Bill Whittle in Newport Beach!

I have College Day at LBCC in the morning, so a big write up will have to wait. Note for now that the Newport Beach event was intimate and informative. Bill Whittle is a captivating speaker, very scholarly and counterintuitive on a number of points. And host Mike Munzing was welcoming and the guests energized and engaged. Great food too. More later!

The U.S. Still Has a Promising Future?

Well, I certainly hope so.



But check Michael O'Hanlon, at Los Angeles Times, "Despite Problems, the U.S. Still Has a Promising Future":

Amid all the talk of gloom and doom in the United States, with the stock market's near-crash and the renewed threat of a double-dip recession, it is worth pausing to remember that the United States remains the greatest country on Earth. It is also the country with the most promising future. I make these assertions not as a matter of national pride, but as an analytical conclusion.

And he makes an excellent argument. The problem --- and I know it's a problem, because I'm just like O'Hanlon on this --- is that his analysis is almost completely structural. That is, O'Hanlon's looking at all this recent turmoil from a comparative power analysis interpretation, which almost systematically excludes internal political determinants. We can extrapolate from past patterns of America's remarkable exceptionalism and global preponderance and expect things to flow along fairly well simply because for all our troubles, no single other nation matches America's bounty or prospects. But the debt downgrade, as Danial Henniger points out today, is the ultimate signal that American hegemony is shrugging. To use Mark Steyn's analogy, we're like a prize fighter who's been hammered, and the opponent's sitting at the opposite stool, counting the seconds until the bell rings to come over for another round of pummeling. That's to say, for example, when Britain fell from preeminent status after WWI, and most definitely at the conclusion of WWII, the mantle of global political and eocnomic leadership passed to a benign power across the Atlantic, the United States. The U.S. had not only resisted the hegemonic role during the 1920s, but after WWII we did just about everything in our power to restore the defeated European nations and Japan to economic vitality and competitiveness. As America declines now --- and I'm using decline now for the first time really in agreement --- there's is no commensurate situation of the leading power passing the baton to a friendly rising power, as we experienced in 1945. China and Russia cooperate where possible but will seek advantage from America's weakening position, as power politics dictates, and that's while at the same time China is paradoxically hemmed in further from America's debt problems (mutual vulnerability forms a trace element of U.S. power internationally). And of course toss into the mix President Obama's hellbent agenda of making the United States the unexceptional nation, and well, let's just hope he's out in one term, November 6th, 2012. And the key factor for the electorate is the massive Democrat debt overhang. We're heading into a double-dip recession, some say. The Fed, for example, promised zero percent interest rates until 2013 because it expects no growth. The only thing good about this is that it almost guarantees that the Democrat ticket will lose next November. Even then, Republicans have been nearly as addicted to spending as the Democrats, with G.W. Bush's Medicare prescription drug expansion being Exhibit A. And the debt overhang will accelerate the collapse of U.S. world leadership unless two things happen: (1) we cut spending, and (2) the economy grows at a sustained pace of growth, say at three percent annual GDP for a decade or two, and then some. I can't see things turning around unless we have a combination of those two things, and without that we'll see a steady erosion of both U.S. global influence and a decline in the U.S. standard of living at home.



So, yes, Michael O'Hanlon makes a good case for continued optimism, but a more thorough analysis must consider the current failures of the American political system, and most importantly, the epic failures of the Democrat Party's expansionist, economic-killing social welfare policies.



More on this later ...

America as Less Than No. 1

I've been thinking about this. I find myself losing my normal optimism on America, which is extremely unlike me.



See Danial Henniger, at Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. is far from finished. The private economy—from the biggest corporations to innumerable dreamers launching start-ups—is fit and eager. But make no mistake: The U.S. has taken a hard hit to its 65-year status as the world's pre-eminent nation.

RTWT.



I'll have more on this topic in upcoming posts.

Kenneth Turan Movie Review: 'Captain America: The First Avenger'

At Los Angeles Times.

I'll probably take my youngest boy to see it today:

Atlantis Landing Ends Space Shuttle Era

At Los Angeles Times.

