Choices, choices

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was a kid, things were simpler. A lot simpler.

You need sneakers? We’ve got some nice Keds for you. One style, in white. And maybe, if we’re feeling really adventurous, we might get in some blue or red ones, just for fun.

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Telephones? There’s the solid black dial up, very reliable. Plug it in and you’re good to go. AT&T will provide the service, one size fits all.

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Expecting a phone call, a really important one? Stay put, then. Because otherwise the phone will just ring and ring, you won’t be there, and the caller might give up forever, and you’ll never even know he called.

TV? Do you want the tiny screen or the small screen? It’s black and white. And then a few years later you get the excitement of color. The signal just comes, for free. No choices there, except the channels: NBC, CBS, ABC, and then a few local stations (9 and 11 and 13 in New York City).

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Want to watch a TV show? Well, you better be home, or at the house of a friend with a TV, cause if not you’re out of luck. And if you miss the moment you’ll miss it forever; reruns and You Tube weren’t even a gleam in somebody’s eye.

Want to take a trip? Get on the highway, which might have only two lanes. Interstates are few and far between. But gas costs 25 cents a gallon, and cheaper in New Jersey.

Or call a travel agent and they’ll book you a flight. The fare to fly to a particular city on a certain airline won’t vary much no matter what day you want to go. You’ll get a ticket you can hold in your hand. And you should probably get dressed up a bit, because it’s extra special.

Want to rent a car when you arrive? There’s Hertz and Avis. For that matter—want to buy a car? There’s Chrysler, Ford, and GM, the big cars and the bigger cars. My father would call the dealer every two years and order a new Chrysler sight unseen. The only real question was what color. In my father’s case it was always dark; in my mother’s, light (a Plymouth, blue or white).

Fast forward to today (and it did go awfully fast, didn’t it?). So many choices, so little time! Or maybe there’s so little time because there are so many choices.

Obama’s oil spill response should come as no surprise

The New Neo Posted on by

Peggy Noonan is deeply disappointed in President Obama’s response to the oil spill:

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They’re in one reality, he’s in another.

Noonan, who liked Obama during the campaign, seems not to have noticed many of the realities about him that were amply demonstrated long before his inauguration. And she still seems to thinks Obama more fool than knave.

I beg to differ, of course—I believe he is a combination of both. And Jules Crittenden nails it in his response to the Noonan column:

The big surprise with the current president is not so much that he is incompetent, inexperienced and divisive, but the extent to which he is all of those things, and the extent to which anyone is surprised. It’s not like there weren’t enough warning signs on the way in, all of which were summarily dismissed.

The Sestak story hasn’t gone away

The New Neo Posted on by

It may be that only political junkies are following it so far, but the Sestak flap has potential to grow, depending on what facts emerge as time goes on. Will the story get so dicey and spicey that the press cannot or will not ignore it? Can the administration’s stonewalling continue successfully?

In the meantime, we have the emergence of other players: Sestak’s brother, who is his campaign lawyer and has now talked to the White House (perhaps to get their stories on the same page?); and Bill Clinton, whom the Obama administration asked to talk to Sestak and ascertain how serious he was about his Senate challenge and whether he might be interested in considering an alternative career path.

My favorite quote from Sestak on the entire matter so far is this one:

Sestak declined to say whether the alleged job offer was inappropriate and defended Obama’s integrity. “I think the president’s a pretty legitimate, you know, person,” he said.

Jonathan Adler at Volokh’s offers the text of the relevant law that may have been violated. He also opines that whomever made the offer to Sestak may not have even known he/she was violating a law.

That’s irrelevant if true, although I’m not at all sure that’s true—Chicago rules and all that But my guess is that, when Sestak first made the offhand statement that the job had been offered to him by the administration, he was unaware of the potentially radioactive nature of the charges. Now he’s gotten caught up in them and can’t retreat without looking like a liar and a fool.

Korea heating up

The New Neo Posted on by

In the flurry of all the current domestic news, and the crisis involving the economies of Europe, it’s easy to ignore the mess going on between the two Koreas.

But we shouldn’t. The North’s attack on the South’s warship Cheonan in South Korean waters killed forty-six South Korean sailors and sent shockwaves through the area. It’s not just the loss of life, but the loss of faith in a policy South Korea adopted long ago and had hope would help damp down the North’s aggressive tendencies. It seems that the Cheonan attack has afforded South Korea’s president a rude and unwelcome awakening:

As President Lee Myung Bak grimly observed on Monday, the South has “always tolerated North Korea’s brutality” for the sake of peace, to the point of “forgetting the reality that the nation faces the most belligerent regime in the world”.

No longer, he said: this time, Pyongyang must be made to pay. To Western ears, what President Lee actually announced may not sound all that draconian: a freeze on trade, banning all North Korean shipping from the South’s territorial waters, the effective sealing of the frontier and, a literal blast from the past, the decision to resume belting out propaganda across the demilitarised zone…

Yet some of these measures will hurt. The trade freeze that President Lee announced will deprive North Korea of 13 per cent of its GDP…For South Korea to be in the vanguard of a strategy of “proactive deterrence”, instead of tugging at US coat tails urging patience and restraint, is a dramatic volte face.

In other words, South Korea is learning an obvious and ancient lesson that seems increasingly difficult for governments to assimilate in this day and age: being kind to the cruel doesn’t work; you only end up being cruel to the kind. Or, put another way, the scorpion doesn’t change its nature; it will bite you if given the opportunity.

