Year: 2010

PET OWNERS, TAKE NOTE . . .

This site promises to have a pet-loving atheist rescue your pet if you ascend in the Rapture – for $110 (first pet, $15 each pet thereafter), a business model I can only envy. Don’t miss the terms and conditions. The service is real (‘Rescuers must sign an affidavit to affirm their disbelief in God – and they must also clear a criminal background check’). Twenty-six atheists have been recruited. Here‘s the back story.

Meanwhile, for those who follow such things, it should be noted that the Rapture Index currently stands at 167, not far off its all-time high. It should be further noted that the Rapture dog tags advertised have nothing to do with tagging or rescuing your dogs; they are guidance for those humans – suddenly less skeptical – who find themselves left behind. (‘I never believed this stuff, Marge, but I was talking to Mary at the grocery store and suddenly she – and the guy spraying the fruit – disappeared. All that was left were their clothes and this dog tag!’)

BASICLAND . . . SORROWLAND

Charlie Munger, in case you didn’t know, is Warren Buffett’s long-time partner in Berkshire Hathaway. Crusty, acerbic, and not easily fooled, he writes this brief history of America from 1700 through 2012. In short: if we don’t enact serious financial reform, kiss it all good-bye.

But before you get all bummed, bear in mind that with any luck we will enact serious financial reform – the House already has. And for every reason to be gloomy about the future, there are reasons to be excited. To wit . . .

HUGE GOOD NEWS:
THE ENERGY SOLUTION

If you missed “60 Minutes” last night, you’ve got to watch this (or at least read it). The Bloom Box fuel cell is already working at places like Google, eBay, FedEx, and Wal*Mart and the inventor thinks it may be powering your home, independent of the electric grid, within the decade. Which would be phenomenal for our economic well-being, security, and the environment.

DEPO

I bought more Friday at $2.36. The company has plenty of cash and, by at least one analyst’s estimate, is worth $3.60 a share even without its gabapentin-based drug being approved. But that drug will be approved, my guru feels sure; so, he says, ‘it’s a chip shot to $3’ (a 27% gain from $2.36) and could at some point climb back to $4. There’s always some risk of disaster; but not a bad place to stash some money you can truly afford to lose.

DEPO – RATS!

If you took a flier with the basket of three speculative stocks suggested here recently . . . DEPO (then at $3.02), DYAX (then at $3.17), INCY (then at $5.62) . . . and if you took some or all your profit in INCY as suggested here (at $10.81) and replaced it with DCTH (at $5.37 or a few days later at $4.61) . . . then you may have noticed that DEPO got clobbered yesterday. It dropped 20% to $2.47. (DYAX and DCTH remain largely unchanged at $3.48 and $5.31.)

Guru writes:

DEPO dropped because XNPT was rejected by the FDA for its gabapentin-based restless-leg-syndrome drug. Gabapentin produces pancreas tumors in rats. Gabapentin is the basis of the drug DEPO hopes FDA will approve. It has been on the market for 15 years and has produced no evidence of increased pancreas tumors in humans, but the FDA said the risk/reward for an approval in restless leg was not worth it.

Gabapentin has previously been approved for post-herpes pain – DEPO’s intended use. The FDA deemed that post-herpes pain was sufficiently important to allow the risk of pancreas tumors in rats. Thus DEPO should be able to get approval for the same thing. (DEPO’s delivery allows better efficacy and fewer side effects and more convenient dosing than the already-approved generics.) However, it appears that Jason Napodano didn’t know this when he made a comment to a reporter that if XNPT went down, DEPO should go down.

The DEPO Phase III data are now in the hands of Solvay, which is being bought by Abbott. Abbott will likely file for approval as soon as they complete the Solvay merger. The fundamentals say all should go through as planned. What I don’t know is whether the stock market will wait until ABT/DEPO version of gabapentin actually gets approval in order to give them credit. If the market does wait for this, then DEPO could be dead in the water for most of this year.

☞ So far, not so great. But I’m holding mine.

