Mark Byron

The Big Dipper

Canada's having a national election Monday, and the result should prove to be interesting, as a transformative charge in the polls by the socialist-flavored New Democrats (that's not conservative hyperbole; the NDP is self-avowedly social democrat) could well see NDP leader Jack Layton as prime minister by this time next week. The NDP is unlikely to get a majority, but they could easily move into second place ahead of the Liberals and a Liberal-NDP coalition might command a majority.

The big news of the race so far is the zoom of the NDP from non-factor to first place in Quebec, largely flowing from left-nationalists who had been voting Bloq Quebecois in the past; the BQ is struggling to hang on to its base. The BQ and NDP are both parties of the economic left, so the main differences is that while the BQ is pariah to the federalist parties and lacking in punch in Ottawa, the NDP might be able to implement "progressive" policies on a national level; soft separatists might be voting NDP in order to influence Canadian politics while they're still part of Canada.

How this translates to seats remains to be seen. If a NDP surge merely splits the center-left vote with the Liberals, we could see a number of 35% Conservative pluralities that would have gone Liberal in the past; small-c conservatives suffered through plenty of those losses in the 90s when the Reform/PC split helped the Liberals to quite a few plurality wins.

What it also may mean is that we'll likely have a large raft of rookie NDP MPs, some of which might not quite be ready for prime time. When the free-market francophone ADQ party had a surprise run a few years ago in Quebec, they suffered from a raft of rookie representatives that made rookie mistakes, helping push the ADQ back into niche status. Jack Layton might have a few interesting personalities to run herd over in the NDP caucus, especially if they behave like a leftist analogue of the Tea Party and want to clean up Ottawa now.

We could go anywhere from a Conservative majority to a NDP-Liberal coalition government come Monday night. Watching the numbers will be key; if the BQ gets knocked down to a point where they aren't the difference in making up a majority, Gil Duceppe may go from Bloc head to blockhead in short order. The Conservatives will likely be the plurality party, but if the Liberals and NDP can form a majority, then the leader of the larger of the two parties could become prime minister.

Layton has traditionally been better liked than the other major party leaders even as his party has come in third in the vote and fourth in seats behind the Quebec-concentrated BQ; that could change come Monday.

 

 

 

Rock You Like A ... Tornado?

Here's an interesting dichotomy on Drudge this evening. On the top left above the headline, they have "Dangerous Tornado Situation: TX to KY...Spinning out of Tornado Alley... Severe Outbreak"

The header..."Ron Paul: He's In!" Given where Ron and Rand are from........ are they talking politics or weather?

Paul likely won't have the same impact in 2012, since (a) the Iraq war isn't as big of an issue as it was last time, so Paul's appeal to the paleocon and paleolibertarian crowd will be lessened and (b) with at least one Tea Party candidate in the mix in Michelle Bachmann, Paul's minarchist appeal will have some company.

The other semi-news of the day is Haley Barbour opting out of a 2012 run. GOP operatives are lusting after his Rolodex.

Barbour had little chance of getting the nomination, for he had little support outside of a block of GOP insiders and his tin ear on racial issues would have been an accident looking to happen for Republicans, especially Tea Party-leaning folks who get the inaccurate brush of racism slapped at them regularly. On top of that, his Mr. Inside persona wouldn't sell well in an election cycle where outsiders will sell better.

 

Midnight Musings

About a week ago, the BBC had a piece on the prospect of a two-hour marathon; the current record is 2:03:59 and the article saw a sub-two-hour marathon as something for another generation of runners.

We got a quarter of the way there yesterday, when Geoffrey Mutai put up a 2:03:02 at the Boston Marathon. That's not a "record" since the course isn't a loop and is a bit downhill, but that's still the fastest anyone has run a marathon. After that show, we might need to shave the ETA of a 1:59 and change marathon a decade or so.

__________

S&P sent a shot across Washington's bow, warning that the US' AAA rating isn't set in stone and could be downgraded if they don't get their fiscal act together. We'll need to rewrite a lot of financial textbooks if that happens, since we tend to use the 3-month T-bill rate as the proxy for the "risk-free rate."

_________

Rick Adelman got canned in Houston. The Pistons could do far worse. Kuester has already lasted longer that the 36 hours I jokingly mentioned as the over-and-under of how long after the last game he'd be canned.

