26 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread”

  1. A few weeks ago I read an article regarding Hugo Chavez being a homosexual. Today I did a search and found that this is not just a freak article, but many latin Amaerican sources are saying the same. It seems that the supermodel thing was a smokescreen. Can you imagine the homosexuals in America going to bat for hugita once they find out? But then again it would open the door for Raul and Hugo to hitch up.

  2. Charles Krauthammer has a nice piece on the Clinton “Legacy”
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/31/AR2008013102627.html
    Here are some nicer points:
    Clinton is a narcissist but also smart and analytic enough to distinguish adulation from achievement. Among Democrats, he is popular for twice giving them the White House, something no Democrat had done since FDR. And the bouquets he receives abroad are simply signs of the respect routinely given ex-presidents, though Clinton earns an extra dollop of fawning, with the accompanying fringe benefits, because he is (a) charming and (b) not George W. Bush.
    But Clinton knows this is all written on sand. It is the stuff of celebrity. What gnaws at him is the verdict of history. What clearly enraged him more than anything this primary season was Barack Obama’s statement that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that . . . Bill Clinton did not.”
    Reagan changed history. At home, he radically altered both the shape and perception of government. Abroad, he changed the entire structure of the international system by bringing down the Soviet empire, giving birth to a unipolar world of unprecedented American dominance.
    By comparison, Clinton was a historical parenthesis. He can console himself — with considerable justification — that he simply drew the short straw in the chronological lottery: His time just happened to be the 1990s, which, through no fault of his own, was the most inconsequential decade of the 20th century. His was the interval between the collapse of the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991, and the return of history with a vengeance on Sept. 11, 2001.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/31/AR2008013102627.html

  3. 1. Teaching Math In 1950s
    A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?
    2. Teaching Math In 1960s
    A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100 His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?
    3. Teaching Math In 1970s
    A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?
    4. Teaching Math In 1980s
    A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
    5. Teaching Math In 1990s
    A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it’s ok. )
    6. Teaching Math In 2007
    Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho?

  4. To paraphrase a line from the old Cheers show, Chavez isn’t just too ugly to be gay; he’s too ugly to be out in public.

  5. Can I be a Babalu contributor while still working at the Miami Herald’s copy desk? Do you consider this a conflict of interest, Henry, especially since you also have Herald Watch blog?

  7. Cuba Spy Threat Grows:
    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,327462,00.html
    MIAMI, Fla. — Cuba is expanding its intelligence operations in the Middle East and South Asia to keep a closer eye on U.S. military operations there, according to a former top Defense Intelligence Agency official.
    Chris Simmons, a former DIA counterintelligence Cuba analyst, said Havana has placed top intelligence operatives in key embassy postings in countries such as Iran, Turkey and Pakistan to gather information for Cuba’s own defenses and provide intelligence to America’s enemies.
    “Havana has an insatiable appetite for information about U.S. military operations as well as U.S. intelligence operations,” Simmons told FOXNews.com. “They see it as a requirement for protecting the regime.”
    Cuba has sent “ambassador spies” — intelligence chiefs-turned-diplomatic envoys — to regions where the United States has active military operations, Simmons said. Before adopting this strategy, Cuba placed such people in the United States.
    One of these is Gustavo Machin Gomez, who heads the Cuban mission in Pakistan. He was one of 14 Cuban diplomats expelled from the United States on espionage charges in 2003.
    Another, Ernesto Gomez Abascal, Cuba’s ambassador to Turkey, was either an intelligence agent or an intelligence collaborator who was Cuba’s ambassador to Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to Simmons.
    Cuba’s increased relations with Pakistan and Iran offer other signs of its expanding spy network, Simmons said. In 2006, Havana reopened its embassy in Pakistan after 16 years, and Iran and Cuba are believed to be working together to jam U.S. radio and TV programming into Iran.
    “I think that it’s very clear that Cuba is opening up another front in the war with the United States,” said Roger Noriega, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs from 2003 to 2005.
    “That’s the Cuban revolution’s primary occupation and preoccupation,” Noriega added.
    For decades, Castro’s spies have successfully monitored activities at America’s domestic air and naval bases, which allowed them to anticipate every major U.S. military deployment, from the 1983 invasion of Grenada to the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, Simmons said.
    Cuban intelligence has “whipped the asses of American intelligence for decades,” Noriega said. He warned that Cuba could be brokering “intelligence information to firm up political support or just help out their friends, be they terrorist organizations or just hostile governments.”
    Cuba’s new strategy follows a series of intelligence setbacks that forced the Castro regime to re-think the way it monitors U.S. military movements. Those included the closing of a Cuban intelligence center in Canada, the 2003 expulsion of several Cuban diplomats working in Washington and the arrest of one-time DIA Cuba analyst Ana Montes, who for more than a decade was believed to be passing U.S. secrets to the Castro government.
    It’s believed that some of those secrets were passed on to Russia, China and Iran.
    Some experts have expressed doubt that Cuban diplomats with former intelligence ties in these and other countries are, in fact, spying on their host countries. “Ambassadors usually don’t go spooking around,” said Larry Birns, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
    Pentagon officials and the DIA refused comment on Simmons’ assessment of Cuba’s spying practices. “We are always concerned about the safety of our military members abroad,” said a DIA official who requested anonymity.
    Several attempts to contact Cuban officials at the country’s interest section in Washington were unsuccessful. But Simmons, who founded the Cuban Intelligence Research Center in Leesburg, Va., said Cuba’s far-reaching spy network — with more than 11,500 agents, including some 3,500 focused on foreign operations — is a concern.
    He said the Castro government could be providing Iran with its knowledge of U.S. military capabilities, at a price. “Historically, in the Castro regime, when it comes to intelligence sharing, nothing is free,” Simmons said.
    U.S. lawmakers are calling for greater attention to be paid to Cuba’s diplomats and their activities. Rep. Lincoln-Diaz Balart, R-Fla., said “insufficient attention” was being given to threats of potential links between Cuba and state sponsors of terrorism such as Iran. He spoke following a recent briefing Simmons gave to Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
    Said Simmons: “The Cubans have a front-row seat and everyone is too busy to pay attention to what they are doing.”

