Staring at Strangers

Gaza in Davos

If you've got nothing to do for an hour and ten minutes, this is worth viewing on C-Span.  Watch Israeli Pres. Shimon Peres, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan & Arab League Sec. Gen. Amr Moussa participate in a panel on “Gaza – The Case for Middle East Peace” at the World Economic Forum this past Thursday in Davos, Switzerland.  Each participant makes his point (and I found it very interesting to hear all of the diverse viewpoints in one sitting), but when Peres, as the last speaker, gets a resounding applause from the audience, the Turkish Prime Minister can't handle it and walks out.

The Turkish Prime Minister stated that he didn't think that he would come back to Davos because Peres had 25 minutes to speak and he had only half that time, and then he promptly walked out.  I checked the video, and he had 16 minutes compared to 21 minutes of Peres, and an additional 2-3 minutes after Peres where he tried not very effectively to make a counter-argument, so the difference in time was negligible.

Technorati Tags: Gaza, Shimon Peres, Israeli President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish Prime Minister, Amr Mousssa, Arab League Secretary, Middle East, peace, Davos, World Economic Forum

Making Partner in a Law Firm Becomes a Demotion

Today's  Wall Street Journal reports that some top law firms, facing declining business, are tapping partners for cash.  In addition to law firms asking their partners for cash or withholding certain partnership distributions, DLA Piper converted more than 200 nonequity partners into equity partners, requiring them to contribute more than $100,000 each to the firm as part of their partnership obligations.

Nice trick.  Raise funds by making a bunch of lawyers partners.  I remember when making partner was a great honor, the culmination of many years of hard work.  Now it's a way for a law firm to raise cash when business is bad.

Technorati Tags: lawyers, partner, partnership, financing

When Men Were Men

Read the obit of James Swett, a Marine fighter pilot who died at age 88, in today's The New York Times, if you want to travel back to a time when men were men. 

In World War II Lieutenant Swett downed seven Japanese bombers in one day with his trusty Wildcat fighter plane.  With his left wing hit, he attacked an eighth Japanese bomber, but its tail gunner fired on him, shattering his windshield and wiping out his engine.  Here's an excerpt from the Times' obit on what happened next:

Lieutenant Swett ditched in the sea, and then came another harrowing experience.

“I was cut up around the face by flying glass,” he told The Oregonian, the newspaper in Portland, in 1991. “I made a good water landing, but my shoulder straps were too loose and I hit my head on the instrument panel and broke my nose. I struggled to get out of the cockpit as the plane sank, but my parachute straps got caught and dragged me under. I don’t know how deep I was before my life raft inflated and popped me to the surface.”

A Coast Guard boat approached.

As Edward H. Sims told it in “Greatest Fighter Missions,” one of the crewmen shouted, “Are you an American?”

Lieutenant Swett replied, “Damn right I am.”

He was taken to a nearby harbor, and given Scotch and morphine to ease his pain.

Scotch and morphine - I think that's listed somewhere in the Physician's Desk Reference.  If not, it ought to be.  I'm sure it did the job.

Lieutenant Swett received the Medal of Honor for shooting down those seven Japanese bombers that day, and he didn't have a computer or an iPod on board to help him make his score, just some machinery and his wits. 

Technorati Tags: James Swett, Medal of Honor, morphine, Scotch, Japanese, bombers, Wildcat, World War II

You Read It Here First!

In my October 11, 2008 SAS post, The Financial Crisis: Here's What's Next, one of the things I predicted was that "hedge funds will be illegal."  Well, check out this paragraph from today's New York Times' article Obama Plans Fast Action to Tighten Financial Rules:

Other elements of the regulatory overhaul, such as the requirement that hedge funds register with and be more closely supervised by the S.E.C., would mark a sharp departure from the policies of the Bush administration. Many hedge funds now voluntarily register and subject themselves to some regulation, but the Bush administration opposed attempts to make registration and tighter oversight mandatory, even though that was proposed by William H. Donaldson, a chairman of the commission appointed by President George W. Bush.

Perhaps my use of the word "illegal" was a bit extreme, but my guess is that after the implementation of these new regulations, hedge funds will be hedge funds in name only.  The basis for my prediction in my original post was simple, "Outlaw hedge funds and you eliminate a major destabilizing force of the markets."

So the world is finally catching up to my post from back in October of '08.  Stay tuned and I'll see what other predictions I can conjure.

Technorati Tags: hedge funds, prediction, Obama

Obama 1, Secret Service 0

In my post Hacking the  President, I wrote about President Obama's battle to keep his Blackberry.  It looked like Obama was going to lose on this one, with both his lawyers and the Secret Service insisting that the President using a Blackberry would be a threat to national security. 