BRUSHING UP ON YOUR LANGUAGE SKILLS

If you don’t already have Google’s toolbar on your browser, you can get it with a few clicks here. One of its many helpful features is a ‘translate’ option I recently turned on. Now, occasionally, I’ll click ‘translate,’ and the entire page I’m reading – even this one – appears, a moment later, in Russian. Being able to go back and forth this way with material whose meaning you already know and have an interest in could be an amusing way to awaken high school language skills. (Or just a way to learn how to say ‘restless leg syndrome’ in French, Slovak, or Simplified Chinese.)

MARRIAGE IN BARELY A MINUTE

She was denied a license to marry her life partner but offered one to marry a passer-by of the opposite sex. (If, after watching the clip, you think the government should allow same-sex couples civil marriage licenses – quite apart from whatever their church, mosque, or temple might choose to bless – sign here.)

ASK, TELL – AND GET TO WORK

Brent: ‘You may not appreciate this editorial quite as much if you are not familiar with the extent that this North Carolina newspaper, the Hickory Daily Record, in the past has promoted anti-gay sentiment. But here it is anyway.’

It’s Time to End ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’
By Lee Barnes

When I was in the Air Force, one of the guys in my barracks was g­ay.

I knew Richard was gay b­ecause he liked to wear a little bit of eye­liner when he wasn’t on d­uty.

I also knew he was gay b­ecause every time he got a few beers in him at the Airman’s Club, h­e’d flirt with m­e.

I handled this great threatening menace to my manhood by telling him to go away. Which he always did. That was quite some time ago — 1970. Those were different t­imes for gay men and women, but not so much as you might i­magine.

Richard and I were medics, a­s­signed to a hospital in Mississip­pi. With the Vietnam War going on, business in military h­ospitals was, unfortunately, very good.

Richard was a great medic, f­ar better than I was. And people in military hospitals always like working with someone who is good at what he does. It’s especial­ly the case when you’re sh­ort­handed, which we always were.

With Richard’s many m­anner­isms, his sexual preference was no secret to anyone, including the of­ficers. It wasn’t a matter of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” It was more a ­mat­ter of “We have work to do.”

We accepted Richard b­ecause there wasn’t time to do anything else. That’s the way it seems to work best for the m­ilitary.

Consider, for e­x­ample, the end of segregated t­roops in the armed forces during the Korean W­ar.

You can look it up. The need f­or troops in Korea exceeded the means to house the black soldiers separately from the white sol­diers.

Thus we got integrated armed forces, out of n­ecessity.

So, back to gays in the m­ilitary.

We’re at a time in our problems in Iraq and Afghanistan where we can no longer exclude qualified volunteers just because t­hey’re openly g­ay.

President Clinton’s “Don’t a­sk, don’t tell” policy was, and is, politi­cal cowardice. It hasn’t worked — thousands of gay soldiers have been dismissed from the military s­ince the policy’s adoption in 1993.

Retired Gen. John Shalikashvili was chairman of the Joint C­hiefs of Staff when Clinton came up with the policy. He opposed it, be­cause he opposed gays in the mili­tary, period.

Now, Shalikashvili says he w­as wrong. He says he has met w­ith gay servicemen and drawn some new c­onclusions.

“These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by t­heir peers,” he wrote.

Well, maybe the military h­as changed, but the people in i­t haven’t. We were capable of accepting gays within our r­anks decades a­go.

That’s exactly the situation t­oday, as today’s soldiers o­verwhelmingly say it’s a non-issue to them.

If I need the help of the medic or marksman working next to m­e, his sexual orientation won’t be high on my list of p­riorities.

Defense Secretary Robert G­ates announced Tuesday that he will begin looking for ways to elimi­nate the policy and begin inte­grating gay and straight s­oldiers.

It’s about t­ime.

Today’s all-volunteer military in this time of war needs all the good people it can get — including t­hose good people who happen to be g­ay.

LEE BARNES is editor of the Hickory D­aily Record.

Correction:

John Seiffer: “I’m sure I’m not the first to point this out, but a pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold.”

☞ Do you know how there’s always one person in a group who’s really annoying? I am ordinarily that person. Today – and I say this with the kind of broad grin that almost requires an emoticon – it’s John Seiffer.

