A sultan speaks

One hundred years ago, a story titled "Dying of Consumption" would most likely be about tuberculosis or other lung diseases.



We've done pretty well in making TB and a lot of those other contagious diseases very rare in the U.S.



But when it comes to our personal spending, it appeared as though the virus was slowly killing us.

So argues Steven S. Roach, chair of Morgan Stanley Asia.

As much as this recession hurts, it has finally compelled many Americans to cut back on spending -- which is a very good thing, he says.

Here are a few of the scary stats he cites:

As a share of disposable income, the personal saving rate fell from 5.7 percent in early 1995 to nearly zero from 2005 to 2007.

According to Federal Reserve calculations, net equity extractions from United States homes rose from about 3 percent of disposable personal income in 2000 to nearly 9 percent in 2006.

...As a result, household debt hit a record 133 percent of disposable personal income by the end of 2007 — an enormous leap from average debt loads of 90 percent just a decade earlier.

What does he recommend? No more tax cuts for now. Spending on infrastructure. Mandatory or incentive-driven savings. No tax increases associated with these mandatory savings.

I must confess that I was surprised to see Mr. Roach's byline -- I don't usually think of Morgan Stanley chairs as leading a rush to fiscal reform.

Given that today's progressive ideas can often become tomorrow's orthodoxy, it will be fascinating to see whether the new adminstration is listening.

Alex the gray parrot

There's a good reason the anti-abortion centers (crisis pregnancy centers is the term used by the movement) show women ultrasounds of the fetus. Once you can see that, at a fairly early stage of life, the fetus has a human form, it's much harder to get rid of it.

We don't eat cats and dogs, having developed relationships with them. I don't know if they still do so in China, but it is so beyond my ability to imagine that it seems almost impossible.

I'm thinking of giving Dr. Pepperberg's "Alex and Me" to some friends for Christmas this year.
Alex was the grey parrot that the doctor bought at a store and who became in some way her friend.

Here's a few paragraphs from the review in today's Times :

“Alex, the African gray parrot who was smarter than the average U.S. president, has died at the relatively tender age of 31,” read an obituary in The Guardian of London. “He could count to six, identify colors, understand concepts such as bigger and smaller and had a vocabulary of 150 words. To his supporters he was proof that the phrase ‘birdbrain’ should be expunged from the dictionary.”
As his owner and colleague, Dr. Pepperberg, writes in her charming new book, “Alex & Me,” the parrot she bought in a Chicago pet store in 1977 would help open a new window on the capacity of birds and other animals to think and communicate. "

See the review, linked above, to learn more about the bird who taught Dr. Pepperberg a lot about communication, and perhaps something about love.

Scary, isn't it? Communication can often usher in affection, and sometimes love. Then you take a look at some of the things you used to do without thinking-- and ask yourself whether you really want to do them anymore.

There's not one answer. But darn it, we need to at least do our some of animal companions the honor of trying to understand them...understanding us -- perhaps more than we know.

In our own backyard

My gut tells me to trust what Tom Friedman says, but my mind is telling me not to go there...yet.

He's been right so many other times (a bit too hopeful on Iraq, but otherwise on target), and he's not generally an a demagogue - so it might be smart to take it seriously when he does ring the alarm.

Here's a paragraph from today's column, linked above...

Right now there is something deeply dysfunctional, bordering on scandalously irresponsible, in the fractious way our political elite are behaving — with business as usual in the most unusual economic moment of our lifetimes. They don’t seem to understand: Our financial system is imperiled.

Given that a lot of the market panic is based on a lack of trust, Friedman argues that the President should install Tim Geithner at Treasury...next week. And that Congress should stay in session. And that we should not underestimate the hugeness of the problem... WMD, in the form of subprime mortages, that were buried in our own backyard.

What's out there?

It's scary how many primeval emotions "No Drama Obama" arouses among some people in America.

I became really aware of this while doing a post for "Get Religion" on a story by Lisa Miller of Newsweek. "Is Obama the Anti Christ?" blared the title. Not that there's any evidence that Miller believe this, of course.

But apparently there's a segment of the populace who believe that it's possible that Obama is the Beast who will bring in the Apocalypse.

When Al Quaeda leaders call Obama a "House Negro" we can shrug our shoulders--what else can we expect from an organization that hates us? But when Americans are writing into Rapture websites and wondering if this is the end times, we might want to be a little attentive.

According to stats Miller pulled from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one -third of white evangelicals believe the world will end in their lifetime -- and that's just the white ones!

What does this have to do with Obama? One commenter wrote that he thought Obama could be, if not THE Anti Christ, an anti-Christ.

