Jon Taplin’s Blog

In Saudi Arabia the latest craze is “numbering”. Cars full of young men chase cars in which young women are being driven and get close enough to bluetooth their mobile number and email address. This is from a fascinating piece in the New York Times this morning about the hormonally challenged young people of Saudi Arabia. 

Though it is as near to hand as the offices they pass each morning on the way to college, or the majlis, a traditional home reception room, where their fathers and brothers entertain friends, the men’s world is so remote from them that some Saudi girls resort to disguise in order to venture into it.

At Prince Sultan University, where Atheer Jassem al-Othman, 18, is a first-year law student, a pair of second-year students recently spent a mid-morning break between classes showing off photographs of themselves dressed as boys.

In the pictures, the girls wore thobes, the ankle-length white garments traditionally worn by Saudi men, and had covered their hair with the male headdresses called shmaghs. One of the girls had used an eyeliner pencil to give herself a grayish, stubble-like mist along her jaw line. Displayed on the screens of the two girls’ cellphones, the photographs evoked little exclamations of congratulation as they were passed around.

Could it be that sex is the chink in the armor of the fundamentalist faith of the Saudis? Although the girls in the article make lip service to the importance of the religious police, they are clearly spending a lot of time and psychic energy trying to be like normal hormonal teenagers.

In the academy, the study of “happiness” has been going on at least since Maslow’s “Hierchy of Needs” (below). One of the conclusions is that “a sense of meaning and purpose is the single attitude most strongly associated with life satisfaction.”

 But the academy is afraid of another research finding which is that people of “spirituality” ( what Tillich and his followers defined as “a search for meaning, for unity, for connectedness, for transcendance, for the highest of human potential”) have a higher degree of “life satisfaction” then pure materialists. Materialists believe the masters of the Universe can control events–can make self-filling prophecies. They believe we are all little libertarian, self-centered, welfare seeking biologies.

Then comes a week like this week, when we realize we are not really Masters of the Universe.

Turns out the Ron Paul Revolution is getting ready for a revival.

Under radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.

That should be fun to watch. A platform fight about the Iraq War would be a good place to start.

Because I admire the Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix, V For Vendetta) I went to see Speed Racer. In case you are curious, let me save you $10. It is one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t even get points for its video game, comic book style. Its just toweringly dumb.

Perhaps this is proof that the audience isn’t as childish as the Warner Bros. executives who greenlighted this turkey. It did only $20 million for the weekend and cost $130 million.

Update: Turns out Warners original estimates for the weekend were way high. From Variety.

On Sunday, Warners estimated a weekend take of $20.2 million, while Fox estimated an opening haul of $20 million. Fox, as well as other studios, said Warners was being too aggressive in its estimate.

Actual numbers released on Monday showed a gross of $18.6 for “Speed Racer,” while “Vegas” grossed $20.2 million, according to Rentrak.

The Snarky but fun site of the day.

The contrast between the two fall strategies as outlined to the New York Times by McCain and Obama strategists point up the weakness of the Republican line. Here is the McCain line.

Republicans will seek to portray Mr. Obama as out of touch with many voters on issues like abortion and gay rights. Some of Mr. McCain’s advisers said they also thought that Mr. Obama had displayed a number of vulnerabilities as a candidate that they would seek to exploit: they argued that he was prone to becoming irritated when tired or pressed on tough questions, that he had trouble connecting with voters in smaller settings and that he had run a campaign light on substance.

That they want to fight this election on gays and abortion is completely disconnected from the reality of 2008 America and a pretty weak line. By contrast, here is the Obama strategy.

In the eyes of the Obama campaign, Mr. McCain’s chief weaknesses include continuing to embrace the Iraq war, his support for extending the administration’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (he once opposed the idea) and his suggestion that the economy had made “great progress” in the last eight years.

Mr. Obama has said he has no intention of making age — Mr. McCain is 25 years older — an overt issue in the general election campaign. Yet in recent weeks, the Obama campaign has made a point of showing their candidate in settings, on the basketball court, as well as surrounded by his young family, that could be seen as telegraphing the message without explicitly raising the issue.

If I was a betting man, I would go for the “oppose Iraq War & tax cuts for the rich and by the way this guy is so old and out of touch he thinks we’ve made great economic progress in the last 8 years” strategy.

UPDATE:Cokie Roberts, who is acting like a first class “convential wisdom” spouting pundit just made the extraordinary prediction that McCain could win a huge proportion of the Hispanic vote in November.  What planet is she on?

For Bill Miller to be subjecting himself to a front page, Business Section, New York Times piece was astounding. Miller runs the $12 billion Legg Mason Value Trust. Three of his largest holdings are (were) Countrywide, Bear Stearns and Yahoo!

Ouch! Why doesn’t this guy let someone else pick the stocks?

Miller defends his “take big bets” strategy as opposed to a more “spread the risk” indexing approach.

“I have never found it a useful policy because what it guarantees is that you will be in the worst sectors of the market as a matter of policy,” he said. “That is why so many managers are justly criticized as closet indexers because they don’t get too far away from the index because they are afraid to be wrong. My view is that being wrong is part of the business. You need to focus on making the best investments you can, instead of trying to smooth things out.”

Its one thing to bet big, but betting big on housing, debt creation and the also ran search provider is mindboggling.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Burma and Zimbabwe. Here you have two of the most oppressive, self-aggrandizing governments in the world and neither the U.S. not the United Nations appears to be able to do anything to really change the situation. The problems of rogue governments seems to resist even the most multilateral sorts of intervention. The resistance is a mixture of regional pride mixed with fear of U.S. meddling. Once America had a reputation for multilateral cooperation, but that perished with the promulgation of the Bush Doctrine of unilateral intervention. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s thugs control the streets while South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki resists U.S. pressure based on the principal of regional sovereignty. In Burma, The Generals refuse to let western aid workers into the country, again on the principal of regional sovereignty.

Perhaps it is time for a new era of regional alliances in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Mid East and the Americas to deal with Kleptocracies? What if we went to China, Japan, Singapore and Korea and said “we’re willing to provide you with aid for Burma, but only with your willingness to deal with a rogue regime at the regional level?” We could say the same to the South Africans. “Mugabe is your problem. Here is some assistance. Deal with it.”

From my friend Bob Estrin, Monty Python’s prescient fable for our contemporary political combat.

I’ve tangled with some bullies in my life, but Harvey Weinstein is surely at the top of my list. When I sold the film Shineto one of his rivals, he hunted me down at dinner in Sundance and put me up against the wall. He doesn’t like to be on the losing team and his long time relationship with the Clintons has him staring defeat in the face. So what does he do? He threatens Nancy Pelosi to cut off the money to the DCCC unless she personally embraces his plan to privately finance a new primary for Florida and Michigan.

Since Harvey and Bill Clinton’s other patron (who are they, Bill?) are going to finance this little oligopolistic fiasco, I assume they will also be in charge of counting the votes. General Pinochet would be proud.