I like this format, which allows me to achieve several of my top goals for this blog: commenting on current events, predictions for the future, and blending in a bit of history. After awhile, I may actually get good at integrating the three meaningfully. For now, just a quick capture of this end-of-year moment:
Past: 2015--Six Noteworthy Things
1) President Obama: He defied the midterm Congressional defeat and accomplished a great deal in 2015, solely through executive initiatives and his national role as head of state. He defied the second-term jinx better than any President we have had in the last 50+ years (I'm thinking of Eisenhower as the last one who was able to maintain a semblance of effective governance through a second term).
2) 2014 Oscar nominees/winners (in February, 2015): "Birdman" and "Boyhood" were two of the best movies of recent years. The first was well-rewarded on Oscar night, the second, not so much (one Oscar for Patricia Arquette as Supporting Actress), but the fact it was even in the running was remarkable.
3) The Crisis in Europe: It took many forms, some very visible--the attacks in Paris (and follow-up battles in Copenhagen, Brussels), the refugee flood into Greece and other Balkan countries (and the counter-reaction from Hungary and some others), the Greek economic and political crisis--some not so clearly visible (the problems with the Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya to Sicily, in the Spanish enclaves near Morocco, in Calais in France), the development of future political crises in the U.K. and Spain. Through it all, Angela Merkel led Europe bravely, making her a good choice (not a great one) for Time's Person of the Year. I would've picked Pope Francis, but he'd already won recently.
4) Crispr, other true Science breakthroughs: Crispr is the abbreviation for Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats--I thought you would want to know. It is a technology that makes DNA editing much more readily possible, which could be used initially to counter diseases. Like other advances in genetics, it will have to be closely monitored for destructive possible uses. There seem to be similar breakthroughs coming against many forms of cancer, possibly against Alzheimer's. Medical research is starting to justify itself after decades of waste, co-optation by Big Pharma. And then there's the electric car, improved solar and wind energy, improved de-salination techniques, a new (but extinct) human species discovered, the fly-by of Pluto....
5) Trump and Sanders: I don't expect either of them to win the Presidential election in 2016, but they won the pre-election run-up in their political parties. Sanders has put on the table the issues we will be litigating for the next 20 years (as Jesse Jackson did 27 years ago), while Trump has updated demagogic politics for 21st-century media methods. Thanks for nothing special, The Donald!
6) American Pharaoh: A solid thoroughbred horse racing Triple Crown winner, he made it look pretty easy, then topped it off with a convincing win in the Breeders Cup Classic. One for the ages, ranks with Citation and Secretariat as the most successful American colts ever.
The Present: College Football
Tonight are the semifinals of the NCAA Division I men's college football playoffs. #1 Clemson vs. #4 Oklahoma, and #2 Alabama vs. #3 Michigan State. This should be a big deal, but it really isn't: the teams are all flawed to some extent (Clemson is the only undefeated one, but their ACC schedule really doesn't measure up; the other teams all had a pretty bad loss.) The fact that the NCAA chose to present the games on New Year's Eve suggests a loser's strategy: Many people, or even most, will be out of the house tonight, and they didn't dare take on the NFL's Game 17 weekend, even though it is pretty much a dud from the drama standpoint--I could see avoiding the NFL's Wild Card Weekend, one of the most popular sports events, but dodging this weekend is just lame.
I would expect Alabama and Oklahoma to win; I'll be rooting for the other guys: when faced with oppressive dominance, root for the underdog--it's a philosophy I've carried since the '60's (anti-Celtics, Yankees, Packers, though I have cooled a bit on my hate for them after several decades). The fact is, in order to make it to this level, Clemson and the top Big 10 teams (Michigan St., Ohio St., Iowa) have had to adopt the SEC's just-under-professional methods, so there's not much difference. Don't get me started about the NCAA's classless permission of the conferences' reorganization in the past few years. And, needless to say, I won't be watching.
College football is the worst offender in US sport, and I have no solution for it beyond the minor palliative of expanding the playoffs to six teams (note: the postseason college game that will interest me the most is #5 Iowa vs. #6 Stanford, to see which team has the most authentic rights to complain about the current system). The other big moneymaker of college sports, basketball, has the one-and-done problem, but also the positive, democratic aspect of March Madness: I would recommend the NBA develop a second level of D-League for McDonald's basketball high-school All Americans who don't want or need to go to college, fund it properly, and their problem will be solved. College football's go much deeper, and will require extensively reforms, along with ones in the NFL, to make the game other than "a brilliant mistake" (to quote one of Mr. McManus' best songs). The beauty of the long downfield pass, the blocked kick, or the breakaway run from scrimmage or on kick returns is undeniable, but unfortunately more than offset by the objectionable labor practices, the health risks, and the reactionary social environment associated with the sport.
2016: Looking Ahead
First of all, I think this will be a fun year in many ways. I should mention the Olympics, which will be in Rio, in August--a great idea, if the Brazilians can pull it off. It's not impossible; London managed the event well in 2012. However, Brazil is having major turmoil due to corruption in politics and in the sporting world, and their economy has crashed, due partially to the collapse in oil prices. At least US audiences will be able to watch many events, live, on several different channels--we should expect that the emerging capability to present several channels simultaneously on our sets will be utilized well.
Next, the 2016 elections should be a full-year source of interest, and, I believe, of encouragement by the end. I fully expect Hillary Clinton to win the election handily and become our first women's President in 2017, but it will be a bit of a wild ride until November (see below for a little worst-case scenario consideration). If she gets a big enough landslide, and the Republicans continue to self-destruct, the Senate should return to Democratic control, and the House will be much closer to even. This last, a much-reduced House majority, might give the GOP one last chance to try to get its act together and preserve its political power, but even without the House, control of the White House and the Senate (and the death or retirement of one of the Evil Axis of Roberts/Scalia/Thomas/Alito) could give modern reason a chance to break up the Supreme Court's hypocritical and repressive trend.
Now, for three downers: 1) US Economic Stormclouds: I think the domestic recovery will probably survive 2016, but just barely. The headwinds are growing now, in the form of a global slowdown, headlined by weakness in China, Japan, Russia, all the OPEC and emerging Markets, with weak support for economic recovery from Europe. The stock market in the US may signal future decline with a correction early in 2016.
2) Thinking the Unthinkable: A Trump victory would be a catastrophe for US' image in the world, so heavily damaged by Bushite Misrule and only partially salvaged by Obama's administration. Either Trump or Ted Cruz winning would signal America pulling up the welcome mat and joining the fencing club, which would seem the surest way to bring about a global economic depression and increased strife worldwide. With Marco Rubio, and to some extent even Hillary, we'd have to worry about the opposite: getting so deeply entangled in the Syria/Iraq mess that we would not be prepared to deal with emerging issues in the China Sea, with North Korea, between Israel and its neighbors. With any Republican, we can expect relations with Mexico, Russia, Iran, and all the predominantly-Muslim countries to collapse disastrously, and the Europeans will once again hold view us as ridiculous. My advice to President Obama is to work things out with Turkey and Erdogan, sooner rather than later: Turkey holds the key to containing and defeating ISIS, and to getting Assad on the way out; we need to deal with Erdogan pragmatically, as we did with Khamenei, working with and encouraging open-minded, democratic forces but tolerating results which sustain distasteful leaders with autocratic tendencies.
3) Cosby, 24/7: I think it's clear that we will be plagued with this news story on Greta van Susteren constantly, and on CNN, much too frequently, through all of the coming year. I would recommend a plea bargain, in which Cosby would agree to donate all the money he will otherwise waste on legal funds to some worthy feminist cause, and cop a plea immediately to a lesser charge (but accept the label of "sex offender", which is probably of nominal significance at this stage of his life). Of course, this won't happen: he seems to believe that winning his court case (which I would consider probable) would rehabilitate his image, and that is possible to the extent that it did for O.J. Simpson. Which is to say, not at all.
I wish for you, my loyal reader, a happy, healthy, and reasonably (but not excessively) prosperous 2016!
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Monday, December 28, 2015
When It Rains in Spain...
To complete this year which has stretched the unity of Europe near the breaking point, Spain has just completed national Parliamentary elections, with results that will lead to complications and uncertainty for the nation and its position in the European Union.
First, a little background necessary to provide the framework for understanding the current stand-off. The national politics of post-Franco Spain (since the death of the aged Fascist dictator in 1975) has been dominated by two parties: the Partido Popular (the current version of the center-right, Christian Democrat political forces which took over when El Caudillo finally kicked) and the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party). They have alternated in power since then, generally sharing 80% or more of the seats in the lower house of Spain's Cortes Generales, in which a majority is needed to determine the Prime Minister. The party which gained the most seats has always been able to form a majority, either alone or in combination with one or more of the many regional parties.
The Socialist government of PM Zapatero fell in 2011, jolted by the terrorist attacks in Madrid and the financial crisis. The PP government of Rajoy imposed austerity reforms required, under the circumstances, to reduce the budget deficit to the levels mandated by the Euro pact. As in Greece, popular reaction against austerity mobilized new forces, the "indignados" (angry) giving way to a new political party, Podemos ("we can"). A fourth major party emerged, Ciudadanos ("citizens"), a centrist party which challenged the PP as a corrupted force which has held back liberalizing reforms.
The last bit of background required to understand the current Spanish political dynamics is the longstanding conflict between the forces of national centralization and the centrifugal tendencies of Spain's regions. Recall the long battle between violent Basque separatists and the national police and military, which finally succeeded in suppressing the extreme forces and channeling Basque ambitions into autonomy. Spain's most wealthy region, Catalonia (Barcelona its capital), opted for the peaceful approach and also gained significant autonomy; however, in recent regional elections a coalition of Catalonian parties seeking a referendum on complete separation has gained power.
As with the Scottish secession movement in Britain, a majority vote in a referendum in favor of separation would create great problems for the state and for the EU: EU policy is that the new state would have to apply for admission (both Scotland's and Catalonia's secessionists have indicated they would want to do it) and the rump state--Britain or Spain--would need to agree in order to allow their admission.
Spain's post-Francoist constitution envisioned a strong central government with the King as head of state; later legislation empowered the recognition of autonomous regions, but secession was ruled by Spain's supreme court to be unconstitutional. Podemos has supported Catalonia's right to hold a referendum, the Socialists have proposed a devolution of power toward a federal state, while the PP and Ciudadanos oppose any referendum.
The Electoral Results and the Current Status+
The PP gets the first shot at forming a government, but they have immediately run into problems: all three of the other top parties have indicated they would not work with Rajoy to form a government, either in coalition or by abstaining in the vote of approval. A PP-Socialist accord would be unprecedented, and the personal rivalry of the leaders would preclude it, as well. Podemos and PP are diametrically opposed on both austerity and the critical issue of the possible Catalonian referendum. In the final stages of the campaign, the PP, which has its strength in rural areas, went after the C's support in the cities to salvage its position as leading party, and the C's, which got a significant result but not as high as they might otherwise have had, now have announced they would oppose any government by the PP.
The next phase would be an attempt by someone else to form a government, possibly a different leading figure of the PP, but more likely an attempt by the PSOE's Sanchez (or possibly another in the party) to form a coalition. If a satisfactory formula can be negotiated on Catalonia, a PSOE-Podemos coalition, or a PSOE-Ciudanos one (with Podemos abstaining, and the support of some smaller parties), or even a three-party coalition against PP, are all possible outcomes. So are a complete deadlock, which would lead to new elections, or the formation of a caretaker government headed by lesser party figures or non-partisan statesmen
After the tribulations with Greece, the refugee issue which exploded in Europe (and threatened the continental agreement to allow free travel within most of the countries), and the British election issues around Scotland, the Spanish election results promise turmoil cointinuing beyond this year of living dangerously.
+ Thanks to Wikipedia for presenting comprehensive data. I would offer a brief ad for that service, which is trying to raise some money to continue its operation.
First, a little background necessary to provide the framework for understanding the current stand-off. The national politics of post-Franco Spain (since the death of the aged Fascist dictator in 1975) has been dominated by two parties: the Partido Popular (the current version of the center-right, Christian Democrat political forces which took over when El Caudillo finally kicked) and the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party). They have alternated in power since then, generally sharing 80% or more of the seats in the lower house of Spain's Cortes Generales, in which a majority is needed to determine the Prime Minister. The party which gained the most seats has always been able to form a majority, either alone or in combination with one or more of the many regional parties.
The Socialist government of PM Zapatero fell in 2011, jolted by the terrorist attacks in Madrid and the financial crisis. The PP government of Rajoy imposed austerity reforms required, under the circumstances, to reduce the budget deficit to the levels mandated by the Euro pact. As in Greece, popular reaction against austerity mobilized new forces, the "indignados" (angry) giving way to a new political party, Podemos ("we can"). A fourth major party emerged, Ciudadanos ("citizens"), a centrist party which challenged the PP as a corrupted force which has held back liberalizing reforms.
The last bit of background required to understand the current Spanish political dynamics is the longstanding conflict between the forces of national centralization and the centrifugal tendencies of Spain's regions. Recall the long battle between violent Basque separatists and the national police and military, which finally succeeded in suppressing the extreme forces and channeling Basque ambitions into autonomy. Spain's most wealthy region, Catalonia (Barcelona its capital), opted for the peaceful approach and also gained significant autonomy; however, in recent regional elections a coalition of Catalonian parties seeking a referendum on complete separation has gained power.
As with the Scottish secession movement in Britain, a majority vote in a referendum in favor of separation would create great problems for the state and for the EU: EU policy is that the new state would have to apply for admission (both Scotland's and Catalonia's secessionists have indicated they would want to do it) and the rump state--Britain or Spain--would need to agree in order to allow their admission.
Spain's post-Francoist constitution envisioned a strong central government with the King as head of state; later legislation empowered the recognition of autonomous regions, but secession was ruled by Spain's supreme court to be unconstitutional. Podemos has supported Catalonia's right to hold a referendum, the Socialists have proposed a devolution of power toward a federal state, while the PP and Ciudadanos oppose any referendum.
The Electoral Results and the Current Status+
1- Partido Popular (PP) - led by Mariano Rajoy-- 28.7% of popular vote, 123 seats (down from 187 in 2011)
2- Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol (PSOE) - led by Pedro Sanchez - 22.0%; 90 seats (down from 110)
3-Podemos - led by Pablo Iglesias - 20.7%; 69 seats (new party)
4- Ciudadanos (C's) - led by Albert Rivera - 13.9%; 40 seats (new party)Others - 14.7% of vote; 28 seats.The results definitively signal a rejection of the austerity policy, as well as change from two-party dominance, with the two insurgent parties getting over 40% of the popular vote and enough seats to have an important voice in the nature of the new government to be formed. With 175 seats needed to form a majority government, no single party can approach a majority, even with the support of all the smaller parties (which itself would be next to impossible). It is possible to form a government with less than an absolute majority of support if there are enough abstentions; typically, this would mean the agreement by a party to provide passive support and request all its members to abstain from a vote of confidence.
