The deed is done: health care bill passes

The New Neo Posted on by

No surprise here: the House has just passed the bill America doesn’t want. Now we will be treated to a bunch of self-congratulatory speeches, and then the real fight begins in the Senate.

I decided a few days ago that this was going to pass, and earlier today I wrote:

I suspect that Pelosi will manage to wrangle enough compromises and simultaneously threaten enough Blue Dogs that it will squeak by, giving the rest of them cover to vote “nay” once the requisite 218 “yays” are reached.

That appears to be more or less what happened; the final tally was 220 in favor and 215 against.

Before the 2008 election I was very worried about the possibility of a post-election government that would be undivided, with Congress firmly in Democratic control as well as a Democratic president. The American people were angry, and they wanted to show their displeasure for Bush and the Republicans.

Well, they sure showed them, didn’t they? And now the Democrats have shown the people what they think of them. Promises, promises—of transparency, bipartisanship, posting bills 72 hours before voting—all were merely hooks to haul in the gullible. After that, we’ve got promises, schmomises—it’s all about power.

[NOTE: I thought it might be a good idea to reprise part of a post I wrote on October 8, 2008, not long before last year’s election. Here an excerpt:

That brings to mind the sort of thing I’m most concerned about this election””what Democrats (or any one party) can do with power. It’s not so much the possibility of an Obama Presidency””although that would be bad enough””but the possibility of an Obama Presidency plus a Congress so strongly Democratic that it might even be filibuster-proof. That combination could do very serious damage indeed…

We are seeing that tonight, and if this bill does pass the Senate and become the law of the land I fear we will see much more of it, up close and personal. But there’s also this, from the same post:

One possible silver lining is that, if history repeats itself and Democrats get this sort of control again, it would also give them the disadvantage of having to own whatever they might do. Theoretically, at least. We saw in the recent bailout vote that even though Democrats had the majority and didn’t need the Republicans to pass the bill, they tried with some success to pin its initial failure to pass on Republican recalcitrance. But if the Democrat majority becomes even more overwhelming, that approach will become more difficult, and they will be forced to take responsibility for their actions or inactions, having no big bad Republicans or evil Presidents to blame.

The Democrats certainly own this one.]

[ADDENDUM: This is a day late and a dollar short, don’t you think?]

Your Permanent Record Card

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of you who are (like me) of a certain age may well remember the Permanent Record Cards of our youth.

Ah, the fear and trembling inherent in just hearing the threat: if you continue to [fill in the blank with some reprehensible behavior or other, like talking out of turn in class], it will go down on your Permanent Record Card!

And then, of course, your life will hardly be worth living. You will never go to college. You will never get a job. No one will ever love you, especially your parents. You will have to wear that mark of Cain on your forehead and that Scarlet Letter on your chest for life, and all the perfumes of Arabia will not be able to wash away the reeking stench of shame.

So my question is: where is it? You can get hold of your FBI files, and even your KGB and Stasi files, so why not those Permanent Record Cards?

Waiting for the miracle: health care “reform”

The New Neo Posted on by

I’d planned a long post on what’s happening today, as the Pelosi Congress wheels and deals and tries to pass its gargantuan health care reform bill that, if implemented, would radically change this country in ways that promise to be very negative (and if even half of this is true, extremely negative).

I’ve only read bits and pieces of the approximately 2000-page bill. But most of what I’ve read, combined with most analyses of it that I’ve seen, have convinced me that this is—if not the “worst bill ever,” as the Wall Street Journal declared it the other day—then certainly one of the top contenders for that honor.

But really, is there that much more to say at this point? Virtually all of us here have been following this in some detail for a while. Now what we do is wait to see how the vote will go.

I suspect that Pelosi will manage to wrangle enough compromises and simultaneously threaten enough Blue Dogs that it will squeak by, giving the rest of them cover to vote “nay” once the requisite 218 “yays” are reached.

Then we’ll wait some more, while the Senate ponders its own bill, and perhaps stops this monstrous juggernaut and puts a more reasonable plan in place.

So I decided instead to write about waiting. We’re all waiting, and so is Nancy Pelosi. What follows are the lyrics to Leonard Cohen’s “Waiting For the Miracle,” rewritten in her voice (notice how little I had to change to make it fit).

Enjoy it—if you can:

WAITING FOR THE MIRACLE

People, I’ve been waiting,
I’ve been waiting
night and day.
I didn’t see the time,
I waited half my life away.
There were lots of conversations
and for sure I had me some,
but I was waiting
for health care reform,
for the miracle to come

I know you really hate it,
but, you see,
my hands were full.
I know it must have hurt you,
to have heard my load of bull,
to have to stand
beneath my window
with your placards
and your drum,
and me I’m up there waiting
for health care reform,
for the miracle to come.

