Translating “Shangri-La” into Chinese - Political News
Every time I visit a hotel called “Shangri-La” in Asia, I am disturbed.
“Shangri-La” is, of course, a nonsense syllable name–made up on the shores of the North Atlantic in the 1930s to sound Chinese (or perhaps Tibetan), but it is not a Chinese (or Tibetan) name.
So how do you translate “Shangri-La” into Chinese?
What do the Chinese characters written alongside “Shangri-La Hotel” mean?
And why did Asia never invent the teacup handle? Saucer, yes. Teacup cover to keep the tea warm, yes. But no handle. Why not?
The answer to the second question in unknown. The answer to the first question is that the Chinese for “Shangri-La” (a) sounds somewhat like “Shangri-La” and (b) means something like, “refuge of relaxation and pleasant fragrances.”
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More bad economic news from Europe and Japan - Democratic Source
Dire economic data underlined the severity of recession in Europe on Tuesday, while Toyota Motor Corp said it would halt all production in Japan in response to plunging demand.With the global downturn hitting automakers particularly hard, Toyota, the world’s biggest, said it would shut all its factories in Japan for 11 days over February and March.
And as a further indication of how the crisis that began with bad housing loans in the U.S. has reached all parts of the world, a state-run Chinese magazine warned that rising social unrest would follow.
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Richardson, Toby Keith, “Buddies - Today in Politics”
Toby Keith, apparently, has a few friends who might be in Obama’s administration, including our very own governor, Bill Richardson.
According to 890 CDJC Country, a British Columbia, Canada station, the two “became buddies” while Keith was taping Beer For My Horses in New Mexico.
In other news, Keith now has additional ties to the upcoming new White House administration. Besides being friends with President-elect Obama’s National Security Advisor, Retired Marine General James Jones, Keith also personally knows New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who Obama has picked as his Secretary of Commerce. Keith met and became buddies with Richardson while filming Beer For My Horses in New Mexico. Richardson hosted a dinner for Keith, and attended one of his shows, hanging out afterward on Keith’s tour bus.
Of course, Beer For My Horses only made $666,000 since being released on August 8.
And critics weren’t much nicer to the film.
But at least, for Richardson, the story didn’t say that Richardson hung out on the Willie Nelson tour bus.
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Freedom’s Watch: So Long, Suckers - Today in Politics!!!
A once-vaunted independent organization that was supposed to help Republicans make up severe fundraising shortfalls is closing after just one cycle in business.
Freedom’s Watch, the 501(c)(4) organization that ran advertisements slamming Democratic candidates, will effectively shut down by the end of the year, according to a source with knowledge of the plans.
The group, which ran television, radio, phone and mail campaigns against dozens of Democrats this year, received most of its funding from wealthy gaming mogul Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.
So endeth the most overhyped, overrated, and underwhelming political project since the presidential candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.
Freedom’s Watch was supposed to be a major player, with planners budgeting as much as $200 million for ad campaigns. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and its chairman, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), warned for nearly two years of an impending and unprecedented spending spree on behalf of Republican candidates.
That spree never emerged. In total, Freedom’s Watch spent about $30 million on television spots, though it would not reveal how much it spent on phones and mail, neither of which must be reported to the Federal Election Commission.
Let the record show that on the Watch’s watch, that $30 million yielded eight Democratic pickups in the U.S. Senate and 24 in the House during calendar year 2008.
So how come the Watchmen are going down?
Adelson reportedly was the source of the overwhelming majority of the group’s funding as well as the guiding force behind its decisions. But the 75-year-old casino executive, whose company owns The Venetian and Palazzo, has suffered his own reversals of late.
The company has lost roughly 95 percent of its stock market value over the past 11 months, dropping Adelson’s rank on the Forbes list of America’s wealthiest people from third to 15th.
At the end of October, a New York compensation consulting firm estimated Adelson’s net worth had fallen by more than $16.6 billion for the year.
Awwww. Poor Adelson, falling all the way to 15th-richest.
Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya, Watchmen.
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Stealing All Your Money - Political News
Probably will need another couple hundred billion soon.
- Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) — American International Group Inc., the insurer whose bonuses and perks are under fire from U.S. lawmakers, offered cash awards to another 38 executives in a retention program with payments of as much as $4 million.The incentives range from $92,500 to $4 million for employees earning salaries between $160,000 and $1 million, Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy said in a letter dated Dec. 5 to Representative Elijah Cummings. The New York-based insurer had previously disclosed that 130 managers would get the awards and that one executive would get $3 million.
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Creative Responses To Rick Warren - Democratic Source
Driving Equality is hosting a Rick-A-Thon to turn Rick Warren’s anti-equality stance into positive change for LGBT people. Every second that Warren stands at the podium, he will be raising money to advance LGBT civil rights. ( Pledge Online)
Rick Warren, a staunch opponent of equal rights for LGBT people, has used his pulpit to spread lies about LGBT families and to raise money for anti-gay legislation, such as proposition 8, which stripped equal marriage rights away from same-sex couples. When Warren takes the stage on Inauguration Day, however, he will be raising thousands of dollars to advance LGBT equality across the country.
On January 20, 2009, President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn in as our next president. Many of us look forward to this day as a moment of new hope, new direction, and positive change.
Unfortunately, many of us also view this day with mixed feelings. Many Americans are upset with Barack Obama’s decision to have controversial conservative minister Rick Warren deliver the invocation for the inaugural ceremony.
Over the years, Mr. Warren has supported the idea of criminalizing reproductive choice, he has advocated for the assassination of foreign leaders who oppose the policy positions of the American government, and most recently, he gave support to California’s controversial Proposition 8, which outlawed marriage equality for gay and lesbian citizens of that state. He has, in the past, compared gay marriage to incest, child abuse, polygamy, and rape (video here).
