Categories
Domestic issues Foreign Policy Politics

The Coming Financial Pandemic

Foreign Policy magazine has an interesting article behind it’s firewall by Nouriel Roubini about “The Coming Financial Pandemic“.

The subheadline reads like promotional material for a Michael Crichton novel:

The U.S. financial crisis cannot be contained. Indeed, it has already begun to infect other countries and it will travel further before it’s done. From sluggish trade to credit crunches, from housing busts to volatile stock markets, this [article will show] how the contagion will spread.

Given that – as this hype seems to suggest – this article may very well determine whether you will survive the next few years, it might be worth subscribing to Foreign Policy magazine. Of course, if you’re like me, despite paying for a two-year subscription last night, you might still be left without the promised “instant access”.

Still – I’ve read Foreign Policy magazine on and off for some time now, and it’s always worth the bi-monthly cost. The above-linked article proved to be rather insightful, despite it’s over-hyped opener.

Categories
Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics The Clintons

The Governors’ Meeting

Dan Balz’s article in yesterday’s Washington Post headlines that “Democratic Governors See McCain as Formidable.” Damn right they do.

Reading the article, it was difficult to tell to what extent each interviewee was trying to ensure that the Democratic nominee would pick them, and to what extent they seriously considered their state in doubt.

Governor Edward Rendell said that Mr. McCain was “the ideal [Republican] candidate for Pennsylvania.” Mr. Rendell went on to describe a scenario that suggested Mr. McCain was the seemingly inevitable candidate for Pennsylvania.

Governor Jennifer Granholm said that Mr. McCain was “appealing in Michigan. He does appeal to independent thinkers – at least he did in the past – and we have a lot of those in Michigan. Whoever the Democrat is, Michigan is a state where we’re going to have to work.”

Governor Ted Strickland explained that, “I think John McCain could have an appeal to a lot of Ohioans.” Perhaps Mr. Strickland didn’t need to get all dramatic about his state because it decided the last Democratic election.

And those are just the Governor who support Ms. Clinton.  Mr. Obama’s supporters at the governor’s meeting seemed to focus less on the likelihood that their specific states would go to Mr. McCain.

Just something interesting to note…

Categories
History Morality

Einstein’s Religiousity

Do you believe in God?

I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.

Some of us might be more definite in our beliefs.  But the key that Albert Einstein here acknowledged, and that we all must acknowledge, is that our individual – and even communal – beliefs must be understood with proper humility.

Earlier in his life, Mr. Einstein was quoted:

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.

This insight seems far more spiritual and far more catholic than anything the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has produced in the past two years.

Categories
Election 2008 McCain Politics

A narrow market share

Hmm. Perhaps my prediction of Mr. McCain’s possible Vice Presidents is entirely determined by this Byron York column I read earlier which listed the two as Mr. McCain’s two main choices. I had forgotten reading this yesterday…

This line from Mr. Pawlenty struck me though:

…if the definition of conservative is going to be so narrowly construed as to only be those things to the right of John McCain, we’re going to have a fairly narrow market share.

It shouldn’t be striking to see Mr. McCain described as a far right conservative – as his record demonstrates he is one. But it is given how he is labeled by the media as an “independent” and “maverick.”  While Mr. McCain clearly has demonstrated independence on some issues – and some very important issues – in his foreign policy prescriptions, in his choice of economic advisers, and in his stances on social issues, Mr. McCain is a far right conservative.

I’m glad Mr. Sanford realizes this.

Categories
Humor Prose

The Funniest Analogies (Collected by H.S. English teachers)

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

More here

Categories
Election 2008 Prose

The difference between a presidential candidate and a fool in love…

The difference between a presidential candidate and a fool in love is only a matter of Secret Service protection.

Now that’s practically poetry.

Categories
Election 2008 Politics The Clintons

If you injected Obama with sodium penathol…

Edward G. Rendell, interviewed by the Washington Post at the governors’ meeting, struck me as a “good ol’ boy” who would hurt as much as he would help a national ticket. Mr. Rendell suggests Senator Joe Biden as Vice President if Mr. Obama wins, and slyly and subtly, himself if Ms. Clinton wins the nomination. I’m not all that sure about either suggestion. In the next moment, Mr. Rendell suggests injecting Mr. Obama with sodium penathol!

Categories
Election 2008 Humor Politics The Clintons

Local color

At this point, close followers of the Clinton-Obama race will have noticed that Ms. (“Texas has a primary and a caucus?”) Clinton doesn’t seem to have invested much in either of the states she is now counting upon to save her campaign on March 4 – Texas or Ohio. The New York Times plays into this with their headline “Pieces of Texas Turn Primary Into a Puzzle.” Certainly, Ms. Clinton, along with most pundits, has been heard to publicly puzzle over the Texas system in the past few weeks. While Senator Barack Obama’s campaign seems to have planned for this from the start. Presuming that I’ve already made the point about how arrogant and unprepared Ms. Clinton has been in this campaign, I direct your attention to this juicy bit of local color from the Times‘s piece on the Texas primary:

Ben Kerr, 66, a medical clinic administrator in Waco who was eating lunch there Friday at a venerable old diner that serves Tater Tots, shakes and dripping burgers but is incongruously called the Health Camp. Mr. Kerr described living for many years east of Houston in Port Arthur, which he said many people considered the true capital of Louisiana because of its Cajun population. But he now considers himself a man of Central Texas, and as part of a smaller area around Waco with a deeply independent bent.

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

The political tide

In stark contrast to my post about why Senator Hillary Clinton should stay in the race, Op-Edna writes that Ms. Clinton can unite the country by dropping out now.

Op-Edna concludes:

Hillary isn’t helping herself by damming a tide that seeks to change this nation. For the good of her nation, she should stand down. And, if, in the interest of her self-centered-ness she needs another reason, let it be to protect the legacy she touts, and that of her husband, before they find themselves doomed, like Jimmy Carter, to stand for their failures and not their many successes.

But I think she’s making my point here. Ms. Clinton – who I have argued practices an especially self-centered politics – should withdraw now, or soon after March 4th, in order to preserve her legacy. But, if Ms. Clinton were to look to the best interests of her party and her ideals, she would turn herself into the villain she has been painted as and campaign against Mr. Obama with a vengeance.

Categories
Catholicism Morality

Random fact of the day…

Reading a news piece on Pew’s new study on religious affiliations in America, I was astounded by this fact:

[R]oughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics.

That’s in addition to the 25% of Americans who are currently Catholic.  More though – that means a large percentage of Catholics – especially factoring in the Latino immigrants who have swelled the number of U.S. Catholics – have left the Church to become “former Catholics.”

I have a lot of ideas and reflections about this topic, but at the moment, I’m keeping them to myself until I have a chance to give them the benefit of a night’s sleep.