More in The American Spectator: this time my thoughts on an aspect of Obamacare

This morning, The American Spectator is publishing my web article about the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). I specifically touch on that body's findings last year about prostate cancer screening.

As readers of this website know, I am a mild-mannered urologic surgeon by day and an occasional intrepid blogger and free-lance writer by night. Here in Montana, as is true in most parts of the country, we urologists are in short supply and have more work than we can handle, so I don't view the USPSTF's findings as an existential threat to my profession in the way that some of my more counterparts in saturated urban markets do. Any doctor who doesn't want to find that certain tests and treatments are unnecessary -- well, let's just say that is someone I wouldn't want to be my doctor. I disagree that prostate cancer screening is unnecessary, but I do believe that treatment should be done more selectively.

The larger point, and the reason I chose to write about it, is that this is an example of a government agency having some correct information but drawing the kind of wrong conclusion that only an impersonal committee can. Anyway, welcome to medical care dictated by impersonal committees. With Obamacare we will only get more of the same -- unless, of course, "we" are elites (like the President) who will be exempt from its strictures.

Here is the link -- enjoy!

My piece in The American Spectator about bison, national monuments, and Montana

This morning, The American Spectator published a web article with my musings on last fall's sale of the Etchart Ranch to an environmentalist group, a subject I wrote about here at Montana Headlines at the time it first happened.

The good editors were interested in the subject matter, but we were in the middle of a heated election season at the time that was using up all available oxygen.

Now that the voting is over and President Obama is firmly entrenched for another 4 years, there is more room for other subjects. When asked recently about the piece, I offered my opinion that this particular topic is a timeless one, and the editors apparently agreed. My opinions are, as the piece makes clear, colored by my own experiences -- I don't pretend to be an unbiased observer by any means.

Anyway, the reader can be the judge -- here's the link. Enjoy!

About the state: Big Sky Big Grass Festival

Sunday update:

I was up too late Sunday night to post and too busy until now, so I'll hit the highlights.

My suspicions about the acoustic/sound problems in the ballroom on Saturday night were confirmed when I went to see the Traveling McCourys early Sunday evening in the same small venue that Special Consensus played. The Traveling McCourys are Del McCoury's band, only without Del McCoury and with a guest guitarist and/or assorted other guests. This evening, the guest guitarist was Bill Nershi of the Emmitt-Nershi Band. I didn't get to hear that band perform due to conflicts in my activity schedule, but Nershi was a fine addition to the McCoury band, led by Del's oldest son Ronnie on the mandolin and with all the band members other than banjo playing Robbie McCoury taking turns on lead vocals. They used the same old school double condenser mike setup to handle the core of their needs, and in the more intimate setting the sound was superb. I felt a little bad about leaving early, but the beloved was holding down seats at the ballroom and I wanted to join her there.

I was glad to have done so, since opening for Sam Bush was the (apparently) world-famous auto-harp player Bryan Bowers. Anyone (i.e., me) who thinks that the autoharp is little more than a guitar for dummies will get a rude awakening by hearing Bowers perform. There were moments when his playing was stunning, and others when it was merely transcendent, as in a slowed down, wistful performance of Ola Belle Reed's "High on a Mountain," backed by John Lowell on guitar and Tom Murphy on mandolin (of Bozeman-based Two Bit Franks). Del McCoury, who has probably done the most to make that song well-known to modern bluegrass audiences, had performed it the night before, but due to the afore-mentioned acoustic issues, its beauty wasn't really conveyed very well, so I was glad to hear it again. Bowers was at times a bit crude for my taste, but the old man has paid his dues with a lifetime of playing on street corners and smoky barrooms and has earned the right to be who he wants to be. Part of his point was that a lot of traditional and folk music has been sanitized over the years for more polite consumption, and he's certainly right about that.

There were parts that I liked better than others about his show, but I went from the starting point of "who is this old guy who's opening for Sam Bush?" to "I'm glad I got to hear this guy once while he's still alive."

The ubiquitous Sam Bush and his guitarist came out and played and sang on the last couple of songs in Bowers's set, and then was back not long later with his band with what ended up, with encores, being nearly a 3 1/2 hour set. Those who are familiar with Bush know that he is a rock star trapped in a bluegrass mandolin player's body. Well, that's really not true -- "trapped" would be one of the last words one could possibly use to describe Bush. He is his own man with his own style, fusing bluegrass, old-fashioned rock-and-roll, free-form jazz, folk, you name it... If you ever want to try to wrap your head around the idea of a rock band with screaming mandolins and banjos, go experience Sam Bush.

