First, it attacked Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. In case you are not familiar with Governor Jindal, he is one of the great talents of the Republican Party. He is only 37 years old and has been Governor since January. Before that he served two terms as a reliably reformist Representative from his state's 1st district. Governor Jindal combines a stellar academic record (Brown and a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford), private sector experience (McKinsey) and a strong Catholic faith. Governor Jindal is the son of Indian immigrants and thus the first Indian American governor in American history.

But in the wake of conflict over legislators' salaries, The Economist decided that Governor Jindal's star was falling (The Economist). Apparently, "[t]he governor’s ratings plunged" and, though he recovered, he has been "damaged". This was in July. How damaged is Governor Jindal now? 77 % of his voters (!) think he is doing a 'good' or 'excellent' job, while 3 % rate his performance as 'poor' (Rasmussen). Some damage, eh? I wonder if he will ever recover.

The second example is from this week's issue, where it offers a poll of economists on the economic plans of Senators McCain and Obama (The Economist). The problem  is that of the economists polled 46 % are Democrats and only 10 % Republicans. With such a left-wing slant, a number of the independent 44 % are bound to be under the spell of Obama too. For me such a biased sample makes the poll completely irrelevant but that is obviously not the conclusion drawn by The Economist.

My conclusion is that I have come to feel that The Economist simply dislikes Republicans. Why would such an intellectual paper dislike fellow free-marketeers? I am not sure, but I sense it has something to do with the social side of things. Governor Jindal, for example, is unconditionally pro-life and supports the teaching of intelligent design in schools.

Am I being unfair? Or too sensitive?

JDR

'nuff said.

Now, now. That was a joke. I was just seeing whether you were paying attention. War, pox and wordsmithery do not belong together, because that would be ... mixing metaphors!

In any case, those mixed metaphors are everywhere. Well-known writers such Thomas Friedman practically bathe in them. (Does he not have editors?) So it was good to see that the New York Times Book Review finally took him to task for it today, choosing this example from his new book:

"The demise of the Soviet Union and its iron curtain was like the elimination of a huge physical and political roadblock on the global economic playing field."

Oh, right, I was going to make us at The Economist look bad. Sorry.

Alright, here is a story that pains me to this day. It was supposed to be my first act of heroism for The Economist. It happened almost ten years ago, on a Thursday morning (London time). Thursday mornings are when we "close" the issue of the week. We sit in a room in a building we call the "tower" in St James's Street (London's drag of private clubs for toffs) and proof-read. No big changes are supposed to be made, because the pages are about to be sent off to the printing presses. Only if huge news happens, do we "open" up the book again and quickly insert something new.

I was still relatively new at The Economist and was not, on that morning, planning to call attention to my existence. But then a news item crossed the wires. A large Dutch insurance company had just announced that it would buy Transamerica, the large American finance firm that gave its name to San Francisco's landmark skyscraper. As it happened, I had just met and interviewed the boss of that Dutch firm, and had really fun, colorful details about him in my notebook. I thought I might be able to hack out a piece quickly and ... bask in glory.

I mentioned it to two editors, and they said 'alright, write something really fast, and we'll see if we can keep the paper open to use it.' My adrenaline spiked, and I set to it. To my relief, the words came out in a torrent. And it was good. And the editor said it was good. And they took the piece into the still-open book.

There were only minutes or seconds to spare now. Two editors had to sit in front of the screen to give the piece a quick edit (because that's what editors do). I stood behind them, watching the clock tick and biting my nails. They loved it and I was proud. And then.....

To my horror, he (who shall remain unnamed) fiddled here and there, and suddenly the last sentence--the very last and thus most prominent sentence!--read:

Surely Mr Storm hasn’t been seduced by the greatest merger wave in history?

Say what? Seduced? By a wave? You mean, not swept up by it, or deluged by it? I was horrified. But I was new and they were senior and this was my big moment and there were seconds left and I was not about to make this my final stand. I said nothing. They pushed 'send', and it went to the presses. I was that week's hero.

But I walked through the streets of London in a state of shame comprehensible only to the loony fringe among pedants. Everyone--no, really, every Briton in this city, everyone in the Tube, and certainly my landlord--would within hours receive a copy of The Economist, and they would all turn straight away to the most important article, which was mine, and they would immediately spot this atrocity of a sentence! I was ruined!

And in truth, I have never gotten over it.

For those of you who want to read the silly thing in question, which is a decent sample of my style as of a decade ago, here it is.

The Economist magazine surveyed a group of 142 economists (46% Democrats) about the economic plans of the two candidates. The results are interesting.

America is building a border barrier that is both too tight and not tight enough

FOR the past four years Steve Johnston has been dropping food, water and socks in the Sonoran desert. They are intended for illegal immigrants, who have often been walking for three or four days. Demand has never been greater. Recently Mr Johnston left 80 gallons of water beside a popular trail, and returned the next day to find all but eight gallons gone. He has encountered 40-strong groups walking in broad daylight. It is, oddly, proof that America’s growing border fence is having an effect on illegal immigration.

The reason so many immigrants are tramping through Mr Johnston’s neighbourhood can be found 12 miles to the south-west. Around Sasabe, steel cylinders have been sunk into the desert to create an imposing fence. That has blocked a popular migration route and driven people east. No More Deaths, a humanitarian group, has drawn up a map of migration routes based on how much water and food disappears. It looks like a leaf skeleton—a pattern of interlocking lines snaking north through the desert, then east to just above a checkpoint. From there, immigrants are driven to Tucson and Phoenix, whence they travel to wherever there are jobs.

