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What a waste of our tax dollars

2011-01-21T12:53:00.003-05:00

Just the other day, a Pittsburgh man was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the premeditated murder of another city man. My first thought was, why in the world are we NOT executing this guy? The murderer, Luzay Watson, is 22 years old. Based on average life expectancy, we could be feeding, clothing, housing and providing medical care to this guy for the next 50 years, just so we can keep him in a box. Of course, who knows how much money would have to be spent fighting endless legal appeals if Mr. Watson had been sentenced to die. That's another problem that needs to be addressed. I'm all for allowing condemned people – or anyone convicted of a crime, for that matter – to avail themselves of appeals. The initial court decisions aren't always right, and our justice system should do everything possible to ensure that an innocent person is not jailed for life or executed for a crime he didn’t commit. But there’s no reason why a convicted killer should be allowed to play the system for 30 years or more to avoid having a death sentence carried out. Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President William McKinley, was convicted on Sept. 24, 1901, and put to death just over a month later. Perhaps we could find a happy medium between these two extremes.

Should they quit trying?

2011-01-21T12:19:00.003-05:00

Mike White of the Post-Gazette wrote a piece yesterday about the fallout from the Seton-LaSalle girls basketball team’s recent 113-14 victory over the girls from Brentwood. Seton-LaSalle says it is dealing with coach Dennis Squeglia internally, but that’s not good enough for the WPIAL, which wants an official report on what action the school takes, presumably so it can go further than the action taken by the school, if it deems that necessary. The real question here is, why is Squeglia in trouble at all? Tim O'Malley, the executive director of the WPIAL, told the P-G that “sportsmanship was totally absent in this case.” The story doesn't indicate why O’Malley believes that to be the case. I'm wondering, did the Seton-LaSalle girls continue employing a full-court press against overmatched Brentwood ball-handlers, despite the score? Were they doing 360-degree dunks? Not likely. It's girls basketball, after all. Squeglia denies running it up against Brentwood and said his starters played only a couple of minutes into the second half. I don't think anybody wants a team to go out of its way to humiliate another, such as by taunting them or celebrating excessively in such a blowout. But why should the girls from Seton-LaSalle, who practice every bit as hard as the girls from Brentwood (harder, perhaps, based on the score), have to essentially stop playing as they have been taught, just so nobody's itty-bitty feelings get hurt? And it's not like this loss was an isolated thrashing. The Brentwood girls also lost 71-9 to Avonworth, 65-11 to Bishop Canevin and 64-12 to Steel Valley. My advice to the Brentwood girls, if they want to avoid another similar whipping, is to work harder and do a better job the next time. If such a beating is too much for the girls' self-esteem to bear, disband the team and just have intramural basketball.

Words matter

2011-01-12T14:38:00.004-05:00

Let's be clear from the start. The guy accused of trying to assassinate Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killing six people in the process is nuts. You can't claim there was a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the angry, sometimes violent imagery used in the world of politics with his decision to try to gun down the Democratic congresswoman. But at the same time, you can’t totally dismiss the effects that such political speech might have, particularly on the more unhinged among us. Sarah Palin, as everyone now knows, disseminated a map of congressional districts she thought the Republican Party should try to reclaim last year, including Giffords' seat, and very clearly marked them with the crosshairs of a gun sight. I'm not suggesting that gunman Jared Loughner, shown at left, saw those crosshairs and took that as an order to commit violence. But it's part of the rotten fabric of what's left of America. Do Democrats and Republicans both engage in demonization of their opponents. Certainly. But let's not pretend that it's equal. Those on the right have a much "richer" history of late when it comes to hinting at violence, or the need for such, if the political opportunities for "taking our country back" are not successful. The underlying message, which no one really wants to say out loud, is that the day is coming, because of President Obama and his minions, when blacks, Mexicans, Arabs – heck, anybody that doesn’t look like a good, old-fashioned white Amerkun – will arrive on your doorstep to take your stuff and maybe even kill you. Just being honest. That's what is written between the lines. When shameless demagogues on the radio and some TV networks, interested only in their approval ratings from a sheeplike fan base, build mental pictures of a post-insurrection, post-societal-collapse world in which only those hugging tightly to the most gold, guns and ammo will survive, we eventually will end up with political killings. Most people who listen to these programs will just don tri-corner hats, slap a “Don't Tread On Me” sticker on the back of their vehicle and bleat incessantly about Obama being a foreigner. But then there are those few who take the extra steps. They join a backwoods militia, playing Army in the woods and waiting for their opportunity. Or, like Timothy McVeigh, they take the anti-government message to another level and blow up a building with women and children inside. Or, like Richard Poplawski, they believe the lunatic-fringe claims that the government is going to take our guns, and they kill police officers. Palin could have apologized for her role in ratcheting up political rhetoric and call for change. But did she? Of course not. She blamed the media and political pundits (which, ironically, is what she is these days) for stoking hatred and violence by having the audacity to suggest that maybe, just maybe the poisoning of the well of our civil discourse might have tragic consequences. She accused the journalists and political analysts of creating “a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” No, what is reprehensible is Palin’s stupid use of the term “blood libel” and her refusal to accept any blame, not one speck, for the sorry condition of our politics today. People with a pulpit, like Palin and the talking heads on TV and radio, have a responsibility to use it wisely, to recognize that their words – their choice of words and images – carry weight with many people, including a few who have lost the ability to recognize the difference between right and horribly, horribly wrong.

This and that

2011-01-12T14:07:00.004-05:00

A few thoughts on recent stories in the news:

– Did you see the one about sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott, above, being released from prison early when Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour commuted their life sentences for an ambush robbery, provided that one sister gave a kidney to the other? According to an AP story, civil rights activists have been trying to get the sisters sprung for years, arguing that their sentences were excessive. Well, let's see. Back in 1994, the sisters were convicted of luring two men into an ambush in which they were whacked in the head with a shotgun and robbed of their wallets. Some of the Scotts’ supporters noted that the robbery only netted $11. So, because the amount of money wasn’t large, that makes it less of a crime? The people who were robbed could just have easily been killed. Sounds to me as if the original sentences were just fine.

– I had to laugh when I read today that Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York wants to step up efforts to make abortions in the city “rare.” What a hypocrite. The Catholic Church refuses to budge on giving its followers the OK to use any form of birth control – other than not “doing it” – then has the gall to say it wants to do more to pare the number of abortions. I'm pretty sure everyone would like the number of abortions performed in New York City and everywhere else to be reduced – to zero, if possible. But if Dolan really means what he says, perhaps he should break ranks with the Vatican and start a program to help people obtain effective birth-control devices and/or pharmaceuticals. But that's never going to happen. In fact, Dolan and other religious leaders with whom he was meeting also took the opportunity to blast public schools for including condom distributions in their sex-education programs. Yeah, we sure wouldn’t want kids who are going to have sex anyway to protect themselves from deadly diseases and also try to prevent pregnancies that might end in ... ABORTIONS.

– I certainly hope that somebody comes forward and offers to pay any fine levied on Russell Miller of Boise, Idaho, because the guy is definitely one of my heroes. The 68-year-old Miller was on board a flight from Las Vegas to Boise, seated next to a 15-year-old boy who was playing games and listening to tunes on his cell phone. As the plane approached Boise, flight attendants announced that people needed to turn off their electronic devices prior to landing. The kid did not follow the instructions, so Miller punched him in the arm. He was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery. It's just a shame he didn't whack the kid a few more times and stomp the heck out of the phone.

– Talk about an overreaction. Greensburg police have charged a 13-year-old middle school boy with a sex crime. His offense: a little necking and petting with a 12-year-old schoolmate after they stole away to a band equipment room during school one day. Police admit that the girl had no problem with the “activities,” but they say that under the law, she is too young to consent. C'mon. It's not as if the band director was in there with the girl. This is one of her classmates, and they were doing what usually comes naturally to young people when puberty strikes. I'm not saying I'm in favor of 12- and 13-year-olds getting "busy" in dark places during schooltime, but running a kid through the juvenile system and perhaps sending him to a detention facility over this is ridiculous. What's next? Are police going to start skulking around darkened movie theaters and high school dances to see if some kid is copping a feel? Wouldn't it be better to just give both of the kids a couple of days' detention and tell them not to do it again?

Let it go, people

2010-12-09T13:42:00.003-05:00

It seems to me that way too much is being made of the relocation of a manger scene from the borough building in Canonsburg. As most know by now, the borough manager got a complaint about the religious display on public property. He asked the Knights of Columbus to move their manger to another location, and a business down the street from the borough building was kind enough to play host. From the community's over-reaction, one would have thought that somebody had burned the baby Jesus in effigy. Folks, get a grip. Number one, the religious display had no business being on public property in the first place. Number two, it's still standing, a few doors down from the borough building. Everyone in Canonsburg, if they wish, can erect their own nativity scene on their own front lawns. There can be 20 on every block. But legally, there shouldn't be one on borough property, and borough leaders were wise to avoid an expensive court battle that they assuredly would have lost. I'm a non-believer. Would I have made a stink about the manger scene in front of the borough building? No. I don't think having a nativity scene there put us on the slippery slope toward the borough enacting mandatory Catholic church attendance. In fact, I greatly enjoy the Christmas season. I like the music, the good food, the gatherings with family and friends. On occasion, I've even attended the beautiful Christmas Eve service at my wife's church. Heck, there's a manger scene and a tree decorated with angels and such in my living room. I just don't happen to believe the story behind all the seasonal festivities. At the same time, I don't feel like less of an atheist because I embrace the joys of the Christmas season. But I will say that I'm sick and tired of hearing the crap about the "war on Christmas." There's no danger of Christmas falling by the wayside because a few people assert their rights under the law or because some stores and other entities recognize that, hey, there are some other religions that are equally deserving of respect. This is a nation where all belief systems, no matter how crazy, should be afforded the exact same level of acceptance. Christians are no more worthy of respect and should be given no more say in how our country is run than Muslims. Your selection of which deity to worship affords you no special rights. And as an atheist, I'd like to state, with absolute certainty, that non-Christians have a much better chance of being victimized by a cultural war waged by Christians than vice versa. So if you don't mind, quit whining and enjoy this wonderful time of the year.

These idiots should go to prison

2010-12-09T12:11:00.004-05:00

It happens all too often, and the punishment, sadly, rarely fits the crime. It is the premeditated murder of defenseless children who die because their parents try to pray them back to health. The latest such case is on display this week in Philadelphia, where Herbert and Catherine Schaible are on trial for involuntary manslaughter in the death of their 2-year-old son, Kent, who was allowed to suffer for two weeks with bacterial pneumonia while his parents did nothing but pray over him. Of course, the toddler died. These people should definitely be sent to prison. It's just a shame that they aren't being tried for murder, because that's what they're really guilty of. A social worker who testified Wednesday said Herbert Schaible told him, “We tried to fight the devil, but in the end the devil won.” That's just sick. And what’s even sicker is that authorities have allowed the couple to retain custody of several other children. If you truly believe that an invisible demon caused your child to get sick with viral pneumonia and die, you have no business raising any child. If people like the Schaibles had to spend the rest of their days in prison, perhaps this sort of thing would go away. But as it is, authorities and society as a whole give way too much leeway to people like them, just because they claim to be acting on the direction of their God.

GOP to miners: We don't care

2010-12-09T11:55:00.005-05:00

Republicans in the U.S. House have made it very clear that they have little interest in improving mine safety. The GOP blocked passage of a bill this week that would have better protected whistle-blowers, boosted penalties for serious mine-safety violations and helped the government to shut down problem mines. The legislation stemmed from the deaths of 29 West Virginia miners at the Upper Big Branch mine. Apparently 29 deaths is just a drop in the bucket for those lawmakers whose first priority is not worker safety, but protecting corporate profit margins.

Crawling farther under rocks

2010-11-18T13:33:00.003-05:00

Our base of knowledge as humans has grown exponentially over the past 2,000 years, but some organized religions are doing their best to continue living in the dark ages. A few recent examples:

– The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, when it comes time to choose a new leader, typically selects the fellow who had been vice president of the group. But not this year. Why? According to church observers, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, who held the No. 2 post, was thought to represent the more liberal “social justice” wing of the church. Kicanas, according to a story in the New York Times, has favored dialogue between Catholic liberals and conservatives. The bishops weren't going to have any of that. They broke with tradition and instead chose New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who is much more reliably old-old-old-school.

– Southern Baptists in South Carolina voted to approve a resolution this week calling on pastors to do more preaching against homosexuality, while also urging Christians to be compassionate toward gay people. I'm guessing a sermon might go something like this: “The lives you gay people are leading are vile, sickening and horrifying in the eyes of the Lord ... but do join us for punch and cookies in the social hall after today's service."

– This is my favorite one, and I swear that I'm NOT making this up. Those forward-thinking Catholic bishops I mentioned earlier held a conference on how to conduct exorcisms because there just aren't enough priests who know how to perform the rite. Seeing as how this is 2010, not the Middle Ages, I was a bit taken aback by this. Leaders in the Catholic Church, in the 21st freakin' century, still believe that people can be possessed by the devil or some other assorted demon. How 1452 of them. My first inclination is to laugh at them, if this weren't so sad.

Boobs

2010-11-18T13:14:00.004-05:00

On America’s political right, it’s all the rage these days to be deliberately stupid. Witness the many Republicans and tea party advocates who believe that Barack Obama is 1) a Kenyan; and/or 2) a Muslim. Village idiot Sarah Palin (she would be the idiot in pretty much any village in which she chose to live) made up a lie about "death panels" in Obama's health-care program, and the masses of blithering simpletons who see her as some kind of hero to the common man – rather than the pandering font of ignorance she is – slurped it up like manna from heaven. Now comes a new poll showing that a majority of Republicans – 53 percent – don’t think there’s any evidence – NONE – of climate change. That's just plain dumb. It was only three years ago that nearly two-thirds of Republicans believed in global warming. Why the change? It's pretty clear that it's politically driven. Obama is in the White House, and anti-intellectual dolts like Palin are now worshipped by a significant segment of our populace, so if scientists say something is true, they're not to be trusted because they are “elitists.” In real English, that means they're smart, and we sure don't want to trust smart people. The truth is, as long as the big energy companies own a fair number of our lawmakers, especially on the Republican side, there will be no shortage of climate change deniers. Some of them are smart enough to know that truth is not on their side, but some are just dumb sheep who believe anything they hear from serial liars like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Palin. Just for the record, about 80 percent of Democrats and a majority of independents still believe global warming is real. So, unless the Republicans and tea partiers want to admit that their ignorance is deliberate, I'll just have to assume that there are fewer brain-dead fools among the Dems and independents than among the GOP/teabagger crowd.

On the local front

2010-11-18T12:58:00.003-05:00

Some thoughts on a few local stories:

– An enterprising young fellow at California University of Pennsylvania are firing up a website designed to allow students interested in “hooking up” with other students to avail themselves of a sort of online free love clearinghouse. It bills itself as “safer than Craigslist and cheaper than bars.” My guess is that the vast, vast majority of those signing up will be horny male students doing some wishful thinking.

– Police in Charleroi have charged a local man with cruelty to animals after finding two pit bulls that had starved to death in cages in a home the man formerly lived in. One can only imagine the suffering those animals went through before they mercifully died. I'm hoping that a judge will make an example of 24-year-old Stanley McDonald and give him as much jail time as the charge allows, provided he is found guilty. I saw a friend or relative of McDonald's on TV claiming that McDonald thought a friend was going to take care of the dogs. Count me among those who think that is bull@#$%.

– I'm rarely surprised by anything Washington City Council does, but I was still puzzled by the story about the hiring of Ron McIntyre, a city police officer disabled in a fall during the 2006 fire at the George Washington Hotel, as the new city code enforcement officer. It's not that I have doubts about McIntyre's ability to do the job. It's the rate of pay for the duties being performed. The old code enforcement officer, Mike Behrens, made $41,000 a year. McIntyre will be making $35,000, but city solicitor Lane Turturice says his duties will only be about half that of Behrens. The solicitor says McIntyre will primarily be involved with rental registrations, while the action code enforcement will be done by fire Chief Linn Brookman and someone from North Strabane Township. Can someone explain to me why McIntyre will be paid nearly the same as Behrens for only half the work? That's a great job if you can get it.

If it worked once ...

2010-09-24T14:14:00.005-04:00

When movie studios in Hollywood run short of ideas or are desperate for a hit film, they often churn out sequels to movies that have been big successes in the past. The Republican Party is trying much the same thing. In 1994, Newt Gingrich and the gang came up with the Contract with America, a list of promises that resonated with voters and led to a Republican massacre of Democrats in House and Senate races. Halfway through President Obama’s term, current Republicans are hoping for a replay of that success and have come up with their “Pledge to America.” The main points can be boiled down to this: They’ll cut taxes and at the same time cut government spending. They also promise to repeal Obama's health-care reform law and put an immediate stop to stimulus spending. According to an AP story, the GOP plan is short on specifics in some important areas, but that’s not surprising. If you start answering vital questions, such as how you're going to cut spending or how you’re going to bail out Social Security, you might anger some people, and that’s not advisable in an election year. In this case, honesty appears to be far from the best policy. There’s really nothing new in this “Pledge to America.” But Republicans were fairly giddy about the manifesto, acting as if they had just cured cancer and herpes all in one fell swoop. Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, “It’s a contrast to the way we conducted ourselves a decade ago. We spent too much money. We lost our way.” Frankly, if somebody tells me that he helped to spend too much of my money and lost his way, I really don't think I'd be interested in returning him for another shot at it. Ryan might want to avoid that "lost our way" stuff in future speeches. Another Republican congressman, Pete Sessions of Texas, shown above, crowed that “We’ve put things on a sheet of paper.” Well, whoop-de-damn-doo. These fiscally prudent Republicans want to save money by halting the spending of any more stimulus money, but then they want to turn right around and spend about $700 billion to give continued tax relief to rich people. And if you still believe that any significant portion of the money those rich folks get to keep will trickle down into the pockets of the poor, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. One last thing. It's an interesting little story about Pete Sessions, reported by the Politico website. Politico noted that on Sessions' Internet site last year, he referred to congressional earmarks as “a symbol of a broken Washington to the American people.” Sounds like a guy who is taking a stand against government waste. Right? Wrong. Politico went on to report that in 2008, Sessions got a $1.6 million earmark for blimp research for an Illinois company “whose president acknowledges having no experience in government contracting, let alone in building blimps.” How did the company, Jim G. Ferguson & Associates, come to Sessions’ attention? Through Adrian Plesha, a former aide to the congressman who once pleaded guilty to lying to the feds about some dirty political dealing in which he was involved and who made almost half a million dollars for his work with Ferguson & Associates. But if Sessions could help a company in his Dallas-area district create jobs, who could argue with that? Just one problem. The would-be blimp-building company was based in suburban Chicago. At least the company had a second office in San Antonio, far from Sessions’ district but at least in Texas. But somehow, when Sessions turned in his earmark request, the company suddenly had a Dallas address. Did they open a new office? No. According to one of the owners of Ferguson & Associates, that Dallas address was actually for the home of one of his close pals. There was no office there at all. Bottom line: When somebody pledges to you that they're going to take better care of your money than the guys in charge now, check carefully before you swallow it hook, line and sinker. It seems to me that no matter who is running the show – Democrats or Republicans – the lies, ineptitude and corruption don’t change much.

Heck, cover her with some of Big Bird's feathers

2010-09-24T13:12:00.003-04:00

Katy Perry’s breasts got her kicked off Sesame Street. I never thought I’d have to write that sentence, but because there is no shortage of prudes in this country, I finally got my chance. Perry, who is a rather attractive pop singer, did a musical number with the Sesame Street puppet Elmo that was supposed to run on the show, but when a clip of the video turned up on YouTube, some people apparently were aghast about the dress Perry was wearing, featuring a gold bustier top much like the one in the photo above. And, of course, with this being one of the leading countries in the world in which people are highly outraged by next to nothing, those folks complained. And Sesame Street, of course, bowed down immediately and killed plans to run the segment. You can still see it on Perry’s website at http://www.katyperry.com/ Judge for yourself. But here’s my opinion. Katy Perry is a pretty gorgeous human being, but I find it hard to believe that anybody was offended by her cleavage because, well, she really doesn’t have much to speak of. I guarantee you that you can go to pretty much any beach in this country and see a lot more skin that what’s revealed by Perry’s dress. Heck, go to Washington Crown Center and you’ll see a lot more. Back in the day, the women’s underwear section of the Sears catalog featured more in the way of partial nudity. Honestly, unless it was pointed out by an adult, if kids watched this video, they wouldn’t think a thing of it. And I wonder if we’d even be talking about this if Perry’s dress had a couple of little straps on it. Unfortunately, children are too often taught that the human body is something to be ashamed of. The folks who are griping about Perry are probably the same ones who want women who breast-feed their children in public to be treated like Hester Prynne. Some people in this country are becoming more like the Taliban every day.

This and that

2010-09-24T12:49:00.006-04:00

– A few days back, some of you might have seen a North Carolina sheriff pleading with law enforcement officers across the country to be on the lookout for his 23-year-old daughter's killer. It seemed pretty cut and dried. The guy in question is a convicted sex offender and all-around scumbag. The girl was described by her father as "perfect." But now you have to wonder. The suspect, Michael Harvey, claims that while he panicked and stuffed Valerie Hamilton’s body in a storage unit, he didn’t kill her. Instead, he says Hamilton, shown above, overdosed when they both took heroin, and she was dead beside him when he woke up the next morning. Add to that the fact that police said medical examiners found evidence of drug use, that it appears Hamilton left a bar of her own free will with Harvey, and that there were no outward signs of violence on the young woman’s body, and you have to begin to wonder if the guy might be telling the truth. Toxicology tests will most likely tell the tale in this case. It just goes to show that initial impressions in a criminal investigation can be dead wrong. The cops might get Harvey for providing the drugs that killed the woman, but the real blame for her death, if it was an overdose, lies with her poor decision-making.