The PP gets the first shot at forming a government, but they have immediately run into problems: all three of the other top parties have indicated they would not work with Rajoy to form a government, either in coalition or by abstaining in the vote of approval. A PP-Socialist accord would be unprecedented, and the personal rivalry of the leaders would preclude it, as well. Podemos and PP are diametrically opposed on both austerity and the critical issue of the possible Catalonian referendum. In the final stages of the campaign, the PP, which has its strength in rural areas, went after the C's support in the cities to salvage its position as leading party, and the C's, which got a significant result but not as high as they might otherwise have had, now have announced they would oppose any government by the PP.
The next phase would be an attempt by someone else to form a government, possibly a different leading figure of the PP, but more likely an attempt by the PSOE's Sanchez (or possibly another in the party) to form a coalition. If a satisfactory formula can be negotiated on Catalonia, a PSOE-Podemos coalition, or a PSOE-Ciudanos one (with Podemos abstaining, and the support of some smaller parties), or even a three-party coalition against PP, are all possible outcomes. So are a complete deadlock, which would lead to new elections, or the formation of a caretaker government headed by lesser party figures or non-partisan statesmen
After the tribulations with Greece, the refugee issue which exploded in Europe (and threatened the continental agreement to allow free travel within most of the countries), and the British election issues around Scotland, the Spanish election results promise turmoil cointinuing beyond this year of living dangerously.
+ Thanks to Wikipedia for presenting comprehensive data. I would offer a brief ad for that service, which is trying to raise some money to continue its operation.
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Past Present and Future
The Near Future: 2016
Elections, they say, are about the future, especially US Presidential elections. The way it should be, candidates put forward something resembling their visions of the future, and voters choose the person they want to be the midwife of the next four years' events--technically, how they would direct the course of Federal execution of the laws. Unfortunately, we are too easily fooled; candidates always promise outcomes they can not deliver, and the vision is obscured by the talking points and attack angles.
One of the favorite angles that candidates are trying to play this year (not unlike some other election years) is to convince us that their election will make the difference, that, with them in charge of our government, our children's future will be bright and our country will be greater than it has ever been before. It's true of all of them (that they will try to do this attempt at convincing us), and it's true of none of them (that they can make the country greater than ever). Still, I would suggest that we evaluate the prospective Chief Executive/Commander-in-Chiefs by which of the following three future outcomes they would tend to lead us:
The Distant Past: "Memoirs of Hadrian"
As they sometimes say, history rhymes, and the stanza that resonates to me with our geopolitical status and stage in our society's lifecycle is Rome, early-to-mid-Empire, roughly 50-200 A.D. Not a perfect analogy, of course, but the basic idea works well: Europe is to us as Greece was to Rome, in our emergence we had our kings (the colonial period), our phase as a popular republic, and what we have now. And that is an oligarchy, in which the critical role of our military/foreign policy has made the Commander-in-Chief (that is what "emperor" means in its Latin root) the predominant figure. Remember that Imperial Rome had the original Senate (it means "old men") but its role during the Imperial period was about like our Electoral College, confirming the election of the foremost but hardly a check on executive power.
Anyway, this period of Roman history had both a string of awful Emperors--the remnants of the Caesars' dynastic line, descendants of Julius and Augustus (Octavian)--and then, after a period of intense chaos and power struggle, a series of rulers we now know as the "Good Emperors", including five in a row who ruled for over 80 years, dying of natural causes (as opposed to the many who were killed in military coups). Their careful succession planning helped preserve some stability, and during this period, citizenship was opened up more broadly, the Empire thrived and maintained its extensive reach, and gained enough vitality for it to retain its coherence and regional dominance through a couple hundred more years of often chaotic power struggles.
Hadrian was the second of those long-ruling Good Emperors (Nerva, who founded the line, could be counted but ruled only two years), succeeding Trajan, and, like Trajan. was born to prominent Roman citizens who lived in what is now Spain. As such, one of the key characteristics emerging during the period was the expansion of fully-fledged Roman civilization beyond the Italian peninsula.
His rule was the stuff of Roman legend, as was his mourning of Antinous, his lover who died as a young man. The French author Marguerite Yourcenar wrote Memoirs of Hadrian in the 1950's, a work of fiction based on her extensive historical research into his life. She tried to incorporate all that we know of his life, his administration, his philosophy, and his times.
In terms of his lessons for us, Hadrian gave up the effort of his predecessors to try to conquer the Asian subcontinent, but instead promoted trade with it and exploration in other directions and developed the capability for the military to hold the territory it had won (most will associate his name with Hadrian's Wall, which he had built across middle-north Britain to keep out those crazy Caledonians in the north). He toured his empire constantly, planned for great cities to be built, and planned his succession through adoption of a few in whom he found to have the greatest potential (among them the famed philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who followed in his footsteps).
There is much that we can learn from Yourcenar's attempt to re-create his thoughts, memories, and philosophy of life--the book is written as an extended letter from dying Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius--though we also see the ways our society is different from that one; one important aspect is the relative unimportance (!) of religion to Romans, in this period when worship of the pagan gods was little more than ritual, but Christianity had not yet taken hold. Of course, Yourcenar has the benefit of knowing what followed Hadrian, and she gives him a level of foresight which would be unusual for anyone, in any time.
The Present Moment--in Live Popular Music
This seems to be a special instant for live performance of popular music on TV. There is a long, and generally somewhat ugly, history of televised rock concerts--low production values, playing to the cameras, bad sound. Techniques have improved, though, and the importance of the concert tour to the economics of popular music has never been higher. Of course the quantity of video concert footage that is available is growing exponentially.
Three events I want to mention: first, the postponed performance from Paris by U2 which was televeised this past week on HBO. It was to be televised on November 14 but was cancelled after the terrorism which struck the city the day before. The event went off on the new date without incident; the performance was mostly the same as the U2 tour which this event completed: a stage running the length of the floor of the stadium with an equally large projection screen overhead; the songs were about 60% from the latest album, which featured a great deal of memories of their early lives in Dublin, and also of the terror in the Irish island in those days. You will (probably) never get a better chance to see The Edge and how he plays those guitar lines at which we have marveled for decades; Bono's voice was a bit bit thin, understandably so at the end of a long tour, but he was up for the occasion. Then there were the Eagles of Death Metal, the American band that was playing at the Bataclan theatre that was the site of the worst terrorist massacre--U2 invited them onstage to perform at the end of the concert. They played Patti Smith's song "People Have the Power" with U2 and then one of their own songs. I will say only that it was not what I thought it, or the band, would be--if you have not seen the concert, you should take a look: HBO is usually very good about rebroadcasting their content, almost endlessly, in fact.
Second, Adele will be on national network TV with a performance from Carnegie Hall on Monday night. Her album's sales are through the roof, and we don't get many chances to see her perform live. Third, there will be a special televised event that was celebrating the 75th birthday of John Lennon, on AMC on December 19, with a host of well-known performers, and I guess Lennon's songs will be featured throughout.
On the subject of covers, I would like to close this section with a discussion of "The Voice", a
"reality" TV series. part taped and part live, that presents singing talent performing hit songs. The format is a drawn-out elimination contest, in which the performers need to appear a dozen or more times, getting tutelage from established star performers who each have their own "team", with voting by Twitter, by download song purchase, and sometimes by judging from the four stars.
There are a couple of things I like about the series, which I have gradually been sucked into by my wife and daughter's interest: the singers genuinely are talented, the stars seem genuinely interested in the teaching (this season, they are Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Pharrell Williams, country star Blake Shelton, and Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, the latter two of which have developed a surprising public romance during the season), and the backup band is excellent. I hate the format, which draws the tension out excessively in each episode, and over weeks, and I hate the way the popular voting is done and how it is utilized. At the end of the day, I feel the performers are being exploited for the commercial benefit of the network (the stars/teachers, too? Their motivations/pay are not very transparent): all this exposure doesn't seem to translate into hitmaking careers for the talent, who are tested heavily and repeatedly. There's something very "Hunger Games" about it all, except nobody's getting killed.
Present: Trump/Rubio/Cruz/???
(Political Drama--Act II, Scene 1)
Still more than 50 days from the first real results of the 2016 Republican nomination contest, the online market in which I participate has already narrowed the field to three contenders--in order of support, Rubio (currently trading at 38 cents on 100), Cruz (30), and Trump (25)--three more rated with dark horse chances (Bush at 11, Christie at 6, and Kasich at 2)--and a long list of longshots at 100-1 odds. This list includes former monthly flavors Ben Carson, who has dropped precipitously during a two-week tour of the world to learn what foreign policy is, and Carly Fiorina, as well as a variety of moribund active candidacies (Paul, Graham, Huckabee, Santorum, Pataki) and some not-even- candidates like Mitt Romney, Susana Martinez, and my own longshot favorite, Paul Ryan (the scenario for him is the deadlocked party turns to a draft-Ryan movement at some late stage, out of pure desperation, and as he did with the House Speaker role, he "reluctantly" steps forward).
Looking at predictit.org's individual primary/caucus markets (which have been set up through Super Tuesday, March 1), we currently just see variations in the order of the top three. Trump leads in New Hampshire and only a couple more, Rubio in the Eastern states and Cruz in the Southern ones. The one that is viewed as the tightest three-way race, at this point, is the fourth in the series of early primary/caucuses, Nevada.
The only market where this pattern varies at all is New Hampshire. Christie edges out Cruz for third place in the betting to win the state (which seems unlikely to me), and there is a more wide-open race (and a special market) for the coveted second-place finish there: there is significant support for Bush, Kasich and Christie; however, second-place in Iowa shows the same three as usual (Carson has faded to a distant fourth at 4 cents), the betting now rather strongly favoring Cruz to win and Trump to finish second. Is there room for someone other than Tea Party wingers Rubio and Cruz, and flaky outsiders Trump and Carson, to make a run? Yes, but that person has yet to show they can garner a significant share of potential Republican voters in the polls.
The newest market to draw big interest is whether Donald Trump will declare a run as an independent or third-party candidate in 2016. This market is currently valued at over 30 cents on the dollar. We explore this concept in a brief fictional scenario below.
Possible Near Future: The No Trump Bid
Offstage, we hear rumors--shots, screams, explosions--of tragic incidents in Paris, in Colorado Springs, in San Bernardino, in Mali, and elsewhere. Our villain, the modern-day Alcibiades, the short-fingered vulgarian (an old description coming from Spy Magazine), the Man of Wherever, takes center stage.
Donald Trump smiles to hear of the latest atrocities and proclaims his newest outrage to our senses of propriety, fairness, justice, and due process. The mob howls its pleasure. Meanwhile, in a dark corner of the same stage, a group of momeymen and political strategists plots their desperate counter-strategy.
Megadonor1: We have a pot of money ready to use, but for whom? Trump laughs at us when our people meet with him. I can't see backing him in the general election.
Strategist1: Keep your powder dry, Charles. We'll come up with something.
MD1: I'm tired of this, Bill--you've been wrong at every turn this cycle.
Megadonor2: Just tell me who we are going to go with--I have wasted tens of millions on Jeb already.
Strategist2: Sorry, Boone, but you know you did that on your own.
Megadonor3: OK, so who do we rally behind? Anybody but Trump, as long as he's strong on Israel.
Strategist2: Truth is, Sheldon, the Presidency is already lost--it doesn't matter who we pick. If we nominate Rubio, or Bush, or Christie, we will get the organization behind him, and if Trump runs as an independent, his voters will show up. That way, we can keep control of Congress. I'd say, we go for whoever wins Florida, or whoever finishes second there, if Trump can win it.
All: Done!
Elections, they say, are about the future, especially US Presidential elections. The way it should be, candidates put forward something resembling their visions of the future, and voters choose the person they want to be the midwife of the next four years' events--technically, how they would direct the course of Federal execution of the laws. Unfortunately, we are too easily fooled; candidates always promise outcomes they can not deliver, and the vision is obscured by the talking points and attack angles.
One of the favorite angles that candidates are trying to play this year (not unlike some other election years) is to convince us that their election will make the difference, that, with them in charge of our government, our children's future will be bright and our country will be greater than it has ever been before. It's true of all of them (that they will try to do this attempt at convincing us), and it's true of none of them (that they can make the country greater than ever). Still, I would suggest that we evaluate the prospective Chief Executive/Commander-in-Chiefs by which of the following three future outcomes they would tend to lead us:
1) The US draws back from the dangerous and unaccepting world around us, and we try to achieve greatness within our own borders;Each of these visions has its merits and defects, and our President's responses to various challenges will not fall exclusively in one category or another, as they often depend more on the specific circumtances, but there are differences in the attitudes of the various candidates with regard to this essential question, and our choice among them is the critical issue for the year.
2) The US leans forward and acts to change the world and make it more the way we want it to be; or
3) The US presents an example before the world, acting within it in accordance with our values, but accepting that our contributions will ultimately be incorporated in the emerging global society.
The Distant Past: "Memoirs of Hadrian"
As they sometimes say, history rhymes, and the stanza that resonates to me with our geopolitical status and stage in our society's lifecycle is Rome, early-to-mid-Empire, roughly 50-200 A.D. Not a perfect analogy, of course, but the basic idea works well: Europe is to us as Greece was to Rome, in our emergence we had our kings (the colonial period), our phase as a popular republic, and what we have now. And that is an oligarchy, in which the critical role of our military/foreign policy has made the Commander-in-Chief (that is what "emperor" means in its Latin root) the predominant figure. Remember that Imperial Rome had the original Senate (it means "old men") but its role during the Imperial period was about like our Electoral College, confirming the election of the foremost but hardly a check on executive power.
Anyway, this period of Roman history had both a string of awful Emperors--the remnants of the Caesars' dynastic line, descendants of Julius and Augustus (Octavian)--and then, after a period of intense chaos and power struggle, a series of rulers we now know as the "Good Emperors", including five in a row who ruled for over 80 years, dying of natural causes (as opposed to the many who were killed in military coups). Their careful succession planning helped preserve some stability, and during this period, citizenship was opened up more broadly, the Empire thrived and maintained its extensive reach, and gained enough vitality for it to retain its coherence and regional dominance through a couple hundred more years of often chaotic power struggles.
