Monday, September 27, 2010

PoliticsUSA: Military: Woodward's new book out, Obama's Wars





And here's another Politico source with link:

DIANE SAWYER interviews BOB WOODWARD tonight on “World News” and “Nightline.” His 16th book, “Obama’s Wars,” is out today. Bob tells Diane in the taped sit-down: “If it turns out [that in] July of next year, nine months away, things are much better in Afghanistan, it seems to be working – [Obama’s] going to be a geo-strategic genius. If it doesn't work, you've got all kinds of people -- generals, Republicans, Democrats -- who are going to say, ‘Wait a minute…’ … This is Obama's war. He really became the strategist-in-chief.” Video: Hurray!, I finally found the link.
Yes, already a bit dated; but still good, snappy, and far out.

-- Politicarp

PoliticsVenezuela: Opposition gains: Prez Chavez's stooges in parliament shaken

BBC reports early results of Venezuela's parliamentary elections (Sept27,2k10):



Chavez foes advance in election

There were broad smiles among members of the opposition MUD as the results were announced.

The Venezuelan opposition has performed well in elections, overturning President Hugo Chavez's two-thirds majority in parliament.

Mr Chavez's United Socialist Party (PSUV) still won a majority of seats in Sunday's poll, but will now be unable to pass major legislation unaided.

The poll was seen as a test of Mr Chavez's popularity ahead of presidential elections in 2012.
An opposition spokesman said he was "very happy" with the results.

The opposition umbrella group he represents, the Table for Democratic Unity (MUD), will now become an important bloc in the parliament, says the BBC's Will Grant in Caracas.

It will be capable of thwarting some of Mr Chavez's key socialist reforms, be they appointments to the Supreme Court or backing for sweeping new laws.

It seems Mr Chavez will now have to find some way to work with the opposition representatives in parliament, our correspondent adds.





Apparently, the vote curtails the PSUV's previously overwhelming majority (anti-Chavez parties boycotted the last election, thank God they did not this time around!). Chavez can no longer be so blatantly and unrestrainedly a super-majoritarian triumphalist.

-- Politicarp

Saturday, September 25, 2010

JuridicsUSA: American Bar Association: Scalded for redicidivism to putatively extreme left

The stolid solid online Politico (Sept25,2k10)  in a report by Josh Gerstein tries to fathom trends and overall direction of American Bar Association which has a long history of trying to arrogate power over the entire profession of jurists, lawyers, judges, juridical scholars (muxh like American Medical Association of yesteryear, now rather constrained.  In recent years ABA had gone thru the refiner's fire, sorted itself into circumspect tendencies, deferring to the ancient canon of suaviter in modo.

The American Bar Association, which was dogged for decades by criticism over a perceived liberal bent, is risking reigniting that debate by taking bold stands on a pair of hot-button social issues.



At its annual meeting last month in San Francisco, the nation’s largest lawyers’ group passed a formal resolution, urging every state in the union to permit same-sex marriages.

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In June, the ABA took what it acknowledged was an “extraordinary action” by filing a brief urging a federal judge in Arizona to block enforcement of that state’s highly controversial law intended to crack down on illegal immigration.
Critics contend that the back-to-back moves on the polarizing issues of gay marriage and immigration show that the ABA is again sliding to the left politically and putting its reputation at risk.
“One of the problems with having a viewpoint on anything and everything is, when the public disagrees with us on something they understand or think they understand thoroughly, that undercuts the willingness to defer to us on something they don’t understand,” said Leslie Jacobs, a former president of the Ohio Bar Association. “It compromises our prestige and our persuasiveness and you only have so many opportunities to influence people.”

In ABA palaver, a key idea comes into focus currently on two issues: "The ABA’s new president, Stephen Zack of Miami, defended the group’s support for same-sex marriage and its opposition to the Arizona immigration law as part of the organization’s broad duty to defend civil rights."
Alberto Gonzales, Federal attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, summed up the matter well:  “I can’t speak for other Republicans or other conservatives, but I can say it bothers me and I’m not a member of the ABA,” said Alberto Gonzales, who served as White House counsel and attorney general under President George W. Bush. “I have a problem with the ABA weighing in on issues like that because they’re telling a lay person they’re lawyers and this is the way it should be, implying to be otherwise is unlawful or unconstitutional. ... They don’t get to decide that. Judges decide that, not the ABA.”  The organization no longer has a monopoly of representation of American lawyers (a population in the zone of 1.2 million active lawyers in the country); the ABA, the largest single lawyer's collectivity, neverthless is a glaring minority of the total number, having some 400,000 members. That makes the ABA short some 800,000 adherents.
The ABA has an inhouse ideology that is far from a reasonably democratic outlook; the organization has become ideolugy-driven, all the while sicklied over with the pale cast of thawt, not the real thing -- at least not if you've studied reformational philosopher of jurisprudence, Herman Dooyweerd.  His Encyclopedia of the Science of Law is slowly appearing and may reach the goal of translating and publishing this monumental 5-volume research in the field, albeit from a decisively Christian perspective. At the same time, HD's general philosophical work has already been Englished and is undergoing textual scholarship to produce an annotated critical edition, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (3 hefty volumes, 1953-1957, plus a free-standing Index volume [IV]).