Bush is best known as one of the world's top mandolin players, but he made his name as a young man by playing the fiddle, and we were treated to him playing fiddle for perhaps the last quarter of his show, ranging from straight-ahead bluegrass to psychedelic jazz/folk fusion (really can't think of a better way to describe it).

For an encore, Bush started by coming out to sing a couple of his old crowd-pleasers: Van Morrison's "Hungry for your Love," and Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country," accompanying himself solo on the mandolin while his stage man set up for the finale. That finale was a "Sam Bush and friends" moment, with a stage full of performers from the week's leading bands (minus Special Consensus, of course, who were flying back from the Grammy Awards, where they lost to Steve Martin's Steep Canyon Rangers).

In typical Sam Bush fashion, the finale started with that old bluegrass standard -- Bob Marley's "One Love," and ended with a tribute to the recently departed Levon Helm: The Band's "Up on Cripple Creek." Everyone on stage and in the audience seemed to enjoy it as much as Bush, with Ronnie McCoury joining Sam Bush at the center microphone to do his best Robbie Robertson imitation. And needless to say, a good jam was had by all. This being a bluegrass festival, Bush knew how to end it, morphing "Up on Cripple Creek" into the bluegrass fiddle tune "Cripple Creek," accelerating until everyone's strings were ready to melt by the end.

Could my nearly 50 year old body and psyche handle the energy of another Sam Bush concert? Not sure, but I'm pretty that by the next time Bush arrives in Montana again, I'll be ready to give it a try.

Kudos to Steve Merlino for organizing a great festival.

* * * * *

Saturday update:

Special Consensus played a great show early in the evening at a smaller, more intimate venue than had originally been planned for them. Plan A was for them to open for Sam Bush on Sunday night in the main ballroom, but then their latest album "Scratch Gravel Road" was nominated for a Grammy, which meant that they needed to fly out for the Grammy Awards just in case (they have stiff competition from Dailey and Vincent and the Grascals, among others), and then they are flying back to Big Sky to appear at a couple more events on Monday, including a benefit for the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center.

I had a chance to meet band leader and banjo player Greg Cahill before the show -- very unassuming both in person and on stage, and quite a performer. The rest of the band, as is so often the case in bluegrass music, were veritable kids by comparison -- and as is also so often the case, they all were incredible musicians. I've always enjoyed listening to Special Consensus on bluegrass radio, and wish them well at the Grammy Awards.

I originally felt bad for them, since their crowd was much smaller than it would have been (there were maybe 25 of us at the start of the show, but it had probably tripled by the end -- and it was an enthusiastic bunch). But by the end of the evening, I think that they perhaps got the better end of things in some ways, as will become clear.

The night's headline act was back over at the main ballroom, which is, to put it nicely, an acoustically challenged venue. It was great to see and hear a legend like Del McCoury in person, but it would have been nice to have been able to hear the music better. It was difficult to make out any of what was said between the songs, and not easy to hear the vocals. Granted, not all of this was the venue -- part was also the crowd. The main ballroom was packed and the same young and rowdy crowd that was so invigorating the evening before just didn't seem to be inclined to quiet down enough to let people hear. Still, you gotta love it when the vast majority of those turning out in force to see an old man with silver hair playing traditional bluegrass music are young enough to be his grandkids. I was particularly warmed to have a college-aged kid walk by during his performance of "Vincent Black Lightning" who knew the words well enough to be singing along.

McCoury is old school -- he and his band (which includes two of his sons) perform in dark suits and ties in the best bluegrass tradition. More to the point, he and his band perform with an old-school setup: a couple of multi-directional condenser microphones do most of the heavy lifting. This may have been part of the problem, since the opening act used a more modern setup, with miked instruments and individual vocal microphones -- and their sound projected much better. Sam Bush also uses a more modern mike setup, so I suspect he will sound better in this venue tomorrow night. We shall see...

Speaking of Sam Bush, he made a surprise appearance on stage to close out the set and play the encore ("White House Blues" -- an old 1920's tune that Bill Monroe turned into a bluegrass classic) with Del McCoury and the band. He and McCoury have been touring together as a duo, so they had plenty of material to choose from for this part of the show.

Bush said it best tonight: if there is a king of bluegrass today, his name would be Del McCoury. In spite of the sound problems (oh, and a temporary failure of sound and light systems worthy of this year's Superbowl), he held the young audience's attention just as well as Mumford and Sons could have. Another youngster (if they're young enough to be my kids they are youngsters) standing near me yelled into his friend's ear: "that's bluegrass royalty we're looking at up there on stage." Indeed.