By the end of this year the American government is supposed to have erected 670 miles of fencing along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Roughly half of the barrier is designed to stop everything bigger than a jackrabbit; the other half will let people through but stop vehicles. It is just part of a drive, stepped up in the past two years, to clamp down on illegal immigration and drug-smuggling. The Border Patrol is swelling from fewer than 6,000 officers in 1996 to more than 18,000 by next year. Unmanned watchtowers bristling with cameras and heat sensors are being developed. Finally, checks at proper border crossings are becoming more rigorous.

The fence is behind schedule and well over budget, and the network of electronic watchtowers is even further from deployment. But enough has been built, strengthened and staffed to make it clear what kind of border the next president will inherit. America is creating a barrier that is at once much too porous and rather too tight.

Until fairly recently the western half of the US-Mexican border was largely abstract. “As far as the eye can reach stretches one unbroken waste, barren, wild, and worthless,” wrote John Russell Bartlett, who surveyed the area for the American government in the 1850s. The border was marked at first by piles of stones, then by concrete obelisks. Over time the occasional barbed-wire fence went up, but the border was permeable. “You could ride your bike across it,” says Michael Gomez, who grew up five blocks from the border and is now mayor of Douglas, Arizona.

Before the early 1990s those who wanted to cross illegally generally headed for the cities of Tijuana and Juárez. They would wait until night, scale the puny fence and dash for San Diego and El Paso. It was a simple matter of outnumbering the Border Patrol. Then, beginning in 1993, taller fences began to go up in the busiest sections of California and Texas. The assumption was that physical barriers would stop crossers in the cities, and geography would stop them elsewhere.

The first assumption turned out to be correct: between 1994 and 2000 the number of apprehensions around San Diego plunged by two-thirds. The second did not. Rather than giving up, immigrants converged on the border’s thinly-policed midsection, braving sun and snakes on long hikes through the desert. In the late 1990s the number of apprehensions shot up in the 260-mile Tucson sector (see chart). So did deaths. Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith of the University of Arizona reckons 125 people died trying to cross the desert in the 1990s. Since 2000 the death toll has been more than 1,000. By contrast, fewer than 300 people died attempting to cross the Berlin Wall in its 28-year history.

As illegal immigrants began to funnel through Arizona, attitudes hardened. In 2004 the state’s voters approved a measure intended to deny public benefits to illegals. It was reminiscent of an initiative that Californians had supported in the previous decade, when their state was the central conduit for immigration. Two years later Janet Napolitano, Arizona’s Democratic governor, harried the federal government into sending National Guard troops to the border. In 2007 she signed a law stepping up penalties on businesses that knowingly employed illegal workers.

Even political moderates have become advocates for the border fence. Arizona’s senior senator is a good example. John McCain has long been an advocate for “comprehensive” immigration reform—Washington-speak for a bill that would allow some illegal immigrants to become citizens. In the past few months, though, he has insisted that the border must be sealed first. Mr McCain’s change of heart was probably necessary to get him through the Republican primaries. Yet it is also in harmony with the more strident tone of public opinion in his home state.

Opinions are more nuanced closer to Mexico. David Walker, whose family owns a ranch that spans ten miles of the Arizona-Sonora border, describes the fence as “kind of a Band-Aid”. The new pedestrian fence that edges his property has stemmed the flow of immigrants but not stopped it. By means of ladders, blow-torches and screwdrivers, immigrants are still getting through. They drop litter, which is harmful (“Cattle are dumb—they’ll eat plastic water bottles”) and break cisterns trying to get fresh water. But Mr Walker regards such things as fairly minor nuisances.

He is more concerned about the drug-traffickers who once tried to run him over. So are others. “I’m not a bit afraid of the little Mexicans coming across the border to work,” says one woman who runs a ranch near the border. “It’s the drug lords that worry me.” She is right to be worried.

New Tijuana moods

Though the drug trade and the violence that goes with it have long been features of the border, the past few years have seen both a rise in violence and a change in its nature. The decision of Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s president, to use the army against drug-trafficking gangs has led to an arms race and provoked turf wars along the border, from Tijuana to Matamoros. The city of Nogales, Sonora (across the border from Nogales, Arizona) has seen 72 murders so far this year, compared with 44 in 2007.

Despite talk of a united front, the Mexican authorities are divided over how to tackle the problem. Marco Antonio Martinez Dabdoub, the mayor of Nogales, reckons the federal government ought to be more heavy-handed. “This should be like the famous surge in Baghdad,” he says. Yet Arturo Ramirez Camacho, the head of Nogales’s police force, says that the deployment of the army has served only to provoke more violence. It has been hard to replace the 188 officers who have been sacked for corruption.

So far the surge of violence in Mexican border towns has been largely confined to the narcos and the police. One journalist in Nogales estimates that all but one of the murders so far this year have involved someone connected with the drug trade. Alvaro Navarro Gárate, who is in charge of promoting economic development for the city of Juárez, south of El Paso, says the violence has not yet deterred economic investment. Although some executives fret about being kidnapped, the lack of infrastructure is more off-putting.

The rise of organised crime has, however, changed patterns of illegal immigration. Ten years ago people-smuggling was a casual, low-margin business—a “mom-and-pop” operation, as locals call it. As crossing the border became harder, and the coyotes’ fees rose from about $500 to more than $2,000, the cartels saw a chance for profit. Many of those who traipse through western Arizona these days do so at the pleasure of the Sinaloa cartel, which also runs drugs across the border (although rarely at the same time as people). Its henchmen can be brutal and dishonest, but they are also pretty good at their jobs.

