Massachusetts’ loss is New Hampshire’s gain?

The New Neo Posted on by

Maybe:

Scott Brown is edging closer to ending the suspense about whether he’ll run for U.S. senator from New Hampshire next year. Brown, who served for three years as senator from Massachusetts, has sold his home there and is moving to the “Live Free or Die” state. Later this week, he will headline the New Hampshire GOP’s annual Christmas party.

This isn’t as strange as it might seem. The telegenic Brown has owned a vacation home in New Hampshire for decades. And although New Hampshire has been getting more and more blue in recent years, it’s still nowhere near as blue as Massachusetts.

So Brown definitely would have a chance. What’s more, New Hampshire is loaded with Massachusetts refugees who would probably be simpatico to Brown’s political relocation.

What’s next for New Hampshire: Romney as governor? After all, Mitt has owned a home on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee since 1997.

The fruit fly war

The New Neo Posted on by

I think I’m winning. For now.

It all started with an event so ordinary as to be unremarkable: a couple of fruit flies (or their larva) came in with some purchase or other. After I spotted them, I was very careful about keeping the kitchen free of any food hanging about, and thought they’d go away, as they always had before.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Drosophila—as I recall their more formal name from science class, where their reproductive/genetic life was looked at in some depth—can be tenacious if given half a chance. The problem—I discovered after the proliferation had already occurred—was that a visiting friend had thrown some fruit in a garbage can I don’t usually check because I don’t usually use it. It was there that the fruit flies had lain in wait, swelling their ranks to become an almost overwhelming force.

Yesterday was D-day for my counterattack—which was quite literally a counter attack. My weaponry consisted of a huge vat of apple cider vinegar and some Saran wrap. Put the vinegar (with a teensy bit of sugar) into some bowls, cover with the wrap and seal tightly with rubber bands, poking holes in the wrap with toothpicks. The little guys can get in but can’t get out.

Actually, some of them can get out, because I’ve watched a few of them do so and live to fight another day. But most of them can’t, and they ultimately die in the vinegar soup. Or perhaps they die and then fall into the vinegar. It all takes quite some time, and my efforts to help them along by coaxing them into the vinegar prematurely don’t seem to have borne—ahem—much fruit.

C’est la guerre.

Despite what some will tell you, red wine doesn’t work nearly as well. Nor do traps bought in the hardware store (I spent about ten bucks on one) or cone-shaped entryways to the vinegar death trap. Take it from me, I know whereof I speak; I’ve got quite the experiment going, with a good hefty n.

R.I.P. Peter O’Toole

The New Neo Posted on by

The British actor Peter O’Toole has died at the age of 81.

(Eighty-one is starting to seem very young to me.)

O’Toole packed a heap of living—and carousing—into one life. He was an always-fascinating and unique actor. Eyes of startling blue, with a penetrating intelligence and sense of playfulness. You always sensed there was much more going on there than could be expressed in mere words. I agree with Mark Steyn that O’Toole was “one of the few actors I was happy to watch in any role.”

R.I.P.

And then there are the Navigators

The New Neo Posted on by

Faced with a choice between relying on the Obamacare website or consulting a Navigator who has undergone no background check or ongoing monitoring, which would you choose?

It seems as though the administration not only was initially uninterested in making the website or the Navigators safe in terms of security, it remains uninterested. Do they see lack of security as a feature, rather than a bug? Or maybe security’s just too darn expensive; they’d rather spend the money on advertising:

The Obama administration decided that Obamacare Navigators, tasked with helping Americans enroll in a health insurance plan, would not undergo mandatory background checks…

Yet the Obama administration still does not plan to implement a “secret shopper” program to monitor Navigators. HHS officials have put together “webinars” for Navigators, but they are voluntary and do not cover specific details.

The report also found that because the Obama administration did not warn Navigators that there could be problems with the HealthCare.Gov website, “Navigators were essentially useless” when the website crashed and had problems.

Of course, a person always could bypass the website entirely and use a paper application.

Then again:

The Committee found that this “push towards the use of paper applications further increases security risks, since health insurance exchange applications contain personally identifiable information such as the applicant’s full name, social security number, the names and social security numbers of everyone in the applicant’s household, and income for every member of the household.”

Over three years and umpteen gazillion dollars (no one really knows how much, but it was a lot) went into this. But hey, some of Obama’s favorite organizations got the plum Navigator jobs, so it’s all good.

Uncle Obamacare wants YOU!

The New Neo Posted on by

UncleBarack

There’s a portion of the NY Times article I discussed in my previous post that deserves a post of its own. Here’s the excerpt from the Times [emphasis mine]:

…[M]any of the New York policies being canceled meet and often exceed the [Obamacare] standards, brokers say. The rationale for disqualifying those policies, said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, was to prevent associations from selling insurance to healthy members who are needed to keep the new health exchanges financially viable.

