A little light fashion distraction

The New Neo Posted on by

Lots of criticism for Gloria Estefan (who’s 54—now, when did that happen, I ask you?) in attempting this dress by Stella McCartney (Paul’s daughter, by the way):

The dress is designed to emphasize the curves of hourglass figures, and the article points out that it was recently worn more successfully by the twenty-years younger Kate Winslet:

I think it’s an ugly dress, although I once owned and wore a more refined version of the same thing (less tight, less clingy material, a few buttons for decoration) at my sixteenth birthday party. But here, even Winslet looks like she’s got a wet-suit without legs on.

Estefan is at a disadvantage not just because of her age and lack of the extreme body perfection that now seems to be required of all stars or has-been stars or would-be stars of the female persuasion. She’s at an additional disadvantage because she’s photographed in more harsh natural sunlight that sheds all sorts of unfortunate shadows on her, and because, unlike Winslet, she’s in the act of walking rather than posing. Some of this is merely a matter of poor posture. So, note to self and all other women out there except the rail-thin: if you’re going to wear a skin-tight sheath dress made of white neoprene—and I would heartily suggest that you think twice before you do so—then you better remember to stand up extra-straight and suck in that gut good and tight.

[Hat tip: Ann Althouse.]

Reaction to Obama’s jobs speech

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, Obama finally kept the promise he’s been making for years and focused like a laser on jobs—at least, in his speech last night to Congress and the nation.

Reaction varies. There’s commenter “West” from this blog:

I’ll Summarize ”“ Pass the bill I haven’t written yet so I can spend 450 billion dollars we don’t have, and if you oppose this , you hate babies and Grandma. And Lincoln built the Transcontinental railroad or something.

With Paul Krugman, you can never get enough stimulus. He cries for madder music and stronger wine (and, of course, for an end to Republican contrariness):

O.K., about the Obama plan: It calls for about $200 billion in new spending ”” much of it on things we need in any case, like school repair, transportation networks, and avoiding teacher layoffs ”” and $240 billion in tax cuts. That may sound like a lot, but it actually isn’t.

Michael Barone notes Obama’s mood—angry and buck-passing:

He bitterly assailed one straw man after another and made reference to a grab bag of proposals which would cost something on the order of $450 billion””assuring us on the one hand that they all had been supported by Republicans as well as Democrats in the past and suggesting that somehow they are going to turn the economy around…Obama assured us that this would all be paid for. But as far as I could gather, he punted that part of it to the supercommittee of 12 members set up under the debt ceiling bill. He now blithely charges it with coming up with more than its current goal of $1.5 trillion in savings by Christmas. Oh, and he’s going to announce “a more ambitious deficit plan” that will “stabilize our debt in the long run”–11 days from now.

In the meantime, he called for higher taxes on “a few of the most affluent citizens”””as if this could pay for all the spending he’s been backing.

The AP, of all things, agrees with Barone about whether Obama’s proposals will pay for themselves.

Republicans such as Cantor concede that they plan to pass some of Obama’s proposals such as trade agreements, small business relief measures, and revamped unemployment insurance. Many Democratic pundits label this as a slight change from Republicans’ former intransigence and lack of cooperation, and as a conciliatory gesture. Call me naive, but I think that at least some of this agreement by Republicans is because these proposals are actually moves that they think will help the economy; after all, it’s not all about Obama and cooperating with or opposing him.

Democrats may believe that Republican “concessions” on these points would amount to a victory for Obama. I agree. But I also sense that most voters wonder (as I do) why Obama waited so very long and took so many detours along the way. In addition, I don’t see why a certain amount of Republican “cooperation” wouldn’t be seen as a victory for Republicans as well.

[NOTE: Here’s the text of Obama’s speech for those of you who want to catch up with what was said.]

Perry works New Hampshire

The New Neo Posted on by

Does Perry have a chance in the New Hampshire primaries? He certainly seems to think so. But of course, candidates have to talk a good game.

But Perry is way behind Romney in New Hampshire right now. New Hampshire tends to be regionally loyal, and it doesn’t seem to like Texans much—George W. Bush lost there in the 2000 primary to a John McCain who “kicked his butt.” Ironically, although New Hampshire went for Hillary rather than Obama during the 2008 primary, at election time in 2008 when New Hampshirites finally had a chance to vote for McCain for president they failed to do so, going for Obama over McCain with a 9.6% margin of victory.

I will now go out on a limb and make a prediction that Perry will lose to Romney in NH, but like Bill Clinton before him (who lost there to Tsongas in 1992), he will frame his second-place finish as a win of sorts—although I doubt he’ll use the phrase “comeback kid.” And that’s the end of my predictions for the moment.

So, is Social Security a Ponzi scheme, as Rick Perry said in the debate?