  8. ***
    A simple question to pose to whichever pretender, of either party, that survives “Super Tuesday”:
    If you were faced with another “Elian Gonzalez” situation, how would you proceed?
    ***

  9. Hello.
    I don’t know how to put videos or pictures or insert hot links to websites but I thought that this article was very interestin especially for readers in Super Tuesday States.
    Many ordinary Americans have long been suspicious of free trade, seeing it as a destroyer of good-paying jobs. American economists, though, have told a different story. For them, free trade has been the great unmitigated good, the force that drives a country to shed unproductive industries, focus on what it does best, and create new, higher-skilled jobs that offer better pay than those that are lost. This support of free trade by the academic Establishment is a big reason why Presidents, be they Democrat or Republican, have for years pursued a free-trade agenda. The experts they consult have always told them that free trade was the best route to ever higher living standards.
    But something momentous is happening inside the church of free trade: Doubts are creeping in. We’re not talking wholesale, dramatic repudiation of the theory. Economists are, however, noting that their ideas can’t explain the disturbing stagnation in income that much of the middle class is experiencing. They also fear a protectionist backlash unless more is done to help those who are losing out. “Previously, you just had extremists making extravagant claims against trade,” says Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Now there are broader questions being raised that would not have been asked 10 or 15 years ago.”
    So the next President may be consulting on trade with experts who feel a lot less confident of the old certainties than they did just a few years ago. From Alan S. Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve and member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton Administration, to Dartmouth’s Matthew J. Slaughter, an international economist who served on President George W. Bush’s CEA, many in the profession are reevaluating the impact of globalization. They have studied the growth of low-wage work abroad and seen how high-speed telecommunications make it possible to handle more jobs offshore. Now they fear these factors are more menacing than they first thought.
    GAINS ONLY FOR A TINY SLICE
    No one is suggesting that trade is bad for the U.S. overall. According to estimates by the Peterson Institute and others, trade and investment liberalization over the past decades have added $500 billion to $1 trillion to annual income in the U.S.
    Yet concern is rising that the gains from free trade may increasingly be going to a small group at the top. For the vast majority of Americans, Dartmouth’s Slaughter points out, income growth has all but disappeared in recent years. And it’s not just the low-skilled who are getting slammed. Inflation-adjusted earnings have fallen in every educational category other than the 4% who hold doctorates or professional degrees. Such numbers, Slaughter argues, suggest the share of Americans who aren’t included in the gains from trade may be very big. “[That’s] a very important change from earlier generations, and it should give pause to people who say they know what’s going on,” he says.
    Blinder warns the pain may just be starting. He estimates that eventually up to 40 million service jobs in the U.S. could face competition from workers in India and other low-wage nations. That’s more than a quarter of the 140 million employed in the U.S. today. Many of the newly vulnerable will be in skilled fields, such as accounting or research—jobs U.S. companies will be able to move offshore in ever greater numbers. “It will be a messy process of adjustment, with a lot of victims along the way,” Blinder says.
    The rumble of academic debate is already having an effect on the Presidential campaign. In an interview with the Financial Times late last year, Hillary Clinton agreed with economist Paul A. Samuelson’s argument that traditional notions of comparative advantage may no longer apply. “The question of whether spreading globalization and information technology are strengthening or hollowing out our middle class may be the most paramount economic issue of our time,” her chief economic adviser, Gene Sperling, recently wrote. Barack Obama’s adviser, the University of Chicago’s Austan D. Goolsbee, is not convinced free trade is the culprit behind the squeeze on incomes. But he believes many U.S. workers aren’t sharing in the gains from open markets and fears a political blowback unless something is done.
    Here is the link to the whole article
    http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_06/b4070032762393.htm?chan=magazine+channel_news&campaign_id=rss_daily

