Although I’m not so sure he wouldn’t be safer, and happier, if he stayed in the NY eatery as a protected pet, rather than be returned to the ocean, even the protected waters of the toney resort of Kennebunkport.
Of course, who knows what makes for lobster happiness? They have such inscrutable faces.
Have you noticed a certain flatness in the news lately?
The election is over. Bush-bashing is no longer so much fun—nor so necessary—because he’s on the way out. Very very soon, they won’t have him to kick around anymore— although I’m pretty sure they’ll keep on trying.
Iraq is relatively stable, and thus off the media radar screen. Israel and Palestine are—Israel and Palestine. The economy is bad, but that’s not news, and now the initial shock is over. Obama is waiting in the wings, but hasn’t really done much except make appointments and speeches, and bare his torso in Hawaii.
Will the lull last a while? Or is this the calm before the storm?:
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen.
Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy,
We worked together at the factory.
But what could I say if he asks “What’s new?”
“Nothing, what’s with you? Nothing much to do.”
Well, even though the news seems to be repeating itself lately, that most assuredly won’t last long. Remember the pre-9/11 summer of 2001, when the biggest stories were about shark attacks?
Real news of import is always a surprise, always unexpected. That’s why it’s called news.
Depressed about the recession? If you are, research indicates that, unless you are directly affected by losing your job or some other dramatic loss, the downturn in your mood won’t last long. And even if you have been directly affected in a fairly dramatic way, you probably won’t remain depressed for long unless that’s your natural tendency anyway.
It turns out that, just as money can’t buy you love, it can’t buy you happiness—at least, not much, and not permanently. But even if there are a few depressed people around, they’re not as likely to have a depressive effect on others:
The reason: sorrow does not spread nearly as readily as joy. Nicholas Christakis, one of the study’s authors, says happy people form groups and socialize. Unhappy people spend more time alone, not always by choice. “Do you want to hang out with an unhappy person?” says Christakis, who teaches sociology at Harvard. “My feeling is that happiness declines during recessions, but I am not sure how much.”
[ADDENDUM: Here’s a piece on what makes for happiness—at least, according to psychology research. Turns out that some of it is genetic—about 50%, as with so many things. And other important factors are the somewhat corny and cliched, but nevertheless important, acts of counting one’s blessings, finding meaning in one’s life, and altruistic endeavors. ]
…on possible (probable?) CNN Pallywood.
Well, it may be Pat Buchanan saying it, but I still agree with him: Obama has a choice between the FDR approach to the Great Depression, policies that made it “greater”—that is, longer and more damaging—than it otherwise would have been; and the more successful Reagan approach to the recession of 1980.
But Buchanan ignores the one thing both FDR and Reagan had in common: an abiding optimism and the ability to convey it. They exuded confidence.
There is something very different and disturbing about Obama’s message, and that is his deep pessimism about America. Despite the lip service paid to the hope/change campaign message of uplift, his negativity comes through loud and clear.
Of course, Obama’s latest economic speech is being given in the context of trying to motivate legislation he will be proposing, especially his huge and controversial stimulus package, which jumps (rather than wades) into deep and uncharted waters. But if you read excerpts from his speech, you will see how extraordinarily gloomy it is, couched in the language of the dire consequences of what could happen if Obama’s plan isn’t realized.
The remedy? Why, big government, that’s what:
Mr. Obama insisted that only government could “break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy,” prevent “the catastrophic failure of financial institutions,” restart the flow of credit and restore the regulations needed to prevent such a crisis in the future.
Not only is big government the one and only answer, according to Obama, but the changes he proposes have to occur as soon as possible:
For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs,” Mr. Obama warned. “More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”
For some contrast, let’s have the words of FDR in his First Inaugural, facing a situation far worse than that Obama faces today:
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself””nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory…Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply…
We can argue over the proper policy to institute in order to deal with the financial crisis, and the Left and Right certainly will do so. But I don’t think there’s any argument about the fact that Obama is striking exactly the wrong tone, if economic recovery is what he is really after.
Back in September I wrote that much of the vicious bias against Sarah Palin was a result of her being from the wrong side of the tracks—the Walmart side. Now Palin is on the record as acknowledging the class issue in an interview with conservative filmmaker John Ziegler.
Palin feels that Caroline Kennedy’s upscale bona fides have caused her to be been handled by the press with more delicacy:
I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also that was such a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy versus, say, the scrutiny of what her candidacy may be.
I personally have been somewhat surprised that Caroline has been criticized at all by the press; I expected more of an anointment, which she certainly has not gotten. Nevertheless it’s true that she has been treated nowhere near as poorly as Palin was—but then again, few people on earth have been treated by the press as poorly as Palin was.
Palin adds that she was certainly aware of how badly things were going with the MSM almost from the start. Re the disastrous Couric interviews:
[M]y question to the campaign was, after it didn’t go well the first day, why were we going to go back for more?
This is another example of the fact that Palin had good political instincts. That was clear from the moment she gave her first speech, and it was one of the things that frightened the opposition and made them determined to destroy her. Her handlers should have trusted her more.
She’s not given up, but I wonder whether she’s through politically on the national level.
The intrepid Richard Landes is on the case.
…fear itself, why does Obama keep playing on it?
