As a New York Giants fan, I'll always harbor a soft spot for Bill Parcells.

However, after Parcells receives the Michael Lewis treatment in this long story for the NYT's new venture, Play Magazine, I feel mostly sadness and disgust for this man:

Right now he is living alone in what amounts to a hotel room in Irving, Tex., whose sole virtue is that it is a 10-minute drive to both the Cowboys’ practice facility and Texas Stadium. It’s just him and whatever it is that keeps him in the game. For the longest time he pretended that he didn’t need it. He walked out of two jobs without having another in hand, and he has played hard-to-get with N.F.L. owners more times than any coach in N.F.L. history. After he quit the Jets, in 1999, he said at a press conference: “I’ve coached my last football game. You can write that on your little chalkboard. This is it. It’s over.” Now, even as his job appears to be making him sick, he has abandoned the pose. “As you get older,” he says, pointing to a screen, where the play is frozen, “your needs diminish. They don’t increase. They diminish. I need less money. I need less sex. But this — this doesn’t change.”

What this is, he can’t — or won’t — specify. But when your life has been defined by the pressure of competition and your response to it, there’s a feeling you get, and it’s hard to shake. You wake up each morning knowing the next game is all that matters. If you fail in it, nothing you’ve done with your life counts. By your very nature you always have to start all over again, fresh. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but it’s nonetheless addictive. Even if you have millions in the bank and everyone around you tells you that you’re a success, you seek out that uncomfortable place.... “It’s a cloistered, narrow existence that I’m not proud of,” says Parcells. “I don’t know what’s going on in the world. And I don’t have time to find out. All I think about is football and winning. But hey — ” He sweeps his hand over his desk and points to the office that scarcely registers his presence. “Who’s got it better than me?”

Right now he is living alone in what amounts to a hotel room, whose sole virtue is that it houses the ultimate blogging computer. It’s just him and whatever it is that keeps him in the blogging game. For the longest time he pretended that he didn’t need it. He walked out of two group blogs without having another in hand, and he has played hard-to-get with Rupert Murdoch more times than any blogger in history. After he quit Open University, he said at a press conference: “I’ve written my last blog post. You can write that on your little chalkboard. This is it. It’s over.” Now, even as his job appears to be making him sick, he has abandoned the pose. “As you get older,” he says, pointing to a screen, where the text is frozen, “your needs diminish. They don’t increase. They diminish. I need less money. I need less sex. But this — this doesn’t change.”

Ever since Bush and Cheney went to the Vietnam analogy well in talking about Iraq, it strikes me that the political ground has shifted.

In the past week alone, the White House has jettisoned the "stay the course" rhetoric, Bush has said in a press conference that he's dissatisfied with the current situation, and military commanders on the ground have painted an even bleaker picture.

From a policy perspective, it's good to see that the president is starting to think about other alternatives to simply staying the course. From a political perspective, however, my hunch is that this shift in rhetoric will be a disaster.

Why? For the past five years, Democrats have been vulnerable on national security issues. Bush and the Republicans projected a clear image of taking the war to the enemy, and never yielding in their drive to defeat radical Islamists. The Democrats, in contrast, projected either an antiwar position or a "yes, but" position. The former looked out of step with the American people, the latter looked like Republican lite. No matter how you sliced it, the Republicans held the upper hand.

The recent rhetorical shift on Iraq, however, has flipped this phenomenon on its head. If Bush acknowledges that "stay the course" is no longer a statisfying status quo, he's acknowledging that the Republican position for the past few years has not worked out too well. If that's the case, then Republicans are forced to offer alternatives with benchmarks or timetables or whatever. The administration has had these plans before, but politically, it looks like the GOP is gravitating towards the Democratic position rather than vice versa.

If this is what the political optics look like, then the Republicans will find themselves in the awkward position of being labeled as "Democrat lite" in their positions on Iraq. And in elections, lite never tastes as good as the real thing.

If these midterms really function as a referendum on U.S. foreign policy, then the GOP is in big trouble.

Of course, my political prognostications should be taken for what they are worth -- which is very little.

Earlier this year I blogged about whether twentysomething were genuinely facing tougher economic times than their predecessors -- or whether they were just whiners (click here for the latest example).

There's been a few reports issued this month that touch on this issue... and the evidence ranges from mixed to favorable.

