Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • The Incompetent or the Incoherent?

    This is the headline of The Economist magazine this week. The Economist, for its part, is going with the incoherent. The logic is simple, but the argument is incomplete. According to the Economist, a liberal-in-the-European-sense magazine published in London, President Bush understands the need for freedom in the Middle East, and acted decisively to respond to the true culprits of 9/11 with a minimum number of mistakes there. However, the editors of the Economist believe that while it was correct to invade Iraq based on shoddy evidence of WsMD, the subsequent occupation has been a disaster. They believe that the American people should give Bush the accountability that he claims to require for everyone, but seems not to require of himself, and vote for Kerry.

    OK, I pretty much agree with that. There are several interesting observations, however. To me, it is amazing that the Economist, a magazine so dedicated to free markets, capitalism, and libertarian ideals, after having endorsed George W. Bush (whose record included six unimpressive years in Austin, a stint as manager of a baseball team, and several failed oil companies) over a sitting Vice President with a record of economic growth but a woody personality, after rallying behind Bush in Iraq, after moaning about the wretched “indecisiveness” of Kerry, has still chosen to change horses mid-stream.

    It is also amazing that throughout the Economist’s justification for its decision, it mentions not once the fiscal policies of this administration. After demand stimulus tax cuts to the wrong segment of society; a record of pork, log-rolling, and horse-trading that even embarrasses the Heritage Foundation; an incoherent trade policy that vacillates between protectionism and liberalism; and three years of “disappointing” job/growth numbers, you think that the Economist would live up to its name as “The Economist” and actually talk about economics.

    How many months of worse-than-expected economic statistics do you want before you say, dammit George, please revise your expectations down and tell the truth? Just shows you, fool me once, um, …

  • Bandung

    We just returned from our little jaunt to Bandung. It’s about a 3 hour train ride from Jakarta, but it’s like a different world. It’s still smoggy and busy, but not nearly as smoggy and busy as Jakarta. It’s far cooler too. Bogor didn’t seem like much of a difference, but Bandung was a good ten degrees cooler due to its altitude. When we went out for dinner, it was downright cool…probably about 70 degrees, which feels like sweater weather to us now.

    The city itself was nice. There seem to be a lot more ethnic Chinese Indonesians in evidence there, and we had some awesome Chinese food for dinner. To tell the truth, it’s not really that different from American Chinese food: still stir-fried, still lots of rich sauce, baby corns, pea pods, etc. But it was really really good; some sort of spice or other ingredient seems to make the difference.

    We also saw a neat little store that sold handmade wayang golek puppets. These are the ones made out of wood. We didn’t buy any, but this is going to be the place to visit again, for sure.