Brooks, Krugman on the Financial Situation

I can't stand Paul Krugman as a political columnist. As an economist, he's on much surer footing, and his column today springs from that part of his brain worth listening to. David Brooks' column contains some interesting thoughts on how PEBO should structure his anticipated stimulus packages. Good ideas for a slow day.

Bombay Terror

Indian authorities have quite a situation on their hands. The more I read and understand what happened, the more I come to believe that this is not a home-grown Indian Islamist group, but more likely a Pakistani group. There are reports of the gunmen having been transported by sea in a vessel whose last-known port was Pakistan. This is not going to have a positive impact on Pakistani-Indian relations, and it appears to signify a possible uptick in the training/capability of Pakistani Islamists, perhaps as a result of increased concentrations of more sophisticated Islamist groups taking up refuge there (i.e. AQ). Whatever is happening here, Pakistan is an open-sewer and its continuing status as the terror capital of the world must be challenged.

UPDATE: Goldwater's Ghost with some thoughts.

Someone Please Verify This is Real

Brother Tom sent this link to me, and it is amazingly ridiculous. I've tried to verify it as being real, but can't come up with an air tight audit trail. Anyone have any info on this?

Those Randy Mid-Westerners!

News here of a couple nabbed during the Iowa-Minnesota football game for bumping uglies in a handicapped stall of the men's room. Apparently, the crowd that gathered to urge them on was a tip for security.

Best line in the story? The woman had to be identified by her husband. Classic.


Update: Great stuff here!

Things for Which I Am Thankful

Rick Brookhiser's entry on The Corner this morning inspired me to compile this (probably not inclusive) list of things for which I am grateful.

1. I am grateful for my life and my health
2. I am grateful for the blessings I enjoy as a citizen of the United States
3. I am grateful for those who toil every day to protect those blessings, be they in our armed forces, our intelligence community, police, fire, rescue, or civil service.
4. I am grateful for the health and lucidity of my mother and father, from whom all that I am or will be emanates.
5. I am grateful for the love and friendship of four brothers and a sister.
6. I am grateful that beautiful sweet Catherine invited me into her life, and that Hope and Hannah are learning to happily accept that fact.
7. I am grateful for 21 years of service to our country, and I am grateful that such service is over...for now.
8. I am grateful to a couple of inspiring men who saw in me some potential and asked me to join their team in private industry, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be compensated commensurate with my contribution and talent.
9. I am grateful for the time and energy to write this blog, and even more grateful that there are intelligent, insightful people who read it and comment about it.
10. I am grateful for a handful of close friends whose esteem and affection mean the world to me.
11. I am grateful for a political process that resulted in the election of a fine man as our next president, and I am grateful for a Constitution that will protect and encourage my opposition to him where appropriate.
12. I am grateful for the service of George Bush, a man who has worked tirelessly to protect this country from another major terrorist attack.
13. I am grateful to a loving God for having given me so much, and I am grateful to that God for being so patient with me.

There is oh so much to be thankful for, but for now, I'll just ask you...what are you thankful for?

Bombings in Bombay

I'm following the situation in Bombay, but I'm waiting until there's a better sense of who is behind it to hazard much of an opinion. India's had its own homegrown Hindu/Muslim problem for oh, I don't know, five hundred years, so this could be just a part of that. Or it could be AQ inspired. Or it could be AQ planned.

But we just don't know right now, so I'll just be quiet until we have some better information.

UPDATE: for good in-stream coverage, out this site.

A Bit of Ayn Rand on Thanksgiving

Very few conservatives worth their salt are unfamiliar with the work of Ayn Rand, and many of us went through some serious flirtation with objectivism as our primary political philosophy. I can remember reading Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead in the summer of 1987 and seeing them as a revelation. Howard Roark and Hank Reardon were the kind of guys I wanted to be, and she created them skillfully.

As time went on and I read more and more of the sort of zany cult following that attended to Ayn Rand in her life (not to mention an interesting personal life), I tended to keep my admiration of the woman a little more in the background. I re-read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in the Summer of 2007 and concluded that my original enthusiasm for objectivism remained strong.

Here are two interviews Mike Wallace did with Ayn Rand in 1959, each is about ten minutes long (Part I and Part II). I'd never heard her voice before, but the heavy Russian accent is a little jarring (sorta like Boris' girl on the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons). The constantly shifting little eyes are also disquieting, but the words are powerful.

Check out also the early TV special effects and Mike Wallace just lighting one up right in the middle of the interview. Classic.

