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China’s New First Couple
This WSJ piece profiles the presumptive next leader of China, XI Jinping. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204573704577186992329708730.html Among other things, we learn that his father was purged by Mao, and that Xi spent his teenage years living in a cave during the Cultural Revolution acquiring proletarian values (and learning to master his resentments). Deng Xiaoping rehabilitated his father, who eventually helped launch China’s economic revolution in the first “Special Economic Zone” in Guangzhou.
Unlike China’s colorless present leadership, who are engineers, Xi was a biochemist (which means that he’s probably smarter), and married a glamorous Chinese singer, who is also a Major General in the Peoples Liberation Army (!!), Peng Liyuan. His last posting before being sent to Beijing was as party boss in one of China’s most freewheeling coastal provinces, Zhejiang Province, where he presided over an explosive economic expansion. This is a formidable person with broad bandwidth, charisma and intelligence.
No-one has the faintest idea of how Xi will govern,and how he will deal with the volcanic instability of China’s economic growth and its political consequences. It is hard to imagine Xi leading a crackdown on entrepreneurs (since he himself was jailed three times during the Cultural Revolution). He might be just the person to crack down, however, on local party corruption which has damaged the legitimacy of the Party.
While we decide which moderate technocrat will lead the US for the next four years, China appears to be leaning forward. Xi visits the US on February 15.
Death of Bipartisanship in Washington?
This POLITICO article highlights a prominent Washington meme, which is that there is declining popular support for bipartisan solutions to national problems, and that people want government control unified under one political party. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72132.html The authors cite Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a ruthlessly efficient partisan warrior when he was in Congress, “We need to take on the mythology that divided government produces progress. Divided government produces divided government.”
With respect to da Mare, our last two experiences with unified government (during George W Bush’s first term and the first two years of Obama) produced, respectively, the Iraq War and a deeply unpopular Health Reform law. The controlling parties were decisively repudiated in subsequent Congressional elections. While it is rhetorically satisfying to push for political hegemony, it is precisely the attempt by these two intellectually bankrupt parties to aggrandize political power that so infuriates an electorate nearly forty percent of whom are neither Republican nor Democrat but independent. These two minority parties are turning off the nation, not mobilizing it.
Where do we get solutions to our pressing national problems (an unsustainable deficit, a looming entitlement crisis, underinvestment in infrastructure, etc.) when, as seems highly likely, 2012 returns a divided government to Washington? Wait for 2014 or 2016?
Where Was This Photo Taken?
Tehran? Moscow? Cairo?
Nope, it was downtown Oakland Saturday night. Angry Occupy Oakland protesters broke into City Hall, trashed a YMCA (??), skirmished with the local authorities, and burned an American flag. Four hundred were arrested.
WTF??
Republican Nomination Trainwreck
These people were Iowa Republicans watching their potential Presidential nominees, prior to an inconclusive caucus vote early this month. In the Wall Street Journal this morning, Bret Stephens argues convincingly that Republicans are squandering a golden opportunity to send a vulnerable Barack Obama home to Chicago: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577178594236642420.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
Italian Captain Claims He “Tripped and Fell into the Lifeboat”
In a classic blame-avoidance strategy, the Captain of the doomed Costa Concordia cruise ship claimed that he wasn’t actually abandoning the ship he steered onto a Tuscan reef, but rather “tripped and fell into the lifeboat”. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/world/europe/costa-concordia-italy-cruise-ship-rescue-suspended.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&gwh=C9D6ED1424F04BF8E70D99E82CE3D612
Sort of makes you think that Silvio Berlusconi might have an encore career opportunity in cruise ship navigation. After all, he successfully navigated a country onto the rocks. And think of the trysting possibilities for all those empty staterooms …
North Korean Leadership Photo!
This is a test. Who’s in charge in this photo of the new North Korean “leader” Kim Jong Un? Looks like a hostage situation to me…
Kevin Pearce Returns!