Addition:

I’ve told you how Fujitsu’s scanner changed my life (and you’ve told me how it’s changed yours). Well, it only gets better. I finally got around to trying it with business cards. And it’s a freakin’ miracle. Instead of entering the info by hand, which I never get around to doing, you just put a stack of cards in the feeder and press a button. Yes, you occasionally have to unclog a jam (a completely trivial task); and, yes, you always have to read each card to correct the inevitable errors (not at all trivial, but kinda fun). But once you’ve done that, one more click and they all wind up in Outlook.

Meanwhile, this new model, the S1300, just hitting the streets, is cheaper, smaller, and compatible with both PC and Mac (in case you’re a dual platform household). I love my S1500, which can handle a thicker stack of documents. But the S1300 may be the better choice for many.

THE BIG PICTURE

Yesterday’s T.E.D. crib notes spared you from cancer. (Eat berries!) Today, thanks to reader Richard Anhalt (who writes, “when Bill Gates talks about using nuclear energy, people listen”), there’s this completely fascinating – and ultimately encouraging – T.E.D. digest. It will take you no more than a minute or two to read.

UNDERWEAR

I actually snuck in something about money yesterday – specifically, about the INHI warrants some of us own. And a money-saving tip – if you can call $8.95 for a pound of shrimp “money-saving.” But more often than not of late, I’ve been lobbing Rachel Maddow clips.

Why?

Because the Republican strategy of “blocking everything in order to win back power” threatens our prosperity.

Which brings us to Rachel’s clip from Tuesday where she shows Republican after Republican attacking the Obama team for Mirandizing the “underwear bomber” – even though this is exactly what the Bush Administration did every time it arrested terrorists on American soil.

And she makes the larger point: yet again, the Republican leadership opposes anything Obama does – even if they were for it until he came their way. (Like the bipartisan deficit reduction panel Republicans co-sponsored but then voted against once the President signed on.)

You’ve got to watch Cheney, Giuliani, and the rest pounding away – all in almost identical language – even though every suspected terrorist arrested on American soil under the Bush Administration was treated the same way.

Including “the shoe bomber.”

Having “also failed when he also tried to detonate PETN when he was also aboard a U.S.-bound airliner after also being trained and directed by Al-Qaeda,” Maddow notes, “Richard Reed was also arrested in the U.S. as a civilian criminal and he was also – yes! – read his Miranda rights. Four times.”

See the difference?

Same with “the twentieth hijacker” and scores of others.

So why are the Republicans orchestrating their scathing criticism when the only thing that’s changed is the occupant of the White House?

If you have any doubt who’s trying to govern responsibly and who’s trying to see that effort fail, watch the clip.

AVOIDING CANCER

The latest TED Conference videos are not yet up, but here’s a recap of one of the presentations – on “angiogenesis” and the anti-angiogens, like berries, that seem to keep microcancers from growing, and the antiangiogenesis drugs that caused tumors in a dog, a dolphin, and a horse, to disappear.

I’m telling you, kids: Floss, and fund those Roth IRAs. With luck, we could be around a long time.

THE FRUGAL HEIRESS: SHRIMP

The frugal heiress made her debut last November with an outstanding submission on an inexpensive New York City hotel. I keep hoping she’ll come up with another, but in the meantime, to keep the concept alive – albeit with a very manly, Cooking Like a Guy™ slant – I want to tell you about colossal shrimp.

There is a tremendous premium placed on colossal shrimp. A pound of colossal shrimp weighs only a little more than a pound of “medium” shrimp, just as a pound of gold weighs just a little more than a pound of feathers*, but there is a big difference.

In the case of the gold, it’s worth vastly more than the feathers (unless they are dodo feathers). But in the case of the shrimp, I would argue that the colossals are worth little or no more than the pound of mediums – yet cost $19.95 (cooked, shelled, deveined, frozen) versus $8.95 for the mediums.