– A school district in central Pennsylvania is engaged in a dispute with the mother of one of its students. Janet Malin wants Lampeter-Strasburg School District to exempt her son from its random drug-testing policy, with which the boy must comply in order to get a permit to park on campus. The woman’s reasoning? According to an AP story, the mother says her boy was raised in the Quaker faith, which “requires him to be truthful and obey society’s laws.” I’ve got two words for Ms. Malin: Richard Nixon. Nixon was a Quaker, and he was one helluva liar. Case closed. Verdict for the school district.

– The latest case of official stupidity came out of a New Jersey school district this week. It seems a fifth-grader who found a cigarette lighter on his way to school has been suspended because the lighter was considered a threat to student safety. I kid you not. Never mind that the 11-year-old never even tried to flick the Bic. The idiot school superintendent said the district considers something a weapon if it “has the potential to cause harm.” Guess what? Being exposed to dim bulbs like the school officials in that district pose a greater threat to students than an unlit lighter ever could.

Religious hatred behind mosque opposition

2010-08-06T12:47:00.001-04:00

A group started by noted hatemonger Pat Robertson (the story I saw called it a “conservative” group; doesn’t that go without saying?) has filed a lawsuit in what will no doubt be a long, expensive, but ultimately fruitless, attempt to stop the construction of an Islamic center a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. The action comes after the New York City Landmarks Preservation Committee unanimously refused to block demolition of a 152-year-old building that stands in the way of the project. Those proposing to build the Cordoba Mosque have made it very clear that their goal is to foster peace and understanding between Islam and people of other faiths. That didn’t stop one goofball at the committee’s hearing from holding up a sign that said, “Don’t glorify the murders of 3,000. No 9/11 victory mosque.” And Rick Lazio, a former Republican congressman now running for governor of New York, took the opportunity to do a little demagogueing, accusing the Islamic group’s imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, of being buddy-buddy with terrorists. He noted a “60 Minutes” interview in the wake of 9/11 in which Rauf said the attacks were in some part sparked by U.S. policies in the Middle East. Of course they were. Does anybody really doubt that the United States’ constant support of Israel against any other interests in that region just might have fostered some anger and resentment? One question I have for mosque opponents is this: Exactly how far must a mosque be from Ground Zero? Is is four blocks? Six? Eight? The distance from Ground Zero really isn’t the issue. It’s the hatred by many people of all things Muslim because of the actions of a militant, violent fringe of that religion. As an online poster noted recently on the O-R website, these folks won’t be calling for a ban on Catholic churches near grade schools because some priests raped children. Apparently, the central argument that will be made in the Robertson group’s lawsuit is that the landmarks panel “acted arbitrarily and abused its discretion.” No, it didn’t. It acted dispassionately, rationally and intelligently. The mosque opponents should give that a try sometime.

Kagan’s on the court

2010-08-06T12:44:00.001-04:00

Elena Kagan won approval of the Senate this week to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, marking the first time three women will be on the panel. The vote was relatively predictable. Kudos to Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lindsay Graham, Judd Gregg and Richard Lugar for putting politics aside and voting for Kagan for the only reason that should matter: They found her to be a well-qualified candidate for the court. And then there’s supposedly Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, the lone member of his party to vote against Kagan. In response to critics of his vote, Nelson said, “Are they from Nebraska? Then I don’t care.” In other words, “Can they vote for me in the next election? If not, I don’t care.” There’s nothing wrong with a lawmaker breaking with his party. In fact, independence is a valuable quality in a lawmaker. But it’s not independence that Nelson is displaying. It’s pure politics. He’ll be facing re-election in a couple of years in a conservative state, and if there’s anything remotely controversial about an issue, you can expect Nelson to vote with the Republicans. He might as well just switch parties and make it official. Then there’s Scott Brown, the Republican senator from Massachusetts, who had the most hilarious explanation for his “no” vote on Kagan. Brown said he thinks Kagan is “brilliant,” but he voted against her because she lacks courtroom experience. I have no problem with someone thinking that members of the top court should have a judicial background, but Brown’s explanation was ludicrous. He said, “The best umpires, to use the popular analogy, must not only call balls and strikes, but also have spent enough time on the playing field to know the strike zone.” That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. First, that’s not a popular analogy. In fact, I’m guessing no one has EVER heard it uttered before in human history. Second, an umpire doesn’t have to have any experience as a player to be a good arbiter. All an umpire has to do is understand the rulebook and apply it accurately and fairly. Brown comes out of this looking like a boob. In other words, he’s perfect for the Senate.

Gay OK

2010-08-06T12:19:00.003-04:00

Justice was served this week in California, where a federal judge struck down the clearly discriminatory Proposition 8, which had invalidated the state law allowing same-sex marriages. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker got it exactly right when he said that opponents of gay marriage, primarily the loving, caring religious right, were motivated only by their ill will toward gay people. Said Walker in his ruling, “Proposition 8 played on the fear that exposure to homosexuality would turn children into homosexuals and that parents should dread having children who are not heterosexual.” That’s definitely what was on display. Fear, stupidity and hatred. The “holy trinity” of right-wing Christianity. There are reports that Judge Walker is, himself, gay. How did Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush not spot that when they nominated him to the federal bench? Kidding. Anyway, this issue isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Eventually, it will reach the Supreme Court, and how that turns out is anyone’s guess. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Alito, Scalia and Thomas won’t be in favor of gay marriage. But whatever the case, the final outcome is inevitable. There will come a day when gay people in this country can marry just like heterosexuals. And that will be a great day.

He's still an idiot

2010-08-02T15:44:00.005-04:00

You would think that with memories still fresh of his little incident with police officers in an alley where a teammate was allegedly relieving himself, Jeff Reed might try to avoid causing a stir. You would be wrong. In an interview with the Post-Gazette, the Steelers kicker is whining about the way he's being treated in contract negotiations. Reed claims that somebody in a higher-up position with the Steelers lied to him about getting a long-term deal. Reed told the P-G that team President Art Rooney II has advised him that such a contract won’t get done before this season gets under way, in part because the team had to ante up some millions to hire Flozell Adams to replace injured offensive tackle Willie Colon. Here's what Reed told the newspaper: “It’s one of those things. Life is not really fair. I’ve experienced that a few times in this league. I honestly feel that if you perform ... you need to get compensated for it.” For the record, Reed will be compensated this year to the tune of $2.8 million. For kicking a ball maybe eight or 10 times a game. Most people would feel really blessed to have such an arrangement. Fact is, Reed is an excellent field goal kicker. At the same time, he’s very average in the kickoff department, and he has repeatedly conducted himself like a buffoon. Maybe the Steelers just want to wait to see if Reed can go a year without acting like a horse’s ass in public. You know, maybe avoid going 12 rounds with a paper towel dispenser, and stop having run-ins with the boys in blue.

What a schmuck

2010-08-02T12:42:00.004-04:00

If you want a few laughs, reading about a sex scandal generally is not the first thing that comes to mind. But Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino’s testimony last week in the case of a woman accused of trying to extort millions from him to keep quiet about a sexual encounter in a restaurant provided some moments of hilarity. I'm sure Pitino wasn't trying to be funny when talking about his dalliance with Karen Cunagin Sypher (shown above) in 2003, but it sure turned out that way. Here are a few paragraphs from an Associated Press story:

Pitino testified Wednesday that he meet Sypher on July 31, 2003, at the restaurant, where he had gone following a golf outing.
Pitino, who is married, said he bought Sypher a drink and the two exchanged small talk after the restaurant closed.
When he got up to leave, Pitino said she whispered something, unzipped his pants and the two had sex “very briefly.”
"Unfortunate things happen," Pitino said.

That's good comedy right there. I can just hear Pitino after his wife found out about the hanky-panky: "Well, honey, I was minding my own business in a restaurant when this lady unzipped my drawers and an ‘unfortunate thing’ happened.” I'm guessing Pitino didn’t think it was very unfortunate at the time. Or maybe he just thought it was unfortunate that the sex was very brief. But is that really something you want known? “Fastest Gun in the West” isn't a good nickname when you’re talking about things that go on behind closed doors. Bottom line: Pitino did something slimy, and Louisville, by continuing to employ him, has made it clear that wins on the basketball court, and money, are more important than having someone of good character leading the teenagers and early 20-somethings on the team.

Politics via PSA

2010-08-02T12:30:00.005-04:00

If you've been watching the news on WPXI-TV lately, you've no doubt seen "public service announcements" featuring Allegheny County Controller Mark Patrick Flaherty. In the ads, Flaherty touts the work done by his office’s weights and measures division in making sure Allegheny County residents are getting the lunch meat and gasoline they're entitled to. That's all well and good, but what is interesting is that the so-called public service announcements are paid for by the Friends of Mark Patrick Flaherty political action committee. In other words, it's a campaign ad disguised as a PSA. If it were a real public service announcement, perhaps a simple video made by someone in Flaherty's office and offered to the local TV stations, WPXI most likely would run it for free, though not in the middle of the morning and evening news shows, which are prime advertising time. Heck, he probably could have gotten one of the WPXI talking heads to do the voice work on a real PSA, but that doesn't get Mark Patrick Flaherty's face on the screen in front of voters who might (will) be asked to cast their ballots for him as he makes a run for a higher office. Flaherty might contend that he's not currently running for anything. Well, I'm willing to wait and see. If Flaherty never runs for county executive or some other office that would constitute a "promotion," I'm a liar. If he does, we'll know what these "public service announcements" were all about.

Open mouth, switch feet

2010-07-21T11:10:00.001-04:00

In the world of clumsy public relations moves and tone-deaf pronouncements, the Catholic Church has few peers. That was evidenced again the other day when the Vatican issued new rules regarding sex abuse by members of the clergy (which, by the way, were weaker than those imposed by U.S. bishops) and decided that would be a good time to also announce that the category of “grave crimes,” such as sex abuse of little kids, would also include any attempt to ordain women. Those within the Catholic Church who think women should maybe be treated as men’s equals were none too pleased with the synchronicity. The next day, the Vatican trotted out an official to say that the Holy See had not intended to equate ordination of women with child rape. Gotcha. About the same time, I saw an AP story noting that the Vatican was 13 years late – yes, 13 years – in submitting a report on child rights that is required of all entities that signed on to the United Nations’ 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. The chairman of the panel charged with implementing the convention has made repeated attempts to get the Vatican to submit its report, with no success. Last September, Vatican representative Hubertus Matheus Van Megen told the U.N. that the needed document was being “finalized as we speak.” Apparently, the word “finalize” has a different meaning in Europe. But maybe the reason for the delay is this: Van Megan said the Vatican planned to include a paragraph about “the problem of child abuse by Catholic Clergy.” A whole paragraph?!?!?!? Who says they don’t take this stuff seriously?

Blatant disregard

2010-07-21T11:08:00.001-04:00

Dennis Roddy and Daniel Malloy of the Post-Gazette had a good story the other day about what allegedly was going on in the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia before 29 miners were killed in an explosion April 5. According to the report, an electrician at the mine is saying that he was ordered to disable a methane detector on mining equipment. Apparently, that particular piece of equipment was not in the area where the deadly explosion occurred, but investigators are looking into the possibility that the same type of thing was done elsewhere in the mine. If it is found that shenanigans like this contributed to the disaster in that mine, and the deaths of 29 people, somebody should go to jail for a very, very long time. In China, they’d probably execute any executives whose deliberate actions, or orders, led to mass deaths. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

Casting a net too wide

2010-07-21T11:06:00.001-04:00

Kudos to New York Gov. David Paterson, who signed a measure Friday that will clear out a database that held the names of thousands of people who had been stopped and frisked by police in New York City but were not charged with a crime. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly lobbied Paterson to reject the legislation, with Kelly calling it a “great crime-fighting tool.” But I think Paterson had it right when he said the so-called “stop-and-frisk” system was “not a policy for democracy.” There’s just way too much opportunity for official mischief. Don Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union expressed the concern well by saying, “Innocent people stopped by police for doing nothing more than going to school, work or the subway should not become permanent criminal suspects.”

Gee, I wonder why

2010-07-21T11:04:00.001-04:00

Despite extensive efforts to shed light on and address the issue, the Army reports that suicides by its soldiers hit 32 last month, the highest number since the days of the Vietnam War. In 2009, a record 245 soldiers killed themselves, and it looks, unfortunately, as if there’s a good chance that record will be broken this year, considering that 145 soldiers had committed suicide through June. It’s a sad state of affairs, and Army leaders are trying everything they can think of to get their men and women the help they need. But they come off as disingenuous when, as in the story I read Friday, they express puzzlement as to what is behind the epidemic. Do you think maybe it’s the fact that our servicemen and women have been sent over and over and over again to Iraq and Afghanistan? Might want to look into that.

Be proud, Republicans

2010-07-13T14:34:00.003-04:00

U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana seems to be auditioning for a leading role in a remake of the classic movie “Dumb and Dumber.” In this case, he’s the dumb guy cheering on even dumber ones. Vitter, whom you might remember apologizing profusely after getting snared in the “D.C. Madam” case that starred Charleroi’s own Deborah Jeane Palfrey, held a town hall meeting for some of the home folks over the weekend and endorsed efforts by some conservative (read: lunatic) groups that are mounting court challenges regarding President Obama’s citizenship. Now, every person in America with more brains than a gerbil knows damn well that Obama was born in Hawaii. But since our populace includes its fair share of dolts, these cases continue to be filed. According to the AP, Vitter told the town hall crowd that the only "direct information" he has about Obama's place of birth has come through the news media “filter.” So, what Sen. Dimbulb seems to be suggesting is that every legitimate news organization in this country is part of a vast, left-wing conspiracy to conceal the African birth of our president. C'mon. You can disagree with the president's policies and the direction he'd like the country to take, but get a grip, for heaven's sake. A lot of people in this country aren't happy with President Obama and the Democrats, and most of them know that the correct way to express their displeasure is at the ballot box, this November and in 2012, if they please. But don't waste everyone's time with this jackassery. In closing, I'd just like to say to David Vitter, “You're an idiot.” And to any and all of his fellow “birthers,” you're idiots, too. But I'm willing to help you get over this obsession. I hear that if you stare at the sun, you will eventually be able to see President Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate. But be safe. Make sure you look through the cardboard tube from a spent roll of toilet paper.

In the news

2010-07-13T14:00:00.005-04:00

A few thoughts on recent stories on the Associated Press wires:

– I'm not endorsing the guy (or his opponent), but it certainly warms my heart to hear Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett, in an AP interview, say that he would consider privatizing liquor sales to help balance the state's books. A couple of months ago, I contacted representatives of the leading candidates for governor to get the candidates' views on putting an end to the state’s Soviet-style liquor sales system. At that time, Corbett's spokesman said privatization of liquor sales was not a priority. Now it sounds like he's giving the idea more consideration. Good news.

– I recently heard about a book called "The Secret." When I found out what it was about, I laughed heartily and wondered why anyone in his or her right mind would spend the money to buy this hogwash. Then I found out that this crap-science book has sold millions of copies, leading me to believe there are millions of nuts among us. The main thrust of “The Secret” is the “law of attraction,” which really isn’t a law in any sense but instead is made-up bull@#$%. The AP reports that author Rhonda Byrne, in 2007, explained it by saying that "when you think and feel what you want to attract on the inside,” the law will pull you in that direction. Hah. But it seems millions of people are willing to suspend their common sense and stifle intelligent thought in order to believe that Byrne is on to something here. She's not the only one preaching this craziness. There's a fellow named James Arthur Ray who I saw profiled recently on a TV news show. You might recognize him as the charlatan who is currently up on criminal charges stemming from a deadly “sweat lodge” incident near Sedona, Ariz. With Ray out of action for a while, this presumably creates more business for Byrne, and she's capitalizing by coming out with her follow-up book, “The Power.” Here's my take: If you believe this stuff, you're a simpleton, and “The Secret” is that a shyster like Byrne has “The Power" to separate you from your money.

– I don't know if you saw this amongst all the important coverage of the LeBron James decision, but a recent guilty verdict against a white former transit officer who shot an unarmed black man sparked rioting in the San Francisco area that led to more than 80 arrests. That's right, a conviction. I seem to recall that there was rioting when police officers were ACQUITTED of whipping the bejeezus out of Rodney King, but there was a CONVICTION in this case, and people still rioted. Wonder what would happen in the case of a hung jury?

Catching up

2010-07-08T12:58:00.003-04:00

It's good to be busy, but it's frustrating to be too busy to blog. Finally, I can unload some of the "stuff" that has been rattling around in my head:

– To some people, the "big news" today is where LeBron James will be continuing his basketball career. I couldn't care less. If James were making his big announcement in my backyard, I'd pull the drapes closed. But if the rumblings are true, and James is planning to abandon his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers to play with his boys D Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, isn't it a huge slap in the face and a major FU to the fans in Cleveland for James to hold a primetime, look-at-me egofest on ESPN to announce he's bailing?

– The folks at http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com do a consistently great job of opening a window on local, state and federal politics and issues. Today, they have a nice follow-up piece on the "mysterious" vehicle with W&J plates parked in the garage at a Capitol office building. Check it out.

– I don't expect TV commercials to be as literate and cerebral as a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, but a couple of area car dealers are driving me nuts with their ads. The folks on the commercials loudly tout their "oh-ten" models. Wrong. It is NOT "oh-ten." It's two-thousand-ten or, if you prefer, twenty-ten. It was OK to say "oh-seven" or "oh-eight," but "oh-ten" is just wrong. If it isn't, then they should have been saying "oh-oh-seven" and "oh-oh-eight."

– Sen. John McCain felt the need to announce that he's going to vote against Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. Wow. What a shock. McCain is running comfortable ahead in his primary race against a right-wing loon, and he's clearly not going to upset the applecart now by even giving minimal consideration to Kagan's nomination. Sonia Sotomayor got nine Republican backers when her nomination came up for a vote, but she wasn't nominated in a mid-term election year. And let's be honest. Kagan doesn't have the advantage of being Hispanic. It will be interesting to see if any Republicans vote for Kagan. The ladies from Maine might do so, but that could be it. In recent confirmation history, Justice Alito received only four Democratic votes, but Chief Justice Roberts attracted 22 votes from the Dems.

– It sounds as if West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin is chomping at the bit to grab the U.S. Senate seat just vacated by the death of Robert Byrd. Some believe that state code calls for Manchin to appoint an interim senator who would serve until the 2012 election, but Manchin is asking the state’s attorney general to determine if they might be able to have a special election for the seat this year. And Manchin, of course, would run in it. Manchin said it "doesn't make sense" for him to appoint somebody to "replace this giant" for two and a half years. Why not? If you select a good person who would represent the state's interests well, what harm is there in that? Oh, wait, that person wouldn't be Joe Manchin. Actually, Manchin could appoint himself but says he wouldn't do that. I guess he has some limits about how self-serving he's willing to appear.

– There was a story last week out of central Pennsylvania about a woman who was bitten and scratched when she had a too-close encounter with a black bear while walking her dog in a wooded area near her home. Black bears are not the most aggressive animals, so the attack was a bit unusual. But what caught my attention was this line in the AP story: "Officials said the woman's dog ran away and was uninjured." Nice. My dogs have their negative points, unexpected "gas attacks" and the occasional roll in some other animal's "droppings" among them, but I know damn well that if any kind of animal attacks me, those dogs would fight it to their deaths. I'm guessing the central Pennsylvania woman's dog must've been a Bichon Frise. You know how good the French are at running from a fight.

– You might be wondering about the photo at the top of this post. I think I might've seen those guys when I stopped at a local gas station this morning. And I'm pretty sure the lady behind me who was hacking up a lung has tuberculosis. The things you see when you go out and about. ;-)
–

Potpourri

2010-06-28T13:12:00.003-04:00

A few random thoughts:

- I saw on the Post-Gazette website today that state police are looking for a 76-year-old guy who was last seen at a casino in Erie. Here's the kicker: The dude is suffering from Alzheimer's and "may be driving a maroon, four-door Nissan." How in the hell does a 76-year-old Alzheimer's patient have access to a set of car keys? Just another piece in the mountain of evidence that points toward the need for mandatory driver's license retesting for those over a certain age. By the way, there's also a perfectly good bill languishing on the state Senate floor that would ban the use of hand-held cell phones for talking or texting while behind the wheel. But do you think our state lawmakers would pass any bill that would anger a significant segment of the population in an election year? Of course not. A great many of them are more interested in getting re-elected than they are in doing what is right for the people of Pennsylvania. How else could you explain the continued existence of the state store system.

- Speaking of which, the union that represents the state store clerks issued one of its hilarious, self-serving news releases the other day. The subject was the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's rolling out of its new wine-vending machines that will be placed in some grocery stores. Granted, the vending machine idea is stupid. Why not just let the stores sell wine off their shelves? Of, because the PLCB would lose its reason to exist. But the Independent State Store Union really went over the top. The union says the vending machines will "only intensify the effort to eliminate the state store system." Actually, the PLCB is doing this as a way to lessen the move to kill the state store system by showing (falsely) that it is trying to cater to wine buyers across the commonwealth. But here's where it gets really funny. Check out this quote at the end of the union's news release: "Alcohol is not a Red Box DVD - it is the most abused drug in every town, city and state in the USAA." OK. If that's the way you feel about it, why don't you issue a news release calling for elimination of all alcoholic beverage sales in the state? Oh, but that would eliminate all those highly paid clerk positions. Never mind.

- Tom Cruise's latest movie, "Knight and Day," pretty much tanked at the box office over the weekend, and it's pretty certain that it's not going to make enough money to cover the cost of producing and promoting it. Anyone who is not a blithering idiot can tell you that Cruise's career went south when he started jumping on couches and acting like a loon about his freak-show religion. But a spokesman for the movie studio that put out the latest film had the cojones to say that the movie got good reviews and "smart audiences" will make it a success by flocking to it. Bull@#$%. The smart audiences are the ones not sticking their dollar bills into the pockets of that wacky Scientologist.

