And now for something completely different—my mother’s childhood poetry

The New Neo Posted on by

Long-time readers here probably remember when I used to write about my elderly mother. And you probably also recall that about two-and-a-half years ago she died. Although I haven’t written much about that event, some day I may.

Shortly after my mother’s death I went through a lot of her possessions, sorting things out and throwing much of it out. It’s not an easy task. But then after that initial spurt of energy I stopped. In particular, I’ve been reluctant to go through the notebook she kept of her poems.

I’d seen that notebook long ago in my childhood, and had already read much of the juvenilia in it. In fact, the whole thing is mostly juvenilia. It’s heavy on poems my mother wrote between the ages of ten and fifteen, when her poetic precocity was much-admired by her family and in her school, and she got a lot of praise from both sources for it. She was always good with words, both spoken and written, and as a child she could churn out boilerplate poetry for holidays and family birthdays, often on demand (a demand she told me she sometimes resented). The notebook goes right on through her college years with a certain amount of more mature poetic verbiage about love gained and lost, and then the whole poetic endeavor abruptly ends when she’s about nineteen years old, never to be resumed.

I don’t know why my mother gave up writing poetry so early in life, but she did. By the time I knew her (I was born when she was in her mid-30s), the only verse she wrote was light song parody to be performed at friend’s parties or fund-raising functions. She was very very good at that, too (I particularly remember one song about shopping at Loehmann’s, to the tune of “Loch Lomond”).

But last night I decided to take up her poetry notebook and do some reading. Amidst the usual odes to snowflakes and flowers, Thanksgiving and grandma’s birthday, was a poem she had written that seemed very very different from the others. I offer it here for your amusement. She wrote this at fourteen, obviously after having gotten a rather hefty dose of Poe’s “The Raven” in the classroom (it’s actually entitled “Written for School,” and the date is 1928). It’s not perfect in its rhyme scheme or meter (and my mother’s name wasn’t “Eleanor”; that was poetic license). But I think for a fourteen-year old it’s awfully fine:

Have you ever had a feeling
That has set your head a’reeling
While so calmly lesson learning
You’d no midnight oil a’burning
On the night before.

Mists before your eyes are lifting
Farther is the classroom drifting
In a daze of joy abounding
Drones of voices never sounding
Thrilled by dreams’ sweet lore.

Suddenly you hear a tapping
Some one who is softly rapping
Tis the boy in back–quite frantic
And the teacher looks gigantic
Towering above the class.

Then you realize you’d been dreaming
Trapped by her ingenious scheming
As you’re thinking—what’s the reason
Nathan Hale committed treason?
This subject you’ll never pass.

Then it comes, that awful feeling,
Horror, clammy cold comes stealing
As you gasp and as you mutter
Swallow, and then madly stutter
She says, “Answer, Eleanor!”

When you’re in this cruel position
To get away is all you’re wishing.
Reader, can you ere forget
That great and most sincere regret:
“I’ll study now and evermore.”

[NOTE: Here’s Poe’s “The Raven.”]

Mr. Boehner requests the honor of Netanyahu’s presence

The New Neo Posted on by

I think the invitation Boehner extended to Netanyahu to address Congress on the issue of Iran was one of the most clever moves Boehner has made.

Which isn’t saying all that much, since Boehner hasn’t made too many clever moves. But still—and although in the end it probably won’t stop Obama from doing what he wants to with Iran—it shows a certain amount of (to coin a phrase) chutzpah on Boehner’s part:

But Boehner told members of the GOP House Conference on Wednesday morning: “The president warned us not to move ahead with sanctions on Iran, a state sponsor of terror. His exact message to us was: ‘Hold your fire.’ He expects us to stand idly by and do nothing while he cuts a bad deal with Iran. Two words: ‘Hell no’.”

And it should come as no surprise whatsoever that Obama does not plan to see Netanyahu on his visit here in February. I doubt Netanyahu will be weeping into his beer at the slight.

The most interesting question is whether the legislation proposed by Republicans, which would impose sanctions on Iran to kick in if Obama’s negotiations fail, will have enough votes to override Obama’s veto.

There’s also this:

Aside from the sanctions bill, a Senate committee was considering a separate bill on Wednesday that would give Congress a vote on any nuclear deal.

The fog of GOP war: the late-term abortion bill

The New Neo Posted on by

What to make of all of this?