This report on asset accumulation and savings among young Americans by Christopher Thornberg and Jon Haveman suggest a worrisome trend -- Generation Y doesn't save as much as prior generations:

In 1985, about 65 percent of Americans aged 25 to 34 owned some form of savings instrument... including traditional savings, money market accounts, certificates of deposit, and other financial investments, such as stocks and bonds, Keogh, IRA, and 401(k) accounts. Between 1985 and 2000, the proportion of this population that owned one or another of these savings instruments fell from 65 percent to 59 percent, a decline of just under 6 percentage points. Between 2000 and 2004, the decline accelerated, when it fell another 4 percentage points, a pace two and a half times faster than in the previous 15 years.

This is consistent with a declining emphasis on savings within this group.... Table 2 indicates a decline in the use of regular interest-bearing savings accounts. At the same time the proportion of the population invested in stocks and bonds increased from 13.6 percent in 1985 to 14.7 in 2000, but dropped to just 12.8 percent in 2004. Those owning non-pension retirement accounts stayed roughly constant at just over 25 percent.

It is plausible that young Americans were more inclined to invest in the stock market between 1985 and 2000 because of the large returns that were available. However, this same logic would suggest a return to the safety provided by savings accounts in the early part of this decade, when the returns were not as good. Quite the opposite happened; the movement away from savings accounts continued.

An alternative explanation is a shift to other forms of asset accumulation, such as home ownership, real estate, or private business. Between 1985 and 2004, the rate of home ownership among these individuals increased from 37 percent to 39 percent, but ownership rates of other real estate and private businesses declined substantially.

Therefore, the explanation most consistent with observed declines in ownership of savings instruments is an overall reduced emphasis on saving....

The mean net worth for individuals between the ages of 25 and 34 increased by 4 percent between 1985 and 2004, much more slowly than income levels for this group. This is the exact opposite situation for the U.S. economy which has seen assets grow at a faster rate than income.

Contributing to the decline in median net worth are changes in demographic patterns among these young individuals. In particular, there are significant changes in three categories that are highly correlated with median net worth. Between 1985 and 2004, the proportion of the population aged 25-34 that was married declined by 8 percentage points, the proportion of whites declined by 17 percentage points, and the proportion with education beyond high school increased by 13 percentage points (Table 4). The decline in marriage rates and the increasing share of the population made up of people of color have contributed to the declines in net worth while increasing levels of education offset these declines. Taken together, these demographic shifts are responsible for just over one-quarter of the change in median net worth among young Americans.

Ngina Chiteji in her chapter in The Price of Independence takes a careful look at debt in young adulthood, finding that, contrary to popular perception, most of today’s young adults are not carrying an unusual or excessive amount of debt, at least not by historical standards or given their time in life, just starting out. The fraction of indebted young adult households age 25 to 34 has barely changed in 40 years, and while, in general, young households carry more debt than the population at large, this is consistent with the predictions of economic theory and most young adults appear to have manageable debt loads....

Because viewing debt levels or borrowing behavior in isolation may provide an inaccurate picture of the extent of the problem, Chiteji also asks not whether debt per se is a problem but whether there are young adults whose overall financial position is weak. About 17.5% of young adults could not meet three months’ worth of their existing debt repayment obligations with their current savings (if financial assets are used to gauge a household's savings). The comparable figure is about 16.5% if using net worth to measure household savings. Approximately 8.5% of young adults have no financial assets. Moreover, this group with no savings (or zero or negative net worth) owes almost $24,800 (on average), with an average monthly payment of $381. The median values are a bit lower—$14,650 and $300, respectively. However, these levels could still be considered troublesome given that these are households with no savings to cushion them should they lose a job or other sources of income.

As a whole, are young adults in trouble? On average, young adults use only 19% of their monthly income to service their debt. Typically, only households that need 40% or more of their monthly income to pay debts are considered to have burdensome debt levels (and to be experiencing "financial distress"). About 9.3% of young households are in financial distress, slightly lower than the 11% for U.S. households overall. Therefore, as a group, today’s young adults do not appear to have an unusually fragile or problematic financial situation. Young adult households are not remarkably different from other families in the nation. However, the research also finds that there are some young adult households whose financial situations appear troublesome. Policymakers and others certainly might want to direct their attention to these households.

a) More young Americans are buying homes;
b) More young Americans are going to college; and
c) "Young adults do not appear to have an unusually fragile or problematic financial situation."

Question for Gen Y readers -- which report better conforms to you personal experiences and those of your cohort?

In the process of moving to Fletcher, I received the standard allotment of office supplies -- printer paper, binder clips, highlighters.... and a f*&@ing stapler that can't seem to staple more that fifteen f#$%ing pages together without self-destructing!!!!

Sorry. This has been an ongoing problem for me -- I need a stapler that can reliable staple up to 40 pages with a miimum of fuss.

