Snowe job: health care reform compromise?

The New Neo Posted on by

Olympia Snowe, RINO of Maine, is engaged in brokering a compromise deal with Obama on health care. The idea is that if she comes on board, other balking moderates will join and the bill will be passed.

This is exactly what happened with the stimulus legislation, and Snowe is detested by most other Republicans for her role in the betrayal.

Snowe’s position is that a public option won’t be in the bill except as a trigger, a threat that if private insurers don’t do what the government requires, a public option will kick in at some future date (see also this). However, there’s some evidence that the public option could kick in sooner, even immediately, since Snowe wrote in July that “This [public] option would be available from day one in any state where ”“ after market and insurance reforms are implemented ”“ affordable, competitive plans still do not exist.”

So it’s clear as mud, as usual. One thing that is clear is that many of the most liberal Democrats won’t like Snowe’s compromise, and the majority of Republicans will hate it too, albeit for very different reasons.

And so the cries mount: “Down with Snowe! Maine Republicans should nominate a real member of the Party instead of a fake one!”

There’s certainly something to be said for doing away with RINOs like Snowe, who give the White House the appearance of bipartisan cover. But understand that getting rid of Snowe would almost undoubtedly result in having a real Democrat instead of a fake one as the Senator from Maine. Maine is most definitely a blue state.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that if Obama and the Democrats manage to offend enough people by 2012—when both Obama and Snowe would be up for re-election—that Republicans couldn’t take over both of their offices. But it’s less likely to happen to Snowe than to Obama. She is extraordinarily popular in Maine; she won in 2006 by 70% over her rival, and her typical winning margins have always been around 2 to 1.

Before you decide that Snowe has got to go, understand that Maine’s political composition is such that a true Republican is highly unlikely to win there, unless a tsunami of conservatism sweeps the country. Right now, the choices are a RINO or a Democrat.

I understand—and to some extent agree with—the argument that if a Republican is going to betray Republican causes as much as Snowe has, it would be better to have the same things done by a Democrat. But the thing is that Snowe hasn’t betrayed all Republican causes. Among the ones she’s supported are: the death penalty, the embargo on Cuba, the invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and some tax cuts as an economic stimulus (her record very spotty on this latter issue, however).

Is that enough to make her of some value to the GOP, or should she be challenged—even if the challenge will almost certainly be unsuccessful—to make a point?

Not quite “death panels”—but the slippery slope of palliative care policy

The New Neo Posted on by

Several British doctors, experts on palliative care (which means the compassionate treatment of the dying in order to make them more comfortable), have registered alarm at a trend in British medical practice:

Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”

The current model for care of the dying in Britain was based on recommendations for cancer patients and was adopted by NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), the British government panel that oversees health policy. It’s been slowly expanded to cover patients who are supposedly dying of other illnesses.

Dr. Hargreaves, one of the doctors who has a problem with the program as currently implemented, says that its success:

…depend[s], however, on constant assessment of a patient’s condition.

He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in…

“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”

He added: “What they are trying to do is stop people being overtreated as they are dying.

“It is a very laudable idea. But the concern is that it is tick box medicine that stops people thinking.”

He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.

The difficulty, as the article goes on to state, is that there can be no “one size fits all” approach to medicine. That is one of the main problems with government getting increasingly into the picture—it tends to promulgate these sorts of rules, and the rules tend to spread to larger and larger populations, as in the program under discussion. The slippery slope is very real, and government intervention has a propensity to grease the skids.

The SEC Madoff investigations: shockingly inept

The New Neo Posted on by

Anyone who’s been following the Madoff story already knew that the SEC botched its chances to catch him, and that it had plenty of them. But now we have a report that says as much.

I wrote back in February about the loudest of the Madoff whistleblowers, Harry Markopolus, an accountant and former investment manager who helpfully provided the SEC with not just a memo or a hunch, but the equivalent of several dissertations on the subject of Madoff’s suspicious activities, and a blueprint on how to trap him. And yet the SEC investigators (I use that term sarcastically) did virtually nothing.

Those same SEC investigators are called “inexperienced” in the IG’s SEC report. That they may indeed have been, but their failures went far beyond that lack. They also seemed to have been devoid of what one might call common sense—or really any sort of sense at all:

The SEC enforcement staff, conducting investigations of Madoff’s business, “almost immediately caught (him) in lies and misrepresentations, but failed to follow up on inconsistencies” and rejected whistleblowers’ offers to provide additional evidence, the report says.