Counting fish in the sea

The fence is undoubtedly changing patterns of illegal immigration. But is it staunching the flow? The Border Patrol points to the fact that they are catching fewer people. Yet this is a very imperfect measure, rather like estimating the number of fish in the sea from those hauled up in fishermen’s nets. The figures do not count those who make it, and they double-count people who keep trying. Remittances to Mexico (see chart above) provide a better picture. These were rising until recently, largely because immigrants began to send more money through formal channels. Now they are falling, but not by much.

For more than ten years, Wayne Cornelius of the University of California at San Diego has been surveying people in high-emigration areas of Mexico. He finds that fewer than half of all would-be illegal immigrants are apprehended on any given trip, and virtually all get through eventually. Mexicans keep trying even though they know the border has become more dangerous. In an unpublished study, Mr Cornelius reports that more than 30% of Oaxacans who plan to steal across the border know somebody who has died trying.

There is a more obvious reason for the recent slowdown in illegal immigration. Construction and landscaping jobs, a common source of employment for Latino immigrants both legal and illegal, have disappeared as the housing market has collapsed. In the past year the Hispanic unemployment rate has risen from 5.4% to 8.0%. Among Hispanics aged 16 to 19 the rate is 22.8%. This deters would-be workers from crossing the border and curtails the ability of people already in America to pay for their relatives to make the trip.

Even if tougher border enforcement has slowed the movement of people, this is not quite the good news it seems. Until recently Mexicans crossed back and forth across the border as work and family demanded. Many years ago Mr Walker’s ranch employed a couple of “wetbacks” (the term was not so derogatory as it is today) who would work half a year each, returning to their families in the off-season.

These days, says Ms Rubio-Goldsmith, migration is not circular but linear. If people come they tend to stay, because the cost and difficulty of crossing the border have increased so steeply. They are more likely to bring their families: in the Sonoran desert, says Mr Johnston, about a quarter of the immigrants are women and children. As immigrants put down deep roots in America, villages in Oaxaca that once lacked young men are becoming utterly depopulated. The border fence may be deterring illegal immigration, but it is not reducing the number of illegal immigrants. It is also annoying people.

Not neighbourly

Ten years ago a group of mayors and other officials on both sides of the line formed the Texas Border Coalition. At first it promoted infrastructure projects, but it is now focused on fighting the fence, which almost everyone in South Texas opposes. They say that it is not neighbourly, that it will be a waste of money, and that it will cut Texans off from the Rio Grande, which marks the border in much of the state.

Texas’s two Republican senators are keener on the fence, but not much. Kay Bailey Hutchinson wrote an amendment to a spending bill that allowed the Department of Homeland Security greater latitude to decide where it should run. Hardliners argued that this was a way of “gutting” the more specific Secure Fence Act of 2006. The state’s other senator, John Cornyn, insists that despite voting for the Secure Fence Act, he doesn’t think it will be built.

Such coolness, which may seem strange in such a politically conservative state, is partly a product of economics. During the first half of this year almost 80% of all US-Mexican trade by value passed through Texas. The state’s border towns have benefited from NAFTA, which was signed 15 years ago. In July unemployment in the McAllen area was 7.8%, down from 25% in 1990.

Texans’ sanguine attitude is also a matter of demography. When the last census was taken, in 2000, Arizona, California and Texas were all between one-quarter and one-third Hispanic. But their border regions look utterly different. Arizona, which is currently America’s fastest-growing state, has experienced a wave of white immigrants—the Midwestern “snowbirds”—who have little experience of Latino culture. Its four border counties were 34% Hispanic in 2000. California’s two border counties, which are thick with retirees and military families, were just 28% Hispanic. Texas’s border counties, by contrast, were 85% Hispanic.

Margaret Dorsey, an anthropologist from the University of Pennsylvania who studies Texas’s Lower Rio Grande Valley, says many local families can trace their roots to the mid-18th-century Spanish land-grant programme. Border Texans often speak fluent Spanish and have family and friends on the other side of the river. Students commute from Mexico to the university in El Paso, crossing in a special line that allows them to make it to class on time. They even pay instate tuition rates.

That would be unthinkable in Arizona, where the fence is broadly popular. Yet Arizonans have plenty of gripes about the tightening border. Increasingly, the problem is less the ease of illegal immigration than the difficulty of legal migration.

Roughly three-quarters of people who cross legally from Mexico into Arizona do so in order to shop. As a result, streets close to the fence have become emporiums for things that are more expensive or harder to come by on the other side. That means handbags and children’s clothes on the American side, pharmaceuticals and beer on the Mexican side. Because most twin towns are bottom-heavy (Nogales, Arizona has just 20,000 inhabitants, compared with 190,000 in Nogales, Sonora), American towns depend a lot more on Mexican shoppers than the other way around.

Jaime Fontes, the city manager of Nogales, Arizona, reckons Mexican visitors account for roughly 65% of all retail sales in his city. As border officers become more finicky about documents and more zealous in searching vehicles, he worries trade will suffer. Local businessmen say it already has. Chang Lee, who runs a clothes shop just north of the border, explains in fluent Spanglish that Mexicans are spending “too mucho time” waiting to cross, which leaves too little time for shopping. They come running into his shop, clutching fistfuls of bills and begging him to sell them something before they have to return. He estimates that trade has fallen 20-30% in the past year.

In Douglas, the number of vehicle passengers crossing during the first half of this year averaged 321,000 a month—down from 708,000 a month in the first half of 2002. There are more pedestrians, but pedestrians do not buy as much. Manufacturing firms that have set up maquilas in Mexico are suffering too. Two years ago a group of economists calculated that delays at the Tijuana border were costing San Diego County and Baja California more than $4 billion each year.

