It’s T-minus 24 hours or so until the the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club in the Pittsburgh area gets underway, so it’s time to check out the Golf Digest.com flyover of the golf course and Ran Morrissett’s Oakmont course profile at GolfClubAtlas.com. Hat tip to Geoff Shackelford.
Senator Joe Lieberman’s hawkish comments from over the weekend regarding Iran received much media attention, but Gregory Scoblete in this TCS op-ed makes the case that Pakistan is actually the more toubling foreign policy problem:
While the 2008 presidential candidates are busy fielding questions about how they would confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions, few seem interested in addressing a much more pressing issue: Pakistan. [. . .]
The truth is Pakistan represents a far greater danger to the U.S. than Iran, at least for the foreseeable future. Let us count the ways. Pakistan is a nuclear power. Iran is not. Pakistan has a proven track record of proliferation, including a dalliance with al Qaeda. It was Pakistani nuclear scientists, after all, who met with bin Laden. Indeed, it was a Pakistani scientist, A. Q. Khan, whose black-market network significantly expanded the reach of nuclear equipment and know-how. Meanwhile, Iranian scientists are still laboring to master the basic elements of the nuclear fuel cycle (though progress continues).
Pakistan was one of three countries prior to 9/11 to recognize and provide significant material support to the Taliban – the one regime whose accommodation made 9/11 possible. Iran opposed the Taliban. Elements within the Pakistani military continue to support rump Taliban elements as they battle NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The New York Times reported that Pakistani army elements have gone so far as to directly fire on Afghan forces (though Pakistan denies it).
Ideologically, Pakistan is vastly more sympathetic to al Qaeda than Iran. Its religious schools preach the extremist variety of Sunni Islam that animates bin Laden’s jihad. While Iran’s Shiite theocrats preach “death to America,” few Iranians have actually embraced the mantra. There are, for instance, 65 Pakistanis in Guantanamo Bay; there are zero Iranians. Unlike al Qaeda, Iran’s Shiite proxy Hezbollah has not embraced mass-causality suicide terrorism against American civilian targets. Indeed, Hezbollah’s most significant anti-American strike was against a military target 24 years ago: a Marine barracks in Lebanon.
The single most important element, however, is the presence of a reconstituted al Qaeda leadership network in Pakistan. The country plays host (whether willingly or not) to the architects of the largest massacre on U.S. soil in history: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. In contrast, Iran reportedly harbors a small number of lesser al Qaeda figures.
In Senate testimony earlier this year, intelligence chief John Negroponte described Pakistan as a “secure hide-out” within which al Qaeda plots further carnage. In February, the New York Times reported that al Qaeda “had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan” including full-fledged terror training camps. In Waziristan, al Qaeda inhabits a failed state within a functioning, nuclear-armed one.
In sum, the danger to Americans in America is emanating principally from Pakistan, not Iran. . .
Read the entire article. Scoblete makes a compelling case.
This Wall Street Journal Online provides this nifty graphic overview of the approval ratings of all U.S. presidents since Truman. Take a few minutes to check it out and enjoy the surprises of a quick history refresher. For example, I had forgotten about the length of the bounce in President Carter’s approval ratings after the Iranian hostage crisis began in late 1979. Of course, that bounce didn’t last as the hostage crisis dragged on for over a year, contributing substantially to Carter’s loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.
Clear Thinkers favorite — USC Urban Economics Professor Peter Gordon — is one of the participants in this Wall Street Journal Econoblog from earlier this year, in which the subject is one near and dear to most Houstonians — that is, the cost of traffic congestion, the problems that such congestion poses for urban areas and the policy options that are effective in dealing with the problems. The discussion is a very good overview of the policies and the problems involved in implementing them.
The U.S. Open begins this week at historic Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh. As noted in this Matthew Rudy/Golf Digest article after last year’s Open, the tricked-up nature of the famed Winged Foot course undermined much of the enjoyment of that event for both the competitors and viewers. According to this E.M. Swift/Golf Digest article, we can expect more of the same this year at Oakmont.
