Archive for February, 2009
What time is it where Hillary Clinton is now?
Some people are wondering what time it is in South Korea.
When people in South Korea wonder what time it is, they look at their watch. When we in Chicago wonder what time it is for Hillary Clinton in South Korea and China for the rest of the trip, we have to calculate that as best we can, remembering 12 noon in Chicago = 3am in Seoul.
So, as of this post, at 2:50pm in the Windy City, Hillary Clinton’s probably either still asleep or just waking up at 5:50am in Seoul, preparing for a big day of meetings and events in one of America’s strongest Asian allies before heading to her last stop, China, tomorrow.
Governor Sarah Palin Will Continue to Manage Alaska Well
First off, we totally want that Palin 2012 shirt, and hope someone close to the Governor shows it to her and convinces her to use that moose as her campaign logo. Obama’s creepy doughnut icon thing was a successful marketing tool for him. We never had anything like it for Hillary Clinton — and as much as we personally love the HILLARY with a little American flag below it, it never carried the mass-produced Kool-Aid zing of Obama’s marketing machine.
That little “O” turned up everywhere.
We’d love to see moose everywhere in 2012 instead.
What’s great about it is that it sums up Palin in one iconic image in much the same way the “O” sums up Obama. In Palin’s case, the moose conjures images of Alaska, is a nod to her love of the outdoors and sportsman traditions, and is an unintended, but not unwelcomed, reminder of President Theodore “Bull Moose” Roosevelt, a noted outdoorsman and reformer himself.
Obama’s “O”, of course, is as empty and relatively substance-free as he is, slick and easily marketable, with little there below the surface besides whatever you personally want to see. How serendipitous.
In the clip above, Glenn Beck rails against the media’s latest attacks on Palin, as she restructures Alaska’s 2009 and 2010 budgets to take into account the dramatic drop in oil prices in recent months (down 65% or so). Alaska, unlike the rest of the US, does not spend every dollar it brings in, so Palin’s cuts won’t be as deep as they would be in Illinois or California, if those states depended largely on oil revenues the way Alaska does. Palin’s judiciously doing her job as Governor, as Beck explains, and properly adjusting Alaska’s goals in the face of a new reality.
The reason we have such a connection with Palin is that, largely, the things the media does to her are the same things the media’s always done to Hillary Clinton. No matter what a strong, independent, hard-working woman does, it seems the media will rip her to shreds. Meanwhile, a smooth-talking, “charismatic”, empty suit of a man can skate by making everything up as he goes along. Palin, meanwhile, is criticized for thinking ahead and acting responsibly.
The more the media attacks her, and the more they push Bobby Jindal or Charlie Crist as the Republicans’ nominee in 2012, the more clearly we see they’re deeply afraid of Sarah Palin.
Not least of all is because her proper management of Alaska will ensure our 49th state is going to be much better off and more judiciously managed than the rest of the US for the next four years.
Hillary Clinton on Indonesian TV show Dahsyat!
We love watching Hillary Clinton on shows like this. When she’s interacting with anchors like the very sweet and friendly ones here, it’s the same way Clinton talks to people one on one at rallies or other events. Her personality comes out, even when she’s talking about policy issues, because the interviewers put her at ease and have no adversarial agenda (like the US media clearly does).
It’s amusing, too, that Hillary Clinton was booked on a show that seems similar in style and substance to the old TRL on MTV — a show for rock stars geared toward a younger crowd.
“Dahsyat” in Indonesian means “awesome”, so having Clinton on Dahsyat was awesome indeed.
Cleveland's Euclid Avenue Corridor Project is an example of why Obama's Trillion Dollars of Spending will fail
Last night, we spent a few hours on the phone catching up with our dear friend Abbey back in Cleveland.
Abbey runs her own small business on eBay, as well as picking up extra work on consulting projects with various downtown Cleveland businesses. Abbey’s husband Byron works for the Cleveland Clinic, which, in addition to University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University, is one of the few financially-sound employers in the city. Abbey home-schools her son, Lil’ Remy, because Cleveland Public Schools are arguably the worst in the nation, largely because of a parade of high-promising hucksters like administrator Barbara Byrd Bennett, who’ve never delivered on any of the grand schemes or pie-in-the-sky hopes they’ve sworn repeatedly would turn the failing schools around.
Cleveland is one city where each new Mayor, and each passing decade, brought ever more unrealistic promises of renaissance and “kick-starts” for the local economy.