I wake up to a huge brouhaha about the report that a bill banning late-term abortion—a bill that’s hugely popular with the American people when polled, and which President Obama swears he’ll veto if passed—has been shelved for the moment over the objections of several female Republican representatives who object to the wording of a rape reporting provision.

In article after article and comment after comment from the right, I read that this is just another awful betrayal by the awful GOP, who are liars and false promisers and who have no cojones and no plan and no this and no that.

Until this morning, I’d never even heard of this bill, although I’ve certainly heard of the problem of late-term abortions and the campaign to ban them. But I wonder whether this latest sequence of events isn’t just another issue on which the right is being played by the media and being whipped up into an angry frenzy over something that is a minor speed bump that will be resolved in short time. I wonder whether this isn’t just a case of legislation being pulled temporarily in order to iron out some controversial language so that more people will get on board.

Now, I’m well aware that this might be wrong. I’m well aware that the GOP often does not keep its promises, and often shows an extreme lack of intestinal fortitude. But I’m also aware that the right carries a huge sack of free-floating rage at the GOP and is ready to activate it at the slightest suggestion of betrayal (although I also understand that there are some very good historical reasons for that).

And it is also clear to me that the only people who benefit from these tendencies on the right are those on the left.

Note the inflammatory word “dropped” in the WaPo headline of the article about it, “Abortion bill dropped amid concerns of female GOP lawmakers.” Note the lede:

House Republican leaders abruptly dropped plans late Wednesday to vote on an anti-abortion bill amid a revolt by female GOP lawmakers concerned…

Abruptly dropped. Makes it sound like it’s curtains for the bill. But if you stick with the article), there’s this:

A senior GOP aide said that concerns had been raised “by men and women Members that still need to be worked out.” The aide, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the plans, said in an e-mail that Thursday’s vote will help “advance the pro-life cause” and that GOP leaders “remain committed to continue working through the process [on the Pain Capable bill] to make sure it too is successful.”

So, what is it? Permanent shelving, or postponement? And if the latter, is it still such a big deal? The disagreement appears to be over a controversial reporting requirement. It appears that, to qualify for a late-term abortion through a rape exception, a woman would have had to have reported the abortion to authorities earlier, a requirement meant to insure that the pregnancy really did result from rape.

But the larger controversy is really this:

A broader cross-section of Republican members also questioned why the House was spending time on legislation that was unlikely to overcome the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, let alone be signed into law by the president.

The divide over the abortion legislation marks a broader disagreement within the Republican Party that has been raging for the last several years. Now that Republicans have an expanded majority, conservatives want to flex their legislative muscles and dare the president to use his veto pen. Meanwhile, moderates want to use the opportunity to tackle less controversial measures.

How about this: do some of each, but stop ripping each other apart?

[NOTE: Renee Ellmers, the main objector to the reporting requirement, explains herself here:

“It’s unfortunate the way it played out,” Ellmers, a Republican from North Carolina, told reporters Thursday morning. “I think we’re all just going through some growing pains.”

Ellmers supports banning abortion past the midway point of pregnancy ”” which is what the bill the House originally planned to pass Thursday would have done. But she wants it tweaked so that women who have been raped don’t have to report it to law enforcement before they can obtain an abortion.

The measure, which leadership still intends to bring for a vote at some point, would ban abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy unless a woman has been raped or her life is in danger…

Ellmers has already voted for the bill before, when the House passed it in June 2013. She dismissed that vote, saying she didn’t realize at the time that it contained the reporting requirement because it “wasn’t evident in the base language of the bill.”]

Obama’s denial

The New Neo Posted on by

Byron York points out that Obama’s SOTU speech featured a lot of denial of reality:

Obama described the world as he wishes it were, not as it actually is. Indeed, in Obama’s State of the Union, things are going so well that it’s hard to imagine why voters would decisively turn control of Congress over to the opposition party ”” not that Obama would acknowledge that, either. Doing so would be a concession that something is still terribly wrong.

But Obama long ago concluded that the best defense is a good offense. He has never had to face the consequences of his failures. He has been able to fool most of the people most of the time, at least when it counted. He has skated past disaster after disaster, and gotten away with lie after lie. The biggest repercussion he’s been met with—the 2014 Democratic defeat in Congress—may not stop him. Republicans are somewhat toothless, in part because they are divided among themselves but also because Obama has veto power that will be difficult to override. He’s also got that phone and that pen, and the will to use them. He has successfully transformed the US into a second-rate power and allies into enemies (or at least, into abandoned and confused ex-allies). And he has turned enemies into, if not allies, then gloating and stronger forces in the world for whatever evil they’ve got in mind.

