Obama the feisty

The New Neo Posted on by

This odd piece by John Dickerson in Slate seems to be saying that:

(1) Obama has returned to campaign mode.

(3) Obama has become feisty again.

(2) Obama has fastened on the argument “those mean old do-nothing Republicans are to blame for any problems I’ve had.”

(4) The above three will energize the base.

The problem is that:

(1) Obama has never really left campaign mode.

(2) Ditto with the feistiness, at least in his rhetoric.

(3) Obama’s constant song has been to blame the Republicans (plus Bush and Cheney) for all his faults.

(4) Even a great many Democrats are heartily sick of the first three above. Plus, none of these approaches is likely to convert a single Independent or Republican to the other side in 2010.

The problem with Obama and the Democrats this year is not what they haven’t done, it’s what they have. And nothing Obama can say—and certainly not these tired devices—is likely to make a particle of difference.

[ADDENDUM: And this approach doesn’t show a whole lot of promise either. Highlighting the Obama’s family’s personal economic troubles? Pul-eeze.]

Do we talk about Obama like we talk about dogs?

The New Neo Posted on by

I dunno; how do we talk about dogs? What did Obama mean when he said:

Some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time and they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog.

I used to have a fluffy little white dog, a cockerpoo. He lived to be fifteen, and he was a real sweetheart. When I talked about him, this is the kind of thing I said: “such a good dog,” “so friendly,” and “not too barky for a small dog.” And in fact, most of the talk I’ve ever heard about dogs has been on the order of: “dogs are better than people; they give you unconditional love.” Nice stuff.

People tend to love their dogs.

But somehow I don’t think that’s the sort of talk Obama meant. Obama’s odd phrase is another off-the-cuff statement of his that reveals a certain awkwardness with the vernacular. Did he mean “treat me like a dog?” At least that’s an expression we can recognize.

His remark reminds me somewhat of Richard Nixon, who famously said to the press in 1962 after his failed run for the governorship of California, “You won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around any more”—the candidate as despised object and self-pitying victim.

It’s unlikely that Obama was trying to emulate Nixon, however. More likely Clinton, whose homey folksy metaphor “I’ll be with you till the last dog dies” and second place finish during the New Hampshire 1992 primary helped earn him the sobriquet “the comeback kid.” Obama wouldn’t mind a bit of a comeback himself right now.

But no, it’s not Clintonesque. I think the original source has actually been located, and it’s Jimi Hendrix. And if you don’t believe me, listen up at 0:27:

Jackie Evancho: the voice

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t ordinarily watch “America’s Got Talent.” But I’ve heard of the 10-year-old singing phenom on the show, Jackie Evancho.

She’s a tiny girl who’s not hit puberty yet, with a voice both beautiful and surpassingly strange. What would be lovely, but not all that remarkable, coming out of an adult, is freakish emanating from a child. If there was a disconnect listening to Susan Boyle because her powerful and self-assured singing voice contrasted oddly with her awkward social personality, at least it was a grownup voice emerging from a grownup body. With Evancho, it’s not. Eerily, a grownup voice is emanating from a child (and no, she’s not lip-synching):

What interests me most is the question: how does she do it? This is the only article I’ve found so far that goes into the physiology and technique behind what’s happening:

The difference between Evancho and fellow Pittsburgher Christina Aguilera is how they produce their sound. A pop voice is “like revving a motorcycle,” says Anne Tomlinson, music director of the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus. “The sound is produced right on the larynx. In bel canto, which is actually the technique opera singers use, the breath is used to support the voice like water supports a boat.”…

“[The voice] needs to be able to function as it is and at the stage of development it’s at,” says Mike McCarthy. As music director at the National Cathedral in Washington, one of McCarthy’s main responsibilities is training the child sopranos to sing in the traditional Anglican men and boys choir. “There is a question of the development of the voice in its more natural form, and by natural I don’t mean like an innocent, sort of treble white ”” I just mean as it matures, it doesn’t try to sound too old, doesn’t try to imitate the sound of an older singer.”…

Carol Tingle is a Los Angeles-area voice teacher who has been instructing private students since 1966. “Technically what’s she’s doing is lowering her larynx to get that opera sound. Singers are incredible imitators of sound. It wouldn’t surprise me if she hasn’t listened to many opera singers, so what she’d be able to do is adjust the larynx and imitate the sound she is hearing either recording or by her coach.”

All children imitate their heroes, whether it’s basketball or singing. A good teacher will make sure pupils channel that enthusiasm into finding their own style. In Evancho’s case, her teacher has an additional challenge: safeguarding that voice.

Puberty may pose a challenge to Evancho as well, as it often does to child singers. Will it change her voice for the worse, or the better? She probably has at least a few years ahead of her, though, to earn the big bucks before it happens. She seems to be a nice, unspoiled kid; let’s hope success is kind to both her psyche and her voice. It will almost undoubtedly be kind to her pocketbook.

A Day for Labor

The New Neo Posted on by

Labor Day is the bookend on the opposite end of summer from its holiday beginning, Memorial Day.

July Fourth is its early peak, with the promise of many long light-filled days ahead. But Labor Day is summer’s last gasp, the moment I dreaded as a child because it marked the finish of vacation and the start of the school year. Spiffy new clothes, a shiny bookbag, freshly sharpened pencils, and the promise of beautiful autumn leaves’ arrival were nice. But they couldn’t make up for the fact that a new school year was beginning. Where oh where had the summer gone?