Also, "A cloudy vision of U.S. spaceflight."

When the orbiter Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, ending the 30-year-old space shuttle program, NASA will have its sights set on the next big exploration mission: sending astronauts to an asteroid in about 15 years.

But the path to that goal remains poorly defined, jeopardized by a bleak budget outlook and a weak political consensus. It has left a deep angst that U.S. leadership in space flight is in rapid decline and the very ability to fly humans off the Earth is at risk.

"I'm very disappointed about where we are today," said Robert L. Crippen, who flew on the first space shuttle mission and went on to senior leadership jobs in both NASA and the aerospace industry. "NASA's future is very fuzzy right now."

NASA has a complicated plan that would include operating the International Space Station, tapping a private launch service to ferry astronauts to orbit, and building a new launch system to send humans on deep space missions, including an asteroid by the mid-2020s.

Engineers and technicians are busy at plants across the nation, building new crew capsules, testing hardware in vibration chambers and preparing to conduct demonstration flights, all part of supporting the future steps that NASA envisions.

Nonetheless, the overall plan has failed to gain widespread support, reflecting serious concerns about the costs, risks and the lack of detail about the most difficult aspects of the exploration mission.

But see, Nicholas de Monchaux, "Spirit of the Spacesuit."

Added: A killer piece at Daley Gator, "Home At Last: Atlantis Makes Historic Final Landing As Nasa’s 30-Year Shuttle Program Comes to An End."

Andrew Breitbart is New York Times' Blogger Provocateur

Well, he should be. He's declared war on the Democrat-Media-Complex.

See, "The Right’s Blogger Provocateur."

The Other McCain responds: "The Semi-Smear."

Below, as promised, is the video from the Breitbart talk in Newport Beach. And buy a copy of Righteous Indignation here.

Sarah Palin: 'America is the Exceptional Nation'

A new SarahPAC video, via Theo Spark:

Recall that when I was a CPAC in February, I made it a point to walk the National Mall to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's birthday. I love this country's history. And I love that Sarah Palin celebrates it with such passion.

Here Come Chinese 'Trophy Acquisitions' in the U.S.

In 1989, the editorial board of the New York Times asked, "Is the transfer of American assets to Japanese ownership something to worry about?"

The answer was no, "of course." But the Times board when on to suggest that this was "a sharp reminder of Japan's growing economic strength." So true, but within just a few years, by the mid-1990s, those fears of "Japan as Number One" quickly dissipated as that nation floundered in the fallout from its overheated bubble economy.

I'm reminded of this by the news this morning that China's Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC) has made a bid for ownership entry into the U.S. financial market. See WSJ, "China's ICBC Bids for U.S. Entry":

CHICAGO—Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. on Friday signed an agreement here to acquire a majority stake in Bank of East Asia Ltd.'s U.S. subsidiary, becoming the first state-owned Chinese bank to make an acquisition of a U.S. deposit-taking institution.

The deal, signed on the last day of Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S., represents what could be the start of big expansions by Chinese financial institutions in the world's largest economy.

The deal comes as both Beijing and Washington are calling for greater commercial ties between the two countries. China is prodding the U.S. to ease its export controls, especially those involving high-technology products, while the U.S. is asking for more Chinese purchases of made-in-America goods and services.

Still, the Bank of East Asia transaction promises to be carefully scrutinized by U.S. regulators, including the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as Cfius, because of the state-controlled nature of ICBC, China's largest lender. Bank of East Asia is a publicly traded bank based in Hong Kong.

RTWT.

And also at WSJ, "Why China’s ICBC Bank Deal is Important."

The Chinese are coming to America. And we'll soon see, no doubt, some "trophy acquisitions" that raise hollers far and wide. But as we've learned from previous experience, this hardly means the end of American world preeminence.

In any case, Daniel Drezner has a roundup on those "writers who vastly exaggerate China's rise!" See, "The most absurd edge of the 'China as behemoth' meme."

Related: Paul Krugman on China (via Memeorandum).

I'll have more later ...