If you’re following the situation in Honduras, as you should be, I have a blog for you – La Gringa’s Blogcito. La Gringa – an American woman who went down to Honduras several years ago “for the plants” [As opposed to "for the waters"?-ed. You've seen Casablanca too many times.] – seems to have good sources. Her latest post – about the role of the State Deparment’s Thomas Shannon – should raise a few eyebrows.

Well, there is no song – that I know of – entitled “I Got the Blue State Blues,” but someone ought to write some lyrics because the old “California Dreamin’” has become bluesy indeed, somewhere along the lines of Billie Holiday’s “Stormy Monday.” It’s that bad. This has become a lousy place to live and everybody knows it, even when “all the leaves are brown/and the sky is grey” elsewhere.

There are many reasons for this but William Voegeli has put his finger on one of the major ones in “Golden State isn’t worth it” – an op-ed that appeared yesterday in the Los Angeles Times. I wonder how many of its readers (or editors) read it, because what Voegeli is saying goes against the policies the paper has taken since I moved West in the era when Mama Cass & Co. sang “California Dreamin’” and ” Go Where You Wanna to Go.” (Oh, man, do the lyrics of that last one make me sad.)

But back to Voegeli. He writes in the LAT:

In America’s federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a “package deal” that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right.

It’s not surprising, then, that there’s an intense debate over which model is more admirable and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit/low-tax package not only succeeds on its own terms but also according to the criteria used to defend its opposite. In other words, the superior public goods that supposedly justify the high taxes just aren’t being delivered.

Voegeli goes on to back this up with facts and figures, adding more in a lengthier piece in City Journal. But to those of us who live here those facts and figures are just so much garnish. We know without opening the papers that Cass’ lyrics have gone sour. It’s almost as if we are living in Friedrich von Hayek’s posthumous joke. All our best intentions have gone to mush in a welter of competing, greedy interest groups. Now, according to Voegeli, and as every California commuter knows, even the state highway system in low taxes Texas is better than the world’s fabled first freeway system. Those great songwriters Lieber & Stoller remain unreconstructed liberals, but even they must be worried about the black denim clad hero of their song on Highway 101.

Which brings me to my conclusion. I thought about sending Voegeli’s article to all my (modern) liberal friends – the remaining ones anyway – because I thought it would get them thinking, if anything does. But I stopped. In this era, nobody’s talking.

The cover story of this week’s New York Times Magazine is a lengthy piece entitled The Obamas’ Marriage that could come straight from the pages of People. I didn’t make it through, not because I was angry with its fawning hortatory tone (no surprise there), but because I got bored. I’m not very interested in the etiology of the Obamas anymore, particularly bowdlerized versions in the Times. I’ve given up hope of ever finding out what young Barack actually did at Occidental and Columbia or even reading a snippet of what he wrote, if anything, for the Harvard Law Review.

No, when I read this tedious New York Times piece, I was reminded of Lerner & Lowe’s immortal “Show Me.” We all remember the lyrics: Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words/ I get words all day through/First from him, now from you/Is that all you blighters can do, etc. (Here’s Julie Andrews in the original Broadway production.)

So I’m not really interested in Obama as a man (or as a husband). I’m interested in what he does. And most of that, of late, he has done in secret. We know more about his marriage than about how the healthcare legislation was drafted or how its contents are being negotiated. As Politico told us a few days ago:

When Barack Obama was running for president, he vowed to lead the most open and transparent government in history. Candidate Obama even promised to negotiate health care reform live on television.

Then it came time to govern, and President Obama has negotiated major parts of the health care bill behind closed doors. Earlier this year, he announced deals his administration had cut with drug companies and hospitals after brokering them out of public view. And now his top lieutenants are working in secret with leading Democrats to craft the health care bill that will be debated on the Senate floor.

What the Times is giving us then in their Couples Hagiography is a form of distraction that is probably deliberate. If you love the people, you wont care what they are doing. Trust them – they’re nice folks. Well, okay, but the reaction of someone like me is that I trust them less. Sure, you could say that I am already an Obama skeptic, but I suspect I am not alone in recoiling at this public relations flackery. It even makes me suspicious when I read things about the Obama administration I applaud, like the recent news from Jerusalem that US has for once given the Israelis a break – but perhaps that was Hillary’s doing. You can bet the Times isn’t writing puffery about her marriage… Well, maybe they would.

Lionel Chetywnd and I were about to do this week’s Poliwood
on an entirely different subject when we heard about the statements of National Endowment of the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman regarding Obama being the most “powerful” writer since Julius Caesar. Landesman also went on praise our leader as the first presidential author of books since Teddy Roosevelt. Say what?