While we await the 10-year project ahead, Gershon's full 3-page article is h+ly recommended.

-- Lawt

Bugs: Pipelines: Sept 9 gas pipeline inferno in San Bruno, California

A reporter for San Fran Chronicle, Jaxon Van Derbeken, spooks us with a very valuable news story:

[Years ago in a previous lethal explosion -- ] The colony of bacteria released gases that eventually broke down the wall of the 5-decade-old, 30-inch gas transmission line, a phenomenon called microbiologically influenced corrosion.


A decade later, the phenomenon is being looked at as a possible cause of the Sept. 9 disaster in San Bruno, in which a 5-decade-old, 30-inch gas transmission line ruptured, killing seven people and destroying 37 homes.  Read more
H+ technics now exist to combat the li'l bratardos, but older pipelines may have too many twists and turns, too many spots where water may pool, too few pipeline companies that take the problem with grave seriousness.

There awtta be a law! -- well, yes, there is one on the books now for several years.  But it didn't stop the 2k10 explosion in Carlsbad, New Mexico.  The National  Transportation Safety Board found the pipeline operator, El Paso Natural Gas, owner  had 'failed to detect, prevent or control' the internal corrosion, the board said, and federal inspectors didn't pick up on the company's flawed corrosion detection program."

-- Lawt

EconomicsUSA: Credit Unions: Three local credit unions bellied-up by Feds


MARKET PULSE
Sept. 24, 2010, 5:05 p.m. EDT · Recommend (3) · 

Government takes over three credit unions


AlertEmailPrintShareby Ronald D. Orol
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The federal government on Friday seized three undercapitalized wholesale credit unions -- Members United Corporate Federal Credit Union of Warrenville, Ill.; Southwest Corporate Federal Credit Union of Plano, Tex.; and Constitution Corporate Federal Credit Union of Wallingford, Conn.-- and unveiled a package of regulations affecting the industry. The new rules include a program to have the institutions pay annual fees to cover the losses on a $50 billion portfolio of toxic mortgage securities losses on the group of undercapitalized corporate credit unions. Last year, in March 2009, the National Credit Union Administration, the regulator for federal credit unions, took control of two credit unions. 

-- EconoMix

Friday, September 24, 2010

FLASH: Iran at UN: Ahmadi-Nejab wavers on rich-uranamium processing?

NEW YORK – Iran would consider ending higher level uranium enrichment, the most crucial part of its controversial nuclear activities, if world powers send Tehran nuclear fuel for a medical research reactor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters Friday.
-- Politicarp

EconomyUSA: China: China's contribution to de-industrializing America via currency manipulataion



Why "Free" Trade Hurts America +  




The sell-off of American companies is greatly rewarded by those doing the selling. Given record low capital gains taxes and other incentives, CEO’s and shareholders of major companies stand to gain more from the one-time bonus of selling their company at a massive premium to a foreign purchaser than from continuing to run them on a salary basis.  Canada has had a long history of China grabbing up firms here on the stockmarket and outr+t buys in private deals.  This rapidizing trend holds here especially true in the extractive and raw materials industries. (I add that China has a huge spy operation here, especially industrial and financial spying. -- EconoMix)



You want to read more of this analysis by Thomas Heffner. Not being sure the "Read more" invite will work to get you beyond the teaser to the main article, I will give the link to it.

Also, not being sure Heffner's article, and the webs+t on which it appears, is payola-financed by the home-groan auto industry (as I suspect), I must point out that the only examples cited by the author are auto industry-related.  Still, I don't want to commit the genetic fallacy to the effect that because so funded the webs+t has nothing to offer, nothing common-gracious, as Herman Bavinck so carefully tawt us.  This applies to both sides of the polarization between Libertarians vs Anti-FreeTraders.  If you have a thawt on this matter, please do let me know.

To be fair to Heff, tho sparse in examples, his wordsmithing in the article does mention in passing other industries besides autos -- retailing (especially textiles, by the way my favorit voracious-capital investment house is recommending cotton stocks, commodities), electronics, freit and shipping, marketing, advertizing, law, and banking -- "all tied directly to American consumption of foreign goods."
On the other side of free trade, encouraging foreign manufacturers to produce in the US creates a big defeat for us. For example, Ohio and Indiana competed to get a new Honda auto factory. Indiana succeeded. They gave Honda an $81 million enticement gift and other intangibles. Honda said they would put up a $500 million facility to produce 200,000 cars per year. They did put up a facility, cost unknown. And 23,000 Americans applied for 2,000 jobs. Two thousand Americans are now turning out 200,000 Honda cars per year in Indiana which translates to one American supplying the labor to turn out 100 cars per year. One American can earn on average about $50,000 per year to turn out $2,000,000 worth of cars (Average car sale $20,000 x 100 cars = $2,000,000). This may be a simplification, but the American labor cost is approximately 3 percent. Almost nothing is made in that factory.
Some 2,000 of us benefit handsomely, while the remainder of our American 300+ million do not -- oh yeah, the consumers (and their families) who buy these 200,000 Hondas presumably have some satisfaction in their auto consumption.  Are the vehicles all green? -- that woud at least help the enviro some, yes?