Well, turns out, in the first major victory of his presidency, Obama got his way.  The New York Times reports today that the key security issues have been addressed, and President Obama will become the first emailing Commander in Chief. 

What are the restrictions?  First, there will be a very limited group of people who will have his email address, and each one of those first will have to be briefed by the White House counsel's office.  I wonder what the briefing will be like.  What is there to say?  "Be really careful what you write because every word will be subject to subpoena.  No dirty jokes or slander."  Gee, how much fun is this going to be?

Over the next four years there certainly will be a status contest to see who can get on "The List" which will put those lucky members in direct electronic communication with the President, whether they have something important to say or not.  As a lobbyist, just knowing someone who is on the list will translate into significant consulting fees.

I'm not being too cynical for anyone here, am I?

Technorati Tags: Obama, Blackberry, Secret Service, email

You Know, Billy, We Blew It

Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. 

Yesterday’s inaugural hoopla left me shaking my head. And even more so after hearing people whom I once respected talk about how they were weeping with joy, filled with excitement, and practically having orgasms over Obama. Enough already!

We blew it. P.J. O’Rourke said it better than I ever could.

 

Technorati Tags: conservatism, Obama, P.J. O'Rourke

Don't "Dis" the President

Today's inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States augurs great hope and expectations, perhaps greater than for any other incoming U.S. President since, dare I say it, John F. Kennedy. 

However, the man is mortal, and he won't be able to please everyone.  No politician can make everyone happy, and if they try, they usually make no one happy.  To be an effective leader you have to be prepared to take clear, decisive action, which always upsets some people, even if it's the best course of action.

Then there is the situation he is walking into.  Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin put it best in today's New York Times when he said, "Mr. Obama is going to have one heck of a first day on the job."

So there will be those who will be disenchanted, disappointed, and displeased.  But I say give the man a chance, show some support, and don't go having a fit if on Mr. Obama's first day in office rainbow unicorns don't come flying out of his ass.

Have I made myself clear?

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, inauguration, John F. Kennedy, hope, disappointment

In Search of the Authentic

Do you call that a shrimp taco? A Buenos Aires Mexican restaurant made the mistake of serving that to food maven and proprietor of Casa SaltShaker Dan Perlman. Read on about his bizarre Mexican food experience.

What passes for Mexican food arrives in some strange incarnations in other parts of the world. I’ve been served tamales bathed in brown gravy in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and I’ve eaten enchiladas swathed in molten yellow cheese and floating in what had to have been Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup. But the strangest was a plate of tacos I was served at a chichi restaurant calling itself Mexican in Ortaköy, an Istanbul suburb. The tortillas resembled crepes, and they were filled with canned corn and fresh, raw peas.

Technorati Tags: Mexican cuisine, tacos, Casa SaltShaker

Life in a Cultural Capital of the World

Rio de Janeiro

Glasgow, Scotland

Barcelona

Helsinki

Michoacán

Luxembourg

Peru

Singapore

Christchurch, New Zealand

Denver

So sayeth Forbes magazine. I always knew there was good reason for loving and living in Michoacán.

 

Technorati Tags: Michoacan, cultural capital, top ten lists

MAD Humor

Mad Magazine used to be a favorite read of mine in my formative years.  It's been a long time since I've looked at it.  I think maybe about 10 years I looked over an issue lying around someone else's house and it looked pretty juvenile.  I guess, as Peter Pan says to Wendy at the end of the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan, I was "too old." Too old to appreciate the humor that I loved so much as a boy.

Well,  stop the presses.  Either Mad Magazine has sharpened its humor, or I've just relaxed a bit, because the February 2009 edition (#498) is a hoot.  The cover, with the title "OBAMA - The First 100 Minutes," features an illustration of Barack Obama with four cigarettes sticking out of his mouth and a fifth in his hand as he presses his hands against his head with newspaper headlines spread out in front of him about everything from the stock market crashing to a "New Taliban Threat!"  

I won't go thru all of Mad Magazine's version of Obama's first 100 minutes in office (or some of the other articles which are pretty funny as well), but here are a few of my favorites:

Minute 25: Go on Facebook; put out a friend request to Ahmadinejad (with no preconditions)

Minutes 31-34: Sneak out to Rose Garden for a quick smoke (there are several of these throughout the 100 minutes)

Minute 43: Send mother-in-law packing to an "undisclosed location."

Minutes 53-57: Send note to every girl who rejected him in high school on stationary marked "Office of the President of the United States."

Minutes 91-99: Do a little blow.

Minute 100: Call John McCain, see if he's still interested in the job.

The stuff is cute.  I don't know, maybe my humor got better or worse over the years, but I feel good that I can still appreciate an issue of Mad Magazine.

Technorati Tags: Mad Magazine, Barack Obama