Barack and Raul: the handshake

The New Neo Posted on by

I expect plenty of disagreement, but I’m actually inclined to give Obama somewhat of a modified pass on shaking Raul Castro’s hand at Nelson Mandela’s funeral.

I’m second to no one in the strength of my alarm and disapproval at President Obama’s policies, both domestic and foreign. And I’m well aware of his kowtowing to dictators, as well as his leftism.

But he was in a lose/lose position here. Perhaps with advance planning there was a way for Obama to have avoided being backed into a situation in which he either had to shake Castro’s hand or cause a disruption by theatrically refusing to do so. And perhaps Obama has a secret affinity with someone like Raul and his older brother Fidel. Perhaps Obama even regrets the fact that Che wasn’t there to have his hand shaken, as well.

But as I said, on this score I’m going to give Obama at least a half-pass. To have turned away from Raul on such an occasion would have caused a different sort of commotion, although I actually think it would have been very appropriate.

At least Obama didn’t bow to him.

I’m much more disturbed by Obama’s official policies than by this act of protocol. The latter only takes on its significance because of the problems with the former, as a symbol of what Obama is doing on a larger scale.

Volunteer firefighters: I think this consequence of Obamacare actually is unintended

The New Neo Posted on by

Obamacare was pushed through Congress at high speed, without much debate and without the usual haggling. The reason was that, like thieves in a hurry to grab everything and get out safely, Democrats were eager to move it through while they still had the time and momentum to succeed.

They figured they’d iron out any problems later, and in the meantime would try to sell the Act to a reluctant public. Spinning and outright lying were delaying tactics until the longed-for day when Obamacare would be implemented and people would love it—that is, enough people would love it, and it would become the new normal, assuring Democrats of a built-in constituency of grateful recipients fearful that a vote for any Republican would do away with their new-found benefits.

And maybe it will end up working out just like that.

But speed had some drawbacks. The bill was so long and so convoluted, its effects so manifold and various, that some of the consequences were bound to hurt groups the Democrats didn’t want to hurt. One such group, of course, was unions. But that was taken care of by a handy—if unconstitutional, but who cares except a few conservatives?—waiver.

Maybe this new wrinkle will ultimately be handled in a similar manner. But in the meantime, marvel at the wonder of it all:

The U.S. Department of Labor takes the term ‘volunteer’ literally, but the IRS says volunteer firefighters are technically employees if they’re on the job more than 30 hours per week, making them subject to Obamacare’s employee-mandate rules…

Since the Obamacare law doesn’t specifically carve out an exemption for them, fire departments where 50 or more people work ”“ either as volunteers or officially as employees ”“ are expected to provide health insurance for every one of them.

In towns with more than one volunteer fire department, all the staffers will likely be lumped together for tax purposes, pushing many municipalities above the 50-worker threshold.

That could cost departments of life-savers hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Those that dump their volunteers into the federal insurance exchanges would still have to pay an annual $2,000 fine for each ’employee’ after the first 30.

“I can tell you right now we can’t afford it,” East Derry, Pennsylvania Fire Company Chief Edward Mann told the Patriot-News. “While a volunteer fire department may not have a payroll, the rest of it isn’t free. The only part that is free is the labor.”

The article goes on to mention that 71% of America’s fire departments are volunteer, while another 16% are mostly volunteer. Many would be in big, big trouble because of Obamacare.

I predict another waiver.

Obamacare is well on its way to creating a more stratified system of health insurance than existed before, and has already created dangerous precedents for the extension of unchecked executive power. Nice.

Will conservatives inherit the wind?

The New Neo Posted on by

I understand conservatives wanting to primary Republicans in Congress who are RINOs who vote with the opposition, especially if said RINOs come from states where there is a decent possibility of a more conservative option being elected.

Maine’s Susan Collins, for example, would come under the first definition (a RINO extraordinaire), but not in the least under the second (a state where there’s the possibility of someone more conservative winning). Primary her and you’ve lost a sometime-Republican seat and ended up with a Democratic one that will help further the Democratic majority.

But Congressman Steve Stockman primarying someone like John Cornyn of Texas? Or Milton Wolfe against Pat Roberts of Kansas? They both seem to be counterproductive and destructive wastes of time, money, and effort. Like DrewM at Ace’s, I think the following are the circumstances under which primary challenges make sense:

So who should be the focus of targeted primary challenges?