He was mocked by other posters. But I have a feeling that a lot of us are walking around so pleased and proud that we are able to elect a black President that we don't notice that some other people are not only unhappy, which is par for the course...but that a much smaller number also see Obama as (gulp) evil.

As I've said here, I'm not a Bill Ayers fan (oh, that was a horrible transition). Although I'm glad he's come out to discuss his behavior as a Weatherman, I still think there's a whole heck of a lot he's not telling about what really went on with that group. And people who remember his misdeeds and the bombings well, which I do not, are really pissed.

I think what bugs me about him is that while I heard general regret, I didn't hear anything truly penitential in his tone. Instead, I heard that snarky kind of self-righteousness found most often in certain academic and political elites, both on the right and the left. Wouldn't it be easier just to say you are sorry and get on with your life?

But one thing the former Weatherman and now professor told Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" got my attention. He said he got death threats during the campaign. When Gross asked him if they had subsided after the election, he said no. They have increased.

There some strange stuff going on out there, and hopefully our law enforcement officials are paying attention. A lot of us aren't.

Even Bill Ayers, former bomber, finds himself on the right side of the law , friendly with his local police, and asking for their protection. What a difference 40 years makes.

PS -- Read (see link) today's Freakonomics column on why some counties went from red to scarlet for McCain. Dunno if he's right, but he takes apart the argument that this is simply all about racism and suggests the truth is more complicated.

But he too has drifted...

I'm linking a wonderful column from today's NYT. Written by conservative columnist Bill Kristol, "George W. Hoover" is a warning to Republicans: don't make the same mistakes you did in the 1930s! Or the perception of mistakes (grin)...

Take a look at this excerpt:

"I don’t pretend to know just what has to be done. But I suspect that free-marketers need to be less doctrinaire and less simple-mindedly utility-maximizing, and that they should depend less on abstract econometric models. I think they’ll have to take much more seriously the task of thinking through what are the right rules of the road for both the private and public sectors. They’ll have to figure out what institutional barriers and what monetary, fiscal and legal guardrails are needed for the accountability, transparency and responsibility that allow free markets to work.

And I don’t see why conservatives ought to defend a system that permits securitizing mortgages (or car loans) in a way that seems to make the lenders almost unaccountable for the risk while spreading it, toxically, everywhere else. I don’t see why a commitment to free markets requires permitting banks or bank-like institutions to leverage their assets at 30 to 1. There’s nothing conservative about letting free markets degenerate into something close to Karl Marx’s vision of an atomizing, irresponsible and self-devouring capitalism."

Less doctrinaire!

No kidding.

I can't often say that Bill and I are singing in the same choir,but I gotta tell ya, these words were music to my skeptical ears.

I also agree with the sentiment in the next paragraph. There's got to be some kind of regulation or perhaps some kind of punishment, beyond the inevitable trouble that occurs when bubbles burst. Sure there were many perps (many pimps, too) but a lot of people are the innocent victims of these drive-by market drunks.

The problem is: what kind of regulation would give the markets maximum freedom? Regulation of any kind is going to be like poison to some conservatives. If you truly believe that markets function best when everyone exercises their own self interests, then why should you have to have someone else checking up on you?

In a sense, I admire the purists -- being a devotee of unregulated markets is like being a totally committed atheist. It's very hard to remain devoted to a hard, no intervention perspective when all around you, you see a society in disarray from people who gamed the system.

By the way, I'm skeptical about Obama's disclosure forms, too ---you can't always screen for potential conflicts of interests. But I also admire him for trying.

Hillary encore

Relax and take a quick look at this nicely satirical piece by Gail Collins (link) -- one of the more serious questions she raises is: does Hillary have enough pantsuits to make a good Secretary of State?

But NAKED?

Last night Mr. C and I were on our way to the gym when "All Things Considered's" Melissa Block did her interview with the naked cyclist from Portland -- not Maine, that would be a little chilly.



Yes, I know some of you will stop reading right here. I considered changing radio stations, but there didn't seem to be anything too objectionable in the story. Colin was quiet, looking out the window.



This young man was arrested for cycling nude in his neighborhood at night. The judge dismissed the case.



In her soft voice, Melissa asked him what the families in the neighborhood might have thought, and whether perhaps he might have considered them before stripping and putting his feet in the stirrups. He didn't seem very open to that notion.

As they talked, it emerged that Portland has a yearly bicycle race -- look ma, no pants!
No shirt.

No umbrellas?

So, at the end, I said wryly to Mr. C -- Oh, these folks on the West Coast.

That's it, he said. I'm not going to Disney Land. I'll go to Disney World instead.

But they only cycle nude in Oregon, I said.

He wasn't going to see his Aunt Marilyn and visit one of the world's big amusement parks next summer because some folks in Oregon can't keep their pants on?

I'm not taking any chances, said Mr. C.