But at least one “whistleblower”—in the person of Markopolus—had already provided evidence galore, scads of it. One of the difficulties was that the information never got to anyone with the background to understand it. This had nothing to do with inexperience; it had to do with knowledge and basic judgment. As Markopolus later described the situation:

Over the past nine years, Markopolos sent detailed and multiple reports to the SEC pointing out red flags in Madoff’s fund operation, all to no avail. He could not get the New York office to understand what he was saying…”In my conversations with [New York SEC head Meaghan Cheung], I did not believe that she had the derivatives or mathematical background to understand the violation,” Markopolos wrote”¦

As for Markopolos’ reference to her supposed lack of mathematical acumen, Cheung said, “Investigations are conducted by lawyers and examiners and investigators. We have experts available to help us.”

Cheung is a lawyer, with a degree from Yale University and Fordham University Law School. I have read nothing about her background in finance; my sense is that she didn’t have one. As for her reference to calling in experts, she seems to have not done so—certainly not the obvious ones who might have been able to explain the more arcane facts in Markolpous’s memo.

I’m no financial expert—au contraire!—but at least I know I’m not. Had I been in Cheung’s shoes I would have gotten to those experts and even conducted an independent audit; this sort of decision is not rocket science. Cheung apparently didn’t even follow the most basic course of action, which would have been to speak to Markopolus. He stated back in February, in testimony before Congress, as to the shocking level of ignorance and omission not only on Cheung’s part, but on the part of most of the SEC officials:

[Markopolus] believed only one SEC staff member, Ed Manion, understood Madoff’s scheme and “the threat it posed to the public.” “My experiences with other SEC officials proved to be a systemic disappointment and lead me to conclude that the SEC securities’ lawyers, if only through their investigative ineptitude and financial illiteracy, colluded to maintain large frauds such as the one to which Madoff later confessed…“Ms. Cheung never expressed even the slightest interest in asking me questions…

This is more than inexperience, this is stupidity. And apparently the problem extended to almost all the SEC investigators, who seem to have almost uniformly been lawyers.

Now, unlike many people, I’ve got nothing against lawyers (some of my best friends are…). I believe they run the full gamut of good and bad, just like most of humanity. But I cannot believe it would have been all that difficult for the SEC to have hired a bunch of lawyers who not only knew a fair amount about law, but a fair amount about finance and the stock market as well—and, even more importantly, who knew what it was that they didn’t know, and who might have been able to judge when to call on the help of people more expert. After all, what good are “available experts” if the person in charge lacks the judgment to know when it’s time to make use of them?

Even Madoff was shocked, positively shocked, at the SEC’s ineptitude in that most basic of ways, the failure to undertake any independent audit of him (and although Madoff could have rightly been called an “expert,” he wasn’t about to offer the SEC any help on that score):

[IG] Kotz said the SEC’s “most egregious” lapse was its failure to verify Madoff’s purported trading with any independent third parties, even after it took testimony from Madoff in May 2006.

Madoff later admitted that he thought it was “game over” after testifying to having cleared his trades through the Depository Trust Co, part of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and provided his account number. He said he was “astonished” that the SEC did not follow up.

Here’s more from Kotz’s report:

Kotz quoted one senior-level SEC examiner as saying, “Clearly, if someone … has a Ponzi and they’re stealing money, they’re not going to hesitate to lie to create records,” and thus “some independent third-party verification” such as through the DTC would be essential.

He said the SEC had made a “surprising discovery” earlier this decade that Madoff’s hedge fund business was making far more money than his better known market-making business, but no one thought this was a “cause for concern.”

Mind-blowing incompetence. If I were a Madoff victim, I’d be nearly as angry at the SEC as at Madoff himself.

[NOTE: In another Madoff-related matter, I reported back in April that Madoff right-hand man Frank DiPascali was about to spill the beans on his former boss. Somehow I missed the fact that in mid-August he began to do so. DiPascali still doesn’t seem to have implicated any Madoff family members in knowledge of the Ponzi scheme aspect of Madoff’s operations, an issue that has interested me from the start. So the jury remains out on that.]

[ADDENDUM: The full text of the IG’s executive summary on the failures of the SEC investigation is here. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I hope to.]

How tyrannical takeovers happen: past, present, future

The New Neo Posted on by

Today commenter “Artfldgr” asked the following question, “anyone else realize that what happened in germany took 12 years to go from start to finish?”