For me it’s three basic things:

1. A lukewarm voting record

2. A record of vocal opposition to conservatives, especially when coupled with a history of “reaching across the aisle”.

3. A record of abandoning our side on key votes.

There’s a lot of understandable and justified anger at Republicans in Congress. But the danger is that it will work to the detriment of electing more conservative candidates and will end up—as it sometimes did in 2012—furthering the election of more liberals. In and of itself, anger doesn’t tend to enhance people’s judgment, although it can fuel their energy. Conservatives need to channel their anger in ways that don’t hurt their own cause.

[NOTE: The title of this post is taken from Proverbs 11:29, “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.”]

The end of history…

The New Neo Posted on by

…has ended, according to Walter Russell Mead.

I never thought much of this “end of history” stuff in the first place. Perhaps I didn’t quite get what Fukuyama was saying, but it seemed absurd to me. History may repeat itself and rhyme and all that (with no end in sight), but it also has a lot of tricks and black swans up its voluminous sleeves.

Here’s a clarification of some common misunderstandings of what Fukuyama was writing about in 1992 what he declared “history” to be at an end:

The most basic (and prevalent) error in discussing Fukuyama’s work is to confuse “history” with “events”. Fukuyama claims not that events will stop occurring in the future, but rather that all that will happen in the future (even if totalitarianism returns) is that democracy will become more and more prevalent in the long term, although it may suffer “temporary” setbacks (which may, of course, last for centuries).

Some argue that Fukuyama presents “American-style” democracy as the only “correct” political system and argues that all countries must inevitably follow this particular system of government. However, many Fukuyama scholars claim this is a misreading of his work. Fukuyama’s argument is only that in the future there will be more and more governments that use the framework of parliamentary democracy and that contain markets of some sort.

I don’t see why, and the last five years has only deepened my skepticism, although I hope Fukuyama was right.

But let’s get back to Mead, who has a gloomy point of view about current history (is that an oxymoron?), one that I share:

Iran should be giddy with joy; pro-administration commentary from the White House and its media allies has focused on the nuclear technicalities to paint the deal as a success, but there is no disguising the immense diplomatic gains that Tehran made…After the nuclear deal came more joy for Tehran; as the New York Times reports, morale is flagging and unity is fraying among the Syrian opposition even as Butcher Assad’s ground forces continue to grind out more gains…President Putin, meanwhile, is giving hearty thanks for one of Russia’s biggest successes since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Kremlin is high-fiving its stunning, come-from-behind victory as Ukraine said a polite “No thank you” to the European Union’s offer of an economic association agreement…Putin may not be able to hold onto his prize, but for now he can justly boast of having outwitted and bested the EU on one of the biggest issues of the day.

The entire piece as worth reading, as Mead goes on to analyze why the US is failing to look out for its own strategic interests and what should be done about it. He believes that time is of the essence, and that “the longer we wait, the harder and more urgent our task will become.” Nowhere in his essay, however, does he seem to acknowledge that our losses during the Obama administration just might have been both strategic and intentional, and that those in charge may be deliberate rather than naive.

Which goes first, the chicken or the egg?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’ll be the egg that will become obsolete (perhaps even illegal some day, like old-fashioned lightbulbs?) if Hampton Creek Foods (founded by Bill Gates) has anything to say about it:

In its food lab, biochemists grind up beans and peer through microscopes to study their molecular structure, looking for plants that can fulfill the culinary functions of eggs. So far, the company has analyzed some 1,500 types of plants from more than 60 countries.

The research has resulted in 11 “hits,” said Josh Tetrick, the company’s CEO.

“Our approach is to use plants that are much more sustainable ”” less greenhouse gas emissions, less water, no animal involved and a whole lot more affordable ”” to create a better food system,” said the former linebacker on West Virginia University’s football team.

The company’s first product ”” the mayonnaise ”” is sold for roughly the same price as the traditional variety. It soon hopes to start selling cookie dough and a batter that scrambles like eggs when fried in a pan.

“The egg is a miracle, so one of the hardest parts of replacing it is all the functions that it can do,” said Chris Jones, the company’s culinary director of innovations and a former contestant on Bravo TV’s Top Chef.