Sophisticated market research suggests that readers of danieldrezner.com work in an office environment, and therefore might be able to help me.

So, please, before I turn into this guy -- what's the best stapler out there?

I received the following in an e-mail today:

Given your vast knowledge of international and domestic politics, I am shocked that you have not blogged on the possible repercussions on future free trade agreements as a result of this election. In this election, in the battleground states (Rhode Island, even Ohio, Montana, Missouri, and Virginia) the Republican incumbent in each state has a very good/ excellent record on free trade, while the Democratic challenger is advocating protectionist policies. Senator DeWine in Ohio is likely to lose in part because of his past support of trade agreements. Unfortunately in these states and in general, free trade has almost no constituency while the anti-trade movement has a large number of volunteers....

At this rate, there are going to be few politicians of any party promoting free trade. Why would Republicans or politicians of any stripe want to support these agreements if they are getting little credit and much condemnation for doing so?

Democrats only need six seats to gain a majority in the Senate, but the election of five new Democrats and one independent in particular would have even greater ramifications. Should seats currently held by free-traders in Ohio, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Missouri go to “fair traders” — and should the sour environment for Republicans prevent them from gaining any seats from Democrats — the bipartisan commitment to free trade in the Senate would almost certainly end, torpedoing the prospects for any significant legislation in President Bush’s final two years and perhaps longer while fundamentally altering the character of the upper chamber.

Here's the thing, though -- it's not clear to me that it matters. Doha is at a standstill, and the FTAA has been in a coma for years. The only promising bilateral trade agreement is with South Korea, but I suspect that it's a dead letter as well -- because there's no chance in hell that the U.S. will accept goods from Kaesŏng. The president's Trade Promotion Authority is expiring in June of next year, and I don't think the president is willing to invest whatever political capital he's got left to have it renewed. Regardless of what happens in the Senate, I can't see Nancy Pelosi agreeing to anything that gives the executive branch more authority in Bush's final two years.

In other words, I'd rather not see the Senate go protectionist -- but a trade-friendly Senate will have only a marginal effect on U.S. trade policy over the next two years.

In the interest of posting some good news about the Middle East, I found this AP story about the diamond trade between Israel and Dubai to be pretty interesting:

As Israelis and Arabs emerge from the war in Lebanon, a booming diamond exchange in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE,) 1,300 miles away, is hard proof that some Arab-Israeli ties have survived despite the region's tensions.

The two-year-old Dubai Diamond Exchange has put the Gulf emirate squarely inside a global business dominated by Jewish traders. And that, inevitably, means trade ties with Israel, another world diamond hub.

"There has been no visible platform for Arab-Jewish cooperation since the 1960s," said Chantal Abboud, Beirut-based representative of Antwerp's diamond industry in the Middle East. "Now, Dubai has created it."

Israeli Diamond Exchange president Avi Paz says diamonds and hospitality flow freely between Israel and Dubai.

"We came there, they came here. There is no problem at all," Paz said in Tel Aviv. "I wish that wherever I go, they'll host me like they hosted me in Dubai."....

The 34-day summer war in Lebanon, between Hezbollah and Israel, dulled sales in Dubai's diamond markets but only temporarily, industry officials say.

"People don't mix conflict with business. The war will not affect the diamond trade in any lasting way," said Abboud.

The relationship was highlighted in March, when controversy arose over Dubai Ports World assuming the management of ports in the United States. At the time the chairman of Israel's merchant fleet told U.S. senators that his ships called often at DP World-owned ports in Dubai and worldwide, and faced no problems.

The Dubai Diamond Exchange, the Arab world's first diamond bourse, seeks to serve the largely untapped but diamond-hungry Gulf market, the world's third largest for diamond jewelry, traders say.

So far, the exchange's tax-free transactions have coaxed more than 250 diamond dealers to become members, including Jewish-Americans, Belgians, Indians -- even Israelis with dual nationality, said Noora Jamsheer, the exchange's chief executive.

"Dubai is quickly growing to become a very important center for diamonds," Ernest Blom, president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, said by phone from Jerusalem.

The good Arab-Jewish vibes extend across the Atlantic. In June, The largely Jewish New York Diamond Dealers Club on Manhattan's 47th Street feted Ahmed bin Sulayem, deputy chairman of the Dubai Diamond Exchange, for his contribution to the industry....

Traders say Dubai has less red tape and is closer to the expanding Chinese, Arab and Russian markets.

