The Japanese seem to really like President Obama. This goes beyond last year’s song from Obama City in Fukui Prefecture (it’s easiest to think of prefectures as being like states). Japanese youths are now using the President’s name as the verb “obamu”, which means “To ignore inexpedient and inconvenient facts or realities, think ‘Yes we can, Yes we can,’ and proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally, as fuel). It is used to...

Nevada’s senior Senator and the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has taken time out to make a new enemy. Reid publicly threatened the Las Vegas Review Journal — the state’s largest daily paper — saying he hoped it would go out of business. He later added that “he wants the Review-Journal to continue selling advertising because the Las Vegas Sun is delivered inside the Review-Journal.” This story has been picked up by a wide range of news sources including the...

The fall semester begins soon, and many new college students will be away from home for the first time as adults. It seems likely that a small portion TMV readers are college students, and many other readers know at least one college student. Please feel free to forward this to any college students or young adults you know. Hey guys. I know this is a pretty cool time in your lives: you are legally grown-ups; you are making new friends, some of whom are from wildly different places and have wildly...

Myrna Ulfik’s item in the Wall Street Journal says: I didn’t run to Canada for [cancer] treatment. Medicare took care of my needs right here in New York City. To endure, I just need the freedom to choose my insurance, my doctors, and get the diagnostic scans and care I need. And one more thing: I need hope that a treatment will be developed that can control my diseases the way insulin controls diabetes. Every cancer patient needs these things, especially hope. But the government’s plan...

In a victory for common sense, the Supreme Court has ruled 8-1 that the strip search of a 13 year old girl was unconstitutional. Among the factors that the court considered were that the girl’s parents were never called, the fact that she was effectively held hostage in the Assistant Principal’s office for 2 hours, the lack of corrroborating evidence, and the nature of the contraband they were seeking. in Justice Souter’s words: “In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts...

Graduate students spend a lot of time talking. One topic that we used to discuss, as music students, was various styles of music. Academic music of course, nothing more popular than Laurie Anderson. In retrospect, we came off as a bit pretentious. A quick look at the various periods of music history reveals that style periods got shorter as time marched on. While we don’t know as much as musicologists would like about music much before about 1300, surviving manuscripts show that styles moved...

This week, the FDIC couldn’t even wait until Friday to close BankUnited of Coral Gables, FL. This has apparently been in the works since April, when the bank was told by regulators they needed to merge or sell itself. Why did they do this on Thursday? When they usually swoop in on Friday afternoons? Well, it wasn’t so they could enjoy the holiday weekend. The FDIC had even more work to do yesterday, as they oversaw the takeover of Strategic Capital Bank of Champaign, IL (a college town...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation always does their dirty work at closing time on Friday. That way they have all weekend to figure out what is going on, get things in order so Joe and Jane Average can get their bills paid on Monday, and Wall Street has 2 days to sort through the carnage. Last night, the FDIC shut down four banks in four different states. That brings 2009’s running total to 29 banks, exceeding the entire number of banks to fail in all of 2008. If this trend merely continues...

Most of us know what the International Monetary Fund prescription for saving any given economy is, right? Drastically cut spending. No really, cut it. Slash it to the bone. Even military spending. Cut cut cut cut cut! This approach has opened them to criticism both from true conservatives and progressives. So then, you know it’s a big deal on those rare occasions that the IMF tells a country they need to spend more money. Yesterday, the IMF urged the 20 largest economies to spend more on...

Please, dear reader, consider this a follow up to Pat Edaburn’s excellent piece on Health Care reform. Wow! What A Deal! Insurance companies agree to cover everyone, and not even charge ludicrous extra amounts for people who have been ill, but only if everyone is required to buy insurance. That’s right, the same highly profitable insurance companies that have caused the price of health care to spiral out of control in a system where nearly 1 out of every 5 workers has no insurance says...

While we have been watching this extraordinary Presidential Inauguration, with over a million people crammed into the National Mall and many millions more watching and listening on televisions and radios (and computers and cell phones), something else amazing is happening at the White House itself. It’s moving day: President Bush and his wife, Laura, will wake up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday morning, just as they have the last eight years. But by the time the new president, Barack...

I must not be very imaginative. I say that because I can’t think of a single thing that is so important that it’s worth strip searching a child in a public school, but so unimportant that it’s not worth calling that child’s parents first, and not worth calling the police first. And the thing is that an appeals court pretty much agreed that if the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons didn’t apply to the actual body of a child in a school, who the heck did...

