Candy Crowley | AP

By Mark Jurkevich

Candy Crowley’s Nov. 18 interview of Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Tom Price was the worst piece of mainstream TV journalism that I have seen this month. Here is the video and the transcript.

Durbin, a stalwart Illinois Democrat, and Price, a Georgia Republican, are key negotiators over the budget impasse, the so-called fiscal cliff. The interview took place on State Of The Union, CNN’s flagship Sunday political program, which Crowley currently moderates. It is broadcast world-wide.

Price predictably laid out and defended the Republican positions. Quickly, Crowley seemed to forget her role of moderator, and went on a leftist attack against Price. Bizarrely, but appropriately given the circumstances, Dick Durbin assumed the moderating role. At times he seemingly defended Price from Crowley’s attack, with chastising interjections such as: Read more »

Brendan Mruk | Wikimedia Commons

By Mark Jurkevich

Leading voices from the far right have recently joined the Democrats in declaring that the Republican Party is now controlled by dumb people. I prefer “ignorant,” a slightly more generous adjective.

A case in point is Bret Stephens’ recent editorial “Earth to GOP: Get a Grip” in the Wall Street Journal. It’s a hilarious piece for any Democrat; and, well, it’s a hilarious piece for any intelligent Republican.

A dedicated right winger, Stephens is the Boy Wonder of the neocon movement’s mainstream-media brigade. He’s the deputy editorial page editor of the WSJ. Before joining it he was editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, and has written pieces such as “Why Hasn’t Israel Bombed Iran (Yet)?” I’m no fan of Bret Stephens, but I do respect his intelligence.

His “Earth To GOP” essay calls for fundamental change in the party’s direction. Here are some of his thoughts about the current direction: Read more »

Carlos Latuff | Wikimedia Commons | Modified by Dan

By Mark Jurkevich

President Barack Obama delivered to America the worst economic performance of any president in modern times, and in return, America delivered to him a second term.

I could rant endlessly in this column about how in 2007 Obama promised health-care reform that will contain middle-class insurance costs, but instead raised their insurance costs in order to create universal health care, a massive wealth-redistribution scheme.

Or, how Obama promised a giant stimulus package that would focus on “shovel ready projects” that would rebuild our physical infrastructure for the next 50 years, but instead delivered the largest pork–laden spending spree in history. As a stimulus package, it was terribly ineffective. However, as candy for traditional Democratic constituencies, it was sweet indeed.

But such rants would only rehash old debates. Instead, I will focus on macroeconomic facts, many from the White House’s Office Of Management and Budget (OMB).

All four of Obama’s annual budgets produced historic deficits as a percentage of gross domestic product, according to the OMB table 1.2: 2009 – 10.1%; 2010 – 9.1%, 2011 – 8.7%; and in 2012 – 8.5% (estimated). Excluding the World War II years, these are the four highest deficits in modern American history. Read more »

SourtoeCocktailClub.com

By Mark Jurkevich

Mexico’s Mezcal, with its famous worm, is no match for our northern neighbor’s novelty drink – the Sourtoe Cocktail. The former comes with one worm in each bottle; the latter comes with one amputated human toe in each drink.

Dawson City’s Downtown Hotel, in the heart of Yukon Territory, has been proudly serving the Sourtoe Cocktail since 1973, when local riverboat captain Dick “River Rat” Stevenson found a severed big toe in a pickle jar.

Stevenson’s original rules for joining the Sourtoe Cocktail Club still ring in the late night hours at the hotel saloon – “You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but the lips have gotta touch the toe.”

The purist version of the cocktail is very simple – Yukon Jack whiskey is poured into a rocks glass. The bartender then fishes out a human toe from a dry salt pack and drops it into the glass. If you successfully down the drink, bottoms-up style, so that the toe ends up resting on your lips, you become a member of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club. Read more »

Wikimeda Commons | Text by Dan

By Mark Jurkevich

Many Americans have a flawed view of the USA’s standing among the community of nations. The self-perception is that we are number one by practically every meaningful measurement.

This view is not surprising given that every politician and all mainstream media saturate us daily with slogans such as:

• American exceptionalism (Does that mean we are the chosen people?);
• America is the leader of the free world (What countries belong to this club? Who is the leader of the unfree world?);
• America has the best health care system in the world;
• Most of the world supports the huge U.S. military because they know it is there to protect them (From who?);

My inspiration for writing this post came from a comment about the huge U.S. military, left last week on this blog. The following comment was in response to my post Global Prosperity Index Boots America From Top 10: Read more »

Some Russians in folk costumes at a London 2007 festival. | Wikimedia Commons

By Mark Jurkevich

As widely reported last week, the U.S. has fallen out of the Top 10 countries on the Legatum Institute’s Annual Prosperity Index.

