Moiseyev Partisans

The New Neo Posted on by

I recall a performance of the Moiseyev Dance Company’s “Partisans” as the single most exciting theatrical experience of my life. It occurred back when I was a little kid and the company was on its very first visit here.

A couple of years ago when I searched YouTube for a video of the dance, which is the venerable Moiseyev’s signature piece, it was—alas!—nowhere to be found. So imagine my thrill recently when I discovered it had subsequently appeared.

However, as I watched, I would have thrown something at the screen had it not been my own computer I’d be damaging. A mere shadow of what it should be, too much of the time it’s either shot from too far away or too close. The fabulous ending, where each couple in turn goes from casual trot to full speed ahead in an instant (you’ll see what I mean if you watch), is ruined by focusing on closeups of the wrong couples at the wrong time, missing the moment of transition for most of them.

And yet, and yet…enough remains of the magic for me to post this video for those of you who’ve never seen it. Yes, it’s very hokey and corny and gimmicky. Yes, it’s about the USSR’s WWII partisans, celebrating the glory of the brave Russians and all that jazz. But what a fabulous illusion it presented (especially as a child)—an illusion far more magical in the theater than in this video. It seemed impossible that dancers could glide across the stage and look as though they were on conveyor belts or roller skates, and yet be creating the effect with nothing but their bodies and their own two feet.

Oh, and as a child, it was altogether thrilling when one of the dancers was suddenly revealed—as her hat fell off, seemingly accidentally, at a well-timed moment, as in this video—to be a woman! I seem to recall in the olden days the dancer had long flowing red hair, which was far more effective. But no matter.

Take a look:

I’ve been having…

The New Neo Posted on by

…connectivity problems. This is the first time I’ve been online today. So here are a few links; better late than never:

—Bookworm has some reflections for the first night of Passover, which is this evening.

—Paul Krugman says hey, let’s not be civil any more. Actually, I wasn’t aware he’d been civil for a long, long, time.

Krugman first came to my attention even before I was a blogger, back when I was smack in the middle of my political change. It was this 2003 incident involving Krugman and Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad that made me realize how deeply duplicitous and self-serving Krugman had become.

There, is that uncivil enough? Hope so. But maybe not.

—Today was Patriot’s Day and marathon day in Boston. The weather was ideal, and winner Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya set a world record, except that he didn’t, because the Boston course doesn’t qualify.

I don’t know about you, but I simply cannot fathom how any human being can run 26 miles in 2 hours 3 minutes and 2 seconds. Or even in double that time. Or run it at all. What’s more, 53-year-old former champ Joan Benoit Samuelson (how time flies) came in a very respectable 45th in the women’s field. Now there’s a woman with persistence and grit.

Libya: the decline of NATO

The New Neo Posted on by

Steven Metz wonders whether Libya marks the end of NATO’s effectiveness. What he describes is a military action by committee, which doesn’t make sense as a way to fight even a limited war.

But what he fails to address is the fact that Libya was an ill-thought-out venture from the start. To enter a war knowing hardly anything about the forces you are supporting seems, to put it bluntly, mad. And yet that appears to be what NATO has done.

When the war began, one of the first question I asked was, “who are the rebels?” This was hardly a mark of some special brilliance of mine, but merely an obvious question—much like “but why is the emperor not wearing clothes?” I have yet to see an answer that reflects well on NATO, or really much of an answer at all.

That a situation such as this one could exist this late in the game is disgraceful:

Too little is known about Libya’s rebels and they remain too fragmented for the United States to get seriously involved in organizing or training them, let alone arming them, U.S. and European officials say…But the more the intelligence agencies learn about rebel forces, the more they appear to be hopelessly disorganized and incapable of coalescing in the foreseeable future…The realistic outlook, U.S. and European officials said, is for an indefinite stalemate between the rebels — supported by NATO air power — and Gaddafi’s forces…Other U.S. officials said the rebels have no sense of a unifying identity or any critical mass beyond Benghazi, lacking an effective structure that would be a prerequisite for providing training, money or sophisticated weapons.

Washington also has been reluctant to side with the rebels due to concerns that Islamic extremists might be among them, although there is debate here about the extent of the militant involvement in the Libyan uprising.

The head of U.S. Africa Command said it was the stated intent of al Qaeda’s affiliate in the area, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), to aid Libya’s opposition.

Harebrained.

It’s even possible that it’s best, in the end, that NATO isn’t being so effective in Libya, with “rebels” like these.

