A Second Hand Conjecture

Texas leads the way with 18 protests and 64,000 attendees.

2 Comments »

I’m at the Houston tea party downtown right now. Over 1000 people easy (update: closer to 10,000). Definitely an experience. I can’t even get close enough to see the stage. Previous speaker was pretty good at firing up the crowd tossing out lots of slogans and popular pro-American sentiments. Speaker now it a bit more academic. Out of the Ron Paul mold, referring to mises and Austrian economics. Giving a historical tax lecture. Protest babes when I get home. Update: More pictures below the fold (more…)

No Comments »

A pretty comprehensive list for Texas here. I roughly estimate around 64 protests planned for just Texas. You’ll note that other states are listed on the right. I’m closer to the Sugarland one and may check it out. I’m curious to see just how big it will be, especially considering there’s about 4 other Tea Party protests planned for the Greater Houston area.

1 Comment »

Kinda. Basically the city of Houston wants to take public money and give it to private individuals to help them pay off loans and improve their credit scores to help them get approved for a mortgage loan. Judging from the comments, the public is not reacting positively to this.

Credit scores do actually mean something and they are used for a reason. They’re a reflection of your financial trustworthiness and giving people tax payer money to improve their score isn’t going to magically make them actually responsible and trustworthy. Government can’t just treat loan standards and credit scores like some game where they’ve found the cheat code, it creates problems, just ask Freddie and Fannie Mae and their subprime loans.

Edit: Mayor Bill White has removed the city council’s agenda.

Council members are now professing their “embarrassment” about the proposal, which has hit the national news circuit, including drudgereport.com.

“This issue has hit a nerve across this country,” said Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck. “Not just here in the city of Houston. Giving people the ability to increase their credit score artificially because we’re allowing them to pay off their credit cards is exactly what got us into this (national economic) crisis in the first place.”

No Comments »

People are finding out that you have to be careful what you wear to the polling booth.

The 40-year-old Houston Realtor was wearing one of her souvenir T-shirts when she went to cast her ballot at a Cypress polling place Oct. 26. A poll worker told her she would have to change the shirt if she wanted to vote.

Hurley, who votes in every election, is familiar with poll site etiquette. She knows not to wear campaign paraphernalia. She’s never run into trouble before.

What, she asked, was wrong with her light blue cotton T-shirt, emblazoned with a moose head, fishing poles, and the words “Seward, Alaska”?

The word “Alaska,” a poll worker answered.

“She said it could be misconstrued as support for a candidate,” Hurley said.

She argued with the poll worker, but neither one backed down. The worker told Hurley she could go into the bathroom and flip her shirt inside-out. She even offered duct tape to cover the offending word. Hurley refused. Finally, outraged, she stormed out of the polling place.

“I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t let me vote because of my vacation T-shirt,” Hurley said this week. “Every time I talk about it, my blood boils.”

Cooler heads prevailed in the parking lot, and a campaign volunteer urged Hurley to check with the precinct judge overseeing the polling site.

The judge took a look at the shirt and let her vote. She didn’t even need duct tape.

Of course there’s other solutions too

During early voting, the clerk’s office got a report of a woman who showed up to a polling place in west Harris County wearing an Obama T-shirt.

She was told she could cover the shirt up, turn it inside out, or not wear it. She chose not to wear it, and voted in her bra.

No Comments »

Hey guys. I’m still here and everything is fine. Had a small leak in my ceiling but otherwise no damage. Got power and water back Sunday, but there are still 1.5 million without, including my mother and sisters. Gas is scarce and as soon as a station gets a shipment in there’s lines down the street. I’ll upload some pictures I took in a later update.

No Comments »

(Houston Chronicle)

2 Comments »

(photo: 2 Dogs)

Modern China has a curious capacity to make otherwise very sensible capitalists instantly forget every experience they’ve ever had with government central planning. The Western businessman on a trip to Shanghai looks up and sees all those gleaming skyscrapers going up on the Yangtze, and he thinks massive state planning must be different somehow in the People’s Republic. It isn’t.

(more…)

No Comments »

The current dust-up over the Cuban-Che flag (flags?) hanging in the Houston campaign office for Barack Obama (opened by supporters, with actual staffers intended to occupy by next week), has spawned some interesting commentary. Captain Ed advised:

Oh, my. Barack Obama may want to call his new Houston office and suggest some decorating ideas…No, that’s not a Texas state flag with a picture of Obama on it. It’s the flag of the Castro-led Cuba regime, with Che Guevara’s face superimposed on the side. A Fox report from Houston captured this image as it showed Obama supporters celebrating his momentum after Super Tuesday.

