Memorial Day weekend task

The New Neo Posted on by

Hope your holiday weekend is going well.

It’s beautiful here, and I’m doing a traditional American thing: going out to test drive cars. I’m in the market for a new one, having decided that my 1998 Totyota Corolla is a bit too small and a bit too uncomfortable for my compromised back.

I’m looking at cars that are a little bit bigger and heavier, with seats that are a little bit taller and more chair-like and have a tilt mechanism for the part you actually sit on. I’ve narrowed it down so far to the Scion xB and the Kia Soul, two cars I’d never even heard of till a couple of weeks ago. Anybody here got any advice?

[ADDENDUM: Looking at the comments I see that I probably should have explained that I’ve already tried (that is, sat in) at least 20 different types of car, including the newer Corollas. I have a very bad back and almost all cars are very uncomfortable for me, and I generally need to use a cushion or two to make them more comfy. I’ve discovered, however, that the higher-up seats of the Scion xB and certain other cars seem to be better for me, especially because they have a tilt mechanism for the bottom of the seat. That’s something I’m looking for, so if a car doesn’t have that option I’m not considering it.]

A song for Memorial Day

The New Neo Posted on by

Today marks the beginning of the three-day Memorial Day weekend. I probably will post another piece on the topic before the holiday is out, but for now I’ll offer a repeat of a song video that I think especially touching and appropriate. It’s Tim McGraw’s extraordinarily moving “If You’re Reading This:”

If you’re readin’ this
My momma’s sittin’ there
Looks like I only got a one way ticket over here.
I sure wish I could give you one more kiss
War was just a game we played when we were kids
Well I’m layin’ down my gun
I’m hanging up my boots
I’m up here with God and we’re both watchin’ over you

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
Is where my momma always prayed that it would go.
If you’re readin’ this I’m already home.

If you’re readin’ this
Half way around the world
I won’t be there to see the birth of our little girl
I hope she looks like you
I hope she fights like me
And stands up for the innocent and the weak
I’m layin’ down my gun,
I’m hanging up my boots
Tell dad I don’t regret that I followed in his shoes

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
is where my momma always prayed that it would go
If you’re readin’ this, I’m already hoooommmmmeeee

If you’re readin’ this,
There’s gonna come a day
You move on and find someone else and that’s okay
Just remember this
I’m in a better place
Soldiers live in peace and angels sing amazing grace

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul is where my momma always prayed that it would go
If you’re readin’ this
If you’re readin’ this
I’m already home

The biggest biggest loser

The New Neo Posted on by

I must say, this is pretty frickin impressive:

bigloser.jpg

Even his facial features look completely different, don’t they?

He’s Michael Ventrella, champ at the TV weight-loss game, who had a lot to gain by losing a lot: “By the final show, he had lost 50.19 percent of his body weight, a total of 264 pounds.”

Weight is difficult to lose. But what’s even worse is that it’s notoriously hard to keep off. The “Biggest Loser” TV show features mega-overweight people who undergo a very public process of huge and speedy weight loss, supervised by physicians and trainers and filmed almost every painful soap-opera-ish step of the way. Perhaps that public exposure gives them an extra dimension that will keep them from backsliding; perhaps not.

Speaking of backsliding—which is easy to do, because the body defends a certain weight, and strives mightily to achieve its former bulk—here’s an article from last September that tracks former winners of the show. The basic trend is to gain some amount of weight back, but not to return to close to the original gargantuan size.

Some have kept all the weight off. But either effort requires extraordinary willpower and almost total dedication. These people cannot just live normally and expect to be thin. The most successful ones become professionals, quitting their day jobs, running marathons or other extreme forms of exercise, writing cookbooks, becoming trainers, and/or joining the inspirational diet speech-making circuit. The specter of the humiliation of weight gain (which, after all, cannot be hidden)—of yo-yo-ing like Oprah or Kirstie Alley—understandably haunts and goads them.

Voting again for Carter II

The New Neo Posted on by

Note the following comment from someone called “SWJ,” written May 21 at 04:37 PM and appearing on this comment thread:

We have to have a Carter-like fool get elected now and then to remind America why the left can’t be trusted to protect and defend our country.

Many people my age (I’m 50) remember Carter (let’s call him Carter I) and can’t understand how America can elect another (we’ll call him Carter II). It’s really simple, though. In 1980, when America had the good sense to send that loser packing, I was voting in my first national election. Anyone more than about 5 years younger than me would not remember what a disaster Carter I really was.

Given the current makeup of the under-45 crowd, Carter II had a good shot at racking up 60% of this group. Of the group over 45, sadly enough, my best guess is that about 25% lived it, remember it, and would vote that numbskull back into office today. Astonishing, but true. These are the true-believers on the left. Facts don’t matter.

Another 25% of the over 45 crowd (just like any other group) isn’t paying attention, so they are fair game for a Carter II fraud.

Add it all up (generally) and you get the makings of a 53% win.

The under-45 crowd is now getting the political equivalent of on-the-job training. It’s going to be painful for them. They’re the ones suffering the job-losses and bleak prospects. Also, many of them will be called upon to go overseas and fight after Obama allows our enemies to get a march on us.

Ah, life experiences! These are the real world things of which Republicans are made. It warms my heart.

“SWJ” is talking about the process of how people—especially young people—might come to change their minds. The point the commenter is making boils down to the old saw about learning from experience. And although it’s true that reading about something in a book or newspaper, or learning about it in a classroom, and then filtering it through the idealistic and naive lens of youth, are all quite different things from actually living it, it’s also true that there’s a big difference between 1980 and now.

We are a full three decades further into a relentless takeover of our educational institutions and the press by the left. The younger generation of today has more indoctrination to undo before it can learn from its life experiences. And there’s no charismatic figure of the right on the order of Reagan coming down the pike, at least as far as I can see.

In addition, Obama himself seems to have a strong charismatic appeal to the young, something Jimmy Carter never came close to achieving. “Jimmy Carter” and “charismatic” are words that usually don’t appear in the same sentence. But since I was around when he was running for office, I’m able to say that I recall people having a great deal of hope that he’d be a breath of fresh air in Washington.

Carter was an outsider. He seemed smart. He appeared to demonstrate a real sense of humility as well as honesty. This all appealed greatly to a lot of people who’d been sickened by Watergate and exhausted by Vietnam and its battles, both foreign and domestic.

As commenter “SWJ” wrote, there are many people who would still vote for Carter I again. The more important question is: how many people are there who would (and will) vote for Carter II—Obama—again? It’s a long way till November of 2012, but we may get a hint this November, which is “only” five months from now.

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.

keds.jpg

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.

telephone.jpg

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).

old-fashioned-tv.jpg

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.