All the Tobacco in China

While traveling through China a couple of times, one thing that sticks out is the absolute mass of cigarette smokers. When I was young, there were no real smoking laws in America and people would light up whenever and wherever the desire struck. It has not been so in the States for over a decade. Travel through China and it will take you back to a more hazy and asthma filled time. This story from the Wall Street Journal I thought was funny and talks a bit about the issue. Can you imagine flying on an airplane with a "smoking" section? I did, sitting with my mom who at the time was a pack and a half day smoker.....yuck!

By HUGO RESTALL who writes in the Wall Street Journal

To all the other superlatives used to describe China we may now add the fact that it has the tastiest cigarettes. I don't pretend to be a connoisseur, having only begun smoking a couple weeks ago, but then again I've been inhaling the smoke of Chinese cigarettes for years.

The country consumes about one-third of the world's cigarettes. As a student, I often carried a pack just to offer to others. Want to start a conversation on a train in China? Shake the pack. Asking directions? Hold out a stick and say, "chou yi ger." If the guy is already smoking, he'll tuck it behind his ear for later.

After years of resisting, a friend in Shanghai gave me the perfect excuse to start smoking. China has become so polluted, he told me, that it's better to breathe through a cigarette filter than just take in the air on its own. And if your lungs are going to get shot to hell anyway, you might as well enjoy it. So, well into middle age, I figured that it was probably a good time to take up the smoking habit.

The result? I enjoy it so much that I don't know why I didn't take it up earlier.

For the Chinese, smoking carries connotations that might seem outdated, even quaint to Westerners. Real men smoke, period. And when real men hang out together, they smoke a lot. The presence of women is appreciated, of course -- if they are quick with a lighter. At a formal meal or banquet, each course may be followed by a cigarette, as if to cleanse the palate, and a few more cigarettes will be smoked at the end, in place of port. As the saying goes, fan hou yi zhi yan, sai guo huo shenxian -- a cigarette after a meal and you feel better than a living god.

Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping smoked like chimneys, even when they were meeting foreign dignitaries. The government provided its leaders with top-quality tobacco. The best cigarette brands, many manufactured in Shanghai on the equipment confiscated from the capitalists in 1949, conferred an aura of power. Limited production now helps them retain their cachet.

Mao reportedly favored a brand called Chunghwa, which means China. These cigarettes always came in a distinctive red packet, the color of the Forbidden City walls, embossed with the Gate of Heavenly Peace in gold, although without Mao's portrait. Perhaps, for Mao, it would have been too strange to see his own face smiling back at him from his cigarette box. Deng smoked the elusive Pandas, which had a campy, 1960s look to them -- psychedelic orange packaging and cartoon of pandas snacking on bamboo.

These brands are still around, of course. But puffing on the same lights as dead dictators doesn't come cheap. Chunghwas run you almost $10 a pack, and Pandas, if you can find them, are $12. But it's worth it. Not only do they offer a pungent sense of history, they taste fantastic. Both are exceptionally smooth, almost like an Indonesian kretek clove cigarette. But they kick like a Camel unfiltered.

Pandas are made with a dark tobacco and hence are woody and nutty, with hints of pine shavings and hickory. They are a bit strong, and have a very long filter to compensate. But they leave a spicy aftertaste, which perhaps is why Deng, who was from Sichuan, the land of chilies and peppercorns, loved them so much.

When you open a pack of Chunghwa cigarettes, you can smell the bouquet of preserved plums, and they convey a fruity flavor even when alight. If smoking puts you on the road to early death, as some spoilsports say, then Chunghwas make the journey an extremely pleasant one. I would go so far as so say that, if you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of being offered a last cigarette, make it a Chunghwa. This is a smoke to be savored like a vintage wine.

Many of the scents of the old China are disappearing, like the smoke of the feng wo mei, charcoal powder pressed into the shape of a honeycomb that was once burned in most households for cooking and heat. But cigarettes, at least, remain. It used to be that, whenever a man exhaled off his cheap cigarette, it would transport me back to my student days and the "hard seat" train compartments where I would almost be asphyxiated by clouds of smoke. Now that man might be me.