The Economically Over the Hill Gang

I was just reading this Detroit Free Press piece on the fallout of Tom Gores' purchase of the Pistons means for downtown Detroit. The first suitor was Tigers and Red Wings (and Little Caesars) owner Mike Ilitch, who would have been inclined to possibly move the Pistons out of their current Auburn Hills digs to a new stadium downtown.

It doesn't seem like it was 30 years ago when Joe Louis Arena was the new stadium downtown. I can remember helping at Eastern Michigan U's cafeteria in the summer of 1980 serving a bunch of Young Republicans bunking down at the EMU dorms during that summer's GOP national convention at "the Joe." A year later, I was visiting the Joe myself, as a delegate to the state Democratic convention (everyone has a few things they did as a college kid that they'd like a mulligan on;-) at neighboring Cobo Hall and checking out the new arena during the lunch break with my dad, watching a bit of a youth hockey game that was taking place.

However, that was 30 years ago, and the Joe doesn't have the luxury box bells and whistles of more recent stadia. Financing a replacement will be a challenge, especially when you can expect little help from state and local governments, even when the new Detroit mayor is an ex-Pistons great. Former ace point guard and Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson hasn't been able to translate that NBA background into money for a new arena there; Dave Bing will likely be up against a similar 8-ball.

___________

Another story of premature obsolescence is that of Blockbuster Video. The fairly new Blockbuster in Midland just east of the tennis center got closed a few months ago, leaving a gaping hole in a nice strip mall complex with a corner view of Wackerly and Jefferson, the latter being one of the main roads out to our mall quadrant. Great location, but the market for post-theater movies has changed since it got built circa 2006. Blockbuster went Chapter 11 last fall, and that closure was likely part of the restructuring of the company.

You have Netflix taking a high-tech niche of quick mail-order movies if you can wait a day or two, or download them right now; cable and satellite providers have gotten into movies-on-demand in a larger way in the last year or two as well. For the pick-up-a-movie side of things, automated kiosks like Red Box have turned movie rentals into a commodity. What's left is an increasingly niche market for folks who aren't tech savvy and want a broader selection of movies than a Red Box machine has; for now, it isn't feeding the bulldog.

Trip Two in the Books

I'm back in my comfy chair in the den after a second South U weekend, this one in Savannah. They have a nice main campus which reminds me a bit of Warner U (nee Warner Southern) and a bit of Florida Southern's Frank Lloyd Wright layout.

Of course, I had to fly through Atlanta and have a 5.5 hour layover; my scheduled flight got postponed than canceled, creating a mass exodus over to the ticket counter of Savannah-bound folks scrambling for alternatives.

I was this close to staying in Atlanta and doing the class from there (we do a teleconference with Atlanta, Columbia and Savannah and the first Saturday was in Atlanta), but the Delta ticket gal pulled a rabbit out of a hat and got me a ticket on the 8:30 flight... first class, no less. A guy who I was talking to got a similar bump-up, to seat 1D; I invoked the old Bob Eucker ad "Looks like I'm in the front rooooow." and he harmonized on "front rooooow".

We almost didn't get out of Atlanta, as the nasty stormfront that was item two on the BBC site just now was just about to hit. We were seeing those nasty red and orange shades on the radar heading our way and things were getting very dark (cue the "does that have a Hemi in it?" guy-"That caint be good"); we took off in the rain, but not yet thundery enough to shut things down. One of my Atlanta students, who was 15 minutes late, mentioned that a lot of power lines were down there once the storm did hit later Friday and early Saturday.

Disraeli said that there were three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics (I was teaching the latter yesterday). Disraeli never had to fly through Hartsfield, or he'd have a fourth- Atlanta airport schedules... at least in the afternoon and evening where weather and mechanical delays can create a game of musical gates. My morning flight back to Flint went just fine and on time other than returning to a sleety, windy mess.

Class proper went very well, better than any of the Saturday double-headers I had at Warner U. So, things are looking up.

Wednesday Musings

Here's an interesting passage from a National Post piece on Libya-

And while Italy’s delegates pushed to arm the Libyan rebels, Germany insisted there was no military solution to Libya’s crisis and Belgium’s Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere objected, “The UN resolution speaks about protecting civilians, not arming them.”

