Stalker tools

ZabaSearch is a new (to me at least), free stalker tool to find anyone.

I used to use Switchboard, but ZabaSearch is much more comprehensive.

HT: AlarmingNews.

Chinese taking over

IPFreely sends a note about this WSJ article (subscription required) on China's Cnooc Ltd.'s bid for Unocal, and rival bidder Chevron's lobbying to stop it.

The battle for Unocal Corp. is shifting to Capitol Hill, where Chevron Corp. is working to derail a rival bid for the energy company by China's Cnooc Ltd.

Chevron, which saw its $16.59 billion cash-and-stock bid for Unocal topped byan $18.5 billion cash offer from the Chinese state-owned company last week, has played a direct role in drafting and circulating letters from members of Congress asking the Bush administration to examine and potentially block the Cnooc bid, according to several people familiar with Chevron's activities in Washington.

In a sign of congressional concern, House Republican leaders are planning tobring to the floor today a resolution urging the administration to give the Cnooc bid close scrutiny. In addition, the House may vote as early as today on a budget amendment that seeks to bar the Treasury Department from taking any action approving Unocal's sale to Cnooc.

Chevron's strategy seems to be: Make Cnooc's bid appear destined for a rigorous and lengthy regulatory review. That, in turn, could make Chevron's fast-track bid preferable to Unocal shareholders, even though Chevron is offering less money.

"Why not focus shareholders on the fact that there is a lot of uncertainty about Cnooc's ability to close? If I'm Chevron, that is the cheapest and mostexpeditious way to go," said Claire Farley, chief executive of Randall & Dewey,an energy-advisory firm that is part of investment bank Jefferies Group Inc.

While Cnooc has marshaled its own team, including the law firm Akin Gump and the communications firm Public Strategies Inc., the unfolding fight underscores Chevron's advantages in the nation's capital. The San Ramon, Calif., company has deep political roots and an established reputation. Its board is salted with political heavyweights: Carla Hills, the U.S. trade representative during the first Bush presidency, who retains close ties to the current White House; and former Sen. Sam Nunn, a moderate Georgia Democrat respected in both parties on national-security issues.

Moreover, Chevron has been able to tap into a rising protectionist stance in Washington amid heightened concern over China's rise as an economic power. To help spread its message, Chevron is deploying former government insiders like Wayne Berman of the Federalist Group, a Commerce Department official during the first Bush administration and a big fund-raiser for the current President Bush. Another Federalist Group staffer, Drew Maloney, a former top aide to Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, also is pressing Chevron's case on Capitol Hill.

The Chevron lobbyists plot strategy daily on an 8:30 a.m. conference call led by Lisa Barry, the company's general manager for government affairs, according to a person with knowledge of the process. Ms. Barry previously held senior positions at Time Warner Inc. and the Commerce Department. Donald Campbell, a spokesman for Chevron, said, "We do
not comment on meetings or discussions we have in Washington."

Lost in all the rhetoric beginning to pour out of Washington is that a Cnooc acquisition of Unocal, based in El Segundo, Calif., would be unlikely to have much of an effect on global energy markets. Unocal's best assets -- oil and natural gas fields in Asia -- represent a very small percentage of global production and much of the energy produced from these fields would likely be
bought by the Chinese regardless of which company owns them.

I guess it's natural for Chevron to use any available tactics to win the bidding war, but I'm not that concerned about Chinese ownership of a relatively small oil company.

Transfers of assets are a forseeable result of huge trade imbalances. We are buying billions of dollars worth of goods from the Chinese, and they have to put those dollars somewhere. For the past several years, those dollars have gone largely into U.S. Treasury bonds.

Now the Chinese appear to be getting tired of measly 4% yields on a depreciating U.S. Dollar. Where else to invest? Sickly Europe? The real estate bubble, as the Japanese did to disastrous effect in the 1980's? No, the new target is U.S. equity. China's Lenovo recently bought IBM's PC business. Cnooc is trying to buy Unocal. Expect many more bids for U.S. companies, and expect the phenomenon to be very positive for the U.S. stock market.

Times requests interview with moron, gets something else altogether

I've posted on the foreign media's distorted view of the U.S. and President Bush before. The foreign press has an extreme case of groupthink, and they have all accepted and propagated the image of President Bush as an idiot, cowboy, and warmonger.

Now the Times of London actually interviews Bush, and realizes the monolithic and simplistic foreign view is inaccurate:

In person Mr Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media.

Congratulations to the Times for breaking ranks with the rest of the moronically unanimous Bush-hating European papers. The whole article is worth reading.

HT: PoliPundit.

Iran elects terrorist

According to this AP photo, the new president of Iran is a terrorist involved in taking the American hostages in 1979.

HT: Polipundit.

Eminent domain debacle

The Supreme Court's eminent domain ruling is one of the most unbelievable rulings I have seen. Cities can now take your property whenever they want just because some developer wants to put up a strip mall or a strip joint that will bring the city more tax revenues.

Voting for this idiocy were Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens, Kennedy, and Breyer. It's a bit surprising that all of the liberal advocates of the poor and downtrodden voted for it. Eminent domain assaults the poor far more often than the rich, as their property is economically more attractive, and they lack the legal and financial resources to defend themselves.

This debacle goes to show why President Bush shouldn't be bullied away from putting Constitutionalist judges on the Court. President Reagan nominated Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg to the Court, neither of whom would have allowed this outrage. Neither were confirmed, Ginsburg because he had smoked marijuana and Bork because he understood the Constitution. They were replaced with the appalling David Souter and Anthony "European opinion trumps the Constitution" Kennedy.

I like this proposal for the city to take Souter's house and turn it into a hotel. In fact, if we have a pro-freedom majority on the city council in any of the five justices' home towns, we could actually get this thing moving forward.

UPDATE: Resources to fight eminent domain are at this site, part of the Institute for Justice.

UPDATE 2: Karol at Alarming News points us to this Ken Wheaton discussion of why liberals want to screw the little guy.

UPDATE 3: Some liberals over at the Daily Kos are on the right side of this one.

Back in black

I'm back from an extended absence, and things really went to hell in a bucket while I was gone. Iran elected a hard-core conservative, Iraq is now popularly considered a quagmire, and the Supreme Court outlawed freedom.

The first two are serious but temporary setbacks. But when the Supreme Court starts making very un-Constitutional rulings that become a new pseudo-Constitution, it's more or less permanent. The eminent domain ruling is a massive and permanent blow to private property rights in America.

No posts for you

No (or very few) posts for the next week as I'm traveling.