The tortilla curtain

Over time such gripes are likely to become louder, while complaints about illegal immigration will probably become more muted. Hispanics are slowly acquiring political heft to match their large presence in America; in some states, such as California and New Mexico, they are already powerful enough to punish tough talk. Perhaps more important, Mexico is changing. The country has zoomed towards a first-world birth rate. In the late 1970s the average woman could expect to give birth to five children; now she gives birth to two. As a result, the potential supply of border-crossers will gradually drop.

Yet they will not stop coming. If the Mexican border is, in the old expression, a “tortilla curtain”, it is still floppy enough to allow people and drugs through. A truly impregnable border, of the kind that Mr McCain is demanding, would involve two layers of fencing 2,000 miles long, with a large no-man’s land in the middle and plenty of watchtowers. The fence would have to look as it does near San Diego, or as it used to in Berlin. This would involve virtually rasing several towns.

Travelling through Texas in the 1850s, Bartlett encountered plenty of immigrant workers. They found employment in the copper mines for the same reason they now toil in America’s building sites and lettuce fields:

“Labour is cheap and abundant in Mexico. At El Paso, Mexican labourers could be had for sixty-two and a half cents per day, they finding themselves; but men could doubtless be procured at even less price.”

While the wage gap between America and Mexico persists, Mexicans will continue to “find themselves” in the American labour force, fence or no fence.

"A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority -- at times by overwhelming margins -- believe Mr Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers. (...)

Eighty per cent of respondents and no fewer than 71% of those who do not cleave to either main party say Mr Obama has a better grasp of economics. Even among Republicans Mr Obama has the edge: 46% versus 23% say Mr Obama has the better grasp of the subject. "I take McCain's word on this one," comments James Harrigan at the University of Virginia, a reference to Mr McCain's infamous confession that he does not know as much about economics as he should."

Since we're in a time of, er, economic crisis, I would think this would carry a lot of weight.  I'm particularly interested in the question of who would appoint the best advisors, as one of my main arguments, in every election is, aside from the candidate him- or herself, what kind of people are they going to appoint as advisors?  We know who John McCain's economic brain is:  Phil Gramm, the "senator from Enron," who infamously called the US a "nation of whiners," as regards our current financial situation, and whose Gramm-Leach-Billey Act is one of the prime culprits in this current mess.  So the fact that fully 80% of economists surveyed believe that Obama would appoint a better economic team is heartening.  Here are the results, in handy colorful graphs:

(h/t Hilzoy)

Eighty percent note that Obama has a better grasp of economics, in general, but McCain has admitted he doesn't understand economics, and that he, again, looks to Phil Gramm for guidance in that department.  A little more about Phil Gramm, from the late, great Molly Ivins:

When he ran for president in 1996 and finished fifth in Iowa, all the profiles written of him included the line “Even his friends don’t like him.” Self-righteous and strident, Gramm demonized his opponents and used bitter, polarizing rhetoric. During a Senate debate over Social Security, a member pointed out that the proposal under consideration would hurt 80-year-old retirees. “Most people don’t have the luxury of living to be 80 years old,” Gramm scoffed, “so it’s hard for me to feel sorry for them.” Well, there is that.

Seniors, take note.  Americans, take note.  This election is such a no-brainer.  I like, also, that 70% say they'd rather work for Obama.  Is it just because McCain's economic policies are shitty, or is it also because everybody knows McCain's a world-class asshole?

I simply do not understand people who are "undecided" this time around.

The writers of the Daily Show compiled a list of exceptions, along with why she doesn't read them:

* Washington Post: "Too 'inside the beltway'."

* Wall Street Journal: "Maybe if it was 'Main Street Journal'."

* Superfluous Bridges Quarterly: "Thanks but no thanks!"

* The Economist: "No one would believe me."

* The Paris Review: "I haven't really read it since Plimpton passed away."

* Architectural Digest: "I'm just not that hungry."

* Wine Spectator: "Too passive. I'm more of a wine reformer."

* Sports Illustrated: "That's a lie. There are no drawings in there."

* Fortune: "Too elitist."

Listen to Palin's response when Couric asked about the newspapers she reads:

Palin, however, clarified what newspapers she reads in an interview with Fox News, and of course, she claimed to read the Economist

Her response: "I read the same things that other people across the country read, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and The Economist and some of these publications that we've recently even been interviewed through up there in Alaska..."

The Daily Show is right: I don't believe that Palin reads the Economist.

"Oh Fuck" titelt de cover van het Amerikaanse financiële maandblad The Economist deze maand. Het had even goed op de cover van een Belgisch financieel boekje kunnen staan.

via

Scoopit!

The latest edition of The Economist has a special section on the US Presidential election.

The lead in to the first of several articles:-

Will America choose the old hero who favours tax cuts for business and the rich and backed George Bush’s wars? Or the young man who promises health care for all, a swift exit from Iraq and more money for the average worker? As America’s financial system buckles, this ought to be an unlosable election for the Democrats. But it isn’t

Useful resource material for those wishing to understand more of what is happening.

I'm just cleaning out some of my old stuff and came across this, which is now two-and-a-half years old but worth re-reading for a moment. In it the author, Clive Crook, writes about why, in his opinion, The Economist is such "a splendid, and partly inadvertent, success," as he puts it. He gives a few reasons, but one is, I believe, relevant to all writers--of books, articles, blog posts--and even to all story-tellers, whether in video, audio or text.

First, though, the obvious disclaimers: I write for The Economist, and it was Clive who "discovered" and hired me, way back when. Clive was The Economist's deputy editor for many years, until he left to join the National Journal/Atlantic family. (He also blogs for the FT now.) At the time of the article from which I am about to quote, The Economist was looking for a new editor, and Clive threw his hat into the ring. (John Micklethwait became editor instead.) But that is neither here nor there.