* * * * * * *

Friday: Well, posting has been sporadic, and I imagine that will be the case for some time to come. We are going to be a bit shorthanded at work for the foreseeable future, which has cut into my spare time a great deal. In addition, I've become addicted to my new mandolin, and when faced with the choice between learning to play a new fiddle tune and writing about current events... well, there really isn't much competition, to tell the truth. While I've certainly not shirked on being able to read music, this was one instrument where I decided that I was going to follow the advice that so many traditional musicians give: learn everything by ear. And I pretty much have, amazing myself with the fact that one can learn relatively complex tunes listening to them at regular tempo. Funny how those old-timers sometimes actually know what they are talking about.

And as the title indicates, I've taken a break from the rat race to come up to Big Sky to ski by day and listen to bluegrass by night. Tonight's opening evening was a showcase of bands from Montana -- a bit of a mixed bag as one would suspect, but a lot of fun. And New Belgium was on hand to showcase some of their specialty offerings -- with your entrance to the show, you also got a commemorative sampler glass and tickets for 10 fills.

As I had expected, it was a young and relatively rowdy crowd -- nice to be one of the oldest people at something rather than one of the youngest for a change. The beer was high-octane and so was the music. Think "Infamous Stringdusters" rather than "Blue Highway," if you know what I mean. Lots of dreads, a fair smattering of crazy ski-slope hats, and late into the evening I saw smoke rising from near the stage and knew it wasn't tobacco -- and indeed when it wafted back, it bore the unmistakeable scent of something Cab Calloway might write a song about. Probably one of the thousands of 20-somethings here in Montana that are dying from cancer, I suppose.

While there was another excellent band -- somebody and the Rusty Dusty Nails -- my favorite band of the evening was the Lil' Smokies -- apparently a Missoula-based band with what were easily the best mandolin and banjo players of the night and a dobro player laying down some very respectable rolls and fills. Their mandolin player was channeling Sam Bush, especially from a rhythmic standpoint.

[Thanks to Ed Kemmick, who point out that the name of my other favorite band of the evening was Billings-based Ted Ness and the Rusty Nails.]Speaking of Sam Bush, he plays here on Sunday night -- the keynote address of the conference, so to speak, and one of the big reasons I didn't want to miss this. He's on my bluegrass bucket list and all that. Anyway, I left a little early this evening to go pick up our tickets and was waiting on the beloved to come join me before I had my first sampling of what New Belgium had to offer. Turns out she had forgotten to ask me where the party was happening. Just as she was deciding which way to go, along comes Sam Bush, whom she decides to follow at a discreet distance, figuring he would know which way to go. Alas, she quickly figured out he was headed elsewhere and not planning to drop in on the evening's activities, so she did what everyone does these days when in doubt -- she shot me a text message asking where to go.

I was carrying my little book where I jot down the lyrics of songs I'm learning and where I keep a list of fiddle tunes I've learned so I can run through them. Armed with it and my trusty pen, I was ready to ask for an autograph in the very unlikely event that I ran into Sam or Del McCoury (the other big name here this weekend) -- so of course it would be the beloved who runs into him in the lobby on the first evening...

I'll update this as the weekend progresses.

My review of Peace, They Say in Touchstone

As I mentioned when I reviewed Jay Nordlinger's fine book Peace, They Say here on Montana Headlines, that review was essentially half of the original draft of my review. I pared that draft down for submission to Touchstone magazine, and used the cuttings in the above-mentioned Montana Headlines review.

I have written a number of times over the years for Touchstone, a fine serious magazine that deals with the nexus between Christianity and culture from a traditional perspective. It includes a balance of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant writers and editors, and for those who are interested in both Christianity and modern culture, its pages contain some thoughtful gems.

As a side-note, it is a little scary to realize that it has now been more than 20 years since my first piece appeared in its pages.

Anyway, my review was just published, and here is the link -- enjoy!

My recent piece in The American Conservative

I have mentioned before that The American Conservative is worth reading because it contains elements of an old-fashioned conservatism that one doesn't find anymore in the "mainstream" conservative media outlets. Love it or hate it, it can never be accused of taking any kind of a party line.

I hadn't been on its website for awhile over the holidays, and I had lost track of a review that I had submitted to that magazine last fall. It was only when the check arrived in the mail from The American Conservative that I realized it had been published.

It is a review of Roger Scruton's latest book, How to Think Seriously About the Planet.

Here's the link -- enjoy.

Back in the saddle for now -- and agreeing with Sen Tester?

Well, it has been a bit since I've posted. Funny how easily one can get used to not writing something three times a week. It was a full Christmas season, jam-packed with family, church, music, and life. Depression over the state of the nation has faded into irrelevance, and we didn't go over the taxation "fiscal cliff" as I had expected. One takes one's comforts where one can find them.