Yet at the end of the day, it’s all shrimp. And – now here comes the frugal tip – if you grab two or three medium tails at once, dipping the duo or trio into the cocktail sauce together, you virtually have one colossal shrimp. I mean . . . what difference does it make? Answer: a difference of $11 a pound. Once a week for a lifetime, compounding after tax at 12%** and beginning at age 21, when the first tranche of your trust funds come under your control, and you’ll have an extra $2,287,704 at age 75 – just by eating smaller shrimp two at a time.

Think about it.

* Just kidding.

** Fat chance.

INHI

I last wrote about our Infusystems warrants a few months ago, suggesting that they would likely expire worthless – even though I was keeping mine. If you own some, please take a minute to re-read that item, and then come back here for the news yesterday (much more fully laid out in the SEC filing), that we may now exchange our warrants for stock.

We are faced with three choices:

1. Make the exchange at a ratio of 35 warrants per share (so, say, 3,500 warrants for each 100 shares).
2. Make it at 25 warrants per share (so, say, 2,500 warrants for each 100 shares) so long as you agree not to sell for six months – clearly the better choice, in my mind, since I’m in no rush to sell.
3. Do nothing and take your chances the warrants will be “in the money” before they expire April 11, 2011. Hmmm.

It’s an interesting situation.

For starters, I’m glad to see that the warrants needn’t expire worthless after all. If you bought some and choose to convert (which you must do by March 17), you’ll have what is currently about 9 cents a share worth of stock for each warrant. (The stock closed at $2.25 yesterday.) And if the stock were to hit $4.50 by April 11, 2011, you’d be well on your way to a nice profit . . . whereas, had you not converted, your warrants would have expired worthless.

But there’s a little element of “the prisoner’s dilemma” here, because if everyone converts – except you – it might make sense not to convert. That’s because the company would at that point have about 20 million shares outstanding . . . so if the company valuation reached $120 million (say) – not easy, but not impossible – it would be $6 a share and your warrants would be worth a cool dollar each!

Yet if, like you, who decided not to accept the offer, no one did, the company would have more like 55 million shares potentially outstanding (the 35 million warrants plus the existing stock), and so would need to be valued at $330 million to be selling at $6 a share – not impossible, but nearly so.

My guess is that most people will convert most or all their warrants. I plan to convert most or all of mine.

As a shareholder (I own some of the stock as well as a preposterous load of the warrants), I don’t much care either way:

If no one accepts the offer, the warrants will all most likely just disappear, valueless, when they expire. Which is great, because then that 35 million share potential dilution just disappears. (Anticipating that, as expiration draws near, the stock might rise at least a little above $5, triggering some conversions after all. And that would be okay, too – with each conversion comes $5 in cash into the company treasury.)

And if everyone accepts the offer, that’s fine, too. Given the 25-to-1 ratio, it would dilute my shares only modestly to get rid of this 35 million warrant option overhang.

KEEP YOUR SHOES ON AT THE AIRPORT

Not soon enough of course, but dare we hope the “MagShoe” is coming?

HOW WE’RE DOING ON THE BAIL-OUT

ProPublica – a non-profit force for “journalism in the public interest” run by former long-time and widely admired Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger – keeps this running tally of the bail-out money we taxpayers have pushed put the door ($500.7 billion) and the portion that has come back ($194.7 billion thus far).

GOVERNORS: RED VERSUS BLUE

Nathan Daschle certainly has a horse in this race. Dozens of them, in fact. He heads the Democratic Governor’s Association. But, as he argues on Politico.com, fact are facts:

. . . Republican governors, as a whole, vastly underperform their Democratic counterparts on virtually every economic or fiscal score. In addition to high unemployment numbers, states with Republican governors are far less likely to be on the Forbes list of “Best States for Business” (only one of the Top 5 has a Republican governor), score a AAA rating from the major credit rating agencies (only two of the seven have GOP governors) or make a real investment in clean technology (only two of the Top 10 clean-tech states have Republican governors).

Perhaps most telling, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, is that throughout the past decade, the size of state governments actually grew more under Republican governors than under Democratic ones.

This is true for both traditional ways of measuring the size of government: spending growth and the number of state employees.

These are the facts. And they are undisputed. . . .

☞ I’m sure I can count on some of you to dispute them – and will post your comments when you do.