Further, the prospect looms of China making green cars for export to the USA, reaping huge rewards, employing a workforce under the whip of the Communist "union," underselling American auto products and even underselling Honda's USA-assembled cars.

-- EconoMix

PoliticsUN: USA Prez Obama: vs Iran's Ahmadi-Nejab on 9/11

The USA President responds to the whatever-he-is Iranian ranter for the latter's "hateful" weird numbnuttery previously at the same forum that claimed "the U.S. government may have been behind the September 11, 2001, attacks." Enuff said; for more go to the good stuff here (Reuters via Yahoo! News, Sept24,2k10) and there (Wall Street Journal, Sept24,2k10).  I add only that the US media, both lamestream and Fox-kind, seem to have a consensus that A-Nejab was playing to a specific Iranian audience he wants to motivate to increase and maintain its support of the Jabber's cause which is in trouble in Iran, while the conservatives (including the clerics) engage each other with their inf+ting propensities. Obama has tried and tried to negotiate with Iran to quit its nuclear adventure, for fear the religio-political psychosis in sway in the country will nucleate some n+t when the moon is h+.  The very project intimidates the regional scene alraedy, not least the Jewish State of Israel, but also the Muslim monarchies of the Gulf States.

-- Politicarp

PoliticsUSA: Republicans: Nu GOP 'Pledge to America'

Doing my rounds to monitor the 24-hr nuzc+cl today, I read up on my incoming email newsletters in the bizness-f+nanchels category.  I got to my favourit strait-up capital-investors daily Money Morning where Kerri Shannon, MM's Associate Editor reports, thusly:

Republicans this week outlined their plan for reform in one-page summary entitled "A Pledge to America." Republicans today hope their pledge will do for them what the "Contract with America" did for Republicans in 1994 when the GOP gained 54 House seats and regained control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

The proposal's goals include immediately canceling any unused funds from last year's $787 billion stimulus program, permanently extending the Bush tax cuts, repealing the new healthcare law, cutting $100 billion in discretionary spending, and freezing the size of the "nonsecurity" federal work force.  It also calls to end government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [The two govt-sponsored housing-mortgage conglomerates which triggered the financial meltdown as the banking houses fell into step (voraciously, I m+t add) -- Politicarp].

The plan comes at a time when many Americans are questioning the economic policies put forth by the Obama administration. With the unemployment rate stuck near 10%, President Obama two weeks ago  announced a new six-year infrastructure plan, which says will create a "substantial number of jobs and improve the country's transport system. 
The report is usefully read in its entirety, and is recommended.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

PoliticsIndia: Kashmir: Visit to separatists by Hindu nationalist party

An important newspaper in India, The Hindu, carries an article about the evaluation of a visit to Kashmir's Hindu majority of Mr Arun Jaitley, leader of the Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata.  "Fight separatism, win over minds of people" (Sept23,2k10) reports a "Special Correspondent":

NEW DELHI: “The government must be willing to wage a war of ideas in Kashmir, a war that must win over the minds of the common people of Kashmir, the students and housewives, a war to fight against the feeling of victimhood and against separatism. And in this task, India must show determination.”


Saying this, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley — who returned on Wednesday from a three-day visit to Kashmir as part of the all-party delegation — added: “When routinely slogans of ‘azadi' are chanted, the ordinary people do not even know what they mean by it.”

Could an ‘azad' Kashmir exist as a separate state and function independently? he said. Was that what they meant?

The “real” battle, Mr. Jaitley said, was between allowing the people to be alienated from India, their own land, and isolating the separatists.

“The Kashmiris are Indians living in India and this land is theirs. We have to have multiple strategies, multiple visions to ensure the people are not alienated from their own country,” he said.

Speaking to ordinary people, Mr. Jaitley said the sense that he and other members of the delegation got was that the people did not want to be harassed.

“They want to be free to live their daily lives in an atmosphere devoid of fear. Their biggest source of anxiety springs from being told on a daily basis that they are acting at the behest of Pakistan,” he said, adding that the people told the delegation: “We have nothing to do with Pakistan.”

“A teargas shell thrown by the security forces at a protesting group of people accidentally killed a boy, setting off a spiral of violence, anger, frustration, and more violence and anger. The government must be willing to recognise and admit the mistakes made and then rectify them,” Mr. Jaitley said.

His views were expressed at an interaction on the ‘Roots of Separatism' at the Constitution Club here.
Mr. Jaitley said the government had been talking about issues related to the Line of Control (making that irrelevant) or demilitarisation and other issues that do not directly touch the lives of ordinary people in the State. He felt a different approach, together with a massive effort to reach out to the people through ideas, was needed.

“Their mindset must be changed, their sense of victimhood must go,” he said.
Bharatiya Janata Party has had to live down some extreme actions by its adherents on the Indian subcontinent.  This effort to understand and make better contact with Hindus in Kashmir seems to be qu+t an alternative approach than those which prevailed previously.

-- Politicarp