In the 1970s, when Dennis Kucinich was the boy Mayor of Cleveland, and the city fell into bankruptcy (while the Cuyahoga River caught fire), all manner of bizarre innovations were dreamed up to “turn the city around”, including our personal favorite, Kucinich’s pet project to transform all the sidewalks downtown into futuristic Jetsons-inspired “people-movers” (making Cleveland “the City of the Future”). To “redevelop” the city’s downtown Warehouse District, 80% of the historic, empty brick warehouses west of downtown were leveled for surface parking lots — to stimulate the local economy by giving people more spaces to park (paying no attention to the massive bald spots this made in the downtown skyline, or the feeling of isolation and abject loneliness the massive swaths of flattened emptiness left in Cleveland’s psyche).
In the 1980s, Mayors Voinovich and White embraced massive public projects to “turn Cleveland around” and “kickstart the local economy”. In addition to the endless highway construction, street repaving, and other projects that perpetually keep city construction crews busy (often spending a year ripping up a road, spending the next year rebuilding that same road, taking a year off and waiting for the poor workmanship to fail and planned obselescence to kick in, then coming back to rip up that same road and start the cycle over again), Voinovich and White decided massive public projects were the way to go to attract businesses to Cleveland and stem the exodus of people fleeing the city (once the 8th largest city in the US, Cleveland’s the 40th largest in 2009, and was somewhere in the 30s throughout the 80s and 90s). This involved enormous expenditures on a grand scale, combining public and private monies: Tower City Center (an enormous transportation hub coupled with an upscale shopping mall and Ritz-Carlton Hotel, with Hard Rock Cafe coming later), The Galleria (an upscale neon, Totally 80s, urban mall), Jacob’s Field (new baseball stadium), Gund Arena (new basketball stadium), Browns Stadium (football), Northcoast Harbor (where the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame and Great Lakes Science Center were built), the Circle Line (a lightrail train moving from Tower City Center to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, past Browns Stadium and the now-defunct Flats Entertainment District), and other development projects that were supposed to bring not only tourists to Cleveland, but increase the number of permanent city residents as well.
Cleveland built an awful lot of stuff.
Some of it was absolutely dazzling.
When Tower City Center first opened its doors, we were understandably AWED. Polished marble from Europe. Amazing Art Deco chandeliers and skylights that showcased the striking Terminal Tower, bathed in golden light at night. High-end stores like Calvin Klein, Gucci, Fendi, Balley’s of Switzerland, and the like. A giant new movie theater. The posh Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Fancy restaurants. A Hard Rock Cafe! It was all astounding.
Calvin Klein lasted less than two years. Gucci and Fendi disappeared too. Gap and Banana Republic replaced them, but by 2001 or so, they too were replaced by the Dollar Store and Check Cashing places. Tower City Center was built on the bones of a failed retail center buried under the Terminal Tower, which was haunted by the homeless and deranged, and terrorized by gangs. All of that mess was briefly replaced by opulence bought by massive public spending. But, the mess just came back again — like weeds springing back to choke the delicate hothouse roses.
The Ritz-Carlton in Cleveland, to our knowledge, has never actually made money. It’s subsidized by the city of Cleveland, in a large sense, because of massive tax breaks Forest City Development Corporation, and its owners, the wealthy Ratner Family, get to keep the doors open. Without those incentives, there would be no Ritz in Cleveland (and probably no Renaissance Hotel either, the other large, upscale hotel anchoring Tower City Center).
None of the economic stimulus Tower City, or any of the other large construction projects, promised ever materialized. There were supposed to be countless businesses, new homes, condo towers, and the like sprouting up all around downtown, once the city completed all of its enormous, expensive stimulus projects. But, those developments never happened.
Cleveland, however, didn’t believe doing the same things over and over again while expecting different results was the very definition of insanity.
In the late 90s, new Mayor Jane Campbell followed in the footsteps of old Mayor Mike White, proposing all manner of grandiose public works projects, including turning Cleveland’s Lakefront into a north-facing version of Chicago’s Navy Pier (by taking over and demolishing Cleveland’s money-making Burke Lakefront Airport) and perpetuating the city’s obsession with building a new Convention Center.
Cleveland, if you aren’t aware, sits on America’s “North Coast” shore of Lake Erie, facing towards Canada. Chicago straddles the western shores of Lake Michigan, facing east towards Michigan. It might seem like a minor geographic difference on paper, until you experience the bone-chilling, blood-freezing, abominable cold of severe wind chills barreling south from the Arctic, by way of Canada, across Lake Erie and channeled through the skyscrapers along East Ninth street in downtown Cleveland’s wind tunnels. It’s impossible to replicate a year-round tourist trap like Navy Pier on Cleveland’s Lakefront without inviting hypothermia.
