Don't mention the war

Statement from Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University --

CAMBRIDGE MA. -- Felipe Calderon MC/MPA 2000, HKSEE 2003, the outgoing president of Mexico and a Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) alumnus, has been named the Inaugural Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow at the Kennedy School, it was announced today by HKS Dean David T. Ellwood. He will begin the Fellowship in January 2013. Calderon is nearing completion of a six-year term as Mexican president, serving as the nation's second democratically elected president since the end of the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 70-year hold on power. 

He is credited with having boosted the nation's economic development as a pro-business, pro-free market leader and having made significant reforms to the country's environmental, immigration and health care policies. During his presidency, Mexico hosted the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP-16) global climate change talks in December 2010, and the G-20 meetings in July 2012, for which Calderon served as Chair.

Er, wasn't there some other stuff going on in Mexico during his time as President?

Once they stop being sheep, they're ours

John Yoo -- George Bush's torture lawyer -- tries to explain why Asian-Americans voted so overwhelmingly for Barack Obama:

It may be because Asians, like Jews when they first emigrated, have congregated in cities, which are run by Democratic-party machines who may demand a certain level of “loyalty,” shall we say, to compete for city business or to deal with city licenses. To the extent Asians then seek to leave the cities through education and entering the professions, they move into other areas controlled by the Left.

Irish roulette

At National Review's The Corner, Katherine Connell purports to clear up some of the alleged confusion that surrounds the implications of the Savita Halappanavar case for the abortion debate in the USA --

He [Ta-Nahesi Coates] is mistaken that a consistent pro-life position requires that abortions be viewed as “murders.” The law recognizes multiple types of homicide for a reason, and in the circumstances Coates is discussing there is clearly no malicious intent.

What doctor would want the words "homicide" and "malicious intent" following him or her around after a crisis abortion decision, even if the politicians decide that in such cases there would be homicide but not with intent?  Note to pro-lifers: a system of OK, we'll take a look at these medical murders after the event and tell you which ones we'll let you away with is probably not going to be enough comfort to the doctors who have to decide these things on the spot.

In which we agree with the Islamists

Gulf Daily News (Bahrain) -

The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star is visiting Bahrain for the first time to officially open the new Millions of Milkshakes franchise at The Walk Bahrain in Riffa on Saturday, in association with Sevens Holding SPC. She [Kim Kardashian] will fly in for the one-day visit after attending a similar launch party in Kuwait. Her planned visit has sparked anger among Islamist legislators, who submitted an urgent proposal at the end of Tuesday's parliamentary session, where they referred to Ms Kardashian as "an actress with an extremely bad reputation". However, the proposal was dismissed because other MPs quickly dispersed the chamber, forcing parliament chairman Dr Khalifa Al Dhahrani to end the session without voting on the issue.

The headline on the story is "Star's visit is big boost for Bahrain," which may mean that things in Bahrain are worse than commonly believed.

On the other hand, there should be major relief that she is not going as US cultural ambassador to Bahrain. We'll let State Dept spokesperson Victoria Nuland explain --

MS. NULAND: I do have a little something on this. So we had a Bahraini entity that approached the Embassy about cosponsoring a visit by this guy [Andrew W.K.], who I take it is pretty popular there in Bahrain. That was initially approved. And then when more senior management at the Embassy took a look at this, the conclusion was that this was not an appropriate use of U.S. Government funds. 
QUESTION: Is that – did – and would they – the government would have paid for his trip over there, had it – 
MS. NULAND: I don’t know what the details of our sponsorship were to be. 
QUESTION: Can you explain why it was – was it – I mean, his – was it that – it was decided that it was inappropriate to send someone over there to Bahrain to represent the United States whose hits include Party Till You Puke and things like that? (Laughter.) Is that why it was decided it was inappropriate? 
 MS. NULAND: Thank you for sharing that. I think -- 
 QUESTION: Is that why? 
 MS. NULAND: I think the conclusion was, when they looked at the body of his work, that we didn’t need to be part of this invitation. I’ll leave it -- 
 QUESTION: Got you. And just hold on. And just to make clear, it was – the invitation was actually never extended to him? MS. 
NULAND: Frankly, I don’t have the details. There may have been some preliminary conversations with him, but he is not going to be going to Bahrain on the U.S. Government’s dime.