As an act of protest against the appearance of Rick Warren at the inauguration, we ask our fellow progressive bloggers that on January 20, 2009, you post your own alternative invocation.
You know, I might just do that.
Also, what Martin Marty said (below the fold).
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The Face of the New Pacific War - Democratic Source
Matt points out that Eliot Spitzer has become a shill for our robot would-be overlords. Even more alarming, Josh Keating posts the graph to the left, indicating international robot density.
The data support only one conclusion. On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy struck Pearl Harbor with six aircraft carriers, wreaking untold devastation. What if, next time, it’s worse? What if those aircraft carriers had been able to transform into giant robots?
This is the face of the future, my friends:
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How Best to Stimulate the Economy - Political News?
Eliot Spitzer is writing for Slate after his fall from grace a few months ago. Spitzer says that the Obama government’s stimulus plan should focus not on essential infrastructure refurbishments but rather on “transformative investments” that might springboard the American economy ahead of its competitors. More than that, Spitzer says that it’s incumbent on Obama’s second New Deal to act in this manner in order to “transform our economy and, in turn, some of the fundamental underpinnings of our society”.
One problem with projects far-seeing enough to deserve the “transformative” label is that they are by definition speculative in nature. They wouldn’t be transformative without the risky element of the unknown. Risk is not necessarily bad. A stock portfolio should contain a certain amount of risky holdings because that’s where the highest rates of return can be earned.
Similarly, government make-work projects, if such are to be created by the new government, should also include some high-risk/high-reward ventures. But not many. The federal government’s addiction to gambling with future generations’ economic security is a large part of what has put us in this crisis in the first place. Doubling down by spending vast sums in an attempt to create the infrastructure of the future might well make things worse instead of better.
For instance, Spitzer’s idea that the federal government should push the deployment of next-generation fuel distribution stations is far from a sure thing. The price of natural gas, for instance, has been as volatile as that of oil in recent years. Where is the guarantee that this will be the fuel of the future. Similarly, where is the assured source of hydrogen that would make laying tens of thousands of miles of pipe a good investment? Such an investment could take decades to pay off even if the right choices are made up front. Or all of these technologies could be made obsolete by new development after the money’s been spent. That’s the problem with making a market.
Considering that significant portions of the existing infrastructure is in need of remediation it seems as though getting these essential projects done first would be a more appropriate approach. Doing so would amount to getting our house in order, always a good move before leaping onto the next big thing.
A Conservative Who’s Been Arrested
Imprisoned tycoon Conrad Black, like imprisoned tycoon Martha Stewart before him, has begun to see the light on drug policy. In an article excerpted by the London Times on Sunday, the former newspaper magnate, who is serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence for fraud in a federal prison in Florida, describes the war on drugs as "a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year…as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved." He calls the plea bargain system "the barefaced exchange of incriminating testimony for immunity or a reduced sentence," involving "intimidation and suborned or extorted perjury, an outright rape of any plausible definition of justice."
[via the Western Standard]
Simple Dramas Packaged For Consumption - Democratic Source
As far as the whole “the left vs. Obama” narrative goes, this passage from Greg Sargent is on the money (emphasis mine):
The problem here is this bizarre need to decide one way or the other whether the entire left is or isn’t irrevocably dismayed with the Obama presidency and whether it has or hasn’t completely given up hope on it.This is fairly straightforward. Some liberals have concerns about this or that particular appointment or this or that particular policy statement. They’re voicing those concerns. That doesn’t make “the left” as a whole unhappy with Obama’s entire presidency. Those same liberals are happy about other things Obama’s doing, and many of them are generally optimistic. Believe it or not, people can simultaneously entertain more than one opinion about Obama’s evolving administration.
The problem here is the desire that the news orgs have to tell a simplistic story about those poor, sad, delusional lefties whose silly idealism blinded them to Obama’s “pragmatism” and “centrism.”
Developing a one-line description of what “the left” think about the entire Obama administration is a silly enterprise lacking any investigative seriousness. It is, instead, an attempt to create a simple drama pitting two not very well fleshed out characters (”the left” and “the Obama administration”) against one another. Dozens of news organizations have sought to use me as one of those characters, recycling two quotes of mine from three weeks ago as somehow representative of a vast anti-Obama uprising among foolish, idealist, hard-left bloggers.
Of course, not only is such a narrative too simplistic in its depiction of “the left,” which is a vast and diverse institution, it isn’t even an accurate portrayal of me. I, like “the left,” think a lot of different things about “the Obama transition.” Further, the Obama transition, like “the left,” is a vast an ongoing process that cannot be accurately described in a single sentence. There are many constituent parts of the Obama transition, which is in the process of hiring 8,000 people. There are many internal debates within the transition, which is not a monolithic reflection of the inside of Obama’s mind. There are debates inside and outside the Obama campaign. Not only is that a good thing, but those debates also tend to be over specific appointments and policies, rather than vagaries about “the left” or “pragmatism.”
I don’t know why so many news organizations are struggling to pay their bills these days, but I can’t imagine that using people to fit into a simplistic, pre-established narrative about something that is actually complex–and very important–is helping that much. Granted, my little media outlet is far smaller and generates far less revenue than most, so perhaps I don’t have the secret to media profitability. However, I think news consumers are better informed and smarter than they are often given credit for being by news producers. This belief comes from having to deal directly with many of the people who consume my website on a daily basis. If you write something that is inaccurate, then some of them will know it is inaccurate, and tell you right away, every single time you do it. Although there are exceptions, devolving into the simplistic is often the same as devolving into the inaccurate, and it might be turning off a lot of consumers who now have the ability to consume news elsewhere.
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