- Finally, this little item struck a nerve with me on Friday. We got a news release at the newspaper from Intermediate Unit 1 announcing that its Center for Science, Engineering and Mathematics Education has gotten a $192,500 grant to "promote algebra readiness in third through eighth grades." The release goes on to say that dozens of teachers in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties will be able to participate in an "intensive summer math academy and school year follow-up focused on the development of content knowledge, its application to classroom practice and understanding of the role that mathematics plays in real-world careers in those subject areas for students." Gag me with a spoon. This is emblematic of everything that is wrong with our education system. Teachers are going to be taking time away from drilling elementary students on the basic math that they WILL use later in life in order to "promote readiness" for algebra, which I'm pretty sure not many of them will be using after high school. I took algebra in high school. I've never used anything I learned in that class, and I'm certain that I would have benefited more by taking ANY OTHER class that might have been offered. Hell, even metal shop was of more use to me than algebra. And in our modern world, with all of the technological advances, there are very few people who will need to come out of high school with the ability to figure out algebraic equations. For those who are pursuing a field in which that might be useful, there will always be the opportunity to take those courses in high school. But it's an absolute waste of time - and our school tax money - to force algebra, or "algebra readiness," on the student body as a whole.

Under the Big Top

2010-06-21T08:55:00.004-04:00

The circus is back in town in Harrisburg. What I mean by that is that your state lawmakers are back at "work" today, with the deadline for approving a state budget just a little over a week away. Are you optimistic that they'll get the job done? After last year, when the budget was approved 101 days after the deadline, one would think that the lawmakers, with the November election on their minds, would bend over backward to accomplish what they haven't done in many a year and actually do their jobs by the required date. But the last I saw, they're facing a budget hole of at least $1.3 billion, and it's going to take a lot of cutting and/or "revenue enhancement" to balance the spending plan. Revenue enhancement is what you and I call taxes. The lawmakers find that term distasteful. They have proven to be excellent at public relations and at honing self-promotion skills that already are second to none. They haven't done nearly as well in the area of making tough decisions, so it wouldn't be a surprise if they once again failed to do what is really the only job that is required of them every year. The other day, Gov. Ed Rendell prodded lawmakers to pledge that they will work every day from now until June 30 in order to pass a budget. His call brought this reply from Brett Marcy, spokesman for House Democrats: "We are committed to doing everything we possibly can to pass a budget by June 30. That is why we passed a budget and sent it to the Senate nearly three months ago." What Marcy isn't telling us is that the spending plan the Democratically-controlled House sent to the Republican-controlled Senate was an absolute joke, a total fraud. And anyone who says otherwise is a liar. There are a few things to watch over the coming days as our "leaders" go about their business. One, will the lawmakers do the right thing and tax chewing tobacco and cigars, as every other state in the union does? Also, will lawmakers pass an extraction tax on the gas-drilling industry? Will they side with the people, who will bear the immediate effects and after-effects of the drilling, or will they side with the big Marcellus drillers? And then, of course, there's the timing of budget approval. Republican state Rep. Sam Rohrer told WFMZ TV in Allentown that, this being an election year, there's a chance that a budget standoff could go past the 101-day-late embarrassment of last year. Heck, maybe the lawmakers could dilly-dally until after the election. No sense doing something that might anger voters when your political future is on the line. Of course, not even our state lawmakers are that stupid. Probably. But if they are, each and every one of them should be shown the door. In fact, after last year's fiasco, if they do anything approaching that 101-day-late mess, they all should be booted out.

The pitiful Pirates

2010-06-21T08:32:00.004-04:00

It's official now. The management of your Pittsburgh Pirates is now the most embarrassing collection of idiots on the face of the Earth. The incident that put them over the top came the other day, when the team fired a guy who dons a costume and participates in the pierogi races at PNC Park. His crime? He had the audacity to make a critical comment on Facebook after it was learned that the Pirates' "brain trust" had extended the contracts of general manager Neal Huntington and check-him-for-a-pulse manager John Russell. The reason I say that it was "learned" that the Pirates extended those contracts is that the extensions actually occurred months ago. The Pirates just didn't bother to tell anyone until the other day. And in the interim, team President Frank Coonelly lied about it. So, essentially, the team's owners and top officials are incompetent prevaricators, but it's the pierogi guy who has to go. The Pirates also totally botched the way they handled the call-ups of the team's promising young players. The Pirates claim that they're going to spend money to build the team when they need to. Well, they have the opportunity to prove themselves by signing the two stud pitchers they just picked in the draft. I'm not holding my breath. And only time will tell whether the team will pay the freight to keep players like Andrew McCutchen when those youngsters reach the point in their careers when they are set to earn real money, rather than deal them for other teams' garbage, as the Bucs have done in the past. Based on the Nutting family's track record, I'm not believing anything they say until it's proven otherwise.

Well-armed cowards

2010-06-21T08:19:00.003-04:00

Democrats in the U.S. House are trying to impose tougher disclosure requirements on money spent on political advertising, but the effort has ground to a halt after opposition arose regarding a loophole that affects the NRA and other large organizations. The bill is a response to a Supreme Court decision that allows corporations and unions to pour money into political campaigns, but of course lawmakers couldn't allow the measure to apply equally to everyone. There's reportedly a loophole for labor unions, which almost always support Democrats, and then Democratic leaders bowed to pressure on behalf of the NRA, further gutting the potential effects of the legislation. Certainly, we can't have a system in which we know who is trying to buy elections and put lawmakers into their hip pockets. The NRA, according to a recent AP story, claimed that the original measure was a "threat to its freedom of speech." Bull#$%@. It's just a threat to the NRA's ability to influence elections under the cover of darkness, like the Wizard of Oz hiding behind a curtain. Who would have thought that people with all those gun could be such cowards.

I'll pass, thanks

2010-06-11T14:20:00.003-04:00

The image above is meant to reflect what my reaction would be if forced to tune in to the World Cup soccer tournament, which I'm told is now under way. Soccer is said to be the biggest sport in the world, but I couldn't possibly care less about the World Cup. And I'm thinking that most Americans are with me on this. Soccer fans are a very dedicated bunch, but there just aren't that many of them in the United States. Sure, kids by the millions run around across our great land, chasing a soccer ball from one end of a field to the other, but for the average sports fan, soccer is hardly even a blip on the radar. One problem, I think, is the lack of scoring. Many American sports fans want instant gratification. They're not interested in a sport where a 1-0 score is commonplace. Heck, sometimes no one scores. I can't pinpoint exactly why I hate soccer. I love baseball, and it's not exactly a thrill a minute. Same with golf. Heck, I'll even watch bowling. But I'd rather have a delicate operation in the groin region than sit through an entire soccer game. Hence, a whole tournament of soccer has about the same appeal to me as having Pele kick a soccer ball into my aforementioned groin region every day for a month, which is how long this thing lasts. Soccer fans tend to get very angry and defensive when you call their game boring. They accuse you of not understanding it and not appreciating the artistry and strategy that go into a scoring chance. Nope. I understand it perfectly well. It just makes me want to drink poison. My sincerest hope, at the risk of sounding less than patriotic, is that the American team is eliminated from the tournament as quickly as possible so that maybe, just maybe, they'll spend less time prattling on about the World Cup on SportsCenter.

Ineptitude

2010-06-03T15:11:00.003-04:00

If you’re looking for someone to do something horribly and deliberately wrong, give Bud Selig a call. The boob who leads Major League Baseball had a chance to do something right today, and of course, being Bud Selig, he did the absolute wrong thing. For those who have been living under a rock (or those who are not sports fans), a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers had a rare perfect game stolen from him Wednesday night by a ridiculously bad call at first base with two outs in the ninth inning against Cleveland. Pitcher Armando Galarraga is to be credited for not choking umpire Jim Joyce on the field, and Joyce showed great class in going into the Tigers’ clubhouse after the game to personally apologize for depriving the pitcher of his place in history. A distraught Joyce later told reporters, “It was the biggest call of my career, and I kicked the shit out of it. I just cost that kid a perfect game.” That’s a couple of stand-up guys there (shown above before today’s game). And then there’s Selig. It’s hard to remember any sport having a commissioner as pathetic as this guy. He has the power to overturn decisions made on the field. He considered the Galarraga situation. And then, in true Bud fashion, he declined to act. Bud did say that he’ll be examining the “umpiring system, the expanded use of instant replay and all other related features.” A lot of good that does Galarraga and Joyce. Here’s the hilarious part. Airhead Bud, in his official statement about the botched call, said this: “While the human element has always been an integral part of baseball, it is vital that mistakes on the field be addressed.” Then address them, you idiot. Selig had a chance to make things right for the game, for the fans, for the pitcher and the umpire. Instead, he handled it like Bill Buckner in the ’86 World Series. Galarraga probably will never come close to a perfect game again in his career. But the one who really has to live with this is Joyce. The guy is considered one of the best umps in the game, but from this day forward, he’ll be remembered as the guy who botched the ninth-inning call to cost a pitcher a perfect game. When his obituary is written, that fact will be in the lead paragraph. Selig could have helped both of these guys. All that was necessary was to rule that the batter on the botched play was out, and that the subsequent game-ending at-bat was wiped out. No one is hurt. The final outcome of the game isn’t changed a bit. But the impotent Selig, who has always been a puppet of major league owners, proved once again why baseball has taken a backseat to football as America’s game. Having a hapless milquetoast like Bud Selig running baseball is like making Richard Simmons a Navy Seal. It's bad enough that baseball continues to have a fiscal system that allows teams like the Yankees to buy World Series titles while small-market teams struggle just to be competitive every once in a while. This makes the game look worse. It’s been clear for years that the quality of umpiring in the major leagues has been in steady decline. Every umpire has, and is allowed to have, his own personal version of the strike zone. The phantom base tags at second on double plays have gotten more and more ridiculous. And then you have guys like Joe West and Angel Hernandez who think they are the stars of the game. They seek out conflict with players and managers so they can be the center of attention when they toss people out of games. Somebody needs to put a stop to this and make umpires accountable for their actions and the quality of their work. But do you really think Bumbling Bud is the guy to do that? The only good to come out of Wednesday’s mess is that perhaps now, finally, baseball will rely on instant replay to fix calls that are clearly wrong. Football does it. Hockey does it. Basketball does it. Baseball has resisted it. Nobody wants replay to be used on balls-and-strikes calls, but the big, potentially game-changing calls should be correct, and if replay can help, it should be used. Because it’s damn certain that nobody could rely on worthless Bud Selig to do the right thing after the fact.

Weird world of crime and the courts

2010-06-01T14:19:00.003-04:00

When it comes to crime, the court system and people's greed and stupidity, if you think you've seen everything, just wait a little bit. Some examples:

– You've probably heard by now about the Michigan woman who claims she was asleep on a plane when she was left behind and locked in the United Express airplane for several hours on the tarmac in Philadelphia. Of course, Ginger McGuire (shown above) is suing. Her attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, the guy who came to fame by representing Jack Kevorkian, will be bringing a suit alleging false imprisonment, emotional distress and negligence. This whole story smells funny to me. How does one stay asleep through the landing of the aircraft and the resulting hubbub of people banging their luggage out of overhead bins and deplaning? And this woman didn’t stir for four hours after the plane was empty? I have my doubts.

– There’s a hearing going on in Ohio for a chief master sergeant who has been accused of sexually harassing nine female subordinates. William Gurney, who once was the top enlisted man at the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base but has been reassigned since the allegations cropped up, was accused by one of the women of having sex with her against her will. But here again, this story has some odd twists. The woman claims she was afraid of Gurney because he was a “powerful man.” But she testified that they had kissed in previous meetings, and she admitted that Gurney never made any threats or used force as they had sex. Gurney’s lead defense attorney, Maj. Gwendolyn Beitz, said the woman had never described the sex as anything but consensual until she was faced with telling her husband that she might be demoted for having an affair. Gurney also is married. I certainly don't condone forcing someone to have sex, or engaging in any sort of sexual harassment, but weak accusations like this one hurt the cases of women who really have been wronged.

– There’s some really nasty video circulating on the Web that was disseminated by a group called Mercy for Animals. The video purportedly shows cows at Conklin Dairy Farms Inc. near Marysville, Ohio, being punched, kicked and poked with pitchforks. And those are the nicer things. Also shown are workers holding down newborn calves and taking their boots to the calves’ heads. Another snippet depicts a cow’s nose being wired to a metal bar close to the ground while another metal bar is used to beat the animal bloody. Just lovely. One worker faces a host of criminal charges in the case. Conklin Farms says it does not condone animal abuse, and it fired the worker facing charges. But the farm doesn’t do itself any favors when it announces that it wants veterinarians to independently review the video. For what purpose? Are they planning to defend some of these actions? And according to an Associated Press story, Conklin also said the undercover video fails to include “context of how the farm is operated responsibly.” Doesn’t that seem almost the same as saying, “Yeah, some animals were tortured, but we’re usually not that mean”? Conklin would do better to just quit trying to engage in damage control and do everything it can to help authorities identify and prosecute each and every farm worker guilty of cruelty and abuse.

– Speaking of digging a bigger hole for oneself, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, who never has come off as the sharpest tool in the shed, made the mistake of going on “Oprah” in an attempt to explain how she ended up being secretly videotaped by an undercover tabloid reporter while offering to sell access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, for about three-quarters of a million dollars. Ferguson attempted to explain her influence peddling by saying it started as an attempt to get $40,000 for a friend in need. How did that escalate to $724,000? Well, she really wasn’t too sure about that. She also told Oprah that she proceeded with her dealings with the “businessman” even though she had her suspicions that he was an undercover reporter. That's about as dumb as the guys who got nabbed on “To Catch a Predator” and admitted seeing previous installments of the anti-pedophile program. As for Ferguson’s future plans, she says bankruptcy is a possibility. I have to assume that it’s fiscal bankruptcy, since she’s clearly already morally bankrupt, and dumb as a box of rocks, to boot.

Trouble in Troop B

2010-05-26T15:02:00.006-04:00

It sure hasn’t been a good couple of months for Troop B of the Pennsylvania State Police. First, Trooper Ed Joyner gets ensnared in the whole Ben Roethlisberger mess, and now another trooper, Daniel Freeman, has been arrested on charges he tried to hire a suspected drug dealer to torch his girlfriend’s home. Freeman, who has been suspended for the past few months, certainly has a presumption of innocence. It's up to a court to decide whether he’s guilty of the arson-related charges. But this won’t be Freeman’s first time facing a judge from the wrong side of the bench. He was charged with DUI after running his vehicle into two parked cars on Route 40 in North Bethlehem Township in June 2008. His blood-alcohol content was double the legal limit. My question is this: Why was Freeman not immediately booted from the state police force? Shouldn’t people who are sworn to uphold the law be held to a higher standard than the average citizen? I'm a reasonable person. If someone gets pulled over and blows a .08 on the Breathalyzer, that's a mistake, and it probably can be forgiven, once. But when you're at twice the legal limit, you know damn well that you're too drunk to be behind the wheel. And then there's Joyner, who was working a side job providing security for Roethlisberger. You would think that a state trooper who had his name linked to the despicable behavior that allegedly went on in that bar in Milledgeville, Ga., would run far and fast away from the disgraced athlete and be very, very thankful that he was not fired for bringing disrepute to the force. But not Joyner. The state police rescinded the approval for him to work for Roethlisberger, and Joyner appealed the decision. That's just unreal. He's lucky the state police can't fire someone solely on the grounds of being dumb and/or arrogant. I guess Joyner figures that no matter what happens, his union will help him come out on top, and based on past history with unions and grievance proceedings, he may be right. The real shame of all this is that the image of many fine state troopers is taking an unfair beating in the court of public opinion. They deserve better.

Why?

2010-05-26T14:26:00.004-04:00

Can anyone give me a single good reason why the NFL decided to hold the 2014 Super Bowl in the New York City-New Jersey area? The NFL has long had a policy of holding Super Bowls in warm-weather locales. Why is that being ignored in favor of the Big Apple? There are valid arguments for having the occasional Super Bowl in northern cities. Football is, after all, at its roots, an outdoor game. But I tend to side with the idea of giving the two teams that have reached each year's ultimate game the best possible conditions in which to play. While it's fun to watch the occasional snowy, muddy or fog-shrouded game, there's really no need to let the outcome of the Super Bowl be decided by Mother Nature. But if the NFL is going to give New York a Super Bowl in February, when that city could very well get socked with 2 feet of snow or be facing temperatures in the teens, then there's absolutely no valid reason why the Patriots, Steelers, Broncos and Packers shouldn't get to host a Super Bowl. Either stick with the old policy or open it up to everyone.

This and that

2010-05-26T13:43:00.005-04:00

A few thoughts on stories in the news:

– I'm not one of those atheists who thinks "In God We Trust" should be removed from our money or that we should start reworking the Pledge of Allegiance, but I think a Fargo man has a point in his license plate dispute with the North Dakota Department of Transportation. Brian Magee is appealing a decision by the department’s Motor Vehicle Division to refuse his request for a license plate reading “ISNOGOD.” In his appeal, Magee notes that the state has allowed plates reading “PRZZGOD,” “ILOVGOD” and “TRI GOD,” among others. Magee’s views are no less valid than the ones expressed on the religious plates. The state should either issue Magee the plate he has requested or recall all the ones expressing religious sentiments. Fair is fair.

– After months of doing nothing, Wal-Mart finally agreed to pull a whole line of Miley Cyrus-brand necklaces and bracelets from its stores because of the health hazard they posed. The retailing giant had known since February, based on testing conducted at the behest of the Associated Press, that the jewelry contained high levels of cadmium, a known carcinogen that also has been linked to bone softening, kidney failure and negative effects on brain development in children. The AP quoted Wal-Mart as claiming that while the jewelry was not intended for kids, “it is possible that a few younger consumers may seek it out in stores.” Not intended for kids? C'mon. It's cheap jewelry branded with the name of a young star of the kids show "Hannah Montana.” This whole story is black eye for Wal-Mart.

– Some of you might remember the name Anthony Hauser. He's the Minnesota man whose teenage son, Daniel, went on the lam last year rather than have traditional medical treatment for cancer. His family favored a nuts and berries approach to curing the illness, but Daniel eventually underwent chemotherapy and reportedly is doing well. Now it’s Anthony Hauser who is fighting what is described as a rare, aggressive form of leukemia, and while he's currently relying on a dietary treatment, he won't rule out having chemotherapy, if needed. My guess is that it most certainly will be needed, if the elder Hauser wants to save his own skin, and it seems that he's a lot less resistant to conventional medicine now that it's his butt in a sling. The Hauser family also notes that it's suffering “severe financial hardships” because Anthony Hauser hasn’t been able to work much. The next sentence in the AP story was the one that caught my attention. It notes that Anthony Hauser and his wife recently had their ninth child. The Hausers certainly have the right to be fruitful and multiply, but when you make the decision to have nine kids, I think you forfeit the right to whine about financial troubles.

– If you needed any more evidence that your state government is out of control, here it is. An AP story this morning noted that the governor is disbanding a special unit within the state Department of Transportation whose sole task is to push through paperwork to help state lawmakers curry favor with voters. The unit came to light through the investigation into the legislative corruption scandal. A spokesman for Gov. Ed Rendell says the 35 workers in the unit are being reassigned within PennDOT, and PennDOT will continue to help lawmakers with their special requests. Let me get this straight. Every one of these unnecessary jobs is being preserved, and the agency will still be doing the lawmakers’ busy work? This is asinine. And wasteful. But it gets worse. The report from the panel doing the legislative investigation also noted that the House Democratic and Republican caucuses spend nearly $1 million a year to employ dozens of people who work to, in the words of the AP, “expedite processing of mostly routine PennDOT paperwork for businesses and other constituents.” It's time that our state lawmakers quit spending their time figuring out ways to pander to voters in order to get re-elected and start doing their real duty. And their main duty, really the only one that is constitutionally mandated, is to produce a budget by June 30. I don't think I'm going to hold my breath on that one. There's a stench in Harrisburg, and the more we learn, the smell just gets worse and worse.

Bums from both parties

2010-05-19T12:35:00.005-04:00

I'm not sure which one of these guys is the most despicable, but Congressman Mark Souder and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal are both on about the same level as whale poop. Let's start with Souder, shown in the bottom photo. Turns out, the "family values," evangelical Christian Republican from Indiana is a fraud. He's the latest member of the holier-than-thou-oops Hall of Shame. The hypocrite congressman, who said all the "right" things about gay people, abortion and abstinence couldn't keep his own pants on. Souder got caught having an affair with a female staff member, a staffer who once worked with him producing a video about the virtues of abstinence-only sex education. Hah. Nice. He has decided to resign and renew his "walk with the Lord." Souder might want to pick up the pace, because the Lord sure lost him on their last stroll. Then there's the sorry story of Blumenthal, who currently is running for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. Blumenthal spoke on several occasions about his proud service with the Marines in Vietnam. Just one problem. He was never in Vietnam. In reality, Blumenthal was granted about a half-dozen deferments that enabled him to go to school at Harvard and a fancy school in England. When it finally looked as if was running out of deferments, he managed to snag a spot in the Marine Reserves, greatly reducing any chance of him ending up in the war zone. Blumenthal explained that he "misspoke" or "misplaced my words." Bull. He's a liar. Plain and simple. Blumenthal also said he wasn't going to allow anyone to "impugn my service." They don't have to, dummy. You did it yourself. And this is not scientific by any means, but when you look at the photos of these two sorry excuses for public servants, does the word "weasels" spring to mind? It did for me. Bottom line, Blumenthal has to be considered the most despicable. Souder is just the latest in a long line of "family values" frauds. He only hurt himself, the other woman and his family. Blumenthal has disgraced the memory of all those men and women who gave their lives by actually going to Vietnam. Anyone who votes for him should be ashamed of themselves.