It’s actually worked out very well for Obama. So why not brag? Who’s going to correct him besides the Republicans and a few pundits in the right-wing press?

Strangely enough, Richard Engel of NBC, that’s who:

Not that it will matter. But I applaud Engel.

[NOTE: Here’s Engel’s bio. Pretty impressive. He actually seems to have knowledge and experience. He’s also very very lucky to be alive; he was kidnapped in Syria in late 2012 and held for five harrowing days.]

[ADDENDUM: Is there anything open and above-board about the people President Obama uses as examples of the wonderfulness of his policies? Not so much:

The woman whose story of economic recovery was showcased by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address is a former Democratic campaign staffer and has been used by Obama for political events in the past.

Rebekah Erler has been presented by the White House as a woman who was discovered by the president after she wrote to him last March about her economic hardships. She was showcased in the speech as proof that middle class Americans are coming forward to say that Obama’s policies are working.

Unmentioned in the White House bio of Erler is that she is a former Democratic campaign operative, working as a field organizer for Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.).

It’s all a Potemkin village, anyway.]

America gets the snarky juvenile president it deserves

The New Neo Posted on by

I was puzzled by this headline: “President Obama’s SOTU ‘sick burn’ lights up Twitter.”

Sick burn? What on earth? From Urban Dictionary [spelling corrected in the following excerpt]:

[definition of “sick burn”] to insult someone on an elevated level; to put someone down to the lowest; usual victims of a “sick burn” will be the guy in your school who tucks his plaid shirt into his pants and clips a cell phone on his belt

a good way to know if you’ve been sick burned is that whoever has burned you will immediately shape his hands like two guns and imitate blowing the smoke off them on at a time and will say in a baritone voice : “sick burn”, possibly with a clever smirk on his face.. you must have a mustache and a red leather jacket to sick burn someone

Bobby: “Hey Jimmy, wanna go for a ride”

Jimmy: “Yeah,…. on your MOOOMMMM..”

Jimmy: “Oh…. sick burn”

“Sick burn” is a term of admiration for the person dealing out the insult, by the way. The insult of Obama’s last night that was so heavily admired was his apparently unscripted ad lib, “”I have no more campaigns to run…I know because I won both of them.”

Isn’t that…elevated. Doesn’t that just set the tone we want in a president?

Apparently, it does. That’s what people admire these days.

Remember back when Obama did the following in 2008? Remember that Republicans were puzzled that more people weren’t offended by it? Silly old Republicans, so behind the times:

Notice the first couple of comments at the YouTube video. YouTube comments are not known for their brilliance, but they do say something about what people are thinking and feeling, and this is the sort of thing you see there: “Such a cool president, he might not be the best, or does a lot of good, you gotta admit that he’s a pretty cool person despite all the president shit.”

Indeed.

It’s not news that Obama’s main appeal to so many voters, particularly the young, is his supposed coolness. It was already known back in 2008 and in 2012, those two victories of which Obama boasted last night. “Coolness” these days seems to include a large juvenile and street-smart component (which, by the way, seems phony and forced to me in Obama; he’s older than that and comes from a very different background). But hey, it works.

[ADDENDUM: And yes, I’m aware that Obama’s “I won both of them” came after some Republicans applauded when he said “I have no more campaigns to run”–which was also snarky of them.]

·

The liberal regimes’ dilemma

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve often had a similar thought, which the following passage by Roger Kimball expresses so well (and “liberal” and “liberalism” in the following doesn’t just mean “liberals” as in “progressives,” but also “liberals” as in “classical liberals”):

Liberal regimes have always suffered from this paralyzing antinomy: Liberalism implies openness to other points of view, even those points of view whose success would destroy liberalism. Tolerance to those points of view is a prescription for suicide. Intolerance betrays the fundamental premise of liberalism, i.e. openness.

Of course (may I say “of course”?), there is a sense in which the antinomy is illusory, since any robust liberalism, i.e., a liberalism buttressed by a core of conservative backbone, understands that tolerance, if it is to flourish, cannot be synonymous with capitulation to ideas that would exploit tolerance only to destroy it. The “openness” that liberal society rightly cherishes is not a vacuous openness to all points of view: it is not “value neutral.” It need not, indeed it cannot, say Yes to all comers.