I dunno. It all seems fishy to me.

I can’t quite imagine a food that could function like an egg but isn’t an egg, which is indeed a “miracle” for its remarkable capacities, not just as an egg (as in scrambled, fried, boiled) but especially in baking.

And as for “sustainable,” what about all the energy used to turn the vegetable sources into egglike artifacts? What are the greenhouse gases involved in a chicken laying an egg?

It turns out that chicken feet have a tiny little carbon footprint:

Lamb, beef and cheese have the highest emissions, in part because they are derived from animals that release a consistent amount of methane gas, which is a potent green house gas pollutant. Chickens aren’t gassy creatures. They produce no methane and cause far fewer emissions during production. Also, pound for pound, they require less feed than hogs, beef or dairy cattle. Chicken is a good alternative to red meat, which is linked to a variety of health issues like obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and even mortality. Of course, protein alternatives like rice and eggs are considerably better for the environment; beans and lentils are better still.

So even if you buy the AGW theory, neither chicken nor eggs seem to be a particularly good target. But hey, that doesn’t stop them from trying, does it?

Tokyo Story

The New Neo Posted on by

It was this comment at my post about outstanding movies that made me decide it was high time I saw “Tokyo Story,” a postwar Japanese film by Yasujirō Ozu that’s considered one of the greatest cinema masterpieces of the 20th century.

I’m not a film buff. I’m not into technique; for example, “Citizen Kane,” that black-and-white achievement everyone always raves about, leaves me relatively cold. The same with “Tokyo Story” when I began watching it. It seemed old-fashioned and downright odd, obscure and slow as molasses.

But then—it started to grow on me. At two and a quarter hours of no action at all except for families sitting around (on the floor, mostly) or standing around and talking, it had better.

After a few minutes I thought “Hmm—Chekhov, Japanese style.” And then a bit later, “These people are very different from us, but also very much the same.” There was a lot of smiling and nodding, but the film manages to convey the conflicted and sometimes negative feelings veiled by all that pleasant and socially-prescribed assent.

If you’ve seen the movie (or Ozu’s other movies, which I haven’t) you’ll know that its technical aspects are so idiosyncratic that it’s nearly impossible to ignore them. The camera is static, set as though it were a person sitting on a tatami mat and looking out at eye-level from that vantage point as a sort of voyeur.

Not that anything risque ever goes on here. Not even close. It’s about how familial generations interact, disappoint each other, swallow their hurts, love each other, deal with the mundane frustrations of life as well as the large, absorb tragedy, and keep on going. About how we are all alone and separate and yet not alone at all, although we might feel lonely.

The movie, although intensely Japanese (and Japanese of the postwar era, at that), is also universal. We are all members of families. We are all subject to the passage of time as it takes us along and then ultimately away. Most of us are not as successful, as happy, as whatever it was we thought we’d be when looking at life and the world through the eyes of a child. And most of us go on and manage to extract quite a bit of joy from the whole thing.

Ozu was interested in families, but he never married. He lived with his elderly mother, who predeceased him by only two years, and is buried with her in a shared grave marked with only the character mu (“nothingness”).

Ozu’s leading lady, the luminously lovely Setsuko Hara, also never married. She retired abruptly from film at the age of 43 only a short time after Ozu’s death, to live the rest of her life in seclusion with her sister. Hara (not her real name) is still alive at 93, but has never given an interview or surfaced long enough for the press to get even a photo.

A scene with Hara, who was age 33 here:

You’re heard of head cheese and toe cheese?

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, now we have human cheese.

I kid you not. Read at your own peril; don’t say I didn’t warn you.

To counter all of that, I have a question for you: do you like fruitcake? Now, some would consider it an a par with human cheese, but I am not one of them. I happen to like it, although I try to stay away because of its extreme caloric density, a trait it shares with pecan pie as the sort of neutron star of the calorie world.

If you do like fruitcake—or know someone who does—I hear tell this is a good example of the genre. Although it’s not a bargain price, a little goes a long way.

And I might as well use this opportunity to segue into a reminder to please use the neo-neocon portal for your holiday Amazon orders. Thank you all!

The public…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is experiencing political whiplash.