On Obama Keeping Gates

Well, I have to say I'm surprised by the reports that have surfaced today saying that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will stay on a bit through the transition (even though many in the media and AuH2O's Ghost called it). I figured Gates really didn't want the job to begin with, he's tired, and he wants to retire to upstate Washington. Matter of fact, I predicted to Gigs' investor's group just yesterday morning that he wouldn't take it (though I left myself an out by saying that if he did, he'd be there a year or less).

What do I think of it? I think it is great for the country, great for the military, and great for the new President. Robert Gates is a fine American and a talented SecDef. He has put the Rumsfeld years behind us and he's run the Pentagon with a deft hand.

I continue to be impressed with the adults that PEBO is picking for his team.

Goldwater's Ghost Now a Blogger!

I'm happy to announce that frequent contributor and guest blogger on this site Goldwater's Ghost has struck out on his own and created a blog, "Postcards From the Backbench". Those of you who criticize me for taking up your day...well, don't click this link. If you do, you'll have yet another site that takes up your time. GG is intelligent and insightful, and his site is a hit!

NYC--Mission Accomplished

I'm writing from the commuter terminal at Laguardia, waiting for my flight back to Charm City. Today was a real professional highlight, as I spent a great day with some fine professionals talking about all manner of things. Gigs was a wonderful host, and I really enjoyed the folks at his firm. Some very insightful questions, and some great information passed back and forth in both directions.

The view from Gigs office is stunning; he overlooks Bryant(?) Park and has a great view of the skyline.

I could work in NYC....at one point, I thought I would. Don't think anyone's hiring these days though....

I am a Sexist Pig

As some of you may know, I host an annual Christmas Party, and it is an event in which I take great pride. I have absentmindedly forgotten/misplaced my bartender's name/email/phone, and it is killing me. She's cute, blonde, and incredibly helpful--the perfect bartender in all ways.

So I've put an ad on Craigslist for a bartender for the event. I just went through 121 separate answers, and I instantly deleted every single one submitted by a male, or anyone whose name even remotely sounded male. Terrible, huh? That's how I roll.

In the Big City

Writing this morning from the 28th floor of a great looking building in Manhattan, where I've come to sit down with a group of investors and analysts who work with one of our frequent contributors, Gigs. Gigs asked me to come up and talk about defense related issues that might impact the financial industry, and a bit on my thoughts with respect to defense and the Obama Administration.

This is a wonderful opportunity, combining a couple of my favorite things. I definitely enjoy talking about politics and geo-strategy, I thoroughly enjoy New York, and I definitely have an interest in the financial world.

I stayed the night at Gigs' house in Connecticut, and when I met him this morning in his home office, he informed me that two of his friends in London had been sacked. More and more folks who do what he does are finding themselves on the short end of the stick.

This will pass, but the system is likely to have changed. Hopefully for the better.

Boy Am I Glad I'm Not in School Anymore!

....or I'd wind up on a police blotter......

An Interesting Week in Grapevine, Texas

I gotta give this guy Pastor Ed Young credit---he sure did come up with a marketable strategy for getting his name and his church's (Fellowship) out there. It seems the good pastor challenged his flock to take to the connubial bed with gusto this week, asking that married couples couple each day for a week as a way of re-establishing intimacy and understanding. Seeing sex in marriage as a gift from God, Pastor Young has energized his mega-church and caused a bit of a sensation in the process. Pointing to children as one of the main causes of sexual alienation between husbands and wives (KIDS--keeping intimacy at a distance successfully), the folks at Fellowship have been urged to lock the door, turn up the radio and get busy. I'm not a big fan of mega-churches, and I'm definitely not taken with charismatic Christianity (the Catholic church lost me when they started holding hands during the Lord's Prayer and then raising them in unison....thought I was gonna hear people speaking in tongues), but this church sounds pretty interesting.

First African-American......

Stop the presses ladies and gentlemen, we have yet another "first" for the African-American community. It seems the Obamas have decided to extend to one "Desiree Rogers" the coveted post of "White House Social Secretary", position in which she would be the "first African-American".

Can we get over this crap PLEASE! The country hired an African-American as President. Can we assume that all African-American appointments to lesser posts are no longer noteworthy? Please?

Obama Making Good Moves with Economic Team

Reports are that President-elect Barack Obama (henceforth PEBO) will nominate Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers as his Treasury Secretary and Director of the National Economic Council, respectively. Summers had the Treasury job at the end of the Clinton Administration and then went on to Harvard where he managed to offend much of the female world by suggesting that women might not be biologically pre-disposed to the math and science disciplines. Geithner's been the NY Fed President, and has gotten high marks for his conduct during this fiscal crisis. Two good picks.

Is Proposition 8 Un-American?