Coincidentally, last night (before that comment was posted) I had spent some time reading “The Rise of Hitler” at The History Place. It’s a relatively short summary of a relatively long process, rather than a comprehensive book such as The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (which I had read as a young teenager but not understood). But I read it with a new sense of urgency; I suggest you do so, too.

The urgency comes not from the idea that Obama=Hitler. I am not sure what figure in history Obama most resembles, although I don’t think it’s Hitler. Nor do I know Obama’s plans. But I have observed that every single step of the way he has shown his propensity for consolidating government and his own power, stomping on or eliminating the opposition (this propensity goes back to his very first election; see also the second half of this), affiliation with figures of the far Left, lying and misrepresenting himself in a host of ways, secrecy about his past, and cozying up to dictators such as Hugo Chavez.

At present, it’s Chavez whom I see as closest to Obama, both in goals and in modus operandi. Fortunately, our Constitution is more of a stumbling block to tyranny than that of Venezuela, but it’s not an absolute impediment. I wrote here (before I had even an inkling of anything about Obama other than the fact that he would probably run for president, and that he was an articulate young man who seemed to be a rising star in the Democratic Party) of what I called “the vulnerability of an easily amended constitution.”

I think some of my words then bear repeating now [emphasis mine]:

I haven’t followed every in and out of Chavez’s rise to power and his successful grab at more power, but I am under the distinct impression it was done with the appearance of following the rules of democracy.

You might think that, as a neocon, I champion democracy in all its guises. But the type of democracy I support (and I actually prefer a republic, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment) is one that includes a constitution that explicitly protects freedoms and individual rights, and features a system by which it is extremely hard to change that constitution and expand a leader’s powers as Chavez has done.

…Chavez gained his expanded powers through a vote by Venezuela’s Congress, which is at present overwhelmingly composed of his supporters. This unanimity was gained because the opposition boycotted the last election, held in 2005…[T]he boycott enabled Chavez to attain”“–between his own party and allied parties”“–virtually 100% control of Congress, far more than the 2/3 it would need to amend the Constitution. One thing appears true: the election was controlled by a National Election Council totally sympathetic to Chavez, and the opposition perceived that, even if they participated, the voting would be rigged.

The entire process points out the utmost”“–and I mean utmost–”“importance of guarantees against such usurption of powers (which, by the way, Hitler used, as well, in his ascendance to becoming Fuehrer; Germany had a similar clause that allowed dictatorial powers to be given a leader by a 2/3 vote of the Reichstag, which Hitler then proceeded to abolish).

If you follow the Hitler link in the above paragraph, you’ll find an excellent summary of Hitler’s rise to power that contains the following statement:

Unfortunately, the [German] constitution also contained several fatal flaws. One of the worst was Article 48 of the constitution, which granted dictatorial powers to the president in times of national emergency.

Our own constitution is different. The process of amendment is more arduous: a vote of 2/3 of both houses Congress is required for the initial proposal, and then approval by 3/4 of the states’ legislatures or special state ratifying conventions.

This makes for a longer course of action in passing amendments, and involves a far less centralized decision-making process, one that includes many stages. So even if Congress ends up with a strong majority of representatives who are in the pocket of a President with tyrannical ambitions, subsequent usurption of power through changing the Constitution would have to be approved by three-quarters of the states.

Wartime has always been a period of special vulnerability, when US presidents tend to assume greater powers. But they cannot throw out the Constitution (or rewrite it, as Chavez did Venezuela’s). The story of how Chavez and his supporters rewrote the Venezuelan constitution can be found here. Note for our purposes that the process involved a single national referendum, and then a vote for delegates to a new constitution-writing assembly. The most recent move in Chavez’s consolidation of power has been a referendum to abolish terms limits for the presidency and allow him to become more fully Venezuela’s Castro.

If you really want to delve into some of the many twisting and turnings through which Chavez undermined the electoral process in Venezuela, in both little ways and big ones, please study this for details. I would bet that Obama is studying it (or its equivalent), too.

Our founding fathers understood tyranny. They could not foresee the future, and they could not protect us against any and every eventuality. With a strong enough cult of personality, a friendly enough Congress, and a rigged voting system, even this country can end up giving up its freedoms.