Anyway, Lionel and I knew we had to change course. Who could resist this record-breaking moment in the history of brown-nosing? And we were both unlikely to get a grant from the NEA at this point anyway. So off we went, burning bridges again.

All Hail Obama – you can watch the new Poliwood here.

I understand the healthcare bill, in its current iteration, runs 1990 pp. That’s a lot of pp., even for an Evelyn Woods graduate, which I’m not, and, to be honest, I never did finish Remembrance of Things Past. I want to be a good citizen, but if I ever get the extra time, I suspects I’ll choose Proust’s epic, which probably contains more information about health (among many other things), over Pelosi’s. Somehow the French masterpiece seems “more considered” and the first volumes, which were assigned in my college comp lit class, were pretty damn good.

And I think that’s the point. Healthcare needs improvement. What doesn’t? But what’s the rush? At present it is far from a catastrophe. The law of unintended consequences tells us a precipitous move may only make things worse. Why not move step by step? I am enough of a pragmatist to follow that where it may lead, even to a single-payer plan, even though I strongly doubt that would happen. But the current method seems so driven by politics it’s no wonder the public seems about to throw up. But the backers of this bill don’t seem to care. They are so locked in their own ideology they seem unwilling to test it. A gradual approach could, of course, reach their desired result, if it proves to be correct. But I suspect many of the people behind this distrust their own ideas. They don’t really believe themselves. They are only interested in power.

As for Proust, at this moment the collection of Remembrance of Things Past is number 672,039 on Amazon. I’m thinking of buying it and kicking it up a few notches. It’s either that or the Pelosi bill. Which do you think is more nourishing?

Analysis of the latest Gallup Poll by the Cato Institute tends to indicate that a lot of us are at least sympathetic to libertarianism, more so than we may be to traditional conservatism and (especially) liberalism. Of course most people don’t know what libertarianism really means. I have enough trouble with liberal and conservative myself. But the Cato folks explain that Gallup put it this way: If you tell people that “libertarian” means “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” 44 percent will accept the label.

Well, the answer to my headline question is then “No, we’re not.” But it may be that plurality of us now are. There is a message in this for the Republican Party: No Rick Santorums, please. Keep the government out of our pocket books and out of our bedrooms.

And there is a message (or a warning) to the Democratic Party as well: Barack Obama is manufacturing libertarians – not Democrats and certainly not liberals.

Fact-checking the New York Times is always fun for two reasons: 1 – they’re so pretentious about being the “newspaper of record” and 2 – it’s so easy to do.

Tonight, I barely started the paper’s latest “authoritative” report Both Iran and West Fear a Trap on Uranium Deal when I came to the following paragraph: “In Washington, the concern is precisely the reverse. Here, even some of President Obama’s aides are wary that Iran is setting a trap, trying to turn the administration’s signature offer of engagement into a process of endless negotiations. They are acutely aware of the fact that the clock is ticking: While talks continue, Iran is steadily enriching more uranium, the fuel it would need if it ever decided to sprint for the bomb, much as Israel and India did 30 years ago, followed by Pakistan and North Korea.”

Thirty years? Oops. As it happens I had been doing a little routine research – about thirty minutes worth – just the other day for a blog post I was contemplating writing on the subject and (hello fact-checkers wherever you are!) the NYT seems to have gotten its chronology wrong. India set off its first self-described “peaceful nuclear explosion” in 1974, thirty-five years ago. And the CIA reported Israel had nuclear weapons in 1968, fully forty-one years ago. (My suspicion is they had them earlier.)

So, in general, more like forty years than the thirty reported by the “newspaper of record.” A distinction without a difference? Besides the obvious that this discrepancy makes you question The Times’ other facts when they play fast and loose with something so simply ascertained – yes, I am aware that these dates may not be precise, but they seem vastly more accurate than the NYT’s – there is a more important point. The larger the number of years these countries have had nuclear weapons, the older and, probably, more common the technology. Pakistan, the putative home of the Islamic bomb with AQ Khan, had its first “nuclear explosion” in 1987 – twenty-two years ago. Khan apparently gave his nuclear knowledge to North Korea. Did he give – willingly or not – similar knowledge to the mullahs?

We don’t know. But we do know this is old technology, more than forty years old for the Israelis and gaining on seventy (!) for the US. Is there something wrong with the Iranians that they don’t know all about this by now? Is it possible that they have had a bomb for some time without letting anybody know, just as the Israelis apparently were able to do? We don’t know – and therein lies the subtext of the Times piece. They are – no surprise here – worried for their man:

But few in the White House doubt how the narrative will be written if the Iranians actually gain a weapons ability on Mr. Obama’s watch. That is why Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who as a presidential candidate dismissed Mr. Obama’s engagement policy with Iran as naïve, last week warned anew that “the process of engagement cannot be open-ended.” The strategy behind the negotiations that unfolded in Vienna last week was pretty straightforward. If Iran was truly interested in peaceful uses for its nuclear fuel, it should accept the West’s help in using its own stockpile to fuel the reactor in Tehran that makes medical isotopes. If they rejected the deal, it should be easier, in theory, to get Russia and China to join sanctions.

