Get ready for Candy Corn Day

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repost of a previous article. As a public service, I decided to edit it a bit and then publish it earlier this year, one day before Candy Corn Day, in order to give all you aficionados sufficient time to get ready.]

No doubt all of my readers, being unusually well-informed people, were already aware that tomorrow is National Candy Corn Day.

But did you know it is estimated that in this country twenty million pounds of the classic treat (invented in the 1880s) are sold every year? I personally might be responsible for approximately a ton of that if I gave in to my worst impulses. However, I try to keep my addiction in tightly-controlled check.

It is part of my penance to confess here that I really like the dreadful stuff and always have. Once I even went to a Halloween party dressed as a piece of candy corn, and I was already a grownup.

Apparently I am not the only adult who has dressed up as candy corn on Halloween. And no, I didn’t look like this—more’s the pity (although to be technical, isn’t she dressed as two pieces of candy corn, the body and the hat?):

candycorncostume.gif

I am not alone in my shameful liking for the tricolor tooth-destroyer. I heard on Fox News (can’t give a link here because I was unable to find the information online) that candy corn is the Halloween treat most often stolen by parents from their kids’ Halloween stash. I believe this to be undeniably true. It is a guilty, shameful secret for most, but I am glad this is finally seeing the light of day.

Even some fanatically health-consciously vegans seem to crave candy corn although alas, the treat is off-limits to them because of its animal-related ingredients. Animal ingredients? If you doubt my words, just take a look:

Sugar, Corn Syrup, Salt, Honey, Soy Protein, Gelatin, Confectioner’s Glaze, Dextrose, Artificial Flavor, Titanium Dioxide Color, Artificial Colors (Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 3, Blue 1)

Gelatin and honey must be the big no-nos. But happily, a thoughtful vegan (are there any other kind?) mother has come to the rescue with a recipe for candy corn so complex and labor-intensive that it undoubtedly reflects a devotion to the stuff even more intense than mine. Try it if you dare—and if you are insane.

There are various gourmet variations on candy corn, and I’ve sampled quite a few in my day. To my mind they can’t compare to good old Brach’s. But after watching the following highly informative video, I may just try some Goelitz:

And here’s a burning question I was reminded of by the video: do you eat your candy corn in sections? And, if so, do you consider the top to be the yellow part or the white part? I’ve always seen the little white triangle as the “foot” of the candy corn, but I learned when I designed my costume years ago that most people see it the other way. For those who might be inclined to disagree with me, I offer the following exhibit from the realm of science:

corn-components.jpg

Happy eating. And oh—I’m done with candy corn this year. I’ve already OD’d.

Obamacare as suicide mission

The New Neo Posted on by

Holman Jenkins writes:

It’s no exaggeration to say the Senate health-care bill taking shape is the equivalent of climbing aboard a train about to plunge into a canyon and deciding what it really needs is a bomb on board.

Ouch.

That’s one of the reasons I’m very glad I’m not a Democrat anymore. The mental gymnastics it would require for me to explain to myself how it is that the President and most of the Democratic Party are determined to do the very things most likely to fatally undermine our economy in a time of such great stress, while I simultaneously attempted to hold on to the idea that they are acting in the country’s best interests, would probably require more flexibility (not to mention self-deception) than I think I could muster.

It’s time to pass the hat

The New Neo Posted on by

passhat.jpg

Well, here we go again.

I would appreciate donations, but they’re hardly required. Nor should you feel the least bit bad if you decide not to click on that Paypal button on the right sidebar, the one that says “donate.” I’d do all of this anyway, for free—as I did at the beginning and for most of the years I’ve written this blog.

But I would be deeply grateful if you do decide to click and contribute, whether it be a penny or quite a few dollars. Every single bit— whether large or small—adds up, and you’d be surprised at how much it helps. I thank you all in advance.

I will probably repeat this notice every now and then, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat. But I’ll be discreet about it. And it’s a lot better than those fund-raising drives they have on NPR, isn’t it? No interruption of the scheduled programming.

And many many thanks to all who have contributed in the past. I’ve been very touched and gratified.

Obama and the blame-Bush game

The New Neo Posted on by

Charles Krauthammer is tired of Obama’s blaming Bush for his own dithering in Afghanistan:

I want to point out one thing about what Obama had said when he talked about “the long years of drift.” There is something truly disgusting about the way he cannot refrain from attacking Bush when he’s being defensive about himself. I mean, it’s beyond disgraceful here.