The writers of our Constitution were determined to avoid that eventuality if possible. But they were not naive enough to think that protection would not be needed, because they understand the seduction of power and the vulnerability of the people to the machinations of smooth-tongued tyrants. Therefore, the framers realized they needed to make sure the Constitution was not so rigid that it could not be changed in ways that were desirable, but rigid enough to protect us as best as possible against the sort of power grab we’ve seen in Venezuela and elsewhere.

I keep speaking of Venezuela, although I began with Hitler. Each case is different, and some more relevant than others, but there are lessons to be learned from all of them. One could also study the regimes of Bolivia, Ecuador, and so many others. One of the commonalities is the drive to pervert the voting process by intimidation and/or rule changes; to dramatically amend, rewrite, or even abolish constitutions; and most particularly to do away with term limits.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have written quite a bit about Obama’s policy on Zeleya and Honduras. This isn’t just because I am concerned for the people of Honduras—although I am that—but for what Obama’s support of Zeleya’s attempt to expand his power in these time-honored ways tells us about Obama himself, and his own propensities and possible plans.

It’s not a mere question of Obama looking on and doing nothing while a Chavez-inspired Zelaya grabs more power; I could understand non-intervention in the Honduran process. But Obama has gone out of his way—in a manner that contradicts his own stated preference for the autonomy of other nations—to actively intervene in Honduran affairs in order to protect Zeleya and his undermining of Honduran due process and its constitution.

There is no benign explanation for this policy of Obama’s. If the American people don’t understand what it tells us about him, it would mean that we have failed to understand history and learn from it.

The study of history is of vital importance. Not only has that discipline been watered down and even distorted in our schools in recent years, but even back when I was in school I believe the emphasis was wrong. Dates and battles are all very well and good, but we need to know more about the deeper patterns: for example, the ways in which tyrannies become established. There are commonalities there, and lessons to be learned from them.

But even if these things had been taught me in school, I wonder if it would have mattered. Would I have been able to understand and relate to them, or would I have considered them boring and irrelevant, from another time and place, an example of “it can’t happen here?” For most non-history-buffs—and that would include most people, including me—these facts have little meaning out of context, in the dry pages of a history text.

Until suddenly they do. Unfortunately, by that time it is often too late.

Anniversaries: WWII (70th) and Beslan (5th)

The New Neo Posted on by

September 1 is a big day for sorrowful anniversaries.

World War II began on this day in 1939—not Pearl Harbor Day as commemorated by Americans, but the combat in Europe that started with the invasion of Poland by Germany. Beginnings are often rather arbitrary, since this conflict was brewing for quite a while, Hitler’s boldness slowly encouraged by the appeasement he received at the hands of western Europe.

But the invasion of Poland finally jump-started the Allies into the realization that “peace for our time” would only come after a long and bloody war. As Churchill said:

Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.

September 1, 1939 was the day Britain and France realized that the result of their choice would be war. That war ended up dwarfing all that have come before—or since, at least so far.

The next anniversary marked today is that of the Beslan massacre. Except in Russia, the agony of Beslan has been mostly forgotten—perhaps because people prefer to not remember. I’ve written previously on Beslan anniversaries numbers one and two, here and here. But this year, because of the recent release of Lockerbie bomber Al Megrahi, I got to thinking about the one Beslan terrorist who remains behind bars serving a life sentence.

His name is Nur-Pashi Kulayev. He is thought to have been the only surviving terrorist from the massacre, although some say there were more who escaped.

Kulayev deserves to be exactly where he is (or worse); make no mistake about that. But during his trial he told a tale that—if believed—poses a number of interesting moral and legal questions.

Note that huge caveat: “if believed.” I have no idea whether Kulayev’s story is true, because it is self-serving and he has much reason to lie. But that doesn’t mean it’s false, either, and the testimony of the surviving hostages doesn’t appear (at least as far as I can tell from a Google search) to have significantly contradicted the parts of it that they might have witnessed.

According to Kulayev, he didn’t know ahead of time that a school would be the target:

His defence laid in the claim that he was one of the recruited Chechens who were told they would be attacking a military checkpoint, and had no foreknowledge their target was the Beslan school; he was reportedly among several of the militants who argued in favour of capturing the local Beslan police station instead.

While no witnesses have claimed he shot any of the victims, several have testified that he ran around the gymnasium shouting curses and threatening to shoot various hostages with his assault rifle…

In addition, “Nur-Pashi reportedly saved the life of a young Alana Zandrovna, whose mother had left on the second day with her nursing son, after she was caught in the burning gymnasium.”

