Month: July 2008

Big O. goes to market. Look out!

If Obama wins, we lose?  The market, that satanic vehicle of capitalistic prosperity, is slumping in tandem with his rising as a good bet to make president, notes Stephen Moore in WSJ’s Political Diary.

[I]nvestors are forward-looking and the slide in the dollar and the fall in the market (despite decent corporate profits) have accelerated at the same pace as Mr. Obama’s meteoric political rise over the past nine months.

Yikes!  And he’s still only a senator!

[S]ome smart analysts . . . find a definite inverse correlation between Mr. Obama’s probability of winning the election (as measured by the Intrade political futures market) and the ups and downs of the stock market. Intrade provides a trading market where investors can bet on who will win the election — such betting markets have a record of performing better than polls in forecasting election outcomes.

How so?

Radio host and fund manager Jerry Bowyer notes on CNBC.com that investors would have good reason for wanting to flee U.S. markets ahead of an Obama victory. Increases in capital gains and dividend taxes alone will “mean very large additional levies on investors.” Mr. Bowyer adds: “Of course, this affects stock prices. It is ludicrous to suggest that adding taxes directly on an asset class would have no effect on its value.”

If this guy and U. Mich. economist Mark Perry, maybe the first to spot the correlation are right,

the lousy market in the last few weeks makes sense. Yes, it’s partly a result of Ben Bernanke’s decision not to raise interest rates. But Senator Obama is now trading as a 34% favorite — that is, bettors believe Mr. Obama is 34% more likely to win in November than Republican John McCain. That implies big tax hikes aimed at the returns on investment in the stock market.

It’s O.’s stock in trade, you might say, as a liberal Dem, what Republicans once called tax-and-spenders.  So investors beware.

“If the political winds keep blowing left,” says Dan Clifton of Strategas, an investment advisory firm, “the market is going to tank. In that case, I advise, get out of the market while you still can.”

There’s an answer, of course: McCain can make taxing and spending a major talking point in his campaign and ride it to victory.

Tags: ,

You bet your morass it’s a mess

Things are going badly in Springfield, says Rich Miller, who lists problems, including:

Unemployment is rising, yet a jobs-producing capital construction bill for our roads, bridges, schools and mass transit is stuck in limbo.

Reading along, I thought he was going to say a tax-reduction bill was in limbo, or such bill is not being discussed.  But he refers to state spending that would produce jobs. 

Reasonable state spending perhaps, on roads, bridges, etc., assuming those are not bridges to nowhere, and incidentally jobs-producing.  But as it stands, his reference smacks of statist solution to economic problem.

He also says:

Nothing — literally nothing — is being accomplished because the governor and the speaker want to crush each other.

Literally as opposed to when he says nothing but doesn’t mean it?

And finally, he speaks of the “intractable morass” that calls for solution.  Ouch.  Morasses are for avoiding, not solving, and in any case we have here a familiar metaphor matched with the non-metaphorical “intractable.”  Stay non-metaphorical, I say: it makes for precision.

Tags: ,

Rev. Jesse and his mouth

Rev. Jesse Jackson is a locker-room mouth from a way back.  In 1969, hearing from a reporter that he’d been a priest, he guffawed.  “You wanted some pussy!”

“I wanted to get married,” the reporter said.

“I know,” he said, laughing.

This was in a Loop hotel room, shortly after he had delivered a stemwinder to the Association of Chicago Priests in a ballroom downstairs, predicting (inaccurately) the departure from ministry of Chicago’s four black priests.

A bodyguard had opened the door for the reporter, who had followed Jesse up to his room after the headline-making speech.  Two others were with Jesse, who was stripped to the waist and eating a banana.  All three were suitably amused.

Yesterday Rev. Jesse said unwittingly on camera that he’d “like to perform an orchiectomy” on Obama for “talking down” to blacks by urging personal responsibility for what happens to them — doing a Cosby, you might say, if not as memorably.

I’m not kidding about NY Sun’s “orchiectomy” — “removal of the testicles, a man’s main source of testosterone,” explains WebMD, never realizing its pertinence to a presidential campaign.