Hadrian was the second of those long-ruling Good Emperors (Nerva, who founded the line, could be counted but ruled only two years), succeeding Trajan, and, like Trajan. was born to prominent Roman citizens who lived in what is now Spain. As such, one of the key characteristics emerging during the period was the expansion of fully-fledged Roman civilization beyond the Italian peninsula.
His rule was the stuff of Roman legend, as was his mourning of Antinous, his lover who died as a young man. The French author Marguerite Yourcenar wrote Memoirs of Hadrian in the 1950's, a work of fiction based on her extensive historical research into his life. She tried to incorporate all that we know of his life, his administration, his philosophy, and his times.
In terms of his lessons for us, Hadrian gave up the effort of his predecessors to try to conquer the Asian subcontinent, but instead promoted trade with it and exploration in other directions and developed the capability for the military to hold the territory it had won (most will associate his name with Hadrian's Wall, which he had built across middle-north Britain to keep out those crazy Caledonians in the north). He toured his empire constantly, planned for great cities to be built, and planned his succession through adoption of a few in whom he found to have the greatest potential (among them the famed philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who followed in his footsteps).
There is much that we can learn from Yourcenar's attempt to re-create his thoughts, memories, and philosophy of life--the book is written as an extended letter from dying Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius--though we also see the ways our society is different from that one; one important aspect is the relative unimportance (!) of religion to Romans, in this period when worship of the pagan gods was little more than ritual, but Christianity had not yet taken hold. Of course, Yourcenar has the benefit of knowing what followed Hadrian, and she gives him a level of foresight which would be unusual for anyone, in any time.
The Present Moment--in Live Popular Music
This seems to be a special instant for live performance of popular music on TV. There is a long, and generally somewhat ugly, history of televised rock concerts--low production values, playing to the cameras, bad sound. Techniques have improved, though, and the importance of the concert tour to the economics of popular music has never been higher. Of course the quantity of video concert footage that is available is growing exponentially.
Three events I want to mention: first, the postponed performance from Paris by U2 which was televeised this past week on HBO. It was to be televised on November 14 but was cancelled after the terrorism which struck the city the day before. The event went off on the new date without incident; the performance was mostly the same as the U2 tour which this event completed: a stage running the length of the floor of the stadium with an equally large projection screen overhead; the songs were about 60% from the latest album, which featured a great deal of memories of their early lives in Dublin, and also of the terror in the Irish island in those days. You will (probably) never get a better chance to see The Edge and how he plays those guitar lines at which we have marveled for decades; Bono's voice was a bit bit thin, understandably so at the end of a long tour, but he was up for the occasion. Then there were the Eagles of Death Metal, the American band that was playing at the Bataclan theatre that was the site of the worst terrorist massacre--U2 invited them onstage to perform at the end of the concert. They played Patti Smith's song "People Have the Power" with U2 and then one of their own songs. I will say only that it was not what I thought it, or the band, would be--if you have not seen the concert, you should take a look: HBO is usually very good about rebroadcasting their content, almost endlessly, in fact.
Second, Adele will be on national network TV with a performance from Carnegie Hall on Monday night. Her album's sales are through the roof, and we don't get many chances to see her perform live. Third, there will be a special televised event that was celebrating the 75th birthday of John Lennon, on AMC on December 19, with a host of well-known performers, and I guess Lennon's songs will be featured throughout.
On the subject of covers, I would like to close this section with a discussion of "The Voice", a
"reality" TV series. part taped and part live, that presents singing talent performing hit songs. The format is a drawn-out elimination contest, in which the performers need to appear a dozen or more times, getting tutelage from established star performers who each have their own "team", with voting by Twitter, by download song purchase, and sometimes by judging from the four stars.
There are a couple of things I like about the series, which I have gradually been sucked into by my wife and daughter's interest: the singers genuinely are talented, the stars seem genuinely interested in the teaching (this season, they are Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Pharrell Williams, country star Blake Shelton, and Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, the latter two of which have developed a surprising public romance during the season), and the backup band is excellent. I hate the format, which draws the tension out excessively in each episode, and over weeks, and I hate the way the popular voting is done and how it is utilized. At the end of the day, I feel the performers are being exploited for the commercial benefit of the network (the stars/teachers, too? Their motivations/pay are not very transparent): all this exposure doesn't seem to translate into hitmaking careers for the talent, who are tested heavily and repeatedly. There's something very "Hunger Games" about it all, except nobody's getting killed.
Present: Trump/Rubio/Cruz/???
(Political Drama--Act II, Scene 1)
Still more than 50 days from the first real results of the 2016 Republican nomination contest, the online market in which I participate has already narrowed the field to three contenders--in order of support, Rubio (currently trading at 38 cents on 100), Cruz (30), and Trump (25)--three more rated with dark horse chances (Bush at 11, Christie at 6, and Kasich at 2)--and a long list of longshots at 100-1 odds. This list includes former monthly flavors Ben Carson, who has dropped precipitously during a two-week tour of the world to learn what foreign policy is, and Carly Fiorina, as well as a variety of moribund active candidacies (Paul, Graham, Huckabee, Santorum, Pataki) and some not-even- candidates like Mitt Romney, Susana Martinez, and my own longshot favorite, Paul Ryan (the scenario for him is the deadlocked party turns to a draft-Ryan movement at some late stage, out of pure desperation, and as he did with the House Speaker role, he "reluctantly" steps forward).
Looking at predictit.org's individual primary/caucus markets (which have been set up through Super Tuesday, March 1), we currently just see variations in the order of the top three. Trump leads in New Hampshire and only a couple more, Rubio in the Eastern states and Cruz in the Southern ones. The one that is viewed as the tightest three-way race, at this point, is the fourth in the series of early primary/caucuses, Nevada.
The only market where this pattern varies at all is New Hampshire. Christie edges out Cruz for third place in the betting to win the state (which seems unlikely to me), and there is a more wide-open race (and a special market) for the coveted second-place finish there: there is significant support for Bush, Kasich and Christie; however, second-place in Iowa shows the same three as usual (Carson has faded to a distant fourth at 4 cents), the betting now rather strongly favoring Cruz to win and Trump to finish second. Is there room for someone other than Tea Party wingers Rubio and Cruz, and flaky outsiders Trump and Carson, to make a run? Yes, but that person has yet to show they can garner a significant share of potential Republican voters in the polls.
The newest market to draw big interest is whether Donald Trump will declare a run as an independent or third-party candidate in 2016. This market is currently valued at over 30 cents on the dollar. We explore this concept in a brief fictional scenario below.
Possible Near Future: The No Trump Bid
Offstage, we hear rumors--shots, screams, explosions--of tragic incidents in Paris, in Colorado Springs, in San Bernardino, in Mali, and elsewhere. Our villain, the modern-day Alcibiades, the short-fingered vulgarian (an old description coming from Spy Magazine), the Man of Wherever, takes center stage.
Donald Trump smiles to hear of the latest atrocities and proclaims his newest outrage to our senses of propriety, fairness, justice, and due process. The mob howls its pleasure. Meanwhile, in a dark corner of the same stage, a group of momeymen and political strategists plots their desperate counter-strategy.
Megadonor1: We have a pot of money ready to use, but for whom? Trump laughs at us when our people meet with him. I can't see backing him in the general election.
Strategist1: Keep your powder dry, Charles. We'll come up with something.
MD1: I'm tired of this, Bill--you've been wrong at every turn this cycle.
Megadonor2: Just tell me who we are going to go with--I have wasted tens of millions on Jeb already.
Strategist2: Sorry, Boone, but you know you did that on your own.
Megadonor3: OK, so who do we rally behind? Anybody but Trump, as long as he's strong on Israel.
Strategist2: Truth is, Sheldon, the Presidency is already lost--it doesn't matter who we pick. If we nominate Rubio, or Bush, or Christie, we will get the organization behind him, and if Trump runs as an independent, his voters will show up. That way, we can keep control of Congress. I'd say, we go for whoever wins Florida, or whoever finishes second there, if Trump can win it.
All: Done!
Thursday, November 26, 2015
The Culture Vulture, Pt. I
This past weekend initiated the 8-week holiday season for films, in which most of the serious releases will occur. I note it, protesting the unnatural distribution, but the fact remains that those films (officially) released between January and October are not generally considered Oscar material by their distributors. Yes, there are exceptions--last year, "The Grand Budapest Hotel", which won four Oscars, was released in March, and "Boyhood", which won only one but was nominated for five more, was released in the summer. But the Oscar success of "Budapest" was a suprise to most, while "Boyhood" was an art film with a quirky concept and limited release that built its success over months.Those who can, do.Those who can't, teach.Those who can't teach, blog.--Ch'in Shih-tang
(February through October) 2015 AV Review
I can't say I've seen all the major motion pictures released this year--in fact, due to a heavy travel schedule, I've seen few of them. There has been some good entertainment, I guess--I liked "Trainwreck" with Amy Schumer and Bill Hader, Blake Lively in "The Age of Adaline" and--forgive me--I enjoyed "Hot Pursuit" (the women's comedy buddy movie still amuses me). "Inside Out" has put me to sleep on airplanes on two different occasions, which is enough for now. I missed out on the mega-release action movies of 2015, but neither I nor they feel the loss. As for "The Martian", I suggest you see the 2000 release "Mission to Mars", which covers most of the same ground. There are a couple of movies released earlier than this fall that I would still like to catch--"Aloha" and "Straight Outta Compton"--and some movies released (in limited release for the most part) that I would like to track down, though I may have to do that via video later on, because I will be sufficiently challenged keeping up with the frantic pace of late-season revleases coming ahead.
For the most part, I'm not watching anything, whether on the big or small screen, that is based around any of the following overworked genres: organized crime, forensic criminal investigation, private detectives, zombies, vampires, superheroes or superpowers, counterterrorism, magic (magicians or wizards), stories about the last person or persons on Earth, and above all, that abomination falsely known as "reality TV" in most of its forms. I will make an exception if the treatment is unusual enough, satirical with regard to the genre's formal conventions, or truly humorous.
Of the four "audiovisual productions" that I have seen since the 2015 Oscars in February and that merit serious comment for their artistic merit, I saw only one on the big screen, and that one hasn't been released in the US yet.
First, I must mention "Leviathan", which I was lucky enough to find on an airplane ride--it was released in 2014 and was one of the nominees for Best Foreign Language film, but never got to a cinema anywhere near me. It's a character-based drama set in the far north of Russia, a brave, though indirect, political commentary that left a deep impression. Next, "Veep": it's just a TV comedy series, but a very funny one, a satire that hits a lot closer to the mark than "House of Cards" or "Madame Secretary" or "Scamdal". I particularly like the episodes since Selena (Julia-Louis Dreyfuss' character) became the Accidental Preisdent. Third, I mention "Show Me a Hero" the TV miniseries which fictionalized a case study of a political battle over desegregating housing in Yonkers, New York in the '70's, with a touching performance by Oscar Isaac (of "Inside Llewyn Davis").
The last of these four is "Youth", the latest film by Paolo Sorrentino, director of "The Great Beauty" ("La Grande Bellezza"), the Oscar winnner a year ago for Best Foreign Language film. The two films share a similar visual sensibility, with an eye for outlandish persons, costumes, and gorgeous scenery, and also have in common powerful dialogue with a dose of philosophical inquiry, but other elements are completely different: plot, location, types of characters. "Youth" will be released in the US December 7--I don't expect great box-office, but Michael Caine's role as co-lead (along with Harvey Keitel, with Jane Fonda in an over-the-top supporting role) could even give Caine a shot an Oscar for Best Actor (he has been nominated for that one once, but has won twice for Supporting Actor). If "Bellezza" turned you off because of the main character's self-indulgence, this one might not work any better (semi-retired, wealthy artists at a luxurious Swiss mountain resort), but Caine and Keitel's characters do not have the overweening self-regard that was the big hangup with Toni Servillo's Jep.
Holiday Movie Preview
Three themes I can foresee for this year's climactic season of film:
1) A desperate struggle for box office attention. There will be a few, certain monster hits: "Star Wars: A Force Awakens" (Dec. 18), "Mockingjay: Part 2" (Nov. 20), and the new James Bond film, "Spectre" (Opened Nov. 6). "Victor Frankenstein (Nov. 25), yet another retelling of the classic human creationist fable, starring James McAvoy in the title role and Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe as Igor, also looks like a winner. So, dreams of commercial success for the primary artistic endeavors will likely not come into play until and unless their first runs survive well into 2016. (Note: the dates for the movies above will be hard to miss, but many of the ones below will be more low-key, possibly displaced, or limited to theaters not near you.)
2) Lead women's roles of an unusual nature. My early favorite for Best Actress award? Eddie Redmayne, coming off his Best Actor award last year, for playing a man passing as a woman who decides to switch gender in the love story "The Danish Girl". OK, just kidding about that, and, although transgender is the cultural fad of the moment, it's not entirely new as a storyline--think of Julie Andrews in "Victor/Victoria" or Jaye Davidson in "The Crying Game", both of which were nominated for Oscars. I would expect something similar for Redmayne; coming off an Oscar-winning performance in 2014, he will earn respect but probably not a repeat award.
Then there is Brie Larson in "Room", who is playing a captive woman who tries to make a decent living arrangement for her child; next, I mention Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in the lesbian romance "Carol" (Nov. 20) set in the Fifties. Oscar-wise, take your pick; I expect Blanchett to get a nomination for Best Actress and Mara for Supporting Actress. "Carol" is a production of the Weinstein brothers, and those who have watched them do it year after year know that no one plays the Oscar campaign political game better. Jennifer Connelly plays a homeless drug addict in a love story called "Shelter" (Nov. 13). Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore in "Miss you Already" (opened Nov. 6) play inseparable friends that face cancere for Collette's character while Barrymore faces childbirth. Finally, in this vein I mention Carey Mulligan as a working-class British woman who turns to violence for her cause--the vote--in the historical drama "Suffragette" (opened Oct. 23).
There are a couple of significant lead women's role contenders that are a bit more conventional: Saoirse Ronan as an Irish-American in "Brooklyn", and Jennifer Lawrence as a multi-faceted entrepreneur in "Joy", the latest from director David O. Russell. The combination worked well for er in "Silver Linings Playbook" and may do so again.