Why is this so hard to learn? Why has wishful thinking increasingly replaced common sense, to our detriment? After the excesses of the first half of the twentieth century—coupled with the new post-WWII fear of atomic war—the world became weary of conflict and activated the age-old dream of a better (kindler, gentler) way. But tyrants see that as laughable weakness, I’m afraid.

Economic sanctions will be tried on North Korea.. But that only works when a dictator cares about his people, and doesn’t have a source of outside support, such as Kim does with China.

The problems with North Korea are not Obama’s fault. No administration has been able to deal effectively with the country. That’s because, IMHO, there is no solution, which is a frightening prospect. Kim’s death has been supposedly imminent for years, but he’s still there and still appears to be in control. What’s more, it’s not at all clear that the chaos that might ensue after his death would be any better than the present situation, depending on who emerges victorious.

However, at least Bush gave the appearance of some toughness, which might have acted as a tiny bit of deterrent to the sort of escalation that is now happening on Obama’s toothless watch. But don’t get me wrong—this sort of crisis has been brewing for a long, long time, and may have been unpreventable.

New England’s best ice cream

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written before about New England’s love affair with ice cream. And now that the weather here is unseasonably but wonderfully warm—summer seems to have arrived, and it’s only May!—the Boston Globe has published this guide to New England’s best.

Supposedly, anyway. What’s Ben and Jerry’s doing there? It’s okay, but you can get it almost anywhere, in a supermarket. Maybe the Globe felt it had to be included because it’s so PC.

I like the flavor variety at Christina’s of Cambridge. Feast your eyes, and then feast your mouth and stomach if you ever happen to be in the neighborhood.

Friendly’s originated in New England. Now that it’s a chain, it doesn’t taste like much. But when I was a child going to camp in the Berkshires, Friendly’s was a wonderful and special treat.

Same for HoJo’s, another New England innovation (see this for my reminiscence). Brigham’s has more or less bitten the dust, but it was the first place I ever heard the New England term “jimmies” used instead of New York’s “sprinkles.” Herrell’s invented (or at the very least, popularized) the mix-in. So noble New England has done its bit for the development and advancement of ice cream.

And I’ve done my time at New England’s ice cream stands over the years. I’m proud to report that I’ve sampled a great many—perhaps more than my share—of the Globe’s recommendations, and can attest to the fact that for the most part they offer a fine selection. Those of you who have been around the New England ice cream circuit might want to vote for your favorite in the Globe’s poll.

The continuing saga of Al Megrahi

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember our friend the Lockerbie bomber, Al Megrahi? The one who got a “get out of jail free” card back in August of 2009 because he only had three months to live, max?

Well, it’s nine months later and Al Megrahi is still among us. Although he’s mostly dropped off the radar screen in the West (a wise decision, given the circumstances), he had a birthday bash back in April.

It seems his return to freedom, friends, and family in Libya has given Al Megrahi a new lease on life. Then again, perhaps his dire prognosis in Scotland was just a reflection of the perils of the UK’s medical system versus the wonderful care he got in the progressive hospitals of Tripoli.

Whatever. We’ll never know, because he’s refusing to release his medical records.

And hey—he’s lived the longest of any prisoner released on compassionate grounds because of terminal illness! Break out the Guinness Book, and break out the Guinness (or should it be the Scotch?)! What’s more, the report claims that, far from being on his deathbed, Al Megrahi’s been working on a documentary TV show.

Will SCOTUS overturn HCR?

The New Neo Posted on by

If Meghan McArdle’s projections are correct, you better hope not.

Maybe it would be better to defund it if possible in 2011, get some intelligent stopgap (is that an oxymoron?) measure in there, and then repeal the earlier bill in 2013 and replace it with one that emphasizes realistic private sector solutions that make sense, knowing that a perfect system can never be designed.

Good luck. What a mess, with no end in sight.

But I think we’re helped in our endeavor by seeing what’s happening to welfare states in Europe right now. The health care solutions offered by the left seem more fiscally dangerous than ever. Will the right step up to the plate? And will the voters give up pie in the sky?

Is the Gulf oil slick seeping towards the White House?

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s the question. And the answer given here is “Maybe. A little bit, anyway:”

…[Coast Guard commander] Allen has repeatedly pointed out that it is BP, not the federal government, that has all the equipment and expertise to deal with the spill. “They’re exhausting every technical means possible to deal with that leak,” he said Monday.

But in the wake of BP’s continued inability to shut down the enormous leak at the deep water well, the Obama administration is getting slammed by those who would normally be seen as allies of the president.

“They’re not tough enough,” Democratic operative and Louisiana native Donna Brazile said Sunday on “This Week.” On the same show, Cokie Roberts, another daughter of the Pelican State, agreed, mocking Obama for naming an investigatory commission: “That is what you do when you really don’t have anything else to do.”…

I’m not at all certain it will end up mattering. Voters who still approve of Obama are so deeply compromised already that they may be unable to change their minds no matter how much he disappoints them. But perhaps the accretion of offenses will add up in the end.

Meanwhile, Obama (whom Rep. Steve Scalise calls “the finger-pointer-in-chief”) blames, blames, blames. In this case, of course, much of the blame of BP appears justified. But some of the blame is Obama’s own. He has refused to open up the alternative of land drilling in places such as ANWR. And his administration failed to properly implement recommendations that would almost certainly have contained the problem. In this last, his presidency is not alone, however; the program was designed in 1994, but has never been put in place.

Once upon a time presidents used to take responsibility for what happened under their watch. The idea was that, even if they weren’t directly responsible, whining and blaming served no purpose and was unpresidential.

That’s the way grownups in charge behaved. And that’s what the public demanded.

Here’s a little nostalgia for you:

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