Month: November 2008

That’s what the shipping companies want:

The pirate-infested waters off of east Africa are huge — more than 1.1 million square miles. So rather than trying to patrol that whole, enormous area, tanker owners’ association president Peter Swift suggests "putting a blockade around Somalia and introducing the idea of intercepting vessels leaving Somalia rather than to try to protect the whole of the Gulf of Aden."

Elkhart, Indiana, 12.30 pm.

Barnett likes Jim Jones:

…with Jones (a figuratively and literally towering figure) as national security adviser, I see the strongest, most credentialed player in that post since Kissinger-the-realized. I don’t see him taking that job only to be as weak a coordinator as Rice and Hadley, meaning it won’t be years until solutions like the Iraq surge are finally allowed to emerge (Seriously, how can you take those two seriously in the post when both expressed such awe at Bush’s intellect? I would never want anyone in that gatekeeper role who held my intellect in awe–just a bad idea.). I would also expect him to work well with Petraeus.

Greg Mankiw doesn’t understand why Obama’s stimulus program costs so much.

A reader writes:

This a false dilemma. We could have restructured the sanctions regime, and Colin Powell signaled that the State Department was interested in doing so prior to 9/11. One bad policy does justify another bad policy. Universe x being better situated than universe y does not necessarily justify the choices that created universe x.

Even if a net amount of lives were saved, that doesn’t necessarily make it worth it, given the huge costs to the U.S. in terms of global strategic positioning and international credibility.

The case for the Iraq War, in short, cannot be assessed in terms of whether one universe is more desirable than another. It has to be assessed with all possible universes in mind, including one in which an administration more responsible than Bush’s or Clinton’s restructures the sanctions regime to make it more humane.

Ramesh Ponnuru seconds Pethokoukis:

Obama’s health-care plan is designed to evolve into a national health-insurance program along the lines of Canada’s. The resulting government monopoly or near-monopoly on health insurance would stifle innovation, require bureaucratic rationing, and infringe on freedom. But it would also move American politics permanently leftward … the inevitable disappointments and failures of a nationalized system would just as inevitably be blamed on underfunding, creating a bidding war that liberals would usually win … the creation of a new system would make free-market alternatives look more radical to the public than they do now, because they would be more radical. The public’s aversion to risk, which now hurts advocates of liberal policies as much as it helps them, would only help them.  So national health insurance could be a lasting political success for liberals even if it is a colossal policy failure; it could, indeed, succeed politically because of its failures.

Vital Kamerhe, president of the National Assembly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, speaks to Spiegel about the war in the country:

We need international troops to protect the populace. There also needs to be political talks with Nkunda and diplomatic efforts to restore the relationship between Congo and Rwanda. That will take time. To begin with we hope for an EU-contingent — 850 men can help stop a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Big Picture has photographs. This photo is of a burnt child victim of the violence by Uriel Sinai/AFP/Getty.

A reader writes:

Regarding Peter Klein, a few points,

• Ford has owned a majority stake in Mazda for decades. Nearly every vehicle in Mazda’s lineup is platform shared with a Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, or Volvo.
• Until last year GM was the majority stake holder in Subaru. GM sold off their shares to Toyota. Ditto Isuzu.
•  Mitsubishi has been kept afloat for decades by Chrysler. In the 80’s and 90’s about half of the entire lineup at Chrysler was platform shared with Mitsubishi. Engines and transmissions are still shared today.
•  Toyota and GM share a factory in California. The factory produces the Toyota Corolla, Toyota Matrix, and Pontiac Vibe.

BMW has used GM automatic transmissions on and off for years. BMW paid GM to develop the automatic transmission in the BMW 5-series and Cadillac CTS.

GM, Chrysler, and Mercedes Benz have a joint venture to build hybrid powertrains.

 Chrysler alone, backing out of a deal to buy automatic transmissions, forced transmission manufacturer Getrag into bankruptcy. Getrag supplies transmissions for every auto manufacturer.

 Ford and Nissan buy their hybrid technology from Toyota. 

All of the auto manufacturers share suppliers. Any one of the Domestic 3 failing would likely take out the other two and severely damage the foreign owned companies ability to continue to operate here. That’s not to say they don’t need to reorganize, but to even do that they have to be able to make payroll and buy materials. That is what this loan is about. Additionally, to the foreign governments who are planning to protest any bailout by the US government as unfair to imports, the imports have been getting their own “bailout” for years via socialized medicine and other government subsidies.

Be careful:

Pot was criminalised in 1985.  It is true that the ban is not enforced very rigidly, and another derivative of the cannabis plant, "bhang", is (I believe) legal in some parts of India and widely used on festive occasions.  But pot is illegal and can land you a 10 year jail term. Legally, I believe, it is not a lesser offence than using the harder drugs. Here’s a 12 year old article, but I don’t think anything has changed since then.

Confirmation here.