Siphoning those people, Mr. Levitt said, would leave the pool of health exchange customers “smaller and disproportionately sicker,” and would drive up rates.

Contemplate that for a moment. I can’t think of a clearer and more succinct example of the callous and manipulative mindset behind Obamacare and social engineering in general. People are pawns to be moved around on a large board. We needed these people here, so liberty and choice can be jettisoned for them.

We said they could keep their plans? Tough. We said later that the plans that were cancelled as a result of Obamacare were only the “junk,” substandard ones? Well, guess what: we lied. Tough again.

It’s for the greater good, after all. As the august Nancy Pelosi would say, embrace the suck.

Previously privileged New Yorkers who supported Obamacare…

The New Neo Posted on by

…discover that Obamacare means they’ll be losing some of their privileges:

Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan…They are part of an unusual, informal health insurance system that has developed in New York, in which independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans, typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. That allowed them to avoid the sky-high rates in New York’s individual insurance market, historically among the most expensive in the country.

But under the Affordable Care Act, they will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies. For many of them, that is likely to mean they will no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs. And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from rising, they will have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage.

Will this constitute the proverbial being “mugged by reality”? Perhaps for some, but my guess is not for most. Despite being writers, lawyers, and even doctors, these people didn’t do their homework about Obamacare before the law was passed. They relied on the MSM and their trusted liberal politicians and pundits to describe it for them instead. Why change their minds now, just because they got hurt by it? For most people, it takes more than that to effect political change of mind on a more permanent, substantive basis.

Roy Lyons, managing director of Marsh U.S. Consumer, an insurance brokerage, said he had heard complaints from physicians, lawyers, pharmacists and optometrists. “At first they think it’s the bar association making the decision or the insurance company doing it,” Mr. Lyons said. “We have to explain that this is the Affordable Care Act; that’s what was put into law. Once they understand, they’re less emotional, but they’re not happy with it.”

And isn’t it interesting that lawyers and doctors have to have this explained to them?

More doctors will be getting the bad news soon, too:

The medical society has not yet formally notified its solo practitioners, because their insurance plans do not expire until April. But those letters will be going out soon, officials said.

I find the following quote to be rather mind-boggling in several ways:

Ms. Meinwald, the lawyer, said she was a lifelong Democrat who still supported better health care for all, but had she known what was in store for her, she would have voted for Mitt Romney.

How could this woman not have already known what “was in store for her”? Also, although a bleeding-heart liberal, she seems to vote only on how something affects her. Where’s your liberal altruism, lady? Or maybe she’s coming to suspect that the whole thing’s a scam, and that Obamacare doesn’t actually benefit the majority of people.

Was Meinwald under the impression that you could add millions of people to the insurance rolls, give them subsidies, not raise taxes, and everyone would come out ahead? Maybe she thought the only losers would be the fat cats, and that she wasn’t quite fat enough. Turns out she was.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, you could add millions to the insurance rolls and come out ahead as long as those millions were very very healthy people who could pay their own way and who would never make claims of any importance. That is the philosophy behind wooing the “young invincibles.” Unfortunately for Obama, most of them not only don’t want health insurance (and the penalties for not buying it are both relatively small and relatively unenforceable), but a great many need subsidies. But most importantly of all, they are outnumbered by other groups signing up for Obamacare: the already-sick, those who are older and more likely to develop health problems even if they are presently in good health, and the poor—some of whom are getting Medicaid, some of whom get hefty subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges.]

South Africa: we don’t need no steenking security

The New Neo Posted on by

Security at the Mandela memorial? It wasn’t just lax; it was apparently virtually nonexistent:

Britain’s The Independent newspaper reported that “thousands of guests entering the FNB stadium in Soweto on Tuesday, especially those who had arrived very early, were not searched.” In addition, members of the media “were permitted to enter the press area directly beneath where politicians and dignitaries were seated without being asked to show passes.” And the Daily Mail reported that “the first crowds entered the stadium without being searched…

The South African government promised tight security for the event. “Working off plans developed for years in secret, the South African government is using an elite military task force, sniper teams and canine teams to help secure the stadium,” CNN reported before the event. “In addition, helicopters and military jets frequently fly overhead.”

It was a show of security. But it wasn’t security.”

Potemkin security, in other words. It was mere luck that nothing terrible occurred. I wonder, if it hadn’t been for the obviousness of the sign language interpreter brouhaha, whether the lax security would ever have been revealed at all.