What are we to make of this? Legally, It is covered by a concept similar to that of felony murder, which basically says that if you’re going to be part of a serious crime that rises to felony level, then you are automatically responsible for every evil and violence that happens during the commission of that crime. Whether Kulayev thought he was setting out for a military checkpoint or not is irrelevant; as a terrorist knowingly engaged in a terrorist activity he is fully responsible and must suffer the consequences.

But a more interesting question psychologically (at least to me) is what such a person might decide to do if faced with such a situation. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that Kulayev is telling the truth. What might he have chosen to do instead in an attempt to protect the innocent?

He certainly could have sacrificed himself and tried to take down a few fellow-terrorists into the bargain, although since he was so outnumbered it probably wouldn’t have done too much good. Here’s some further testimony of his that reflects on that issue [emphasis mine—and please substitute the word “terrorists” for the weasel word “militants”]:

Nur-Pashi has testified that [terrorist leader] “Polkovnik” smashed his cell phone in rage, stating that Russian forces were unwilling to negotiate, and also killed three of the militants, including the two female suicide bombers who had objected to the scholastic target by detonating one of their bombs. Nur-Pashi was supposed to be shot himself, by his brother Hanpashi on orders from “Polkovnik”, but Hanpashi refused.

Again, we must take this all with a grain of salt—after all, Nur-Pashi Kulayev was testifying to save himself. But (although I can’t find any details on this either) some corroboration of his testimony might come from the fact that two female terrorists were found to have been killed prior to the massacre’s final debacle.

It is not outside the realm of possibility that some of the terrorists were not told the identity of the target until the last minute. I recall that this was true of at least some of the 9/11 hijackers, who were formed into teams, some of whom knew ahead of time (that would be the pilots-to-be, certainly) and some of whom did not. At any rate, terrorist indoctrination and dedication seem to ordinarily result in the previously uninformed perpetrators’ accepting whatever target they are assigned without protest, and cooperating in its destruction. But if Kulayev is telling the truth, we see what tends to happen to terrorists who express doubts or second thoughts—they are killed by their fellows.

But for the families of the Beslan victims, this is all a side issue of little import. They still grieve, five years later:

At exactly 9:15 a.m., a bell rang out over the city of Beslan and the remnants of School Number 1, where 32 heavily armed militants took more than 1,200 people — children, parents and teachers — hostage on the first day of school in 2004.

Russian television showed hundreds of people lined up at the school’s gymnasium, where the hostages were herded.

They brought flowers, toys and water bottles — symbolizing the water the captives were denied.

I think it is important that we all remember.

Teased hair and other follicular torments

The New Neo Posted on by

I spent quite a few of my early teen years developing a skill I haven’t used since: the ability to coax hair into tangled masses and then smooth the top layer over the whole thing in order to create volume, a process known as “teasing.” It involved a fine comb, much patience, and iron will, things the teenage girl has in abundance when it comes to fashion and her hair.

It also involved another lost skill set, that of rolling the wet hair around large metal cylinders almost as big as Coke cans and then pinning them in place, tying the whole thing down with a hairnet, and sleeping on it. Yes, sleeping on it, which was perhaps the most acquired skill of all, involving the ability to stay in one position all night, carefully putting pressure only on the spot designated most comfortable (or rather, least uncomfortable).

It meant, among other things, that a girl couldn’t comb or brush through her hair once it had been arranged, until the next time it came to wash it. And unless you had very greasy hair that needed washing very often (I did not), you spaced out the washings as long as possible because hair teased much better when less than squeaky-clean.

I was reminded of all of this by a single photo I came across last week, in an article celebrating the music of Ellie Greenwich. I’d never heard of her before, but I’d certainly heard some of the songs she wrote—most notably “Be My Baby,” “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” and especially “Leader of the Pack” (vroom, vroom!)—that spanned a long career as a very successful songwriter. Ellie died just a few days ago, and as I was searching the tributes I came across the following very fine example of the art of teasing. Blond Ellie is on the left, her husband and co-writer Jeff Barry in the middle (sans teasing), and on the right (and sporting the higher, and therefore better, “do”) is someone I believe to be Ellie’s sister:

ellie-greenwich-11.jpg

But these hairdos are models of restraint compared to the ones I frequently encountered—and sometimes sported myself—in the public junior high and high schools I attended. Alas, I have very few photos of myself in those years and none readily available for scanning. So you’ll just have to trust me when I say that I achieved great heights during the time I wore a hairdo known as the artichoke, which was a shortish (but not too short) and highly teased and layered coif.