Interesting outcomes

2010-05-19T12:24:00.003-04:00

For a primary in an off-year election, there were plenty of intriguing races Tuesday. In one of the high-profile contests, state Rep. Bill DeWeese of Waynesburg, held off two Democratic challengers to win renomination. DeWeese's troubles and dwindling influence in Harrisburg have been well-documented, but it appears as if DeWeese's home folks will stick by him unless he happens to go from the state House to the "big house." Even then, I'm not so sure. In the race for the remainder of the term of late U.S. Rep. Jack Murtha, a former aide to the congressman, Democrat Mark Critz, scored a fairly easy victory over Republican newcomer Tim Burns. The race had been seen as a toss-up going into Tuesday's voting. Burns gets another change in November, when he and Critz will square off again, this time with a full term on the line. The decision by Burns and the GOP to focus almost solely on linking Critz to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't seem to resonate with voters. It will be interesting to see if Burns pursues a different strategy in the next election. In the big race for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, Congressman Joe Sestak put a pretty fair beating on longtime Sen. Arlen Specter. It wasn't that long ago that Sestak was trailing Specter by 30 points in opinion polls. But relentless television advertising portraying Specter as a political opportunist interested only in continuing his own career did the trick. Specter sank like a rock. What are your thoughts on these races and others from Tuesday night?

Can't we all just drive smarter?

2010-05-19T12:13:00.003-04:00

It seems there has been a rash of deadly accidents lately involving people from our area, and I'm guessing that most of them could have been prevented if people had been paying better attention to the way they were driving. But in at least one of those cases, according to police, a deliberate might have been involved. Two young people were killed last Saturday night when a 19-year-old man driving on Route 50 near Hickory tried to pass another vehicle and struck the victims' vehicle head-on. The teenager passed on a double-yellow line, according to state police. How many accidents, fatal and otherwise, can be attributed to people who decide that the laws and rules of the road just don't apply to them? I travel Route 844 daily, and some of the driving I see on that road would curl your hair. People speeding 15 or 20 mph over the speed limit, tailgating the folks in front of them and them passing them wherever they damn well please, double-yellow lines be damned. Crest of a hill? No problem, they think. What happens when a deer jumps off a bank as one of these idiots is tailgating someone? People are dying because other people are idiots. And that's a shame. Maybe the penalties for these types of violations aren't strict enough. But unless these folks go to jail, it really won't matter. Take their licenses? They don't care. They drive anyway. Perhaps the only way the rest of us will be safe is if those who deliberately put others in peril are put away for a long enough time to make them think twice about doing it again.

Is that the bunt sign, or is Coach crossing himself?

2010-05-10T13:31:00.005-04:00

There’s plenty of praying in baseball. Any time a pitcher faces Albert Pujols with the bases loaded, you can bet he’s praying to somebody. But that’s a personal, private matter. Kids on a Little League team in Oregon didn’t have a choice. But one parent had the guts to say something about it. The AP reports that Mike Miles pulled his 10-year-old daughter off the team and complained to league officials that the coach, Chris Palmer, forced religion on the children by leading prayers and quoting Scripture before games. The response of Medford National Little League was to keep Palmer as coach of the Indians team and kick Miles off its board of directors. Now there‘s religious tolerance for you. Said Miles, who once was an assistant coach for Palmer, “All I wanted was for my daughter to sign up and play baseball this spring, not to have religion shoved down her throat. There’s a time and place for prayer, and baseball isn’t it.” Well said, Mr. Miles. Palmer tried to explain that the prayers were “not a religious tool” and were simply designed to “calm the team down, focus them and bring them together in unity.” Really? What it sounds like to me is, well, what comes out of the back end of a bull. Prayer is not a religious tool? Since when? Palmer also claimed that no one was forced to join in the prayers. Again, really? Do you remember being 10 years old? No 10-year-old kid wants to be the “different” one who turns his back on the prayer, or walks out of the dugout or complains. Palmer had what amounted to a captive audience for his religious show. And it’s just wrong. For one thing, it’s wrong to put a kid in the position of participating in one sort of prayer when his family might practice another religion, or none at all. Maybe next year, the Medford league should scrap the name Indians and call the team the God Squad. At least then, parents would know what to expect.

Our failure in Iraq

2010-05-10T12:41:00.004-04:00

It has now been more than seven years since the invasion of Iraq, and it’s getting harder and harder to hang onto any shred of hope that this is all going to turn out well. Where do we stand today? Well, 84 people were murdered and hundreds more were wounded today in attacks across Iraq. It has been more than two months since the March 7 election, and not only does Iraq not have a new government, it doesn't even have final results of the balloting. The closest thing they have to an emerging government came to the fore last week, when it was announced that two Shiite blocs have allied with hopes of running the country. Those would be the two Shiite blocs supported by none other than Iran. And it gets worse. The two groups have signed a deal that would give Shiite clerics the final say in political disputes between the blocs. Isn’t that just great. Thanks to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the other chickenhawks in that administration, a secular dictatorship that did not allow fanatic Shiites to gain a foothold is now on the brink of becoming an Islamic theocracy. Nice work, George. I'm not trying to argue that Saddam Hussein was a lovely man, but he certainly provided a counterpoint to Iran's strength in the region. Now, Iran may be running Iran and Iraq. And let's not forget that the waging of this war of choice in Iraq was accomplished only by virtually abandoning the war in Afghanistan. Now Iraq seems very much on the brink of descending into bloody chaos, and our prospects of ever turning things around long-term in Afghanistan appear almost as bleak. If these misadventures had come with little cost to the United States, that would be one thing. But we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars we can ill afford on the war in Iraq. And Bush can scrub his hands 24/7, but he can’t wash off the blood of 4,000 American servicemen, servicewomen and Department of Defense civilians. That stain should haunt him always.

This and that

2010-05-10T11:28:00.005-04:00

A few subjects from the past week:

– After Ted Haggard, Sen. Larry Craig, Rep. Mark Foley and many more, we really shouldn't be too surprised when anti-gay ministers, activists and politicians find themselves in "interesting” positions, but a new story out of Florida is just too funny not to mention. The Miami New Times reports that George Alan Rekers, a co-founder of the Family Research Council and author of the book “Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality,” was spotted at an airport returning from a 10-day trip to London and Madrid with a young male prostitute. The escort, “Lucien,” described himself on the website rentboy.com as “sensual, wild and up for anything.” But Rekers said he didn't hire the young man for any of that gay sex stuff. No, siree. He explained to the newspaper that he was recovering from surgery and couldn’t lift luggage. Hence, the hiring of the young Puerto Rican gentleman. I guess tipping a porter or a bellhop just wouldn't do. Rekers, by the way, was supposedly pushing his and the young man’s suitcases when seen at the airport. But maybe that caused his condition to flare up, because Miami New Times reports that since that London-Madrid getaway, Rekers has reportedly e-mailed “Lucien” about a future trip to Rome. Apparently, the young fellow did a bang-up job of handling Rekers’ bag. Rekers’ name, by the way, has now been removed from the Family Research Council’s Internet site.

– I'm an “American Idol” fan, but I usually DVR the "results show” and watch it later so I can zip through not only the commercials but some of the “special” performances of current music stars that are part of the program. I wish I had not been subjected to last week’s offering by Lady Gaga, but the missus is a fan, so I unfortunately had to witness Ms. Gaga performing her new single, “Alejandro.” Mere words can hardly explain this entertainment spectacular. There were some half-naked men jumping about as if they had been Tasered at a Philadelphia Phillies game, and Ms. Gaga, herself, looked as if she had become entangled in a combination of giant spider webs, fish nets and a few of my late grandmother’s doilies. As for the "music,” I can only say that it would have been perfect for use as psychological torture against Guantanamo Bay detainees. And it went on, and on, and on. But it didn't go on long enough to suit Ms. Gaga, who reportedly was miffed that only about five minutes of her display was aired. I couldn't imagine sitting through any more of it, but I guess we missed something. And for that, I thank the producers of "American Idol.”

– I have long been of the opinion that our children are overscheduled. They have too many activities and not enough down time. But some high school football coaches want to make it even worse. A group of high school coaches met last week with Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt and his Penn State counterpart, Joe Paterno. And one purpose of the meeting was to win the college coaches’ support for allowing spring football practices for high school teams in Pennsylvania. Is it not enough that high school football players have to begin practice weeks before the start of the school year? Or that they put in hour upon hour upon hour of practice during the season? This is ridiculous. The kids are already making enough of a commitment of their time and effort to this sport. And what about those who might like to play a different sport in the spring? Are they just out of luck? Enough is enough.

Fire away!

2010-05-04T15:51:00.003-04:00

A stupid teenager got the surprise of his young life Monday night when he decided to hop onto the field at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game and cavort around like a boob. After running from security guards for a few seconds, the kid made the mistake of wandering too close to a Philadelphia police officer who quickly put him on the ground with a shot from a Taser. That’s an actual photo of the incident above. Some people are saying the officer went overboard, but I applaud him. When somebody runs onto an athletic field, authorities have no idea what his intentions are. It was just a few years back that a couple of jabronies climbed out of the stands at a Chicago White Sox game and viciously attacked a Kansas City Royals first-base coach. The lesson in the Philly case is this: If you're going to act like a horse’s ass, be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Say what?

2010-05-04T15:46:00.003-04:00

I'm guessing most of you aren’t subscribers to Pediatrics magazine, so I'll give you a major scoop from the latest issue. The folks at Pediatric are reporting on a study that finds ... drum roll, please ... fat kids get picked on more than skinny kids in school. I know, it's a stunner. I'm wondering how much good could be done with all the money that is spent on “no sh!#” studies. I mean, there have been studies financed to determine that exercise helps people lose weight and that people are not as honest online as they are in person. And how much money was spent over many decades to find out that smoking is bad for us? Holy cow. They could have given me a million dollars, and I would have been glad to tell them that sucking hot, chemical-laden smoke into one's lungs could have a negative effect. I hear the folks at Pediatrics have a blockbuster coming next month. Word has it that their researchers have determined that learning to crawl and walk upright improves babies’ mobility. You heard it here first.

He's got a point

2010-05-04T13:03:00.004-04:00

Tim James, who is running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Alabama, is promising in a campaign ad that if he wins in November, he'll push to offer the state’s driver’s test only in English. Currently, the test is given in a wide variety of languages. James is claiming that it will save the state money. That's a pretty questionable assertion, but I do agree with his central premise. If traffic signs are in English, and if those overhead highway message boards give important information in English, why shouldn't people who want to drive in this country be expected to speak English before they're given a license? But while James is at it, if he really is committed to improving the caliber of driver on Alabama drivers, maybe he could work to repeal the state law that lets first cousins marry. It never hurts to freshen up the gene pool.

That's it for me

2010-04-22T15:20:00.003-04:00

The latest Internet reports are suggesting that the Steelers, despite suggestions to the contrary, have not been actively shopping disgraced quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. That’s too bad. I stuck with my favorite football team despite their decision to keep linebacker James Harrison following his domestic assault case. I stuck with the team despite its decision to keep jackass kicker Jeff Reed. But this is where I draw the line. In the grand scheme of things, it's a meaningless gesture, and it won't cost the Steelers a nickel, but if Roethlisberger is not dealt away, I'm done watching the Black and Gold. We've all heard the stories about Roethlisberger’s foul and stupid behavior over the past few years. I'm not going to rehash the whole thing. But I will share with you just one paragraph from a story today by Jonathan Silver of the Post-Gazette:

Numerous female witnesses to Roethlisberger’s night of heavy partying in Milledgeville, Ga., last month described unflattering behavior by the quarterback that included providing alcohol to underage students, calling them “bitches” and making a vulgar, sexual remark to several women.

We're not even talking about the alleged sexual assault. But after reading that paragraph, can anyone, in good conscience, still support a team that is led by this buffoon? Now, here’s something from an AP column written by Tim Dahlberg:

Now that Goodell has acted, it’s time for the Steelers to take some action of their own. The talk about the Rooneys being a family of integrity determined to run a team with integrity has to be more than just talk. There’s no need to wait for a psychological evaluation to figure out what to do. No need to groom another quarterback to take his place. No need to con some other team out of high draft picks just to ease the pain of him leaving. Just send him packing and spare an entire city any more pain and disappointment.

I couldn’t agree more. The Rooneys have always talked the talk. Their track record in walking the walk, however, has been a bit spotty. They cast off so-so players in a heartbeat. The stars? Uh, no. This is the crossroads for me. I've been a Steelers fan since before they won their first Super Bowl. Through the good years and the bad. But unless Roethlisberger is gone, I'm out. Maybe some people can overlook it. I can’t. After Harrison and Reed and now this sickening mess, my cup of disgust has runneth over. Maybe my moral outrage should have come sooner. That's a fair criticism. Maybe I'm late to the party when it comes to having enough of the Rooneys’ selective righteousness. But I'm there now. So, don’t bother coming up to me on Mondays this fall and winter and asking, “Did you see what Big Ben did yesterday?” I won’t know whether you’re talking about a game-winning touchdown pass or another accusation of a bathroom rape. And I won't care, either.

The time of the season

2010-04-22T15:05:00.004-04:00

In less than a month, voters will be going to the polls for the Pennsylvania primary, and the pre-vote TV ads are showing up full force. A few observations about some of the early offerings:

– Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, who is running for governor, has an ad in which he talks about growing up in a home that is shown on the screen. Later he says that he still lives in the same neighborhood, a few miles away. Now, is it just me, or is that the biggest neighborhood known to man? I'm thinking that if you have to drive several miles away, you're NOT in the same neighborhood.

– Does anyone know what party Mark Critz belongs to? It's really hard to tell based on the advertisements being run by the former Murtha aide who is running for the late, legendary congressman’s old seat. The answer to my original question: Critz is a Democrat. He just doesn't seem to be very proud of it.

– Finally, has anybody seen the hatchet-job advertisement Sen. Arlen Specter has rolled out to target his Democratic primary opponent, Congressman Joe Sestak? No touchy-feely stuff from Arlen. He's going straight to the brass knuckles. The Specter ad starts by attacking Sestak’s military record, then goes on to chastise him for missing a lot of votes in the House. Here's the deal. To have any chance at unseating a guy like Specter, who has been in the Senate since the Iron Age and has a big old campaign war chest, a challenger has to spend countless hours raising money and actually campaigning. The big-money politics of our time demands it. If any challenger in Sestak's position played by Specter's rules, he would have little or no chance of unseating an incumbent. Oh, yeah, I get it now.

If you're driving, look out for Turnpike officials

2010-04-22T14:05:00.003-04:00

If you’re involved in a scavenger hunt that has you looking for people who are in trouble with the law in Pennsylvania, the first place to stop might be your county jail. The second place might be the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. The AP reports that the chief operating officer of the Turnpike Commission was picked up April 5 for drunken driving after he allegedly crashed into a fence in Hershey and then drove off northbound in the southbound lane of the road. It's been over two weeks, and no disciplinary action has been taken against George Hatalowich, who was driving his own car at the time. Police say he blew a 0.137 on the Breathalyzer. This comes just two months after the vice chairman of the commission, Timothy Carson, resigned after admitting to a pair of drunken driving incidents involving Turnpike Commission vehicles, according to a report in The Patriot-News in Harrisburg. And just days after Hatalowich was allegedly running into stuff while drunk, the former head of the Turnpike Commission, Mitchell Rubin, pleaded guilty to felony obstruction of justice for trying to hamper an FBI investigation of former state Sen. Vince Fumo, who is now doing five years in prison for corruption. What a crew. It's no wonder that former Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburg, in an op-ed piece that ran late last year in the Observer-Reporter, called for the Turnpike Commission to be dissolved and its duties taken over by PennDOT. I'll let Thornburg have the last word: “The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is a haven for those who wish to gorge themselves upon commonwealth tax dollars and load the payroll for political purposes. This type of patronage abuse has no place in Pennsylvania politics. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission should be abolished.”

You don't want Roger Goodell's job

2010-04-15T13:30:00.003-04:00

The latest black eye for the NFL's reputation has arrived in the form of camera-phone video of an obviously stewed Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones making disparaging remarks about Bill Parcells and Tim Tebow during a conversation in a bar. Many of us have probably been liquored up and said things we regretted the next day. The difference is, what we said didn't end up on ESPN over and over and over again. I understand that times have changed. There's a 24-hour news cycle, and the old rules about what passes for news, even in the sports world, are out the window. But I think it's unseemly that the sports media is taking what was essentially a private conversation and splashing it all over the radio and TV. It's not as if Jones made these remarks at a news conference or some other scheduled public event. Jerry Jones is a pretty easy guy to dislike, and as a public figure, he has to expect to be under the microscope. But I still think he deserves the right to have a conversation with a couple of other people in a bar without some opportunistic slimeball voyeuristically and surreptitiously videotaping him and then selling the video to some Internet site. And ESPN, of course, leaped on this with both feet. I'm a fan of the "Mike and Mike" show on ESPN. I watch and/or listen to the program every weekday. But their defense of ESPN repeatedly showing the Jones video and their spending an inordinate amount of time talking about it sort of fell flat with me. One of their main arguments was that, while the shooting of the video was wrong, they have an obligation to repeatedly show it and to talk about it endlessly because it’s “news.” Let me translate that for you: They won’t do the dirty work themselves, but they’ll perch like vultures and feast on the carrion that is drug into public by people with lesser morals. Their other argument was that if they didn't give the video wall-to-wall coverage, viewers and listeners would turn to other outlets that did. Translation: Journalistic integrity and ethics aren’t as important as ratings and advertising dollars. It's a far cry from the days when reporters looked the other way when Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin and other pro athletes and coaches were drinking, carousing and raising hell. But maybe we've gone too far. It's almost reached the point at which the actual games are taking a back seat to the off-field goings-on. There's a big difference between a star quarterback being accused of sexual assault, which is a legitimate news story, and an NFL owner getting a snootful of booze and talking to some folks at a tavern. One is news. The other is an invasion of privacy.

Double dose of dumbness

2010-04-14T13:54:00.004-04:00

If anybody still doubts that the Christian right wing is filled with more than its share of haters, here are a couple of fresh examples:

Mike Huckabee, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and is likely to seek it again two years from now, says that support of gay marriage is akin to legalizing incest, polygamy and drug use. I could argue that comparing Mike Huckabee to a decent human being is like comparing monkey dung to New York strip steak, but I digress. I'm guessing that Huckabee is not a stupid man, though he hasn't gone out of his way to answer whether he believes the Earth is only a few thousand years old. So, I'm left with the explanation that Huckabee is deliberately acting like an idiot. Huckabee recently told The Perspective, a news magazine at the College of New Jersey, that the country shouldn’t try to accommodate every group’s interests. Then he offered this bit of genius: “That would be like saying, well, there’s lots of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, should we accommodate them?” The big point that Huckabee misses here – no doubt on purpose – is that people choose to engage in incest, polygamy and drug-taking. But gay people are born gay. Anyone who doesn't believe that is clearly delusional, and there's really no point trying to argue with them. Stupid is stupid. And I don’t expect anything less from Huckabee, who once came out in favor of isolating AIDS sufferers from the rest of the population. Detention camps, anyone? When it comes to gay marriage, I don't think the terminology is really all that important. Don't want to call it marriage? Well then, how about just giving gay couples each and every right now enjoyed by heterosexual couples, with the provision that churches that aren’t interested in taking part won’t be forced to handle the weddings or civil union ceremonies, or whatever you want to call them. I'm still waiting for a good answer on why this shouldn’t happen, immediately.

•••

Just when I thought that Huckabee's remarks would be the dopiest thing I saw this week, a friend passed on to me an item from the Huffington Post about a statement made by Bryan Fischer, who is described as the “director of issues analysis” for the American Family Association. Fischer is saying that Muslims now living in the United States should be shipped back to Muslim lands, “where they can live in a culture that shares their values, a place where they can once again be at home, surrounded by people who cherish their deeply held ideals.“ Wowzers. This guy makes Huckabee sound like Desmond Tutu. Has Fischer somehow blocked from his mind that we are a nation of immigrants, made up of people who came here with different beliefs and cultures? Has he forgotten that we are a nation that prides itself on freedom of religion? But it gets worse. Fischer goes on to say that Muslims living here who have not yet become citizens should be automatically denied naturalization, and that our country can “use the money we would otherwise spend on their welfare, their education, their medical care and their incarceration to graciously assist them in returning to their countries of origin.“ Fischer does, however, make an exception. He says Muslims who accept Christianity and renounce their faith, Allah, Mohammed and the Koran could be welcomed as “good Christians“ and “true Americans.” If Fischer is an example of a good Christian and a true American, then I feel sorry for the Christian faith and America in general. Fortunately, that's not the case. I typically don't revel in others’ misfortune, but in this instance, it wouldn’t sadden me greatly if I learned that someone “graciously assisted” Fischer, a raging bigot, in falling down a long flight of stairs. And perhaps the American Indians should pick up on Fischer’s idea and boot out all the descendants of the violent immigrants who brought their strange religions with them and terrorized the Indians centuries ago. Granted, that’s a bit unwieldy. Let's start with a smaller plan, one that calls for Huckabee and Fischer to find another place to live. America would instantly become a better country.

What an idiot

2010-04-11T10:39:00.003-04:00

Please pardon my indelicate language, but Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes is a dumbass. Holmes has about as many brushes with the law as seasons in the NFL, including an accusation that he assaulted the mother of one of his children and an arrest for having dope in his car. He managed to skate in those cases. But more recently, he got into a dispute in a nightclub, an incident that has yet to be adjudicated. And now, just weeks later, we get word that Holmes is facing a four-game suspension in the coming season for violation of the NFL drug policy. It's being reported that Holmes either missed a required drug test or failed a test. If this suspension is upheld, any further transgression could possibly see him getting kicked out of the league for a whole year. With his rookie contract entering its last year, there's no way in hell that the Steelers should ante up millions of dollars to re-sign this dipstick. I'm guessing the Steelers aren't that stupid. But there are enough dumb owners in the NFL that someone will write a big check to this ticking time bomb. If the Steelers can unload Holmes before this season, that would be even better. We also aren't sure who will be chucking the ball when the season starts. Although there are reports that quarterback Ben Roethlisberger will not be charged in the Georgia nightclub incident, it's possible that Commissioner Roger Goodell, tired of the bad publicity Roethlisberger has brought to the league, will suspend him anyway for a couple of games. Charlie Batch is a senior citizen in football terms, and I have my doubts whether Dennis Dixon will ever be a better-than-average NFL signal caller. So, it will be interesting to see if the Steelers spend an early draft pick on a quarterback. The Steelers have a great many solid citizens on their roster. It's just very disconcerting that two of the most prominent offensive players can't seem to avoid trouble.

