STUART EIZENSTAT IS SIXTY-NINE

STUART E. EIZENSTAT

b. January 15, 1943

STUART EIZENSTAT

AS CHIEF DOMESTIC POLICY ADVISER

TO PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER

Published in BUSINESS WEEK, August 25, 1980 (p. 29)

A lawyer by training, Eizenstat went on to be Ambassador to the European Union and then hold various trade and economic posts under President Bill Clinton, culminating as Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs and then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury (details here). He is currently partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling (details here).

TAIWAN HOLDS AN ELECTION; WANG DAN IS IN THE NEWS

MA YING-JEOU

RE-ELECTED

PRESIDENT OF TAIWAN

WANG DAN AT HARVARD

A.M., 2001, Ph.D, 2008

STUDENT LEADER IN BEIJING IN 1989

("TIANANMEN," "JUNE 4")

SEVEN YEARS IN CHINESE JAILS

NOW TEACHING AT

NATIONAL TSING HUA UNIVERSITY

HSINCHU, TAIWAN

As a sidebar on the Taiwan elections held today, the Washington Post ran a piece by Andrew Higgins featuring a lecture by Wang Dan on "why China, too, needs elections." What made this deemed newsworthy was apparently the presence in the audience of students from the mainland, some of whom "rushed to pose for a souvenir photograph with the man reviled by Beijing as a 'counter-revolutionary' agitator."

In the end, Beijing's preferred candidate in the Taiwanese presidential race, the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou, won handily enough, though with a smaller margin than last time. The details and some of the context can be found here.

The L.A. Times article quotes a People's Daily editorial which says, seemingly without any sense of irony, "Ma Ying-jeou's victory was the choice made by Taiwan's people."

RHP (RANK HATH PRIVILEGE): THE CHINESE RULING ELITE & THEIR CARS

THE ELITE FLEET

CARS AWAITING THEIR OFFICIALS

IN THE INTERIOR COURTYARD OF

THE GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE

DURING THE 17th CONGRESS OF

THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

BEIJING, OCTOBER 2007

The Audi A6 is identified as the "semiofficial car of the Chinese Communist Party" by Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times this week (here). Above is a flock of Audis waiting for delegates to the 17th Congress of the CC to be disgorged from the Great Hall of the People in October 2007. Cars for the privileged in the People's Republic of China are not new, and popular anger against the abuses of this system has been noted before, for example, in a 2006 Edward Cody piece in the Washington Post (here). What is perhaps new is the posting of cellphone photographs of offending vehicles online, reported by Demick.

An earlier example of this well-worked-out system of RHP (Rank Hath Privilege) can be seen here, in a photograph taken three decades ago in Nanjing.

ONE LEG AT A TIME: KOIZUMI II, NAZARBAYEV II, & PUTIN & BUSH TOO MANY TIMES TO COUNT

GET READY

SET

FIND YOUR MARK

JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI

KAZAKHSTAN PRESIDENT NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN &

AMERICAN PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (L-R)

find their marks for the Expanded Family Photograph

at the St. Petersburg, Russia, G-8 Summit (July 2006)

Only Nazarbayev is still in the same office, although Putin is running to reclaim his old post in fifty-five days' time (March 4, 2012). Another Koizumi is here (yesterday's post); another Nazarbayev here. For a sampling of the many Putin and Bush posts, see here and here (for more, please see the labels below). For one of the two of them, "Alone Together," see here.

KOIZUMI HITS SEVENTY

JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI

b. January 8, 1941

JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER

JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI

PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE G-8

SUMMIT IN ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

July 2006

Shortly before Koizumi resigned as the third-longest-serving

postwar Prime Minister (five years, five months, 2001-2006)

Since then there have been six new prime ministers in five years. Some details and discussion of why this is and whether it is bad for Japan or not, can be found here.

MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL: WHICH REPUBLICAN IS MOST CONSERVATIVE OF ALL?

PROMISES,

PROMISES

DUELING TVs #8

ABC Report on the GOP &

Religious Conservatives +

PBS on Andy Warhol

ON THE EVE OF THE FIRST

REPUBLICAN PRIMARY OF 2012

WHO IS THE MOST CONSERVATIVE OF ALL?

AND DO THE REST OF US WANT TO HEAR IT?

OR HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT?

HAPPY ONE-HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY TO THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO (USA!)

NEW MEXICO

IS ADMITTED AS

THE 47TH STATE

OF THE U.S.A.

January 6, 1912

SAN FRANCISCO DE ASIS

MISSION CHURCH

RANCHOS DE TAOS, NEW MEXICO

More NEW MEXICO here and here and here

THOMAS P. ("TIP") O'NEILL, Jr., d. January 5, 1994

THOMAS P. O'NEILL, JR.

December 9, 1912-January 5, 1994

Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives

1977-1987

"TIP" RETIRES FROM

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

MARTIN TOLCHIN WRITES

ABOUT THE

SPEAKER IN RETIREMENT

"EX-SPEAKER O'NEILL:

A SALTY PAR FOR THE COURSE"

THE NEW YORK TIMES

August 28, 1987

For more Tip, see the labels below, and here

SOMETIMES A HAT IS JUST A HAT -- OR NOT: GEORGE STAVRINOS

GEORGE STAVRINOS-

DESIGNED

DECOUPAGE PIN

("PIKE'S PEAK")

PHOTOGRAPHED FOR WOMEN'S WEAR DAILY

PUBLISHED MARCH 31, 1972 (p. 28)

George Stavrinos (1948-1990) is here identified as a "Boston boutique designer." Nineteen-seventy-two seems to have been early days for him; his career as an illustrator obviously took off afterwards. His New York Times obituary is here; the citation for his induction into the Hall of Fame is here.

Meanwhile, however, for this piece in WWD, Stavrinos talked about finding "a new place for the decoupage pins he makes out of old postcards -- jammed into hatbands. 'I can see Clark Gable wearing the look, sitting at his typewriter in the city room with Roz Russell hanging over him.'"

HAPPY NEW YEAR! & WAR & PEACE AGAIN

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

"WAR & PEACE"

SARAH CALDWELL'S STAGING OF

SERGEI PROKOFIEV'S OPERA

FROM LEO TOLSTOY'S NOVEL

Here's hoping for more peace and less war in 2012, two hundred years after both Wars of 1812 -- the European one which is the subject of Tolstoy's "WAR & PEACE" and the American (or Euro-American) one --