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NOVEMBER 26, 2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 8:35 P.M. ET:

GRIM PREDICTION – Egyptians go to the polls Monday for the first of three rounds of voting.  The Muslim Brotherhood, already the best organized force in Egypt, has grown even stronger as a result of the recent unrest in the country, which has made it even tougher for the other parties to organize.  So, we should brace ourselves for a bad outcome in the most important Arab country.  We remind ourselves of the truth – that democracy isn't just an election, it's a way of life, a way of thinking about society.  That way of life does not permeate the Middle East.

AND OTHER HEADACHES IN THE MUSLIM WORLD – There is a new crisis in Pakistan after a NATO raid that, Pakistan says, killed 24 of its troops.  But NATO is claiming its forces were fired on first and acted in self defense.  Pakistan has retaliated by ordering the U.S. to vacate a base used for drone attacks.  This comes after Pakistan ordered border crossings into Afghanistan closed, thus cutting off NATO supply lines.  This is one of the worst crises in Pakistan/NATO relations, which effectively means Pakistan/U.S. relations.  Welcome to reality.

AN AUDIO FEAST – Playing to his strength as a debater, Newt Gingrich has challenged President Obama to a series of seven Lincoln-Douglas style debates should Gingrich get the GOP nomination.  And Newt says, "If he wants to use a TelePrompter, that’s fine… We have to be fair.”  While I don't think Newt will get the Republican nod, a series of debates between him and Obama would be an audio feast.   Newt would win handily, and expose the Obama administration as devoid of ideas, policies, and even intellectual arguments.  I'd love to see this, in high definition.

JUST DESSERTS – The goofball government of Norway, which regularly parades around the world lecturing everyone else on morality, is now embroiled in the kind of scandal for which Norwegian leftists once tut-tutted the United States.  It seems that a school in Oslo has decided to segregate its classes between pure Norwegians and immigrant students, in order to prevent white flight.  The Oslo education chief says he is shocked, shocked, that segregation is going on there.  But other education figures in Oslo are standing their ground.  Maybe the morality lectures will now stop.

November 26, 2011       Permalink

HIGHER EDUCATION ON THE MARCH, OR THE CRAWL – As readers know, we like to chronicle, at Urgent Agenda, the goings-on in higher education, especially the chronic obsession with something called "diversity," which, roughly translated, means preference for whatever groups are popular on the political left in a given year.

The terrific Heather MacDonald, writing in National Review Online, presents us with some exciting examples, taxpayer-funded of course, of the diversity boondoggles that are currently the rage:

UC Berkeley’s diversity apparatus, which spreads far beyond the office of the VC for E and I, is utterly typical. For the last three decades, colleges have added more and more tuition-busting bureaucratic fat; since 2006, full-time administrators have outnumbered faculty nationally. UC Davis, for example, whose modest OWS movement has been happily energized by the conceit that the campus is a police state, offers the usual menu of diversity effluvia under the auspices of an Associate Executive Vice Chancellor for Campus Community Relations. A flow chart of Linnaean complexity would be needed to accurately map all the activities overseen by the AEVC for CCR. They include a Diversity Trainers Institute, staffed by Davis’s Administrator of Diversity Education; the Director of Faculty Relations and Development in Academic Personnel; the Director of the UC Davis Cross-Cultural Center; the Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; an Education Specialist with the UC Davis Sexual Harassment Education Program; an Academic Enrichment Coordinator with the UC Davis Department of Academic Preparation Programs; and the Diversity Program Coordinator and Early Resolution Discrimination Coordinator with the Office of Campus Community Relations. The Diversity Trainers Institute recruits “a cadre of individuals who will serve as diversity trainers/educators,” a function that would seem largely superfluous, given that the Associate Executive Vice Chancellor for Campus Community Relations already offers a Diversity Education Series that grants Understanding Diversity Certificates in “Unpacking Oppression” and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in “Understanding Diversity and Social Justice.”

COMMENT:  Get those checkbooks out and make those donations.  I know you'll want to participate.  Oh, be sure your checks are written on recycled paper and drawn on an entity with a name like "The People's Bank and Workers' Mortgage Commune."  Then they'll accept your donation.

November 26, 2011       Permalink

BRITAIN IN THE DOLDRUMS – AT 7:52 A.M. ET:  And this will eventually impact us, especially as there are strong signs that other European economies are in trouble.  From Britain's Telegraph:

The Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) is predicting that the economy will shrink, the Government was warned on Thursday.

Whitehall sources said the forecasts suggest that growth would be negative during the first six months of next year due to the euro crisis.

The prediction, to be published on Monday, is the first from a respected forecaster to indicate that Britain faces a double-dip recession.

The preliminary findings of the OECD, to be released on the eve of George Osborne’s Autumn Statement, are said to have “sent a lightning bolt” through the Treasury and Downing Street. On Tuesday, the Chancellor will announce his growth strategy, which will lead to billions of pounds in infrastructure spending and a scheme to increase loans to small and medium-sized businesses.

