Month: November 2011

Question? askandrew@thedailybeast.com Video archive here.

Based on a Fast Company survey last month showing that African Americans make up only 1.6 percent of Occupy Wall Street, Stacey Patton explores why more of them aren't protesting:

Black America’s fight for income equality is not on Wall Street, but is a matter of day-to-day survival. The more pressing battles are against tenant evictions, police brutality and street crime. This group doesn’t see a reason to join the amorphous Occupiers.

Walter Russell Mead wonders why the media's been so quiet:

Black failure to attend right wing demonstrations appears to be a mysterious matter demanding detailed investigation, but there is nothing to discuss when they shun left wing ones.  Moreover, a relative absence of Black faces in right wing crowds clearly demonstrates the racism of both the protesters and their ideas, while an absence of Black faces in left wing crowds means — absolutely nothing.

(Photo: Occupy Wall Street activists march through downtown Manhattan after police removed the protesters early in the morning from Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011 in New York City. By Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Edward Jay Epstein believes so:

At 1:31—one hour after Diallo had first told a supervisor that she had been assaulted by the client in the presidential suite—Adrian Branch placed a 911 call to the police. Less than two minutes later, the footage from the two surveillance cameras shows [Brian Yearwood, the hotel’s chief engineer] and an unidentified man walking from the security office to an adjacent area. This is the same unidentified man who had accompanied Diallo to the security office at 12:52 PM. There, the two men high-five each other, clap their hands, and do what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes. They are then shown standing by the service door leading to 45th Street—apparently waiting for the police to arrive—where they are joined at 2:04PM by Florian Schutz, the hotel manager.

The hotel is denying any grand conspiracy:

The Sofitel specifically challenged the article’s assertion that two of its employees were caught on video celebrating for three minutes. “In fact, the incident in question lasted only 8 seconds and both employees categorically deny this exchange had anything to do with Mr. Strauss-Kahn,” the hotel’s statement said.

A source familiar with the hotel's evidence, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Beast that all security-video footage was reviewed again this weekend and that two employees were questioned in connection with the Review article. The two employees said they couldn’t recall the exact reason for their fleeting celebratory behavior but that they believed it may have involved sports, which they frequently talked about, the source said.

Nate Silver compiles the evidence. Bottom line:

What I think is fair to say is that Mr. Gingrich would at least have a shot at winning New Hampshire if he also wins Iowa, a result that could be devastating to Mr. Romney’s campaign.

The DNC mercilessly pummels Mitt:

It's the kind of ad a Republican would gleefully use against a Democrat. But J.P. Green questions the timing:

I gather the strategy behind the ad is that Mitt Romney is the GOP's most formidable opponent for President Obama, and weakening him now could help one of the more vulnerable Republican candidates get the GOP nod, thereby improving Obama's reelection prospects. The strategy is a bit risky in any case. The GOP has other candidates who are electable in a declining economy, despite the clown show of recent months.

A shorter, punchier, funnier version of the ad – now running in five states and DC – can be seen below:

Nate Silver ponders Romney's endorsement dominance and his polling weakness:

Gaps of this magnitude [between endorsements and polling] are not common historically. Unless the measures are brought into better alignment in the next several weeks, 2012 will represent a key test between competing political science theories about how nominations are decided. Do party officials lead the process, eventually coaxing the voters to their preferred candidates? Or has popular support become the key driver and grown more immune to the establishment? 

The latter, surely. Remember Clinton-Obama last time around?

The digital currency has seen better days:

Beyond the most hardcore users, skepticism has only increased. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote that the currency’s tendency to fluctuate has encouraged hoarding. Stefan Brands, a former ecash consultant and digital currency pioneer, calls bitcoin “clever” and is loath to bash it but believes it’s fundamentally structured like “a pyramid scheme” that rewards early adopters. “I think the big problems are ultimately the trust issues,” he says. “There’s nothing there to back it up. I know the counterargument, that that’s true of fiat money, too, but that’s completely wrong. There’s a whole trust fabric that’s been established through legal mechanisms.”

Tyler Cowen wonders:

In fact it seems that early December has in general the cheapest prices of the year, not Black Friday. Dare I suggest that some people like waiting in those lines with their thermos cups and stale bagels.  

Yglesias says that "to get a really good deal on anything what you actually have to do is wait until after the shopping rush and see what excess inventory stores have that they're desperate to purge. "

Just because a food is advertised with a geographic location doesn't mean it was sourced from there:

As it happens, the tomatoes most visibly associated with San Marzano in the United States are actually grown in California, not Italy (although they are the same varietal). Indeed, the very concept of protected geographic origin is a tenuous one in the United States, which relies instead on trademarks that defend geo-specific brand names such as Boston Market (a national fast food chain based in Golden, Colorado) and Philadelphia Cream Cheese (manufactured by Kraft in Wisconsin) …