3) Documentaries, Historical Drama, and Biopics. OK, there's "Steve Jobs", which has already come, flopped, and gone. I'm not sure why it was so inferior to "The Social Network", which had the opposite commercial outcome, but I didn't really need one nor the other. "Snowden", Oliver Stone's telling of the Edward Snowden saga, has now been postponed until 2016--maybe the story will have a different, more interesting, ending if he waits awhile; of course, Stone will always push the envelope of credibility. Michael Moore has come out with "Where to Invade Next" (Dec. 23)--as one of my friend's bumper stickers stated, "I'm already against the next war"--but the thrust of his film (which has been released for awhile but has not come anywhere close yet) is that the US could learn something by invading certain countries. Seems doubtful. Johnny Depp is out there as Whitey Bulger in "Black Mass"--Depp is a great risk-taker, but I got enough of that character (fictionalized) in "The Departed".
Three others that have greater interest for me" "The 33" (Nov. 13), starring Antonio Banderas, is the true story that we may still remember of the Chilean coal miners, their ordeal, and their ultimate resuce. If it is anything like the real-life drama, it could be gripping. "Spotlight" (Nov. 6, starring Mark Rufalo and Michael Keaton, among others) is the story of the Boston Globe reporters who broke the story of Catholic priests in the diocese who abused children, and of the church officials who covered it up. "Trumbo", starring Bryan "Breaking Bad" Cranston, is a promising story of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted in the McCarthy Era of the Fifties for refusing to answer whether he had been a Communist, but who was able to work under assumed names and contributed to some of the great successes of the period.
Finally in this category I want to mention "The Big Short" (Dec. 11), the movie version of Michael Lewis' non-fiction story about the financial crisis, and in particular, a few investors who figured out what was going to happen with the credit default swaps and made huge profits. It doesn't seem like a very suspenseful or entertaining movie, but Lewis' tales have already hit the mark twice in Hollywood, with "Moneyball" and "The Blind Side", so we'll see.
Big Question Marks, and a Couple "Sure Things"
I note first Quentin Tarantino's new film, "The Hateful Eight" (Dec. 25), which I presume is a variation off "The Magnificent Seven", itself a variation off Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai". By now, we should know what to expect from a Tarantino genre knock-off romp, so the question is merely whether it's what you want to go watch. Charlie Kaufman is one of the most brilliant, quirky writer/directors in the industry; he has a movie called "Anomalisa" coming out (Dec. 30) which is billed as a "stop-action animation sound play", whatever that is. And, returning to a topic he worked hilariously in "Being John Malkovich", puppets. I am attracted to the idea of a new production, with modern action film techniques, of the Shakespeare action drama "Macbeth" (Dec. 4), starring Michael Fassbinder and Marion Cotillard--maybe the time is right for it.
For creatively divergent films with world-class production values, I have increasingly come to look to what I call the "Mexican Mafia"--directors Alejandro Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, and Guillermo del Toro, and the king of cinematographers, Emmanuel Lubetzsky. To me, this looks like an off-year for them, though: Cuaron ("Gravity", "Children of Men") does not have any films coming out, while del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth", the "Hellboy" films) had a horror film, "Crimson Peak", that came out last month and didn't seem to take off. Inarritu ("Birdman", "21 Grams") has a major release, "The Revenant", a gruesome-looking Western revenge drama with Leonardo diCaprio (Dec. 25). From the preview, I can see that, with his compadre Lubetzky, the cinematography will be incredible, and I will go see it, but I am not too hopeful. And my other top go-to director, Joel/Ethan Coen (think of them as one auteur), has nothing coming out this season, either; his/their next movie, "Hail, Caesar!" is now scheduled for release in February, 2016.
Besides "Revenant", two other movies that I will have to see, and in their cases I expect they will be rewarding experiences, are: "Sisters" (Dec. 18), with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (How could it miss? I hope it can't); and "In the Heart of the Sea" (Dec. 11), Ron Howard's adventure epic which re-creates the 19t-century whaling incident that was reputedly the inspiration for Herman Melville to write "Moby Dick". Howard is a canny veteran who rarely goes astray, and I credit him for digging this one up. Sight unseen (though I have seen the previews), it would be my pick for favorite in the Best Picture category.
Sorry if I missed something important. Hope you can make it to the cinema to see some of them (in the words of the late Roger Ebert, "Save me the aisle seat"). I far prefer those venues, preferably a big old one with a good sound system (IMAX/3-D totally unnecessary), to DVD, DVR, Netflix, fill in the blank with the latest lazy consumption medium....
Sunday, November 22, 2015
The Culture Vulture, Pt. 2
Songs
Every year, there is a sort of unofficial competition to find the "song of the summer". That would be the one that crosses over all genres and radio formats, the one you can't help hearing even if you wanted, the one that plays in the water parks, the beach parties, the CYO high school dances. The battle is for those in the age 12-17 demographic; in this field of entertainment they are the ones who move the commercial drivers: downloads, social media, mp3, the free and paid online music services.
As I say, it's an unofficial competition, but I should note a couple of self-appointed official designations. One was the Video Music Awards' Song of the Summer, which went to "She's Kinda Hot". Kinda Not! Well, at least the band's extended the term of its celebrity from five seconds to 15 minutes. As for Entertainment Weekly ('ew") and Billboard, they went with "Cheerleader", a somewhat reggae dance number by Jamaican artist OMI. I'm no devotee of the pop music circuit--I hear its stuff mostly in the big room/locker room of my gym--but I did catch "Cheerleader" a couple of times. The song is pretty ordinary courting material, but the video does have show some attractive dancing (not by the singer).
Spotify, and Billboard, for that matter, acknowledged that the dominance of any single song was not so clear, and both mentioned songs by supreme crossover artist Taylor Swift ("Bad Blood") and Wiz Khalifa ("See You Again", with a falsetto crooner alternating with Wiz' raps). I agree with a web-mag called "Chicagoist" which, dismissed the OMI tune as "forgettable fluff", and noted the lack of a single clear winner. They reviewed the candidates, adding "Shut Up and Dance" (by Walk the Moon), which is quite catchy, a crossover tune to be sure, but was already tired by summertime, before opting for a danceable tune called "Can't Feel My Face"(...when I'm with you) by the Weeknd. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean--cocaine? They also invited their staff writers to come up with some alternatives, none of which I had ever heard, either the song or the performer.
I think the point is that the world of popular music is so fragmented that across-the-board success is mostly out of reach; a big success is to score in two or three of the various formats. Still, working off my daughter's observation that the "alternative" and "mix" formats seem to be converging, I have suggestions of my own:
Books: Rock Memoirs
And then, on the other hand, there's Elvis Costello. "Costello" (his assumed name) actually once released an album called "Trust" (his fifth, a "transitional" album from his angry pop toward more thoughtful composition). I now realize the title was a verb--in command form--rather than a noun, and the belief he commanded, and received, often obsessively, from his fans, was hardly reciprocated with sincerity on his part. This seems to have been revealed, unabridged, in his new 700-page memoir (and accompanying 2-CD set, naturally), "Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink".
I haven't read it, won't buy it, but I've gotten the gist from his interview tour to help sell the product which is "this year's model" (another album, early, quite good). From the reviews, it is extremely well-written, literate, self-deprecating, honest. It seems that all those popstar nasty young man hits produced in his early career were just a pose for commercial success, when what he really always wanted to be was a romantic lounge lizard, like Burt Bachrach (a longtime buddy and recent collaborator). Or something similar, more like his old man, who was a successful singer in England's postwar period, or his wife Diana Krall, who sings moderately jazzy torch songs. One thing I've noted from his comments, with which I totally agree, is his fervent dissociation from the label "punk"--he was strong on musical skills, lyrical talent, high production value, and obfuscation, while, with a couple of exceptions, punk was the opposite of all that.
I am much more motivated to read, and especially to purchase, the memoirs of two different rock heroes of mine, Chrissie Hynde ("Reckless: My Life as a Pretender") and Carrie Brownstein of Slater-Kinney and the "Portlandia" TV show fame ("Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl").*
Theater
Lin-Manuel Miranda is already the toast of the town in New York for the show he created, "Hamilton", a rap musical about the life of our relatively unsung founding father, Alexander Hamilton. Miranda's talent and his show are now becoming too huge for even the Big Apple to contain; he has been featured in the past couple of weeks on "60 Minutes" and the "Tonight Show". His talent, which is musical theater, is remarkable and unique in its realization; his personality is generous, warm, and enthusiastic. His show's concept is audacious, incredibly ambitious, and most amazingly, he has pulled it off with a success that has blitzed the city.
I don't know how long he will be willing to do it all: direct and perform the show which he wrote and scored. I hope I will have a chance to see it while it is still in its world-class form. It's not impossible; at the current time, one just has to plan ahead a few months to get tickets from the box office.
Historically, even the greatest of societies are defined by a few magnificent creations, ones which express something essential of the time and place, and at the same time provide value for the generations, or centuries, that follow. As we look at what the US has provided for human civilization during this period of its peak influence in the past century or so, clearly the marvels of science and technology stand out: things like electricity, electronics, the Internet, spaceflight, nuclear physics. These are things that will never be forgotten, as long as civilization as we know it continues.
Culturally and artistically, it is a tougher call. I have a few films in mind, but will that entertainment mode survive in any form, or are today's film masterpieces the equivalent of the gramophone discs of 100 years past? "Our" music (jazz/blues/rock) has been a gift to the world, one that the world has picked up and interpreted back to us. That's a a thing of beauty but possibly only of the moment. We've had a few great books, but the Great American Novel remains an elusive target, maybe not even a real one.
The American theater is perhaps a limited artistic form in terms of size of audience, but it has retained its prestige, even if its relevance has sometimes waned (a surfeit of crowd-pleasing light musical entertainment, in my opinion). There are a few American theater productions which have had outsized cultural significance--dramas like "Death of a Salesman", "A Streetcar Named Desire", and "Angels in America"; and, among all the musicals, I'd name "West Side Story". And now, "Hamilton" has made a bid for this kind of immortality.
Every year, there is a sort of unofficial competition to find the "song of the summer". That would be the one that crosses over all genres and radio formats, the one you can't help hearing even if you wanted, the one that plays in the water parks, the beach parties, the CYO high school dances. The battle is for those in the age 12-17 demographic; in this field of entertainment they are the ones who move the commercial drivers: downloads, social media, mp3, the free and paid online music services.
As I say, it's an unofficial competition, but I should note a couple of self-appointed official designations. One was the Video Music Awards' Song of the Summer, which went to "She's Kinda Hot". Kinda Not! Well, at least the band's extended the term of its celebrity from five seconds to 15 minutes. As for Entertainment Weekly ('ew") and Billboard, they went with "Cheerleader", a somewhat reggae dance number by Jamaican artist OMI. I'm no devotee of the pop music circuit--I hear its stuff mostly in the big room/locker room of my gym--but I did catch "Cheerleader" a couple of times. The song is pretty ordinary courting material, but the video does have show some attractive dancing (not by the singer).
Spotify, and Billboard, for that matter, acknowledged that the dominance of any single song was not so clear, and both mentioned songs by supreme crossover artist Taylor Swift ("Bad Blood") and Wiz Khalifa ("See You Again", with a falsetto crooner alternating with Wiz' raps). I agree with a web-mag called "Chicagoist" which, dismissed the OMI tune as "forgettable fluff", and noted the lack of a single clear winner. They reviewed the candidates, adding "Shut Up and Dance" (by Walk the Moon), which is quite catchy, a crossover tune to be sure, but was already tired by summertime, before opting for a danceable tune called "Can't Feel My Face"(...when I'm with you) by the Weeknd. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean--cocaine? They also invited their staff writers to come up with some alternatives, none of which I had ever heard, either the song or the performer.
I think the point is that the world of popular music is so fragmented that across-the-board success is mostly out of reach; a big success is to score in two or three of the various formats. Still, working off my daughter's observation that the "alternative" and "mix" formats seem to be converging, I have suggestions of my own:
--EW has a trend watch list of 10 hot things from any medium, or some such, each week. ("The Must List", a name I find way too dank, but anyway--) The same week they announced OMI's "triumph", they mentioned in their list "Dreams", a single by Beck. A bit late in the summer, maybe, but that song is a refreshing return by Hansen to the post-modern genre blend which brought him success in the '90's (a switch after the downer album which somehow won him the Best Album Grammy last year).Finally, let's stipulate that "Hello", by Adele, would blow away any of these for universal popularity, but it just doesn't qualify on a chronological basis. Adele's re-emergence with a new age-titled album, jumping from "21" to "25" (released this past weekend), with her current age actually 27, tells me that, while she's working very hard, it's getting hard to generate the same emotions out of her now more-settled lifestyle. Like most everyone else, I admire her throwback talents, her highly-polished delivery, and I hope that she will eventually use, for a good purpose, the trust she has built up by dealing with her public with sincerity.
--"Ex's and O's" by Elle King, a saucy number about how her ex-boyfriends won't leave her alone after she's schooled them and left them. I've heard it a lot on several different types of radio.
-- My nominee for the true song of the moment, though, is "The Long Way Down", by Robert DeLong. It has an early Pet Shop Boys kind of sound--beats, synthesizer, multi-track vocals--and a similar kind of conflation of the political and romantic. It's highly cynical, essentially saying to his romantic interest to stop trying to save the world and enjoy the slow ruination with him. Not the message I would prefer, but at least he's saying something about something outside his immediate interests, even if only his disregard of them.
Books: Rock Memoirs
And then, on the other hand, there's Elvis Costello. "Costello" (his assumed name) actually once released an album called "Trust" (his fifth, a "transitional" album from his angry pop toward more thoughtful composition). I now realize the title was a verb--in command form--rather than a noun, and the belief he commanded, and received, often obsessively, from his fans, was hardly reciprocated with sincerity on his part. This seems to have been revealed, unabridged, in his new 700-page memoir (and accompanying 2-CD set, naturally), "Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink".
I haven't read it, won't buy it, but I've gotten the gist from his interview tour to help sell the product which is "this year's model" (another album, early, quite good). From the reviews, it is extremely well-written, literate, self-deprecating, honest. It seems that all those popstar nasty young man hits produced in his early career were just a pose for commercial success, when what he really always wanted to be was a romantic lounge lizard, like Burt Bachrach (a longtime buddy and recent collaborator). Or something similar, more like his old man, who was a successful singer in England's postwar period, or his wife Diana Krall, who sings moderately jazzy torch songs. One thing I've noted from his comments, with which I totally agree, is his fervent dissociation from the label "punk"--he was strong on musical skills, lyrical talent, high production value, and obfuscation, while, with a couple of exceptions, punk was the opposite of all that.