Ah I don’t believe you’ll like it,
you won’t like the result.
We’ll lie to pass it quickly,
then you’ll watch as we exult.
The leaders say “just trust us,”
but if you did, you’re dumb,
when you’re waiting
for health care reform,
for the miracle to come

Waiting for the miracle,
there’s nothing left to do.
I haven’t been this happy
since the end of World War II.

Nothing left to do
when you know
that you’ve been taken.
Nothing left to do
when you’re begging for a crumb.
Nothing left to do
when you’ve got to go on waiting
waiting for the miracle to come.

And now, if you want to wash that bad taste out of your mouths, here’s the original:

Please note the new Amazon widgets

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I’m placing this at the top of the blog for a day or two more, just for those who haven’t seen it yet. Then it will be allowed to fall back down on the page and out of sight. But the wonderful widgets will remain.]

The Amazon connection is now working properly. So go right ahead if you so desire and use the click-throughs here, which you may note I’ve changed and expanded.

I actually had a lot of fun assembling the Amazon widgets you see on the right sidebar, All three of them (count ’em, three!) can be used to click through to Amazon and place an order. Anything you buy there (not just my recommendations) will give me four cents for every dollar you spend—minus a few purchases such as Kindle books, or things you had already placed in your cart.

I’ve spaced the Amazon boxes out at regular intervals on the sidebar, so you will need to scroll down a bit to see all three. The topmost one is for book recommendations. It’s stationary and has a second page you can click on. The second and third* are for music and videos, respectively. Both of those scroll automatically and slowly, although each has a pause button on top. They will also temporarily stop moving if you place the cursor over a selection to view the title and price. Pretty nifty, I think, although a bit busy

The reason I’m calling your attention to all of this is that I’m curious to get some feedback on whether you think all the bells and whistles are a plus, a minus, or neutral. For instance, do the widgets affect your loading speed? Do you find the movement of the latter two attractive or distracting (or neither)?

In other words, what do you think? I plan to change the recommended selections now and then, but I can tweak them in a host of other ways.

*[NOTE: On my lovely Mac, I’ve just noticed that on Safari the two scrolling widgets don’t display consistently; sometimes yes, sometimes no. But they do fine on Firefox. All you MacLovers out there, is that true for you?]

Why was Hasan still in the military?

The New Neo Posted on by

Michelle Malkin has a good round-up of articles about Hasan and the Fort Hood shooting, especially as Islam relates to the event.

Short version: it does. And no, not all Moslems are terrorists, or even the majority. But yes, Islam is a religion that tends to foster and promote these sorts of acts, and with a history of proselytizing through armed conflict.

But what I’m wondering is this: why, with the huge number of red flags raised by Hasan’s prior behavior and remarks (supporting jihadist suicide bombers, for example), was Hasan still in the military? Why was he about to be posted to a war zone, as well? Why was he still practicing psychiatry? I’d like to know more about what attempts were made by the military to investigate him, what the findings were, and why nothing was done.

I realize that hindsight is 20/20. But we are learning things about this man that were already known to the military prior to the shooting, things that common sense dictates should have caused more of a reaction. I’m not putting the main responsibility for the deaths on the military; that responsibility is Hasan’s alone. But the sad reality is that, if we’re going to have Moslems in the service—and of course we are—we cannot let political correctness stand in the way of awareness of the possible dangers involed and appropriate preventative reaction when warranted.

[ADDENDUM: Ed Morrisey asks the exact same question.]

Obama the cool morphs into Obama the cold

The New Neo Posted on by

In discussions on this blog and others about the Fort Hood shooting, quite a few people have noted Obama’s lack of appropriate affect in his remarks right afterwards, as well as in his introduction to those remarks (a light-hearted “shout out” to certain members of the audience, for example).

Here’s a description of the latter:

But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.” Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?

Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned.

I didn’t see or hear the banter, but I did hear his official remarks. I say “hear” because I was in my car at the time and missed the video. Nevertheless, even without the oddness of the introduction, I found his tone strange. It’s hard to describe, but the best I can do is to call it inappropriately flat.

I’m not expecting a president to emote; they all don’t sound like Reagan, who was, after all, an actor. But I cannot escape the impression that there is something missing in the emotional department with Obama. I don’t think this extends to all parts of his personal life (for example, he seems to be a good and loving father). But I feel a coldness in him that is fairly global, a chill that goes pretty deep.