Hardliners For Jesus

This editorial was written before the Christmas holidays but I just came across it again today.

We are close in Govt class to looking deeper at the issues of the 1st Amendment. Here is a taste of some of those issues.

By Harold Meyerson

As Christians across the world prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it's a fitting moment to contemplate the mountain of moral, and mortal, hypocrisy that is our Christianized Republican Party.

There's nothing new, of course, about the Christianization of the GOP. Seven years ago, when debating Al Gore, then-candidate George W. Bush was asked to identify his favorite philosopher and answered "Jesus." This year, however, the Christianization of the party reached new heights with Mitt Romney's declaration that he believed in Jesus as his savior, in an effort to stanch the flow of "values voters" to Mike Huckabee.

My concern isn't the rift that has opened between Republican political practice and the vision of the nation's Founders, who made very clear in the Constitution that there would be no religious test for officeholders in their enlightened new republic. Rather, it's the gap between the teachings of the Gospels and the preachings of the Gospel's Own Party that has widened past the point of absurdity, even as the ostensible Christianization of the party proceeds apace.

The policies of the president, for instance, can be defended in greater or (more frequently) lesser degree within a framework of worldly standards. But if Bush can conform his advocacy of preemptive war with Jesus's Sermon on the Mount admonition to turn the other cheek, he's a more creative theologian than we have given him credit for. Likewise his support of torture, which he highlighted again this month when he threatened to veto House-passed legislation that would explicitly ban waterboarding.

It's not just Bush whose catechism is a merry mix of torture and piety. Virtually the entire Republican House delegation opposed the ban on waterboarding. Among the Republican presidential candidates, only Huckabee and the not-very-religious John McCain have come out against torture, while only libertarian Ron Paul has questioned the doctrine of preemptive war.
But it's on their policies concerning immigrants where Republicans -- candidates and voters alike -- really run afoul of biblical writ. Not on immigration as such but on the treatment of immigrants who are already here.

Consider: Christmas, after all, celebrates not just Jesus's birth but his family's flight from Herod's wrath into Egypt, a journey obviously undertaken without benefit of legal documentation. The Bible isn't big on immigrant documentation. "Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him," Exodus says the Lord told Moses on Mount Sinai, "for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Yet the distinctive cry coming from the Republican base this year isn't simply to control the flow of immigrants across our borders but to punish the undocumented immigrants already here, children and parents alike.

So Romney attacks Huckabee for holding immigrant children blameless when their parents brought them here without papers, and Huckabee defends himself by parading the endorsement of the Minuteman Project's Jim Gilchrist, whose group harasses day laborers far from the border. The demand for a more regulated immigration policy comes from virtually all points on our political spectrum, but the push to persecute the immigrants already among us comes distinctly, though by no means entirely, from the same Republican right that protests its Christian faith at every turn.

We've seen this kind of Christianity before in America. It's more tribal than religious, and it surges at those times when our country is growing more diverse and economic opportunity is not abounding. At its height in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was chiefly the political expression of nativist Protestants upset by the growing ranks of Catholics in their midst.
It's difficult today to imagine KKKers thinking of their mission as Christian, but millions of them did.

Today's Republican values voters don't really conflate their rage with their faith. Lou Dobbs is a purely secular figure. But nativist bigotry is strongest in the Old Time Religion precincts of the Republican Party, and woe betide the Republican candidate who doesn't embrace it, as John McCain, to his credit and his political misfortune, can attest.

The most depressing thing about the Republican presidential race is that the party's rank and file require their candidates to grow meaner with each passing week. And now, inconveniently, inconsiderately, comes Christmas, a holiday that couldn't be better calibrated to expose the Republicans' rank, fetid hypocrisy.

Where Lawmakers Go When They Die...K Street

This is an issue we will look at later in the semester but it's a major factor for members of Congress. We will refer to it as the "revolving door" when we talk about it in class.

Lawmakers returning to the Capitol are being welcomed back by some familiar faces: former members whose one-year ban on lobbying their old colleagues has just expired. Among them is Jim Davis, a Democrat who left the House in 2007 after an unsuccessful bid for governor of Florida.