Instead, here is the crux, buried in his last two paragraphs (my italics). Isn't it odd, he says, that we are getting so many readers, when

... it is not as though the paper's writers and editors ever really sought those readers out. In my experience, the editorial side of the enterprise spends little time worrying about what readers might want. In this insecure age, the larger part of the media industry thinks about little else but what readers, viewers, and advertisers might want—the better to serve them, or condescend to them, or pander. The Economist has always been much more interested in the world, and in what it thinks about the world, than in the tastes of its readers or anybody else.

... I suspect that if The Economist ever starts to worry very much about the new readers it would like to reach, in print and on the Internet, and to think about how it should tailor its content more deliberately with them in mind, then that will be the moment when its business starts to conform to industry averages.

The lesson: don't second-guess what others want, for that is the way to inauthenticity. Say what you want to say, and to hell with "the market".

Now, every lesson, needs a counter-lesson, just as yin and yang need each other. Otherwise you make a fool out of yourself. I'll give you the counter-lesson in the next post.

Obama Makes McCain Very Uncomfortable

By David Nather

Let the record reflect that Barack Obama made the approach to John McCain tonight.

As the two shared the Senate floor tonight for the first time since they won their party nominations, Obama stood chatting with Democrats on his side of the aisle, and McCain stood on the Republican side of the aisle.

So Obama crossed over into enemy territory.

He walked over to where McCain was chatting with Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida and Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. And he stretched out his arm and offered his hand to McCain.

McCain shook it, but with a "go away" look that no one could miss. He tried his best not to even look at Obama.

Finally, with a tight smile, McCain managed a greeting: "Good to see you."

Obama got the message. He shook hands with Martinez and Lieberman - both of whom greeted him more warmly - and quickly beat a retreat back to the Democratic side.

Traitor Lieberman better get friendly with that side of the aisle.  He'll be sitting there come Janaury, with many fewer friends than he has now.

Meanwhile, McCain is throwing in the towel in Michigan.  Gives up. Cries Uncle. Acknowledges loss of its 17 Electoral votes.  The First Rule in politics is follow the money.  Where is it being spent?  Where isn't it being spent? They have him spending time and money defending Indiana, for God's sake. The last time a Democrat carried Indiana his name was Lyndon Baines Johnson and it was 44 years ago.  If Barack Obama doesn't screw this up pretty soon, he may be in danger of winning a landslide.

The difference in talking about politics whilst in a state of inebriation whilst in DC (I've been reading a lot of stuff written by Brits lately), is that at least people in DC are mostly educated about it.  Yeah, there are those occasional fucking idiots who learned 3 lines from watching CNN and they repeat that crap all night thinking they should be elected to Congress (although, in reality, they might do a better job than some current congresspeople); but for the most part, people in DC tend to be more knowledgeable about politics than your average Joe.

I'm surprised our pre-gaming hasn't turned into The Economist and Atlantic Monthly reading parties/games - Every time The Economist refers to people in the French way (Messrs and M), take a drink; or every time Atlantic Monthly has an article with more than 1,000 words, bottoms up!

Unfortunately, the only place where there is anyone who wants John McCain to be President is in the U.S.  Crazy country.

Scoopit!

Unfortunately this has the ring of truth

I was going to keep this next one for a Money Funny, but it was so appealing I decided to make it a bonus cartoon for today.

David Gorski explains how he became a major critic of the antivaccine crowd & reviews Paul Offit's book

American purity balls and brainwashing young children - I've heard about these before and I find the whole thing extraordinarily creepy and disturbing.

POLITICAL NEWS:

Democrat Kay Hagan pulls ahead of Republican Elizabeth Dole - As you may recall, Dole criticized Hagan almost exactly 1 month ago for having the audacity to meet with secular organizations. . .you know, atheists. So I hope Hagan kicks Dole's ass.

Hell No, We Won't Coal - Al Gore is calling on the nation’s youthful, unemployed, and unwashed to commit civil disobedience to stop construction of new coal plants that don't install carbon capturing technologies. Coal is one of the most plentiful, non-renewable energy resources on the planet and 40% of our electricity comes from coal-burning power plants, but it's terrible on the environment.

CREATIONIST NEWS:

Another absurd creationist rip-off of the Randi Million Dollar Challenge w/ an impossible to reach goalpost - Now it's the creationist who got Richard Dawkins' website banned in Turkey has offered:

"10 trillion Turkish lira to anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution" - a sum roughly equal to £4.4trn.

PZ Myers calculates that to be $8,010,890,000,000. Eight trillion, ten billion, eight hundred and ninety million dollars. Of course creationists have tried this gambit before. The trick is that they're asking for a single fossil that will prove evolution because they believe (or profess to believe) despite being corrected many, many times that evolution means that individual fossils should resemble some sort of hybrid or chimera like Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort's classic straw man, The Crocoduck. Evolution can't be proven with a single fossil because the very nature of evolution requires the comparative analysis of many fossils:

Did Kirk Cameron's obscure and undoubtedly crappy Christian movie only in limited release do better than the mainstream blockbuster "Eagle Eye?" - Depends on who you ask. If you ask Kirk's partner in crime, Ray "The Banana Guy" Comfort, then the answer is yes. If you ask any other rational person, the answer is not even close. ON his blog, Ray cites advanced ticket sales:

"In terms of advance sales, Cameron's Fireproof, an ultra-low-budget marriage-minded family drama opening on about 800 screens, has smoked LaBeouf's $105 million, opening-everywhere thriller Eagle Eye.