However, officials at the OECD, which is backing the Coalition’s austerity drive, are believed to have advised the Treasury that it may have to draw up a so-called “Plan B” to slow public spending cuts if the single currency crisis is not resolved imminently.

COMMENT:  There are rumblings that even Germany may face new economic problems.  One effect of all this is to suppress exports from the United States, and thus hiring by American companies.

Another effect, rarely discussed unfortunately, is that economic stress tends to reduce interest in foreign policy, and also to reduce the ability of a country to maneuver internationally.

November 26, 2011     Permalink 

AN OBAMA MOMENT – AT 7:39 A.M. ET:  Our great national nightmare is over, and we can sleep better at night knowing that high-level dribbling is going on.  Owners and players in the NBA have reached a tentative agreement, making it likely that President Obama will have something to watch on TV this year besides
Fox News:

NEW YORK – NBA owners and players reached a tentative agreement early Saturday to end the 149-day lockout and hope to begin the delayed season on Christmas Day.

Neither side provided many specifics but said the only words players and fans wanted to hear.

"We want to play basketball," Commissioner David Stern said.

Tim Frank, the Senior Vice President of Basketball Communications for the NBA, confirmed to Fox News that the tentative agreement had been reached.

After a secret meeting earlier this week, the sides met for more than 15 hours Friday, working to try to save the season. This handshake deal, however, still must be ratified by both owners and players.

Stern said it was "subject to a variety of approvals and very complex machinations, but we're optimistic that will all come to pass and that the NBA season will begin Dec. 25."

Barring a change in scheduling, the 2011-12 season will open with the Boston Celtics at New York Knicks, followed by Miami at Dallas in an NBA finals rematch before MVP Derrick Rose and Chicago close the tripleheader against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.

The league plans a 66-game season and aims to open training camps Dec. 9. Stern has said it would take about 30 days from an agreement to playing the first game.

"All I feel right now is `finally,"' Dwyane Wade told The Associated Press.

COMMENT:  We have not yet gotten word of the president's reaction, as he was last reported playing golf.  There is no reported strike of caddies.

November 26, 2011     Permalink

NOVEMBER 25,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:32 P.M. ET: 

THE GLORY OF ECONOMIC REPORTING – Wasn't Charlie Dickens the British chap who wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"?  Yeah, he said that in a book that got turned into a movie.  Big box office in the thirties.  Dickens could have been a modern business reporter.  Fox News is reporting one of the best Black Fridays on record.  Other news outlets are reporting flat sales, or a little worse than last year.  And U.S. stocks had their worst Thanksgiving week drop since 1932.  Choose whatever news you like.

TOM WICKER – Tom Wicker has died.  He was a vestige of the old, and better New York Times, and became its Washington bureau chief.  His greatest reporting moment came in his calm, fact-based coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  When I was at The Times I edited a Magazine story by Wicker on J. Edgar Hoover.  What struck me was Wicker's fairness and his insistence that everything he said be fact-based.  Today, some journalists would call that old-fashioned.  Wicker could have some funny ways.  He pronounced "ghettoes" as "jet toes," but he was a solid rock who has left a good journalistic name.

CHILLING – Egypt, the most important Arab country, is about to vote, but the country is wracked with tension, with 41 people killed this week alone in political violence.  And on Friday, the Muslim Brotherhood held a vitriolic rally in a mosque, filled with death threats against Israel, Jews, nonbelievers, and, ultimately, Americans.  Remember, Israel is the Little Satan, but we're the Big Satan.  At the same time, Morocco held an election today, with the main Islamic party expected to make strong gains.  We may regret the Arab Spring, and moderate Arabs may regret it more.  President Obama played golf today.

OPENING? – Republicans believe the failure of the Supercommittee to come up with an agreed-on series of budget cuts and revenue enhancements opens the door for them to play the GOP's strongest hand, national security.  The committee's failure triggers a series of automatic budget cuts, most severely at the Pentagon.  Republicans plan to move to exempt the Defense Department from catastrophic cuts, contrasting their toughness with what they perceive is Obama's weakness.  At the same time, the Obamans, who can't run on an economic record, are boasting of their guy's toughness in foreign policy, certainly not an argument Obama raised in 2008.  The Dem base must be fainting.

November 25, 2011        Permalink 

BOOLA, BOOLA – AT 7:37 A.M. ET:  As we contemplate things for which to be thankful, some trends in higher education shouldn't be among them.   This isn't a major story, but I just had to pass it on to you.  From Fox:

A doctoral candidate in Yale University's American Studies Program is teaching a course in "nightlife culture" that includes DJ lecturers, a field trip to New York nightlife hot spots Le Bain and the Boom Boom Room and a discussion titled "Looks, Doors and Guest Lists: Getting Past the Velvet Rope."

