Giopolitics

A dusting of snow and some freezing rain equals front page news...

Update: 2 to 4 inches of snow! Look out!

Mike Huckabee continues to showcase his mean streak on the campaign trail. The target, this time, is Mitt Romney. Unfortunately, Huckabee used a toddler to try to score political points. I will be happy when he goes away.

Confronted by crying toddler on Tuesday, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee quipped the child must be for his rival Mitt Romney.

"He's not the happiest boy today," Huckabee said, smiling for a picture with the boy and his brother and sister. "I think he must be a Romney voter. Look at him. He's so sad."

I would have had some words for Minister Huckabee had he said that to my child.

File Under: Poetic Justice.

Mike Nifong has filed for bankruptcy. Next, hopefully, comes jail.

Jonathan Cohen reports on the McCain and Romney campaigns in Michigan. Cohen focuses extensively on the theme of economic uncertainty and explains why he think the state might go for Romney. I am not a big fan of either candidate, but Cohen's article is worth a read.

The Triangle Business Journal has a story on the proposed development on 751 across the street from Chancellor's Ridge. According to an email I received from a member of the development team this afternoon, the developers filed their plan with the city today.

The article notes:

A pair of one-time partners in Raleigh's Boylan Cos. are teaming up with entrepreneur Neal Hunter to bring a big mixed-use development to southern Durham.

The 164-acre project, thus far unnamed, would be off N.C. 751 between Stagecoach Road and the Chatham County line. It would feature between 1,200 and 1,300 residences and at least 500,000 square feet of commercial space, says Alex Mitchell, a former Boylan Cos. partner developing the site with Boylan President Tyler Morris.

The project, costing more than $50 million, would have civic buildings including a YMCA, an elementary school and a fire station. Mitchell and Morris are in talks to donate the land for the projects.

"It's a real kind of grade-A product, and I think it's going to be a top-notch deal for Durham," Mitchell says.

Hunter, a Durham businessman who co-founded lighting company Cree and is now CEO of LED Lighting Fixtures, sold the land for the project to Morris and Mitchell, his cousin.

Both Hunter and Mitchell declined to discuss the price of the transaction, but both said the deal was done at market value - about $100,000 per acre in southern Durham, Mitchell said, making the cost somewhere in the range of $15 million to $20 million.

Hunter is a minority, passive partner in Southern Durham Development Inc., the company Morris and Mitchell set up to develop the land. The site is about a mile from Colvard Farms, a 600-acre residential project Hunter developed.

and

Hunter, who owns another 86 acres of land nearby that he says he has no current plans to develop...

So, the person who sold the land and still has a huge financial stake in the development going ahead also owns another large parcel of land down the road, yet has no plans to develop it? It appears reasonable to assume that if this development goes through that it will only be the first shoe dropped by this group.

Critical realignments happen infrequently, but this does not stop Paul Starr from trying examining the road map to a progressive realignment in American politics. I do not believe a critical realignment will occur regardless of who wins the presidency. In fact, I predict the next administration will find itself in much the same environment as the last one (country split roughly 45-45, insignificant margins for the majority in Congress to accomplish much, and angry wings of the base on both the liberal and conservative sides of the aisle).

Judith Miller, formerly of the New York Times, explores the politics and future of the United Arab Emirates in an article in the winter edition of City Journal.

Writing in the National Interest, Ted Galen Carpenter examines the latest episode of North Korean non-compliance with its nonproliferation obligations. In analyzing the situation, Carpenter notes:

It is possible that the North Koreans are merely engaging in bargaining tactics to obtain larger quantities of energy and financial aid than have already been promised, and if they gain further concessions, they will eventually make a full disclosure. But American and east Asian leaders also need to consider another possibility — that Pyongyang is merely stalling while it continues to build nuclear weapons from the plutonium it has already extracted from the Yongbyon reactor. For all of its promises to the contrary, North Korea may be determined to crash the global nuclear weapons party.

Carpenter misses the forest for the trees in this analysis. Simply, there is no benefit for North Korea to come in from the cold and give up its mantle as a rogue state. Such an action would lead to the demise of the regime. On the other end of the spectrum is all out confrontation with the US, which would also result in the destruction of the regime. The North Koreans have chosen a middle path that avoids the extremes and seeks to maximize the chances of regime survival. As such, North Korea has oscillated between conflict and cooperation, stick and carrot, and breaking then keeping promises. It is not clear to me what will end this pattern as North Korea benefits from keeping enough attention on it to bring in cash, aid, and prestige while at the same time remaining shy of all-out war.

The interesting question, to me at least, is whether the Bush administration fully realized this or whether they believed that North Korea could be permanently brought to heel with tough talk and tough actions or whether they simply sought to manage a bad situation as best as possible during their time in office.