Fireproof accounted for a whopping 40 percent of all advance sales this week on Fandango, the ticket service said today. Eagle Eye was a distant second, representing 17 percent of sales. Through Wednesday, Fireproof was leading the week with 23 percent of all advance sales. No other movie, “Eagle Eye” included, was even in double digits."

Of course many of the commenters on Ray's blog pointed out the problems with this so-called victory. Kirk's little movie got terrible reviews. One commenter reported that "Eagle Eye still made $29.2 million in its opening weekend, compared to Fireproof's $6.5 million, according to studio estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations." Another commenter wrote: "Just what are "advance sales" for films? I'm picturing an organization (an evangelical church perhaps) buying up reams of tickets and telling members to go." Another wrote, "Why exactly should advance ticket sales through Fandango mean anything? . . . That puts Eagle Eye at $8,305 per theater, and Fireproof at $7,764 per theater. Without even taking into consideration whether Fireproof opened only in areas where it was more likely to do well (and not in those in which the opposite was true), Eagle Eye still did better on a per-theater basis. All you've really said is that more people chose to buy advance tickets through Fandango for Fireproof than for Eagle Eye. I assure you, this holds significance for no one except Fandango"

Charlie's Playhouse - A website that sells Evolution-friendly toys to children.

Mercury Retrograde - a term hijacked by the astrologers

WHAT'S THE HARM?

Can tithing hurt you during a financial crisis? - Some Christians are continuing to tithe (give 10% of their income to church) despite not being able to pay their mortgage, once again proving that belief in religion and superstition does great harm.

And another example of what's the harm:

Here's Age of Autism's latest blog:

"If you don’t like the way your tax dollars are being spent, or not spent, on autism research, this is your chance to speak up and take action. The strategic plan (SP) for autism research will guide federal spending on autism research for the next five years, subject to annual updates."

Everyone who is even the slightest bit concerned about autism, the hosts of virtually extinct diseases that could return if enough people stop vaccinating, and the idea of medical science being directed by scientifically illiterate quacks should find this proposal absolutely frightening.

THE MORE YOU KNOW: POPULAR MYTHS

The healthy human body is exactly 98.6 degrees F - This medical myth is FALSE

EPIC FAIL!

Crackergate launches a revolution on TouTube - Once again Catholic outrage over something has drawn far more attention to it than existed prior to their outrage. Now YouTubers are making their own videos "desecrating" the Eucharist. Good job. Way to fail, Catholics:

"His videos began two months ago with the user saying into a webcam that he denied the Holy Spirit, then splitting a host in half and eating it with disrespect."

Please somebody tell me how one eats a cracker with disrespect, because I've got a Nabisco cracker that has pissed me off the last time. Then I got to get me a communion wafer of my own to defile. If anyone can get me a communion wafer, please let me know. I will defile it worse than any god made of crackers has ever been defiled before. Here is one YouTuber cited in the article who's really going to town on these wafers. I particularly like this one where the body of Christ gets nailed:

AND NOW A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:

Solar Cell Sets World Efficiency Record - "Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have set a world record in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device that converts 40.8 percent of the light that hits it into electricity. This is the highest confirmed efficiency of any photovoltaic device to date."

Brain Disorder Leaves Patient Always 'Lost' -"Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute recently documented the first case of a patient who, without apparent brain damage or cognitive impairment, is unable to orient within any environment. Researchers also believe that there are many others in the general population who may be affected by this developmental topographical disorder."

Dark Energy: Is It Merely An Illusion? - "Dark energy is at the heart of one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics, but it may be nothing more than an illusion, according physicists at Oxford University."

NASA’s Dirty Secret: Moon Dust - "The Apollo Moon missions of 1969-1972 all share a dirty secret. “The major issue the Apollo astronauts pointed out was dust, dust, dust,” says Professor Larry Taylor, Director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee. Fine as flour and rough as sandpaper, Moon dust caused ‘lunar hay fever,’ problems with space suits, and dust storms in the crew cabin upon returning to space."

Warren Buffet weighed in on the issue a few days ago and spoke eloquently and simply about the credit crisis.  In the video he suggests that the government may likely profit from purchasing these mortgage backed securities, and I thought that made some sense.  Critics of the legislation don't like the politics of funding greedy investment banks with taxpayer money.  Words like socialism and free-market capitalism likely circulate those heated deliveries.  In fact, the government would be purchasing undesirable securities at a below-market price with full intention of selling them at a later date when they are again desirable.  I'd imagine that the value of these securities will increase once house prices stabilize (as they have in some parts of the country).  Sounds like a pretty capitalist notion.

All of this is complicated further by the election season.  Both candidates seem to be in favor of the legislation.  Republicans reportedly disliked the markedly partisan speech given by Nancy "I'm-going-to-take-you-out-to-a-nice-seafood-dinner-and-not-call-you-back" Pelosi and promptly voted against the measure.  Never underestimate the white man's pride.  Democrats respond by suggesting Republicans are more willing to salvage their political carreers than vote yes on a controversial bill that may save the country's economy.  Correct.  But Republicans also realize that if Pelosi really had the country's best interest in mind she wouldn't have been such a huge bitch about it.  Try giving a better sales pitch next time, Nancy.

In other news, here's a really interesting article comparing Nixon's campaign to the Obama/McCain one.  It seems like all the post-partisan talk championed by Obama has just gone to draw more attention to the divisions of Nixon's "culture war."  From the article:

Nixon’s great contribution to Republican politics was to master the politics of cultural resentment. Before him, populism belonged as much to the left as the right. William Jennings Bryan railed against the eastern elites who wanted to crucify common folk on a “cross of gold”. Franklin Roosevelt dismissed Republicans as “economic royalists”. Nixon’s genius was to discover that the politics of culture could trump the politics of economics—and that populism could become a tool of the right.