Sorry, can’t find a good photo of an artichoke—even on someone else, even after a Google search—except for pictures of the vegetable. But here’s the beehive, courtesy of the singing group known as the Ronettes:

teasehair2.jpg

Lest you think that only black entertainers did this to themselves, let me just say that I recall a very Caucasian girl in my high school who daily sported an even loftier version of this very same hairdo, and she did it without using a false hairpiece or any such nonsense. Marie Antionette would have been proud:

marieantionette.jpg

The whole thing collapsed, as it were, sometime in the mid-to-late 60’s. First came post-Beatles British fashion and then hippies, and shiny straight hair was the thing.

You’d think that would liberate us females. But no, girls with un-shiny, un-straight hair (otherwise known as curly) had to decide whether to use straightening irons (or even regular irons, after protecting the hair by placing a thin towel over it and putting the iron on a low setting—not recommended!) or whether to go au naturale.

Curly hair came in later, of course, and then for a brief and unshining moment it was our straight-haired sisters who suffered through perms. Here’s an example of a typical bad, bad, super-bad one:

badperm2.jpg

But those days are gone—fortunately for all of us, curly and straight. Now, however, we have the odd habit of the fashionistas to flatten any natural tendency of the hair to wave or even to fall in any normal sort of manner. They straighten it via the ceramic iron. Here’s the desired result:

straighthair.jpg

To me it looks as though every ounce of life has been squeezed out of the girl’s poor tresses. But fashion is a cruel master, and twas ever thus.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a video featuring stills of Ellie Greenwich. It’s a tour of some of the hairstyles I mention, from all sorts of teased do’s to the long straight look. Ellie’s the blond:

Honduras continues to matter…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and Obama continues to fight against Honduras’s efforts to retain its democracy, its constitution, and its autonomy.

And Obama’s alliance with Hugo Chavez and against the forces of freedom in Honduras continues to pass under the radar screen of most Americans.

And I continue to find the Obama administration more offensive with every passing day.

[Hat tip: commenter “huxley.”]

Wild fires

The New Neo Posted on by

Many years ago I lived in southern California in the hills bordering the San Fernando Valley. Every day I drove towards the city on the San Diego Freeway and then back again. Back then the traffic wasn’t as bad as it is now; there actually was a finite rush hour rather than a perpetual one.

One late afternoon I was on my way home. As I reached my exit I noticed a small patch of fire in the dry brush off the freeway to the right. It was small: maybe two feet square, maybe even less. It was summertime, very hot and very arid in the usual way of summer in southern California, so the fire had obviously just begun, perhaps started by a carelessly tossed match or cigarette.

I lived about two minutes from the freeway exit. By the time I got home I could hear the buzz of the helicopters and see them circling above. Although I couldn’t see the fire from the yard, I could smell the acrid smoke and feel the sting in my eyes.

I turned on the television to learn what I could. I was stunned by what I saw. In the two minutes since I had first spied that tiny fire on my drive home, it had become a major conflagration. Several large hills were fully ablaze, pouring thick smoke as the helicopters circled. I recall seeing water (or flame retardant) pouring from the planes, but perhaps I’m confusing that with later visions from other televised fires. There are many such visions when you live in southern California.

That particular fire turned out to be relatively easy to contain; it was over in few hours, with only a few blackened foothills to show for the trouble. Not so the fire a few years later that consumed the home of a good friend of mine. She lived on a high hill in a ritzy suburb of Los Angeles, with a panoramic view of the Pacific. When the fires came, she and her husband had a mere hour (but a precious one) to stuff their cars with whatever they deemed most important to save, say goodbye to their lovely home forever, and drive down the mountain road to safety.

Those who haven’t lived in southern California—or other areas equally dry—cannot imagine how fast a fire can spread there. I had read about it, but I would not have believed it had I not seen it for myself. I still find it hard to believe, even though I have seen it for myself.

So the news of the fire now blazing to the north of Los Angeles has a grim reality for me beyond the abstract. Here’s a description of its scope so far:

Even for a region used to enduring huge wildfires, the rate at which the Station Fire spread is staggering. Much of the city of Los Angeles is covered with a thick layer of soot, and authorities are telling residents of the city to stay indoors if possible. More than 2,500 firefighters are battling the blaze, using everything from hand tools to airplanes, but have only contained five percent of the fire, and don’t expect full containment for at least another week.