But the larger point here, while not original to me, is that this is more than coincidence. Republicans generally don’t believe in government; Democrats do. Bush’s first Energy Secretary had, as a Senator, actually called for abolishing the Energy Department; Obama’s is a Nobel-prize winning physicist consumed – as are his deputies – with the importance and potential of rejuvenating the U.S. energy industry and helping to achieve energy independence. See the difference?

Obviously, not everything R’s do is bad or lackluster; not everything D’s do is good or exemplary. Clearly. Definitely. I get that.

But if your basic philosophy is that government can’t do things well – well, as the saying goes, “argue for your limitations and they are yours.” And I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “If you think you can’t do something, you’re right.”

HOW THE HEALTH INSURERS ARE DOING

Thanks in part to those who won’t allow single-payer or a public option or anything except tort reform (which, done sensibly, I, too, favor), top health insurers saw profits jump 58% last year even as 2.7 million more Americans lost coverage.

FILIBUSTER

I’m mad as hell, and I hope Congress is getting ready not to take it anymore. It’s time for the nuclear option – and for another must-watch Rachel Maddow clip showing the inconsistency of the Republican position.

But here is Harry Reid saying the votes aren’t there to change Senate rules. (It took 15 years to modify the filibuster the last time – here’s the history.)

And here, from Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen, is an assessment of the current situation . . .

Senate Republicans are well aware of the fact that they’re breaking the American legislative process, and making it impossible for the majority to govern, which suits them fine.

. . . and of how reform just might be possible . . .

[P]rocedural changes happen when there’s a credible threat. A quarter-century ago, the threat of eliminating the filibuster altogether led to reform. Five years ago, the Gang of 14 got together when the “nuclear option” appeared likely to happen. Just a couple of days ago, President Obama threatened a slew of recess appointments, prompting the Senate GOP to quickly approve 27 pending administration nominees. To be sure, it’s naive to think Republicans would simply stop filibustering to prevent a Democratic “nuclear option” from coming to fruition. But a credible threat is far more likely to have an effect than the alternative – which is to simply tolerate the GOP’s unprecedented abuse. If Harry Reid were to make clear, with varying degrees of subtlety, that the status quo is simply untenable, and that he feels like he has no choice but to make it possible for a majority to govern again, it would possibly change the nature of the existing dynamic. At this point, he has nothing to lose.

ABE

James Gleick: “You write: ‘You know one person who would be appalled by what the Republican Party has become? Abe Lincoln.’ It reminds me of how the historian William Lee Miller (President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, p. 142) paraphrases Lincoln’s view of what the Civil War was really about: ‘Republican government – democracy, we say now – requires a tacit understanding between majorities and minorities. Majorities rightly prevail, but they respect the liberty of minorities to agitate to try to replace them; minorities have the right to express and organize in behalf of their view, but when the votes are counted, they must acquiesce.’”

If you clicked the first Rachel Maddow link before I fixed it at around 11:30 yesterday morning (Eastern time), you got the wrong link. Sorry! Here‘s what it should have been.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Abe would have been 201 today. I came across some quotes:

‘Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?’

‘Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.’

‘America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.’

To the question of whether Obama has been attacking DA/DT repeal the right way:

‘Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.’

To the question of whether it’s enough just to be angry:

‘He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.’

And so many more!

(‘Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.’)

(Oh! And . . . ‘How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.’)

SO I ASKED HARRY REID . . .

Five years ago, in mid-January, 2005, I gave a bunch of money to attend a small fundraiser with then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Most such dinners are much larger, but – having just lost to Bush again (if you pretend we lost to him the first time) – there was not a lot of enthusiasm among Democratic donors.

As dessert was being served, I screwed up my courage, seized a lull in the conversation – we were all at one table – and asked (more or less), ‘Senator, I’m sure this is naïve, but couldn’t you go to the President and say, in effect, ‘Look, Mr. President, you won half the votes this time, and you have my congratulations.  But I represent the other half of the country whose votes you didn’t get, and here’s the deal:  I’m simply not going to allow you to get anything of substance through Congress that you and I haven’t worked out together.  You’ll still be President, of course; but we’re really going to have to do this jointly.’  We only need 41 votes to block most things, and we have more than that.”