And yet that basic instinct for practical self-preservation, that paradoxical prohibition necessary for the general openness, is often ignored today. “Democracy is not a suicide pact”—at least, it shouldn’t be.

The origin of that phrase lies in several statements by historic Americans, but the most specific one was by Supreme Court Justice Associate Justice Robert Jackson in 1949, in a dissent to the decision in the freedom of speech case known as Terminiello:

…[Jackson] wrote a twenty-four page dissent in response to the Court’s four page decision, which concluded: “The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

I think that’s a possibility we’re facing now. What used to be known as Western Civilization can’t seem to get out of its own way. Its enemies have no such problem; excessive tolerance in not their thing, but the excessive tolerance of the West is something on which they heavily rely.

I used to think…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that folks who thought we should abolish the IRS and simplify the tax code were wacko.

Now they make a lot of sense to me, particularly Ted Cruz:

Now that Republicans control Congress, Cruz said the party must seize on the opportunity to simplify the tax code and make it fairer.

“The last two years have fundamentally changed the dynamics of this debate [on the tax code],” he said. “As we have seen the weaponization of the IRS, as we have seen the Obama administration using the IRS in a partisan manner to punish its political enemies.”

The problem is always: what is “fair”? Flat tax?:

“We ought to abolish the IRS and instead move to a simple flat tax, where the average American can fill out our taxes on a postcard,” he said last week on Fox News. “Put down how much you earned, put down a deduction for charitable contributions, for home mortgage and how much you owe. It ought to be just a simple one-page postcard, and take the agents, the bureaucracy out of Washington and limit the power of government.”

Frazier said Cruz views the FairTax as “ideal” but embraces the flat tax as the more “realistic” option politically.

Cruz’s crusade echoes those of other politicians.

Billionaire businessman Steve Forbes built his 2000 presidential bid around a flat tax. Rick Perry advocated a flat tax when he ran for president last year. Dick Armey, the former House majority leader from suburban Dallas, has long pushed a flat tax, as does FreedomWorks, the tea party group he founded.

I don’t think any of these proposals would actually eliminate the IRS, however; the honor system for reporting and collecting wouldn’t work. But it would certainly make the IRS into a token shadow of its former bullying and behemoth self.

Among the 300+ drafts I have for posts unwritten-as-yet but nevertheless researched is a lengthy one on the battles involved in the original passage of the progressive income tax. It was fascinating to see that all the arguments that people have today on the subject were already present back then.

Here’s one tiny example, from a 1906 speech by Teddy Roosevelt (at the time he was proposing a progressive inheritance tax):

It is important to this people to grapple with the problems connected with the amassing of enormous fortunes, and the use of those fortunes, both corporate and individual, in business. We should discriminate in the sharpest way between fortunes well-won and fortunes ill-won; between those gained as an incident to performing great services to the community as a whole, and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the limits of mere law-honesty.

Of course no amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them. As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual ”” a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual; the tax, of course, to be imposed by the National and not the State Government.

Such taxation should, of course, be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.

In 1907 he added a progressive income tax, and justified it with some rather fancy tap-dancing:

A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like would be on a small fortune. No advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes which would be affected by such a tax; and as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood. We have not the slightest sympathy with that socialistic idea which would try to put laziness, thriftlessness and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift and efficiency; which would strive to break up not merely private property, but what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole civilization stands. Such a theory, if ever adopted, would mean the ruin of the entire country–a ruin which would bear heaviest upon the weakest, upon those least able to shift for themselves. But proposals for legislation such as this herein advocated are directly opposed to this class of socialistic theories. Our aim is to recognize what Lincoln pointed out: The fact that there are some respects in which men are obviously not equal; but also to insist that there should be an equality of self-respect and of mutual respect, an equality of rights before the law, and at least an approximate equality in the conditions under which each man obtains the chance to show the stuff that is in him when compared to his fellows.

It is instructive to remember that the federal income tax needed a constitutional amendment to be passed. There was a reason such a tax had been prohibited by the Founders; they had figured out some problems with them:

Direct taxes were viewed by the Founding Fathers as a dangerous tax because they give government great power over its citizens and also because, in order to assess such taxes, agents must have the authority to snoop into the private details of the daily lives of the citizens. They agreed, therefore, that direct taxes are safer if administered by the states, where elected representatives are closer to the people and easier to control. Indirect taxes, on the other hand, were viewed as less dangerous, because people could avoid them, if they wanted, merely by not purchasing the items being taxed. This assumes the establishment of taxes only on those items that are considered nonessential, such as liquor and tobacco, often called luxury taxes. Furthermore, the process of collecting indirect taxes does not endanger the individual’s right of privacy. For these reasons, the delegates agreed that indirect taxes are more appropriate for the federal government.