And the new Convention Center became the great white whale (or mythical Lake Erie monster) the Mayors of Cleveland continue to chase today. Campbell invested countless hundreds of thousands in development studies and plans to build a new Convention Center everywhere from floating on the lake itself, to hovering over the railroad tracks cutting downtown off from the Lakefront, to replacing the abandoned Higbee’s Department store at Tower City Center. All of the plans were gorgeous, of course. The one thing about Cleveland that’s always consistent is the quality of its dreams and the caliber of the artists hired to sketch them.
But, Cleveland didn’t need a new Convention Center, because the facility it already had was not the reason conventions don’t come to Cleveland. If you build it, they still won’t come — because if conventioneers are given the choice between Orlando, San Diego, Las Vegas, Chicago, or Cleveland for conventions, you can guess which city loses bids in the first round of cuts.
So, essentially, all the billions spent on Cleveland’s many large-scale development schemes to turn the city into something it is not and has never been (a tourist destination), were all for naught. All that massive public stimulus spending, and here we are in 2009, and Cleveland’s still looking for that “kickstart to the local economy” that’s eluded the city all this time. “If we only had a Convention Center! If we only took over Burke Airport and built a Ferris Wheel there! If we only had a Monorail! Monorail! Monrail!”.
But, the most ridiculous thing Cleveland did in recent memory to stimulate the local economy is the disastrous Euclid Avenue Corridor Project.
Our friend Abbey says people all over Cleveland go to bed every night wishing they had never sunk all that money into this infrastructure boondoggle.
The Euclid Avenue Corridor Project is one of those things that sounds good on paper, and people have a hard time arguing against because of all the old chestnuts tossed out when advocating any public works project. It creates jobs! It beautifies the city! It will encourage business development and economic investment! It’s environmentally friendly!
And, as the mob starts chanting Monorail! Monorail! Monorail! voices of reason like Abbey’s are drowned out completely…until, months after the construction’s finished, when everyone realizes Abbey was right all along.
Because she knew from the start the Euclid Avenue Corridor Project was an enormous waste of federal, state, county, and city money in Cleveland. Some of Abbey’s clients were based on Euclid Avenue, and were actually driven out of business by the 5 year long construction project. Wrap your head around that for a moment, won’t you? The project was rammed through planning boards and funding reviews because it was supposed to create new jobs and benefit the local economy — but the prolonged construction, with consistent delays, and inconvenience caused to customers of Euclid Avenue businesses caused people to just go elsewhere for whatever they needed, as it was too hard to get to the stores they wanted to go to. Without customers, those businesses failed in droves. Not only did Euclid Avenue look like a torn-up war zone for years, but it also became a ghost town, as shop after shop closed up.
But, look at all the construction workers who have jobs because of that project! Actually, when you think about that too, you’d realize those construction crews belong to all the same trade unions that tear up other roads around town every three years, and would have been doing exactly that if they weren’t ripping up Euclid Avenue. Abbey noticed the main arteries coming into Cleveland weren’t torn up during the Euclid Avenue Corridor Project, which was odd because Cleveland’s freeways have four seasons (winter, spring orange barrel season, summer orange barrel season, and fall orange barrel season). It appears the same men and women who would normally have been ripping up freeways the last few years were instead ripping up and rebuilding Euclid Avenue.
But, look at all the materials that went into Euclid Avenue and the jobs that created to create, ship, and install them! Once again, when you think about it, it’s really a wash in those terms, because materials would have been used on standard highway construction too. You can’t see something like this as creating new jobs so much as moving jobs laterally from one place to another. The mob in Cleveland controls the construction companies, cement and gravel suppliers, and other materials manufacturers. Trade unions keep pressure on politicians to ensure roads are never properly installed or maintained, so every year there will be a massive construction project somewhere, keeping all those dues-paying union members on the job. With or without the Euclid Avenue project, the city would have overpaid a fortune in construction materials for something, so how did this giant infrastructure project really benefit anyone?
This entire conversation started with Abbey last night because we asked her what was new in Cleveland, and what she thinks the city asked for from the Trillion Dollar Spending Spree Obama jammed through Congress. She, like us, believes the Mayor Frank Jackson’s going to try to somehow get that Convention Center the city’s dreamed about for years out of this “stimulus infusion”. It’s a $500-600 million project that’s small potatoes compared to the $8 billion Harry Reid rammed into the Spending Spree for his magnetic Vegas-Los Angeles super train.
The new Convention Center is supposed to replace Cleveland’s current convention center, which means the current convention center will have to be torn down while the new building is built. So, what happens to conventions that want to come to Cleveland during the 3 years or so that building the new facility will take? No one appears to have thought about that, just like they didn’t think about how the “economic stimulus” of Euclid Avenue construction would drive away all the businesses along the street (and cost all of those jobs).