Sadly, late on Christmas Day we learned that Eartha Kitt, the singer of Santa Baby, had passed away. She was 81. My generation became acquainted with her as Catwoman on the old Batman TV show. The following generation knows her — her voice, anyway — as Yzma in The Emperor’s New Groove. Her actual working career spans seven decades. Here’s some vintage Eartha for you: Even as she got older, she was a fantastic performer with a great sense of timing: The world has lost a...

Every once in a while, somebody will ask me “Who is to blame for the current housing and foreclosure mess?” Usually they want a short, snappy answer. The truth is that there is a giant pie of blame, and there’s plenty to go around. In no particular order, here are some of the culprits. This is my opinion alone, and you are welcome to disagree with me. Fannie Mae. The Federal National Mortgage Association, shortened to FNMA and then simply Fannie Mae, is a federally chartered...

With the announcement of President Elect Obama’s economic “dream team,” speculation officially begins concerning what his cabinet will look like. “Which of those heavy hitters will be Treasury Secretary” is merely the first and most obvious question. The Associated Press (yes yes I know many people are still boycotting them) has come up with an interesting collection of short lists for the various positions, with the caveat that “Obama has signaled that he will...

Less than 12 hours from now, the first American polling places will open on Election Day. In many areas, early voting places were very busy with people trying to exercise their rights as they had time to do so. Of course, this helps people who normally work on Election Day, as they don’t have to count on voting during a small window of time before work, after work, or on their lunch break. While many people have certainly already voted, many have not. A massive turnout is expected for this...

The SEC has temporarily banned short-selling of 799 financial stocks. Maybe you don’t know what short-selling is. Here’s the funny explanation first: Now here’s the not-so-funny explanation. Essentially, buying a stock is betting the price will go up. Short-selling is selling shares you don’t actually have, betting the price will go down, and you can “buy to cover” later. One thing to remember: when you buy, you can only lose as much as you spent but your gains...

Last night, Japan’s “new” Prime Minister became their Ex-Prime Minister. More: Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda announced on Monday night that he would resign, abruptly ending his chronically unpopular government after just a year and leaving Japan’s governing party scrambling to find fresh leadership ahead of crucial national elections. Fukuda’s surprise announcement, made at a hastily called news conference, stunned Japan and appeared to plunge the world’s second...

I first learned yesterday of a police raid gone wrong. Busting down the door when the warrant doesn’t specify no-knock? Bad. Shooting the dogs as they ran away, then leaving them to bleed to death while you interrogate the homeowner? Worse. Refusing to believe that the homeowner is in fact the Mayor as you force him to kneel on the floor handcuffed in his boxer shorts for hours? Worse still! But wait! there’s more! The unopened package containing the drugs giving the cops the “grounds”...

This time, the terror watch list has picked up Clinton-era assistant attorney general, Jim Robinson. He is on this list despite having a recently renewed set of security clearances. It’s ok for him to have access to nuclear secrets, but not to get on an airplane without some serious extra hassle. He’s been quoted several places: I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it. But I doubt it. I expect my story...

No, this is not Indiana Jones fan fiction. This morning I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and IndyMac. Let’s start with a little background. Fannie and Freddie are federally chartered entities that buy mortgages from the banks and mortgage companies that write them. The original mortgage holder gets (most of) their money right away instead of waiting 30 years, so they have the money to lend to somebody else in a neighborhood like yours. IndyMac...

Today we learned that in June, our economy lost roughly 62,000 jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Along with this, we learned that even more jobs were lost in May than initially thought. The unemployment rate is remaining stable at 5.5% — this has to do with the very narrow BLS definition of “unemployed” (you had a full time job, you lost it, you aren’t working at all, and you are actively looking for work). Keep in mind, May and June are a time when our...

Thanks to the miracle technology of RSS feeds, I am able to look at hundreds of news stories, blog commentaries, and cute pictures of kittens every day. One of my favorite news sources is the Christian Science Monitor. Their research is solid, the coverage in-depth, and despite the things implied by their name, they are very low on bias. Today, the CSM asks “Can McCain Deliver His Home State?” And they ask, conceding at the outset that Senator McCain “consistently gets 80 percent...

Let me start by extending congratulations to Senator Obama and Senator McCain as the presumptive nominees for their respective parties. And thank whatever Deity you like that the primaries are over! But now the time to throw stones is over; the time to gather stones together is begun. They can throw them at the other party later. Senator McCain has the relatively quiet task of selecting a running mate. For Senator Obama, the task is more complicated. He first has to find a way to turn Senator...

This morning, financial news channel CNBC was kind enough to point out that “The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said the final reading in May for its index of confidence fell to 59.8 from April’s 62.6, slightly above the median expectation of 59.5 in a Reuters survey of economists. May’s reading was the lowest since 58.7 in June 1980….” That’s right, consumer confidence hasn’t been this low since, well, since oil was at record high...