The Sixteenth Amendment was adopted in 1913, overriding such concerns (go to the link to read more about the history of how it came to be passed):

The Sixteenth Amendment (Amendment XVI) to the United States Constitution allows the Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on the United States Census. This amendment exempted income taxes from the constitutional requirements regarding direct taxes, after income taxes on rents, dividends, and interest were ruled to be direct taxes in the court case of Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. (1895).

And here we are today.

Obama the youth candidate

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Every now and then I’ve been republishing old posts that shed light on some interesting aspect of Obama that was evident way back when he was first running for president. These problems were apparent very early in the game; it’s stunning that more people did not notice and pay attention to what were huge red flags. The following piece first appeared on this blog in April of 2008. At the time I first wrote it, I had not yet come to appreciate the full destructiveness of Obama’s intentions towards the US, although that became clear not too long after. But I already had come close to understanding the extent of the narcissism and arrogance of his character. As I’ve said many times before, that does not show any special brilliance on my part; it was all there right on the surface for anyone who cared to actually look at Obama’s words.

I am republishing the post in its entirety.]

I’m beginning to see that one of the sources of Obama’s appeal, especially to the young, is that he speaks their language. Although the man is forty-six, he comes across as much younger, with a certain “like, you know” improvisational attitude towards the Presidency, especially when speaking off the cuff.

Some no doubt find it refreshing. I do not. Continue reading →

Remember all those articles about Boehner taking revenge on those who’d opposed his Speakership…

The New Neo Posted on by

…by taking away their committee positions? And remember how angry conservatives got about it?

I wrote a post on it here. But the next day I made this comment:

…[T]here’s no real evidence that the retribution [by Boehner against his conservative enemies] is occurring…

Now, I’m not saying it won’t happen. As I’ve written before, politics ain’t beanbag and people with power tend to reward those who support them and punish those who don’t. But it’s interesting that nothing much has really happened yet and yet we get all these reports that it’s happened or will happen. Who is making the reports? The MSM. Since their goal is to heighten the discord on the right, they have every motivation to spread rumors that will do just that.

I’ll wait for something clearer before I will believe it’s happening. Again, I won’t be surprised if it happens. But it may not.

Now comes this article in National Journal entitled: “Boehner Foes Get Gavels, Not Punishment,” and subtitled “The speaker’s allies are annoyed that GOP rebels are getting top subcommittee slots.” Here’s an excerpt:

As Republicans try to foster unity at a joint retreat here, frustration is boiling over among allies of House Speaker John Boehner that his biggest detractors are being rewarded with promotions, even after trying to overthrow him in a coup earlier this month.

The latest controversy comes as Rep. Louie Gohmert, who directly challenged Boehner for the speakership, announced on Thursday that he was given the chairmanship of the Natural Resources Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee…

Boehner’s allies have been much more eager to exact revenge against his opponents than the speaker himself has, and leadership sources have said that while Boehner is angry at his foes, he does not think public retribution is the best long-term move.

Gohmert is only the latest Boehner foe to receive a gavel. Because of that, several members described a thick air of tension within the House GOP Conference, a feeling a second Republican House member described as a blanket hanging over the GOP’s three-day retreat, which ended Friday.

The only constant seems to be the constant carping within the Republican Party. But Boehner certainly doesn’t seem to be at fault here, and the reports that he was taking revenge were (IMHO) efforts to stir up reactive anger on the part of conservatives.

I would caution all conservatives to be alert to the very real possibility that the press is trying to fan the flames of your ire, and that you are sometimes being manipulated.

State of the Union

The New Neo Posted on by

Tomorrow evening we have the State of the Union speech.

Ugh! I won’t be watching; I almost never watch those speeches, so why would I watch this one? But preliminary reports are all about Obama’s “Robin Hood” tax proposal, a measure that has virtually no chance of being passed but is just another wealth redistribution fish thrown to his base.

It is almost too tedious to discuss at this point. But here are some humorous observations on the matter, and here are the basics of the recommendation.

Oh, and here’s the real Robin Hood, the one I knew in my childhood. Big big crush (there are a ton of full episodes on YouTube, if you’re interested in pursuing your nostalgia):

RichardGreeneRobinHood