[UPDATE: Please note that I neither endorse nor condemn the Citi bailout here, only comment on the opportunities presented by the financial crisis we now face.] My grandfather, a small business entrepreneur, used to say, “Borrow a thousand dollars from the bank and the bank owns you; borrow a hundred thousand from the bank and you own the bank.” The times were simpler then. But if you add a few zeroes, as represented in the sometimes shaky yet astronomical loans made by major US lending...

Ann Althouse headlined a link to a news story this way: “Surgeons thought Rosemary Alvarez had a brain tumour, but on operating they found the worm.” Somehow, that made me think of this scene from ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’: Come to think of it, the Althouse headline, taken from the body of a BBC report, also looks like the lead-in for a Monty Python sketch. [This has been crossposted on my personal blog.]

Howard LaFranchi has some informed speculations. Those with whom LaFranchi spoke speculate that, owing to our own financial crisis, the one precipitated by falling oil prices in Iran, and the upcoming Iranian presidential election in which incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is, by no means, a shoo-in, Obama will take deliberate approach to confronting and eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The new president is, according to LaFranchi’s reporting, likely to seek new sanctions against...

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and his military henchmen will do anything to maintain power in their country, even preside over the unnecessary deaths by starvation and disease of hundreds of thousands of their countrymen. After losing a presidential election but declaring victory, Mugabe et al entered into a power-sharing standoff with actual winner Morgan Tsvangirai. Since then, a major new Zimbabwean humanitarian crisis has been brewing. The BBC reports that “nearly half the population”...

We read or hear the names of a plethora of countries every day. But I have to confess that as closely as I try to follow world news and foreign affairs, I can’t always identify the locations of some countries. In this era of globalization and of the projection of US power and influence, it seems sort of important for we Americans to be more aware of the world around us. After all, people in Yemen, Bahrain, and other places can’t avoid us or the influence of our culture. Today, the Middle...

For any incoming President, building a Cabinet team can be a bit like piecing together a puzzle. Even if you don’t begin with a nod to identity politics, pledging as Bill Clinton did during his transition to the presidency, to have a Cabinet that “looks like America,” presidents want to have teams that bring not only competence, but also allow them to placate various groups and interests. Yet, there’s more at play in putting together a Cabinet than completing a checklist. As...

Mitch Mitchell, drummer with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, has died. Here’s Mitchell on drums, along with John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards, doing one of Lennon’s White Album tunes. I love Ringo Starr’s drumwork on the original recording and in a way, Mitchell and Starr represent diametrically opposed approaches to drumming. Starr has always claimed to hate drum solos, insisting that his job as the rhythm section is to provide a backbeat. Mitchell, on the other hand,...

In June 2006, my denominational body required me to fill out an eighteen page document called Mobility Papers. Filling it out was a pain, but a necessary step to be taken after my wife and I had determined that, after what was then nearly sixteen years at our second parish, I needed to open myself to the possibility of being called to serve another congregation. I don’t deal well with paperwork and frankly, it took me longer to fill out the Mobility Papers than it does for me to fill out our...

And, by whom? “Your success here is assured. You’ve got youth, energy, humor, looks, and fun. That’s exactly what the English like.” What struck me in these words is how easily someone could have written them to one of the young Beatles. They had all of those attributes bundled in with their talent and so won over their fellow Brits, as their Command Performance before the Royals famously underscored. And the act about which the words above were spoken, in fact, became favorites of the...

Once upon a time, Republicans believed in limited government, civil liberties, restrained spending, and foreign policy realism. But, in courting the Religious Right, the party changed course dramatically. That change has been especially pronounced during the administration of George W. Bush. With the loss of the White House and the larger Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress that came about last Tuesday, will the GOP try to go back to the past to secure a better future?

I will probably blog more about this, but it’s is really intriguing. He won Jews and Roman Catholics and posted higher tallies from evangelical Protestants than John Kerry. Read the whole thing. [This has been crossposted at my personal blog.]

Did Sarah Palin lose the 2008 election for John McCain? It should first of all be said, that even before the meltdown of the financial markets in September, the 2008 presidential election was the Democrats to lose. President Bush’s approval ratings were in the tank and most people blamed the Republican Party for a host of perceived ills. And while I always believed that John McCain, because of his penchant for working with people from across the aisle, his strong record for frugal spending,...

John McCain delivers a classy concession speech with deep historical sensibilities and personal grace. [This was cross-posted on my personal blog.]

When the brave, visionary leaders of the new United States gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to form a more perfect union, they emerged with a Constitution. Amazing though it was, the Constitution was marred by an enormous and horrible flaw. Those brave, visionary leaders could not bring themselves to count the Black slaves who lived among them as more than three-fifth human nor could they give them a vote. Nor would the descendants of those slaves have the vote until the passage of the Voting Rights...

It looks like Jean Schmidt has dodged another bullet. In 2004, Schmidt lost her Republican primary bid for the Ohio State Senate. The loss was a source of glee for many of her fellow Republican activists in Clermont County, the mostly suburban, somewhat-rural county east of Cincinnati’s Hamilton County. In spite of having been a township trustee and a State Representative from the county’s most populous areas, she lost the county in that race. Her political career was seen as dead. But...

Fox News and NPR have called Ohio for Senator Obama. If that holds true, as I’m sure it will, the race is over. Back in January, 2007, I advocated having Ohio put at the very beginning of the primary process. That advocacy was under-girded by two key facts: * There have been 51 presidential elections since 1804. Ohio has voted with the winner 43 times, an unmatched predictor of electoral success, an 84.3% success rate. Since 1960, that rate goes to 92% and since 1972, when the parties began...

Fox News has just called Ohio for Barack Obama. That’s not a surprise. I live in Hocking County, an hour southeast of Columbus, in the midst of the state’s 22 Appalachian counties. This area is represented by a Democrat in Congress and went for Hillary Clinton in the Ohio primary. White, working-class Appalachians were seen as Hillarycrats or PUMAs, voters who would bolt the Democratic Party and Barack Obama to vote for John McCain today. But in the weeks running up to today’s election,...

My projection of Electoral College… Obama: 409 McCain: 128 [Cross-posted at my personal blog]

If the election day goes as expected, come January 20, a Democratic president will be supported by an overwhelmingly-Democratic Congress. When something like this happens, as it has with less frequency in recent decades, it’s the closest we get to a parliamentary system in the United States. Under a parliamentary system, of course, the majority party or parties who form majority coalitions to control the legislative mechanism of a country, “form a government,” installing legislators...

The moment that Vice President Dick Cheney gave his public endorsement of John McCain and Sarah Palin for president and vice president on Saturday, the Obama campaign talked it up and went to work producing a commercial touting it. It’s understandable why the Obama folks would want to call attention to Cheney’s nod for McCain and Palin. Cheney has even lower approval ratings than President Bush and viewed suspiciously by Americans for his secretiveness, his alleged tweaking of intelligence...