I am much more motivated to read, and especially to purchase, the memoirs of two different rock heroes of mine, Chrissie Hynde ("Reckless: My Life as a Pretender") and Carrie Brownstein of Slater-Kinney and the "Portlandia" TV show fame ("Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl").*
Theater
Lin-Manuel Miranda is already the toast of the town in New York for the show he created, "Hamilton", a rap musical about the life of our relatively unsung founding father, Alexander Hamilton. Miranda's talent and his show are now becoming too huge for even the Big Apple to contain; he has been featured in the past couple of weeks on "60 Minutes" and the "Tonight Show". His talent, which is musical theater, is remarkable and unique in its realization; his personality is generous, warm, and enthusiastic. His show's concept is audacious, incredibly ambitious, and most amazingly, he has pulled it off with a success that has blitzed the city.
I don't know how long he will be willing to do it all: direct and perform the show which he wrote and scored. I hope I will have a chance to see it while it is still in its world-class form. It's not impossible; at the current time, one just has to plan ahead a few months to get tickets from the box office.
Historically, even the greatest of societies are defined by a few magnificent creations, ones which express something essential of the time and place, and at the same time provide value for the generations, or centuries, that follow. As we look at what the US has provided for human civilization during this period of its peak influence in the past century or so, clearly the marvels of science and technology stand out: things like electricity, electronics, the Internet, spaceflight, nuclear physics. These are things that will never be forgotten, as long as civilization as we know it continues.
Culturally and artistically, it is a tougher call. I have a few films in mind, but will that entertainment mode survive in any form, or are today's film masterpieces the equivalent of the gramophone discs of 100 years past? "Our" music (jazz/blues/rock) has been a gift to the world, one that the world has picked up and interpreted back to us. That's a a thing of beauty but possibly only of the moment. We've had a few great books, but the Great American Novel remains an elusive target, maybe not even a real one.
The American theater is perhaps a limited artistic form in terms of size of audience, but it has retained its prestige, even if its relevance has sometimes waned (a surfeit of crowd-pleasing light musical entertainment, in my opinion). There are a few American theater productions which have had outsized cultural significance--dramas like "Death of a Salesman", "A Streetcar Named Desire", and "Angels in America"; and, among all the musicals, I'd name "West Side Story". And now, "Hamilton" has made a bid for this kind of immortality.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
What to do Now?
The bestial attacks on Paris last night were a game-changer. We must all recover from our unfocused anger and decide what the right response from the civilized world should be for these--barbarians is too good a word--monsters with evil intent.
I would assume that the domestic counterterrorism will swing into action in France and in other European countries to which the authorities can trace the routes of those who committed these heinous deeds. The circle, hopefully, will expand to the point that other attacks this cell may have had in planning will be intercepted and precluded.
The question remains, though, how to prevent further atrocities, and the only way to address it is to go to the source, the regions controlled in the failed states of Syria, Iraq, and Libya; the places where the leaders of ISIS believe they can act openly. Indiscriminate bombing, cruise missiles, even tactical nukes, or just "bomb the shit out of them" (as Donald Trump suggested even before the latest events)--I'm sure they will all be suggested in the coming days, and it's not that they are not deserved for those who hide there, and I'm not even all that sympathetic to those who have accepted to live among those of ISIS. I just don't think it would work--the cancer would reappear, in a new and even more malignant form, as has occurred in the past after the destruction of al-Qaeda and the collapse of government control in those countries.
As it happens, the G-20--the leaders of 20 major nations--will gather in Antalya, Turkey--only a few hundred miles away from the center of ISIS' depravity--this Sunday and Monday. All the major players will be there (President Hollande of France has cancelled, but will send his Foreign Minister). I suspect the concerns about the global economy will recede under the circumstances, and the focus will be on a unified response. Of course, there will be a communique with a condemnation of the murders, but that is not nearly enough. The response should include: 1) humanitarian aid, for Turkey, Jordan, liberated portions of Syria, and those portions of Europe which have borne the brunt of migrating refugees; 2) a quarantine, a "cordon sanitaire", around the worst-affected areas, to prevent unauthorized movement out (as though jihadists were afflicted with a deadly disease); and 3) a military plan, a broader coalition of the willing, with the objective of going beyond merely containing ISIS but to the physical elimination of its lawless "safe area".
I would assume that the domestic counterterrorism will swing into action in France and in other European countries to which the authorities can trace the routes of those who committed these heinous deeds. The circle, hopefully, will expand to the point that other attacks this cell may have had in planning will be intercepted and precluded.
The question remains, though, how to prevent further atrocities, and the only way to address it is to go to the source, the regions controlled in the failed states of Syria, Iraq, and Libya; the places where the leaders of ISIS believe they can act openly. Indiscriminate bombing, cruise missiles, even tactical nukes, or just "bomb the shit out of them" (as Donald Trump suggested even before the latest events)--I'm sure they will all be suggested in the coming days, and it's not that they are not deserved for those who hide there, and I'm not even all that sympathetic to those who have accepted to live among those of ISIS. I just don't think it would work--the cancer would reappear, in a new and even more malignant form, as has occurred in the past after the destruction of al-Qaeda and the collapse of government control in those countries.
As it happens, the G-20--the leaders of 20 major nations--will gather in Antalya, Turkey--only a few hundred miles away from the center of ISIS' depravity--this Sunday and Monday. All the major players will be there (President Hollande of France has cancelled, but will send his Foreign Minister). I suspect the concerns about the global economy will recede under the circumstances, and the focus will be on a unified response. Of course, there will be a communique with a condemnation of the murders, but that is not nearly enough. The response should include: 1) humanitarian aid, for Turkey, Jordan, liberated portions of Syria, and those portions of Europe which have borne the brunt of migrating refugees; 2) a quarantine, a "cordon sanitaire", around the worst-affected areas, to prevent unauthorized movement out (as though jihadists were afflicted with a deadly disease); and 3) a military plan, a broader coalition of the willing, with the objective of going beyond merely containing ISIS but to the physical elimination of its lawless "safe area".
Sunday, November 01, 2015
Spring Back, Fall Forward
Leaving aside the question of whether daylight savings time itself makes sense, the mnemonic to remember the directions of change for clocks entering, then leaving, our annual time dislocation has never quite convinced me, because the inverse (see above title) also makes some sense. Especially right now, when many things in public affairs are a little confusing: When events surprise us, we "spring back"; in the absence of shocks, politically, we just "fall forward".
The Markets are Perverse
The global economy is slowing, US earnings reports have been generally unfavorable; so why are the stock markets heading toward an all-time high?
There is a sort of logical explanation; it starts with the glut of crude oil and gives far too much weight to the question of whether, and when, the Fed may begin to raise interest rates. Despite a long period of job and GDP growth, inflation remains close to zero. The oversupply of crude oil has kept energy prices low, with a stable to negative trend; while many of the cost-of-living measures exclude energy cost, low energy prices have an indirect effect on prices in general--for suppliers, and, I would argue, by strengthening the US dollar, which makes purchased objects cost less in dollars (especially imported ones).
So, the Fed looks at flat price trends--nothing to correct there yet. Unemployment going down--it is their secondary goal to allow economic growth to continue. The conclusion that the time is not yet ripe to begin to re-set interest rates upward from their current near-zero values is justifiable. The trick is that Fed members know that they cannot be wholly reactive; because of the time-lag effects of their monetary adjustments, they need to anticipate future trends and act based upon the leading indicators. As the unemployment rate drops, one that the Fed will watch closely will be labor costs; the low labor participation rate which you may have heard mentioned by Presidential campaigners looking for dark clouds is structural and demographic, and shortages in skilled professions may start up inflation's engine. So far, though, there is no imperative to act, though the eventuality of raising rates from the floor level, where they've been for several years, is not in doubt.
Somehow this inevitability does not seem to have registered much with the markets, which respond with these reactions that I would describe as both knee-jerk and perverse: good economic news, in the form of growth or employment, causes the markets to pull back, as the day of rate increases is deemed to draw nearer; while continuation of the slow-growth improving trend pushes the markets ever upward. (I exclude the usual overreactions to individual companies' reports of negative news in their reporting of short-term revenues and profits, and the shocks from abroad, which cause one-day drops but have generally been absorbed.) It would seem that the current rally is due to be erased once the date of the initial Fed rate increases becomes certain. On the other hand, my expectation is that the anticipation--of rate increases' negative effects on the economy--will be much more painful than the reality, and that the Fed would do well to puncture this little bubble in the stock markets, raise rates a single time, then wait for a new equilibrium to develop before making its next move.
A Critical Ally Endangered
We in the US may think our policy is confused in the Middle East, but I would say the top two priorities--containing and reducing ISIS, and restoring peace in Syria by easing out the failing Assad regime--are clear, and generally accepted by all parties. Among the various Presidential candidates of both parties there is lots of posturing about our posture, and less agreement on handling the Iranians, but little in the way of meaningful alternatives to advance our objectives (see below on the "no-fly" option which has been revived by some).
One aspect about which I hear very little intelligent discussion here is our view of the much more complex challenges faced by our second greatest ally in the region (after Israel, given that Israelis are a player in this active war theater, somewhat on the margin, bordering as it does on Syria in the Golan Heights area), and the ally which is most directly involved in the mess. Turkey has the challenge of managing several difficult, interrelated problems simultaneously:
Another result in today's election concerned the Kurdish party, perhaps comparable to Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein in being the peaceful arm of a movement which has--for decades--violently resisted the central government. A significant factor in the defeat of Erdogan's party this spring was the emergence of this party as a political force which gained representation (at a minimum10% of the vote) in the national parliament for the first time. The party lost ground but maintained a presence in parliament, so again only a partial victory for Erdogan.
The conditions of the electoral campaign were a state of high tension. A peace rally of Turks and Kurds in the nation's capital, Ankara, was rocked by two suicide bombs which killed hundreds. This great wound exacerbated a tension which had built over months, as Turkey agreed for the first time to facilitate US airstrikes, then responded to a previous bomb near the border by beginning airstrikes of their own into Syria, which seemed to focus more on the Kurdish forces than on ISIS. Many Turks were deeply suspicious of the government's actions and motives; in the aftermath of the Ankara bombing, the opposition claimed that the government's forces of order were more interested in suppressing Kurdish political aspirations than in protecting civilians. The government has attributed the attack to ISIS, but some were less than convinced; political polarization has increased, and restrictions on individual liberties have continued.
It is not an overstatement to say that unlocking Turkey's capability to act effecctively and positively in the region is the key to solving the whole ISIS/Assad mess--at least with regard to Syria. In this sense, the electoral result today could at least provide a stable outcome for the domestic environment. Turkey has been accused of playing a two-faced game, particularly during the desperate battle for the Syrian border city of Kobane between ISIS and the Kurdish forces; the accusation is true, but it simply reflects the complex realities the country faces.
Were it not for the pure evil of ISIS, Turkey would naturally gravitate more to that group, which opposes both of the nation's key foes in the region, the Kurdish nationalists and the Assad regime, the latter of which it blames entirely for the strife. Indeed, there seemed to be an understanding between ISIS and Turkey for months leading into this past season, with Turkish hostages released and Turkey impeding others' use of its territory for attacks on ISIS. Turkey has the largest, best-trained military force in the northern Middle East; with the support of NATO, it could put ISIS out of business in a matter of months, though there would remain the problem of how to fill that power vacuum--Turkey would never do it if the result were to put Assad back in control in Syria.
In the meantime, instead of being part of the anti-ISIS coalition the US has sought to put together in the region, Turkey is pursuing its own objectives. Foremost among them is to create safe areas within Syria and thus reduce the pressure of refugees fleeing the conflict. They have long requested the US, and the West, to establish a no-fly zone within Syria. It is a call that has been taken up by some, but it was always a tall order (due to the anti-aircraft capabilities of the Syrian government forces) that has just become much more complicated with the arrival in the area of the Russian air force.
Putin's "Improvocations"+
If the challenges of the US and its coalition and of Turkey were not messy enough, now Putin's Russia has inserted itself into the theater with aggressive and unpredictable actions, raising the geopolitical stakes even higher. That Putin would line up with the Assad regime was a given; Russia has allied with the minority Alawite-dominated Assads for decades, and Syria has given Russia much-desired privileged access to the Mediterranean through its coast. Providing lethal aid to Assad has been done more or less openly all along. A month or so ago, though, Putin switched the focus of his mischief-making from the Ukraine border region to Syria, first stepping up the quantity of aid, then providing direct military assistance.
Putin's comments were all about defeating ISIS, but the initial bombing attacks focused on populated areas outside the control of both Assad and ISIS. Clearly, the targets were not being chosen by the anti-ISIS coalition, but by Assad's clique: their best chance to survive this civil war in power is to eliminate the possibility of any third force, making it a grim choice between them and the monsters of ISIS. There was also an element of intrigue with Iran, too: Russia joined the West in bringing Iran to agreement on its nuclear program, but has also been in the forefront, once the agreement has been concluded, to relieve sanctions there, and Iran and Russia share an interest in the survival of Assad's (anti-Sunni) regime. Indeed, Russia launched cruise missiles from its ships in the Caspian Sea; when one of them fell off course into Iran, the Iranians did not publicly complain.
Most recently, the Russians are trying a little harder not to antagonize the West; they have met with our officials, first at a high level and then at a more technical level, to ensure their sorties will not conflict directly with our own. The Russians are hoping to have their sanctions relieved, too; a key test will be if they can avoid actions which make the flight of refugees even worse than the present, and at the same time assist in the defeat of ISIS. No doubt they will seek every opportunity to thumb their nose at the US, and at their ancient nemesis Turkey.
The latest news is the shocking plane crash in the Northern Sinai of a chartered plane full of Russians returning from vacation. ISIS has claimed "credit" for this atrocity; the investigation has just begun, but the dispersal of the wreckage suggests the plane broke apart in midair, so it may not have been a mechanical failure, and pilot error would seem unlikely given the circumstances. Once again, ISIS' insistence on violating norms of behavior may end up creating a powerful, fervent opponent when it could have avoided that. Even the Russians and their Ukrainian stooges were discreet enough not to brag about shooting down a passenger aircraft when they did it.
+I just invented this term, which combines two words which share the same Latin root, "prov", meaning, to try: "improvisation" and "provocation".
The Markets are Perverse
The global economy is slowing, US earnings reports have been generally unfavorable; so why are the stock markets heading toward an all-time high?
There is a sort of logical explanation; it starts with the glut of crude oil and gives far too much weight to the question of whether, and when, the Fed may begin to raise interest rates. Despite a long period of job and GDP growth, inflation remains close to zero. The oversupply of crude oil has kept energy prices low, with a stable to negative trend; while many of the cost-of-living measures exclude energy cost, low energy prices have an indirect effect on prices in general--for suppliers, and, I would argue, by strengthening the US dollar, which makes purchased objects cost less in dollars (especially imported ones).