I may have thrown in something about Swiftboating John Kerry and all the other frustrations a lot of us felt, that – against all reason – George Bush had been rehired.

But whatever the specifics, that was the gist, and I concluded by asking . . . “Could we do that?”

“No,” said the Senator.

And now the Republicans are doing it instead.  Much more, really – they are not even trying to work together, but rather, as the three Rachel Maddow clips made so clear yesterday, simply shutting everything down.

I’m not saying Senator Reid was wrong.  What the Republicans are doing is, in my view, deeply unpatriotic, and I would hope that we would never have gone that far.  But I wish, during the Bush years, we had gone further than we did.  And that the current Senate Minority Leader had the same sense of public service as Harry Reid.

You know one person who would be appalled by what the Republican Party has become?  Abe Lincoln.

Rachel was on fire Tuesday night. I’m sorry for the delay in getting these to you. They are must-watch TV.

RACHEL I – ‘CHECK!’

Here she shows John Boehner ticking off the four things Republicans wanted in the health care reform bill – and, after each one, shows where it is in the Senate bill that they oppose.

All four.

Even a start on tort reform.

One after another, she checks them all off.

It’s a devastating eight minutes that I urge you to watch.

Urge, urge, urge.

RACHEL II – KILLIBUSTER

This second clip highlights the Republican propensity to say no to everything – even things they themselves proposed. It will make you want to jump through the TV and put the filibuster back in its rightful, Jimmy Stewart place.

Urge, urge, urge.

Really, try to find the time for these clips.

RACHEL III – HYPOCRISY

Finally, there’s this clip showing Republican after Republican trashing the stimulus package, voting against it, and then taking credit for the projects it financed.

The country’s in trouble, folks. Having an opposition Party focused so singularly on producing ‘Waterloo’ rather than solutions is not the way to help.

Take a snow day to watch these three clips . . . cancel your lunch date, if need be . . . or, better still, invite your lunch date over to watch these clips with you.

Tomorrow: My Harry Reid story

In case you thought there was no column yesterday, it’s because I forgot to click “POST” until about noon. (“24” was on. I got frazzled.)

It was about Albania! And China! And the Saints!

Maybe go back and take a look?

As for today . . .

NO MORE MOUTH-TO-MOUTH

Here’s a generally more appealing – and potentially more effective – way to save lives until the paramedics arrive.

CALL ME A CAB (“OK: YOU’RE A CAB”)

The estimable Alan Rogowsky: “You probably need THIS on your iPhone.”

☞ Just launched, Siri aims to be your personal assistant. Hmmm.

IS DEMOCRACY KILLING DEMOCRACY?

“Just as the founders feared, American democracy has gotten way too Democratic,” writes Kurt Andersen in New York Magazine.

. . . [I]t’s possible that the populist impulse is now too powerful for the elite to reassert control. In the old days, the elite media really did control the national political discourse; there were no partisan, splenetic cable news or ubiquitous talk-radio channels and no blogosphere to keep the populists riled up and make them feel the excitement of a mob. Until fifteen years ago, presidents and congressional leaders could pretty well manage the policy conversations, keep them on reasonable simmer. But the new technologies have, maybe permanently, turned up the political heat to boil. . . .

☞ Anderson is an elitist. But there is something to be said for choosing extraordinarily competent people, whether you are hiring them to play basketball, perform brain surgery, pilot jets, or sit in the Oval Office. Sarah Palin has many fine qualities, but “extraordinary competence” (or even just “knowing stuff”) is not one of them. George Bush had many fine qualities, too – and we didn’t know who the President of Pakistan was, either (or even why it might be important) – so almost half of us voted to give him a try.

I would argue it did not turn out well.

THE SAINTS!

Did you see Hank Paulson and Alan Greenspan on Meet the Press Sunday? Both betting on the Colts? (I also disagree with their view that we mustn’t let Bush’s tax-cuts-on-income-above $250,000 a year expire. More on that tomorrow, or soon.)