Does Obama know his Houston supporters honor a terrorist in his campaign office? I’m sure he doesn’t. However, it would behoove him to ensure that the flag gets taken down and that he renounces any affinity for Che and the Fidel Castro regime.

I really doubt that Obama has any idea either. But this is campaign season, and his refusal to wear a flag pin or put his hand on his heart during the pledge of allegiance opens him up to attack based on this sort of miscue by his supporters. I really don’t care about the flag pin (I don’t wear one either), but the hand-over-the-heart petulance does raise legitimate questions, IMHO.

In any case, the leftosphere is accusing the rightosphere of having apoplectic fits over this, and using “Rovian Swiftboaters,” with their prime target being Captain Ed (my emphasis).

Oh darn those college volunteers with their affinity for hacky-sack & Che Guevara!

It’s going to be another long, reality-deprived year from the GOP Operatives. Apparently, some young volunteer for the Obama campaign had the temerity to set up an office in Texas BEFORE Obama’s actual staffers arrived in Texas. This included someone taking something off their dorm room wall, a Cuban flag with a picture of Che Guevara on it. This sent Captain Ed to the nitro tablets and asthma respirator.

It seems someone hasn’t been on a college campus in thirty-five years. Where youthful affectation with revolucion long ago replaced pictures of “Happiness is a Warm Puppy”. Oh those kids today with their I-Phones, their I-Pods, and their I-deas.

Up next, college-age Hillary Volunteer wears “Bush Sucks” T-Shirt. Ed Morrissey faints.

James Joyner attempts to the split the difference:

[Captan Ed is] right that Che is a terrorist who shouldn’t be honored by decent people. Che worship (or, alternatively, the wearing of Che t-shirts as a statement without the slightest clue of who he was) seems to be a phase that certain left-leaning activists go through in their youth; it generally passes. Driscoll’s characterization of it as “juvenilia” is spot on.

But, surely, Obama doesn’t need to publicly weigh in on the decorating choices of every low level staffer? Let alone “renounce” affinities which he’s never shown?

I sure didn’t take from Captain Ed’s post (or Charles Johnson’s) that he wanted Obama to take a loyalty oath (as Joyner later suggests), and I’m not sure why suggesting that Obama distance himself from such an idiotic display of anti-Americanism is going beyond the pale. Captain Ed was simply encouraging Obama to have his Sister Souljah moment, which seems like pretty good political advice.

But the most irritating thing about the apologia is the persistent inference that this was a youthful transgression. First of all, take a look at the picture and point out to me where this “youth” is. Do you see any college kids in that picture? Are there no adults in charge there? Don’t the women in the picture bear some responsibility here?

Secondly, why should anyone be even remotely complacent about the seemingly accepted fact that “youths” have no compunction about displaying the likeness of a mass murderer in the dorm rooms, on the their chests, and in their volunteer headquarters? Have we just given up on teaching any semblance of what’s right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable? If the flag was instead a revolucion flag from Chile with Pinochet’s hirsute mug gracing it, would the left be as complacent about that? How about Mao or Pol Pot? Is Mugabe OK, or Hugo Chavez? Where exactly does the line get drawn for which statist terrorists may grace the clothing and walls of “youths” before it becomes a fashion faux pas?

Oh, and for the record, here’s a little history on the source of that flag:

I came across a flag which is very usual in demonstantions and events of the youth organization of the portuguese communist party (J.C.P. / P.C.P.). It consists of a cuban flag defaced with the likeness of the mythical communist hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara. A similar flag, all red with black elements and bearing at times the cuban slogan “hasta la victoria siempre” (”towards the victory, always”). I’m not sure if any of these are used by communists anywhere else, namely in Cuba, but it is most likely.
Antonio Martins, 26 December 1999

This non-Cuban “Che flag” is or was, according to Jaume Olle’, used by a ultra left guerrilla group in Guatemala. I used darker colours because flags appear with darker colours. These flags are, of course, unofficial, so the shade here is basicaly a matter of taste, but they are usually used with darker colours than those we have in the Cuban national flag.
Jorge Candeias, 27 December 1999

Getting back to the genesis of this story, I really doubt that this will have much of an effect on Obama’s campaign. Those whom are already against an Obama presidency, aren’t going to be any further swayed by the fact that he has the support of communist sympathizers. By the same token, neither are those on the left with an affinity for Obama (even if they are voting for Hillary) going to be moved, since they seem to have little problem with communist sympathizers being in their midst (to their eternal shame, I might add). And anyone who is part of the undecided middle in this race, probably isn’t even going become aware of this little fiasco, since they likely don’t pay much attention to politics outside what they here on the evening news.