So, the Fed looks at flat price trends--nothing to correct there yet. Unemployment going down--it is their secondary goal to allow economic growth to continue. The conclusion that the time is not yet ripe to begin to re-set interest rates upward from their current near-zero values is justifiable. The trick is that Fed members know that they cannot be wholly reactive; because of the time-lag effects of their monetary adjustments, they need to anticipate future trends and act based upon the leading indicators. As the unemployment rate drops, one that the Fed will watch closely will be labor costs; the low labor participation rate which you may have heard mentioned by Presidential campaigners looking for dark clouds is structural and demographic, and shortages in skilled professions may start up inflation's engine. So far, though, there is no imperative to act, though the eventuality of raising rates from the floor level, where they've been for several years, is not in doubt.
Somehow this inevitability does not seem to have registered much with the markets, which respond with these reactions that I would describe as both knee-jerk and perverse: good economic news, in the form of growth or employment, causes the markets to pull back, as the day of rate increases is deemed to draw nearer; while continuation of the slow-growth improving trend pushes the markets ever upward. (I exclude the usual overreactions to individual companies' reports of negative news in their reporting of short-term revenues and profits, and the shocks from abroad, which cause one-day drops but have generally been absorbed.) It would seem that the current rally is due to be erased once the date of the initial Fed rate increases becomes certain. On the other hand, my expectation is that the anticipation--of rate increases' negative effects on the economy--will be much more painful than the reality, and that the Fed would do well to puncture this little bubble in the stock markets, raise rates a single time, then wait for a new equilibrium to develop before making its next move.
A Critical Ally Endangered
We in the US may think our policy is confused in the Middle East, but I would say the top two priorities--containing and reducing ISIS, and restoring peace in Syria by easing out the failing Assad regime--are clear, and generally accepted by all parties. Among the various Presidential candidates of both parties there is lots of posturing about our posture, and less agreement on handling the Iranians, but little in the way of meaningful alternatives to advance our objectives (see below on the "no-fly" option which has been revived by some).
One aspect about which I hear very little intelligent discussion here is our view of the much more complex challenges faced by our second greatest ally in the region (after Israel, given that Israelis are a player in this active war theater, somewhat on the margin, bordering as it does on Syria in the Golan Heights area), and the ally which is most directly involved in the mess. Turkey has the challenge of managing several difficult, interrelated problems simultaneously:
1) Turkey is the front line for the international Syrian refugee problem, sheltering more than 1.5 million, and the point of departure for those among them with the means to try to escape the camps;The last of these is the most acute at present. Turkey had its second general election in months today, in an environment in which President Erdogan sought to play the nationalism card to reverse an electoral defeat in June, in which his party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in a decade. Erdogan gained a partial victory, restoring his party's majority, but did not gain the two-thirds majority he had originally sought to pass constitutional amendments to lock in more deeply his political advantages.
2) Turkey is the point of arrival for those inspired to try to enter the war theater from outside, and thus the only country with the ability to intercept them, block them, or otherwise impede them;
3) Turkey faces a huge issue, both domestically and outside its borders, of the Kurdish population which seeks greater autonomy and has been the most effective counterforce to ISIS in northern Syria and northern Iraq;
4) Turkey's domestic politics have been roiled by the instability in the region.
Another result in today's election concerned the Kurdish party, perhaps comparable to Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein in being the peaceful arm of a movement which has--for decades--violently resisted the central government. A significant factor in the defeat of Erdogan's party this spring was the emergence of this party as a political force which gained representation (at a minimum10% of the vote) in the national parliament for the first time. The party lost ground but maintained a presence in parliament, so again only a partial victory for Erdogan.
The conditions of the electoral campaign were a state of high tension. A peace rally of Turks and Kurds in the nation's capital, Ankara, was rocked by two suicide bombs which killed hundreds. This great wound exacerbated a tension which had built over months, as Turkey agreed for the first time to facilitate US airstrikes, then responded to a previous bomb near the border by beginning airstrikes of their own into Syria, which seemed to focus more on the Kurdish forces than on ISIS. Many Turks were deeply suspicious of the government's actions and motives; in the aftermath of the Ankara bombing, the opposition claimed that the government's forces of order were more interested in suppressing Kurdish political aspirations than in protecting civilians. The government has attributed the attack to ISIS, but some were less than convinced; political polarization has increased, and restrictions on individual liberties have continued.
It is not an overstatement to say that unlocking Turkey's capability to act effecctively and positively in the region is the key to solving the whole ISIS/Assad mess--at least with regard to Syria. In this sense, the electoral result today could at least provide a stable outcome for the domestic environment. Turkey has been accused of playing a two-faced game, particularly during the desperate battle for the Syrian border city of Kobane between ISIS and the Kurdish forces; the accusation is true, but it simply reflects the complex realities the country faces.
Were it not for the pure evil of ISIS, Turkey would naturally gravitate more to that group, which opposes both of the nation's key foes in the region, the Kurdish nationalists and the Assad regime, the latter of which it blames entirely for the strife. Indeed, there seemed to be an understanding between ISIS and Turkey for months leading into this past season, with Turkish hostages released and Turkey impeding others' use of its territory for attacks on ISIS. Turkey has the largest, best-trained military force in the northern Middle East; with the support of NATO, it could put ISIS out of business in a matter of months, though there would remain the problem of how to fill that power vacuum--Turkey would never do it if the result were to put Assad back in control in Syria.
In the meantime, instead of being part of the anti-ISIS coalition the US has sought to put together in the region, Turkey is pursuing its own objectives. Foremost among them is to create safe areas within Syria and thus reduce the pressure of refugees fleeing the conflict. They have long requested the US, and the West, to establish a no-fly zone within Syria. It is a call that has been taken up by some, but it was always a tall order (due to the anti-aircraft capabilities of the Syrian government forces) that has just become much more complicated with the arrival in the area of the Russian air force.
Putin's "Improvocations"+
If the challenges of the US and its coalition and of Turkey were not messy enough, now Putin's Russia has inserted itself into the theater with aggressive and unpredictable actions, raising the geopolitical stakes even higher. That Putin would line up with the Assad regime was a given; Russia has allied with the minority Alawite-dominated Assads for decades, and Syria has given Russia much-desired privileged access to the Mediterranean through its coast. Providing lethal aid to Assad has been done more or less openly all along. A month or so ago, though, Putin switched the focus of his mischief-making from the Ukraine border region to Syria, first stepping up the quantity of aid, then providing direct military assistance.
Putin's comments were all about defeating ISIS, but the initial bombing attacks focused on populated areas outside the control of both Assad and ISIS. Clearly, the targets were not being chosen by the anti-ISIS coalition, but by Assad's clique: their best chance to survive this civil war in power is to eliminate the possibility of any third force, making it a grim choice between them and the monsters of ISIS. There was also an element of intrigue with Iran, too: Russia joined the West in bringing Iran to agreement on its nuclear program, but has also been in the forefront, once the agreement has been concluded, to relieve sanctions there, and Iran and Russia share an interest in the survival of Assad's (anti-Sunni) regime. Indeed, Russia launched cruise missiles from its ships in the Caspian Sea; when one of them fell off course into Iran, the Iranians did not publicly complain.
Most recently, the Russians are trying a little harder not to antagonize the West; they have met with our officials, first at a high level and then at a more technical level, to ensure their sorties will not conflict directly with our own. The Russians are hoping to have their sanctions relieved, too; a key test will be if they can avoid actions which make the flight of refugees even worse than the present, and at the same time assist in the defeat of ISIS. No doubt they will seek every opportunity to thumb their nose at the US, and at their ancient nemesis Turkey.
The latest news is the shocking plane crash in the Northern Sinai of a chartered plane full of Russians returning from vacation. ISIS has claimed "credit" for this atrocity; the investigation has just begun, but the dispersal of the wreckage suggests the plane broke apart in midair, so it may not have been a mechanical failure, and pilot error would seem unlikely given the circumstances. Once again, ISIS' insistence on violating norms of behavior may end up creating a powerful, fervent opponent when it could have avoided that. Even the Russians and their Ukrainian stooges were discreet enough not to brag about shooting down a passenger aircraft when they did it.
+I just invented this term, which combines two words which share the same Latin root, "prov", meaning, to try: "improvisation" and "provocation".
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Disorder in the House
Disorder in the house
There's a flaw in the system
And the fly in the ointment's gonna bring the whole thing down
The floodgates are open
We've let the demons loose
The big guns have spoken
And we've fallen for the ruse
Disorder in the house
It's a fate worse than fame
Even the Lhasa Apso seems to be ashamed....
Disorder in the house
All bets are off
I'm sprawled across the davenport of despair
Disorder in the house
I'll live with the tosses
And watch the sundown through the portiere
--Written by Warren Zevon and Jorge Calderon, 2003: "The Wind"
I downloaded this picture from the right-wing news service Newsmax (I like to keep tabs from time to time on what is getting them all excited). I like the wit of the reference to Julius Caesar; there was something Roman in Boehner's sacrifice, and something very civic and honorable in fixing the looming budget dilemma with the deal--which will be highly unpopular with the Tea Party membership, to which he was more than willing to offer the back of his hand. There will be more here about analogies between ancient Rome and the US; I will just say that in the arc of the Romans' history, we are well past the fall of their Republic.
The rallying of the Republicans around Paul Ryan was predictable. He wanted a less-than-fulltime Speakership role, and the caucus' inclination was for weakening the position of the leadership, so there was grounds for agreement.
Speaking of prediction, I caught Ryan's probability of being Speaker at a pretty good timing on predictit.org, buying shares at 34% (they're now at 95%). I ended up on the wrong side of the Will Biden Run? teeter-totter; my last trade was for Yes; however, I was always on the No side for his winning the nomination and the Presidency, which more than made up for the loss on the speculative market of his announcement. And, my investment in shares on positive outcomes for Hillary in 2016 (in Iowa, for the nomination, for the Presidency, and for a woman being elected President) have all appreciated nicely in recent weeks. Finally, I got shares on Justin Trudeau becoming the next Prime Minister of Canada when they were at 20% and the race was a virtual three-way tie. I wasn't sure then who would win, but I was fairly certain that the incumbent, Stephen Harper, would not.
No Labels!
My good friend and radio talk-show host Norm Goldman should get on the docket for this group, which seeks to bridge the partisan chasm. It's not that he is non-partisan, but that he eschews labels like "liberal" and "conservative" (and I agree they have become totally distorted to the point of being meaningless). We differ on "progressive", though; I think he and I both are of that persuasion, while he insists it is not a meaningful one.
Anyway, this No Labels group had its caucus in New Hampshire recently (of course; for a few months it is the center of the US political universe). Its favorable location and opportunity to showcase one's pragmatic line-crossing (if that was the posture deemed advantageous) allowed it to get the attendance of a number of Presidential candidates: Christie, Pataki, Graham, O'Malley (by phone), Sanders, Trump, Kasich and Webb.
A couple more interesting notes: The co-chairs are Jon Huntsman and Joe Lieberman--showing that the group's core is among those rejected by, or running away from, their party's base--while the agenda also showed participation from Kelly Ayotte, Evan Bayh, and Bill Nelson. Ayotte is running for re-election in New Hampshire, and will need crossover votes from Indpendents and/or Democrats to win a tough battle, so she had two reasons to show up. Nelson I can't quite figure--he is not running until 2018, but in Florida it is usually best to have crossover appeal.
The most interesting case is Bayh: one of Indiana's Senate seats is opening in 2016 (Dan Coats is retiring), and Bayh is sitting on $10 million of campaign funds from previous elections, but his office has stated clearly that Bayh is not running for it. My guess is that he is in touch with the Clintonistas, and they have told him he will be in consideration for the Vice Presidential nomination, to keep himself available and burnish his credentials with moderates (which have always been good). If Bayh can give Hillary a fighting chance in Indiana (which Obama won narrowly in 2008, and lost in 2012), that makes the Republicans' Electoral College map even more difficult.
I will not be watching the CNBC debate tomorrow (the World Series holds more interest for me); though some different moderators from a less-friendly network might ask questions outside of the usual Republican primary comfort zone, I'm not too interested in Trump bashing his latest straw dog. This time I imagine he will come out looking for a reason to attack Ben Carson, who will try the rope-a-dope strategy. Whatever.
There's a flaw in the system
And the fly in the ointment's gonna bring the whole thing down
The floodgates are open
We've let the demons loose
The big guns have spoken
And we've fallen for the ruse
Disorder in the house
It's a fate worse than fame
Even the Lhasa Apso seems to be ashamed....
Disorder in the house
All bets are off
I'm sprawled across the davenport of despair
Disorder in the house
I'll live with the tosses
And watch the sundown through the portiere
--Written by Warren Zevon and Jorge Calderon, 2003: "The Wind"
I downloaded this picture from the right-wing news service Newsmax (I like to keep tabs from time to time on what is getting them all excited). I like the wit of the reference to Julius Caesar; there was something Roman in Boehner's sacrifice, and something very civic and honorable in fixing the looming budget dilemma with the deal--which will be highly unpopular with the Tea Party membership, to which he was more than willing to offer the back of his hand. There will be more here about analogies between ancient Rome and the US; I will just say that in the arc of the Romans' history, we are well past the fall of their Republic.The rallying of the Republicans around Paul Ryan was predictable. He wanted a less-than-fulltime Speakership role, and the caucus' inclination was for weakening the position of the leadership, so there was grounds for agreement.
Speaking of prediction, I caught Ryan's probability of being Speaker at a pretty good timing on predictit.org, buying shares at 34% (they're now at 95%). I ended up on the wrong side of the Will Biden Run? teeter-totter; my last trade was for Yes; however, I was always on the No side for his winning the nomination and the Presidency, which more than made up for the loss on the speculative market of his announcement. And, my investment in shares on positive outcomes for Hillary in 2016 (in Iowa, for the nomination, for the Presidency, and for a woman being elected President) have all appreciated nicely in recent weeks. Finally, I got shares on Justin Trudeau becoming the next Prime Minister of Canada when they were at 20% and the race was a virtual three-way tie. I wasn't sure then who would win, but I was fairly certain that the incumbent, Stephen Harper, would not.
No Labels!
My good friend and radio talk-show host Norm Goldman should get on the docket for this group, which seeks to bridge the partisan chasm. It's not that he is non-partisan, but that he eschews labels like "liberal" and "conservative" (and I agree they have become totally distorted to the point of being meaningless). We differ on "progressive", though; I think he and I both are of that persuasion, while he insists it is not a meaningful one.
