believe the sheer force of science cannot be restrained, that it will change the world — for the better — without a heavy guiding hand. The Industrial Revolution, he writes, occurred “without anyone,” including intellectuals, “noticing what was happening.” But at the same time, he argues that 20th-century progress was being stymied by the indifference of poets and novelists. That’s why he wrote “The Two Cultures.” So which is it? Is science an irrepressible agent of change, or does it need top-down direction?

This question is the aspect of “The Two Cultures” that speaks most directly to us today. Your answer — and many different ones are possible — probably determines how widely and deeply you think we need to spread scientific knowledge. Do we need to produce more scientists and engineers to fight climate change? How should they be deployed? Do we need broader public understanding of the issue to support governmental action? Or do we need something else?

Snow’s own version of this call for action, I believe, finally undercuts his claims. “The Two Cultures” initially asserts the moral distinctiveness of scientists, but ends with a plea for enlisting science to halt the spread of Communism — a concern that was hardly limited to those with a scientific habit of mind. The separateness of his two cultures is a very slippery thing. For all the book’s continuing interest, we should spend less time merely citing “The Two Cultures,” and more time genuinely reconsidering it.

I have to admit, that threw me when I first read it. After all, the intellectuals of the 20th Century were predominantly Leftists, whether merely liberal, socialist, or actually Marxist. And the defining characteristic of the Left sensibility is optimism about Man's nature, the belief that Man is essentially good but has been corrupted by an oppressive and unfairly hierarchical economic system. But then as you read on you find that he's talking about conservative intellectuals--Eliot, Yeats, Pound, Wyndham Lewis--who he, quite improbably and totally inaccurately, calls the most famous of twentieth-century writers. At any rate, taking this as his jumping off point, Snow argues that the gulf that exists between science and his version of "intellectuals" is a result of scientists complete disregard for traditional culture and the "intellectuals" refusal to look at what the natural world might teach us about potential problems with that culture.

Snow goes on to call these intellectuals "natural Luddites", men who refuse even to understand the industrial revolution (the transition from agriculture to manufacturing). He's of course right that most conservatives are at least somewhat hostile to the industrial revolution, precisely because of the damage it did to traditional culture, but that's a very different matter from not understanding it. Snow decries their failure to celebrate this revolution because in his view "Industrialization is the only hope of the poor." He believed that the problem of his own age was that this revolution was being followed by a pure "scientific revolution" in the area of electronics, atomics, and automation, that was widening the cultural divide still further as pure scientists lost the ability to communicate with even the mechanics and artisans of industry, who had at least understood the industrial revolution.

Snow also took note of another divide plaguing the modern world, that between rich and poor nations. And he blamed that divide on the failure of poor nations to industrialize. Thus, he included the USSR and other communist nations in the group of rich nations, because they had made the transition to heavy industry.

He located the solution to all of these problems in education. He thought that simply by making education in the West, specifically in Britain, less specialized that the breach could be healed, with scientists learning about culture and intellectuals learning science. And he thought that making poor nations rich would be merely a matter of educating their populations.

I'd like to think that it's not only in retrospect that we can see how profoundly wrong Snow was in everything except for his initial metaphor, of a divide between science and the rest of the culture, about which more later. Firstly, as noted above, the real intellectual class, the Left of literature, art, and academia, shares the optimism of scientists. This is the case for one obvious reason, that neither group believes in the Judeo-Christian biblical world view, most specifically the belief that Man is Fallen, is by nature sinful. It is this belief, more than any other, that undergirds the pessimistic conservative intellectualism that Snow was apparently bothered by. But this is a decidedly minority view and became more so with every passing year of the 20th Century. In fact, the shallow optimism of the intellectuals of the Left and of scientists had largely prevailed by the time Snow wrote--as witness the triumph of communism, socialism, and liberalism across the globe.

Even today, it is basically only in the U.S (the West's last Christian nation), that there exists a vibrant and powerful conservative movement, but it is significant that America is the exception because it proves the conservatives to have been on the right side of this cultural divide. We need only look at the social pathologies that the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Age unleashed--crime, violence, illegitimacy, deviancy, drugs, etc.--to see that Man was not a plastic waiting to be perfected by science. We need only look at the basket case that the Communist worlds became to see how mistaken Snow was about the inevitability of industrialization improving peoples' lives. We need only look at the education levels achieved in places like the Soviet Union and Cuba to realize that no amount of education can compensate for a misguided political philosophy. We need only look at America's stubborn resistance to the worst excesses of the optimists and our corresponding predominance in the political and economic realms to realize how closely that success has been tied to the conservative pessimism that is built into our very system of government. The great educational task turns out not to be getting conservatives to understand why they should be optimistic, but instead to teach scientific and Leftist utopians why they should be at least skeptical of their own optimism.

Snow did though tip toe right up to the edge of a profound truth in his metaphor of the two cultures. Because while the scientists and the intellectuals (now we speak of the real intellectuals, those of the Left) share a common optimism, they do not any longer have any way of communicating with each other and, more importantly, neither any longer communicates with the rest of us. This is so because of an unnecessary but understandable sequence of events. As Snow notes, as late as say the 1850s, any reasonably well-educated, well-read, inquisitive man could speak knowledgeably about both science and the arts. Man knew little enough that it was still possible for one to know nearly everything that was known and to have been exposed to all the religion, art, history--culture in general--that mattered. But then with the pure science revolution of which Snow spoke--in biology and chemistry, but most of all in physics--suddenly a great deal of specialized training and education was necessary before one could be knowledgeable in each field. Like priests of some ancient cult, scientists were separated out from the mass of men, elevated above them by their access to secret knowledge. Even more annoying was the fact that even though they had moved beyond what the rest of us could readily understand, they could still listen to Bach or read Shakespeare and discuss it intelligently. The reaction of their peers in the arts, or those who had been their peers, was to make their own fields of expertise as obscure as possible. If Picasso couldn't understand particle physics, he sure as hell wasn't going to paint anything comprehensible, and if Joyce couldn't pick up a scientific journal and read it, then no one was going to be able to read his books either. And so grew the two cultures, the one real, the other manufactured, but both with elaborate and often counterintuitive theories, requiring years of study.

Snow was an entirely conventional novelist so perhaps it's not surprising that he missed this point. He was also a member of both elites, the scientific and the intellectual, and to a significant degree they've reached an implicit agreement whereby each accepts the others judgment in their given fields. Artists don't question the likelihood of the Big Bang and scientists simply ac