Of Bart and baseball

2010-04-09T14:54:00.002-04:00

A couple of quick hitters on a Friday afternoon:

After being the center of an abortion-funding controversy during debate on the new health-care reform law, Rep. Bart Stupak has decided to call it quits. The Michigan Democrat was being targeted by teabaggers who were spending plenty of time and money in an effort to oust him come November. The AP reports that three little-known Republicans are on the ballot for Stupak’s seat, along with an anti-abortion Democrat who planned to challenge the congressman in the Democratic primary. Stupak said the teabaggers had nothing to do with his decision. He says he's just tired of the travel involved with the job. The funny thing is, the whole abortion hysteria that Stupak was at the center of was really a non-issue that was whipped up by health-care reform opponents. It was much like the non-existent “death panels” that a certain village idiot screeched about. I don't think Stupak's retirement is any great loss for our country, but you never know what the people of his district might get in his place. Could be a great statesman or stateswoman. Chances are it won’t be.

•••

Major league umpire Joe West was probably out of line for doing what he did, but baseball fans everywhere most likely agreed with his statement that the length of baseball games is ridiculous. In an interview with the Bergen Record in New Jersey, West ripped into the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox over the slow pace of play in their season-opening series. He called it a “disgrace to baseball.” And he’s right. Anyone who watches baseball regularly has to be frustrated by pitchers who wander around the mound licking their fingers and then wiping them on their trousers repeatedly, adjusting their caps six or eight times and then shaking off their catcher until said catcher has to come out and have a personal conversation with the hurler. And sometimes that's just to get one pitch thrown. The batters are no better. After almost every pitch, they step out of the batter’s box and adjust their protective cups, their helmets, their batting gloves, their shoes, their uniform shirts, their pants, etc., etc., etc. The powers that be in baseball have said they want to shorten games, but they apparently won't give the umpires the backing to crack down on these delays, or they're not demanding that the umpires do so. As retired player Curt Schilling noted, the umps also could go a long way in helping to shorten games if they'd just simply call more strikes. If you know what the rules say about the strike zone, you also know that not a single umpire in Major League Baseball adheres to it. Every ump seems to have his own personal conception of what a strike zone entails. Some won't call "high strikes." Some won't call "low strikes." Others won't call an "inside strike" but will give the pitcher a strike call on a ball that remains six inches off the outside part of home plate. If the umpires started calling strikes in the zone laid out in the rule book, there would be a lot more swinging of bats and a lot fewer full counts. And a lot faster games.

Shooting the messenger

2010-04-08T13:58:00.003-04:00

Is the pope beyond criticism? It's a question that bears asking after the virulent attacks by those associated with the Vatican against media and others who questioned the actions by the church and, particularly, Pope Benedict XVI in handling past incidents of child molestation by Catholic priests. Recent news reports might not provide the absolute "smoking gun" to show that Benedict was personally involved in a coverup of the sexual abuse cases, or at the very least of incompetence through inattention, but some of those guns seem very, very, very hot to the touch. The responses by those connected with the Vatican and Benedict paint a picture of some sort of anti-Catholic plot that really doesn't exist. And some of the statements defending them are ridiculous. On Tuesday, Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, an official of the Holy See, claimed Benedict and the church are targets of a hate campaign, and Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, leader of a Vatican discipline commission, says Benedict has become a target because of his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. The most unhinged remarks came from Benedict’s personal preacher, who likened criticism of the pope to the historic suffering of the Jewish people. All of these defenses seem to have the same goal: to launch a potentially chilling attack aimed at quieting those who would do no more than seek the truth in these cases while pointing out that the man holding the most powerful religious position in the world, during his years before assuming that post, might not have done all he could or, worse, deliberately looked the other way when rapes and other sex crimes were being committed against children. One would think that rank-and-file Catholics, as well as church leaders, would want answers. But very often, the response seems to be to blame those who raise the questions.

He is not here ...

2010-04-04T06:32:00.002-04:00

Wishing a happy Easter to my Christian friends. May you have a blessed, glorious day.

A time to kill

2010-04-02T15:37:00.002-04:00

Take a look at these three brief stories that appeared today on the AP state wire:

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A second teenage suspect has been arrested in the fatal shooting of a Pittsburgh woman who police say was an innocent bystander.
Pittsburgh police charged 16-year-old Robert Brown on Thursday in the weekend shooting death of 60-year-old Cheryl Esseny in the city’s Homewood neighborhood.
Investigators say Brown and 15-year-old Anthony Thomas each fired at a passing vehicle from a railroad trestle on Saturday evening. One of the bullets struck Esseny, who had just left a nearby library.
Authorities say the teens told officers the identity of the intended target, but police say the man they thought they were shooting at was in jail at the time.
Thomas was arrested Sunday. Both teens face homicide charges.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Police in Philadelphia have made an arrest in the attempted rape and fatal beating of a woman behind a city deli.
Twenty-one-year-old Sharod Graham is facing murder and attempted rape charges in the vicious assault that killed Eraina Merritt.
Police said deli employees went behind the store to take out the trash and saw a man hitting a naked woman on the ground. They broke up the attack and the assailant fled.
The 47-year-old mother of four never regained consciousness after the March 24 assault in the city’s Olney neighborhood, and police could not interview her. She died Monday of her injuries.
Police said her attacker was caught on a security videotape at the deli earlier on the night of the assault.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Police in Pittsburgh say a short video surveillance clip has led to the arrests of two teen suspects in the slaying of a retired firefighter.
Police say a security camera recorded 17-year-old Cordell Brown and 16-year-old Tyrone Thomas following 55-year-old Mark Barry just before he was fatally shot while walking his dog on March 14.
Authorities say the teens killed Barry because they wanted drug money but his dog prevented them from going through his pockets.
According to court documents, the teens each blame the other for the shooting. Police say they are seeking other suspects.
Thomas and Brown were charged Wednesday with homicide and are being held without bail. It was not immediately clear if they had attorneys.

Now, answer me this: Why should we allow people like this, if they are found guilty of these vicious crimes, to draw breath among us for any significant length of time? If these people are convicted, and there is no reasonable doubt that they committed these offenses against decency and humanity, they should get one appeal in which to make all of their arguments for a new trial. Once that appeal has worked its way to the top of the judicial food chain, if they are not successful, they should be executed the next day. I, for one, am tired of seeing even a penny of my taxes going toward feeding, clothing and providing medical care to scum on death row. From our own area, we have seen people convicted of murders decades ago and sentenced to death who are still alive. Why? Allowing these people to game the legal system, getting appeal after appeal after appeal, needs to stop. Some will argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent against crime. That's not my central concern, but I do think the deterrent will be greater if would-be murderous slime see that someone convicted of a killing – or perhaps even a crime against police officers or children – gets put to death sooner rather than later. And I also think that prosecutors seek death sentences way less often than they should. It might be a greater cost up front to prosecute a death-penalty case, but if these people are put to death in short order, we would save money in the long run. And one thing that no one can deny is that carrying out the death penalty is an absolute guarantee against recidivism.

On burgers, briefs, buffoons and bones

2010-04-01T13:28:00.004-04:00

A few random thoughts:

I saw a story on the Internet this week clearly illustrating that some people have too much time on their hands and also are horribly misguided. A watchdog group called Corporate Accountability International is mounting a campaign to have Ronald McDonald removed as mascot of the fast-food chain bearing the same name, apparently because he is leading kids to potentially unhealthy fast food. Now, certainly, kids think Ronald is a pretty cool guy, and they're big on the Happy Meals, but Ronald isn't going to their houses and giving them rides to the Golden Arches. It's up to parents to decide whether their children get a Happy Meal or a Filet-O-Fish or a Big Mac and fries. We can only assume that Corporate Accountability International will be coming out in favor of the Hamburglar, with hopes that he will snatch cheeseburgers from the hands of children. What they should really do is just shut up.

When it comes to groceries, I'm very picky about what I buy. I'm not saying I only buy healthy foods, but that I make sure the junk that I'm putting into my body is top-quality junk. When it comes to clothes shopping, I'm not nearly so meticulous. Ask anyone who has seen how I dress. My inattention to detail proved to be a problem the other day. I was in the market for some underwear, so I went to the local store with the bull's-eye logo and checked out its offerings. I've always been a briefs guy, and when I spotted a six-pack of nice-looking, well-priced “sport briefs,” I tossed them in the cart. It was only when I got them home and tried on a pair that I noticed ... there's no hole in the front of these briefs. My underwear have always had holes in a useful place, so this has required a bit of an adjustment in my bathroom routine. The whole thing left me wondering, though. Do "sporty" people not go Number One all that often? And when they do go, do they maybe sit? Sorry. That's just how my twisted mind works.

No one does a better job of treating their viewers like drooling imbeciles than local TV newscasters. During prime time, they'll breathlessly run promos for their 11 o’clock news with teasers like this: “Is a serial killer stalking South Hills residents?” Then they'll come on at 11 and tell you that, no, it was a false alarm. I was actually just a raccoon going through people's trash cans. I exaggerate, but you get the drift. This next part is real. The other night, the irritatingly kooky Wendy Bell on WTAE was teasing an upcoming story about the Steelers’ preseason schedule. She said something about the Steelers facing “strange competition” next preseason and telling viewers to stay tuned to find out what “enemies” the black and gold would be facing. This really had me wondering. Would the Steelers perhaps be squaring off against the Colgate University lacrosse team? Canadian female curlers? The Bangladesh national badminton squad? Uh, no. Turns out they'll be playing a couple of teams they don’t normally play in the exhibition season. And what’s with this “enemies” stuff? Those preseason games are glorified practices. There's not enough anger or enmity in those so-called contests to fuel a go-cart. The real rage should come from season-ticket holders who have to pay top dollar for the right to attend those auditions for third-string tight ends.

Finally, let's talk about lunch meat. It never seemed odd to me when stores advertised “ham off the bone.” Real hams have a bone right down the middle, and one could easily imagine somebody carving lunch meat off of them. But last night on TV, I saw a Shop ’n Save ad touting turkey off the bone. Huh? Last time I checked, turkeys had lots of bones, and I couldn't think of one particular turkey bone that a butcher might be carving slices of lunch meat from. What's next? Bologna off the bone? Salami off the bone? Maybe head cheese off the bone? Just wondering.

Now that's rich

2010-03-30T13:23:00.004-04:00

John McCain is a funny guy. Not intentionally, but funny nonetheless. As you might have heard, President Obama made a dozen or so recess appointments over the weekend. In layman's terms, that means he waited until Congress was out of session, then appointment people to various government posts after Republican senators refused to allow votes on those nominations, sometimes for many months. Republicans in the Senate were, predictably, running around like their hair was on fire after Obama’s decision, especially as it regarded the appointment of union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. The funniest lines came from McCain, who is quickly becoming the Senate’s angry old man. Any day now, I expect him to wave a cane at a bunch of kids outside the Capitol, telling them to pick up those dadgum skateboards and get the hell out. On Obama’s recess appointments, he had this to say: “Once again, the administration showed that it had little respect for the time-honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress. This is clear payback by the administration to organized labor.” Pardon me, but I sure don’t recall McCain bitching and moaning when George W. Bush used recess appointments 170 TIMES during his tenure, including seven times to put people who thought like him on the National Labor Relations Board. And does McCain really want us to believe that Obama is the first American president to reward groups or individuals who support him and his party? Obama naming a union lawyer to the NLRB is no different than Bush, his dad or Ronald Reagan naming rich white guys to various posts. Those who win elections get to make the appointments. The opposition can fight them tooth and nail, but sometimes presidents use the recess appointment method to go over senators’ heads. Republicans in Congress have done pretty much everything in their power to obstruct the president since the moment he took his hand off the Bible at his swearing-in, with one GOP lawmaker even bragging that his party would make health-care reform Obama’s Waterloo. When Republicans are back in control of the White House, Democrats will no doubt assume the obstructionist role, and the GOP president will do exactly what Obama has done. But then, as far as McCain is concerned, that’ll be OK.

Really, was this necessary?

2010-03-30T13:00:00.004-04:00

Those who know me recognize that I'm not a religious person. In fact, I often point out the failures and hypocrisy of religious organizations. But it really rubbed me the wrong way when I read in Rob Owen’s “Tuned In” column in the Post-Gazette that WPXI television in Pittsburgh is booting from Channel 11 a Catholic Mass that has been broadcast on that station for decades on Sunday mornings. Owen reported that the program will be shifted to the over-the-air RTV channel and WPXI’s cable station, PCNC. But anyone who gets their television signals via a satellite dish won’t be able to see the Mass. The reason for the change, according to WPXI, is that it will allow the station to begin its Sunday morning newscast at 5:30 a.m. rather than 7 a.m., in order to directly compete with WTAE’s morning news program. Here was the explanation offered by WPXI program director Mark Barash: “We were feeling like there was an audience looking for news on Sunday mornings, and our viewers were kind of saying, ‘Where’s your newscast?’ and we didn’t have one.” Yes, Mr. Barash, you did have one. It started at 7 a.m. Does he really expect us to believe that the station was being inundated with calls from people saying, “Dammit, I got up at 5:30 a.m., and you people didn’t have a rehash of yesterday’s news and video from a couple of overnight car crashes!” I'm not buying it. I don't know this for a fact, but I'm willing to entertain the notion that ratings and money somehow enter into this equation. And the needs of shut-ins and others who faithfully watched the broadcasts of the Masses? Hmmm, maybe not so much.

And life goes on

2010-03-24T13:16:00.004-04:00

President Obama signed the health-care reform legislation into law yesterday, and today the sun came out as usual and the United States was not sucked into a huge black hole. To hear some people talk, you might have thought the country would have disappeared from the face of the Earth the moment Obama's pen touched paper. Is the health-care legislation perfect? Far from it. Is it better than doing nothing? Almost certainly. Is it better than what the Republicans were proposing? It has to be, because they really weren't proposing much of anything, other than to squawk “TORT REFORM" in unison at almost every turn. I believe I read somewhere that tort reform might actually cut health-care costs ... by 1 percent. Not really the big-picture answer. The past few days saw teabaggers using racial epithets against black lawmakers, another black lawmaker being spat upon, more teabaggers mocking a crippled man and a Republican congressman calling Rep. Bart Stupak a "baby killer." Stupak, some of you might recall, is staunchly anti-abortion but agreed to vote for the health-care bill based on Obama's pledge to reaffirm a ban on use of federal funds for abortions. The funniest comment came from Sen. John McCain, who, upset over the procedures used to pass the health-care bill, vowed that “there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year.” To quote Joe Biden, BIG #@$%^&! DEAL. There hasn't been any significant cooperation by Republicans since Obama took office. More and more, McCain is starting to sound like a nursing home resident miffed that his daily dose of Metamucil wasn't delivered fast enough. That said, I'm not overly impressed with the new law. I have my doubts that it will result in any real savings. The best that can probably be said for it is that it should provide coverage to more people and might - might - restrain increases in health-care costs. I'm also not thrilled about the mandate that people buy coverage, but mainly because I favored a system that would render that unnecessary. It's called single-payer. Essentially, you just extend Medicare to cover everybody in the country. Would it be expensive? Of course. But should it be a priority for a country of our wealth and power to make sure everyone has equal access to quality health care? I think so. I hear a lot of crying about government-mandated insurance. It's funny how many of those doing the crying never utter a peep about paying for government-mandated car insurance and government-mandated license plates for their vehicles. And the worst of this crowd were the senior citizens at the town hall meetings who shrieked, “Keep the gubmint outta my health care.” Never mind that their health care is provided through a government program. Those people, and the other ones mentioned above, make me think that death panels might actually be a good idea. The health-care bill might not be the greatest piece of legislation passed by an American Congress, but I have to admit it was enjoyable watching horse’s behinds like Mitch McConnell, Joe Wilson and John Boehner lose and cry like little girls.

On another topic that never gets old to me, there’s a new poll out about beliefs held by Republicans in our country. The national Harris poll finds that 57 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim, and 45 percent are still clinging to the stupid notion that the president was not born in this country and is ineligible to be our leader. That's nearly half of the Republicans polled who are ignoring facts and common sense in order to side with the "birthers." But here's the best part: Nearly one in four Republicans surveyed agree that Obama “may be the Antichrist.” I'm sorry, but that’s beyond dumb. It's imbecilic. Responsible Republican leaders should call a major news conference and denounce this lunacy. They should outline their policy differences with the president but make it clear that if someone believes Obama is a Kenyan Muslim who just might be the Antichrist, they’re not welcome in the Grand Old Party. But on the other hand, brain-dead sheep like those folks are pretty easily manipulated by lies and scare tactics, so they might come in handy this November.

The weird world of sports

2010-03-22T15:05:00.003-04:00

A few non-March Madness thoughts on sports:

– People who know me are well aware that I'd rather have a painful medical procedure than watch figure skating on a regular basis. Now I see that they have created a "reality show" based on pairs figure skating called “Thin Ice.” It sounds really dramatic, but here's what it is: Figure skaters will be skating with other figure skaters who are NOT THEIR REGULAR PARTNERS! Oh ... my ... God. The missus is convinced that this is a major deal and super challenging because they're not used to skating with different people. I think it's a lot like taking major league baseball players and seeing if they can play slow-pitch softball, or taking football running backs and seeing if they can also run fast without their pads on.

– Another sport that I try to avoid like the plague because I find it about as exciting as watching grass grow is soccer. But it's pretty clear that somebody high up in the company at ESPN is a really, really big soccer fan. Because on ESPN News, when they run the crawl across the bottom with scores and sports news, scores from the English Premier League, the Italian Series A league, etc., are part of the regular rotation. I think I can say with great confidence that the overwhelming majority of ESPN's viewers couldn't give less of a $%^# about Italian soccer scores. But one of the big honchos at ESPN or its parent company must really want to see them, so the rest of us are subjected to them.

– The folks at ESPN were also nearly breathless over the weekend about their "exclusive interview" with illustrious golfer and serial adulterer Tiger Woods. Well, one would think it must be a lengthy, in-depth examination of Tiger's travails and his pending return at the Masters. Uh, not so much. ESPN and the Golf Channel got five minutes with Tiger. Yeah, five minutes. It took them more time to fire up the cameras and get people's microphones pinned on that it did for the interview itself. Apparently, the same interview offer was made to CBS, which said it would be delighted to conduct an in-depth, no-restrictions interview with the golfer. When Tiger's handlers told CBS they would get five minutes, the network told Tiger's lackeys to pound salt. Good for CBS. The only thing ESPN and the Golf Channel accomplished was to be used by Tiger. They were the pawns in his game, which will enable him to go to the Masters and claim, "I already did an interview about the other stuff, and I'm only going to talk about golf." The folks from ESPN and the Golf Channel should never, ever be able to claim again that they are professional journalists. They're media whores for Tiger Woods.

’Tis the season

2010-03-16T14:52:00.003-04:00

There were some interesting goings-on lately in the bid to succeed the late Jack Murtha in Congress. When Democratic Party leaders met to choose their favored candidate, the two leading contenders were Mark Critz, an aide to Murtha, and veteran political figure Barbara Hafer. The Dems favored Critz, by a wide margin. Perhaps they believe Critz could keep at least a shorter version of the Murtha pork train rolling into Western Pennsylvania. Maybe they just believed he'd be a better candidate. Despite the rebuke, Hafer filed nominating petitions to run for the seat in the May primary (the party primaries and the special election for the remainder of Murtha’s term will be contested at the same time). Then, a day later, Hafer announced she was dropping out of the race in deference to Murtha’s widow. There also were concerns that Hafer’s nominating petitions might not pass muster. This is not the first time that Hafer, a former state treasurer and auditor general, has expressed interest in running for a post, from governor to Congress, before backing out. When it comes to the quick surrender, Hafer seems to be the French army of political candidates. On the Republican side, party leaders had a choice between Eighty Four businessman Tim Burns and Bill Russell, who lost to Murtha two years ago. Their vote was nearly two-to-one in favor of Burns, who will be the GOP candidate in the special election. Russell is still a candidate in the primary, and he was none too pleased about his treatment by state Republican leaders. In remarks to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Russell assailed Burns’ supposed inexperience. I’m not sure what he’s talking about. Is it life experience? Russell was a career military man. While that military experience might be useful in Congress, is that more valuable than what Burns brings to the table? I don’t know a lot about the man, but I do know that he’s regularly described as a “self-made millionaire.” This sounds like a guy who knows how to keep more money coming in than going out. Would that kind of approach be good in Washington right now? Or maybe Russell was talking about political experience. Well, Burns is a political novice. But Russell’s experience would seem to consist of being a carpetbagger who moved to Johnstown solely for the purpose of running against Murtha, then had his butt handed to him, despite raising more campaign cash than the incumbent. That's really not much of a resume. Maybe, just maybe, the Republican powers that be thought that Russell wasn’t exactly a ball-of-fire candidate the last time around, and they decided to try something different. Whatever the case, it makes for an interesting race.

Wandering down to West Virginia

2010-03-16T14:05:00.003-04:00

A few thoughts from a quick trip over the weekend to The Highlands, the shopping development just over the state line on I-70 on the way to Wheeling:

– The missus and I paid a visit to the Books a Million store at The Highlands, and after browsing for quite a while, I walked out without making a purchase. The reason: They didn't have a single thing that I couldn't buy online and have delivered right to my front door. At a cheaper price. I'm pretty sure that retail bookstores are about to go the way of record stores. The Books a Million Store was very nice, as are the Borders and Barnes & Noble stores up by South Hills Village, but when a person can buy a book from the comfort of their own home and save money in the process, what's the incentive for folks to drive to one of these stores? When the Borders Express store closed at the Franklin Mall, it meant nothing to me. I hadn't been there a half dozen times over the previous few years. One reason is that there just weren't very many books there. My online bookseller of choice offers thousands more titles than the traditional bookstore, as well as CDs, DVDs, clothing, etc. Plus, I can order used books from vendors affiliated with this particular online retailing giant, saving myself even more money. And I'm not one of those “techies” who wants to read books on a Kindle or some other such electronic apparatus. I like reading a good, old-fashioned hardbound book. I like the smell of them. I like the heft of a good book in my hands. I like falling asleep with one open on my chest. In short, I love books. I just don't love bookstores anymore, at least not enough to make a regular trip.

