Home

People who feel they can’t trust their leaders to be true to their word will eventually lose faith in government altogether.

Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, in his book My FBI

Some of you may have found the following statement to be incredible:

…the Democrat party today is the party of the 60’s radical. That includes just about every major player in the party.

But this is in fact the case, even for the younger major players:

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious – and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.

Now, as Obama runs for president, what two guests recall as an unremarkable gathering on the road to a minor elected office stands as a symbol of how swiftly he has risen from the Hyde Park left to a man closing in fast on the Democratic nomination for president.

“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified him as her successor.”

Obama and Palmer “were both there,” he said.

Obama’s connections to Ayers and Dorhn have been noted in some fleeting news coverage in the past. But the visit by Obama to their home—part of a campaign courtship—reflects more extensive interaction than has previously reported.

The New York Times may have helped John McCain to solve his problems vis a vis the economic conservatives in his party:

"You’re surprised that Page Six-type gossip is on the front page of The New York Times?" Limbaugh asked as he began his radio show. "Where have you been? How in the world can anybody be surprised?"

Limbaugh said earlier in an e-mail to Politico that the Times article about McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist was a clear case of "the drive-by media … trying to take him out."

Laura Ingraham, another influential conservative radio host, asserted that the Times waited until McCain was on the brink of the Republican presidential nomination and now is seeking to "contaminate" him with an article that she calls "absurd" and "ridiculous."

And the Evangelicals?

Obviously an article like this doesn’t help McCain among the conservatives he’s trying to win over, especially social conservatives. But let’s take a step back for a moment.

The NY Times has NO evidence in their story that there was actually a romantic relationship. No phone calls, e-mails, etc.

Will some people be put off by the alleged romantic relationship? Sure, but I’m not convinced it’s a killer when it comes to McCain’s courting of the evangelical vote.

It may be one more reason not to vote for McCain for some Evangelicals. But my hunch is that for the most part, this story does nothing to radically change McCain’s relationship with Evangelicals. I mean, what? All of a sudden Evangelicals won’t vote for him because of this, or now vote for Obama or Clinton? I don’t see it.

Much to the dismay of many, the U.S. has outsourced much of its manufacturing capabilities to other countries.  Now we have the possibility of outsourcing something that many didn’t think could be: a seaport:

Planned to be larger, cheaper and more efficient than Long Beach-Los Angeles, America’s busiest seaport, Puerto Colonet (south of San Diego, in Mexico) seeks to provide an alternative gateway to the United States for the growing volume of cargo arriving from manufacturing bases in Asia.

It’s also, for now, just a dream.

Still needed is about $4 billion of private capital, construction of community and infrastructure to support the port complex and agreements from various transportation and trade-related entities like railroads, marine terminal operators and ocean carriers.

But the project has cleared several important hurdles, including a $1 billion commitment from the Mexican government, political support from national, regional and local bureaucracy and the resolution of important and often complicated land-use issues.

Plus, there’s growing interest from shippers and retailers concerned about growing costs associated with seaports in California and elsewhere.

California has succeeded in running off a good deal of heavy industry and the infrastructure to go with it through its extensive regulatory structure, including the offshore oil industry.  Is this next?

The Brown government’s decision to nationalise Northern Rock takes us back to the days when Labour governments in the UK were wont to nationalise just about everything that moved–literally in the case of British Rail and British Leyland.  (I’ve compared the latter to the Anglican Communion elsewhere, and in fact the Church of England itself is a nationalised entity, in its own way.)

Today London is probably the single largest financial market in the world, in no small measure because of two factors:

1. The progressive deregulation of the financial and economic system initiated by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980’s.
2. The moralistic over-regulation of the American one by Sarbanes-Oxley, doubtless one of the most ill-conceived pieces of legislation that Congress (the opposite of progress) has ever promulgated.

If the Brown government allows this kind of mentality to spread to other aspects of policy (especially taxation,) they will oversee the running down of the UK as they did following World War II, as capital goes elsewhere.