HALF-FULL REPORT 11/18/11
What an exciting week! Lots of good news and bad, significant developments and phony controversies. Events will have to play out some more before we can tell whether the glass was half full this week, or half empty, but I'm feeling optimistic. The Supremes will rule on Obamacare. Dems think Zero might lose. No matter how the Court rules, Republicans win. The Pentagon successfully tested a flying bomb that can strike anywhere on earth within an hour. Speaking of bombs, with its violent but sparsely attended protests Thursday, Occupy Wall Street has jumped the shark. "The whole world is watching, and it's generally repulsed by what it's seen," said a pr expert. The European debt crisis is getting worse. It's likely to spread here because our six "too big to fail" banks hold some $50 billion in highly suspect European bonds. The deadline fast approaches for the "super committee" to fish or cut bait on deficit reduction, and no deal is in sight. In the volatile Republican race for president, Newt Gingrich is up, Herman Cain is down, and Ron Paul may pull an upset in Iowa.
THE COLLEGE BUBBLE IS ABOUT TO BURST
The ultra-left wing Nation magazine is often hilarious, though rarely intentionally so. In the Nov. 21 issue, executive editor Richard Kim paints a sympathetic portrait of Joe Therrien, who quit his job and took out $35,000 in student loans to get a master's degree "in his passion -- puppetry." Now Mr. Therrien wonders why he can't get a job. "Like a lot of the young protesters who have flocked to Occupy Wall Street, Joe had thought that hard work and education could bring, if not class mobility, at least a measure of security," Mr. Kim wrote. In his expectations and in his disappointment, Mr. Therrien has lots of company. Few students major in subjects which will do them much good. More major in the Visual and Performing Arts than in engineering. American colleges now offer some 1,600 majors. It is a bubble, and it's about to burst.
HOW OBAMA IS AFRICAN
Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. It took coming here, to the darkest pit of hellhole Africa, for it to finally dawn on me who Zero really is, to what total extent he isn't American at all, but African. Freedom House, in its 2011 Worst of the Worst report, highlights Equatorial Guinea as "one of the world's most repressive societies." Its dictator, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo,has ruled since 1979, declared himself to be his country's God who "can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell" in 2003, and last January was elected by leaders of the 54 member-states of the African Union (AU) to be its Chairman. Obiang uses his country's oil revenue as his personal piggy bank, enriching his friends and family while the average citizen of his country lives on $1 a day. But there is nothing at all exceptional about him. He is merely yet another example of what in Africa are called Big Men - narcissistic charismatic sociopaths who gain power however they can, never let go of it, look upon themselves as demi-gods for whom ordinary morality does not apply, utterly convinced they deserve to be worshipped with total obedience, and to live in complete extravagance while being completely indifferent to the poverty of others. Remind you of anyone in America?
WHY WOULD ZERO WANT IRAN TO HAVE NUKES?
Iran could start building a nuclear weapon "in a matter of months," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report last Wednesday (11/12). Scientists at a top secret facility in Parchin are building high tech precision detonators essential for a nuclear device, and developing a uranium core for a nuclear warhead, the IAEA report said. Iranian scientists also are working on ways to mount a nuclear warhead onto its Shahab 3 missiles, the UN agency said. "The facts lay out a pretty overwhelming case that this was a pretty sophisticated nuclear weapons effort aimed at miniaturizing a warhead for a ballistic missile," U.S. arms control expert David Albright told Reuters. "The level of detail is unbelievable," agreed a Western diplomat who was quoted anonymously by the New York Times. Incompetence and stupidity may not be enough to explain why this caught the Obama Administration by surprise.
MY NIGHT AT THE MARINE CORPS BALL
I'm writing this after attending an event that turned out to be one of the most moving evenings I've ever had. I had the honor and privilege last Saturday night (11/12) of attending The Basic School Instructor Battalion 236th Marine Corps Birthday Ball at the Greater Richmond Convention Center with Corporal Kelsey DeSantis. I knew I would have an evening that I wouldn't forget. Something I could tell my friends about. What I didn't know was how moved I would be by the whole experience. I've always been very vocal about my support of our Armed Forces. I've always felt like they offered us the opportunity to live our lives freely without the fear that so many other nations have to endure still to this day. And, they do it without asking for anything in return. I had this very feeling walking into this dinner. So, to say I was stoked to be there would be more than accurate.
