Creative Class

Look Ma, no cast. Doesn’t matter. The cast is not the thing, it’s where the picture was taken.

Predicting sports is not my usual thing, but I’m picking the Giants to win the Super Bowl for six reasons.

1) They have the much sought after momentum. After starting off slowly, their entire team has been on a roll, improving week by week.

2) Eli Manning seems to have made a quantum jump in performance, as many people but especially elite former NFL quarterbacks have commented.

3) The Patriots have looked a little off, and are certainly not playing as well as they might be or had been. This can be a particular problem in light of point 1.

4) The Giants aren’t the least bit afraid. They know they can beat the Patriots. Heck the nearly did.

5)  The Pats have to lose a game sooner or later …

6) Tom Loves New York:  Question: Where does the Pats QB hang in his off-time? Out in Foxboro, over at Fanueil Hall. Hardly. He’s a fixture in the Big Apple, walking around town,  going to chichi restaurants, clubs and haunts with Gisele. The issue isn’t the “boot” on his foot, the suspected sprain, the possible ruse? Brady will be in fine physical shape.  It’s the mental factor. The guy wants to be in NY so much he can taste it.  Playing in the Super Bowl against any other team, I’d bet on him being cool, calm and collected. But not against the Giants. His secret desire to be in New York is sure to pysche him out. Deep down he’ll be thinking, “what if I was doing this there?”

You just watch:-) …

It’s a map of the NYC subway system which reflects the places that white New Yorkers live and travel to (h/t: Michael Bernstein, original map from Streeter Seidell).

In Spain as in Canada, people are pulling for Obama. Our driver, an American expat, says he now tells people he is Canadian because he can’t take the Bush jokes.

Bill Greider, a thinker and writer, I have long admired and a former neighbor in Washington DC weighs in.

The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of
the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on
the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to
the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The
nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four
more years. The thought makes me queasy.

That’s the title of a lead article in the New York Times Magazine. In it, Parag Khanna writes:

It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama
administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has
pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state
of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force
presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran
is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its
naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of
Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.

Why? Weren’t we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations
and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to
collective security and prosperity?  … That new global order has arrived, and there is
precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its
growth.

At best, America’s unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but
that was also a decade adrift. The post-cold-war “peace dividend” was
never converted into a global liberal order under American leadership.
So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing
— in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other
superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the
21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly
depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam
embroiled in internal wars; and not India,
lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic
appetite. The Big Three make the rules — their own rules — without any
one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors
in this post-American world.

There is lots and lots I could say about this, but I have a speech coming up so I’ll have to be brief.

1)  I like the title a lot.

2)  I’m sort of surprised the Times ran with it. But it means people who try to lead the thoughts must be nervous – or at least imagining that the US is no longer the center of the univivers.

3) The idea of a multi-polar world sounds reasonable.

4) Where are multinational corporations in this world?

5) Where is innovation, creativity, and innovation?

6) Do we really believe that big states will dominate in the post-empire age?

7) My guess is that the nation-state will radically decline in influence, in ways few people adequatrely recognize.

The new order will feature new institutions organized by global capitalists and global companies

9) It will take shape not around nations but increasingly around mega-regions

10)  Class divides will grow increasingly salient and a key feature will be how to raise the valleys of the world economy in order to protect its peaks from attacks.

The New York Times endorses Clinton and McCain. Whaddya think about that?

People commonly think of this: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”  What Marx actually wrote was this: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” The reality is: Wolfowitz returns to U.S. government.

During the Democratic debate, Obama shot back at Hillary,  “I feel like I’m running against two Clintons.”  No matter what they think of his presidency, a growing number of people on all sides of the aisle are taken aback to see a former president doing what Bill Clinton has been doing in this campaign.

So, what do you think would be the fall-out if, say, Michelle Obama showed up on Oprah or a similar venue to talk her role in the campaign and possibly the White House versus Bill Clinton’s recent behavior and the tendency of the Clintons to “gang up” on people?

The New York Times discovers that the city’s little Cambodia is getting littler.  Hmmmmm. Well,
at those real estate prices does this really surprise anyone?

All over the country – and all over North American actually – immigrant
populations have been moving out of urban enclaves and into the
suburbs.  As Tyler Cowen will tell you, the best ethnic restaurants in
DC aren’t in the city but in the suburbs.  Brookings demographer Bill
Frey reports that by 2000 more immigrants in U.S. metro areas lived in
suburbs than cities; and Audrey Singer’s detailed research documents this shift in greater Washington DC and elsewhere.

The old model of immigrants locating and forming ethnic communities
in central city neighborhoods is no longer the dominant pattern. It’s
not even a matter of immigrant succession – land first in the cities
and then head to the suburbs – more and more immigrants are heading
directly to the suburbs.  Many city neighborhoods which used to attract
immigrants are becoming too expensive, and suburbs frequently offer
better schools and other “amenities” immigrants require.  In fact, our
entire “urban structure” is changing fairly dramatically as a
consequence of idea-driven economies and the sorting of populations by
class, life-stage and other factors.

The New York Times discovers that the city’s little Cambodia is getting littler.  Hmmmmm …  Well at those real estate prices does this surprise anyone.  But all over the country – and all over North American actually – immigrant populations have been moving out of urban enclaves and into the suburbs.  As Tyler Cowen will tell you, the best ethnic restaurants in DC aren’t in the city but in the suburbs.  Brookings demographer Bill Frey reports that by 2000 more immigrants in U.S. metro areas lived in suburbs than cities; and Audrey Singer’s detailed research documents this shift in greater Washington DC and elsewhere.

The old model of immigrants locating and forming ethnic communities in central city neighborhoods is no longer the dominant pattern. It’s not even a matter of immigrant succession – land first in the cities and then head to the suburbs – more and more immigrants are heading directly to the suburbs.  Many city neighborhoods which used to attract immigrants are becoming too expensive, and suburbs frequently offer better schools and other “amenities” immigrants require.  In fact, our entire “urban structure” is changing fairly dramatically as a consequence of idea-driven economies and the sorting of populations by class, life-stage and other factors.