It's fine and well you're looking

Online newspaper headlines this morning screamed that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was "clinically dead."  Here's the King today  doing a good job -- for a dead person -- of sipping Arabic coffee with Crown Prince Salman. Do Syrian and Iranian propaganda outfits really have nothing better to do than spread dodgy rumours about the Saudi royals?

Photo: Saudi Press Agency.

Take that, Québec

From the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer announcement that Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney is to be the next Governor of the Bank of England --

Mr Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada in 1965. As a Canadian citizen he is a subject of Her Majesty The Queen.

The new Whitey tape

This blog has obtained exclusive must-credit access to the original versions of the Susan Rice talking points file for her now notorious September 16 interviews after the Benghazi consulate attack. We have excerpted the key section above.

Success has many fathers

Irish Minister of Finance Michael Noonan speaking at a Thanksgiving lunch in Dublin --

This [USA-Ireland} friendship was evident this year as Ireland welcomed some 35,000 American visitors to Dublin in September for the American football match between Notre-Dame and the US Navy. [I have been told that Notre-Dame has gone on to have a fantastic season and currently sit undefeated and as top seeded team. Perhaps Notre-Dame should consider opening each season in Dublin! There is no doubt that other teams will be looking at Notre-Dames season and trying to replicate the success – including the trip to Dublin - and I am sure that an exclusive and long term deal could be agreed for the “fighting Irish.”

Arab Spring accessory

The National newspaper (Abu Dhabi) --

Guy Fawkes masks have been banned from (UAE) National Day celebrations amid fears that people could wear them to symbolise opposition to the state."Legal action will be taken against anyone wearing the masks during the celebrations," said a security source.

She had more to her life than that

The above very questionable headline on a Wednesday AP story about Savita Halappanavar has through the wonders of news wires and syndication followed the underlying story all over the world. To state the obvious, she didn't show up at the Galway seeking an abortion. She showed up sick and pregnant. 

A leg up

George W. Bush White House announcement, April 29, 2008:

The White House today announced that thirty two outstanding men and women from across the country have been selected as National Finalists for the White House Fellows Program - the nation's most prestigious program for leadership and public service. The National Finalists represent a diverse cross-section of professions, including business, medicine, law, non-profit sector, media, state government, finance, and education. Additionally, four branches of the military are represented among the National Finalists. A complete list of the National Finalists appears below. 

The White House Fellows Program was founded in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This non-partisan program offers exceptional men and women first-hand experience working at the highest levels of the federal government. Fellows also participate in an education program consisting of roundtable discussions with renowned leaders from the private and public sectors. Following the Fellowship year, Fellows are expected to repay the privilege by contributing to the country as national leaders and public servants. Selection as a White House Fellow is highly competitive and based on a record of remarkable professional achievement early in one's career, evidence of leadership potential, a proven commitment to public service, and the knowledge and skills necessary to contribute successfully at the highest levels of the federal government. ... 

2008-2009 White House Fellows National Finalists and Hometowns ... Paula D. Broadwell, Associate Director, Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University; Bismarck, ND

Business got personal

Interesting account in the Wall Street Journal of why the US stock market was so hard hit yesterday: many traders had gone heavy into stocks in anticipation of a Romney victory --

Jerry Harris, chief investment officer at Sterne Agee in Birmingham, Ala., which manages $17 billion in assets, was among those who had placed bets on Mr. Romney winning the election. Mr. Harris had put money into some health-care stocks on Monday and Tuesday, predicting they would get a bump. While some health-care stocks rose, others sold off. Mr. Harris now regrets his move, though he said the damage to his portfolio was minimal. "It wasn't a big risk, but I did the two [trades] with the deliberate intention of thinking we'd get a boost out of stocks if Romney won," he said. On Wednesday, Mr. Harris said he told himself: "You've been caught leaning. You know better than to have strong opinions before an event like that." The selloff surprised Thomas Lee, stock-market strategist at J.P. Morgan, who before Tuesday had called for a postelection rally through year-end no matter which candidate won. "There were probably more people than we realized hoping for a Romney win," he said.

Especially noteworthy is that while you'd normally think of these big speculative bets as being based on hard analysis, the positions were driven -- as their chastened holders admit -- by a hope that Romney in, along with a revealingly cynical assessment as to which equities would benefit (health insurance companies, banks, and energy companies).