Nixon understood in his marrow how middle-class Americans felt about the country’s self-satisfied elites. The “silent majority” had been disoriented, throughout the 1960s, by the collapse of traditional moral values. And they had boiled with righteous anger at the liberal elites who extended infinite indulgence to bomb-throwing radicals while dismissing conservative views as evidence of racism and sexism. Nixon recognised that the Republicans stood to gain from “positive polarisation”: dividing the electorate over values. He also recognised that the media, which had always made a great pretence of objectivity while embracing a liberal social agenda, could be turned into a Republican weapon. He encouraged Spiro Agnew, his vice-president, to declare war on the “effete corps of impudent snobs” in the media, with their Ivy League educations and Georgetown social values.

Sounds like we haven't come so far after all.  I have a hard time seeing McCain subvert it all.  Or Obama for that matter.

Help stimulate the economy by going to the record store and buying sweet albums.

Save the economy.  Save the world.

Primeiro, a Veja publica essa constrangedora capa. De primeira, nem achei tão ruim assim, achei até ousada e corajosa. Aí, eu leio a reportagem e fico vermelho de vergonha - principalmente vergonha alheia pelo jornalista. Depois, vejo o que uma revista liberal de verdade diz. Como a cereja do bolo, hoje eu leio isso no blog do Pedro Dória.

Acho que a próxima manchete de capa da Veja vai ser:

Oh, e agora, quem poderá nos defender?!

Não acredito no fim do liberalismo, não estou torcendo pela "Queda do Império" nem estou feliz pela crise. Só acho que não é preciso passar tanta vergonha quanto a Veja passou...

So the financial crisis that's dominated the American news has been making headlines abroad, as well, and for good reason: If the American economy collapses, collateral damage will abound. What, then, are those international headlines? How are other countries viewing the proposed $700 billion bailout that might pass any day now? How far could this go?

• Let's look at the Economist first. That magazine, unsurprisingly has some really thoughtful coverage of the situation. In one article, for example, they note a fundamental paradox at work: The American economy has depended on credit for its expansion, but that credit is now at an end. Because we can't pay that bill with more credit (as we've tried to do for a long time), the economy will lose its basis for expansion. In other words, we're going to have to suck it up for awhile, tighten the belts and brace for some major recallibration. As the magazine puts it:

Once started, the process is hard to stop. “What the financial and household sectors are doing is unwinding more than ten years of a credit boom,” says George Magnus, an economist at UBS. “The idea that they can rid themselves of this problem in a matter of months is pie in the sky.”

Elsewhere, the magazine detailed the history of the crisis in quite readable prose. While acknowledging the huge risks involved in a possible bailout -- including the risk of acting too hastily, a risk that Capitol Hill has generally argued against -- they also gave us some props for at least recognizing how quickly things went bad here (hey, I'll take whatever good news I can on this:

In spite of these risks, the odds seem to be in favour of both political passage and success. America has owned up to its mistakes with exceptional speed, and pulled out the stops to correct them.

• [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

  In Australia, there was caution, a reluctance to shout either huzzah or boo.

LOCAL investors have reacted cautiously to an historic agreement by US politicians  to spend $US700 billion ($840 billion) on a plan to bailout major Wall St banks.

Australia has a very definite financial stake in any collapse or recovery of the American economy:

Global share markets have been battered in recent weeks following the collapse of major US investment banks and fears the world’s biggest economy was on the brink of recession.

This has lead to billions of dollars being wiped off the Australian share market and super fund balances being savaged.

• [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

  Developing economies are hurting because of the American market, too. Afrik.com notes that Uganda, if not directly exposed, will certainly suffer as the ill effects make their way downhill:

Governor Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile, of the Bank of Uganda, commenting on the financial system and international financial crisis and its impact on Uganda’s economy said yesterday that the global economic slowdown is expected to trim down inflows of aid, private remittances, reduce interest rates amongst other harmful outcomes.

• [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

  In Brazil, President Lula minced no words in blaming the Americans for our own mess, adding that the bailout was particularly unjust to the poor of the world. He said:

"Eles querem ajudar os bancos e não querem ajudar os pobres", disse Lula, na noite de sábado, durante comício do PT na cidade de Garulhos, na Grande São Paulo.

"Porque quando eles ganham é só deles, mas o prejuízo eles querem repartir com todos os países do mundo e com os mais pobres. Se eles brincaram com a economia deles, eles que resolvam e não deixem a crise chegar aqui", acrescentou o presidente, de acordo com reportagem da Agência Brasil.

By my translation, that's:

"They want to help the banks, but they don't want to help the poor people," Lula said on Saturday night, at a meeting of the Workers Party in the city of Garulhos, in greater São Paulo.

"Becayse when they win, it's all theirs, but the loss they want to share with all the countries of the world and with the poorest. So if they play with their economy, let them be the ones who resolve it and not let the crisis get here," the president added, according to reportage from Agência Brasil.

• What do you guys think? How far will the ripples of the American economic crisis extend; given all that's at stake, how far does the responsibility for solving it extend; how soon will things return to normal -- and what will that even mean?

THEY cast themselves on the seas in leaky boats in their hundreds of thousands, so desperate to escape penury and oppression that they would risk being drowned, murdered or shot. There was a time when the word “Vietnamese” was almost invariably followed by “boat people”. They began arriving soon after the fall of Saigon in 1975. By 1994 liberalisation in Vietnam was lifting the economy, the flood of refugees had become a trickle and the UN had found a way to resettle or repatriate them.
In unhappier days

Millions of others left Vietnam by less risky means during and after the country's independence wars of the mid-20th century. But in recent years many of the estimated 2.7m Viet kieu (overseas Vietnamese) have begun trickling back, encouraged by the government. The initiative to welcome them back comes from the very top. In January Nong Duc Manh, the general secretary of the Communist Party, said Vietnam's recent economic achievements were partly due to the efforts of “patriotic” returned exiles.