Now let’s celebrate the fact that we don’t have to worry about that anymore—except, perhaps, for the teachers among you.

As for politics—Obama will celebrate the holiday by speaking at a union function in Milwaukee. He’s one of the most union-friendly presidents in history, so at least the crowd will know he’s sincere. Soon, as part of a new economic proposal, he will ask for $50 billion dollars to improve public infrastructure.

But wait a minute—didn’t we just do something like that as part of the hated stimulus bill? Is this not a perfect example of sending good money after bad? Does Obama really think that members of Congress running for re-election are going to be eager to vote yea on this one? And most importantly, does he not realize that the temporary jobs it will create are not what the nation needs most—-that people want government to stop its anti-business stance and to create a climate that will encourage the private sector to hire more permanently?

And Obama’s anemic proposal for a $100 million tax credit for businesses that develop new technologies will hardly do the trick, either. Obama’s focus has been so profoundly off, his emphasis so transparently wrong, his delay in offering any sort of meaningful relief so protracted in the face of mounting crises, that Americans do not trust him—and rightly so—whether they think him a fool, a knave, or both.

[ADDENDUM: Hey folks—I forgot to wish you a Happy Labor Day! So consider it wished.]

[ADDENDUM II: The tax credit is for $100 billion; not so anemic. But still not inclined to do the trick, for the aforementioned reasons.]

Bragging on HCR

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not really surprising that Blue Dog Democrats who voted against HCR in the House are bragging on that fact in their 2010 campaign ads. They’re from relatively conservative districts, and it makes sense that they would point up their opposition.

What’s more surprising is that no Democrat, even those in liberal districts, is bragging on having voted for the bill:

…[P]arty officials in Washington can’t identify a single House member who’s running an ad boasting of a “yes” vote ”” despite the fact that 219 House Democrats voted in favor of final passage in March.

One Democratic strategist said it would be “political malfeasance” to run such an ad now.

Democrats have taken that advice to heart; it appears that no Democratic incumbent ”” in the House or in the Senate ”” has run a pro-reform TV ad since April, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ran one.

And President Obama? Democratic candidates are saying, “Who? Never heard of him.”

And now Fareed Zakaria…

The New Neo Posted on by

…seems to have lost his ability to reason.

The argument he offers in his Newsweek column about 9/11 and the US reaction to it is the equivalent of saying that, since the pneumonia patient recovered after getting the antibiotics, the treatment wasn’t necessary. Has Zakaria ever heard of the principle of cause and effect?

There is no way to prove what would have happened post-9/11 in the absence of the Bush administration’s reaction. Of course, it’s possible that the response had nothing to do with the result: that we would have been completely safe without it, and that al Qaeda, after its enormous political and psychological success in pulling off the largest terrorist attack ever, in the most flamboyant way possible, and on US soil, would have just slunk off and gone quietly into the night, satisfied with the blood and suffering it had extracted.

If Zakaria believes that, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell him.

[NOTE: Patterico agrees, with an analogy to a similar brain glitch in the NY Times Seems there’s a lot of that going around.]

Young people and unemployment

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday on this comments thread there was a smattering of schadenfreude towards young people who voted for Obama and are now out of work.

A number of readers felt that the high rates of unemployment among the young is a case of just desserts: serves them right. And although I want a great many young people to learn the lesson that voting for a con man, an empty suit with little or no experience who makes beautiful promises that mean little or nothing, is a bad idea—and that they retain the information for decades to come, so it doesn’t happen again—there’s no joy in my heart about the rest of it.

Perhaps this is because I know too many hard-working young people who have been unable to find jobs or have been laid off from the ones they had and relied on. They weren’t living beyond their means, but right now they’re hurting. Yes, in many cases they can return to stay with parents, but the stress this will cause on everyone can be huge, and in some cases they have become parents themselves.

As for blame, I can’t find it in my heart to castigate them. I understand far better why and how a young person could have been fooled by Obama than an older one, who has no excuse. This is especially true for very new voters, aged 18 (I happen to think the voting age should have been kept at 21), or even those in their twenties.

What do they know of economic reversals? What have they ever seen? And is it their fault if schools didn’t do a good job of teaching them history, or if they were taught it but the words didn’t have much reality for them until they experienced something similar themselves? Grown-up life’s not called “the school of hard knocks” for nothing.

As Churchill is reported to have said (although apparently, like so many quotes, it is a suspect attribution), “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” Young people can be forgiven for having heart, for wanting to do good, and for being fooled by a good-looking grifter who appeals to that heart. But having their hearts broken is how young people can come to grow up.

Paul Krugman…

The New Neo Posted on by

…appears to finally have gone stark raving mad.

He thinks Obama has erred in following:

…a strategy of playing it safe: never put forward proposals that might fail to pass, avoid highlighting the philosophical differences between the parties.

Has Krugman been paying any attention at all? For example, did he notice how many promises and deals had to be made, and how the usual procedures were passed over and avoided, in passing HCR, all because the bill was so radical there was a high probability that it would be defeated even with such strong Democrat majorities in both houses?

Does he understand that other bills such as cap and trade had to ultimately be abandoned because there was no support for such an extreme anti-business agenda?

Does he have any notion that the American people are leaning Republican now in good part because the actions of the Obama administration (and Pelosi and Reid) in advancing legislation with such radical goals has accomplished just what he said they failed to do: highlight the philosophical differences between the parties?

Krugman’s error here is to ignore basic political reality. He seems to have become delusional: what he wants Obama to have done is what Obama should have done, and that’s that.