“We have to protect civilians,” insisted Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. “Since we cannot make air strikes — air to ground — in the streets, in the squares, in the cities, in the populated areas, either we make it possible for these people to defend themselves or we withdraw from our obligations to support defending the population of Libya.”

Vanackere's comments are interesting and plays into how folks view guns. An armed civilian is better protected against thugs than an unarmed one, but many folks see that type of protection as a government job only. However, that's how a Christian Democratic lawyer who's part of a centrist grand coalition government might have to look at things.

Since Italy has a center-right government with a pro-American PM, Frattini can afford to play to a Second Amendment-style ethic. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

____________

The Canadian party leaders are having their French-language debate even as we speak; their analogue to presidential debates has both a French night and an English night and the English one was yesterday. They moved it up from the origionally scheduled Thursday night since Montreal is playing their playoff opener against Washington tomorrow night and the pols knew that given a choice between them and the Habs, a red-blooded Canadian would pick hockey.

You have to set your priorities.

____________

Barry Bonds did get convicted of obstruction of justice, but not of perjury. They almost convicted him on one perjury count, but one juror didn't quite buy the eyewitness that saw him get a shot from the 'roid-running trainer.

This doesn't bode well for getting other folks like Roger Clemons up on charges. Getting tarnished in the court of public opinion will have to do.

I'm Bidding One.... No-Trump

Politically, Donald Trump is an amoral Ross Perot, a self-financing businessman who's a skeptic on free trade. That's not going to sell well in a Republican primary.

Trump's only realistic shot at the White House would be to run as an independent, for I don't see him getting past the 17% he's getting in early GOP polls. He has played with running as a centrist independent in the past and would have an outside shot of patching together a Perot-like coalition of centrists equally uneasy with Obama and the Tea Party.

Within the GOP, he would have next to no support among religious conservatives, which would mean patching together a moderate-libertarian coalition. One way to appeal to the lesser angels of the center-right Perotgi with an ethnocentric streak is to play the "birther" card.

I have a certificate of live birth from Saginaw County, Michigan that works with Social Security and the driver's licence offices of four states to date to prove my identity and US citizenship from day one; President Obama, born a day before I was, also has one of those from Hawaii. There isn't anything there, but demagogues on the center-right love to play up the idea that he has a certificate of live birth rather than something titled a "birth certificate." Trump is one of those demagogues.

Right now, Trump isn't talking policy much, but is getting a lot of free media for playing up the birther issue. He might well be "Obama's worst nightmare" in that he'll make the rest of the field look moderate in tone and less like bigoted yahoos.

The Wurst of Times

Both sides seem to have blinked; the government's back in session. Just after I posted a few hours ago, a deal was struck to do a budget for the rest of FY2011. The bill includes $38b in cuts, but doesn't include the Panned Parenthood defunding rider; that will get a seperate vote in the Senate in the future.

One feature of the American political system is that divided government means having to make deals; were we in a parliamentary system, we'd be looking at an election. Since that isn't an option, both sides had to reach a deal.

Such dealmaking has oft been compaired to making sausage; you don't want to see them put in everything but the squeal. However, there are some mighty tasty sausages; this isn't one of them, but it's a step away from the brink at least.

Saturday in the Park? Not This Weekend

I'm coming up for air now that I have my new MBA class up and running. The first weekend in Atlanta was an adventure. The Saturday class went well but getting through Hartsfield... was a .... chore... and a half; any more of a chore, and I would have been in the hospital.

Anyways, now that Dr. Byron is back in the saddle (a second class will start at the end of the month, so I haven't scared off my new employers yet) I can start to get back to putting in my $0.02 on those chatty-ring pulling things.

___________

We've got an hour of government left. Actually, we've got the weekend before your 9-5 Mon-Fri cubical rats get affected, so only the photo-op places like the national parks are at issue over the weekend.

It will be interesting if Panned Parenthood (they try and limit it as much as they can, so it makes more sense without the l) funding becomes the sticking point. Both sides seem to want the issue, but the conservatives seem to want it more. If the government is still on hold come Monday morning and that's the reason, it might be a while before one side blinks.

They have the weekend to come up with a deal before it affects the core of government services. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail. It will be an interesting weekend.