His one-year ban ended last week, and now he’s signed up with the lobbying arm of the Holland & Knight law firm. It’s a transition that plenty of House and Senate members make.

Former Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and John Breaux (D-La.) opened their bipartisan lobbying shop two weeks ago, with Lott just recently having followed a well-worn path from Capitol Hill to K Street. But at a time when Congress is touting new rules aimed at curbing lobbying influence, and Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards are railing against the persuasion class on the presidential campaign trail, it raises a question about why so many lawmakers do it.

In a softly lit meeting room at Holland & Knight’s office, Davis talked freely about his career path. He was an attorney and state legislator before being elected to the U.S. House in 1996, where he served on the Energy and Commerce Committee and was co-chairman of the moderate New Democrat Coalition.

After losing the governor’s race in 2006, Davis said he took stock of his strengths: an interest in issues, intimate knowledge about how Washington works and a history of advocacy. “The thing that attracted me to politics is an interest in issues and bringing people together. I tried to think what was the most valuable thing I could do,” he said.

And, he concluded, becoming a lawyer-lobbyist “seemed a place where I could do well.” He shifted in his seat when the conversation turned to the accusations from Obama, Edwards and others that lobbyists are a essentially a subspecies, interested only in making money for themselves and bending public policy to fatten the bottom line of corrupt corporations.

“I’ve been a member of Congress, a candidate for governor — I’ve had pretty much everything thrown at me,” Davis said evenly. Besides, there are some pretty obvious upsides to his new K Street gig. The pay is better, and he has got two kids reaching college age.

And unlike Obama, Edwards and the rest of the political class, he doesn’t have to go begging anymore for campaign cash. “Oh, God, yes!” Davis said when asked if he is happier to be the contribution check writer rather than the hungry recipient. He has already been added to his old colleagues’ donation wish lists, but it doesn’t seem as if he’s going to be a soft sell. “I’ve never been a fundraiser. I’m busy building my practice,” he deadpanned when asked if he would be a sympathetic giver.

Davis intends to focus on energy, financial services and health care — three issues that are likely to dominate the Congress as lawmakers take up a major global climate change bill, respond to the housing crisis and debate ways to rein in health costs. Since he has arrived back in Washington, Davis said, he has been struck by how fundamentally the House has been changed by his Democratic Party’s takeover.

One case in point: While on the Energy and Commerce Committee during the Republican era, he said, “when I talked about climate change, they’d turn off the lights and the microphone.” Davis’ entire House career, from 1997 to 2007, was served in lowly minority status. He and his partisan brethren were shut out of virtually any substantive policy discussions at the committee level and on the floor.

The rise of the Democrats has also ushered in a return of powerful committee chairmen, bent on setting their own agendas, holding hearings and hashing out legislative language inside their own domains. The process slows legislation and diffuses power. But it provides greater opportunity for lawmakers and outside interest groups to make their case for changes or deletions.

To be sure, today’s congressional minority has scant influence on the final outcome of those drafting sessions. But the majority hearings at least allow the opposing view to be aired.

In the Republican era, major legislation was routinely rewritten or drafted in the cloistered House Rules Committee by a handful of leaders and their senior aides. The final outcome, Davis asserted, “was more about the political interests or preferences of the leaders.”

Another obvious change is the elevation of his old friends to subcommittee and committee chairmanships. And he’s taken some ribbing for jumping ship just when the partisan tide was turning. “Why’d you leave?” they ask; and “Don’t you wish you were back?” Davis shrugged off any wistfulness.

“I don’t look back,” he said. But he conceded those new leaders will ease his transition into the lobbying world, even if the new ethics rules prevent him from taking them to dinner. “My relationships with members are relationships for life,” he said, noting that he rarely socialized in Washington when he was in the House because he had young children at home.

In fact, he said, the biggest impact the new rules have on him is that he can’t use the House gym anymore. When he was in office, Davis used to go to the gym to change into his running clothes before heading out to the National Mall for a two- or three-mile jog. Now, he’ll change in the law office. “I can still use the Mall,” he said.

Why Markets Tumbled

For all of you that just came to my class from Economics...this should make some sort of sense to you.