I try to be honest with myself and ask whether it’s because I don’t like his policies that I view him as a cold man, and the answer is no, as best I can tell. In fact, there’s nothing that precludes emotional intensity in an opponent (“the worst are full of passionate intensity“). Take a look at Hitler’s speeches and you’ll see a frightening amount of it, for example.

I think Peggy Noonan nailed it best. She was an early Obama admirer, remember, and in some ways still is. But back in September she wrote this WSJ piece, in which she observed:

I watched with great interest much of Teddy Kennedy’s wake and funeral, and saw in a clearer way than I had in the past a big cultural difference between the elites of the two parties, or rather the Democratic and Republican establishments. Pretty much the entire Democratic establishment was at the Kennedy services, and the level of shown affection among those in the pews and the audience was striking””laughing, hugging, telling stories, admitting weaknesses, weeping. It was Irish, and old-time…

The president walked into the funeral and moved toward the front pews nodding, shaking hands. He hugged Mrs. Kennedy, nodded some more, shook more hands. He was dignified and contained, he was utterly appropriate, and he was cold.

He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he’s disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there’s not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool. One wonders if this will play well with the American people. Long-term it is hard to get people to trust your policies if they think you’re coolly operating on some intellectual or ideological abstractions.

Cold is the dark side of cool. Obama was cold yesterday when speaking about the Fort Hood massacre, but it was not a special case. He is cold in general.

During the campaign this was interpreted by supporters as a good thing; having a cool head in a crisis, for example, and being able to think calmly. It was also an excellent foil to John McCain’s far more emotional style, exemplified in McCain’s suspending his campaign and racing down to Washington to manage the financial crisis, versus Obama’s non-engagement.

But even some of Obama’s previous supporters can’t help but see now that Obama’s coolness is not mere calm; it is an indication that something important is missing. And that should trouble us all.

Please note the new Amazon widgets

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I’m placing this at the top of the blog for a day or two more, just for those who haven’t seen it yet. Then it will be allowed to fall back down on the page and out of sight. But the wonderful widgets will remain.]

The Amazon connection is now working properly. So go right ahead if you so desire and use the click-throughs here, which you may note I’ve changed and expanded.

I actually had a lot of fun assembling the Amazon widgets you see on the right sidebar, All three of them (count ’em, three!) can be used to click through to Amazon and place an order. Anything you buy there (not just my recommendations) will give me four cents for every dollar you spend—minus a few purchases such as Kindle books, or things you had already placed in your cart.

I’ve spaced the Amazon boxes out at regular intervals on the sidebar, so you will need to scroll down a bit to see all three. The topmost one is for book recommendations. It’s stationary and has a second page you can click on. The second and third* are for music and videos, respectively. Both of those scroll automatically and slowly, although each has a pause button on top. They will also temporarily stop moving if you place the cursor over a selection to view the title and price. Pretty nifty, I think, although a bit busy

The reason I’m calling your attention to all of this is that I’m curious to get some feedback on whether you think all the bells and whistles are a plus, a minus, or neutral. For instance, do the widgets affect your loading speed? Do you find the movement of the latter two attractive or distracting (or neither)?

In other words, what do you think? I plan to change the recommended selections now and then, but I can tweak them in a host of other ways.

*[NOTE: On my lovely Mac, I’ve just noticed that on Safari the two scrolling widgets don’t display consistently; sometimes yes, sometimes no. But they do fine on Firefox. All you MacLovers out there, is that true for you?]

Shooting at Fort Hood

The New Neo Posted on by

First impressions (I was busy all day and just started to catch up on the news):

There’s a press conference going on right now, and they just said that the shooter actually is not dead. He is alive, although hospitalized.

It’s shocking to me that that shooter is a psychiatrist, although perhaps it shouldn’t be.

It is not shocking to me (sad to say) that he is apparently a Muslim.

Another very odd tie-in is that the shooter seems to be a graduate of Virginia Tech, a school with a history of an unusual number of violent acts.

They are reporting that the person who wounded the shooter was a female member of the military. Correction: a female civilian officer. She also was first reported to have died, but is hospitalized.

There are reports that the shooter was very vocal about not wanting to be deployed to a war zone, and that he spoke out against the Afghan and Iraq wars. It is also reported in a Fox News interview with someone who knew him in the military that he had hoped that, with the election of Obama, the wars would end, but was disappointed and upset that this had not yet occurred.

Another report: he had gotten previous poor job reviews at Walter Reed. And his entire medical education had been financed by the military; he did not enter the service as a physician.

The drumbeat begins: he was listening to sad stories of vets returning from the war arena. It goes without saying this is no excuse for anything, nor is it PTSD. Listening to war stories? Give me a break.