“We are making progress, but it is very slow and very dangerous,” U.S. Forest Service incident commander Mike Dietrick said at a press conference this morning. “We have to wait for the fire to come to us.”

I don’t have to tell you how brave firefighters are, and how dangerous their job always is. Two have already died in connection with this fire, when their car went off a steep mountain road. Let’s hope there will be no more casualties.

But the winds are due to pick up tonight.

Lamaze class and Obama: the morning after

The New Neo Posted on by

Whatever could the connection be between Lamaze class and President Obama?

When I was pregnant I went to Lamaze class to learn breathing and relaxation techniques that would help me during my delivery. I was a pretty good student. I practiced assiduously, and when my husband squeezed my hand (or whatever paltry exercise was supposed to simulate the pain of labor) I huffed and puffed right through it like a champ.

I made a tape of favorite music to soothe me between pains. I packed a little bag to take with me. In short, I was all prepared.

Except I wasn’t, as it turned out. Not at all. I don’t know about others, but for me Lamaze class turned out to be something between a cruel joke and a cruel lie.

I won’t bore you with the female equivalent of war stories. But let’s just say that the tools Lamaze class gave me were entirely inadequate to the task of dealing with the pain of labor and childbirth (which happened in my case to have included unrelieved back labor and the rather unusual situation of the delivery of a full-term infant in an unbroken sac filled with amniotic fluid. But I digress.)

What’s far more important, it turns out (surprise, surprise!) that labor is the least of the things for which a new mother needs to be prepared. After all, labor is short compared to eighteen or twenty-one years of raising a child.

For these I was almost totally unprepared, although in retrospect I think I stepped up to the plate quite nicely. But I remember wondering why everyone had seemed so focused on childbirth itself, as though that were an ending rather than just the beginning.

How does this relate to Obama? I think that he and his staff were focused mostly on the pregnancy and childbirth of the campaign and the election. It’s not that they paid no attention whatsoever to what would come after. But I’m not so sure they thought all that much about it.

Perhaps that’s true of many candidates. But for Obama and his staff, as competent as they were about the campaign, they seem so far to have been equally incompetent about governing.

I’m not just saying that because I disagree with nearly everything they’ve done—although I certainly do disagree with nearly everything they’ve done. It’s that they seem unfocused and naive. The vaunted “transparency” they promised not only has not been demonstrated, but instead a different sort of transparency has surfaced: the arrogance of their efforts to blame the American people for disagreeing with them, and the obviousness of their attempts to twist the economic forecasts in order to deceive the public about what’s happening and what the financial results (including needed taxes) of their proposed policies are likely to be.

Kyle-Anne Shiver chalks much of Obama’s problem up to his following the Alinsky playbook:

Alinsky’s power tactics are all about gaining power and have absolutely nothing to offer in the way of practical solutions for effective American governance. Even Alinsky alerted his acolytes to this glaring hole in the revolutionary garment he was devising…

So, when a politician jumps the gun and sprints for the presidential power-perch without first thinking through the country’s problems and trying to come up with some actual new things to try, he is sunk in a mudhole of his own making long before Inaugural Day.

Even supporters are getting frustrated at what seems to be the Obama adminstration’s incompetence and disorganization, as well as its lack of focus. Their concern is that Obama can’t “sell” his policies and get Congress and the American people onboard. For Obama opponents, these failures are reassuring, because they mean that Congress and the American public are starting to wise up to the far-Left nature of so much of the Obama agenda—perhaps in time to stop it.

Let’s hear it for the “Science Fiction Theater” theme

The New Neo Posted on by

This is for those among you who, like me, were huge fans of the early TV show “Science Fiction Theater.” It was the forerunner to a much better (and better-known) series, “The Twilight Zone.”

But “Science Fiction Theater” had its own charm. I was practically a tot at the time (yeah, right), but for me it was one of the most eagerly-awaited and anticipated half-hours of the week.

Not the least of the attractions—it actually may have been the greatest one, for me—was the intro to the show. It featured sweeping music that had an exhilarating quality. I always felt a thrill and a chill on hearing it. Host Truman Bradley, although nowhere near as mysterious, biting, and wonderful as Rod Serling to come, had a trustworthy demeanor that gave gravitas to the otherwise-flighty proceedings.

I was very pleased to find this clip at You Tube—hadn’t heard that music in centuries (or is it millenia?):