Chi Trib boldly quotes Rev. J’s cutting remark:

“I want to cut his nuts out,” Jackson added [to his whispered criticism], gesturing as if grabbing part of the male anatomy and then pulling.

Kudos to writers John McCormick and Monique Garcia and the Trib copy desk for giving us the true facts of the matter, though their “part of the male anatomy” might have been better stated as “crotch,” as Mike Royko once wrote, wondering why baseball players were always pulling on theirs.  Why?  Maybe to straighten out the cup?

Tags: , ,

Reading noosepapers

Headlines can be fun:

* ChiTrib’s front page headline for a story about a lost and found three-year-old is about “Panic.”  What’s it doing now?  “Turns into joy, relief,” says hard copy headline.  This answers a question in the minds of many, “What’s Panic been up to lately?”

* Trib again, next to this: “Bernanke grabs reins on economy.”  Up to his old horse-riding tricks.

* More Trib, still p-1: about “Russia’s toxic rivers.”  What’s new with them?  I’ve been wondering.  They are “running out of time.”  Like the drinkers in T.S. Eliot’s bar, hearing, “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME.”

Same story, sub-head: “Mother Volga . . . oozes sickly to the sea.”  Not a good thing to ooze sickly.  Nothing this father wants to do, nor any mother of his acquaintance.  Get well soon, Mrs. Volga.

* Sun-Times also pleases. Mary Mitchell says “Taste” shooting “not new” to residents of “black and brown” neighborhoods where gangs prevail.  She missed this year’s Taste, hasn’t been to one since her kids “nearly drowned in a sea of people . . . streaming out of Grant Park.”  Not oozing, notice.

This time, “young thugs . . . streamed into the Loop [again!], bringing their gang signs and armed bravado with them.”

“Some Chicagoans” know all about these “urban terrorists” — and she has that right, which looks like a leaf from Dennis Byrne’s book. 

What to do?  Would have been “a riot” if cops had moved in aggressively, as Daley said, she says.  Her answer: more cops in the neighborhoods.  Doing what?  (Byrne: Call out the National Guard.)

* Meanwhile, Supt. Weis merits p-1 S-T treatment for maybe dropping the Taste ball.  “Rookie mistakes?” asks banner.  “Were police unprepared?” asks p. 5 story, where the failure to round up the bad guys is attributed to lack of enough squadrols rather than fearing a riot. 

Low in this story is the killer statistic that murder is up 13% “under Weis’s watch . . . over the first six months of the year.”  Yes, even with the city’s gun-control laws.

* Finally, laugh with us here at Blithe Spirit at Steve Rhodes’s riff on insurance magnate Pat Ryan’s “doubts violence will affect 2016 [Olympic] bid,” Ryan being in charge of that process. 

Rhodes looks into the future and sees these key developments:

* “Olympic Boss Doubts Today’s Congestion on the Kennedy Will Affect 2016 Bid.”

* “Olympic Boss Doubts Cubs Loss Will Affect 2016 Bid.”

* “Olympic Boss Doubts Failure of CHA Will Affect 2016 Bid.”

* “Olympic Boss Doubts Fewer Starbucks’ Will Affect 2016 Bid.”

* “Olympic Boss Doubts Lame Hometown Cheerleading Press Will Affect 2016 Bid.”

Er, wait a second . . .

Later, he adds:

 “Olympic Boss Doesn’t Think Jailed Governors Will Affect 2016 Bid.”

And yet later:

Comedy Gold
“Police: Suspect Tried To Rob Bar With Cheese Grater.”

Local Reaction
“Olympic Boss Doesn’t Think Cheese Grater Robbery Will Affect 2016 Bid.”

With Olympic bosses like this, we can move mountains.

Tags: , , , ,

Feeding Audrey

Red meat today for angry blacks and guilty whites in Chi Trib’s hard copy p-1 headline story, “The transplant gap keeps more blacks waiting for kidneys,” by Deborah Shelton. 