In theory indeed. No one has yet explained to me successfully why Russia and China would really want to help us with the Iranians. But if the New York Times says it’s possible, it must be, n’est-ce pas?

ADDENDUM: One of the other concepts the NYT is trying to sell us in the above linked Iran update is that there is serious disagreement on the nuclear issue among the Iranian ruling class. I doubt this. I think they are just playing for time – and that’s it. Nuclear weapons are, alas, one thing on which all the mullah/thugs agree. This evening we have this report from the regime’s PressTV: Iran waiting for a change in US policy:VP. Uh-huh. Right. More stalling. More whirling centrifuges. Obama’s talk-talk policy seems worthless and toothless to me.

The news tonight from the religious psychotic oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia is alas scarcely shocking: “A Saudi court sentenced a female journalist Saturday to 60 lashes for her work on a controversial Arabic-language TV show that aired an episode in which a man bragged about his sex life, two sources told CNN.”

Ho-hum. So life goes in the land of our great allies, the primitive misogynists. But the next graph of the CNN report did make me laugh: “The court in Jeddah also imposed a two-year travel ban on Rosanna Al-Yami, according to a Saudi Information Ministry official, who could not be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.”

“Not authorized to speak to the media”? The diplomatic double-speak of our own press and Western governments is now being invoked by The Kingdom when giving a woman sixty lashes. Holy-moly!

On the latest POLIWOOD, Lionel and I interview Thor Halvorssen who, through his website and company Motion Picture Institute, is starting to distribute films – documentaries and narrative features – online. Is this the wave of the future? Well, probably in some way or other. It’s hard to tell which direction things are going, but, as I indicate on the show, as of now, chances are you follow this guy. He’s the Francis Ford Coppola of our times, even though he doesn’t make up stories.

But speaking of Coppola, he inspired us to do this episode when he made certain statements about the state of the industry at the Beirut Film Festival: “It’s a period of incredible change,” says the director of “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.” “We used to think of six, seven big film companies. Every one of them is under great stress now. Probably two or three will go out of business and the others will just make certain kind of films like ‘Harry Potter’ — basically trying to make ‘Star Wars’ over and over again, because it’s a business.”

Watch this all on Poliwood here. Catch up on the “brilliance” (oh, shut up) you may have missed here.

Well, you know the answer to that headline “riddle,” if you read this blog. But things are really coming to a head today as the international negotiators await word from the Iranian government (not the people!) to the UN’s latest proposal: “The plan would give Iran access to uranium enriched to a level sufficient for civilian use, but lower than what is needed for a nuclear weapon. Negotiators in Vienna had set a Friday deadline for an agreement.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the indications from Tehran are “not positive.” But he said he retains hope the Iranians will still accept the deal.”

A few days ago, many people (even a few Israelis?!) were jumping up and down about a possible nuclear breakthrough with the Mullahs. It’s the end of the day in Tehran now and it doesn’t look good (assuming this was even a breakthrough in the first place, and not a charade). The French, first President Sarkozy and here FM Kouchner, have been the skeptics all along, playing hardball with the vicious regime and being much more outspoken than our president when millions of democracy demonstrators took to the streets of Iran. More than anything, that demonstrated Obama’s core personality to me. Most of us were moved, sometimes to tears, by these brave people but Barack kept dreaming of some accommodation with Khamenei & Co., an accommodation that would yield him plaudits for negotiating a deal that in all probability would be worth less than the paper it was written on. I can’t think of one nuclear power that has told the truth, even remotely, about their development of atomic weapons. The US began the whole thing at the clandestine Manhattan Project. We should know, but apparently we don’t.

Meanwhile, as the current negotiations continue, every minute lost in blablabla is a minute used by the Iranians for weaponization. But we all know that and still the dumb show continues. There are no easy solutions, far from it, but only one superpower has muscle to do anything serious but we are as likely to do that as fly to Alpha Centauri with our current administration. No wonder Sarko is miffed, as indicated in a new “analysis” from Reuters. The writer ascribes much of it to personal slights, but even she eventually gets down to the nitty gritty – Iran: “Officials say the disconnect is centred on real issues, such as Obama’s attitude to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which has been less hardline than Sarkozy’s hawkish stance.

“There is an annoyance about what the French see as naivety in the Obama administration,” said Bruno Tertrais, a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research.”

More to come, undoubtedly.