Indeed, the only real eye-opener here is that apparently a number of people think that mythical-Marxist hero worship is nothing more than a college kid fad, and they’re okay with the next generation being that stupid. I guess I’m just not.

8 Comments »

Gas flaring in the Niger Delta (photo: Ellie)

John Ghazvinian is a journalist and historian of considerable insight into African affairs. He also happens to have written one of the best recent books on the emergent international struggle for African petroleum: Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil (the paperback edition is due out in April). Whilst being an enormously valuable investigation of a very serious issue, it is also a page-turning and literate adventure into exotic and dangerous places. Indeed, one that’s practically impossible to put down once you’ve picked it up.

As John writes therein, since 1990 the oil industry has invested $20 billion in oil exploration and production in Africa, with $50 billion more planned before 2010. Over the next five years Chevron alone is devoting $20 billion in investment for Africa. Taken collectively, this exercise represents the largest commercial investment in African history. But such a spectacular windfall for some of the world’s most impoverished countries can be a poisoned chalice, where the brutal economic forces of the so-called “resource curse” hollow out states, eviscerate agricultural economies and break traditional cultures.

Populous and promising Nigeria for example, is one of the oldest and most well established oil producing countries in Africa. But with the expansion of Nigeria’s oil extraction industry, she has seen only the systematic erosion of her economic and civil society. As well as witnessing the transformation of her oil bearing region in the Niger Delta (one of the richest in the world), into a vast social wasteland of extreme poverty, rapacious crime and guerrilla warfare. As John notes, “Nigeria” is now a shorthand expression in Africa for what everyone with oil desperately wants to avoid.

John took some time out of his morning yesterday to sit down with me for a telephone interview. We were able to discuss a variety of subjects related to issues raised in his book. Including among other things, US oil supply diversification, the political consequences of offshore exploration in the Gulf of Guinea, the resource curse and rentier states, instability and post-nationalist militancy in the Niger Delta, oil field subculture, the labor problem, Chinese energy strategy in Africa and the difficulty of talking about Africa “without lapsing into sanctimoniousness” (as John puts it in the preface of his book). As I did, I believe you’ll find this to be a rather rewarding and unconventional discussion.

(more…)

9 Comments »

Yeah, that’s me after a few too many cocktails in the hotel lounge. As Lance related, I’m in Houston in the Texas Medical Center (TMC) visiting my father who recently had an internal defibrillator put on his heart. The surgery went remarkably well and he seems more lively than when he went under the knife on Thursday, but he’s trapped in the bureaucratic waiting-for-approval world of hospitalization that feels like standing in line at the DMV…only with your ass hanging out of a gown. Thus my mother and I keep him company during the day and sit starring at the hotel walls at night. I decided to start obliterating the time with vodka this evening, thanks to the encouragement of the medical-student bar staff who have seen this all before.

As always when I’m here, I’m struck by the bizarre experience of this health care city (and I’ve unfortunately been here a lot with Dad’s ongoing heart problems). The TMC is the largest medical district in the world, with one of the highest concentrations of hospitals, clinics, research centers and doctors anywhere (photo of the TMC’s rows and rows of hospitals). Just looking out my hotel window I can see the Texas Children’s Hospital, St. Luke’s Hospital, the Methodist Hospital, the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Baylor’s College of Medicine, Ben Taub Hospital, office tower after office tower of medical offices, research facilities…and seemingly perpetual construction for even more. There’s a boutique across the street for designer scrubs (the official uniform of this city-state) and almost every store/cafe/bar has a somewhat medical theme or is named after a famous surgeon, doctor or whathaveyou.

It’s a highly Ballardian place, full of sanitized winding corridors to nowhere, sterilized corporate conformity, multi-million dollar ugly sculpture, startlingly advanced high technology, foreign doctors nabbed from the world over, meticulously manicured lawns, smiling receptionists in vivid eyeshadow…and just beneath the surface –infecting the place with its sole purpose– life and death. Think Super-Cannes for physicians.

(more…)

6 Comments »