Seoul

For anyone upset that there was no IMterview on Friday, here is a longer-than-usual excerpt from Hillary's speech yesterday at the Jewish Community Relations Council's annual legislative breakfast at the 92nd Street Y.

Hillary connects the port security issue with the national economy. Then, while not exactly promising to an IMterview in the future, she does sound eager to chat about all this real soon.

"Let me say a word about port security because I think it is emblematic of a larger problem...I don't think any member of congress will tell you we've done all we know we need to do. We've made some hard trade offs. I would argue some of the reasons we've had to make those trade offs is because we've gone from a balanced budget and a surplus to a deficit and an increasing debt. So that every day today we borrow two billion dollars and we borrow it from foreign lenders to pay the interest on our debt. So when we go hat in hand, to Beijing, and Seoul, Tokyo,and Riyadh, and the Caribbean banking centers and other gulf states to borrow money to feed our inability to control our fiscal future, we cede some of our fiscal sovereignty. And we force ourselves into what I consider false choices. The choice is do we do everything we know we need to do on port security, or not."

She went on to say:

"There are those who say we can't do it [prevent foreign governments from operating U.S. ports] because look what happened in the last 20 year. Foreign governments already control our ports, the Signaporean government. You know, we have the Chinese running the Panama Canal. We have other government-controlled entities controlling our ports. Well, just because it's been happening doesn't mean we should let it continue. And this is an area where I believe we should have a good, vigorous public debate."

--Azi Paybarah

The New York Times today has a piece about wealthy immigrants moving to the U.S. to take advantage of our sub-par schools.

Meet the Shins: 40's, married with children, well-off and well-established back home in Seoul. But the problem was the academic grind their kids would face if they stayed.

Mrs. Shin tells Times reporter Paul Vitello a few things you didn't know about Great Neck:

"Here are many Asians. And here my children have more ... more ... chance to live normal." The chance to live normal is a relative value and might mean many different things to different people. But among a growing group of monied Chinese and South Korean newcomers arriving in this community of 40,000 in Nassau County, there is a strong feeling of what it means: the chance to spare their children the grinding competition and unrelieved pressure of scholastic life in their homelands.

- Tom McGeveran

What happens when, on the very same day, New York Social Diary and Page Six run items that interlock in a quite fantastic manner?  read more »

I inherited my dry cleaner.  read more »

Singer and bassist Maggie Kim came to New York five years ago to become famous.  read more »