The suprise is not that Obama’s popularity is so low…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it’s that it’s still so high.

But the latest poll shows further erosion among a group he must win in order to have a second term: independents. His support among them is only 35%.

The only problem for Republicans is a fairly large one, I’m afraid: they need to find a strong candidate. A strong candidate will defeat Obama and a weak one will fail—that much seems fairly obvious and fairly certain, at least barring unforeseen reversals.

All the strong horses have decided not to enter the race, however. So far. And that may be the tragedy of the election of 2012. Who has the respect of the American people? Obama? Not really. The sorry field of Republican contenders, including the almost-comic Trump? Hardly. Congress? Don’t make me laugh.

I’m not one to think we should idealize and glorify our leaders. Au contraire. But a little bit of respect would be nice. Trouble is they’ve got to earn it, and very few have.

If the GOP was really surprised by the tone of Obama’s attack…

The New Neo Posted on by

…then they’re even stupider than I thought.

This report indicates that Paul Ryan and the other Republicans who were specifically invited to the president’s speech and given seats of honor at their own verbal excoriation were surprised by its harsh partisan tone. If true, this indicates to me that they have no idea who they’re dealing with. They’re bringing a feather to a knife fight.

Obama: again with the orator

The New Neo Posted on by

I am truly puzzled.

In this article by economist Laurence Kotlikoff, he criticizes Obama’s budget speech although he’s an Obama supporter. He thinks Obama offered no proposals of his own, and he thinks Paul Ryan’s approach to Medicare is pretty good.

That’s not the puzzling part, although it’s rare for an Obama-supporter to be fair enough to say anything good about Ryan. No, the really puzzling part for me was this:

I voted for and even campaigned for the president, and my jaw drops every time I hear him speak. But eloquence is no substitute for substance. We need real leadership now, not after the next election.

I read that paragraph several times in a vain attempt to parse it. The last sentence was no problem; it was the first that made my jaw drop. Whatever verbal spell it is that Obama casts—one that I seem to have always been immune to—this man is still at least partially under it.

No doubt he’s not alone.

[NOTE: Kotlikoff may not be alone, but more of America seems to be slowly emerging from the spell, if this new poll is any indication.]

[ADDENDUM: Unlike Kotlikoff, fellow economist Paul Krugman is busy excoriating Ryan and lauding the glorious specificity of Obama’s budget proposal. Noel Sheppard asks “whaaaa??”]

Obama, birthers, and horns

The New Neo Posted on by

This response of Obama’s to a Stephanopoulos question indicates that he knows a good opportunity for ridicule of birthers when he hears one:

I think a problem for [birther-candidates such as Trump] when they want to actually run in a general election where most people feel pretty confident the President was born where he says he was, in Hawaii. He– he doesn’t have horns”¦we’re not really worrying about conspiracy theories or– or birth certificates…

I think there are two interesting things about this statement. The first is Obama’s use of the third person to describe himself. Not sure what it means, but it’s a bit odd, especially for Obama, who usually seems to like to say “I.”

The second is the segue into the charge about having horns.

What did he mean? It may have been a reference to his not being the Antichrist—after all, that Biblical figure, according to prophecy, will have ten horns (it will also have a few other attributes, such as seven heads and ten diadems on the horns, and will be allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months rather than the forty-eight Obama’s in for in his first term).

The horn thing also is a conventional way of referring to the devil. But yet another reference would be to being Jewish: it was long a common misconception, based partly on a Bible passage and Michelangelo’s statue of Moses, that Jews have horns. So is Obama hinting that he might be Jewish? Birthers, take note.

And speaking of Jews with horns…

Mubarak & Sons…

The New Neo Posted on by

…are now in prison (sons) and hospital detention (father).

I can’t help but think that the message received by dictators around the world is that it’s much better to be a US enemy than a US friend.

Here’s more about what might be going on in Egypt:

The arrest of Mr Mubarak has been a key demand of protesters. Many analysts believe the latest moves against the Mubarak family are a politicised bid to mollify angry demonstrators, who have recently shifted their attention to the titular head of the military, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, a long-serving Mubarak-era minister.

”I seriously doubt that after all this the Mubaraks will be released,” said Ragia Omran, a human rights lawyer and pro-change activist. ”There’s been a lot of anger in the Egyptian street over the demands of the revolution not being met, and the ruling generals have arrested the Mubaraks in an effort to calm the people. To let them go now would be political suicide.”

It will be interesting to see how the new government shapes up in terms of revenge against the former regime. Will there be a Reign of Terror? Or amnesty? Or something in-between?