If not...don't let Moore find out!

From the Economist:

IT APPEARS to be an old-fashioned case of risk aversion. Stockmarkets are plunging (the FTSE 100 was down more than 300 points, or 5% just after noon in London, on Monday January 21st), commodity prices are dropping and investors are flocking to the safety of government bonds and currencies like the Swiss franc and yen. Speculative bonds now yield seven percentage points more than US Treasuries, the highest spread since April 2003.

For some, this merely represents a case of stockmarkets catching up with reality. It is now a year since the subprime crisis first emerged. In that time central banks have cut interest rates, investment banks have announced big write-offs and various rescue packages have been suggested. But the end of the crisis is not yet in sight. Indeed, another leg of the debt crisis may be under way, if problems of monoline debt-insurers (an obscure but important bunch who guarantee the timely repayment of bond principal and interest when the issuer defaults) are not contained. If the American economy is not now in recession, it is close enough not to make a practical difference to sentiment.

For much of past year equity investors knew those salient facts but chose instead to take comfort from three more bullish factors. First was that the Federal Reserve would rescue both the markets and the economy, as it has done so often before. Second, even if the American economy faltered, the rest of the world (particularly Asia) could take up the burden of producing global growth. Third, given the global picture, corporate profits could stay high.

All three assumptions are now coming under question. Although the Fed may cut rates this month, it can take 12-18 months for the effects of monetary policy to boost the economy. On the issue of decoupling, it is not clear that either Europe or Japan can escape America’s gravitational pull. The latest data on Singapore (slowing exports and a decline in fourth-quarter GDP) suggest that other parts of Asia might not escape either. It is significant that emerging markets, which had been outperforming their developed brethren in recent months, are now starting to underperform. On Monday Hong Kong suffered its worst loss since September 11th 2001. As they review the evidence of decoupling analysts are cutting their profit forecasts.

An indication of the change in sentiment came when America's administration announced plans for a fiscal stimulus on Friday. In good times, that would have kick-started a market rally; in the current mood, the package was seen as a sign of desperation.

Share prices have now fallen far enough that European indices are in bear market territory having dropped 20% from their peaks. Indices for smaller stocks in Britain have fallen by a similar amount. However, it takes more than just a big percentage fall for a bear market to be officially under way; the decline also needs to be long-lasting (the 2000-02 decline was a classic example).

The markets have had short-term 20% declines in the past (1998, for instance) only to rebound quickly. Indeed, what was remarkable about the long bull run from March 2003 to June 2007 was that it occurred without any such corrections.

Share prices have fallen so far and so fast that an attempt at a rally seems almost inevitable. What may determine if this is a correction or a bear market is whether that rally can be sustained for more than a day or two.

Dreaming?

In a couple of weeks, we will start our unit on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights.
Tomorrow marks Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Here is the full version of the famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The Weekend Primaries

Okay, so two more states were decided yesterday.

In South Carolina, the GOP, in a suprise and perhaps the nail in the coffin of Mike Huckabee, voted for John McCain. The importance of North Carolina to the GOP is that no Republican candidate has ever won the party nomination without winning North Carolina. In a state that has a very strong evangelical base, the Huckabee campaign was desparatly needing the state to have a chance to continue. With this state in the McCain bag, it looks like it is down to a two person race the rest of the way out.

Remember the statement that I posted last week about the NCAA Final 4. With McCain defeating Huckabee in his must win, we now turn to Nevade where both Republicans and Democrats had a caucus yesterday.

Since McCain had already pulled an upset in South Carolina, Nevada was no longer a must win for his campaign, and good thing. Mitt Romney walked away with the victory in the Silver State, keeping his hopes still alive. With back to back wins in Michigan and now in Nevada, the stage is set for a wild "super duper doppler" Tuesday.

On the Democrat side, a wild week of mud slinging, lawsuit threatening came to and end with Clinton winning the basically two person race in Nevada. As with the Republicans, the Democrats are now headed to what will be an exciting day on the first Tuesday of February.

The Replacements

As a part of your semester long adventure with me, I believe it is my duty to also introduce you to some great music. Some of which you may have never heard before.

Welcome to The Replacements