The New Neo Posted on by

No, not exactly. As this article points out, a Ponzi scheme has to attract investors, whereas Social Security has a captive investor-audience: all Americans who work. And Social Security can keep asking for more from them, not just in absolute terms but as a percentage of their income as well:

Social Security taxes have been raised some 40 times since the program began. The initial Social Security tax was 2 percent (split between the employer and employee), capped at $3,000 of earnings. That made for a maximum tax of $60. Today, the tax is 12.4 percent, capped at $106,800, for a maximum tax of $13,234. Even adjusting for inflation, that represents more than an 800 percent increase.

On the other hand, initial investors get rich from a Ponzi scheme, and no one gets rich off Social Security—unless you count the government itself, which uses the money for a host of things that were not originally intended when the legislation was passed. And of course, Social Security is not illegal, while Ponzi schemes are.

Nor was Social Security originally set up as a Ponzi scheme, although it does partake of some of its characteristics (mainly, that beneficiaries are paid not from profits, but from the “investments” of later payees). If the monies had been kept in a lockbox (that famous Al Gore phrase), the situation would have been somewhat better. But changing demographics are a big part of the problem; when the system was implemented, no one expected such a high percentage of people to live past the age of 65 and to be able to collect on their investments.

[NOTE: The WSJ weighs in.]

Obama: president then, president now

The New Neo Posted on by

Today while I was doing a small bit of research in order to make the point that Barack Obama was first an editor and then the president of the Harvard Law Review, I came across this:

[Obama] got himself elected by convincing a crucial swing bloc of conservatives that he would protect their interests if they supported him. Building up that trust was done with the same kind of long listening sessions he had used in the poor neighborhoods of South Side, Chicago. Richard Epstein, who later taught at the University of Chicago Law School when Obama later taught there, said Obama was elected editor “because people on the other side believed he would give them a fair shake.”

So Obama established his m.o. quite early as the bring-em-together conciliator as well as the guy who listens. And if not for these conservatives who voted for him, he would never have gotten the credentials that catapulted him into the public eye (he received huge media coverage and a book contract from his selection as HLR president).

Fast forward to the 2008 election and the wooing of such “conservatives” such as David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Colin Powell, and these people, who were all instrumental in convincing themselves and then the public that Barack Obama would exhibit those very same traits and be president of us all. This was especially attractive after the divisive Bush years.

So now, when Obama fumes at Republican refusal to “compromise,” it is likely that he is actually being sincere rather than disingenuous. After all, he is accustomed to getting what he wants from conservatives, and may rarely have faced a situation before where the stakes were high enough for the opposition to take a firm stance and not be quickly swayed by his silver tongue and his let-us-reason-together demeanor. As president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama is reported to have “ended minor disputes with the words, ‘Just remember, folks: Nobody reads it.'”

That may have worked back then. Unfortunately for Obama, people are “reading it” now.

Getting sick of Obama’s voice and empty promises

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s an interesting phenomenon coming from the left: more people seem to have become unable to listen to Obama’s voice because they’ve found his promises to be empty. Matt Taibbi notes at Rolling Stone that he’s become so disillusioned with Obama’s broken promises to help labor that, “I just don’t believe this guy anymore, and it’s become almost painful to listen to him.”

Taibbi’s reaction ties in quite nicely with the poll results I mentioned yesterday when I wrote, “The percentage of respondents who give Obama a very poor rating on ‘being honest and straightforward’ took a leap sometime between spring and fall of 2009 and has not significantly declined since.” Again, this is a bipartisan issue; there are only so many times a president can backtrack and have people retain faith in his veracity.

Those of us who were sick of Obama from the start heard that note of falseness in his voice almost right away. Yes, for the most part we also didn’t agree with much of what he was proposing. But that really wasn’t the heart of the problem, at least not for me. I felt his duplicity before I felt the extremity of his views, back when he was posing as a moderate bring-us-all-together type. His behavior just didn’t match his calm nice-guy demeanor.

For me, the turning point on Obama came early: it was a combination of learning what Obama did to Alice Palmer back when he first got his start in politics (it was clear from this behavior that he was not a nice guy), and then seeing him change his mind on campaign financing and pretending his position was consistent, as well as blaming the big bad Republicans for his flip-flop. This further informed us all (all who were paying attention, that is) of Obama’s duplicitous ways.

The Palmer incident had occurred in 1995-1996, and was described in a lengthy article in the Chicago Tribune in April of 2007, so anyone unfamiliar with it can’t say they weren’t warned. And Obama’s campaign finance shenanigans occurred in June of 2008, plenty early in the game. At the time I wrote:

But Obama’s been running as the business-as-unusual candidate, not just another hypocritical, lying pol who, as Obama’s former mentor the Rev. Wright said, “does what politicians do.” And yet as soon as Obama saw that the money flowing his way was far beyond what he could get if he adhered to his agreement, he reneged.