  10. Can I also be a Babalu contributor even though I am on the Herald’s Board of Contributors?

  11. I’d be willing to concede that free trade might not be mutually beneficial when libs concede that global warming is not the result of man’s activities.

  12. I’d be willing to concede that free trade might not be mutually beneficial when libs concede that global warming is not the result of man’s activities.

  13. I read Slaughter’s paper on that globalization thing. It was interesting but I think Bob Marley said it best when he said “a hungry man is an angry man.”
    Or mon.
    Whichever you like.
    Either way, with over half of the world’s population living on less than a Jefferson greenback………

  14. GDP,
    I agree with you mon. It’s unrealistic to think that we can continue to grow and have our economy prosper through tariffs and protectionism. If you think we have a problem with illegal immigration now, imagine if the countries south of the border couldn’t sell us products.

  15. GDP,
    I agree with you mon. It’s unrealistic to think that we can continue to grow and have our economy prosper through tariffs and protectionism. If you think we have a problem with illegal immigration now, imagine if the countries south of the border couldn’t sell us products.

  16. Well, to be fair … and realistic, our country having tariffs and whatnots is only part of the problem. The other countries also have to have the same measures to protect their own industry.

  17. Well I don’t agree with you then. Making our goods more expensive to them and making their goods more expensive to us doesn’t do anyone any good.

  18. Well I don’t agree with you then. Making our goods more expensive to them and making their goods more expensive to us doesn’t do anyone any good.

  19. Well then we’ll have to just disagree.
    Free trade is only fun when you’ve got more resources than your neighbors.
    Look at our country’s history, look at Great Britain’s history: when either was at a commercial disadvantage, it was tariff, tariff, tariff so as to allow native industry to develop enough strength so that when the tariff gloves came off, they could hold their own … no, so they could dominate.
    Fair is fair and free trade is not fair trade.
    If you don’t believe that then you don’t understand why you graduated from Belen in Miami and not from Belen in La Habana.

  22. Seriously, there’s no such thing as “more resources”. Every country has resources and has a comparative advantage at something, though that advantage isn’t always apparent. Japan has a powerhouse of an economy though it lacks many of the natural resources other countries have. But it also has an educated work force and quality skilled labor. Other countries have natural resources. Seriously how does a country like guatemala benefit from putting tariffs on American or Japanese manufactured goods? Do you think that will sprout new industries in Guatemala or just depress the standard of living and add to higher consumer prices?
    Free trade is the ONLY fair trade.

  23. Seriously, there’s no such thing as “more resources”. Every country has resources and has a comparative advantage at something, though that advantage isn’t always apparent. Japan has a powerhouse of an economy though it lacks many of the natural resources other countries have. But it also has an educated work force and quality skilled labor. Other countries have natural resources. Seriously how does a country like guatemala benefit from putting tariffs on American or Japanese manufactured goods? Do you think that will sprout new industries in Guatemala or just depress the standard of living and add to higher consumer prices?
    Free trade is the ONLY fair trade.