Talented snowboard aerialist Kevin Pearce made a remarkable recovery from a near-lethal head injury. See video of this beloved boarder: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45892841#45892756
Congress Extends Winless Streak!
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse in Washington, Congress deadlocks over how FAR to kick the can down the road…
US Skiers Destroy Competition!
No she isn’t falling- she’s going 80 miles an hour and killing the rest of her World Cup competitors! Lindsey Vonn is simply crushing her opponents, winning four straight World Cup gold medals- some races by 40-50 meters. So are the rest of her teammates, both men and women. It’s a great sports story most Americans will never hear: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082591817947110.html?grcc=970366a9b0cb9e683e53b75a94c13dfaZ3&mod=WSJ_hps_sections_sports
Eleven years ago, I spent a week at Portillo, Chile in August, watching the US and Austrian mens downhill teams training. The Austrians were so arrogant. (Hermann Meier, their bull-like superstar, pretended to be someone else when I asked him to autograph my helmet). The young American team I rode up on chairlifts and lifted weights with complained that downhill skiing was no longer cool anymore (all their friends snowboarded) and it was like no-one seemed to care about what they were doing. And they were getting smoked in their training runs by their Austrian “older brothers”.
Eight years later, it’s the Austrians who are praising (and losing to) them. One of them said, “We see them as super-cool because they are having so much fun. With the Americans, it comes from the heart”. Too bad we’re distracted by all the televised spectacles and superstar egos. Our skiers are amazing…
US is now Net Energy Exporter!
If you’re scrabbling around for good news, chew for a moment on this chart. For the first time since 1949, the US exported more energy than it imported (primarily to Latin America). Admittedly, some of this is because our economy is depressed, but it’s also because of dramatic strides in energy efficiency, and also new sources of domestic energy supply (a North Slope sized oil discovery in North Dakota and the shale gas explosion in the northeast and Texas).
Moreover, according to the Wall Street Journal, it’s likely to continue for a while. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203441704577068670488306242.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
So we’re not irrevocably tied to the Middle East for energy supply. There is actually a lot of good economic news just now, but this is really stunning.
Iranian Students Trash British Embassy!
In an eerie reprise of the Iranian seizure of the American Embassy in 1979, a frenzied mob of Iranian “students” attacked the British embassy in Tehran. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204449804577067912218983018.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
What do you think the chances are that this is an Occupy Wall Street type spontaneous outpouring of anti-British sentiment? Try “Zero”! The “students” were actually the youth wing of a vast national thuggery called the basij militia. Who, exactly, in the Iranian power structure sent the thugs over the wall while the police looked on is not yet clear. The Iranian power structure is riven with political intrigue. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is under attack by Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khameni. What better time, then, to focus internal anger on a foreign enemy, and for Ahmadinejad or his hard line opponents to regain the upper hand?
What is clear is that Iran will be the biggest loser if the murderous Assad regime in Syria falls, heightening both its political isolation and its paranoia. This faux incident could be the beginning of a wave of externally directed political aggression against the West. Fasten your seatbelts. We might see an attempted re-ignition of the Iranian revolution focused in external enemies, accelerating instability in the Middle East.
Hillary- Our Next President?
Is it time for President Obama to step aside and assure a Democratic victory in next year’s election? That’s the provocative thesis of this article by two Democratic pollsters (neither of whom are Obama fans): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203611404577041950781477944.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
In brief, their argument is that an unpopular Obama cannot run for re-election on his accomplishments, since we are clearly not better off than we were four years ago. And he cannot run on what one wag called recently “hopium”. So the only way he can win is by waging a scorched earth, divisive and relentlessly negative campaign that if he wins will render the country hopelessly polarized and ungovernable.
Thus Caddell and Schoen ask the President, in effect, to resign at the end of his first term, like Truman and Lyndon Johnson, and permit his popular Secretary of State and former first Lady Hillary Clinton to run in 2012. There are numerous problems with this scenario. One, unlike Truman and Johnson, who had virtually no hope of being re-elected, Obama stands an excellent chance of winning, given the state of the Republican nominees and national party. Two, a major part of Clinton’s present appeal (she destroys any possible Republican nominee in head to head matchups) is that she has not transparently sought higher office. Three, she ran a terrible, undisciplined 2008 Presidential campaign riven with factionalism and backbiting, a poor sign that she would run a disciplined, unified White House.