I’m with Krauthammer on this. And although Ed Morrisey comments that the issue of when to stop blaming previous administrations and start taking responsibility for one’s own has been an “eternal question in the American context,” I cannot think of a single president in my lifetime who engaged in blaming a previous administration to anywhere near the extent that Obama has.

During campaigns, perhaps, especially when running against the previous president (which Obama successfully did, even though McCain was his actual opponent). But not after taking the oath of office.

This tendency to blame Bush is, as Krauthammer (a psychiatrist) points out, reflexive and repetitive on Obama’s part. I believe Obama cannot help himself; the temptation is just too strong. It says a great deal not only about his failure to take responsibility and his lack of alternative strategies, but about his mean-spiritedness on a very personal level.

Who’s afraid of Glass-Steagall (or the uptick rule)?

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember (ah, it seems like eons ago) the first few months of Obama’s presidency?

The focus was on the economy and attempts to foster its recovery. There were a gazillion articles about what had gone wrong: blame the Democrats, blame the Republicans, blame both, blame the 2007 repeal of the uptick rule, blame the 1999 end of Glass-Steagall.

The uptick rule. Back in June, I wondered about the delay in reinstating it. Well, it’s the end of October now, and I haven’t heard a thing about the topic since late spring. Wiki, which often tends to have the most current information about things, reports a flurry of discussion and activity about it in the first few months after the inauguration, but nothing since then.

I admit that, until the financial crisis hit about a year ago, I’d never even heard of the uptick rule. But a crash course (pun intended) in what had happened to the markets introduced me to the uptick rule and more. And I was shocked when I learned on what basis it had been repealed in the first place:

…[T]he “uptick” rule…helped limit downward spirals by allowing a stock to be sold short only after a rise (an “uptick”) from its immediately prior price. Adopted in 1938, the uptick rule was repealed by the SEC on July 3, 2007, primarily on the basis of a pilot program conducted in 2005. In the pilot program the agency compared 943 randomly selected stocks from the Russell 3000 not subject to the uptick rule to the remaining stocks in the Russell 3000 (a broad-based index of U.S. stocks of all sizes) still subject to this rule.

The comparison was only for six months — far too brief a time to draw conclusions about a rule that had been in effect for 70 years. The comparison also did not take place when repeal of the uptick rule could be stress-tested: 2005 was a year of rising stock prices with low volatility.

I’m not a financial wizard. But I do know something about research design. So, long before I read that last paragraph, I realized that a 6-month pilot study, performed under relatively stable market conditions, concerning a rule that had worked for approximately seventy years and is most vital under volatile market conditions, does not a proper pilot study make.

But we can’t expect the SEC to know that, can we? After all—as we’ve learned to our dismay in recent months—the SEC couldn’t even recognize a Ponzi scheme when it was handed one on a platinum platter.

While we’re on the subject, what about Glass-Steagall? That was another long-standing post-Depression rule that had stood the test of time, and whose repeal paved the way for the current crisis, at least in the view of many experts. I wrote about it in some depth back in March, and noted then that Paul Volcker had suggested that Glass-Steagall be reinstated.

If you Google “reinstate Glass-Steagall,” you’ll come up with a list of articles pro and con (mostly pro its re-establishment, however). Here, for example, is an eye-witness report of the pernicious influence of Glass-Steagall’s repeal on the insurance industry. And, although this author thinks believes that Glass-Steagall’s repeal was not instrumental in the financial breakdown of a year ago (look at the comments for a counter-argument), he finds that there is nevertheless a case to be made for its reinstatement (here’s another piece that unequivocally calls for reinstatement).

But where does the administration stand on this issue? Isn’t Volcker a top adviser, appointed Chairman of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board back in February?

Is this inaction another case of Obama as Hamlet? Or is it just the usual situation involving the influence of monied interest groups determined to prevent needed reforms? Or has there actually been an in-depth review, and a rejection of the case for repeal of the uptick rule and reinstatement of Glass-Steagall on the merits? If so, I can’t find anything about it.

The most relevant article I could locate on the subject appeared recently in the business section of the NY Times. In it, Volcker was described as firmly behind the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, but he’s been given the cold shoulder by this administration because of its belief that this action would make the US less competitive in the world market. Instead, Obama would prefer to more closely regulate the institutions in question—but hasn’t yet done so (Hamlet again?):

The Obama team, in contrast, would let the giants survive, but would regulate them extensively, so they could not get themselves and the nation into trouble again. While the administration’s proposal languishes, giants like Goldman Sachs have re-engaged in old trading practices, once again earning big profits and planning big bonuses.