I also wonder whether the Secret Service does its own checks, and how Obama was allowed to enter a situation so fraught with peril. There’s a hint in the article:

Before the event, CNN reported that a “Secret Service spokesman noted that while the agency’s preference is to bring their own metal detectors to such events, they do not have authority over local law enforcement in foreign countries and would be working with South African officials on security matters.”

Even as Obama flew to South Africa, White House officials confidently told reporters that the South African government could take care of things. “The sheer number of leaders appearing in the same place at one time raises numerous logistical and security challenges, but the White House expressed confidence in the South African government’s ability to handle the event,” CNN reported. “‘We have not heard any concerns,’ Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One. ‘The South Africans hosted the World Cup, so they have experience hosting significant crowds and managing events like this.'”

And I also wonder whether they’ll be more careful before sending Obama to future events in third-world countries, or whether they’ll fail to learn anything from this experience.

The Lie of the Year

The New Neo Posted on by

Politifact says it’s: “If you like you health care plan, you can keep it.”

Can’t argue with that selection, really—except that there were so many other excellent ones from which to choose.

All the shills in the press or in political life who touted the wonders of Obamacare without ever once really taking a good look at it deserve their own “lie of the year” or maybe “lie of the decade” awards. But it’s too late to matter; Obama was re-elected on the strength of their lies—and/or their omissions—about his lies.

The Arapahoe shooter…

The New Neo Posted on by

…appears to have been acting alone and was not reported to have telegraphed any particular warning signs, mental illness, or violent tendencies. Good student, excellent debater—who had been kicked off the debating team and was seeking revenge.

That certainly can’t be a common denominator for school shootings. Nor, it seems, could this particular crime have been predicted in any way:

Pierson — who was described as exceptionally bright but difficult and argumentative — was upset about being booted from the debate team.

Minne said the senior had a combative personality.

“He was always the type that wanted to be right. He would always argue with the teacher about scholastic things, whatever we were talking about he always had something to say. Never wanted anyone to tell him he was wrong. I definitely noticed that in the classes I was in with him,” Minne said. “He spoke intelligently, he’s a smart guy, I think he did pretty well in school, he was just kinda weird. … He wasn’t a violent person, he was just verbally aggressive.”

Pierson’s neighbor said he was quiet and seemed like a nice boy but they didn’t really know him well.

The only person Pierson killed was himself, although a student he shot is in critical condition. Librarian Murphy—who was head of the debating team and who seems to have been Pierson’s intended target—was uninjured.

Oh, and of course the left would like to make some sort of political hay of the tragedy. But unfortunately for them, Pierson was a socialist and/or a Keynesian. Some newspaper accounts are murky about this; some mention unspecified “strong political beliefs” and seem to want you to figure it out yourself, because what those beliefs might be are mentioned only quite far along in the articles.

For the record, I don’t suppose that Pierson’s political beliefs had much influence on his violence one way or another; I think the motivation was personal and ultimately suicidal in nature. But I have no doubt that, had Pierson’s beliefs been on the right, they would have been emphasized in news reports of the shooting.

Megyn Kelly is driving them crazy

The New Neo Posted on by

By now Megyn Kelly of Fox has become so popular that, right on schedule, comes the inevitable flap—about a segment on Kelly’s show concerning whether Santa and Jesus were white. I’ll pass by the substantive [sic] issues and just say that the discussion was notable mainly for Kelly’s critics’ risible assertion that Jews are not white—who knew? (And yes, Ethiopian Jews aren’t white, but Jesus was not Ethiopian.)

Even the WaPo‘s Dan Zak has been charmed by Megyn, whose ratings have been fabulous ever since her new show debuted two months ago. I’ve long been a fan—she’s really just about the only newsperson whose program I watch regularly.

Kelly is an unusual combination. To begin with, one can’t ignore the fact that she’s not just attractive but absolutely gorgeous, with a figure to match (despite having three kids, the youngest of whom is only four months old). But that’s just the beginning; even such beauty would pall after a while if it weren’t accompanied by a whip-smart intelligence and an astounding aggressiveness that almost never segues into obnoxiousness. How does Kelly manage to combine hard-driving, rat-a-tat interviewing with a winning and natural ease of manner? I don’t know, but it’s her great gift.

Zak’s article indicates that Kelly has always been ambitious and has long known exactly who she is, and that she presents that self without falseness on camera. Maybe that’s her secret. I do know that I usually watch TV news people interviewing guests and grind my teeth, thinking “You should ask such-and-such! Why don’t you point out such-and-such?” With Kelly I don’t have to yell at the TV screen, urging her to call her guests on their BS—that’s her specialty, and she does it better than anyone else on TV, at the same time often coaxing a reluctant smile from guests when they see they’ve been bested again by the endearing Megyn.

[ADDENDUM: And the spelling of her first name may just drive me crazy. I’ve fixed it.]