There is tremendous anxiety about Obama inside the Democratic party right now. Much of it is a function of his persistent outsiderness, and the dragons slain on the way to the White House. Caddell and Schoen may well be right- that the only way to re-election is for the President to ignite a class war. But how many powerful people surrender power willingly? The Hillary scenario, as Herman Cain recently said, “ain’t gonna happen”. Would you give up a comfortable retirement on Martha’s Vineyard for four years in what Truman called “the crown jewel of the federal penal system”?
Scorpion Stings Twice!
Desert dwellers- be careful to shake out those boots next summer! Because if you are bitten by scorpions, and are taken to the hospital for anti-venom treatment, it could cost you as much as $65 thousand (no typo), and insurance may not even cover them unless the victims are children or “elderly”.
According to this Pharmalot blog posting http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/11/stung-by-the-high-price-of-an-antivenom-drug/, a newly approved anti-venom called Anascorp (approved under FDA Orphan Drug provisions), is being sold WHOLESALE in the US for an astonishing $3500 a vial. Hospitals then charge patients between double and triple that much, for treatment may require 3-5 vials. The same venom is sold to patients in Mexico for $100 a vial or less.
Orphan drugs are approved under special provisions for drugs of extremely limited usage, and pricing is, of course, effectively unregulated. Maybe these drugs were named for the orphans created by bankrupt Scorpion bite victims. Got to love our American healthcare system!
Is China’s Bubble Bursting?
This WSJ article suggests that it is: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204505304577001180665360306.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB10001424052970203716204577017811017851128%26articleTabs%3Darticle
Wenzhou is where Deng Xiaoping went in the late 1970’s to launch China’s economic modernization. Today, the massive, informal networks of angel financing that powered Wenzhou explosive, thirty-year long expansion are rolling up, leaving empty factories, empty apartment complexes, unemployed workers, and personal carnage. It didn’t take much of an export contraction to roll up Wenzou’s economy, and it may be just beginning if, as expected, the Eurozone tips into recession.
If Wenzhou’s troubles spread to the rest of eastern China’s industrial belt, a lot of its manufacturing workers headed back to their villages emptyhanded. China’s people have had a taste of our prosperity and a foretaste of our freedom. They’re hooked, and when prosperity ebbs, it won’t be pretty.
The historian Crane Brinton argued that revolutions are not caused by poverty or deprivation, but rather by the confounding of rising expectations- the dashing of hopes. Nowhere in China were hopes higher for longer than in Wenzhou. China’s rulers might have their hands full, and the temptation to distract the angry masses with some bogus foreign incident will rise sharply.
Keep a close eye on China!
Michael Jackson’s This is It!
On Sunday, we saw Michael Jackon’s valedictory This is it! on Vh1 (the rock necrophilia cable channel). It was riveting and scary at the same time. If Jackson had lost a step, you sure couldn’t see it. His dancing and vocals were razor sharp and elegant. And the music was beautiful and beautifully done. Elvis in his final days was a pathetic, stumbling clod compared to Michael, whose final tour would have dazzled. This is It! was really depressing.
His ultra-capable crew called him “Sir”. You could see how afraid they were of him, even as they delighted in his performance. He was the ultiimate control freak. Jackson was definitely a non-carbon based life form. Behind the mask, there was another mask.
In our toxic culture, when someone reaches Jackson’s rarefied heights, they have enough money and power to get whatever they want. Their character can blossom or fester without interference. It is absurd to have convicted his physician of killing him. Jackson was wealthy and powerful enough to find someone to “help him sleep”. There was simply no-one with enough influence to tell him to take care. Jackson had already left earth and was floating free in his own ego-space. It was only a matter of time before he simply drifted away.