Unlike Volcker, Alan Greenspan thinks Glass-Steagall should remain repealed. But I have to say that at this point Greenspan has lost almost all the credibility he once had. But Volcker has lost something too: his influence on Obama—that is, if he ever had any in the first place. Let’s hear what he has to say:

[Volcker’s] disagreement with the Obama people on whether to restore some version of Glass-Steagall appears to have contributed to published reports that his influence in the administration is fading and that he is rarely if ever in the small Washington office assigned to him.

He operates from his own offices in New York, communicating with administration officials and other members of the advisory board mainly by telephone. (He does not use e-mail, although his support staff does.) He travels infrequently to Washington, he says, and when he does, the visits are too short to bother with the office. The advisory board has been asked to study, amid other issues, the tax law on corporate profits earned overseas, hardly a headline concern.

So Mr. Volcker scoffs at the reports that he is losing clout. “I did not have influence to start with,” he said.

Who does, I wonder?

Computer question

The New Neo Posted on by

I have long noted that computers are a mysterious bunch, and their ways inscrutable—at least to tech-challenged me.

Yesterday, in a mild cost-saving move, I decided to try downgrading to a lower-speed connection from my previous fast one. The lady I talked to on the phone assured me that I could try it and see whether it worked out.

She warned me that the newly-diminished velocity would be quite noticeable, especially when uploading and downloading photos, and that You Tube buffering would probably be a problem, too. But I could cancel immediately if I didn’t like it, and go back seamlessly to my formerly speedy service.

But when I went to my computer, I discovered that its speed was faster than before. It was quicker to post photos to the blog, faster and better at showing You Tube videos, zippier at navigating in general.

Can anyone within the sound of my voice explain this paradoxical phenomenon?

The public option: by hook or by crook (continued…and continued…)

The New Neo Posted on by

reidclaws.jpg

In the last couple of days I’ve noticed a new strategy from certain Democratic pundits, bloggers, and commenters: act as if the public option’s a done deal, or very close to it.

It’s the power of positive thinking in action. Therapists sometimes use a similar technique with clients to spark positive change—attempting to verbally frame things in such a way as to try to create a self-fulfilling prophecy and a sense of near-inevitability. In this case, the aim is also to get opponents to give up and maybe even climb on board.

Here’s just one example of an article that uses this method, by Froma Harrop in the Providence Journal. Here’s what passes for thinking from Ms. Harrop:

…Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has included the opt-out clause in the bill. He’ll do whatever it takes to calm a few phantom-obsessed Democrats…

Well, I’ve been going on and on and on and on about this public-option business for months. The least pleasant part has been countering the rumors of torch-bearing masses defending the honor of the private insurers.

But it will soon be over. I now hear the cock crowing with the dawn. Let us toll the bell for the phantom of the option.

Pretty funny stuff, eh?—and simply dripping with contempt for those stupid uninformed torch-bearers, upset with all the imaginary problems the public option cannot possibly cause (if you say so, Froma).

That article’s tone may be a tad more condescending than most of its genre. but it follows the general rule of saying the public option is a done deal. In contrast, we have this sort of thing from the WaPo—a paper I’ve noticed presents some fairly objective articles now and then. In this one, Dana Milbank reports the following exchange between Harry Reid and an intrepid CNN reporter (I can’t believe I wrote that phrase: intrepid CNN reporter) [emphasis added in bold]:

…”Do you feel 100 percent sure right now that you have the 60 votes?” CNN’s Dana Bash inquired. Reid looked down at the lectern. He looked up at the ceiling. He chuckled. He put his palms together as if in prayer. Then he spoke. “My caucus believes strongly there should be health-care reform” was the non sequitur he offered.

Bash reminded the leader that she had asked him “particularly on this idea of a public option.”

Instead of answering, Reid, with a Zen expression, looked to the back of the room to solicit a question from somebody else. But Bash piped up again. “Senator Reid, with all due respect, is it possible to answer the question on whether or not you have the votes?”

“I believe we clearly will have the support of my caucus to move to this bill and start legislating,” he replied, which also didn’t answer the question.

By this time, Reid’s spokesman, Jim Manley, had one foot on the podium, as if he were ready to rush the stage and whisk his boss to safety.

Of course, everybody knew that Reid didn’t have the votes. That’s why he was standing there alone, a Gang of One.

Well, from my perusal of the blogosphere and certain liberal columnists such as Harrop, “everybody” certainly doesn’t know that (or at least they’re pretending not to know it). Milbank suggests that Reid knows, though. He writes that Reid’s proposal for an opt-out clause is really an attempt to placate liberal in Nevada and preserve Reid’s own re-election chances.