– I also stopped by Quaker Steak and Lube for lunch. From what I understand, their wings are their pride and joy. Maybe I just hit them on a bad day, but the wings I had were nondescript, tough and dry. I must say that the cheesy, bacon-sprinkled fries I had on the side were outstanding, and from the looks of the menu, I think I'd like to try their burgers and soup, but the wings. Meh. I've had better wings as several establishments much closer to home, including my favorite (and the closest), Breezy Heights Tavern. I think I'll stick with the locals from now on when I want some tasty chicken extremities.

– One of the (typically false) arguments used by those who favor keeping the Soviet-style Pennsylvania liquor sales system is that the clerks at our state stores are the only thing standing between us and private businessmen forcing booze into the hands of drunks and schoolchildren. They paint a horrible picture of unfettered sales by unscrupulous wine merchants interested only in making a buck. Well, it’s certainly not that way with the private-enterprise system in West Virginia, at least based on my experience Saturday. I went into a Target store to buy a couple of bottles of wine – buying wine conveniently, what a concept – and when I approached the young girl at the cash register, she asked to see my ID. Now, I'm 51 years old. On my best day, and with a cashier suffering from extreme astigmatism, I might pass for 40. Nevertheless, the young lady wanted to see my identification. She then took my driver's license, made sure the photo matched my face, and swiped the magnetic strip on my license through a slot in her cash register. Whether that's to make sure that the license was legit or to keep a record of who is buying booze, I'm not sure, but I am sure that West Virginia isn't the Wild West when it comes to alcohol sales.

From the people who brought you slavery …

2010-03-11T12:54:00.006-05:00

You can always count on the folks in Mississippi to try to drag the country back into the Dark Ages (or, in their case, maintain the status quo). A rural school district in the Jackson area has canceled the prom at Itawamba County Agricultural High School because a lesbian student wanted to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend. The cowardly school board wouldn’t even admit the reason for its decision, saying only that the action was in response to “recent distractions.” But Constance McMillen, shown above, is certain that the board was targeting her for trying to upset the apple cart. McMillen told The Clarion-Register newspaper that “a bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it’s really retaliation.” The district issued a statement expressing its hope that “private citizens” will organize a prom. It didn’t mention whether the district hoped that those private citizens will harbor a deep and abiding hatred for gay people and keep them from mingling with the "normal" kids. We'll just have to read between the lines. I'm also guessing they have no objection to banjo-plucking inbreds coming to the prom together. First cousins? Fine and dandy. Brother and sister? That's just family togetherness. But gay people? No freakin' way. What’s sad is that most of Constance’s fellow students probably couldn’t care less whether she brings a female date. It's the adults who are making a mess of this. It’s like canceling recess for the whole class because one kid spoke without raising his hand. The district statement said board members made their ruling after “taking into consideration the education, safety and well-being of our students.” Say what? Education? Are they afraid that the students might learn that not everyone in the world is exactly like them? Safety and well-being? Are they afraid Constance or her date are going to pull a gun and force everyone to listen to Indigo Girls CDs and ditch their heels for more sensible shoes? Constance said the district told her that she and her girlfriend could not arrive at the prom together, that she couldn’t sport a tuxedo and that the couple might be asked to vacate the premises if their attendance at the prom made any other kids “uncomfortable.” What about students who might be uncomfortable with bigotry? I guess that’s not a concern.

What a laugh

2010-03-10T12:12:00.003-05:00

I find most television commercials to be either boring or stupid, or both. But I've always gotten a few laughs from the E*Trade ads featuring the talking babies. Actress Lindsay Lohan doesn’t share my opinion. She’s suing E*Trade for $100 million because of the company’s latest ad, which features one baby girl referring to another as “that milkaholic Lindsay.” Lohan, who has a history of substance abuse, claims the character in the ad, who pops onto the screen at the end of the commercial and says “Milk-a-what?," is clearly based on her, and that her right to privacy has been violated. It seems ridiculous to me that someone like Lohan, whose party girl behavior has landed her on tabloid magazine covers and those parasitic syndicated TV shows about the entertainment industry, can claim any right to privacy. But it gets funnier. Lohan alleges in her suit that the character in the ad had to be named after her because she has the same “single-name” public recognition as Oprah and Madonna. Sure, that’s right. Anytime I'm ticking off the world’s biggest female celebrities one might recognize by their first names alone, it's usually Oprah, followed by Madonna and then, of course, Lindsay Lohan. Unless she or one of her family members is getting arrested or going into rehab, does anyone even think of Lindsay Lohan these days? I suppose if you're a fan of the aforementioned TV shows or the trashy tabloids, you might see her every once in a while. But I doubt the average American has given her much of a thought in ages. I mean, for the past five or six years, the woman is more famous for her bouts with substance abuse and photos taken with a camera lens pointed up her skirt or down her blouse than she is for her acting career, such as it is. Does she really want to draw more attention to herself at this point? Never mind. Of course she does.

It's long past time to grow up

2010-03-09T13:57:00.003-05:00

Unless you've been living underground for the past few days, you're well aware that the beloved “Big Ben” Roethlisberger is in hot water again as a result of his alleged conduct with a member of the fairer sex. In this latest case, a 20-year-old college student is accusing the Steelers quarterback of sexually assaulting her inside a nightclub in Milledgeville, Ga. This comes just months after Roethlisberger was sued by a woman who claims the athlete raped her at a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2008. In the earlier case, I was inclined to believe Roethlisberger. The woman who sued him never made a criminal complaint, and the whole thing had a funny "smell" about it. We don't know yet, and may never know, what happened in the latest case, but Roethlisberger’s "people" are sure taking it seriously. Almost immediately, they suggested that the woman involved had an ulterior motive and said the fact that no charges were instantly filed indicated no crime was committed. For those of you counting, that's one piece of character assassination and one outright lie. Police in George continue to conduct their investigation, and once they have talked to everyone involved, including Roethlisberger and his "posse,” and have examined all the evidence, including surveillance video, they'll make a decision about whether a crime did, in fact, occur. That’s the correct way to proceed. The fact that Roethlisberger wasn't immediate cuffed and taken to jail means nothing. And the hiring Monday of high-profile defense lawyer Ed Garland, whose past clients have included rapper T.I. and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, suggests to me that Roethlisberger and his handlers think, or fear, that criminal charges might be forthcoming. But even if no charges are filed, Roethlisberger’s image has taken another savage beating. Most people were willing to forgive the stupidity of his helmetless motorcycle crash and to overlook the Lake Tahoe incident, based on what became known about the case. But this stink isn't dissipating as quickly, and some fans are finally questioning the lifestyle choices being made by their football hero. I've always thought of Roethlisberger as an egotistical, insincere jerk. And apparently I'm not alone. The AP reported the other day that Roethlisberger has become known for “occasionally inelegant behavior in Pittsburgh.” The story said the quarterback has been the target of complaints from restaurant owners in the ’Burgh who say he has tried to skip out on bills on the grounds that he brought business to the establishments by gracing them with his presence. In Georgia, a college girl who was in the bar where the sexual assault allegedly took place said she was one of the young ladies allowed into the VIP area with Roethlisberger and his contingent. According to the AP, the young lady, Amber Hanley, said she asked Roethlisberger to take a photo with a friend whose boyfriend was a fan, but Hanley said Roethlisberger seemed disappointed that the girl wasn't interested in “something more.” Hanley told the AP that when she rolled her eyes at Roethlisberger, he cussed her and walked away, only to begin “aggressively hitting on another girl.” Based only on my perceptions of Roethlisberger and anecdotal evidence, I’m not inclined to doubt her. I’ve also heard very disturbing stories from young women I know about the nightclub behavior of other Steelers players, some of whom reportedly developed temporary amnesia about the wife and kids back home. There are plenty of people in other professions who behave badly, but professional athletes have to know they’re in the spotlight, and that their actions can reflect badly on fellow players and the franchise. And Roethlisberger clearly doesn't get it. At age 28, he’s no longer some deer-in-the-headlights-of-fame kid fresh out of college. In the Nevada case, I don’t recall him ever denying he had sex with the woman in question, just that he didn’t rape her. I think it’s fair to question his morality if he bedded down with a virtual stranger, even though that doesn't seem to bother a lot of people these days. Nevertheless, after the civil case was filed, you would think that any intelligent person would modify his behavior so as not to put himself in such a position again. Not Roethlisberger. His love of the nightlife apparently lives on unabated, and you have to believe that the Steelers’ brass are not very pleased about the attention he‘s getting. There’s an incredible level of irresponsibility about all this. Not that Roethlisberger is the worst offender. I saw a story over the weekend about cornerback Antonio Cromartie of the Jets, whose contract apparently had to be restructured to account for his child-support obligations. He’s 25 years old, and he already has seven children by six different women. Nice. Fortunately for the NFL, there are quality people like Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Donovan McNabb playing in the league. Unfortunately for us Steelers fans, we have the quarterback with the moral, intellectual and emotional development of a 14-year-old.

Now or never?

2010-03-04T11:50:00.004-05:00

In a matter of weeks, we will know whether significant reform of the nation’s health-care system will pass in Congress. With their ability to stop filibusters in the Senate eliminated by the recent Massachusetts election, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress faced a decision: scrap everything they had done on health care over the past year, or use a filibuster-exempt process known as reconciliation. There really was no decision to be made. Reconciliation is the only option, because Republicans have never and will never negotiate in good faith on health care. If, at the beginning of the reform process, Obama had offered legislation that was an exact replica of what the GOP is now touting as its “plan,” the Republicans would have been unanimously against it, solely because it was proposed by Obama. They have no interest in real health-care reform, offering only piecemeal approaches that would likely do little to make health care significantly more affordable or cover very many of those currently without insurance. Nevertheless, Obama has offered to include several of the GOP proposals in the final health-care bill. Republicans, of course, are not satisfied. And, of course, their idea for how health-care reform should proceed is for Obama and the Democrats to totally kill every bit of what they've done to this point and start over, start over, start over, start over. Why did I just type "start over" four times. Because that's how the Republicans sound, like a broken record. Apparently, they received a script from GOP headquarters telling them that anytime they are asked a question about health-care reform, their reply must be, like a trained parrot, to squawk, “START OVER!" If the Democrats did agree to start anew, does anyone really believe that Republicans would engage in good-faith negotiations on health care? Of course not. They would do as little as possible, as slowly as possible, while filibustering each and every item that showed any sign that it might hurt the big insurance companies. And the Republicans still may get their wish. Democratic unity is a non-entity. There are a lot of Democrats in Congress who are clearly more interested in their re-election prospects than pondering whether the reform bill would be good for their constituents. There's no doubt that they are facing an angry electorate. It's not surprising, considering that the economy is still struggling to rebound, and that Republicans have spent the past year spreading misinformation and outright lies about the health-care measures, including false claims about abortion funding and the “death panels.” But at some point, people who claim to be leaders have to have the courage to cast unpopular votes, if they believe those votes are in the best interest of the people they represent. The key objections raised by opponents of real health-care reform are the cost of such an effort and the government involvement. Well, doing nothing clearly isn't working in terms of controlling costs, and if not the government, who is going to put a stop to the mess that exists today? I'm pretty sure that insurance companies and drug-makers aren't going to cut us all a break out of the goodness of their hearts.

Here's a “Guy” who should be fired

2010-03-04T11:18:00.003-05:00

Here's the background: A couple of football players at Division II Texas A&M-Commerce were arrested on drug charges. The campus newspaper printed an edition with the story of the drug bust on the front page. A couple of fellow football players went around campus stealing all the newspapers from racks to keep people from reading about the drug arrests. Now, one would expect that the football coach would immediately denounce the thievery of 2,000 newspapers. But no. Coach Guy Morriss had this response: “I’m proud of my players for doing that. This was the best team-building exercise we have ever done.” We? Was Morriss or someone else connected with running the football program behind the thefts? One has to wonder, because when campus police notified athletic director Carlton Cooper of the crime, he said he “didn’t think (the players) were smart enough to do this on their own.” James Bright, editor of the campus paper, estimated the loss from the theft at $1,100. In a lot of places, that qualifies as a felony. Yet Morriss thinks it was a “team-building exercise.” This guy should be fired immediately, because he clearly doesn't have the morals necessary to be a leader of young people. Cooper did say that Morriss and the players involved in the thefts (they were identified from surveillance video) had been disciplined, but he wouldn’t elaborate. But Cooper also seemed to be downplaying the severity of the incident, calling it an “error in judgment.” Do adults, even young adults, have to ponder the question of whether stealing is wrong? It’s not a judgment call. If administrators at the school are able to exhibit good judgment, Morriss will have coached his last game there.

Despicable

2010-02-26T14:29:00.003-05:00

U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., was a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher back in the day. As a human being, he belongs in the Hall of Shame. On Thursday, the House passed a bill that, in part, would extend unemployment benefits for laid-off workers. The Senate planned quick action on the bill, because the benefits are due to expire this weekend. But that plan was wrecked by one person: Bunning. The Kentucky senator, who has a reputation of being a pain in the behind, even to his Republican colleagues, unilaterally blocked action on the measure because he said the overall bill would add $10 billion to the budget deficit. This is the same guy who had no qualms about grabbing hundreds of millions – probably billions – of dollars in pork-barrel spending for his state over his long Senate career, deficit be damned. He's also the same guy who created the tax-shielded Jim Bunning Foundation, a “non-profit” organization whose main beneficiary has been none other than Jim Bunning. According to a 2008 report in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Bunning raked in $180,000 in "salary" over 12 years for a "job" at which he reportedly worked one hour a week. Nice gig if you can get it. At the same time, the foundation gave out a little more than $136,000 to real charities. And no one was going to argue with Bunning, because the three-member board that oversaw the foundation consisted of Bunning's wife, an old pal of his and a guy who used to work for him who is now a lobbyist whose clients received pork barrel cash from the senator. Sweet. The guy's a real humitarian, unless of course you're a poor, unemployed person who is scratching and clawing to pay the mortgage, keep food on the table and pay the heating bill this winter. He clearly doesn't a damn about those folks, despite the fact that his home state has an unemployment rate of 10.7 percent, one of the highest in the nation. But what does Bunning care about what those folks think? He's retiring and not facing re-election. I guess I'll just be left to hope that Bunning develops gangrene in a most uncomfortable part of his anatomy. Is that mean?

Cleaning house

2010-02-24T13:23:00.004-05:00

An AP story in today’s O-R notes that some teachers unions are now getting on board with what Timothy Knowles, director of the University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute, calls “more aggressive interventions in failing schools.” In other words, the unions are becoming more willing to participate in things like merit pay and cutting ties with underperforming teachers. While cleaning house might seem like a natural step in places like the Philly school referenced in the story (more than 90 percent of the high school’s 11th-graders last year couldn’t read or do math at grade level), there is the question of who will replace the fired educators. Raising salaries to attract better instructors might work to some degree, as might the prospect of merit pay, but the effort in Philly also involves making the school day longer, adding some Saturday sessions and holding classes in July. Those aren't selling points for most prospective employees. And let’s be honest. If you’re a top-notch teacher and have the choice of working harder in an inner-city school or plying you trade in a leafy suburb, which job are you going to take? There was another story that moved on the AP wire today about an impoverished school district near Providence, R.I., that has decided to fire every teacher, guidance counselor and principal at Central Falls High School, where only about half of the students graduate and only 7 percent of 11th-graders were meeting basic math standards last year. The union there says it is pondering its legal options. The union might have a point. Surely, there's at least one teacher there who doesn't deserve to be canned. But at the same time, when your school is a total disaster, bold moves are necessary. It will be interesting to see if this move toward accountability takes hold in our region, which is a staunch union area. We might have gotten an indication recently when not a single school district in Washington and Greene counties met the eligibility standards for grants that could have brought in six-figure checks. In many cases, the reason was that teachers unions refused to sign off on the proposal. One of the concerns was that student assessment data would be used in teacher evaluations. In fairness, there also were worries about what would happen if the federal money dried up. But it’s been pretty clear to me that unions have little interest in tying evaluations of teachers’ performances to the achievements of students. Teaching is a tough profession. Dealing with kids can be a pain, and dealing with their parents, especially those who don't give a damn, can be even worse. But the pay these days is pretty damn good, and teachers tend to have Cadillac health-care plans, wonderful pensions and, yes, plenty of time off in the summer. Back in the olden days, when I went to school, I had some excellent teachers who made learning fun and knew how to get information across. But I had others who couldn't teach a fish to swim. They shouldn't have been allowed to feed at the public trough for 30 years while failing their students. Every workplace – from newspapers to schools to factories – has its weak links. When private companies are involved, it's up to the managers and owners to weed them out. When those weak links are being paid with tax dollars, the public should have the right to expect they'll be removed.

How much fuzz is too much fuzz?

2010-02-24T13:03:00.004-05:00

Some people are easily offended. I'm not one of the them, but I understand that some folks have different sensibilities than I. That said, I think it's a bit much that Lamar Advertising in Colorado Springs, Colo., has rejected proposed bus stop advertising posters for a production of the Tony-winning musical “Avenue Q” because a puppet was showing a bit too much, um, skin. That's right. Excessive puppet cleavage is the given reason why the posters cannot be used. Jeff Moore, a Lamar account executive, says his company takes a conservative approach in politically conservative Colorado Springs, which is home base for some conservative Christian groups, including Jim Dobson’s gay-hating Focus on the Family. I saw “Avenue Q” in Pittsburgh a few years back. It’s a highly entertaining show, but it is definitely not for those who are against swearing, gay people and sex in general. However, it boggles the mind to think that anyone could get the vapors over a puppet wearing a revealing dress. Remind me to cross Colorado Springs off my potential vacation spots.

How sincere

2010-02-19T12:56:00.003-05:00

Troops are dying in Afghanistan, tens of millions of Americans are out of work and some nut flew a plane into an IRS building, but the BIG news this week is that Tiger Woods went before a TV camera and apologized for being lower than whale poop. The other night, with all that is going on in the world, ABC News' lead story was that Tiger was going to talk about his well-publicized, self-inflicted problems. Not that he WAS talking, but that he was GOING to talk. That's a sad statement about what passes for news judgment these days. And this wasn't even what one would typically consider to be a news conference. Tiger was going to read from a written statement and was refusing to answer any questions. It was all very self-serving, but most of the news media treated it as if Moses were coming down from the mountain to issue 10 more commandments. On Friday, Woods spoke for about 15 minutes. I can sum it up for you this way: Tiger is "deeply sorry" for his "irresponsible and selfish behavior." He has let us down. His wife didn't hit him with a 5-iron. He's not going to answer any questions about the status of his marriage. He's getting back into his Buddhist faith. He's going for more therapy. And he plans to return to golf someday. No @#$%, Sherlock. Does anybody really think Tiger is going to skip the Masters in April? Really, those were the only noteworthy statements in his entire speech. Only a handful of writers and a single TV camera were invited to this self-serving event. To its credit, the Golf Writers Association of America declined to send any of its members. Certainly, Woods has the right to set whatever ground rules he wants, but reporters don't have to be a part of the charade. The reaction of some media personalities was ridiculous. George Stephanopoulos of ABC said the speech was “one of the most remarkable public apologies ever by a public figure." Go overboard much, George? And golf analyst David Feherty of CBS said, "The vast number of people just want their Tiger Woods back." No, David. The vast majority of people really don't give a damn whether they ever see Tiger Woods again. Their lives just aren't that shallow. But CBS, I'll bet, really wants its Tiger Woods back, because he's the meal ticket for that network's golf coverage. I give credit to Rick Cerrone, the former public relations director of the New York Yankees. He saw through the BS and told CNN, "What I saw was arrogance. It was basically an infomercial." It's early, but I'd give the award for stupidest reaction to Debert Cook, publisher of African American Golfer's Digest, who said, "I think we are entering a whole new era spiritually and emotionally for Tiger Woods." Pardon me while I puke. The Onion gave the speech the gravity that it deserved, putting up a story with the headline, “Tiger Woods Announces Return to Sex." As always with Tiger Woods, it's all about Tiger Woods. And I'm guessing that I'm not the only one who believes that if Tiger hadn't gotten caught, he'd still be hitting the sack with as many cocktail waitresses as he could get his hands on.

Creating a smokescreen

2010-02-15T13:49:00.003-05:00

A few thoughts about the Winter Olympics:

– That was quite a tap dance that Olympic officials did after a Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, went off the luge course, hit a pole and died last Friday. The International Olympic Committee and officials of the sport basically blamed Kumaritashvili for his own death, citing the 21-year-old's relative inexperience. But his deadly accident came on the same day a veteran slider lost his sled in an accident and had to hang onto it for dear life as he shot down the track. And what did the IOC and luge officials do after telling everyone that the track was perfectly safe? They put up a big wall to prevent anyone else from hitting the pole, and they changed the starting points for the men and women lugers to cut down the speeds. There are also reports that Canadian Olympic officials did what they could to prevent lugers from other nations from practicing at the site until just before the games, in order to give their lugers a home-track advantage. Shameful.

– The missus is a huge Winter Olympics fan, so I've seen nothing else on my television since Friday night. I find some of the sports enjoyable to watch. Speed skating comes quickly to mind. But some of this stuff, like cross-country skiing and the ice dancing part of the figure skating competition, make curling look like “Rollerball.” And would it be too much to ask NBC to show more of the actual competitions, even if the competitors are from Zingzangistan and not in contention for medals, rather than blab, blab, blab for 50 minutes out of every hour? A little less talk, a lot more action would be nice.