What little business the Cleveland Convention Center now attracts sustains businesses like the few hotels, restaurants, and shops nearby. Currently, hotels in downtown Cleveland are running at 50% occupancy on a good day. Hotel staff are down to working 25-30 hours a week, and are always in danger of losing their benefits because there aren’t enough hours to go around for everyone. At some hotels, staff are voluntarily going on unemployment so that other people in the building can have the hours they need to support their families.
And the few conventions Cleveland lands each year at the current Convention Center keeps these hotels and other businesses alive, even if they are just ghosts of their former selves.
But, the city, in its infinite stimulus wisdom, wants to close, and then tear down, the only thing that’s keeping these hotels, restaurants, and other businesses alive…because in three or four years, when the new Convention Center and Medical Mart are finished, the city promises there will be enough foot traffic and convention business generated to keep everyone employed for years to come.
The same way Tower City, Jacobs Field, the Rock Hall, and other massive projects were supposed to bring enough people to Cleveland to turn the struggling city into a glittering mini-Chicago on America’s North Coast.
The same way the Euclid Avenue Corridor Project was supposed to kickstart the local economy.
Monorail! Monorail! MONORAIL!
But, in the meantime, a rushed and poorly thought out “stimulus project” could very well sink the few businesses that are holding on (by the slimmest of threads), costing real jobs while city leaders wax dreamily about all that could be, all that should be, all that might be if only they had a new Convention Center.
If you don’t have experiences like this in your own city yet, you probably will soon. There are strategic flaws in the stimulus activity Cleveland’s employed for over 30 years now, trying to “turn the local economy around, create jobs, and kickstart opportunity for the future”. None of these massive infusions of public and private cash have worked. Jobs and people flee Cleveland every year.
More often than not, the “stimulus projects” in Cleveland have made things worse, not better.
Just ask the people who used to work on Euclid Avenue…or all those who will probably lose their current jobs to make way for that new Convention Center.
******** Do you have relevent examples of similar wasteful spending, on a grand scale, in your own cities, that never resulted in all the jobs and economic stimulus promised? If so, please share in comments.
Hillary Clinton's Interview with Andrea Mitchell of NBC
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Hillary Clinton's Interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC
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What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent today in Indonesia, before boarding a plane for South Korea, the third leg on her four-country tour of Asia. Here are some photos of her day:
U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton (L) is greeted by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the presidential office in Jakarta February 19, 2009. Clinton held talks with Yudhoyono on Thursday on a trip aimed at building ties with the Islamic world, before heading to South Korea for talks on the North's military threat.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gestures as she talks with local residents during her visit to a USAID-sponsored environmental and health services program at Petojo neighbourhood in Jakarta February 19, 2009. Clinton made small talk on a popular music TV show and toured U.S.-funded aid projects on Thursday as she tried to improve America's image in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton waves as she visits the Petojo residential area in central Jakarta, Indonesia on Thursday February 19, 2009.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton waves to reporters before leaving for South Korea at Halim Perdanakusumah airport in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) talks with Han Duck-soo, South Korean ambassador to the U.S., upon her arrival at a military airport in Seongnam, near Seoul, February 19, 2009
Go, Hillary, Go!
Good luck and God bless in South Korea!