ALBANIA BANS DISCRIMINATION – COULD AMERICA BE NEXT?

Last Thursday, Albania’s parliament unanimously banned discrimination on the grounds of various characteristics, including sexual orientation and gender identity. No one expects the U.S. Congress to be as enlightened, but it’s at least something to shoot for.

Dripping sarcasm aside, one really does hope we follow countries like South Africa, Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden – and now Albania – as quickly as possible.

After all, it was we who invented life, liberty – equal rights – and the pursuit of happiness. No?

CHINA (AND ASIA) – NOT SO FAST

China’s future may be bright, as suggested in yesterday’s excerpt (and who among us would not wish good things for a sixth of humanity?).

But this equally fascinating piece from Sunday’s Boston Globe by Joshua Kurlantzick (thanks, Nick!) argues that expectations China will lead the world are overdone:

. . . Asia’s growth has built-in stumbling blocks. Demographics, for one. Because of its One Child policy, China’s population is aging rapidly: According to one comprehensive study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, by 2040 China will have at least 400 million elderly, most of whom will have no retirement pensions. This aging poses a severe challenge, since China may not have enough working-age people to support its elderly. In other words, says CSIS, China will grow old before it grows rich, a disastrous combination. Other Asian powers also are aging rapidly – Japan’s population likely will fall from around 130 million today to 90 million in 2055 – or, due to traditional preferences for male children, have a dangerous sex imbalance in which there are far more men than women. This is a scenario likely to destabilize a country, since, at other periods in history when many men could not marry, the unmarried hordes turned to crime or political violence.

Looming political unrest also threatens Asia’s rise. China alone already faces some 90,000 annual ‘mass incidents,’ the name given by Chinese security forces to protests, and this number is likely to grow as income inequality soars and environmental problems add more stresses to society. India, too, faces severe threats. The Naxalites, Maoists operating mostly in eastern India who attack large landowners, businesses, police, and other local officials, have caused the death of at least 800 people last year alone, and have destabilized large portions of eastern India. Other Asian states, too, face looming unrest, from the ongoing insurgency in southern Thailand to the rising racial and religious conflicts in Malaysia.

Also, despite predictions that Asia will eventually integrate, building a European Union-like organization, the region actually seems to be coming apart. Asia has not tamed the menace of nationalism, which Europe and North America largely have put in the past, albeit after two bloody world wars. Even as China and India have cooperated on climate change, on many other issues they are at each other’s throats. Over the past year, both countries have fortified their common border in the Himalayas, claiming overlapping pieces of territory. Meanwhile, Japan is constantly seeking ways to blunt Chinese military power. People in many Asian nations have extremely negative views of their neighbors – even though they maintain positive images of the United States.

More broadly, few Asian leaders have any idea what values, ideas, or histories should hold Asia together. ‘The argument of an Asian century is fundamentally flawed in that Asia is a Western concept, one that is not widely agreed upon [in Asia],’ says Devin Stewart, a Japan specialist at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs.

Even as Asia’s miracle seems, on closer inspection, less miraculous, America’s decline has been vastly overstated. To become a global superpower requires economic, political, and military might, and on the last two counts, the United States remains leagues ahead of any Asian rival. Despite boosting defense budgets by 20 percent annually, Asian powers like India, China, or Indonesia will not rival the US military for decades, if ever – only the Pentagon could launch a war in a place like Afghanistan, so far from its homeland. When a tsunami struck South and Southeast Asia five years ago, the region’s nations, including Indonesia, Thailand, and India, had to rely on the US Navy to coordinate relief efforts.

America also has other advantages that will be nearly impossible to remove. With Asian nations still squabbling amongst themselves, many look to the United States as a neutral power broker, a role America plays around the world. German writer and scholar Joseph Joffe calls the United States today the ‘default power’: No one in the world trusts anyone else to play the global hegemon, so it still falls to Washington.