Here’s more:

He received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001. The Vinton, Va. native served eight years as an enlisted soldier. He also served in the ROTC as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg. He received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry there in 1995, according to the Roanoke Times…

Hasan is the son of Palestinian immigrants and Vinton residents Malik Awadallah Hassan and Hanan Ismail “Nora” Hasan, according to the Roanoke Times. Nora Hasan ran the now defunct Capitol Restaurant on the Roanoke Market. Hasan’s father owned the Mount Olive Grill and Bar and the Community Grocery Store on Elm Avenue. Both parents are deceased.

The Left, the 2009 election spin, and health care

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not even going to bother linking to the legions of articles from pundits and journalists and bloggers on the Left who say that Tuesday’s election results have no meaning in terms of national politics, and shouldn’t and won’t affect a thing. You’ve seen them yourself, or heard them on TV, if you read or listen to the news at all.

Pay no attention to that huge group of Americans behind the curtain! Progressives onward and upward, to more and more government control of our lives!! Coming very soon to a theater near you on Saturday, when House leaders plan to cut off an illusory debate that never was and pass the Pelosi health care bill.

I wonder, however, to whom it is the Left is really speaking. Is anyone fooled by this into thinking Tuesday was actually not meant to be a repudiation of health care reform and all the other massive spending by this administration and this Congress? Does the Left really have that much contempt for the intelligence of the average citizen, especially the Independents they will need on their side to avoid heavy losses in 2010?

Or maybe they just don’t care, because they don’t need them at the moment. Perhaps it’s more in the nature of a pep rally to shore up the base and give extra strength to the Blue Dog arm-twisting that’s going on behind closed doors. Leftist eyes are on the prize so near at hand, not the distant 2010 elections. If Saturday’s health care bill passes, and then clears the Senate (a more daunting task), the Left is banking that it won’t matter if it’s deeply unpopular, because it will be difficult to repeal.

Perhaps that’s correct. It’s the common mantra, anyway: once this is passed, it will create so many entitlements they’ll be no going back. But I’m not entirely sure.

First of all, there’s the aforementioned Senate hurdle. Then, even if that’s cleared, the vast bureaucracy the bill will implement wouldn’t really get going for quite a few years. So there might be time, if Republicans do well in 2010 and then especially in 2012 (on the legislative and executive levels), to repeal it and undo what’s been done. It would take some pretty massive victories, however; difficult, although not impossible.

But to return to the present: what will happen on Saturday in the House is anybody’s guess. And Pelosi continues to curve the corners of her mouth upwards as she simultaneously grits her teeth (I hesitate to call it a “smile,” exactly) as she declares victory. And maybe, she’s right—if you take the short view, which is Saturday’s vote:

Okay, here’s a question for all you Mac experts out there

The New Neo Posted on by

From the comments on yesterday’s MacHate post, I can see I’ve got some knowledgeable computer people here. So I’ve got a question for you.

If I place my Gateway and my Mac side by side (both are laptops of approximately the same dimensions) and go to the website RealClearPolitics on each, and then make the font size so that I can actually read it (which means taking it up one notch from the default font on the Mac), the fonts look to be approximately the same size. So far so good.

But on the Gateway the page is nicely spaced and balanced. Each article and author is on a single line. The Mac can’t seem to handle it, either in Safari or Firefox. It can’t fit the very same words on a single line; most of the titles and authors of the articles wrap around to the next line, and the whole thing is much less readable and more cluttered.

When I’m composing my blog on WordPress or even just viewing it, there are also font problems on the Mac that don’t exist on the Gateway. All is well on the latter: when the font size is good I can see the entire blog; no problem. But on the Mac it varies wildly, even the text on a single webpage. There are differences on the Mac between Safari and Firefox; Safari comes out only slightly ahead in the font size sweepstakes, but it has other problems.

I won’t bother with more details. Let’s just say it’s extremely annoying and requires constant adjustment of the Mac font size back and forth even on the same webpage, with none of them being satisfactory.

And believe me, I’m not using an unusually large font size either; merely one that isn’t teeny-tiny. Also, this is by no means the only problem I have with the Mac; au contraire. It’s just one of the more annoying and in-your-face.

And don’t tell me to change the display resolution. I’ve tried every single one, and none solve the problem, although some of them create new ones (such as stretched pictures).

So, any suggestions?

[ADDENDUM: And why, oh why, do my nifty new scrolling Amazon widgets fail to display consistently in Safari, although Firefox handles them quite nicely? If the Mac’s so great with graphics, why does Safari fall down on that task?]