I received a private email the other day asking the following:

"…I’m not a really deep thinker in the mold of you, and (Goldwater's Ghost). But, every now and then the old noggin does make an attempt to makes sense of certain things. That latest “thing” is the recent vote in California on Proposition 8.
It finally hit me as to why I was against its passage. My reasoning is that it is quite “un-American”. How’s that? Well, as you are well aware, the US is a republic and not a democracy. In a republic, the minority viewpoint is considered such that we can’t have a vote in which 51% of the people vote in favor of enslaving the other 49%. I believe this is the classic example always put forth for this argument.
Well, in the state of CA, we just had a vote in which 52% voted to “enslave” the other 48%. Yes, this is an example of the mob rule of a direct democracy. It is quite “un-American”!
Your thoughts?"

This is a very good question on a number of levels, and so I'll take it on in little bite sized chunks. Bottom line up front: what the people of California did was not just NOT un-American, it was entirely American.

1. Let's start with my view of gay marriage in general. As I've said in the past, I'm not in favor of straight marriage, so my opposition to gay marriage is entirely consistent. What do I mean by this? I mean state sanction of marriage. I think marriage is a wonderful social/cultural/religious institution and it ought to be just that. Take the state out of it and I'd be all for both gay and straight marriage. Leave existing contract law to cover the relationship between the parties and we have our winner. Now that that is out of the way, on to the specifics of this issue.

2. "The US is a republic and not a democracy. In a republic, the minority viewpoint is considered such that we can’t have a vote in which 51% of the people vote in favor of enslaving the other 49%" There’s a lot here to deconstruct so let’s get started.

• This view of what a republic is and mine are different. My view of a republic is one in which people vote for other people who then represent their interests--rather than in straight out democracy in which people vote directly for themselves. Being a republic is in no way an impediment to a majority enslaving a minority.
• The Bill of Rights is definitely an impediment to the majority voting a majority out of its rights, rights thought to be so essential to liberty as to require codification in the Constitution. As such, it is often seen as the chief enforcer of the “no enslavement” stuff within our system of government.
• There is a really romantic notion afoot that our system is designed to protect the rights of the minority. This is true, but only to a point. Let us never forget that our Constitution has provisions for its alteration. A determined majority could remove any and all rights from a minority. It would just be very, very difficult to do so.

3. So now, let’s talk about some of the specifics of the California issue, and whether it was “un-American”

• Is defining marriage as between a man and a woman “enslavement” of a minority? No, not by a long shot. We have laws on the books that prohibit teens from drinking, we have laws on the books that allow businesses to charge different prices to seniors. Whole classes of people are impacted by these laws, yet they are not enslavement. It is especially important to remember that California’s domestic partnership laws extend all the goodness of marriage to domestic partners without the term “marriage”.
• Let’s review what happened here. The California Legislature, exercising that power of representative democracy that was their due, passed a statute defining marriage as between a man and a woman. In a case brought to them that caused judicial review of the law, the California State Supreme Court struck down the law as being inconsistent with the Constitution of the State of California, and hence unconstitutional. Exercising provisions for altering the Constitution of the State of California (contained within and explicitly stated there) the people of the State of California voted to amend their Constitution in a manner in which a state regulatory function (that is, the granting of marriage licenses) was determined to be applicable only to unions of a man and a woman (incidentally, who also must be of the age of consent).

I would have voted for Prop 8, largely because I think the State Supreme Court overstepped its bounds. If the people of California put forward an amendment to take the state out of marriage altogether, I’d support that too.

But there was NOTHING un-American about what went on there. In our system, the will of a determined majority is unlikely to be stymied.

Clemson 13 UVA 3

Just back from a long trip to Charlottesville and back to watch the thoroughly feckless Wahoos stink up the field. They were joined in the effort by the Clemson Tigers who also played listlessly. Poor execution (interceptions, receivers not knowing where the first down marker is) and horrible play calling sealed our fate. And so ends another season of UVA home games. See you all next year boys....

A View of Our Soldiers from a French Soldier

Passed along to me by my brother....this is really a wonderful ode to the greatest fighting force in the world.

Remembering a Really Cool Day

One of my crewmembers in USS BULKELEY (DDG 84) posted this photo on his Facebook page, and it brought back great memories of an awesome day. I was CO of #84, and we raced the destroyer next to us (USS COLE) and the Cruiser from whom this picture was taken (USS PHILIPPINE SEA--who nipped us by a nose). The CO of the Cruiser was a guy named Gene Moran, who is an amazing guy and a great friend. He retired from the Navy shortly after I did, and we run across each other quite a bit in DC these days.