The story is another in a line of “makes me want to holler” items that regularly feed black resentment and white-liberal anguish, recounting in excruciating, montonous detail what’s wrong with organ transplantation in this country as regards racial disparity.

Read it and weep, whether from anger or guilt or ennui compounded with disgust at colorized journalism meant to feed the race-complaint machine — rather plant, like Audrey in “Little Shop of Horrors” : “Feeeeeed me!”

At least in the Metro section’s page-one story about bicycle messengers with its bike-messenger viewpoint lede, we read also about drivers and pedestrians’ complaints about cyclist’s recklessness and flouting of traffic rules.  In this kidney-transplant story, on the other hand, we get almost all quotes and notations in support of What a Damn Shame This Is.

African-Americans account for 37 percent of people receiving dialysis but make up only 19 percent of the transplant population, according to the United States Renal Data System, a government database.

This is news?  Over– and under-representation of blacks in bad (as incarceration) and good (academic achievement) has been trumpeted with indignation, but never going beyond that and white American responsibility for it all.  Or is it propaganda?

Responsibility, thy color is white, is the message.  If you’re black, step back from responsibility, for this and a dozen other bad situations.  A very bad message for all concerned.

Tags: , , ,

George and Caroline and their son Fred

George II of England and his queen, Caroline, had no use for their son Frederick, Prince of Wales, who returned in 1733 from schooling in his grandfather’s home city or state of Hanover, Germany. He had no use for them either, and some close observers were worried, including Lord Hervey, who discusses it in his Memoirs.

The prime minister, Robert Walpole, urged the parents to make it up with the son, whom their enemies would play against them, but they said no, you don’t know him like we do — and he did turn out a nasty fellow before his death in 1751, nine years before his father’s. There was no use being nice to him, they said; it will only make him worse.

Hervey had already tried, with some success, to mollify the son, whom he had served as advisor. It was a no-win situation, he told him. The king has many enemies, and you all have much to lose, nothing to gain. The prince seemed to take it to heart. Would the parents do so too, if some dared to tell them about the enemies in their midst? Hervey thought so and told Walpole as much.

Walpole agreed that the king should use “supple insinuating arts” to make friends, rather than engage in such a “fierte” — “wildness” or “fierceness” — involving his son and heir, and should cease his “awkward, simple, and proud conduct.” But he was buttering no one up, nor was he spreading cash around, and so no one had a good word for him, in and out of the palace. He had neither “address” enough to do the first nor “liberality” enough to do the latter.

But Walpole would “not dare to tell them of the ticklish situation they are in,” said Hervey, warning him that when matters went bad, he and other ministers would get the blame.

At this point the two interrupted by the Duke of Newcastle, who entered “with as much alacrity and noise as usual . . . in his hand a bundle of papers as big as his head and with little more in them.”

In any case, Hervey eventually warned the royal couple by reporting what he said he heard others say, having got their acquiescence in his not revealing his sources, which were nonexistent. In this way he could give his own ideas as if they were others’ and thus escape censure.

Tags: , , , ,

Make mine white

Like milk?  The whole near-creamy variety that brings a smile to your face?  But you dasn’t drink it for health reasons?  Consider this:

Whole milk is one of the best foods in the average corner shop-and a vital part of a nutritious diet for . . . children, . . . .

Whole milk is what is called a complete food, because each ingredient plays its part. Without the fat, you can’t digest the protein or absorb the calcium. The body needs saturated fat in particular (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat can’t do the job) to take in the calcium that makes bones strong. Milk fat also contains glycosphingolipids, which are fats that encourage cell metabolism and growth and fight gastrointestinal infections.

Vitamins?

The all-important vitamins A and D are found in the fat. Historically, whole milk and butter were the best sources of these vitamins in the American diet, which had up to 10 times more of both vitamins than modern industrial diets.

In skim and low-fat milk, the vitamins are removed along with the fat, so dairies add synthetic A and D. But Vitamins A and D are fat-soluble; that means they cannot be absorbed into the body unless they’re taken in with fat. Thus, even fortified skim and low-fat milk are not nearly as beneficial as the real thing.