Obama’s budget speech

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t watch Obma’s speech last night. Fortunately, I was busy doing other—and more pleasant—things.

But from the reports I see, I don’t think anyone was pleased with it, left or right, with the exception of a few of the president’s most partisan shills. Joe Biden used it as an opportunity to get some shuteye. Clive Crook thinks Obama’s speech was a pitiful waste of breath.

In his speech, Obama abandoned any temporary pretense of bipartisan rhetoric and indulged in his tried-and-true Bush/Republicans bashing mixed with a liberal helping of class warfare. Perry Bacon at the WaPo certainly noticed the intense partisanship:

In the speech, he used as many words to attack the GOP proposal as to lay out his own…

Even as he savaged the GOP proposal, Obama was less than specific about his own. He did not say exactly how he would reform how corporations are taxed, what he would do to achieve a simpler tax system or which defense programs he would cut. On Social Security, he not only didn’t announce a proposal but would not say whether one was likely to be included in the final legislation.

And Obama, who rarely personally interjected himself into the negotiations on the federal budget over the past two weeks, seems prepared to play a similar role on the deficit: He announced that a group of 16 members of Congress and Vice President Biden would negotiate over the legislation, allowing the president to remain out of the day-to-day politicking on the issue.

This is Obama’s m.o. as we have come to know it, from the time of his campaign for president: blame the Republicans and distort and demonize their stand, then remain vague about what you’re proposing as an alternative. As Fred Barnes puts it, Obama didn’t rise to the occasion; he sank.

That doesn’t mean that at the end of the day he won’t come out ahead in this series of negotiations. I don’t think most people listened to the speech, but many more will pay attention to the final result, or at least their perception of the final result. Obama is counting on Republicans being scattered and weakened by fighting among themselves . And he may indeed be correct on that score.

[NOTE: Obama also indulged in another of his favorite pastimes, dissing those present at the speech without their being able to answer back. Talk about captive audiences! In earlier speeches it was the conservative Supreme Court justices; this time it was Rep. Paul Ryan. As Jim Geraghty points out:

Perhaps one of the reasons Obama loves the setting of the grandiose national address is that there is rarely a rebuttal. Any interruption to dispute the facts ”” like, say, Rep. Joe Wilson yelling out, “You LIE!” during an address to Congress ”” comes across as rude to the office of the presidency. The Supreme Court is completely unused to being criticized to their faces; members of Congress are used to the back-and-forth of debates on the floor in which every accusation and assertion can be rebutted and cross-examined.

I’m reminded of Saul Alinsky’s Third Rule: Wherever possible, go outside of the experience of your enemy.

Obama is, among other things, a petty bully and a demagogue who seems to get off on inviting his enemies to a front seat (literally) and then making them squirm.

And here, in case you want it, is a more sober analysis of the Ryan plan.]

Phone home: not!

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently I saw a depressing article in the NY Times about the decline of the telephone conversation. And the comments were even sadder.

It seems the phone is going the way of the dodo and the calling card. People would rather text. People don’t have time to chat. People see it as an intrusion. People want to get to the point. People have better things to do.

Like what? Are most people so engaged in earth-shaking activities that time out for a little conversation is so onerous? Or are people just immersing themselves more and more in the safety of solitary technology, which eliminates all messy demands from others and gives us more drastic control of input and output?

I confess that, although I certainly spend more than average time on a computer, I love the contact of the phone and use it regularly. Always have. I have a lot of friends and loved ones who are far away. I have a great many local friends who are busy and for whom the phone is the best way to communicate. Even though I’m a writer, I prefer to supplement email contact with the human voice, which conveys feeling and tone and jokes and interactions in real time.

And (gasp!) I even prefer face-to-face contact over telephones. That’s just the sort of dinosaur I am.

[NOTE: I’ve also noticed that business contacts on the phone are becoming stranger and more difficult. I’m not talking just about the usual wait for the message (“press 1 if you would like to speak to…”) to run through its laborious paces, but the contact itself once you get to speak to someone. The person on the other end—be he/she computer techie or salesperson or airline information agent—increasingly seems vaguely hostile and irritated right from the start.

All too often, “customer service” has now been relegated to what is almost a battle, even for one’s request to be understood, much less answered. And I’m not just talking about those times when the person on the other end hails from Mumbai, either. I’ve noticed that, in general, the agent can’t seem to respond to a question or a situation of any complexity whatsoever.

No doubt they’d rather be texting.]