My favorite quote from Reid just might be this (try to imagine another Senate Majority Leader, the famously arm-twisting LBJ, uttering these words):

The Post’s Shailagh Murray asked Reid another question about the lack of a consensus in the Democratic caucus, but by this time the majority leader had grown exasperated. “We all hug together and see where we come out,” he answered.

I didn’t hear the interview, so the description of Reid as “exasperated” makes me think that perhaps he was being sarcastic. I certainly hope so.

It’s not surprising that Reid was mum on the details of how states could go about opting-out, and what it might cost them to do so. Perhaps this is an indication that the opt-out provision in the bill isn’t really meant to be a serious one. Or perhaps it’s just characteristic of the smoke and mirrors approach to legislation that’s become so popular in Congress. Transparent as mud.

Reid’s ploy doesn’t seem to be attracting the wavering moderates, though. RINO Olympia Snowe seems to be hanging tough in the fiscal conservative camp (I emphasize the word “seems”, because you never quite know with Olympia Snowe—hey, that’s catchy enough to be a campaign slogan). She says she was “deeply disappointed” by Reid’s decision, although she still favors a trigger. Snowe’s twin RINO Senator from Maine, Susan Collins, issued a statement opposing “a taxpayer-subsidized, government-run health insurance company.” And Joe Lieberman isn’t buying, either.

Yesterday I wrote that the Democrats seem determined to get some sort of public option by hook or by crook. Commenter “davidt” quipped, “by hook AND by crook.”

I’ll leave it to you to decide which are the hooks, and which the crooks.

The public option: by hook or by crook

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s no secret that the health care reform bills in both the House and the Senate are both almost certain to contain some version of the public option. We don’t know the details yet, but the intent to include a public option is there, and has been clearly expressed by Congressional leaders Pelosi and Reid.

I don’t think most American would be against a public option if it truly (1) left private options intact and did not compete unfairly with them (2) allowed for choices such as high deductible and/or catastrophic insurance in both the private and the public sectors (3) was actually deficit- and tax-neutral; and (4) covered all uncovered citizens who want coverage, and did not compel those who don’t want it to be covered against their will.

But that’s not the case with the current bills. And since it is virtually impossible to craft a public option that has those features, it’s a safe bet that it won’t be the case for the final bills either.

Polls about the public option are essentially useless in telling us what America actually wants. Most polls don’t even use the word “public option” (many of the polls use the phrase “government health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans,” for example, and some even describe it as “similar to Medicare”). None describe the provisions of the bills actually under discussion in the legislature, most of which would not just “compete” with private health insurance but bury it, as well as violating the other three criteria I mentioned above.

That’s not what the American people want, and I don’t think we need a poll to tell us that. Nevertheless, that’s what the American people might very well get.

But why would the Democratic Party want to pass such an unpopular bill? Because they’ve been wanting to for a very long time, because Obama promised health care reform during his campaign, because they favor increasing government intervention in general, and because now’s there a very good chance of success—perhaps the best they’ll ever have—since they hold powerful majorities in both legislative bodies and control the presidency as well. So carpe diem.

[NOTE: I haven’t spent a lot of time in this post describing how it is that the bills under consideration are examples of sleight of hand, pretending to do one thing—preserve private insurance choices and keep costs down—while actually doing another. There have been countless articles in the press and the blogosphere explaining just that (here’s one, for example), so I see no need to reinvent the wheel.

But if you take a look at the details of the Senate bill that supposedly is the leader right now, you’ll see what I mean. Everything about the public option is designed to appear to retain the private insurance choice, while at the same time having the actual affect of making the private option non-competitive, and most likely ultimately phasing it out.]

The wit and humor of Go Fug Yourself

The New Neo Posted on by

Guys, you can go get a beer right about now if you’d like.

I just want to say to the rest of you that this sort of thing is the reason I often go to the blog Go Fug Yourself for some relief from the cares and troubles of the world.

The bloggers there don’t just write about fashion faux pas (with photos; let’s not forget those all-important photos). They’re genuinely funny. How they do this while striking essentially the same note over and over—“here’s a starlet who looks like dreck in this dreadful outfit”—I really don’t know. It’s a narrow niche, but they are intensely creative within it.

Noonan and Obama: public and private selves

The New Neo Posted on by

Peggy Noonan explains Obama’s recent falling approval ratings in the polls by saying that he owns his presidency now. Nine months into his term, people have stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt as a newbie, and are beginning to consider him responsible for what is happening on his watch.

