Toyama Koichi campaign video

Via Japundit, this is a pretty funny campaign video from the Tokyo Governor’s race of a few years ago. Apparently, Toyama got 15,000 votes.

Obama’s struggles with smoking

To mark the signing of anti-smoking legislation this week, New York magazine goes back through public statements by the President and others about his smoking.

New York’s summer of 1969

Forty years later, John Koblin revisits the summer of 1969 in the New York Observer.  John Lindsay’s reelection hopes were intertwined with the fortunes of the Mets, and boosted by a visit from Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

Eating at some of my favorite places

The President and First Lady went to Citronelle in Georgetown last weekend.  It’s been a year or so since we’ve been there.  Might be time to go again. 

Obama and Biden went to Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington last Monday. Ray’s is not a “burger joint,” as in the news reports. It’s kind of foofy. You can get foie gras on a burger.  But as an eating experience it’s really transcendent, the fulfillment of the steakhouse burger only not in a steakhouse. 10 ounces, cooked to the “warm red center” temperature.

Regrets and hopes from Kim Jong Il’s former tutor

Now a professor at George Mason University near DC, Kim Hyun Sik recalls his time tutoring the Dear Leader in Russian, as well as his feelings of hope and despair about his country’s fate, in Foreign Policy.

 

Kim Jong Il

Geopolitics and geographical determinism

In Foreign Policy, Robert Kaplan argues that geopolitical realism is back in style, and that more attention should be paid to geographic factors in analyzing that reality.

Economics: Why the crisis wasn’t anticipated

Richard Posner’s essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education explores the social and political psychology that prevented the government from anticipating and preventing the housing bubble bust and the resulting crisis in the financial sector.  

It’s a good essay. While Posner focuses on myopia in the time immediately preceding the financial crisis (after it was already clear that the bubble had burst), another theme that’s interesting to me is the political system actively resisting steps that could have prevented some of the worst excesses (e.g. regulatory reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).

Also, Posner proposes that a financial/economic intelligence unit be created, which would have access to the books of all financial institutions. I wonder. The track record of political-military intelligence services in accurately foreseeing events and/or convincing the political leadership to take action is not stellar.

Incarceration and race in America

This month on the Cato Unbound site, there is an interesting debate on incarceration and race in America, with a lead-off essay by Glenn Loury and responses by James Q. Wilson, Bruce Western, and John Lott. I haven’t been through all of it yet, but there’s lots of provocative stuff.

President Obama with Wizards jersey

This is from Bulls-Wizards game he attended earlier this month.  Neat picture.

Inside Obamanomics

This piece from about a week ago in New York magazine looks at the Obama Administration’s economic team and where policy is headed.

Some of the policy discussion has been overtaken by events, as more detailed plans to deal with toxic assets held by banks were announced last week.

The discussion about the central personalities–Treasury Secretary Geithner and National Economic Council Chair Summers–remains interesting and relevant. The author also does a good job of setting the broader context of how the new administration’s policies represent a departure from Rubinomics as well as from the policies of the last several Republican administrations.