There's already the question of how Karl Rove was able to rustle up so much in campaign contributions for Romney on what turns out to have been a futile bet. Now we know it was not just the campaign chequebooks that were caught by the fever.

The sash his father wore

British PM David Cameron doing an Obama-style bow to Saudi King Abdullah in Jeddah today today as he received the sash named for Abdullah's father, Abdulaziz (Ibn Saud).

Photo: Saudi Press Agency.

Sometimes a crest is more than a crest

So, the Paul Ryan ancestors are from Kilkenny and he is invited there next year, according to the Irish Times.

Since Everything Must Have Meaning, the Kilkenny city crest therefore represents the fortresses to which the rich would retreat under a Romney-Ryan presidency, with the main source of employment being the troops needed to invade other countries and generally keep order.

We recommend that Ryan entertain Kilkenny next year with tales of how great austerity is.

Grace of Allah

About the most precariously held up highway overpass you'll ever see, the aftermath of a massive explosion in eastern Riyadh yesterday when a fuel truck hit one of the pillars, killing at least 22 people and injuring hundreds.

Photo: Saudi Press Agency.

Cupla Focal

Boarded up store in Rockaway, Queens, NY.

Photo by Shannon Stapleton, Reuters (part of slideshow).

Flooding in cities is complicated

A taxi parking lot in Hoboken, NJ. When the scale of the failures during Hurricane Katrina became evident, one of the most persistent right-wing talking points was that the city of New Orleans had unused school buses that it allowed sit in a lot and get flooded when they could have been used for an evacuation. The argument never, er, held water, but it circulated nonetheless. The above illustrates the scale of the problem. If a private company standing to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in flood damage and lost revenues couldn't organize getting its cars out of a lot ahead of a flood, how was a city supposed to mount a massive evacuation of hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged people, with a storm that got much less advance billing than Sandy?

Photo: Charles Sykes, AP.

They're sandbags full of money

Outside the Goldman Sachs HQ in Lower Manhattan (photo: New York Times).

There has to be an Islamic angle

New York Times on the US East Coast storms -- The full moon on Monday could cause even greater flooding because tides would be at their peak.

Mother Nature is a mad scientist

Tropical Storm Sandy around 9pm GMT Saturday night.
Photo via US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Welfare Queens in McMansions

Conservative economists Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur at the American Enterprise Institute write in the Wall Street Journal to take on the various pesky studies that show a big increase in inequality i.e. in the share of total income accruing to the richest households. After some vague doubt-raising about statistics (in which they never explain how the issues they complain about specifically affect the studies they are disputing), the AEI team gets to their killer point --

Yet the access of low-income Americans—those earning less than $20,000 in real 2009 dollars—to devices that are part of the "good life" has increased. The percentage of low-income households with a computer rose to 47.7% from 19.8% in 2001. The percentage of low-income homes with six or more rooms (excluding bathrooms) rose to 30% from 21.9% over the same period. Appliances? The percentage of low-income homes with air-conditioning equipment rose to 83.5% from 65.8%, with dishwashers to 30.8% from 17.6%, with a washing machine to 62.4% from 57.2%, and with a clothes dryer to 56.5% from 44.9%. The percentage of low-income households with microwave ovens grew to 92.4% from 74.9% between 2001 and 2009. Fully 75.5% of low-income Americans now have a cell phone, and over a quarter of those have access to the Internet through their phones. 

In other words, Chinese Communism has reduced American poverty: with their factories churning out home electronics resulting in glut-pricing, the access of everyone, including the poor, to these goods has increased. Which is as true of poor people anywhere as in the USA -- remember when American politicians would take helicopter flights over Baghdad and proclaim that Iraq must be doing well because of all the satellite dishes?

In any event, having spent the first part of their article complaining about data problems with other studies, you'd think they've approached their own data source with a somewhat questioning perspective. The above is an important table from their source database (US Department of Energy Residential Energy Consumption Survey). According to it, most households with total income below US$40,000 a year are not receiving any assistance with food or housing -- for example, of the households with income below US$20,000 a year, 2/3 are not getting food assistance ("food stamps") and 80 percent are not getting housing assistance. But a big chunk of the low income group has at least 6 rooms in their homes. Note to Washington DC think-tank economists: US$20,000 per year is not a whole lot of money.