It also competes directly with Antwerp, serving as a gateway for India's burgeoning diamond output. For example, Rosy Blue diamonds, a leading Antwerp-based business, is considering moving its headquarters to Dubai, said Pearl Chandrawansa, who heads the company's Dubai operations. (emphasis added)

[I thought this was a good news post!!--ed. Sorry,I failed to stay the course.]

It would seem that Russian President Vladimir Putin's hostility to certain forms of foreign investment extends to.... soccer. RIA Novosti explains:

The Russian president said Wednesday he was concerned over the large number of foreign nationals playing for Russia's soccer clubs.

Vladimir Putin, speaking at his annual televised question-and-answer session, said: "There are too many of them. We need to restrict their number, because when it comes to composing the national team, we do not have enough players."

Russian national soccer has achieved little success in recent years, in spite of reforms. The national team performed poorly at Euro-2004 in Portugal, and failed to qualify for this summer's World Cup in Germany.

Earlier the President of the Russian Football Union, Vitaly Mutko, said that the clubs in the Russian Premier League would not be allowed more than five foreign players by 2010, compared to the current limit of eight per club.

Mutko also said that as of next year, clubs will have to pay $30,000 to the union for each foreign player....

Soccer is not the only sport in Russia that has a large number of foreign players. Vyacheslav Fetisov, the head of the Russian Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sport, highlighted the problem in December last year, saying that foreign nationals playing for Russian teams take $250 million in salary and compensation out of the country annually.

He said the excessive number of foreigners in Russian teams is hindering the development of sports in the country, and that the issue should be primarily addressed to regions and teams that pay large sums to foreign players, rather than financing their sports infrastructures.

As a general principle, however, this kind of policy strikes me as absurd. Imagine, for a second, imposing caps on the number of Dominican baseball players allowed into Major League Baseball, for example. The best way to have quality American ballplayers is to have them face the toughest competition imaginable. UPDATE: here's a report to back up this assertion.

Question to readers: is there an infant industry logic to protectionism in sports?

The only funny section of an otherwise forgettable move called The Hebrew Hammer comes when the protagonist has his big seduction scene with his moll, Esther. From the screenplay:

ESTHER: Mordechai?

HAMMER: Yes Esther.

ESTHER: I want you to talk dirty to me.

HAMMER: Oh. Okay. (He thinks for a moment.) I want to have lots of children by you. Get a good paying, stable job. Settle down in Long Island somewhere. Someplace nice. Fancy. But not fancy schmancy.

ESTHER: Oohhh....

HAMMER: I want for our children to go to private schools and take music lessons. Little
Abraham will go to Stanford for college, Batya will go Ivy League, maybe Vassar.

ESTHER: Keep going.

HAMMER: Afterwards they'll make the decision as to whether or not they'd like to continue their religious studies in Israel. Because, hey, after all we'll have practiced the highly effective assertive democratic style of child rearing, sprinkled with a healthy dose of liberalism.

ESTHER: Oh god, yes! Keep going! Don't stop!

It's mildly amusing that strong voucher opponents argue against the notion of choice in schools, because truthfully the middle class and wealthy already have that choice. They choose their schools every time they decide which community to live in. The more money you have, the more choice you have. The wealthiest can even choose to send their child to a private school.

I see that Harrison Ford says he's fit enough to play Indiana Jones in a fourth movie.

This leads to an interesting question... where shall we find the mature Dr. Jones? As Andy Bryan discovers in McSweeney's, Indy's antics don't play so well with the straightlaced academic crown of archaeologists:

January 22, 1939

Assistant Professor Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr.
Department of Anthropology
Chapman Hall 227B
Marshall College

Dr. Jones:

As chairman of the Committee on Promotion and Tenure, I regret to inform you that your recent application for tenure has been denied by a vote of 6 to 1. Following past policies and procedures, proceedings from the committee's deliberations that were pertinent to our decision have been summarized below according to the assessment criteria....

To summarize, the committee fails to recognize any indication that Dr. Jones is even remotely proficient when it comes to archaeological scholarship and practice. His aptitude as an instructor is questionable at best, his conduct while abroad is positively deplorable, and his behavior on campus is minimally better. Marshall College has a reputation to uphold. I need not say more.

My apologies,

Prof. G.L. Stevens
Chairman

The chief United Nations envoy for Sudan has been kicked out of the country because of what he's said on his blog. Warren Hoge explains in the New York Times:

Sudan’s government ordered the chief United Nations envoy out of the country today, saying he was an enemy of the country and its armed forces.

Secretary General Kofi Annan said that he was reviewing the letter from the Khartoum government and had requested the envoy, Jan Pronk, to return to New York for “consultations.”