It’s not just that he reneged, either”“it’s how he reneged. Who’s to blame, according to Obama? Why, John McCain and the nasty Republicans, that’s who. James Joyner writes that this charge of Obama’s does take “a bit of gall.” I’d say it takes substantially more than a bit, as well as a heavy dose of the whining, blaming, audacity in which the holier-than-thou Obama tends to specialize…

Obama is no doubt betting that few people will know, remember, or care what a hypocrite he looks like at the moment, because now he’s got the money (and the control of it, unlike the RNC funds McCain will have some access to) to mount an unmatchable media blitz of ads from now till November. It just might work; he’s wasting no time…

Trust is an interesting phenomenon. For whatever reason, Obama’s supporters believed in him despite evidence that they should not. But some people did not believe in him during the 2008 campaign, and those people were not all Republicans or conservatives by any means. I knew many Democrats—mostly Hillary supporters, it turns out—who had a very uneasy feeling about him and his veracity, from watching the way she was treated. But I know other Democrats who thought Obama was practically the Second Coming. Some of them are now disillusioned, and like Taibbi have grown tired of the sound of his voice. But some still think he’s a straight-shooting and well-meaning man up against terrible odds.

What makes the difference? Who are the true believers and who the ones who will lapse? I don’t know. Some of the former may just be so doctrinaire they’re following the program, but most of my friends are not that kind of political animal. Some of it may have to do with how much attention people are paying. Some of it may be related to how credulous an individual might be, or how naive. And some may reflect just how difficult it can be to change one’s mind, even in the face of strong evidence.

[ADDENDUM: Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds notes that the press has become slightly less deferential to Obama lately. He links to this WaPo piece on Obama’s recent statement about having passed “the biggest middle-class tax cut in history,” a claim that earned Obama a four-Pinocchio rating from the WaPo for duplicity.]

Obama may not be dumb…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but Russ Smith sure is. In an article entitled, “Is Barack Obama Dumb?” he writes [emphasis mine]:

There are [the] usual caveats: Of course Obama isn’t illiterate or Bush-dumb because as Jesse Louis Jackson once said, “God doesn’t make junk,” and the intelligence-challenged just aren’t allowed near Harvard, much less become editor of that university’s Law Review.

But George W. Bush—the very model of “Bush-dumb”—was not only allowed near Harvard, he graduated from its Business School. What’s more, unlike Barack Obama, Bush is a graduate of both Harvard and Yale, having gotten his undergraduate degree from Harvard’s traditional rival Ivy.

How did the highly intelligent Russ Smith manage to miss those facts? Or has he forgotten them? Or does he think they don’t matter because, after all, Bush is Bush and everyone knows he’s stupid no matter where he went to school, whereas Obama’s schooling proves his own intellectual mettle? Or does Smith think the worth of Bush’s degrees is obviously negated by the fact that he had family connections, and yet the role of affirmative action in Obama’s academic career (which Obama himself has acknowledged) can be safely ignored?

Sperm donors may win biological sweepstakes

The New Neo Posted on by

For all of humankind’s history, men have been rivals for the favors of women, and a huge part of that competition (at least in the biological sense) has been to foster the birth and survival of their own offspring. If you believe in natural selection—and I do—that struggle for progeny has favored the growth of certain characteristics in men, ones that are more likely to lead to what we might euphemistically and archaically call the spreading of their seed.

Now a relatively new phenomenon, artificial insemination by sperm donor, may end up skewing the situation at least a little bit (more if current trends continue). At the very least, it has led to some potential problems for the offspring involved. The strange fact is that there are no legal limits in the US on the number of women who can be impregnated by one donor, and some donors have racked up some rather high numbers.

This article mentions one donor who is known to have been the biological father of 150 living children. That’s a sobering thought, especially when you consider that the donor does not know who his children are and has nothing whatsoever to do with them. And for the children themselves it poses some conundrums, not the least of which is that they face a possibility of meeting their own half-siblings and falling in love with and even marrying and having children with them, without knowing they are so closely related to their own spouses.

One way to reduce this problem is to legally limit the number of children a sperm donor can father. But this would only affect the future; it’s of no assistance to the children who are already alive. Some of them have already been helped by the establishment of donor registries to connect donor families. This has had the added benefit of sharing information about inherited diseases and the like. It also has a strange but understandable side-effect:

Today there are 150 children, all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way. “It’s wild when we see them all together ”” they all look alike,” said Ms. Daily, 48, a social worker in the Washington area who sometimes vacations with other families in her son’s group.

Ah brave new world, that has such people in it!