  24. Okay, let me see if I understand this: Cuba has natural resource but no industry so Cuba should be okay, right? (This could be looked currently or before 1959)
    Cuba has sugar which it exports so that it can import candy.
    What the heck?
    Jamaica has bauxtite which it exports but it has to import aluminum.
    Huh?
    The US has almost zero bauxtite but Boeing et al cannot make any jet planes without the aluminum that comes from bauxtite.
    Speaking of jet planes, nicket is needed for jet engines yet this country has almost zero of that commodity either.
    So let’s get back to Cuba and 1959: Uncle Sam’s strategic nickel reserves plummeted by about 66% when Cuba nationalized US-owned Nicaro Nickel.
    Heck, you like to look stuff up. Look up United Fruit (hello Beantown!) and Latin American countries like Guatemala and even Cuba and don’t forget to look up United Fruit and the name “Dulles.”
    You got your economics degree in G’ville?
    Great!
    Hopefully you paid some attention in your history classes because your mention of Japan helps drive home a larger point.
    Even casual students of history all agree that – eventually – a Japanese war with the US in the Pacific would be suicide. Heck, even the Japanese knew it. So why did they Pearl Harbor anyway?
    Because their emerging economic machine needed the raw materials that you correctly said they lacked.
    Wasn’t the drive for raw materials the reason for the colonial slicing up of Latin America, Africa, SE China, SE Asia, etc?

  25. Jamaica has bauxtite which it exports but it has to import aluminum.
    Huh?
    No, huh is what I say. You’re talking in circles.
    Dude, your around the world in 80 words is quite a dodge.
    Let’s start at the end. Japan clearly doesn’t have a lot of certain kinds of natural resources. But it does have certain other types of resources. That’s where trade comes in. You have something I want and I have something you want. If the government gets in the way and adds a tariff it creates an imbalance. My two coconuts might be worth your one apple. But now because your government requires it, I have to come up with 3 coconuts to get your apple. So maybe I find someone who will trade me their apple or maybe I’ll substitute a pear for my two coconuts. Now your population doesn’t get to eat coconuts.
    Plus your version of history ignores the obvious. Japan lost the war. Yet today Japan’s economy is greater than the emperor could have ever imagined. And it was because of close ties and trade with the U.S. for the most part. It was their faulty assumption before the war that because they were not blessed with vast amounts of natural resources that the only way they could get them was through war. In reality, Japan was able to import raw materials, add value to them and export them for a profit.
    Wasn’t the drive for raw materials the reason for the colonial slicing up of Latin America, Africa, SE China, SE Asia, etc?
    Perhaps, but I’m not defending discredited geopolitical strategies, I’m talking about the mutual benefits of free trade. If tariffs are so good and necessary why don’t we have tariffs on goods “imported” from other states in the U.S.? The answer is obvious, it gums up trade and creates a huge efficiency loss to the economies of all the states.
    Again, I ask where you did your training in economics.

  26. Jamaica has bauxtite which it exports but it has to import aluminum.
    Huh?
    No, huh is what I say. You’re talking in circles.
    Dude, your around the world in 80 words is quite a dodge.
    Let’s start at the end. Japan clearly doesn’t have a lot of certain kinds of natural resources. But it does have certain other types of resources. That’s where trade comes in. You have something I want and I have something you want. If the government gets in the way and adds a tariff it creates an imbalance. My two coconuts might be worth your one apple. But now because your government requires it, I have to come up with 3 coconuts to get your apple. So maybe I find someone who will trade me their apple or maybe I’ll substitute a pear for my two coconuts. Now your population doesn’t get to eat coconuts.
    Plus your version of history ignores the obvious. Japan lost the war. Yet today Japan’s economy is greater than the emperor could have ever imagined. And it was because of close ties and trade with the U.S. for the most part. It was their faulty assumption before the war that because they were not blessed with vast amounts of natural resources that the only way they could get them was through war. In reality, Japan was able to import raw materials, add value to them and export them for a profit.
    Wasn’t the drive for raw materials the reason for the colonial slicing up of Latin America, Africa, SE China, SE Asia, etc?
    Perhaps, but I’m not defending discredited geopolitical strategies, I’m talking about the mutual benefits of free trade. If tariffs are so good and necessary why don’t we have tariffs on goods “imported” from other states in the U.S.? The answer is obvious, it gums up trade and creates a huge efficiency loss to the economies of all the states.
    Again, I ask where you did your training in economics.

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