In reality, I think the public is disillusioned with both parties.

For those of you who rejoice at the “throw the bums out” mentality, I offer some cautionary words, taken from an earlier post of mine.

The following is an excerpt from Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free. The book, first published in 1955, is an exploration of Germans’ attitudes in the period leading up to WWII and including the war and its immediate aftermath. It features interviews with ten “typical” Germans, conducted a couple of years after the war’s end, and offers extraordinary and often relevant insights into how it was that Hitler came to power and stayed there so long.

Here is my general discussion of the book and its author, who was a man of the left. To understand the following excerpt, it is helpful to know that for the purposes of the book, Mayer refers to the ten interviewees as his “friends”:

National Socialism was a repulsion of my friends against parliamentary politics, parliamentary debate, parliamentary government—against all the higgling and the haggling of the parties and the splinter parties, their coalitions, their confusions, and their conniving. It was the final fruit of the common man’s repudiation of “the rascals.” Its motif was “throw them all out.” My friends, in the 1920’s, were like spectators at a wrestling match who suspect that beneath all the grunts and groans, the struggle and the sweat, the match is “fixed,” that the performers are only pretending to put on a fight. The scandals that rocked the country, as one party or cabal “exposed” another, dismayed and then disgusted my friends…

While the ship of the German State was being shivered, the officers, who alone had life preservers, disputed their prerogatives on the bridge. My friends observed that none of the non-Communist, non-Nazi leaders objected to the 35,000 Reichsmark salaries of the cabinet ministers, only the Communists and the Nazis objected. And the bitterest single disappointment of Nazism…was the fact that Hitler had promised that no official would get more than 1,000 Reichsmarks a month and did not keep his promise.

My friends wanted Germany purified. They wanted it purified of the politicians, of all the politicians. They wanted a representative leader in place of unrepresentative representatives. And Hitler, the pure man, the antipolitician, was the man, untainted by “politics,” which was only a cloak for corruption…Against “the whole pack,” “the whole kaboodle,” “the whole business,” against all the parliamentary parties, my friends evoked Hitlerism, and Hitlerism overthrew them all…

This was the Bewegung, the movement, that restored my friends and bewitched them. Those Germans who saw it all at the beginning—there were not very many; there never are, I suppose, anywhere—called Hitler the Rattenfé¤nger, the “ratcatcher.” Every American child has read The Pied-Piper of Hamlin. Every German child has read it, too. In German its title is Der Rattenfé¤nger von Hameln

California doctors don’t ♥ Obamacare

The New Neo Posted on by

California may have one of the better state Obamacare websites, but it sure doesn’t seem to have one of the better rates of reimbursement for doctors. And that may have big consequences:

An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange and won’t participate, the head of the state’s largest medical association said…

California offers one of the lowest government reimbursement rates in the country — 30 percent lower than federal Medicare payments. And reimbursement rates for some procedures are even lower.

In other states, Medicare pays doctors $76 for return-office visits. But in California, Medi-Cal’s reimbursement is $24, according to Dr. Theodore M. Mazer, a San Diego ear, nose and throat doctor.

In other states, doctors receive between $500 to $700 to perform a tonsillectomy. In California, they get $160, Mazer added.

Only in September did insurance companies disclose that their rates would be pegged to California’s Medicaid plan, called Medi-Cal. That’s driven many doctors to just say no.

They’re also pointing out that Covered California’s website lists many doctors as participants when they aren’t.

“Some physicians have been put in the network and they were included basically without their permission,” Lisa Folberg said. She is a CMA’s vice president of medical and regulatory Policy.

As I’ve said before, the websites are turning out to be somewhat of a Potemkin village: a facade of something rather than the real thing. California seems to be a particularly egregious case, and it’s an important one because it is one of the most populous (and liberal, I might add) states in the union. If California fails to enroll a lot of people, it can’t end up very good for Obamacare. And if California does end up enrolling a lot of people and there are far too few doctors to serve them, it can’t end up very good for Obamacare.

I also wonder whether putting those doctors on the website as network participants when they are not was in fact an accident, or whether it’s a form of mild coercion that will soon become not-so-mild.

[NOTE: Regarding the title of this post—now that I’ve learned how to use HTML to make a heart, I seem to be doing quite a bit of it.]