When is the United States Golf Association going to realize that setting up a course so that shooting a good score is a crapshoot is neither a good way to determine the nation’s golf champion for the year nor particularly interesting to watch?
It’s hurricane season in the Gulf Coast region, which always generates some interesting issues involving insurance markets and liability (see also here). Along those lines, this Tim Haab post discusses an interesting case arising from the floods of Hurricane Katrina regarding the difference between an Act of God and an act of man under a homeowner’s insurance policy. A good reminder to pull out your homeowner’s policy and review what type of damage is covered and what’s not in the event of a hurricane.
I’ve been meaning to pass along this Peter Wallison/American.com article that does an excellent job of summarizing what is at stake with regard to the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of the Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta case involving the issue of secondary liability for companies that do business with a company that commits securities fraud:
It is an old legal saw that hard cases make bad law, but Stoneridge should not be a hard case. The legal principle advanced by the plaintiffsóthat persons unrelated to the statements that constituted securities fraud could be held liable for the plaintiffsí lossesówould be impossible to restrict or cabin in any effective way. Every party that engaged in ordinary commercial transactions with a public company in the United States could later be accused of participating in a securities fraud if the commercial transaction itself could be characterized as fraudulent or deceptiveóeven if the commercial transaction was not understood by the defendant to be part of a securities fraud.
Back when the Stros were close to a .500 ball club, I concluded the previous periodic Stros season review (all previous 2007 reviews are here) as follows:
Thus, my sense is that Stros management, for all their declarations of trying to field a playoff contender, is really biding its time this season as Biggio trudges toward his 3,000th hit. There is simply no way that this club will be much better than a .500 ballclub with its current starting pitching staff and Biggio, Everett, Ausmus and the pitcher burdening the hitting lineup on most nights. The Stros should be honest and concede that the club is attempting to compete as well as possible while supporting Biggio’s climb toward 3,000 hits and dispense with the ruse that this club, as presently configured, has any meaningful shot at the playoffs.
Well, as if on the cue, the Stros (26-35) went into the tank immediately thereafter, posting a 6-14 record during the past 20 games (after going 9-12 and 11-9 in the first two eighth segments of the season), including an excruciating 10 game losing streak in which the club gave up a total of 72 runs while scoring only 20. To make matters worse, overmatched Stros Manager Phil Garner panicked as the streak worsened, using nine different lineups, four right fielders, three first basemen, three third basemen and three leadoff hitters. The Stros responded by scoring fewer than two runs in a game five times and allowing eight or more runs in a game five times.
So, just a little over a year and a half since the club’s first World Series appearance, the Stros have turned into one of the worst teams in the National League — only the Reds (24-38) and the Nationals (25-36) have worse records through 37% of the season than the Stros. In fact, the Stros are not much better than the worst teams in all of Major League Baseball, the Rangers (23-39) and the Royals (23-40).
The Stros have continued their long trend of poor overall team hitting, scoring 12 fewer runs than an average National League team would have scored using the same number of outs as the Stros have used through this point in the season (“runs created against average” of “RCAA,” explained here), which is 10th among the 16 National League clubs. But the pitching overall has been even worse, giving up a total of 21 more runs than an average National League staff would have given up through this point of the season (“runs saved against average” or “RSAA,” explained here), which is 12th among the NL clubs. When a club is running a net deficit of -33 runs to what an average National League club would generate hitting or give up pitching, you know that team’s record will be decidedly below-average.