HALF-FULL REPORT 11/11/11
The glass seems half empty this week. The story that’s gotten the most coverage, is, again, the charges of sexual misconduct against Herman Cain. A new accuser came forward, an old one was identified. Both have credibility issues. The Cain sex scandal was not the most important news. That could be Italy going the way of Greece . Europe induces sloth and indolence , and shouldn’t expect a bailout, said the chairman of China’s sovereign wealth fund. The Department of Energy has been bailing out solar firms in Spain , too. The IAEA finally saw evil in Iran this week. Despite this, Ron Paul wants to offer the mullahs an olive branch. How can a guy who is so right about economic issues be so wrong about everything else? In Ohio, big labor won repeal of Gov. John Kasich’s bill curbing the power of public employee unions by a wide margin. A referendum opposing the individual mandate in Obamacare passed by a wider margin. After Wednesday’s debate in Michigan, many conservatives said the GOP field may not be as bad as they thought previously. Today (11/11) is Veterans Day. Thank one if you see one. Yesterday was the Marine Corps’ birthday. My beloved Corps was born in a bar (the Tun Tavern in Philadelphia). Its first mission was to the Bahamas. Gotta love ‘em.
CAIN, CLINTON, AND THE MEDIA
Herman Cain's nightmare began a week ago Monday (10/31) when the webzine Politico reported two women had accused him of sexual misconduct when he was president of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. The story was thin. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal summarized it this way: "Anonymous sources told Politico that unnamed women alleged that Cain said unspecified things." It triggered a media feeding frenzy anyway. ABC, NBC and CBS reported on the Cain "scandal" 84 times in the first week. This contrasts with 0 as in zero, the number of times in 2008 ABC, NBC and CBS mentioned allegations of sexual misconduct by former Sen. John Edwards, who ran for president that year. And it contrasts with exactly 4, the number of stories the broadcast networks ran in the week after Juanita Broaddrick said she'd been raped by President Bill Clinton.
THE US-INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACY TO DESTROY JOBS AND GROWTH
How much pressure would it take before you would sell out your intellectual integrity? Those who are given responsibilities for developing and promoting sound public policy are subject to never-ending pressure by those in the political class to serve them rather than the public. An extraordinarily well researched and provocative paper has just been released, tracing how the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a major international organization, descended from promoting trade- and job-creation policies among the nations of the world to one that is supporting job-destroying tax cartels for the benefit of the high-tax countries. What we are seeing is the growth of international, non-elected bureaucracies that hack away at our liberties and economic freedoms, destroying jobs and opportunity, all in the name of redistributionist and "tax-fairness" schemes. But international organizations aren't the only ones that are destroying jobs and economic opportunity in the name of tax fairness. The U.S. Treasury and Internal Revenue Service are considering regulations that could cost Americans millions of jobs.
FAILING SCHOOLS ARE A SIGN OF FAILING NATIONAL CHARACTER
During a workout last weekend, I watched and listened as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan bemoaned our "crumbling schools." Sorry, but it's not our schools that are crumbling, Mr. Secretary: It's our values. But we can't even discuss the problem honestly and have to trim the conversation to keep it within politically correct patterns. Well, when yet another survey trumpets that the U.S. has fallen to sixth place in teaching math or science, or that we're fifteenth in education overall, my reaction is "Okay, break those scores out by specific school locations." Generally, our suburban and many small-town schools still deliver competitive (if less than optimal) educations. Our statistics skew sharply downward because of the appalling conditions in the inner-city and barrio holding pens and teacher's-union bunkers we pretend are real schools. The left, for political advantage, has written off poor blacks and browns educationally-confining them in schools that are now about the unionized teachers, not the students. And let's be honest: Conservatives have made no serious attempts to reform those schools, either.
GORILLAS, PYGMIES, AND THE FRENCH
Bangui, Central African Republic. Pygmies are the original Africans. Africa was populated almost exclusively by them for millennia. Then came larger folks like the Bantu who exterminated them, pushed them deep into the rain forests of Central Africa, and enslaved them. There are now only a few groups of Pygmies left, scattered in pockets of the densest jungles, still practicing the original human way of life, hunting and gathering. There are three kinds of gorillas. The giant hairy kind you see in zoos, and the thuggish human kind who rule over other people as "Big Men." Africa has plenty of both. Then there's the French colonial gorilla, which still has control over Francophone Africa. The poster child for the French gorilla is the CAR. Of all of Africa's capital cities, this one is at the bottom of the Dark Continent's barrel. Most of the city's streets are dirt with more potholes than road, what few streets are paved are more of an asphalt quilt riddled with bumpy pothole patches, most buildings are decrepit, there isn't one new modern building or establishment of any kind. So why am I here? To arrange an astoundingly awesome expedition. There is a hidden pocket of the southwest CAR where it, Cameroon, and Congo-Brazzaville come together. This three-country region is the most uninhabited area in all Sub-Saharan Africa. Save for two small villages of a few hundred, no one lives there except for pygmies and gorillas - tens of thousands of gorillas, outnumbering humans at least 100-1. This only hints at the extraordinary profusion of wildlife. No one knows about it. And now I know how to take you there.