Even in the economic realm, the United States remains strong. As Zakaria admits, the United States accounted for 32 percent of global output in 1913, 26 percent in 1960, and 26 percent in 2007, remarkably consistent figures. The United States remains atop nearly every ranking of economies according to openness and innovation. While Asia’s centrally planned economies can build infrastructure without worrying about public opposition – China has built impressive networks of airports and highways – they are less successful at nurturing world-beating companies, which thrive on risk-taking and hands-off government. Compared to Intel, Google, or Apple, China’s major companies still are state-linked behemoths that do little innovation of their own. The leading corporations in most other Asian nations (with the exception of Japan and South Korea) also are either giant state-linked firms or trading companies that invest little in innovation. And censorship or tight government controls alienate the most innovative firms – Google is now threatening to pull out of China entirely.

As Asia throws up barriers to immigration, in the United States immigration helps ensure long-term economic vitality. Chinese and Indian immigrants accounted for almost one-quarter of all companies in Silicon Valley, according to research by AnnaLee Saxenian at the University of California-Berkeley. According to the most comprehensive global ranking of universities, compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, American schools, powered by immigrants and flush with cash, dominate the top 100, with Harvard ranked first. Asia has no schools in the top 10.

Most important, the United States is a champion of an idea that has global appeal, and Asia is not. During the opposition protests in Iran, demonstrators look to the United States, not China or Indonesia or even India, to make a statement. In a reversal of the Iranian regime’s rhetoric, some protestors even chant ‘Death to China’ because of Beijing’s support for the repressive government in Tehran. As long as protestors in places like Iran, or Burma or Ukraine, call out for the American president, and not China’s leader or India’s prime minister, the United States will remain the preeminent power.

To be the global hegemon requires military, economic, and political might, but it also means offering a vision for the world. As Mahbubani admits, during Britain’s imperial period, elites in places like Malaya, India, or the Caribbean wanted to study in England, or read British authors and philosophers, because they believed that the ideas Britain had imparted – the rule of law, the Westminster political system, an idea of fair play, a meritocratic civil service, evidence-based scientific exploration – had merit for the entire world. Even men and women who, ultimately, became some of the biggest thorns in Britain’s side, like Jawarhal Nehru, cherished their British studies and their links to British culture.

So, too, since World War II the United States has been, for many foreign publics, the nation looked up to in this way. Even at the worst moments, such as the period after 9/11 in which the Bush administration created the prison at Guantanamo Bay and allowed torture and other questionable tactics, I have rarely met anyone, in any country, who wanted to move to China, or India, or even Japan, rather than the United States. Foreigners may want to spend a few years in China or India or Indonesia, to see the dynamism of these places, but few, if any, have plans to become Chinese, Indian, or Indonesian citizens. Perhaps one day China or Indonesia or India will draw these migrants, who would come seeking the same dreams and openness as they do today in the United States. But it won’t be soon – and it might not even be this century.

Joshua Kurlantzick is a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

☞ And here is James Fallows in The Atlantic, having just returned from three years in China, with an equally fascinating take.

. . . Through the entirety of my conscious life, America has been on the brink of ruination, or so we have heard, from the launch of Sputnik through whatever is the latest indication of national falling apart or falling behind. Pick a year over the past half century, and I will supply an indicator of what at the time seemed a major turning point for the worse. The first oil shocks and gas-station lines in peacetime history; the first presidential resignation ever; assassinations and riots; failing schools; failing industries; polarized politics; vulgarized culture; polluted air and water; divisive and inconclusive wars. It all seemed so terrible, during a period defined in retrospect as a time of unquestioned American strength. ‘Through the 1970s, people seemed ready to conclude that the world was coming to an end at the drop of a hat,’ Rick Perlstein, the author of Nixonland, told me. ‘Thomas Jefferson was probably sure the country was going to hell when John Adams supported the Alien and Sedition Acts,’ said Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator and presidential candidate. ‘And Adams was sure it was going to hell when Thomas Jefferson was elected president.’ . . .

☞ The Fallows piece is actually more colorful and anecdotal than the Kurlantzick piece – you’ll enjoy it, if you have time.

But just as many scoffed at the notion that U.S. home prices could ever go down – the worry of a few perennial Cassandras – so could it be a mistake to underestimate the work we need to do to remain competitive.