Anyway, this No Labels group had its caucus in New Hampshire recently (of course; for a few months it is the center of the US political universe). Its favorable location and opportunity to showcase one's pragmatic line-crossing (if that was the posture deemed advantageous) allowed it to get the attendance of a number of Presidential candidates: Christie, Pataki, Graham, O'Malley (by phone), Sanders, Trump, Kasich and Webb.
A couple more interesting notes: The co-chairs are Jon Huntsman and Joe Lieberman--showing that the group's core is among those rejected by, or running away from, their party's base--while the agenda also showed participation from Kelly Ayotte, Evan Bayh, and Bill Nelson. Ayotte is running for re-election in New Hampshire, and will need crossover votes from Indpendents and/or Democrats to win a tough battle, so she had two reasons to show up. Nelson I can't quite figure--he is not running until 2018, but in Florida it is usually best to have crossover appeal.
The most interesting case is Bayh: one of Indiana's Senate seats is opening in 2016 (Dan Coats is retiring), and Bayh is sitting on $10 million of campaign funds from previous elections, but his office has stated clearly that Bayh is not running for it. My guess is that he is in touch with the Clintonistas, and they have told him he will be in consideration for the Vice Presidential nomination, to keep himself available and burnish his credentials with moderates (which have always been good). If Bayh can give Hillary a fighting chance in Indiana (which Obama won narrowly in 2008, and lost in 2012), that makes the Republicans' Electoral College map even more difficult.
I will not be watching the CNBC debate tomorrow (the World Series holds more interest for me); though some different moderators from a less-friendly network might ask questions outside of the usual Republican primary comfort zone, I'm not too interested in Trump bashing his latest straw dog. This time I imagine he will come out looking for a reason to attack Ben Carson, who will try the rope-a-dope strategy. Whatever.
Tuesday, October 06, 2015
Fall Sports Preview
The baseball postseason starts tonight with the AL Wild Card game, and I have to say I am looking forward to postseason games, but without much of a dog in the hunt (due to the predictably bad season for the Cincinnati Reds). In a season of insurgents, my spring predictions were quite bad: by my count, I had about 3 1/2 of the 10 teams into the postseason correct (Cards, Dodgers, Pirates, and Royals, sort of). I did spot rising tidings for the Cubs, Rangers, and Astros, all of which made the postseason, but didn't expect them to have quite so much success as to make the playoffs this year. The moves of the Mets, Yankees, and Blue Jays, I missed entirely, and I was like most in picking the favored Washington Nationals to do a lot more than they did.
In recent years, I have looked for the teams that were hot going into the postseason to do well--this year, there aren't any, really. None of the postseason teams have better than a 6-4 record in their last 10 games (KC, Toronto, and Houston). The AL teams that have done particularly well in the second half of the season are Texas and Toronto, so I would pick the winner of their series to win the league's Championship Series.
Wednesday's NL Wild Card game shapes up as one of the highlights, a do-or-die showdown of two top starting pitchers, the Cubs' Jake Arrieta and the Pirates' Gerrit Cole, and the teams with the second- and third-best records in the major leagues. I pick the winner of that game to defeat their divisional series opponent, the team with the best regular-season record, their divisional rival the Cards, who have struggled late in the season. The Mets have a great young rotation, but their pitching cannot match the Dodgers' supreme 1-2 punch of Zach Greinke and Clayton Kershaw. I expect the key will be Game 4, in New York, when the Mets will either have to go to a rookie with a bad back (Stephen Matz) or the ancient guile of Bartolo Colon, probably to save their series, and possibly against Greinke going on short rest.
My sentimental pick is the Cubs, but they are no better than 50-50 to get past their first game. I will go with the Blue Jays vs. Dodgers in the Series, but will drop in a comment if these choices are obviated in the first round.
Basketball
The surprises of the 2014-15 regular season were the conference-topping performances of the Golden State Warriors in the West and the Atlanta Hawks in the East. The Hawks flamed out rather badly in the playoffs, but the Warriors confirmed their status in the top flight by cruising through to the championship with surprisingly little difficulty.
Still, league watchers doing previews of this upcoming season are having trouble recognizing or accepting the Warriors' pre-eminence. One very good reason is the restructuring of the lineup of the San Antonio Spurs, who return their veterans and their rising star Kawhi Leonard, but have also added a major piece, through the free agent signing of LaMarcus Aldridge. In the West, there are two or three other teams with all the pieces to make a possible run, including Houston, the LA Clippers, and Oklahoma City (assuming Kevin Durant stays healthy this year).
The East race is considered to be no contest, with the Cleveland Cavaliers far in front and several possible contenders, including the Hawks, for the moderately prestigious #2 slot. As a Chicago resident, it will be interesting to see if the Bulls can return to their previous Conference Finals form; in particular, whether Derrick Rose still has it, similarly whether Pau Gasol and rising star Jimmy Butler can meet prior standards of performance, and whether the departure of coach Thibodeau, who to my view always got overachievement from the team, though perhaps at the cost of exhaustion, will hurt them. My former favorite team (from the '90's, basically), the New York Knicks, will remain the target of jokes and their GM Phil Jackson the subject of endless speculation, but their selection, at the #4 draft pick, of a 20-year-old 7-foot Latvian work-in-progress (Kristaps Porzingis) suggests to me that they are playing the long game, and that achieving mediocrity this year will have been a successful campaign.
I will make some NBA predictions in a follow-on comment when I have seen a bit more.
In college hoops I have to be even more reticent as the season approaches. My co-favored team (U. of Kentucky) had an undefeated regular season, but lost in the NCAA semifinals, with their six or seven top players going pro. Fear not, coach John Calipari and the Wildcats return with a fresh crop of prospective one-and-dones, but I will have to watch some games before I know whether they have actual possibilities to compete at the top level or are more likely (as happened one recent year) to lose in the first round of the loser tournament, the NIT. As for the other co-favored, U. of Louisville, Rick Pitino's organization just got rocked with the disclosure that one of his assistants has been accused of pimping ho's for prospects. I kid you not; the consequences could be very heavy.
U. of North Carolina is the preseason favorite--I would be happy with anything non-Carolinian winning the championship in my preliminary assessment. The college regular season has become a four-month learning exercise for talented freshmen, as their coaches seek to develop the chemistry needed for a tournament run, and the players prove their professional mettle or decide to return for further schooling.
Soccer
My principal preoccupation early in the international season (the US season is in midcourse, but I don't follow it much) is the disastrously bad performance of my favorite English team. Something is rotten in the Borough of Chelsea (leaving aside that the stadium is in Fulham and the practice grounds in the fashionable western suburb of Cobham), and the Blues got'em in a serious way so far.
Despite his leading the team to a very successful 2014-15 season (above all, Premier League champions, but also League Cup winners who had respectable F.A. Cup and Champions League seasons), the start of this season is so bad that head coach Jose Mourinho has already been targeted for a quick hook, which Chelsea in its 21st-Century supersized version has readily employed. So far, though, he has received a vote of confidence from the Board of the club--which is fine, as long as it lasts--and Mourinho has stated he will not quit, they will have to fire him.
Really, though, the team is in 16th place (out of 20) in the league, and the start of their Champions League group has not been auspicious, either. Mourinho relied heavily--perhaps excessively--on a consistent selection of his top 11 last year (as long as they were healthy), and the team has not changed much, but all of the returnees are playing noticeably worse, so far, than they did last year. So, there is a possible charge of overuse, and I would add another, of being profligate with the talent acquired. It is possible one could construct a team of just the players Mourinho has discarded in the two years he's been there--names such as Mata, DeBruyne, Lukaku, Cole, Schurrle, Cech, Salah, Cuadrado...--that would be better than the ones he's got; they didn't fit into his scheme of team defense. Yet it is exactly that defense which is the problem so far; with defensemen he has been less wasteful, but his returning defenders are the ones who seem tired and slow. To be fair, though, in today's game and in Chelsea a lot of the strategy is about the midfield maintaining control or blunting the counterattacks of the opponents, and that seems also to have been lacking. I'd say Mourinho has until February--there will be an opportunity to fill gaps during the transfer window in January, and if he can plug holes he might be able to survive even a subpar season; if, however, they come out of that period still looking like this, it will be time for a total rethink and yet another team manager.
On the positive side, my Italian side Fiorentina is a surprise leader in Serie A. I have followed them, somewhat inconsistently I admit, for longer than Chelsea, some thirty years, and their performance is usually like Chelsea's used to be, pre-Roman Abramovich unlimited budget days: middle of the pack, occasionally better, generally hanging on in the top level. Their team this year is fairly anonymous, filled with Slavs and Hispanics, but they are playing well and playing together. The teams of the larger markets--based in Rome, Milan, Naples, and Torino--are playing quite badly so far. I doubt this will last.
One thing to watch is the qualification for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, a contest of national teams that has gradually risen in significance. It has some peculiar specifications, with three players allowed over the age of 25, but that is less of an impediment than it seems with the strong youth development in many nations. The US has important games toward its qualifications coming up .
Football (The Other Kinds)
I have seen one college game so far this year, an inspired bid by the usually-lowly Indiana Hoosiers to defeat #1-ranked Ohio State (last year's national champion). I should root for Ohio St., which has broken the stranglehold the SEC teams have had on the top spots, but I feel the Buckeyes have just cloned the SEC formula for success. Anyway, OSU won by holding Indiana on a series of downs inside its 10-yard line in the last minute. Questionable but acceptable result for the #1 ranked team (the commentators were suggesting down the stretch that one loss may not disqualify OSU for the national championship playoffs, which will be four teams this year); and a moral victory for IU, which has been getting wiped out by Ohio St. in its Big 10 games as long as I can remember.
The NFL is gradually assuming the character of the WWE (pro wrestling): highly entertaining, but results without much credibility. Cheating is rising, as are players' misdeeds, lawsuits, and, unfortunately, permanently disabling injuries, with sportsmanship totally evaporating; now we know not even the playoffs are immune. ("Deflategate")
There is also a form of football known as rugby (union, or league, I don't know which, and does it matter?) that is holding its world championship tournament now. I know the US made the field but probably is already eliminated; I think England is out, too. The big news was a huge upset by Japan of South Africa in the first game they played in the tourney, but I don't think they could sustain the momentum. That about covers my knowledge of the event.
In recent years, I have looked for the teams that were hot going into the postseason to do well--this year, there aren't any, really. None of the postseason teams have better than a 6-4 record in their last 10 games (KC, Toronto, and Houston). The AL teams that have done particularly well in the second half of the season are Texas and Toronto, so I would pick the winner of their series to win the league's Championship Series.
Wednesday's NL Wild Card game shapes up as one of the highlights, a do-or-die showdown of two top starting pitchers, the Cubs' Jake Arrieta and the Pirates' Gerrit Cole, and the teams with the second- and third-best records in the major leagues. I pick the winner of that game to defeat their divisional series opponent, the team with the best regular-season record, their divisional rival the Cards, who have struggled late in the season. The Mets have a great young rotation, but their pitching cannot match the Dodgers' supreme 1-2 punch of Zach Greinke and Clayton Kershaw. I expect the key will be Game 4, in New York, when the Mets will either have to go to a rookie with a bad back (Stephen Matz) or the ancient guile of Bartolo Colon, probably to save their series, and possibly against Greinke going on short rest.
My sentimental pick is the Cubs, but they are no better than 50-50 to get past their first game. I will go with the Blue Jays vs. Dodgers in the Series, but will drop in a comment if these choices are obviated in the first round.
Basketball
The surprises of the 2014-15 regular season were the conference-topping performances of the Golden State Warriors in the West and the Atlanta Hawks in the East. The Hawks flamed out rather badly in the playoffs, but the Warriors confirmed their status in the top flight by cruising through to the championship with surprisingly little difficulty.
Still, league watchers doing previews of this upcoming season are having trouble recognizing or accepting the Warriors' pre-eminence. One very good reason is the restructuring of the lineup of the San Antonio Spurs, who return their veterans and their rising star Kawhi Leonard, but have also added a major piece, through the free agent signing of LaMarcus Aldridge. In the West, there are two or three other teams with all the pieces to make a possible run, including Houston, the LA Clippers, and Oklahoma City (assuming Kevin Durant stays healthy this year).
The East race is considered to be no contest, with the Cleveland Cavaliers far in front and several possible contenders, including the Hawks, for the moderately prestigious #2 slot. As a Chicago resident, it will be interesting to see if the Bulls can return to their previous Conference Finals form; in particular, whether Derrick Rose still has it, similarly whether Pau Gasol and rising star Jimmy Butler can meet prior standards of performance, and whether the departure of coach Thibodeau, who to my view always got overachievement from the team, though perhaps at the cost of exhaustion, will hurt them. My former favorite team (from the '90's, basically), the New York Knicks, will remain the target of jokes and their GM Phil Jackson the subject of endless speculation, but their selection, at the #4 draft pick, of a 20-year-old 7-foot Latvian work-in-progress (Kristaps Porzingis) suggests to me that they are playing the long game, and that achieving mediocrity this year will have been a successful campaign.
I will make some NBA predictions in a follow-on comment when I have seen a bit more.
In college hoops I have to be even more reticent as the season approaches. My co-favored team (U. of Kentucky) had an undefeated regular season, but lost in the NCAA semifinals, with their six or seven top players going pro. Fear not, coach John Calipari and the Wildcats return with a fresh crop of prospective one-and-dones, but I will have to watch some games before I know whether they have actual possibilities to compete at the top level or are more likely (as happened one recent year) to lose in the first round of the loser tournament, the NIT. As for the other co-favored, U. of Louisville, Rick Pitino's organization just got rocked with the disclosure that one of his assistants has been accused of pimping ho's for prospects. I kid you not; the consequences could be very heavy.
U. of North Carolina is the preseason favorite--I would be happy with anything non-Carolinian winning the championship in my preliminary assessment. The college regular season has become a four-month learning exercise for talented freshmen, as their coaches seek to develop the chemistry needed for a tournament run, and the players prove their professional mettle or decide to return for further schooling.
Soccer
My principal preoccupation early in the international season (the US season is in midcourse, but I don't follow it much) is the disastrously bad performance of my favorite English team. Something is rotten in the Borough of Chelsea (leaving aside that the stadium is in Fulham and the practice grounds in the fashionable western suburb of Cobham), and the Blues got'em in a serious way so far.
Despite his leading the team to a very successful 2014-15 season (above all, Premier League champions, but also League Cup winners who had respectable F.A. Cup and Champions League seasons), the start of this season is so bad that head coach Jose Mourinho has already been targeted for a quick hook, which Chelsea in its 21st-Century supersized version has readily employed. So far, though, he has received a vote of confidence from the Board of the club--which is fine, as long as it lasts--and Mourinho has stated he will not quit, they will have to fire him.