In short, something ain't right with this data. There are households in the measured low income groups that don't have the typical profile for being poor, which likely means that they are not. One possibility is that it's picking up people immediately post-college and retirees, who will have low measured income but assets. But actual poor people living the high life as they nuke a packet of ramen noodles? Probably good enough for a President Romney to proclaim that they are doing just fine.

Not even trying

New York Times --

Angola Fund Set to Invest Oil Revenue in Businesses ... The Angolan fund, which will focus on investments in Africa’s booming hotel industry and large infrastructure projects, seeks to wean the economy from oil, a finite resource, to a more diversified and sustainable base, said José Filomeno de Sousa dos Santos, a son of President José Eduardo dos Santos, and a member of the fund’s board ... The fund’s elegant offices, a few floors down from the oil industry services company Halliburton, are decorated with raw silk wallpaper, designer furniture and black lacquer fittings.

So the oil money will be managed by the President's son from the same building that Halliburton is in.

Heckuva job.

The 54th parallel

Wall Street Journal --

Seoul to Study Irish Reunification Model

Ireland has a reunification model? The Irish Times had a more sober story linked to the same visit, which referred to the topic as a cross-border peace model.

The WSJ story discusses the peace-advancing role of the Republic removing Articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 Constitution. Another relevant lesson might be in seeing that the structure of an eventual agreement has perhaps already been agreed some time back, but it's up to the people who rejected it then to wait until they're sure they can be in charge after accepting it:

North Korea in 1985 halted change in several documents and its propaganda, helping to facilitate meetings in the late 1980s that ultimately produced an inter-Korean pact in 1992 known as the Basic Agreement. It placed inter-Korean dealings within a "special interim relationship stemming from the process toward unification" rather than as sovereign nations. Most elements from that deal have been abandoned, though officials from the two Koreas occasionally call for its revival.

It's the Korean Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Gulf Squid

Reuters --

Aabar's disposal of its stake in Daimler early this month was triggered by a failed derivatives deal underpinning the Abu Dhabi investment firm's purchase of the shares, sources familiar with the matter said ... The story of Aabar's Daimler stake underlines how some Middle Eastern investment firms entered derivative deals to finance acquisitions during the region's asset market boom several years ago, only to find the transactions mostly benefited the investment banks involved ... Aabar, also an investor in major corporations such as commodities group Glencore and Italian bank UniCredit, bought 96.4 million Daimler shares, or 9 percent of the company, at 20.27 euros per share in March 2009. It entered derivative transactions, mainly collar trades and put options, to finance the acquisition. The derivatives were sold by Goldman Sachs, the sources said.

Self Indictment

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi during a speech in Venice today --

Allow me to mention, in particular, the work carried out by the Financial Stability Board – the organisation over which I had the honour of presiding between 2006 and 2011 – on the regulation of the financial markets.

He must be expecting a close election

Mitt Romney names all 15 Arab-Americans who support him. They're the ones who managed to overcome being told that their culture is deficient, that the Palestinian problem is a waste of time, and that US policy in the Middle East should be whatever Bibi Netanyahu wants at that particular time.

And the Nobel Prize in Self-Parody goes to

Today's Nobel Peace Prize award to the European Union is final proof of the descent of the European elites into a self-regarding delirium. Because the one thing the EU project hasn't lacked is self-esteem, and the awarding of prizes to each other. Here's European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso giving the Charlemagne award to someone, but who awards what to whom is beside the point when you're at this level of pomposity.

I'm so old that I can remember when Private Eye awarded the Bore of the Year award for 2 straight years to the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System.

That joke isn't funny any more.

Niche tourism

UAE official news agency --

The Foreign Ministry has urged citizens not to travel to Libya for hunting purposes due to the unstable security situation there. Director of the Department of Citizens Affairs at the Foreign Ministry Issa Abdullah Al Kalbani said that the measure has been taken as part of the government's keenness to guarantee the safety of its citizens.

There's a trend of going from the Gulf to Libya for hunting?

UPDATE 30 March 2013: The identical warning is issued for Iraq.

Futile gesture alert

From the decisions of the European Council of finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg yesterday, the part which allowed some slight relaxation of the conditions under which the Portugal bailout operates --

The United Kingdom abstained from the decision.

The decision would have gone through regardless of how the UK voted, and it's technically on the hook for some of the money being lent to Portugal.

For Felix Baumgartner

Kanye West - Touch The Sky from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

Yes, he's crazy.