In the financial crisis, he’s been sounding a relentlessly gloomy note from the very start. I agree that things are far from rosy, but I believe that Obama is doing no one any favors by being so consistently pessimistic. Perceptions and emotions affect the economic climate, and pronouncements of the President (or President-Elect) help to shape them.
Donuts (or doughnuts, take your pick) are popular again, not that they ever really went out of style.
This article indicates that those luscious little bundles of fried dough are undergoing a renaissance, as well as a gentrification that includes something called the gourmet artisanal doughnut. Really. Examples of the latter include donuts with lavender-scented glaze, or flavors such as mashed banana-filled peanut butter.
Well, count me out. I actually only like one kind of doughnut: the sour cream glazed. And I only like them when they’re very fresh, and a bit heavy and rough-edged to give the right crust of crunchy, with many depressions and crevices in which the (non-lavender-scented) glaze can pool.
This exact type used to be readily available in the supermarket near where I live, representing a constant and not easily resisted temptation. Not only that, but a nearby bakery (which thankfully closed a few years ago) used to package up its unsold doughnuts late in the day and sell a bag of eight for about two dollars, and often that bag would contain nothing but the sour cream glazed variety. Dangerous.
A few years ago when the Krispy Kreme Kraze swept the country, I had to wait a while to get my first taste. But when I finally came across one, I was deeply disappointed. This was the donut I’d heard so much about? This airy thing that evaporated almost as soon as it entered the mouth? A travesty.
But worst of all is the cupcake. When I was a child I found them perfectly fine, but past the age of about eight I’ve never understood what the fuss is about. A cupcake is just a piece of cake with some icing, except there’s no layers and therefore no filling. So, what’s the big deal? Why have they become so incredibly popular these days?
And why oh why have they become so astoundingly expensive? At four dollars a pop, the things are ridiculous.
And stores entirely dedicated to them? I first encountered this phenomenon a couple of years ago in Greenwich Village. Nothing but cupcakes in the window, enticing aging and paunchy boomers to wax nostalgic and young and slender hipsters to contemplate the retro pleasures of the comfort food. It must hark back to something about childhood, but that’s as far as I can get with it.
This article mentions that the world has passed an important milestone: more than half its population lives in cities. That means that city life is having a greater and greater effect on our culture, bodies, and psyches. So there’s reason to be interested in the crop of recent research discussed in the piece, which indicates that cities dull our ability to think, reduce our impulse control, and increase aggression.
This isn’t really all that surprising; some of these results have been known for some time What is somewhat new is that the same research suggests that just a bit of greenery can mitigate some of these effects. Although we are social animals, apparently we are also meant to be natural ones amidst the world of plants and foliage:
[J]ust looking at a natural scene can lead to higher scores on tests of attention and memory. While people have searched high and low for ways to improve cognitive performance, from doping themselves with Red Bull to redesigning the layout of offices, it appears that few of these treatments are as effective as simply taking a walk in a natural place.
Wordsworth had a thing or two to say about it all:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.””Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Many people ask why there are so few Israeli casualties in comparison with the Palestinian death toll. It’s because Israel’s first priority is the safety of its citizens, which is why there are shelters and warning systems in Israeli towns. If Hamas can dig tunnels, it can certainly build shelters. Instead, it prefers to use women and children as human shields while its leaders rush into hiding.
The article in the WSJ is by Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center. In it, he also mentions that ceasefires are used by Hamas to regroup and rearm, and that this is a pattern. The pattern includes offers by the world to give ever-increasing funds for humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, whose leaders then use it to do everything but truly benefit its people.
My question is: why is this pattern not more widely recognized? It’s not as though it’s hard to see. One can evoke anti-Semitism as the reason, and no doubt this is responsible for a portion of it. But it’s hardly the whole story. There’s also the need on the Left to sympathize with any third world peoples, and the Palestinians have been milking this for decades in their unrelenting propaganda.
But I continue to believe that the media itself has an enormous role, perhaps in great part because of a self-serving need to continue to report favorably on the Palestinians in order to continue its all-important “access” to a story it’s already presenting in such a skewed manner. Why bother?
Ralph Peters doesn’t like the Panetta pick, not one little bit. He says that it shows that Obama does not take intelligence “seriously.” I hadn’t thought of that description when I wrote my piece on the subject, but it does seem particularly apropos.
As Peters says, this is not a good time or venue for on-the-job training. It would help immeasurably to at least be familiar with the bureaucracy that forms the intelligence community, but Panetta is not. And Obama doesn’t seem to care:
To be a qualified D-CIA, a man or woman needs a sophisticated grasp of three things: The intel system, foreign-policy challenges and the Pentagon (which owns most of our intelligence personnel and hardware). Panetta has no background – none – in any of these areas. He was never interested.
Is Obama interested? One wonders.
This pick worries Peters, and it certainly worries me. It is an indication of a trend that was evident during the entire Obama campaign, which is that Obama seems to think qualifications and experience are not important.
Remember his preposterous assertion that he himself was as qualified (or more qualified) than anyone to make foreign policy decisions because he had lived in Indonesia as a child and traveled to Pakistan as a young adult (please see this to refresh your memory)? Perhaps that wasn’t just campaign hyperbole.
My current suspicion is that Obama believes it is true. If so, this a dangerous thing. The most ignorant person isn’t merely the one who doesn’t know, it’s the one who doesn’t know that he/she doesn’t know.