Secretary of State of the Day: Abel P. Upshur (15th Secretary of State)
Term in Office: July 24th, 1843 – February 28th, 1844 (killed in explosion while in office)
Successor: John C. Calhoun
- Born at “Vaucluse,” Northampton County, Virginia, June 17, 1791
- Attended the College of New Jersey and Yale College
- Admitted to the bar in 1810 and practiced in Richmond
- Served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates 1812-1813 and 1825-1827
- Married first Elizabeth Dennis, who died; then married Elizabeth A. B. Upshur in 1826
- Served as a judge of the General Court of Virginia, 1826-1829
- Was a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention of 1829
- Served as a judge of the reorganized General Court 1830-1841
- Was Secretary of the Navy in President Tyler’s Cabinet, 1841-1843
- Served as Secretary of State ad interim June 24 July 23, 1843
- Secretary of State from July 24, 1843 and served until his death;
- As Secretary of State, reopened negotiations for the annexation of Texas
- Killed by the explosion of a gun on board the battleship Princeton in the Potomac River about 15 miles below Washington, DC, February 28, 1844
In July 1843, President Tyler appointed Upshur United States Secretary of State, to succeed Daniel Webster, who had resigned. His chief accomplishment was advocating for the annexation of the Republic of Texas as a slave state. Upshur and Texas ambassador Isaac Van Zandt worked closely on the treaty of annexation until Upshur’s untimely death. He was also heavily involved in the negotiations in the Oregon boundary dispute and was a strong advocate of bringing the Oregon Country into the union. He was eventually willing to settle on the 49th parallel compromise, although negotiations were not finished until after his death (and after the end of Tyler’s term)
On February 28, 1844, while joining the President and many other dignitaries for a Potomac River cruise on the new steamship USS Princeton, Secretary Upshur and several others were killed when one of the ship’s guns exploded. He is buried at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Today in History: February 19th (Year One, Day 31 in The Golden Age of Obama)
197 – Roman Emperor Septimius Severus defeats usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum, the bloodiest battle between Roman Armies
1594 – Sigismund III crowned King of Sweden
1600 – Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in most violent eruption in South American history
1674 – England and the Netherlands sign the Peace of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War (one provision transfers Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, which renames it New York)
1807 – Former Vice President Aaron Burr arrested for treason and confined to Fort Stoddert
1846 – Republic of Texas transfers power to the new Texas state government, as Texas is formally annexed by the US
1847 – Donner Party is rescued
1861 – Russia abolishes serfdom
1878 – Thomas Edison patents phonograph
1945 – Battle of Iwo Jima: 30,000 US Marines land on Iwo Jima
1953 – Georgia approves first literature censorship board in the US
1959 – UK grants independence to Cyprus
1972 – Asama-Sanso hostage standoff in Japan
1978 – Egyptian forces raid Larnaca International Airport on Cyprus, attempting to handle a hijacking situation there, without authorization from the Republic of Cyprus. Cyprus responds by killing 15 Egyptian commandos and destroying an Egyptian transport plane in open combat.
1985 – First artificial heart recipient leaves hospital.
1985 – Iberia Airlines 727 crash into Mount Oiz, Spain (148 die)
1986 – Soviet Union launche MIR space station (remains in orbit for 15 years)
1999 – President Clinton issues posthumous pardon for US Army Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper (first black cadet to graduate from West Point, charged with embezzlement and acquitted at trial but was dishonorably discharged from Army for conduct unbecoming in 1880)
2001 – Oklahoma City Bombing Museum is dedicated
2002 – NASA’s Mars Odyssey space probe sweeps Martian surface with thermal imaging system
2004 – Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal awarded honorary knighthood
2008 – Fidel Castro announces he will resign as President of Cuba
RACIST! RACIST! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST!
Al Sharpton’s at it again.
RACIST! RACIST! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST!
Apparently, no one informed him all Race Cards expired at 12 noon on January 20th, 2009. A black man is the President of the United States. There is no more racism. No matter how much people like Sharpton want to find some hidden in cartoons, the way those posters they used to have at the mall in the 90s hid pictures of bunnies or fairytale castles inside complex geometric shapes, or zealots sometimes believed Satanic messages were hidden backwards in pop songs in the 80s.
Earth to Sharpton: Nancy Pelosi wrote the stimulus bill. Not Obama.
Do you know how we can tell?
The bill is terrible and poorly written.
Just like Pelosi’s skunk-juice laced books. Her fingerprints and bite marks are all over that monstrosity.
And while we’re beaming information into outer space, wherever Sharpton’s orbiting, he needs to know that this week a chimpanzee (that was a former spokesmodel for Old Navy) went on a rampage, mauled a woman and tore most of her face off and ate it, before escaping into the woods to be hunted and shot by police.
Sounds like Pelosi’s trip to Italy and visit with Pope Benedict, minus the Old Navy part, and the thing about the woods and face-eating.
It also sounds like Sharpton’s playing his favorite game again, but in a world where the Race Card no longer works.
Every man, woman, and child in America needs to shout right back at the black community when they try to pull this crap — because enough is enough. This impossibly RAAAAAAAAAACIST! country has a black president: that means Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the other old time race-baiters are permanently out of work.
Their ridiculous bellows of racism can never be addressed on an intellectual or academic level, but should be countered with something ridiculous and gratuitous in its own right: prime, grade-A, beefcake. That’s right, Sharpton. You shout RAAAAAACIST!, and we answer back with a little bit of this:
Because we’re so sick, mentally and physically, of race-baiting nonsense that we can’t even deal with it anymore. Instead, we’ll lose ourselves in Cheyenne Jackson for a while…and drift off to our own private Xanadu.
What’s that, Sharpton? You don’t like shirtless openly gay Broadway hunks lounging in boxers staring at you with comehither goodness?
HOMOPHOBE! HOMOPHOBE! HOOOOOOOOOOOOMOPHOBE!