The season statistics for the Stros to date are below, courtesy of Lee Sinins‘ sabermetric Complete Baseball Encyclopedia. The abbreviations for the hitting stats are defined here and the same for the pitching stats are here. The Stros active roster is here with links to each individual player’s statistics:
Inasmuch as I have never been comfortable with the characterization of Barry Bonds as a fraud because of his steroid use (prior posts here), this Skip Sauer/Sports Economist post comparing Bonds’ situation to that of former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson caught my eye:
This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece worth reading by historian Warren Goldstein, on the simmering feud between Barry Bonds and his critics in baseball and the media. Goldstein sees an analogy between Bonds and the black superstars who were run out of sport in the 19th and 20th Century as racism became institutionalized in American society. The list, borrowing from William Rhoden’s recent book, $40 Million Dollar Slaves, includes Isaac Murphy, a three-time winner of the Kentucky Derby, Major Taylor, the top cyclist exiled to France, and boxer Jack Johnson. Since watching Ken Burns’ documentary on Johnson a few years ago, I’ve viewed Bonds and Johnson as soul mates of a sort. So I am predisposed to both Goldstein and Rhoden’s take on this.
Bonds plays in an era where overt racism is much diminished, and banishment akin to his predecessors seems unlikely. But he is caught front and center in the anti-drug witch-hunt, and he — like just about every other player of his cohort — is unapologetic. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if Bonds would not mind being immortalized in a manner similar to Murphy, Taylor, and Johnson. Just as Bud Selig and various members of the media shrink from celebrating Bond’s pending achievement, it is likely that Bonds finds the prospect of sharing the moment with his detractors to be repulsive. For reasons both valid and perhaps a bit petulant, he’d rather figuratively hang with his homies Murphy, Taylor, and Johnson. I can see his point: they’re an accomplished group.
In this recent blog post on the closing days of the Conrad Black criminal trial in Chicago (prior posts here), Mark Steyn explains why criminalization of merely questionable business transactions is a manifestly unfair and arbitrary way to regulate business:
How many times does Jim (The Skim) Thompson, four-time Illinois Governor and serial skimmer, get a pass?
Yesterday, hostile witness Pat Ryan of KPMG testified that at a Hollinger International Audit Committee meeting he asked and received confirmation from Governor Thompson that the non-compete payments had been approved.
Today, late in the morning, Chris Paci, a lawyer for Shearman & Stirling, had been doing some “due diligence” work for the Wachovia bank and requested a meeting with the Audit Committee to ask specific questions about the non-competes and other related-party transactions. He asked the Big Skim explicitly whether the disclosures on Hollinger 10K and proxy statements were correct. “He said that yes, the related-party transactions had been approved by the Audit Committee and that the disclosures were correct,” testified Mr Paci. “I recall that I came away satisfied that I had got the answers I needed.”
How many times does a four-term Governor get to skate on this? Risible as it is, he can just about get away with testifying that he “skimmed” the 11 official documents put his name to and missed the same passage on 11 separate occassions, and it just coincidentally happens to be the same passage that his two fellow members of the Audit Committee claim to have missed 11 times, too. As I said at the time, that’s Olympic-level synchronized skimming, but if he can say it with a straight face good for him.
But does he skim human conversations, too? Can he plausibly claim not to have confirmed his approval to Pat Ryan? And, even more of a stretch, can he claim not to have known what he was doing at a meeting where he was asked explicit questions about the approvals and in which Mr Paci had been invited to participate in order to receive confirmation of those very approvals?
Why are four men facing the rest of their lives in jail for these allegedly non-approved non-competes but the guy who approved them in writing and verbally multiple times gets to skate? How many different approvals and confirmations does the Serial Skimmer get to disavow?
In civil litigation, all of the Hollinger directors and executives involved in the allegedly questionable non-compete payments to Black and his associates would be included as defendants. Thus, in such a case, responsibility for the payments — if they were found to be wrongful — could be allocated among all of directors and executives involved. But the sledgehammer effect of criminal prosecution focuses all of the responsibility for the transactions in question by hanging the threat of long prison sentences over Black and his associates even though it is clear that the allegedly wrongful payments were disclosed to and approved by Hollinger’s directors. This is not the way a truly civil society would resolve such issues.