I really haven't been following much regarding the legislature, but I noted that I was somewhat in agreement with Sen. Jon Tester in his remarks to the Montana legislature. Not about all of that bipartisan stuff -- when Democrats say "bipartisan" they usually mean "go along with what we think." And not about his grandstanding on "Citizen's United" and all that. But this line:

Don’t focus on division and distraction.

We have already seen some goofy stuff -- the ever-reliable Jerry O'Neil wanting to be paid in gold, for instance. Or how about Sen. Jason Priest's suggestion to shrink the size of the Montana legislature? Neither thing is particularly harmful. It is just the kind of silly stuff that the Montana press loves to write about -- and why not? It makes for great theater.

Just once I'd love to see a hard-nosed Republican majority go to work on an exclusively economic, legal, and regulatory agenda made up of common-sense stuff that would be difficult to assail from the left.

We have a Democratic U.S. Senator addressing the Montana legislature saying that at the federal level, every spending program needs to be on the table -- i.e. the chopping block. Let's have a Republican legislature put that into play. Put every department and every expensive program on the table here in our state. Do some significant (but not over-the-top) trimming, and quote Sen. Tester at every turn about how everything needs to be "on the table." Let the opposition howl and be the ones to be unreasonable for a change.

Leave the controversial and divisive social issues alone for a term. Leave at home, for once, those items that amount to nothing more than picking fights or picking nits regarding battles lost long, long ago. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Rep. O'Neil.)

The truth of the matter is that if Republicans take Sen. Tester's admonition to heart and "don't focus on division and distraction," the big winner would be the Montana Republican Party. Surely Sen. Tester knows this -- which means that he is serenely confident that a sizable number of Montana GOP legislators will ignore his advice and proceed to shoot themselves and their party in the foot. I wish I didn't share his confidence...

Blog review

Back in the early days of Montana Headlines, I posted nearly every day -- sometimes more than once a day. In that atmosphere, I found myself frequently commenting on content found in other blogs -- both lefty and righty. Now that I have been sticking to a regular thrice-weekly posting schedule and maintaining topical consistency for the publication schedule, I rarely have space or opportunity to comment on the interesting blogs that I read.

The Montana blog that I visit the most often, hands-down, is Electric City Weblog, and for good reason. The triumvirate of writers -- Gregg Smith, Dave Budge, and Rob Natelson are as good as any around. Each has his area of interest and expertise, making for regular doses of something for everyone. In addition, their blog has made room for guest posters. Most recently, Electric City has given space to the woes of Benefis Hospital in Great Falls. While I haven't read all of those posts, as a health professional, I can guarantee that the public has been treated to inside views of the Great Falls health care scene that it would never get from the official media -- in no small part because of the economic power that large local hospitals have in Montana cities (i.e. they buy lots of advertising).

Astute readers will also have noted that Ed Kemmick's blog was recently added to the sidebar at the right. Longtime readers will recall that Kemmick's City Lights blog at the Billings Gazette was the key Montana blog as far as Montana Headlines was concerned. In addition, just as Montana Headlines has been a faithful critic of his employer, the Billings Gazette, Kemmick has been a faithful critic of Montana Headlines when I have deserved it (and even occasionally when I haven't.) Kemmick was never an enthusiastic commenter on things like politics in his blogposts and comments, but he did a most credible job of it in spite of such scruples. The advent of his current blog coincided with the appearance of his recent book (just buy it -- you won't be sorry) and has taken an interesting literary bent, with musings on books and literature taking the fore.

One blog I have mentioned a few times has been Million Dollar Way, the mother of all Bakken blogs. It is like drinking from a fire hydrant -- one is in awe at the output, which is so voluminous that one has to spend a fair amount of time just making sure that one has glanced over all of the posts since one last visited.

A new rightward Montana blog is Rockin' On the Right Side, with an interesting mixture of politics, pop culture, and music videos. A recent sampling includes a recent lineup of Chicago performing "Questions 67 and 68," Peter Gabriel doing "Big Time," BTO with "Takin Care of Business," and one of my favorites -- Huey Lewis. It's worth visiting just to see what classic rock videos are going to be posted.

What about the leftie blogs? Have to confess that I rarely look at them the way I used to, and thus have little worth saying about them.

There doesn't seem to be the kind of heated interplay between the leftward and rightward blogosphere in Montana -- and indeed, there aren't as many political blogs in Montana -- compared to my most active years of political blogging. Perhaps the world has moved on to other forms of communication, leaving blogs in the dust. Maybe we just aren't bothering to communicate at all. Maybe we're all too busy doing more important things. My vote -- or rather my hopes -- are with the latter.

I have the entire family home for the holidays, so my own blogging will be sparse until January.