Scandinavian countries dominated, with Norway, Denmark and Sweden grabbing the top 3 positions in the 2012 ranking. The U.S. fell to the 12th position, behind No. 6 Canada; No. 7 Finland; and No. 11 Luxembourg, among others.

The Legatum Prosperity Index seeks to capture long-term underlying components of national prosperity, rather than focus on quarterly or annual fluctuations in national economies.

In discussing this year’s ranking, authors Jeffrey Gedmin and Nathan Gamester caution against outdated thinking that places to much emphasis on GDP growth when evaluating national prosperity:

“For three-quarters of a century, gross domestic product has been single most important framework for evaluating economic success. In recent years, though, a ‘beyond GDP’ debate has started.” My recent column “Can America’s middle-class learn something from France?” makes a similar case that higher GDP numbers do not necessarily equate to higher prosperity for the middle-class.

The Wall Street Journal, a pro-business bastion of Republican-leaning fiscal conservatism, published “U.S. Prosperity Is In Decline” by the Legatum authors as its lead op-ed on October 30th. Read more »

Note from Dan: Mark Jurkevich is taking a short vacation, so we don’t have a column from him today. This post is derived from a theory he has and that he explained to me in a series of emails back in January 2010.

The election is tomorrow and it features four relatively physically attractive candidates. So I thought it was time to renew an old post from around back then. We’ll start with an email Mark sent back then that I regarded at startling.

It was about Scott Brown’s victory in a special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy:

“That is quite a message the folks in Mass. sent to the Dems in electing Brown.  The Republicans also seemed to get the theory that when Americans are feeling bad it sure helps to put a good-looking candidate in front of them. Brown looks like Mitt’s younger cousin.”

I responded with some surprise, and he went on:

“A) The USA hasn’t felt this bad about itself since the back end of the Carter years;

B)  Reagan won, in part because of his virility, good looks and glamor surrounding him and Nancy.  Americans compared them to how Jimmy Carter and his family looked, their tea-tottling and confessions of having lust in his heart etc.; Read more »

Waves wash over the seawall near high tide at Battery Park in New York Monday. | AP Photo

Note from Dan: Mark Jurkevich is taking a short vacation, so there will be no fresh posts from him today or Monday. Here’s an oldie-but goodie he wrote for this blog on March 10, 2010 under the pen name, MarkX. I’ve edited it lightly, added a comment and changed the art. Incidentally, comedian Bill Maher disagrees (NSFW).

By Mark Jurkevich

By now it’s pretty hard for the informed and interested not to be certain that the orthodox global warmers, led by their front man, Al Gore, have grossly distorted the facts to fit their story line.

Yes, in 2010, I no longer fear being labeled a heretic and brought before an Inquisition for making such a statement!  To throw Gore’s words back into his face – this fraud is now established fact and we have to move beyond that debate and now identify who is behind it and what is their motivation. Read more »

Santa Maria Church in Paganica, damaged by the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake | pablo72 | Wikimedia Commons

By Mark Jurkevich

Six Italian scientists were found guilty of manslaughter by an Italian court for failing to predict the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake.

They were each sentenced to six years in prison, plus damages. They were also ordered to pay the massive court costs, including that of the prosecution, as well as damages. Finally, the guilty scientists were barred from ever holding public office again.

Among those convicted was Enzo Boschi, one of the world’s most respected seismologists, and former head of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.

The Oct. 22 guilty verdict is the culmination of a trial that began in September 2011. The judge deliberated for only four hours before issuing his verdict. Consistent with Napoleonic law used throughout most of continental Europe, a jury was not involved.

More than 300 people perished in the central Italy 6.9 magnitude earthquake. The region resides on an active volcano and earthquake zone.

The 6 convicted scientists were members of the Great Risks Commission, an Italian committee of scientists which evaluates potential for natural disasters. The week before the earthquake, they met to discuss the small earth tremors that had rattled the area for several months.

After the meeting, they issued a statement concluding that a major quake in the near future was improbable, although one could not be excluded. The meeting and statement led to manslaughter charges on grounds that the scientists failed to alert the Aquila population of “an impending major earthquake.” Read more »

Executives of two major Chinese technology companies, Charles Ding, of Huawei Technologies Ltd. (left), and Zhu Jinyun, of ZTE Corporation are sworn in on Capitol Hill before testifying before the House Intelligence Committee in September.

By Mark Jurkevich

The powerful U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence recommended that U.S. telecom operators and governmental agencies avoid business with Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE, according to its October 8 report.

The committee argues that deploying technology supplied by these companies poses a national security risk because of their ties to the Chinese government.

Based on the global market penetration of Huawei and ZTE, clearly this opinion is not shared by our allies like the European Union; nor for that matter, by our geopolitical competitors such as Russia.

Huawei conducts 70% of its business outside of China. Last year it generated more than $4 billion revenue in the European Union, and attained a market-leading position in Russia. Read more »