It’s certainly not because Obama has stopped blaming Bush. That particular technique (his favorite) continues apace. But the public is less and less likely to buy it as time goes on, and I agree with Noonan that there’s been somewhat of a turning point lately.

Regarding Obama, Noonan herself is an interesting case. I’ve written about this earlier, here and most especially in the second half of this post. Although a Republican, and famous for being one of Ronald Reagan’s speechwriters (she also wrote for Bush the Elder), during the 2008 campaign Noonan wrote disapprovingly of Governor Palin, who was (in her words), an example of “a new vulgarization in American politics.”

If Palin was indeed vulgar (and I didn’t find her so), I submit that Noonan was ignoring her American history. There’s been a long strain of vulgarization in American politics, going back at least to Andrew Jackson. And who could forget Lyndon Johnson, his gall bladder, and his lifting his beagle by the ears? And that was just LBJ’s public self; the private one was a veritable model of vulgarity. But that’s not what made him a good or a bad president.

There are some sins even worse than vulgarity, as Noonan has apparently begun to notice (although she somehow failed to pay attention to subtle hints of real vulgarity in cool man Obama during the campaign, such as when he appeared to give Hillary the finger, as well as this brush-off gesture). Before the election and for some time after it, Noonan seemed under the seductive spell of Obama’s charm and silver tongue, as many wordsmiths were.

Recently she seems to be coming out of it, but slowly. I mention Noonan not only because she’s a prominent writer, but because I think she represents the feelings of a great many people who are just now beginning to wake up to a sense of the morning after. They don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but they feel it in their gut as they gaze across the pillow at this man they’ve wedded after such a short courtship: something is not right.

Two things especially struck me on reading Noonan’s recent piece. I agree entirely with this, and have noticed it myself:

Democrats, [Obama] said to the Democratic audience, are “an opinionated bunch.” They always have a lot of thoughts and views. Republicans, on the other hand”””the other side”””aren’t really big on independent thinking. “They just kinda sometimes do what they’re told. Democrats, y’all thinkin’ for yourselves.” It is never a good sign when the president gets folksy, dropping his g’s, because he is by nature not a folksy g-dropper but a coolly calibrating intellectual who is always trying to guess, as most politicians do, what normal people think. When Mr. Obama gets folksy he isn’t narrowing his distance from his audience but underlining it. He shouldn’t do this.

Yes. And it’s not because Obama’s dropping his g’s is vulgar (I don’t find it so). It’s that it doesn’t ring true for him.

Except that, Peggy and other pundits, it’s time to stop giving Obama advice. Those who do so are still very far from understanding what the man is about. He is not interested in taking this sort of counsel because he has a different agenda than you think he does. And in addition, as I read him, I don’t even think he’s capable of major changes in his approach; unlike Bill Clinton, for example, he doesn’t appear to be a flexible person.

In her next paragraph, Noonan asks a parenthetical question:

But the statement that Republicans just do what they’re told was like his famous description of unhappy voters as people who “cling to guns or religion.” (What comes over him at fund-raisers?)

I think I can answer that one for you, Peggy. What comes over him? He relaxes (to the extent that he can relax in public) and becomes more his real self and less the manufactured public persona. The public persona is the one who mouths smooth and ingratiating platitudes, and is essentially a false self. Among friends and supporters at fund-raisers Obama’s bile comes out, his rage against the opposition and his belittling of it, and it’s not a pretty sight. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg of his internal partisanship and anger and resentment, I’m afraid.

Noonan continues:

The problem isn’t [Obama’s] personality, it’s his policies…It is a problem of political judgment, of putting forward bills that were deeply flawed or off-point. Bailouts, the stimulus package, cap-and-trade; turning to health care at the exact moment in history when his countrymen were turning their concerns to the economy, joblessness, debt and deficits””all of these reflect a misreading of the political terrain.

Noonan is correct here, as far as she goes. But she doesn’t go nearly far enough. Before her looms a chasm as large as the Grand Canyon. She’s poised on the edge and refuses to leap, and I don’t blame her. It’s dangerous to do so, and it’s cold and lonely here on the other side.

What Noonan is so far refusing to understand is that, although Obama is narcissistic and likes adulation, he’s not primarily interested in popularity—except as a tool to policy. Policy is paramount, and his goal is not to be responsive to what the American people want, nor to hear their actual concerns and then to shape policy around them. His goal is to tell them what they want, to lie if required, to silence and ridicule and chastise and threaten the opposition, and if necessary to pull every political trick he can get away with in order to ram his agenda down our recalcitrant throats.