"I worry about whether people will think this is serious," Madison Moore said. "But it's not just about getting drunk. It's about the history of it, the Harlem cabarets, understanding race, gender, sex, Prohibition and the law."
Ivy League schools seem to be taking party studies seriously -- nightlife kingpins Noah Tepperberg and Jason Strauss spoke recently at Harvard Business School. But some parents might have mixed feelings about the Yale syllabus, which includes headings like "Studio 54 and Limelight: The Birth of the Mega Club."

Yeah.  At fifty grand a year, some parents might worry.

Moore's "Dance Music and Nightlife Culture in New York City" seminar at the 310-year-old institution of higher learning also features texts by Village Voice writer Michael Musto (whose recent piece, "Why I Hate Nightlife," is a tortured love letter to the scene) and Anthony Haden-Guest, who won top prize in Spy magazine's 1988 Ironman Nightlife Decathlon.

Speakers include Madame Wong's and Red Egg pop-up club mastermind Simonez Wolf, Santos Party House's Andrew W.K. and Vibe magazine co-founder Scott Poulson-Bryant.

COMMENT:  This will produce our future leaders.  Get the white flags ready.

November 25, 2011       Permalink

THE GINGRICH FACTOR – AT 7:23 A.M. ET:  Now that Newt Gingrich is a top-tier, high-polling GOP candidate,  he's getting intense scrutiny in comments, columns, and news reports across the media.

Several themes emerge:  What Republicans like about Gingrich is his intellectual vitality and vast knowledge.  Many of them dream of him debating Barack Obama, a great voice attached to an empty suit.  Gingrich is a man of ideas.

On the other hand, many who've known him openly doubt his ability to perform the functions of a president.  According to a new piece in The Hill, that includes former colleagues:

Newt Gingrich has failed to land any lawmaker endorsements since he’s risen to the top of the polls, a sign that those who worked with the former Speaker in Congress aren’t warming to him.

In contrast, Mitt Romney, another frontrunner for the nomination, has announced several congressional endorsements in recent days, including Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rep. Charlie Bass (R-N.H.).

Gingrich had a controversial reign over the lower chamber — he worked with then-President Clinton on welfare reform; but worked against Clinton on the budget, which included two government shutdowns. He ultimately resigned his congressional seat in November of 1998, after the GOP lost five House seats and he faced a leadership challenge.
“His tenure as speaker was turbulent, to put it mildly,” said Jack Pitney, a professor at Claremont McKenna College who grew acquainted with Gingrich in the 1980s. “You're not going to get a huge number of endorsements from people who actually served under him. Their memories are very mixed.”

COMMENT:  I suspect that this is more of a problem within the party than with the electorate.  Most voters don't particularly care what members of Congress think of a colleague, as long as the colleague hasn't done anything lewd or blatantly illegal.

But within the party Gingrich is going to face stiff opposition.  As the piece says, he isn't winning "Miss Congeniality."  Frankly, I think Romney will pull it out, but, if it really gets close, look for Gingrich's friction with other Republicans to become a major factor. 

November 25, 2011       Permalink

BLACK FRIDAY – AT 7:01 A.M. ET:  And the shopping rush is on.  But there is an issue, a legitimate one, that is maddening to many retailers.  From The Washington Times:

It’s a scenario all too familiar to retailers: A customer walks in, asks to see a product, discusses it at length with the sales staff, and then pulls out his cellphone.

Jason Brewer, vice president of communications and advocacy for the Retail Industry Leaders Association, explains what happens next: “He uses his smartphone to take a picture of the bar code on the back of the item, and then, right in front of the sales person, he checks prices and orders the item online.”

Why? Because most online outlets don’t charge sales tax, unlike traditional bricks-and-mortar stores. Buying online, especially when it comes to jewelry, cameras, computers and other high-end electronics, can save consumers a hefty chunk of change. But the costs to traditional retailers, not to mention state and local governments, are mounting.

“Not only does the retailer lose the sale, but the sales staff just lost 30 minutes telling the customer about the product,” Mr. Brewer said.

It’s infuriating to store owners, but after years of griping about the lack of fairness, this may well be the last holiday shopping season when bricks-and-mortar stores operate under a sales-tax handicap. A bipartisan consensus appears to be forming in Congress in favor of legislation that would close the tax loophole.

Such bills have come and gone for years, but the political winds took a turn this year, thanks largely to the efforts of lawmakers in California. The state waged a high-stakes duel with Amazon.com and won after the online giant agreed in September for the first time to comply with a state sales tax instead of fighting it in the courts or at the polls.

COMMENT:  Look, as a taxpayer, and someone who purchases online, I can't be thrilled about this.  But I do concede that there's a certain fairness involved.  I'd love to hear from readers and how you feel. 

Here in New York, online sellers located in the state must charge sales tax to state residents.  Because my major vendor is in New York, I pay the tax anyway, and so don't benefit from any breaks.  Should the system be unified, with one law covering the entire country?  You tell me.

November 25, 2011        Permalink