Among them is Philip Owings, who fled on a boat when he was eight, ending up in a refugee camp separated from his family. He was adopted by Americans and grew up on the West Coast but is now back as assistant manager at one of Hanoi's top hotels. Mr Owings first returned seven years ago as an exchange student and admits it was a culture shock. Now, with a promising career, he has married a Vietnamese and feels settled. Locals still charge him “foreigners' prices” when they hear his accent, but he says it is not hard to be accepted by his compatriots.

David Thai, a coffee-shop entrepreneur (see article), was born in Saigon to a family that had fled the north after the war to expel the French, left on a boat in 1975 and ended, via the Philippines and Vanuatu, in America. He describes growing up aspiring to be American but later longing to seek out his Vietnamese identity. Returning as a student, like Mr Owings, he was met with polite curiosity, not the hostility he had feared.

Tracy Le, a Vietnamese-Australian from Melbourne with an accent straight out of “Neighbours”, visited the country her parents left in the 1970s for a holiday, but accepted a job at Indochina Capital, a Ho Chi Minh City firm that is channelling foreign investors' cash into Vietnamese businesses. She reckons she is typical of younger exiles: planning only a brief visit, they end up staying. But most of them see no need to tear up their foreign passports yet. The government plans to offer them dual citizenship.

Vietnam does not have a super-rich diaspora like China's. Last year the Vietnamese government recorded business investment by Viet kieu of only $89m, though they are probably spending much more on personal consumption, from cars to property. A much more important contribution are the remittances—officially $5.5 billion last year, but probably more—that Vietnamese emigrants send home to their families.

The large number of well-educated professionals returning from the rich world are just what Vietnam needs to relieve its shortage of higher-level skills. Ms Le's boss at Indochina Capital, Tung Kim Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American, reckons there is a bigger wave to come as older exiles return to spend their final years back in their homeland. They will not need jobs, but will bring their pension money with them and build retirement homes in the suburbs.

Might the waves of returning exiles who have got used to living in democracies also help transform Vietnam's politics? So far most of them are keeping their heads down. One says that although they are officially welcomed, he is sure that they are closely watched by the authorities to see if they belong to exiled pro-democracy groups (some of which are indeed sending in Viet kieu). Yet in the longer term they are bound to become a force for political liberalisation.

I learned a lot about the discipline. Chief among these realizations was that I was not very good at it. My first day I learned how to dig a 30cm square by 1 meter deep test pit. Dripping with a potent combination of sweat and bug spray, I gamely attempted to dig straight down in even, 10cm increments, pouring the shovelfuls of dirt and stones onto my excavating partner's sifter so she could look for artifacts. Needless to say our test pit gradually took on a fun-house mirror appearance, especially in comparison to the other, perfectly dug pits around us.

My partner suggested we switch off so she could fix some of my mistakes. I was relieved, until I realized that I had to sift dirt while looking for any kind of material culture. Easier said than done. She carefully showed me the difference between a piece of fire-baked pottery and a normal pebble. I nodded understandingly, confidently lifted up the sifter, and promptly realized I was at an utter loss to tell the difference between a rock and pottery shard. Over the weeks, I got slightly better - to the point where I was throwing out more rocks than pottery, but only just. They finally learned their lesson and ended up having me map out each boulder, tree, and test pit on the small section of property using a tape measure and a series of graphing sheets.

Despite my incompetence, I managed to gain a deep appreciation for both the immense challenges and rewards of archaeological research. There is something truly thrilling to be standing and digging on the very spot where your subject of historical research lived. Although I get the same thrill from a manuscript or document, they lack the tangible reality of a material artifact you excavate in the field. Marc and Lucianne's analysis led to a series of insights into my research that I never would have gained - they discovered the remnants of a dry dock that implied extensive river trade and activity, a faded cart path that likely corresponded to one mentioned in a land deed, and the foundation of a two-bay house and at least two other structures on the homestead. All of these were exciting and valuable contributions.

On the other hand, I was met with the frustrations of what I saw as broad speculation. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I couldn't tell the difference between a rock and a nail, but hearing theoretical conjecture about Venture Smith's life and activities based on tiny bits of pottery raised up red flags for the careful, source-oriented historian in me. I am guessing it is simply another form of source evaluation, one that I am far less comfortable or adept with. Just as I would judge a historical record based on its author, writing style, and context, I'm sure Marc and Lucianne bring to bear an equally careful evaluation of material artifacts.

Finally, I can't resist linking to an article from the Economist's Technology Quarterly - titled "Armchair Archaeology." The article discusses how archaeologists are using satellite imagery such as GoogleEarth to plan expeditions, identify sites, and do surprisingly complex analysis. One cool example is using imagery to identify the quarrying and transportation routes of pre-Hispanic obsidian stone: "Mapping these routes has helped archaeologists reconstruct production and trade patterns, and hence economic, social and political relations in the region..." And the best part? It's free.

In this week's The Economist magazine, the powerful cover image (left) shows the cyclone sucking up brand names like Fannie Mae, AIG, Morgan Stanley, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers and ... Merill Lynch.

But the bull got sucked into the swirl by another means. Its full page ad inside (probably scheduled and printed before the news stories were laid out) ran with this copy:

"Merrill Lynch connects capital to opportunity..."Our 94-year history of leadership in the financial industry has been a source of confidence for our clients in both good and challenging markets."