– Speaking of figure skating, did anyone else notice that in the pairs and ice dancing competitions, there are a bunch of people who were born in one country but are skating under another country’s flag? Apparently, a guy from the United States can skate for France if his third-cousin’s grandmother’s brother once ate a croissant. Seriously, these rules need to be tightened up so that the competitors have to compete for the country in which they were born and lived all their lives.

Stop the insanity

2010-02-15T13:15:00.004-05:00

Anyone who watched the Pittsburgh TV news Friday night or Saturday no doubt saw the coverage of the incident at the Giant Eagle in Murrysville. According to police, an 86-year-old man behind the wheel of a 1993 Oldsmobile (what else) was backing his car out of a parking space when he bashed into a vehicle behind him. At that point, he surged forward, out of control, toward the store's entrance and went up on the sidewalk, hitting an unfortunate 48-year-old woman who was slammed so hard into the front glass door that her body shattered it. The octogenarian then backed up before lurching forward again and smashing into a pillar in front of the store. The woman who was struck had multiple open fractures and chest injuries that required her to be flown to a Pittsburgh hospital. The driver also was flown for treatment. The woman who was hit by the car in this case, believe it or not, is one of the lucky ones. Sometimes people die because family members, doctors and even our state legislators refuse to confront the problem of the dangers posed by elderly drivers who no longer have any business being behind the wheel of a multi-thousand-pound piece of machinery. Much in the way that we need to stop the hazardous practice of people driving while they gab away or text on their hand-held cell phones, somebody needs to address the issue of members of the "greatest generation" mowing down people with their Oldsmobiles and Buicks. Family members need to do whatever is necessary, even reporting their loves ones to the proper authorities, if necessary, to get their parents and grandparents off the roads when they start posing a threat to themselves and others. Doctors need to do their duty by reporting those who should have their licenses pulled. And our legislators should have the courage - yeah, right - to impose mandatory driver re-testing after a certain age. Those who object to these measures often argue that young people have more accidents. Maybe they do, but most of those young drivers, through experience and the maturation process, will eventually become good drivers. Unfortunately, there's really no substitute for experience when it comes to improving one's driving skills. But those young people aren't wrecking because they forget which pedal makes the car go and which one stops it, or which gear makes the car go forward and which one makes it go backward. And those elderly drivers aren't going to get better with advancing age. For most of them, it's a one-way trip toward being a threat to all of us.

Snow of the century

2010-02-10T11:20:00.003-05:00

The recent snowstorm was, in many ways, a learning experience. We learned, once again, that it's foolish to trust TV weather forecasters, or, as I like to call them, the boys and girls who cry "wolf." Typically, they oversell the storms that are approaching, calling for six or eight inches when we end up with one or two. But in this case, they called for a lot of snow, and we got a LOT more than they predicted. We also learned that Allegheny Power is a pretty darned good utility company. At my house, we lost power about 10 p.m. Friday, and we didn't get it back until we got home from work Monday evening. At the time, when you're freezing your behind off INSIDE the house and have no water because the well pump runs on electricity, it seems like a ridiculously long time to be without power. But when you consider the magnitude of the job – more than 400,000 people without power just in Allegheny’s service area – you realize the great work they did, and you have to applaud the dedication of those who work for the utility company. As of today, Allegheny Power was still trying to restore service to about 30,000 people in Greene and Washington counties. I can feel the pain of those still waiting, because you really don't realize how much you depend on electricity, and how much you take it for granted, until it's not there. You're left huddling under mountains of covers in the dark, and it's not a pleasant experience. I personally learned that complacency is a very bad thing. I could have checked my generator on a warm September day, but I didn't. Heck, the power never goes out for more than a few hours at a time, right? And the generator will fire up without protest despite not running in ages, right? Wrong and wrong. When the generator doesn't work during a long power outage, that's not good. I know that now. Thanks to my Uncle Bill, one of those people who can truthfully be described as being so kind and generous that he would give you the shirt off his back, the generator is back in service. He went way beyond the call of duty. Which is another lesson. We need to be more thankful for family and friends who are there for us in tough times. I couldn't count on both hands the number of people who either lent us a hand or offered to take us into their homes. It was greatly appreciated. I also appreciated the work done by PennDOT and the local road crews. People like to gripe about PennDOT, but my trips to and from Washington were blessedly uneventful, thanks to their untiring efforts. I also gained more appreciation for my wife, who hung in there like a trouper and was everything you could hope for as a partner in a tough situation. Those city girls can be tougher than one might think. And I'm sure about one thing: From now on, when I flip a light switch, adjust the thermostat or turn on the faucet in the kitchen sink, in the back of my mind, I'll be telling myself not to take those things for granted.

This is why I find some Republicans frightening

2010-02-04T10:48:00.007-05:00

It's become crystal clear that Republicans in Congress will vote in total lockstep against anything significant proposed by President Obama, even if he proposed that Congress be turned over to the Republicans. If Obama wants it, they're against it, even if they would benefit from it or previously supported it. This makes me wonder what sort of people are still supporting these jackasses. (No need to tell me that the Democratic ranks in Congress also are primarily filled with jackasses. I'm aware of that.) Thanks to a poll conducted for the Daily Kos Web site by Research 2000, I have some answers. My thanks to the 2 Political Junkies blog http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com/ for bringing it to my attention. Before you GOP backers get your panties all in a twist, I know that Daily Kos is a liberal Web site. But Research 2000 is a well-respected, non-partisan, independent polling outfit. Their poll involved 2,000 self-identified Republicans. Here are some of the findings, which I find sad and scary. Nearly 70 percent of those polled agree or are on the fence about the idea that Obama should be impeached. No reason was given, but I assume it's because he's a white-hating, terrorist-loving sumbitch who is also a "furriner." Gee, I guess I was right on at least one count, because the next question asks whether those polled think Obama is a socialist. Nearly two-thirds believe he is, and 16 percent are thinking it over. For the record, that's just dumb. Now, for something dumber. Nearly a quarter of those responding believe Obama wants the terrorists to win, and another 33 percent are not sure. Those people are idiots. More than three-quarters of the Republicans questioned believe or are willing to consider that ACORN stole the 2008 election. You have to be a little bit mentally ill to believe that. Oh, lookey here, I'm right about something else regarding why Republicans want Obama impeached. More than 30 percent believe the president is a racist who hates white people, and 33 percent more are unsure. Here's another crazy one. Nearly one-quarter of those polled think their state should secede from the United States. There was no follow-up question about whether gay people and minorities would be allowed to live in those states after secession. Wait. Maybe I have that answer. It seems that the percentage favoring secession is highest in the South, by a pretty fair margin. Hmmmmm. I'll sum up the area of gay rights by saying that the Republicans surveyed overwhelmingly oppose equality for gay people. We know Republicans, by and large, don't want gay folks to be allowed to marry, but almost three-quarters of those responding think gay people should be prohibited from teaching in public schools. Oh boy. The Republicans surveyed are against sex education, and they're also overwhelmingly opposed to aborting any pregnancies resulting from kids' lack of knowledge about how to prevent babies from getting made. Not a surprise. A lot of very moderate, reasonable people are against abortion. But here's where it gets squirrelly. Nearly half of those polled believe or are willing to consider a ban on the use of contraceptives, and even more think that the use of birth-control pills is the equivalent of abortion. So, very clearly, it's not enough for some Republicans if abortion were outlawed. A significant percentage of them think it should be against the law to attempt to prevent a pregnancy. That's tin-foil hat territory. And maybe somebody should point out to them that outlawing birth control would lead to more abortions. So maybe a little more thought is in order before they schedule that condom-burning rally. But I've saved the best stuff for last. More than half of those responding think Sarah Palin is better qualified than Barack Obama to serve as president, and 33 percent can't make up their mind on that question. Say what you will, I'm laughing out loud at that one. And even after all this time, 36 percent of Republicans polled think Obama was born somewhere other than the United States, and 22 percent are undecided. Really? To believe that, a person would have to be so intellectually crippled that keeping their spit in their mouth would require constant concentration. And finally, more than three-quarters of those responding believe that students in public schools - PUBLIC SCHOOLS - should be taught that "the Book of Genesis explains how God created the world." If that ever happens, I want to be given the right to offer the alternative view that Tim the Enchanter from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" really created the world. In closing, while I was looking around Research 2000's Web site, I came across their recent prediction that Sarah Palin will be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. These are the same folks who accurately predicted in June 2007, when Hillary Clinton had been all but crowned the Democratic presidential nominee, that Hillary would NOT be the choice in 2008. So, for all of you who criticize me for keeping track of what Sarah Palin is saying, arguing that she's not worthy of so much attention, I beg to differ. I shudder to think what would happen to this country if she and those who think like her ever gained control of this country. And I'm going to continue to point that out. My apologies to those who are offended.

The holy hotline

2010-02-03T14:52:00.005-05:00

There's an old saying that a fool and his money are soon parted. Now, I'm not claiming that those who avail themselves of a new telephone service are fools, but they'll definitely be parting with some of their money. A group of businessmen has created what it calls the Bless Me Network, which it describes in a press release as a "service that allows people of the Christian faith to call a toll-free number and speak with members of the clergy. Just one catch. Once you call the toll-free number, if you want to actually talk with a priest or a preacher, you'll have to ante up $1.99 for the first minute and 99 cents for each additional minute. John Adams, the chief operating officer of the outfit, says the Bless Me Network provides "affordable faith-based counseling with a level of convenience and confidentiality that has never existed before.” The network says it will give more than 50 percent of its earnings to clergy, church, charity and humanitarian aid over the next five years. Anyone want to bet that it'll be 50.1 percent? And do they pocket all of the money after five years? I don't know. But here's the interesting part: the network expects those charitable donations to exceed $200 million dollars over the five-year period. So that suggests to me that their take will also be pretty close to $200 million. Not a bad little business venture. I suppose that if you're having some crisis of faith or other spiritual emergency at 4 a.m., this might be helpful. But if your problem is such that you need to call a man or woman of the cloth in the wee hours, it's probably pretty darned serious, and it might take quite a while to work it out. If we're talking a half hour, that's $30.70 on your next phone bill. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like there's a risk that some really troubled people who aren't the sharpest tools in the shed might get taken advantage of. And there are plenty of people who can talk with folks about these kinds of spiritual and personal problems. They're the ministers and priests who live right here in our own communities. I'm not a religious person, but I know several pastors in our area who would be very helpful to talk with if I needed their input, and they wouldn't send me a bill. And I'm sure there are many more very caring, effective members of the clergy with whom I am not personally acquainted. I do want to thank the Bless Me Network for indirectly leading me to a business idea. While doing a little research before posting this item, I ran across a Wikipedia entry on religion in the United States. It cited a study that found the number of people in this country claiming no religious identification (atheists, agnostics, humanists, deists, etc.) rose from an estimated 14.3 million in 1990 to 34.2 million in 2008, which translates to a jump from 8 percent of the population in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008. So, coming soon to a phone near you: "Talk to a Heathen." I'm telling you, it's catching on.

If she were one of the Seven Dwarfs, she'd be Dopey

2010-02-02T15:45:00.004-05:00

You can always count on Sarah Palin to create a mountain out of a molehill, or to create a mountain where not even a molehill exists. This time, the target of her dumbness is White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. It seems that Emanuel, at a policy session a few months back on the health-care issue, used the term "f-ing retarded" to describe liberal activists who were thinking about running ads against some Democratic lawmakers. Well, old "death panel" Palin has gotten wind of this, and she's calling on President Obama to fire Emanuel because of his use of profanity and what she calls his "slur on all God's children with cognitive and developmental disabilities.” Emanuel has never denied the oft-told tales about his regular use of cuss words. But to suggest that he's taking a shot at handicapped people is just absurd. Webster defines retarded as "slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress." That certainly does not apply only to people who are handicapped. It could well be applied to some of our politicians, of all parties and persuasions. It also might very well be applied to Palin, who required nearly a half-dozen colleges to obtain a single bachelor's degree. And anyone who saw her interview with Katie Couric can speak to Palin's intellectual shortcomings. This tempest in a teapot brings to mind a controversy about a decade ago, when an aide to then-Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams quit his post because of the furor over his use of the word "niggardly." A black co-worker apparently took that to be a racial slur when, in fact, the word means "miserly." It has no racial connotation whatsoever. Maybe people who don't know the meaning of words, or that words can have more than one acceptable meaning, should just keep their mouths shut. And if any of you want to take me to task for writing about Palin again, I'll offer a deal. If Palin agrees to stop doing and saying stupid things, and of going out of her way to draw attention to herself, I'll quit blogging about her. In other words, I'll be blogging about Palin for a long time.

Quite an embarrassment

2010-01-30T19:42:00.004-05:00

Four people are facing charges and more could be in trouble after police review videotapes from a melee Friday night at a Wash High-Monessen boys basketball game in Monessen. Police say the incident, which Washington schools superintendent Roberta DiLorenzo described as a "riot," apparently began when a girl from Wash High and a female student from Monessen started "fighting over a male basketball player." The incident escalated, with some adults reportedly joining students in the fray. One person needed hospital treatment after the brawl, and police had to use Tasers on as many as four people to subdue them. The gym was cleared of fans before the game was allowed to continue. Two adults and a teen from Washington, along with a Monessen teen, were cited by police. It's bad enough that kids were acting like idiots, but it's shameful that so-called adults joined in. And now the superintendents of the two schools are displaying considerable gall by questioning how police handled the mess. For the record, four off-duty Monessen police officers had been hired to work the game. That right there tells me all I need to know about the atmosphere at Monessen games. If you need four cops at a high school baskeball game, you've got problems. And as it turns out, those four policemen weren't even enough to handle the mess that developed. They had to call for backup from neighboring police departments. But DiLorenzo and Monessen superintendent Cynthia Chelen are suggesting that police went overboard, questioning their use of Tasers to get the miscreants under control. Said Chelen, "Looking at the video (from TV), I'm not sure a Taser was necessary, but I was not there." So, the superintendent admittedly wasn't even at the game, yet she seems to think she knows what level of force was required to restore order. I guess Ms. Chelen would have no problem if the Monessen police chief comes to her and says, "You know, I just watched two minutes of classroom video, and I'm not sure you're doing a good job preparing your students for the PSSA tests." When it comes to how police handled this "riot," to use DiLorenzo's term, the superintendents need to put a sock in it. When severely outnumbered police officers are facing a situation where a brawl could conceivably escalate to involve dozens of people, they should do what they need to do to keep that from happening. I seem to recall that the City League in Pittsburgh used to play its football and basketball games in empty stadiums and gyms because of a legitimate, experience-based fear of violence by students and fans from the league schools. Perhaps the folks who run high school sports in Western Pennsylvania should take the same approach at places where students, parents and other fans have gained a reputation for not knowing how to act.

Weir-do

2010-01-29T14:00:00.004-05:00

Figure skater Johnny Weir is a strange bird. No. Wait. Let's be honest. He's a walking, talking freak show of a human being. The latest strange story involving Weir centers on a small piece of white fox fur that he had his "designer" attach to his costume at the recent U.S. Figure Skating Championships. That's the "garment" shown above. Well, the costume caused the fur to fly as animal rights groups took Weir to task. Friends of Animals wrote an open letter to Weir and contacted his designer, Stephanie Handler. Initially, Weir wasn't fazed a bit, saying, "I totally get the dirtiness of the fur industry and how terrible it is to animals. But it's not something that's the No. 1 priority in my life. There are humans dying every day. There are thousands, if not millions, of homeless people in New York City. Look at what just happened in Haiti. I tend to focus my energy, if there is a cause, on humans. While that may be callous and bad of me, it's my choice." Flash forward a couple of days, and Weir decided to change his choice, announcing that his costume will henceforth be decorated with fake fur. Weir's agent says the decision was made because the skater feared that animal-rights groups might try to disrupt his performances in the upcoming Winter Olympics. Weir made it clear that it was all about him and the "dream I have had since I was a kid." He added, "I hope these activists can understand that my decision to change my costume is in no way a victory for them. I am not changing in order to appease them, but to protect my integrity and the integrity of the Olympic Games." Weir also has pointed out that all his fellow competitors are wearing skates made of cowhide. Perhaps he doesn't understand this, but there's a difference between utilitarian items such as skates and a piece of frivolous fringe on his outfit. I think these animal-rights groups go way overboard with some of their criticisms. I'm not going to give up steak dinners and ham sandwiches because an outfit like PETA doesn't like my lifestyle. But I believe they have a point when it comes to fur. Do a whole bunch of animals really need to die, and be killed in a horrific fashion, just so some rich lady can sport a floor-length mink coat? Do rabbits need to be killed so somebody can have a fancy fringe around the hood of their winter coat? And does Johnny Weir really need that stupid-looking tuft of fur on the shoulder of his goofy-looking costume? If Johnny doesn't have a problem with taking advantage of a smaller animal to make his outfit look more fabulous, I understand. But then I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I scalp him and dangle his pelt from my key ring. Hey, heterosexual guys can accessorize, too.

Open mouth, insert foot

2010-01-26T13:31:00.004-05:00

It's only Tuesday, but at the risk of being proven wrong, I'm going to go ahead and anoint South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer as jackass of the week. During a recent speech at a town hall meeting in rural South Carolina – where his message was no doubt warmly received – Bauer related a story allegedly told to him by his grandmother when he was but a small boy. Grandma, said Bauer, told him to stop feeding stray animals. "You know why?" asked Bauer. "Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a human ample food supply." I don't think it's going too far out on a limb to interpret Bauer's remarks as meaning that he believes we should cut off the food supply to poor people before they have a chance to reproduce. Bauer later explained that he was trying to explain that government social programs have bred a "culture of dependency." Why he didn't just say that, instead of suggesting that hordes of lazy, worthless poor people are suckling at the public teat and then producing more and more poor people who will take those good Republican tax dollars, is beyond me. Maybe he's just an idiot. It doesn't take a whole lot of reading between the lines to hear Bauer telling a no-doubt heavily white audience that the black people are bleeding them dry. Even if Bauer is not a dope, he certainly comes off as someone who doesn't give a damn about the less fortunate in his state, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the entire country. But, of course, Bauer, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, is more interested in attracting the votes of the rich and, let's go ahead and say it, rednecks who don't like black people, than he is in courting the downtrodden. Poor folks aren't his "base." But it might be interesting to see how many of South Carolina's large number of right-wing evangelical voters stand behind Bauer if there are more stories cropping up about his personal life. Prominent gay activists have outed the anti-gay-rights Bauer as being, himself, gay. For the record, Bauer is a 40-year-old bachelor who was once a varsity cheerleader at the University of South Carolina. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Protecting the children from words

2010-01-26T13:13:00.002-05:00

George Carlin, in his famous comedy bit about the seven words you can't say on television (all of which have since been said on television, with the advent of cable), opined that there really are no bad words, just bad thoughts and bad intentions. I tend to agree with that. A parent in a California school district doesn't agree with that assessment, and the district has gone absolutely nuts in response. According to blogger Judy Molland on the www.care2.com site, the mother demanded that the district ban the 10th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary after her kid came across the term "oral sex" in one of the books. School officials, unbelievably, folded like a cheap suit and pulled the dictionaries from every school in the district. And now, in true bureaucratic fashion, they've formed a committee to determine whether the ban should be made permanent. Apparently, in Menefee Union School District, a book filled with words used in the English language presents a clear and present danger to youngsters who are supposed to be learning. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

For a truly funny example of unnecessary censorship, check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCxgmPEt7Y4

Haven't the Haitians suffered enough?

2010-01-26T12:51:00.003-05:00

To his credit, actor John Travolta used his own Boeing 707 jetliner to take relief supplies and doctors to earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Unfortunately, he also "gifted" the Haitian people with "ministers" from the Church of Scientology. If those ministers are hauling rubble and tending to the injured, that's one thing. But I've got a problem with it if their intention is to proselytize for their "religion" during this terrible time for the island nation. What are they going to do, hook up devastated Haitian people to their little auditing meters – which I'm convinced are just repurposed Milton Bradley "Operation" games – and make their troubles float away? Again, the supplies and doctors were a great gesture. The ministers? Not so much.

Where have you gone, hefty PB cups?

2010-01-21T10:24:00.003-05:00

In the 1942 movie “Kings Row,” a newly legless Ronald Reagan famously asks, "Where's the rest of me?" That was sort of the feeling I had today when I bought a two-pack of the Reese's dark chocolate peanut butter cups. The package was so light that I thought they might have to tie the candy bars to the rack so a light breeze doesn't blow them away. Folks of my generation have memories, which we're only too glad to share, about the days when a kid could take a dime into a store and come out with a Hershey bar and a Coke. And in those days, a Reese's peanut butter cup was a good-sized piece of candy. Maybe I'm overdoing it a bit, but it seems like a single Reese's cup from my youth weighed more than the two in the pack I bought today. Food producers are a pretty tricky bunch. We all remember how the coffee cans started shrinking so we paid the same price for less coffee. It's been the same deal with ice cream containers. And I even noticed that a package of hash browns, which used to weigh 2 pounds, now comes in at around 34.5 ounces. On the good side of food news, we are now able to buy "throwback" Pepsi and Mountain Dew, which means they are produced with real sugar rather than the corn syrup that has been used, as far as I can recall, since the 1980s. The difference in taste is remarkable. The bad news is that Pepsi says the "throwback" versions – also known as “Mexican,” because sodas in that country still are produced with real sugar – will be available for a "limited time only." Let's see if I have this right. Pepsi puts out a product that is clearly preferable to the one that had been available, and then plans to take it back off the market. In other words, they're screwing with us. It's like McDonald's and the McRib sandwich. I rarely eat at McDonald's, but I will stop by if I see that the McRib is making one of its occasional "limited-time-only" appearances. And then, just as quickly as the McRib reappears, it is gone again. Why do they do this?