Worried about your heart and arteries?

[S]cientists are increasingly finding that whole milk and saturated fats have been given an undeserved bad rap. Many experts say the evidence blaming saturated fats for heart disease is surprisingly weak. Indeed, the main effect of eating saturated fats is to raise high-density lipoproteins, or H.D.L., the so-called good cholesterol. And with H.D.L., the higher, the better.

Etc., from Nina Planck, author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why

Real food

Who she?

[A] food writer, an advocate for traditional foods, an entrepreneur, and the leading American expert on farmers’ markets and local food. A champion of small farmers, she grew up on an ecological vegetable farm in Virginia and sold the family vegetables at farmers’ markets from age nine.  After leaving the farm, Nina was a congressional staffer, a reporter for TIME, and a speechwriter for President Clinton’s ambassador to the UK.

A woman of parts, it appears.

Tags:

Button your lip, Father

This may bother some priests itching to abuse the pulpit:

Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput [did] issue a new directive this week that clarifies what political activity is allowed by clergy and prohibiting them from endorsing or contributing money in partisan elections.

But they will have to suck it up for the sake of their role in society, which is not political.

Same goes for newsies, of course: They routinely claim neutrality.  Why?  So they can fulfil their role in society, which depends on their credibility.

I have the script right here for that and am reading carefully.

It’s not a problem in Denver, where only one donor said he’s a Denver cleric, a deacon.

But nationwide, about 100 Catholic priests and deacons have contributed nearly $100,000 to federal candidates or political parties in the 2007-08 election cycle, according to a Coloradoan review of FEC records.

Most of the contributions are to Republican groups or candidates, particularly outspoken opponents of abortion. However, the largest single recipient of Catholic clerical money is presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, a supporter of abortion rights.

Suckers for populist rhetoric?  Mad about the war?  This latter is my guess.  Pound for pound, there’s more pacifism among mainstream religious professionals, is my educated guess. 

However, issues are not out of bounds:

While restricted in partisan political activity, clergy have an obligation to speak out on important moral issues such as abortion or immigration, [archdiocesan spokeswoman Jeanette] DeMelo said.

“The church’s role in the public square is to help Catholics understand the teaching of their church regarding moral issues and encourage them to make informed decisions in light of those moral principles,” she said.

So pro-life and [pro?-] immigration preaching OK:

“Political campaigns prohibited would be those that are strictly partisan; in other words, the priests or deacons cannot support political parties or candidates in a public way. Right-to-life or immigration initiatives are not strictly partisan — in fact, we encourage that they not be partisan,” she said.

I insert “pro-“ before immigration because priests have been quite prominent on marches, etc.

However, very few preachers have gone whole hog as Fr. Michael Pfleger did in l’affaire Hillary at Obama’s former church, Trinity UCC.  They don’t name names but make their points in other ways, as I pointed out a few years back in a Wednesday Journal column, “If you’re Irish and you’re Catholic… [you’re a Dem].”

Tags: , ,

One of the D.C. gangs

Oak Park (IL) village manager Tom Barwin is not apologizing for saying the Supreme Court is “in alliance with the gangbangers” in its ruling in favor of individual right to own a gun, but he does have advice for others:

“I really think we ought to tone down the emotion, which I will also try to do,” he said. “But I think we should be working harder to find common ground and eliminate these conditions that breed violence.

He will try very hard to tone it down but is willing to leave the Supremes dangling with gangsters.

“I think the … gangbanger comments really just were a way to succinctly express that, in my experience and view, the further proliferation of guns will inevitably result in more drug pushers and those of a criminal mind ending up with firearms.”

As it is, of course, they have to get along with their bare fists?

Later, from Dick Cutler in Ann Arbor:

I have strong sentiments about private possession of firearms.  I grew up on a farm; I had guns then; I have guns now (several, would you like an inventory and a report of my marksmanship?); and FINALLY, “I intend to keep my  guns and my skill in using them  — so as to be prepared to shoot the miserable ass off anyone who comes to take them from me.”

Tags: ,