Vlad the Impaler
It’s always amused me that the West fears tin pot madmen like Kim Jong Il, Qaddafi and Ahmadinejad when by far the most dangerous foreign leader is the once and future President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Former spymaster and martial arts practitioner, Putin chills the blood with this recent interview: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204358004577032533741783056.html?mod=WSJ_hps_editorsPicks_1
In it, he literally seethes with bitterness over how the West has treated his country. He considers the fall of Qaddafi to be a “tragedy”, and says the only reason that we deal with his country is because “Russia is the only country that can destroy the US in a half an hour”. He not only possesses billions in private wealth, but an enormous nuclear arsenal, and the nuclear submarines and long range bombers to deliver it. He has cut off gas supplies in mid winter to eastern european countries that messed with him, and built a cyberware capacity to shut down entire countries’ economies (Estonia, Georgia) perhaps superior to that of the Chinese.
Putin has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th Century. Unlike the cautious technocrats who run China and fear revolution if their experiment in explosive modernization backfires, Putin has nothing to fear from anyone. It is not unimaginable that Putin could “reclaim” one of the Baltic states (Lithuania, eg.) by invasion and dare the West to do something about it. It is only by noblesse oblige that he withdrew from Georgia, a neighbor state who foolishly displeased him during the tail end of the Bush Presidency and which he invaded.
Vladimir Putin is smart, ruthless and hungry. He fully merits our close attention and respect.
Pakistan “Hides” its Nuclear Warheads in commercial Delivery Vans!
Many defense observers think the greatest threat to world peace is the failure of the Pakistani military to secure its nuclear arsenal. This remarkable story, which appeared first in National Journal, suggests the Pakistani military has dispersed its arsenal in mobile commercial vans with light or no security- to hide them from the United States! http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/pakistan-nukes-delivery-vans/ The article suggests that to hide their arsenal from the threat of American seizure, they’ve actually made it less secure against the threat of seizure by a terrorist organization.
Though the Pakistani army claims the nukes are “demated”- that is, the fuses are kept separate from the bombs themselves, this is the same military that could not find Osama Bin Laden living less than a mile from their equivalent of West Point (for five years!) , and who did not know we had penetrated hundreds of miles into their airspace and taken the dead Bin Laden away until we told them.
I’ll have sprinkles on my warhead please.
Pelosi Works Out!
I knew it. She can bicycle and eat chocolate ice cream at the same time! http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/11/14/111114ta_talk_mayer?printable=true
You can be certain that this is that annoying woman who shows up at the gym in a $700 outfit, piercing perfume and perfect makeup. Bicycling and eating chocolate ice cream is the perfect metaphor for the Democratic Party’s economic agenda: let’s borrow and spend our way back to prosperity!
Does St. John make a track suit?
Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You?
As the Occupy Wall Street movement goes global, the recent rioting in Rome shows how volatile things might become. A lot of those Occupy Wall Street protesters in the US are young, unemployed Obama voters, for whom the message of “hope and change” has heralded several years of living in their parents’ basements. The President walks a fine line with the message: “challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonising those who work there”. Good luck with that fine line…
Will he be able to resist working the encampments and fanning the flames against the “millionaires and billionaires”? (I’m counting the days… ) Will his political staff succumb to the temptation to harness the understandable frustration to aid his flagging re-election hopes? His “Jobs Bill” took money from the “millionaires and billionaires” and gave a lot of it to the public sector unions. The failure of the Jobs bill has been blamed on the greedy, obstructionist Republicans who are fronting for the capitalist pigs.
It’s looking a lot like 1936 to me. Rome r US?
Meryl Streep, Barnard Commencement Speaker 2010, Columbia University
This is one of the most brilliant and affecting Commencement speeches I’ve ever heard. She was NERVOUS, believe it or not. As a fellow graduate of an all girls college (in her case, Vassar), she connected with her audience in a special way. Not acting, but worthy of an Oscar!