The Sudanese order said he had to leave by Wednesday. United Nations officials confirmed he would depart before then.

Mr. Pronk, a blunt-spoken former Dutch cabinet minister, has been outspoken in reporting on the killings, rapes and other atrocities in Darfur, the region in the western part of Sudan where 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes.

He has become increasingly pointed in his comments because of the rise in violence across the area despite a May peace accord between the Sudanese government and a major rebel group, and because of the government’s refusal to grant permission for a new United Nations force to take over peacekeeping in the country from the overstretched African Union.

Mr. Pronk is known as a forceful presence at the United Nations from his frequent appearances before the Security Council, where he characteristically delivers unflinching accounts of the continuing mayhem and political breakdowns in Sudan in a rhetorical style that includes finger-jabbing and dramatic pauses for emphasis.

Sudan’s action against him was apparently provoked by an entry he made in his personal blog — www.janpronk.nl — last weekend that said Sudan’s armed forces had suffered two major defeats with extensive casualties against rebels in Darfur in the past six weeks. He also reported that generals had been cashiered, that morale had sunk and that the government had collaborated with the feared Janjaweed Arab militias, which are held responsible for pillaging villages and killing and raping their residents.

The Sudanese armed forces on Thursday cited the blog entry in calling Mr. Pronk a threat to national security and asking that he be expelled.

The fact that one of its top officials has put sensitive findings in a personal blog has embarrassed the United Nations and put its officials in an awkward position. When the matter arose Friday, United Nations officials resisted rebuking Mr. Pronk for the practice for fear that it would appear to be a vote of no confidence in the mission, rather than just in his professional lapse.

Questioned repeatedly on Friday over whether the United Nations stood by the statements in Mr. Pronk’s blog, Stéphane Dujarric, Mr. Annan’s spokesman, said, “Those views are expressed by Pronk, are his personal views.”

Mr. Dujarric indicated that this was not the first time a problem with Mr. Pronk’s blog had come up. “There have been a number of discussions with Mr. Pronk regarding his blog and the expectation of all staff members to exercise proper judgment in what they write in their blogs,” he said.

[The Sudanese Armed Forces] has lost two major battles, last month in Umm Sidir and this week in Karakaya. The losses seem to have been very high. Reports speak about hundreds of casualties in each of the two battles with many wounded and many taken as prisoner. The morale in the Government army in North Darfur has gone down. Some generals have been sacked; soldiers have refused to fight. The Government has responded by directing more troops and equipment from elsewhere to the region and by mobilizing Arab militia. This is a dangerous development. Security Council Resolutions which forbid armed mobilization are being violated. The use of militia with ties with the Janjaweed recalls the events in 2003 and 2004. During that period of the conflict systematic militia attacks, supported or at least allowed by the SAF, led to atrocious crimes.

On the one hand, it seems morally repugnant to blame Pronk for writing a blog that exposes Sudanese duplicity and moral depravity. Later in his story, Hoge observes, "commenting on the international campaign that has arisen to try to end the violence in Darfur, [Sudan’s president Omar Hassan al-Bashir] said, 'Those who made the publicity, who mobilized the people, invariably are Jewish organizations.'" And as the Independent points out: "Observers says Pronk's direct style may have been a contributing factor in naming him the UN envoy to Sudan. He is often credited with keeping the crisis there high on the international agenda." It certainly seems like diplomats are shooting their mouths off with increasing regularity these days.

And yet, I'm pretty sure that one of the primary jobs of a diplomat is not to needlessly piss off an actor who has a seat at the negotiation table. By blogging about such a sensitive matter, Pronk gift-wrapped the Sudanese an excuse to expel him and delay dealing with the United Nations Security Council. How does this help anyone in Darfur?

This is not an issue to which I've paid a great deal of attention, so I'm issuing a bleg: for those who have been keeping tabs on Darfur, was Plonk's blog post a necessary or counterproductive action?

There are certain jobs that would not seem to agree with blogging at all, and being a diplomat might be one of them.

I have to assume that Reuters reporter Claire Sibonney has sacrificed her first-born child to the hounds of hell, because the following is the kind of quote that would cause most reporters to agree to human sacrifice in order to obtain:

"It's not sexy sex sex, where we're talking about whips and chains, but we will talk about whips and chains," said graduating student Robbie Morgan, 33, who left her job teaching sex education in Chicago to attend the [University of Toronto's] Sexual Diversity Studies program, one of the largest of its kind in North America.

"We'll talk about whips and chains in a political, social, cultural, religious context of sexuality and how that sexuality affects those institutions."