Really, though, the team is in 16th place (out of 20) in the league, and the start of their Champions League group has not been auspicious, either. Mourinho relied heavily--perhaps excessively--on a consistent selection of his top 11 last year (as long as they were healthy), and the team has not changed much, but all of the returnees are playing noticeably worse, so far, than they did last year. So, there is a possible charge of overuse, and I would add another, of being profligate with the talent acquired. It is possible one could construct a team of just the players Mourinho has discarded in the two years he's been there--names such as Mata, DeBruyne, Lukaku, Cole, Schurrle, Cech, Salah, Cuadrado...--that would be better than the ones he's got; they didn't fit into his scheme of team defense. Yet it is exactly that defense which is the problem so far; with defensemen he has been less wasteful, but his returning defenders are the ones who seem tired and slow. To be fair, though, in today's game and in Chelsea a lot of the strategy is about the midfield maintaining control or blunting the counterattacks of the opponents, and that seems also to have been lacking. I'd say Mourinho has until February--there will be an opportunity to fill gaps during the transfer window in January, and if he can plug holes he might be able to survive even a subpar season; if, however, they come out of that period still looking like this, it will be time for a total rethink and yet another team manager.
On the positive side, my Italian side Fiorentina is a surprise leader in Serie A. I have followed them, somewhat inconsistently I admit, for longer than Chelsea, some thirty years, and their performance is usually like Chelsea's used to be, pre-Roman Abramovich unlimited budget days: middle of the pack, occasionally better, generally hanging on in the top level. Their team this year is fairly anonymous, filled with Slavs and Hispanics, but they are playing well and playing together. The teams of the larger markets--based in Rome, Milan, Naples, and Torino--are playing quite badly so far. I doubt this will last.
One thing to watch is the qualification for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, a contest of national teams that has gradually risen in significance. It has some peculiar specifications, with three players allowed over the age of 25, but that is less of an impediment than it seems with the strong youth development in many nations. The US has important games toward its qualifications coming up .
Football (The Other Kinds)
I have seen one college game so far this year, an inspired bid by the usually-lowly Indiana Hoosiers to defeat #1-ranked Ohio State (last year's national champion). I should root for Ohio St., which has broken the stranglehold the SEC teams have had on the top spots, but I feel the Buckeyes have just cloned the SEC formula for success. Anyway, OSU won by holding Indiana on a series of downs inside its 10-yard line in the last minute. Questionable but acceptable result for the #1 ranked team (the commentators were suggesting down the stretch that one loss may not disqualify OSU for the national championship playoffs, which will be four teams this year); and a moral victory for IU, which has been getting wiped out by Ohio St. in its Big 10 games as long as I can remember.
The NFL is gradually assuming the character of the WWE (pro wrestling): highly entertaining, but results without much credibility. Cheating is rising, as are players' misdeeds, lawsuits, and, unfortunately, permanently disabling injuries, with sportsmanship totally evaporating; now we know not even the playoffs are immune. ("Deflategate")
There is also a form of football known as rugby (union, or league, I don't know which, and does it matter?) that is holding its world championship tournament now. I know the US made the field but probably is already eliminated; I think England is out, too. The big news was a huge upset by Japan of South Africa in the first game they played in the tourney, but I don't think they could sustain the momentum. That about covers my knowledge of the event.
Sunday, October 04, 2015
Of the Recent Moment
Papalmania
It's not hard to guess who will be Man of the Year and the US' Most Admired Person for 2015. For six days, Pope Francis took over America; the question now will be to what extent we take what he says to our hearts. And our heads.
He had never been to the US before, but for the most part he had prepared well, understood his audience and the messages he wanted to deliver. For just about anyone, Francis brought both some comfort and some challenge. Even for the senior US Catholic clergy: while his speeches and commentary generally followed the church's teachings, with regard to the history of pedophilia in several Catholic dioceses and the cover-ups that followed, he began by lamenting the suffering of the priesthood (!) but changed his tune and offered solace to its victims and promised resolution.
For the rest of us, those of the left got condemnations of inequality and the death penalty, and the culture of war and death and guns, along with acceptance of alternate lifestyles. The right got firm opposition to abortion. Everyone got encouragement to aid the refugees, to save the planet from environmental devastation, and the proposition that there is a higher calling than capitalism. The event suggested in my mind a hypothetical visit to Rome by Jesus; hit hard and fast, but don't stick around long enough for the counterforce to catch up.
Politically, he would be something extremely rare in American politics: someone who is truly pro-life, across the board (though I am waiting to hear about his approach to overpopulation, or whether he thinks the planet can stand another 100 years of the traditional five-children Catholic families). No one here wishes him ill, at least not yet; but he better watch out for those back home in the Vatican whom he has been dispossessing with his reforms.
Yogi Berra
The passing of Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra, baseball Hall of Fame catcher and one of the most beloved heroes of the sport, came somewhat quietly at the age of 90. He was the top everyday player on the Yankee team that set the all-time record for the sport with five consecutive World Series championships, and he held the major league record for homeruns by a catcher until broken by Johnny Bench.
It seemed as though Berra was characterized as some of baseball idiot savant, an impression reinforced by his tendency to provide bizarre quotes to the press. His nickname, "Yogi", was sort of a mocking description of him as being a guru, something he seemed to accept with his characteristic good humor. I think this was an unfair treatment, one which underrated his intelligence and overweighted his relatively uneducated skill level with the English language (he was the son of Italian immigrants).
The catcher is normally the on-field director for the defense, helping to set the positioning and signaling to the pitcher the type of pitch and location. Later, he was the manager, and a fairly successful one, for the Yankees and the Mets. But beyond clearly having a high baseball IQ, he had also the emotional one, and, sometimes, an offbeat wisdom. From this list of 50 Berra quotes, many of which just reveal idiomatic confusion, I selected these three which make a lot of sense to me:
Near-Death Experiences: VW, Boehner, Blatter, Walker
"Defeat device"--what an ironically accurate name for the gadget which is now on the verge of destroying Volkswagen's reputation and economic future. Faced with a difficult engineering challenge for their highly-promoted "clean diesel" technology, when it was failing tests for emissions of dangerous nitrogen dioxide, it figured out how to detect the presence of a testing device and change the emission level, just for the test. Fiendishly clever, except that it was not hidden sufficiently well, and the software driving the cheat was discovered (credit to West Virginia University).
It's not hard to guess who will be Man of the Year and the US' Most Admired Person for 2015. For six days, Pope Francis took over America; the question now will be to what extent we take what he says to our hearts. And our heads.
He had never been to the US before, but for the most part he had prepared well, understood his audience and the messages he wanted to deliver. For just about anyone, Francis brought both some comfort and some challenge. Even for the senior US Catholic clergy: while his speeches and commentary generally followed the church's teachings, with regard to the history of pedophilia in several Catholic dioceses and the cover-ups that followed, he began by lamenting the suffering of the priesthood (!) but changed his tune and offered solace to its victims and promised resolution.
For the rest of us, those of the left got condemnations of inequality and the death penalty, and the culture of war and death and guns, along with acceptance of alternate lifestyles. The right got firm opposition to abortion. Everyone got encouragement to aid the refugees, to save the planet from environmental devastation, and the proposition that there is a higher calling than capitalism. The event suggested in my mind a hypothetical visit to Rome by Jesus; hit hard and fast, but don't stick around long enough for the counterforce to catch up.
Politically, he would be something extremely rare in American politics: someone who is truly pro-life, across the board (though I am waiting to hear about his approach to overpopulation, or whether he thinks the planet can stand another 100 years of the traditional five-children Catholic families). No one here wishes him ill, at least not yet; but he better watch out for those back home in the Vatican whom he has been dispossessing with his reforms.
Yogi Berra
The passing of Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra, baseball Hall of Fame catcher and one of the most beloved heroes of the sport, came somewhat quietly at the age of 90. He was the top everyday player on the Yankee team that set the all-time record for the sport with five consecutive World Series championships, and he held the major league record for homeruns by a catcher until broken by Johnny Bench.
It seemed as though Berra was characterized as some of baseball idiot savant, an impression reinforced by his tendency to provide bizarre quotes to the press. His nickname, "Yogi", was sort of a mocking description of him as being a guru, something he seemed to accept with his characteristic good humor. I think this was an unfair treatment, one which underrated his intelligence and overweighted his relatively uneducated skill level with the English language (he was the son of Italian immigrants).
The catcher is normally the on-field director for the defense, helping to set the positioning and signaling to the pitcher the type of pitch and location. Later, he was the manager, and a fairly successful one, for the Yankees and the Mets. But beyond clearly having a high baseball IQ, he had also the emotional one, and, sometimes, an offbeat wisdom. From this list of 50 Berra quotes, many of which just reveal idiomatic confusion, I selected these three which make a lot of sense to me:
30. I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won twenty-five games. What I don’t understand is how he lost five.
44. Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.
17. The future ain’t what it used to be.Berra was at the very end of his playing career when I became a baseball fan, and my lifelong aversion to the Yankees might have played out differently if I had seen him in his prime. Since then, I have developed a more nuanced view of the teams that derive their entitlement to success from having the deepest pockets, but in Berra's case, it was superior scouting which won him to the team in the first place. I do remember being offended on his behalf when he was fired as Yankee manager in 1964 after leading them to the pennant (but not winning the Series), and I think it was the Yankees' shabby treatment of him in his second round as their manager in the '80's which eventually turned him off to the club (and particularly, to George Steinbrenner).
Near-Death Experiences: VW, Boehner, Blatter, Walker
"Defeat device"--what an ironically accurate name for the gadget which is now on the verge of destroying Volkswagen's reputation and economic future. Faced with a difficult engineering challenge for their highly-promoted "clean diesel" technology, when it was failing tests for emissions of dangerous nitrogen dioxide, it figured out how to detect the presence of a testing device and change the emission level, just for the test. Fiendishly clever, except that it was not hidden sufficiently well, and the software driving the cheat was discovered (credit to West Virginia University).
Nothing but losers as it turns out, except possibly for VW's competitors (if it turns out that they are not also guilty of this kind of fraud). The owners of the affected cars (11 million of them, across several brands, if we can trust VW's numbers) don't know whether they will end up with a car with diminished emissions and output or some sort of compromise, though VW alleges that they can fix the problem (apart from just removing the defeat device, which will not do the trick). The public has been subjected to dangerous and illegal emissions, health effects unknown (but possibly litigable). The employees, the German economy and the reputation of German export products and regulators are all negatively affected, but the ones who will be hurt worst (apart from those in the management who will be revealed to be culpable, penalties for which could be major in both civil and criminal courts, in several jurisdictions) will be the shareholders. I was astounded to see the stock rebound a couple days after the disclosure--I am guessing it was the evidence of effort by the company to support the share prices from total collapse. To date, they have dropped about 40%, a BP-oil-spill kind of effect, but I suspect there is going to be a steady flow of new indictments, new lawsuits, that will weigh them down for several years.
At some point, I would expect the company to recover, as this was not a pervasive problem, but one presumably limited to a team of engineers and programmers and a few management types that winked at the scam, and there will be strong support for VW regaining its feet from the German state (the local region of Lower Saxony is one of the leading shareholders). That being said, my advice to potential investors is to wait 3-4 years, not to buy into the story too soon. And there is a chance that VW, which spent 70 years successfully rehabilitating its image from its Nazi-era origins as a consumer-friendly, efficient mass market car producer (with significant upscale flavor through its ownership of Audi and Porsche), may end up in a negative downdraft which is permanent. It's going to be a rough ride, for those shareholders who choose to ride it out.
Next up, John Boehner, who chose to fall on the political sword rather than endure yet another government shutdown crisis over the question of de-funding Planned Parenthood. I think it was just fatigue and frustration for him, and not some more complex strategy: he had enough of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus (or whatever name they call themselves), their indiscipline and lack of realism or effectiveness. Boehner leaves a legacy of some five years of legislative impotence for his side that so far has not been punished by the voters, and the zealots want more of the same, only somehow better. Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Leader, is the obvious frontrunner to take the Speaker's position; he immediately put his foot in it, bragging about how the House's Benghazi hearings, prolonged endlessly and so far unrevealing, had brought down Hillary's approval ratings. To be fair, they did produce one result, the disclosure of Hillary's secret email servers, which, though little more substantial, has proven much more damaging than the Benghazi case or the hearings themselves. The problem with his comment is that McCarthy had strayed from the approved talking points, that the hearings were an objective, non-partisan inquiry into a tragic foreign policy security failure, so a bad omen for his potential Speakership. Personally, I think the timing is perfect for a takeover by the extremists and a spectacular fiasco, a fact of which the Republican establishment figures are fully aware and will try desperately to avoid. Meanwhile, I celebrate the fall of the House of Orange and note that the new claimant to prominence with the color, Donald Trump, is timed in synch with the seasonal change of leaf pigmentation.
I was amazed to see that Seth Blatter is still in charge of FIFA, the international association of professional soccer. His name reappeared amidst all the other news because of his criminal indictment, now going to trial in Switzerland, and the question of the moment is whether legendary French football hero and top FIFA official Michel Platini will be dragged into the mud with his friend Blatter. So far, FIFA has not stepped away from their catastrophically bad decisions to award the next two World Cup tournaments to Russia and to Qatar. Both were possibly the result of corruption: the first was defensible, but has turned out to have been poor timing; the second totally inexcusable and doomed to disastrous outcome if not unwound.
Finally, we need to celebrate the collapse of the candidacy of Scott Walker, the Republican candidate whom we singled out for our strongest opposition some time ago. I am grateful that the polled primary-probable electorate recognized fairly readily what I called out: that his is a small mind, with small accomplishments and small ideas, and that no amount of politically pandering positioning could hide those facts. My next prime target is a tougher one, a canny, unctuous and unscrupulous opportunist, Ted Cruz. He hasn't done particularly well in the polling so far, but he has positioned himself well to suck up support for the failing Rand Paul campaign and for the leavings from Trump's eventual abandonment of his campaign cruise ship when it finally runs aground (see Schettino, Francesco). It is important to realize that, while nothing has been won so far, neither has anything been lost, unless it is the hopes, dreams, and dollars of campaign contributors. So if Cruz still has his, we still have him to worry about; he will be one of the last to leave the stage, I suspect.
You may notice that I save myself from invective about the current front-runners, Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina. My feelings about them is that they pose little threat: they will fade, and if they shouldn't, if somehow one of them gets the nomination, the Republicans will get the comprehensive general election thrashing they will deserve.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