Brown-out for the Dems

2010-01-20T07:22:00.004-05:00

The equation in the special Senate election in Massachusetts was simple: Bad Democratic candidate + angry electorate = embarrassing loss. Massachusetts might be the last state where a Republican would be expected to topple a Democrat in a major race, but it happened Tuesday, when the GOP's Scott Brown whacked Democrat Martha Coakley to claim the Senate seat that had been held for decades by Ted Kennedy. Several questions came to mind after the election was over. My first thought was, how bad were the other candidates in the Democratic primary if Coakley was the winner? The second question, and much more important, is what this means for health-care reform. It would be an easy out for the Democrats to lay blame for Tuesday's loss on Coakley's failings as a candidate, but they really should recognize that anger over government spending and pending health-care legislation was the real reason for the Republican victory. What should the Democrats do now about health-care reform? With Brown taking office, they no longer have the votes to block a Senate filibuster, unless they can attract a moderate Republican - and there ain't many of them - to their side. But that would take some major concessions, weakening an already watered-down bill. They also could try to find enough House members to approve the Senate bill, as is. That's a tough sell. I wouldn't be the least bit unhappy if the legislation died a quick death. They lost me when they eliminated any mechanism to provide real competition for the health-insurance companies. Without a single-payer system or a true public option, the chance for the measure to have a significant impact on health-care costs is minimal. Those who still support the pending legislation say it's a good first step and can be improved later. Really? Who, exactly, is going to "improve" the legislation down the road? The next Congress? You mean the one with a lot more Republicans in it? Good luck with that. Some Republicans are positively giddy about Tuesday's outcome. Some are touting the benefits of a divided government, now that Democrats have lost their 60-40 advantage in the Senate. Funny, but I don't remember them crowing about those positives when the Republicans lost the House and Senate in 2006. One person I saw on Facebook last night even called it the beginning of the second American Revolution. Easy there. Don't go digging up Paul Revere's corpse and strapping him to a horse just yet. The midterm congressional elections aren't until November, and a lot can happen in nine months. As you might recall, nine months before the 2008 Democratic primaries began, Hillary Clinton was being fitted for a crown for her coronation tour. How did that work out? For the Democrats' sake, I hope they're not going to follow the advice of Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the chief of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who told the Associated Press that the plan is for his colleagues to continue to lay the blame on the Bush administration for steering the economy "into a ditch" and then running away. Enough of that. Certainly, Obama was left with a mess by Bush, who, in my opinion, was a really rotten president. But Obama has been in office for a year now, and the Democrats have controlled Congress longer than that. By the time the November elections roll around, Obama's tenure will be close to two years. At that point, whatever state the country is in, he and the Democratic Congress own it, not George W. Bush. One problem with the Democrats is that they want to be the party of lofty ideals, but they're not willing to get down in the mud and wrestle for what they believe in. The GOP might be morally bankrupt, depending on your way of thinking, but they've rarely gone broke by pandering to and rallying the birther/town hall shrieker/take-back-the-country-for-Jesus-and-the-rich crowd. They secure their base much better than the Democrats do, and if they can attract independents angry about the course of the country, they're winners. That's exactly how that Obama fellow ended up in the White House. He rallied the Democratic core and added support from independents, some of them disgusted by the eight years of Bush-Cheney rule and others, no doubt, legitimately fearful about having the Wasilla Wingnut a heartbeat away from the presidency. At this point, the best the Democrats can really hope for is moderate losses of seats in the next Congress. The worst is a wipeout that would leave them and the president largely impotent. To minimize the damage, they need to go on the offensive, stake out their positions clearly, point out the failings of the Republican Party and truly stand up for what they believe in. They've got a big selling job ahead, but knowing the history of the Democrats, they'll probably just sell out.

That old-time extremism

2010-01-19T13:22:00.010-05:00

In this country, we often hear about "Muslim extremists," but I don't hear anyone complaining about the Christian extremists in our midst. One such bunch appears to be operating in Westmoreland County. It seems the pastor of Christian Fellowship Center of Greensburg has gone to county court to seek an order upholding a vote by the church board to expel two church elders. One of the elders reportedly was argumentative and had a poor attendance record at church functions. OK, that's understandable. The second, however, was voted out because he, um, failed to speak in tongues. For the uninitiated, speaking in tongues involves spewing made-up gibberish, supposedly through the power of the Holy Spirit, and, according to an AP story, it displays what some churches consider to be “necessary evidence of one’s faith.” I don't know if you’ve ever seen anyone speaking in tongues, but it makes the Jodie Foster character in the movie “Nell” sound like Sir Laurence Olivier. Hearing about this legal action brought to mind something even scarier, the hellishly frightening 2006 documentary “Jesus Camp,” in which children essentially were tortured into buying into the charms of Pentacostal/charismatic Christianity. To get an idea of the film’s contents, take a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac. Involving young children in this sort of twisted indoctrination amounts to mental crucifixion and child abuse. If Muslim parents gathered their children together at such a camp and treated them in this fashion, badgering them to fight for the views of their God, there are a lot of folks in this country – selling a different brand of faith – who would accuse them of sowing the seeds of jihad and probably attempt to have the kids taken from them. This is just a reminder that extremism is bad, no matter who or what is being worshipped. And if you’re not sickened by what you saw in the video clip, there’s really something wrong with you.

Dick Ebersol is aptly named

2010-01-15T13:18:00.003-05:00

Nobody can accuse NBC executive Dick Ebersol of not being a company man. If you've been living under a rock, NBC has decided to kill Jay Leno's 10 p.m. weeknight talk show and wants to put Leno back at 11:35, thus pushing back Conan O'Brien’s "Tonight Show." O’Brien, as one might expect, is balking about the move and has been very public in bashing the network's plan. And now Ebersol is trying to shift the blame for the whole mess to O’Brien, calling him an "astounding failure." Ebersol also ripped O’Brien and fellow late-night host David Letterman for their pointed jokes about the situation, saying, "It’s chicken-hearted and gutless to blame a guy (Leno) you couldn’t beat in the ratings. They're just striking out at Jay.” Chicken-hearted? It's not as if O'Brien and Letterman are leaking statements to the National Enquirer. They're making them on national TV in front of millions of viewers. And let's remember that it was NBC who pushed Leno out of the "Tonight Show" seat and replaced him with O'Brien. As for that "astounding failure" remark, I think O'Brien, whose previous show needed time to build an audience, deserves more than seven months to succeed with the "Tonight Show." Ebersol also is taking O'Brien to task for blaming his own so-so ratings on the weak lead-in provided by Leno. Let's face facts, Dick. Leno's ratings at 10 p.m. stink. That's the reason you're killing his show. And O'Brien isn't the only one pointing to the sorry lead-in provided by Leno. NBC affiliates are reportedly hacked, and losing money, because Leno is providing such a weak lead-in to their 11 p.m. news programs. Leno promised something new and different when he moved from 11:35 to 10 p.m., but instead he rolled out the same old, tired gags from his old show. Viewers stayed away in droves. Leno is the real underachiever here. It's really easy to settle this whole mess. If Ebersol is so convinced that O'Brien is an "astounding failure," he and NBC should have no problem releasing O'Brien from his NBC deal and allowing him to immediately take his talk show to another network, where he could compete directly with Leno. Yeah, right.

Just shut up

2010-01-14T14:05:00.004-05:00

For anyone who isn't aware, televangelist Pat Robertson is a dumbass of the lowest order. His latest pronouncement from Mt. Dunderhead is that the earthquake in Haiti was somehow linked to activities by local residents a couple of hundred years ago. Here's what dipstick said on his “700 Club” program Wednesday: "(The Haitians) were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’” I'm not sure where old Pat is getting his info on this so-called deal. Maybe the Port-au-Prince Examiner had a reporter on the scene. Robertson has a long history of making stupid statements after disasters, natural or otherwise. He has linked everything from Hurricane Katrina to 9/11 to the near-deadly stroke suffered by Israeli leader Ariel Sharon on activities that hacked off God - like people being gay and such. I'm not sure how long the Big Guy has been unleashing wrath on innocent folks because of the supposed misdeeds of small groups of people within the population or, in Haiti's case, their forefathers. Maybe the 1974 tornado that leveled Xenia, Ohio, and killed about three dozen people was retribution for some guy skipping church to play golf. Or maybe God only recently returned to Old Testament-style smiting. We'll have to ask Pat about that. I have a few other questions. When a child dies of cancer, is that punishment for something that somebody did somewhere? Why does God allow people like Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts and Jerry Falwell to bring ridicule upon the Christian faith? And why does Pat Robertson think his religion is any more valid or grounded in reality than Haitian voodoo? There's certainly no evidence to back that up. Falwell and Roberts are dead. It's not going to be a great loss to humanity when Robertson joins them.

Might as well face it, he's addicted to love (making)

2010-01-14T13:36:00.003-05:00

If published reports are accurate, Tiger Woods, who was last seen thrashing about on the lawn of his Florida mansion last Thanksgiving under very sketchy circumstances, has checked himself into a private clinic for treatment of sex addiction. The reports aren't very clear on where the clinic is located. One report says Arizona, another South Africa. I guess this is Tiger's way of claiming that it wasn't his fault he ditched his trousers with the frequency of a porn actor. He had a sickness, don't you know, just like all those other celebrities who suddenly find a need for rehabilitation to get off booze or pills after they run their Hummer into a house or open up a can of whoop-ass on their significant other. People magazine, which claims Tiger is in an Arizona facility called The Meadows (I don't think Delvin Miller was involved with this one), cites a source who says the golfer “should be out by Valentine’s Day or thereabouts.” Yep, Valentine's Day. You can't make this stuff up.

Oh, come on

2010-01-11T07:34:00.003-05:00

Let me preface this by saying that I think Harry Reid is a dim-bulb political hack and a sad excuse for a leader of anything, let alone the U.S. Senate. But Republican calls for him to step down over remarks he made about the 2008 presidential race and the election of Barack Obama are just plain stupid. For those who didn't hear the story in recent days, there's a new book out called "Game Change" in which Reid is quoted as saying that Obama benefited by being light-skinned and having "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Based on the trumped-up outrage of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Senate GOP Whip Jon Kyl, you would have thought that Reid had said Obama should be picking cotton in the Mississippi Delta. Oh, wait, that was Trent Lott, the former senator to whom those Republicans are trying to compare Reid. I kid you not. Steele, who is an early betting favorite to win the "Political D-bag of the Year" award for 2010, said Reid should resign his leadership position, and he tried to link Reid's comments to those of Lott, who quit his Senate leadership post in 2002 after suggesting that the United States would have been a better place if blacks were still separate and unequal. Any rational, intelligent person can see that there's no comparison between what Reid and Lott said, but rational, intelligent people aren't the folks whom Steele, Cornyn and Kyl are pandering to. Fact is, Reid was talking about the reality of Obama's appeal to voters, particularly white voters, and while Reid has apologized for his wording, his comments are essentially true. When 25 percent of Democratic primary voters in West Virginia in 2008 said their decision was at least somewhat motivated by race, it's pretty easy to see that a candidate like Barack Obama would do better with some voters than a guy who looks and talks like Sonny Liston. And while it might not be politically correct to say so, there is a "black dialect" in our country. It's a pattern of speech that most of us hear every day if we watch television, and traces of it are detectable even among highly trained speakers such as TV newscasters. It's really no big deal. As a nation that includes people of many different cultural backgrounds, we shouldn't expect each and every person to sound like Rex Harrison in "My Fair Lady." Lott's remarks eight years ago were decidedly different. The senator, now a lobbyist, said at a birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond, who was once one of America's leading racists, that his home state of Mississippi was proud that it had supported Thurmond's bid for the presidency in 1948. Added Lott, "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over these years, either." Nice. As for Reid, black leaders far and wide are rallying behind him, so this issue really is a tempest in a teapot. The Republicans should just move on.

In reality, dogs rule

2010-01-07T12:35:00.003-05:00

This will probably come as no surprise, but a new Associated Press-Petside.com poll has found that more Americans like dogs than cats. Plenty of people like both, but the poll found 74 percent of respondents like dogs a lot, but just 41 percent like cats a lot. I've had dogs and cats since I was a young child, and while I've had some very lovable cats, I really don't find them a match for a good dog. The photo above shows my "baby" with his muddy paws on the coffee table that he chewed at every opportunity when he was a pup. I think Joseph Moreus, a California man interviewed for an AP story about the poll, summed it up pretty well when he said, “Cats are all about cats ... Cats don't care if they please you or not.” That's pretty much it. Cats do their own thing. Our current cat, when she's not fending off the retriever, spends most of her day sleeping under a piece of furniture in the living room. She doesn't care whether we humans go upstairs, downstairs or outside the house. Dogs, on the other hand, want to be where you are. They're sad when you go somewhere and happy as all heck when you come home. You want to play, they'll play. You want to hit the couch for a nap, they'll curl up next to you. You want to pee in the yard, they'll join you. OK, maybe that was a bad example, and don't try that family "whiz break" if you live in town. I should mention, for my own personal safety, that my wife does NOT join us for that particular group activity. But back to my central point, which is that it's hard not to love dogs. My dogs are happy when I'm happy, and comforting when I'm not. My life is better because of my dogs. And I think that's the best endorsement I can give.

Health or dollars?

2010-01-07T12:16:00.003-05:00

Can we start by agreeing that air pollution is bad? Probably. But where we'll disagree is on how much air pollution is acceptable and how much we're willing to spend to reduce it. The Environmental Protection Agency today proposed tougher smog standards, just a couple of years after President Bush ignored scientists’ recommendations and set a higher smog standard than what they proposed. Actually, ignored is probably not the right word. Bush heard what they said, but when electric utilities and other companies complained, he sided with industry over the health of Americans. The new, tighter standards are not cost-free, by any means. The EPA says it will cost tens of billions to meet the called-for smog reductions, but the agency says billions eventually will be saved in terms of avoided emergency room visits, premature deaths, missed work, etc. We can't control what other countries do around the globe, but we can, and should, do what we can to improve our environment. And that includes, for some people, admitting that climate change is real and that our actions are largely to blame for it. And admitting that we need to do more – much more – to develop alternatives to our current fuel sources.

An old-man rant

2010-01-04T14:52:00.004-05:00

If you've heard this before (and if you're a longtime reader of this blog, you have), please bear with me. I'm going to climb back up on my soapbox to bemoan the drop-of-a-hat frequency with which school districts either order school delays or call off classes entirely. As early as Sunday night, school districts in Western Pennsylvania already were posting two-hour delays for Monday’s classes. By Monday morning, a lot of them were changing those delays to cancellations, apparently because of the inch of snow we received. I'm all for keeping our children safe, but has anyone calculated the amount of instruction time lost when all those two-hour delays are added up? At the risk of being labeled an angry old man (I am one), I have a tale to spin for those who grew up any time after the 1980s. Back in the dark ages, 30 or 40 years ago, kids went to school in the winter, waiting outside at bus stops, if necessary, unless there was a "real" snowfall. And by real, I mean something along the lines of five or six inches of snow. We had a lady who drove our school bus along the snowy ridges out back of Taylorstown and Claysville, and I'm guessing it never occurred to her to check the radio or television for a delay or cancellation when a couple of inches of snow fell from the sky. And if someone had suggested that school be delayed because it was COLD IN THE WINTER, they'd have been looked at as if they were nuts. But today, little Suzie and little Bobby can't possibly be expected to stand outside in cold weather, even if they'd just spend the weekend playing outside for even longer periods. When I was a youngster, I never once remember one of my classmates having to go for treatment at the nurse’s office for a case of frostbite after standing at a bus stop. And while I'm ranting about how soft we've become, I'd also like to discuss, and get your thoughts, on the goings-on at Texas Tech, where the coach was run out of town after it was found that he had made a player sit in a dark tool shed a couple of times. The player in question was Adam James, son of college football legend and current TV sports analyst Craig James. The facts in this case are about as solid as butterscotch pudding, but it seems that the younger James indicated to coaches that he thought he had suffered a concussion, so the response of Coach Mike Leach was to have him sequestered in a dark equipment shed. After complaints from James' famous daddy, Leach was gone. Perhaps the coach wasn't overly sensitive in shaming a possibly injured player in front of his teammates, but from most accounts, this wasn't an instance of a tough-as-nails, hard-working player being reprimanded for a singular incident. Sources say Adam James wasn't well-acquainted with the terms "dedication" and "work ethic." In fact, acting offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley, in an e-mail to university administrators, called James "unusually lazy and entitled." That's not surprising in this day and age, when outstanding athletes, especially those from prominent families, are coddled from an early age and told they're the greatest thing since sliced bread. Texas Tech fans weren't exactly lining up to support James. An Associated Press story about the Red Raiders' Alamo Bowl victory on Saturday night said that James was booed so loudly as he left the field at halftime that it drowned out the marching band that was on the field. And Leach isn't the only coach to lose his job for being less than charming. Kansas recently ran off football coach Mark Mangino, whose crime reportedly was being mean to his players. All of this makes me wish that players like Adam James and the ones who whined about Mangino could spend a couple of weeks with Bear Bryant. They'd last less than five minutes before running home to Mommy.

When is it too much?

2009-12-27T10:54:00.003-05:00

It hasn't been a good past few days for actor Nicolas Cage. From all accounts, he's in very severe financial difficulties. He's suing his former business manager, while at the same time being sued by a former significant other, Christina Fulton, who is seeking $13 million. And the former business manager has countersued Cage, saying the star ignored advice to curb his excessive spending. Now, he's been hit with a $36.7 million lawsuit by a group called Red Curb Investments, which says Cage, who just this year is facing IRS tax liens approaching $7 million, failed to repay more than $5 million in loans and also failed to give notice of his tax woes. From the sound of all this, it's beginning to look as if Cage, despite earning millions and millions of dollars, is headed either toward bankruptcy or sharing a prison cell with Wesley Snipes. Which finally brings me to my point: While people who make huge sums of money are certainly entitled to spend it as they wish, isn't it a little bit sickening to watch them wallow in excess? This is not jealousy on my part. I'm not a wealthy person, but I enjoy my "regular life." I have no interest in mansions, yachts, private planes and classic sports cars. But everywhere we look, the various media are slobbering over the rich and famous, basically celebrating their lives of excess. I saw an ad last night for a TV show that glorifies lavish weddings. We're talking six-figure, maybe seven-figure, affairs. It would be disturbing to me to even watch something like that. It brings to mind the infamous case of Dennis Kozlowski, who looted Tyco International and was convicted and sent to prison. At his trial, Kozlowski's spending habits were laid out for the world to see. The pinnacle of this, or the low point, perhaps, was Kozlowski's spending of $2.1 million for his wife's 40th birthday party on a Mediterranean island. When people are fortunate enough to become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, shouldn't it be enough for them to life a very, very comfortable life - even sock away a few million to ensure the financial security of their children and grandchildren - and then do something more altruistic with their riches? Don't get me wrong. There are many people who do just that, but it seems as if there are a growing number who have embraced a culture of unbridled spending. It's not just "me, me, me." It's "look at me." It also has struck me this Christmas season more than any other - perhaps because of the terrible times so many people have gone through this year - that we are throwing money away (much to the delight of corporate America) on gifts that people don't need. I receive gifts that, while very nice, are not necessary for my daily life. And I'm sure I give people gifts that they could very well have done without. Well, I'm finally stepping off the Christmas-Hanukkah-Kwanzaa-whatever merry-go-round. Next year, I'll be telling the people with whom I have typically exchanged gifts that I want nothing from them and that I will be taking money that I usually would have spent on gifts and giving it to worthy charities. Small children will be exempt from my new policy. Is anyone else having the same thoughts?

Season’s greetings

2009-12-24T10:35:00.003-05:00

I want to wish a happy and blessed Christmas to all of my Christian friends, and to extend the same wishes to those who may be marking other holidays and observances during this time of the year. Underneath all of our beliefs, or lack thereof, we have the same basic hopes and dreams for those we love and care about, and for our world as a whole. May peace be with you, and may all of us have a wonderful 2010.

Who is an athlete? What is a sport?

2009-12-24T10:26:00.003-05:00

When the Associated Press recently named NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson its Male Athlete of the Year, it brought up a couple of interesting questions. What is an athlete? And, what qualifies as a sport? It's hard for me to consider a guy who sits down on the job for the title of top athlete. There is no doubt that Johnson has great skills as a race car driver, including tremendous reflexes and great stamina. But I really don’t think he can be considered alongside people like Roger Federer, Usain Bolt, Peyton Manning, Lance Armstrong or Lebron James. That brings us to the question of what is a sport, and what is not. In my definition – and this is just my opinion – a sport involves defense. In other words, there has to be someone trying to stop you from doing what you want to do for an athletic event to be a "sport." To me, golf is an athletic pursuit, as are track and field events, gymnastics and ice skating. They all require athleticism, but they're not sports, at least under my definition. What are your thoughts?

Say it ain't so, SpaghettiOs

2009-12-18T10:57:00.004-05:00

There are some minor events in one's childhood that stand out while other, more important events are forgotten. It's been more than 40 years, but I can still recall my introduction to one of the greatest foods known to man: SpaghettiOs. And I'm still eating them (meatballs version only; don't even talk to me about sliced franks). But life as I know it is about to change, and not for the better. Campbell's Soup Co., the makers of this delectable treat (Even cats like it!), has announced that it will cut the amount of sodium in SpaghettiOs by as much as 35 percent. Said Sean Connolly, president of Campbell's U.S. soups, sauces and beverages division, "Changing the recipe of SpaghettiOs comes on the heels of reducing sodium in our condensed kids soups to healthy levels. It's also consistent with our commitment to advertise only sound food choices to children." Screw that. What about us big kids? Couldn't they make a "classic" version of SpaghettiOs for those of us who don't give a damn about our sodium intake and make a tasteless kids version? This is just another assault on traditional (bad-for-you) foods that we all knew and loved. Oreos and Twinkies are now just poor imitations or their original selves. I don't know what they did to Dinty Moore beef stew, but it isn't good. And don't try to tell me that McDonald's fries are as good now as they were when Ronald was deep-frying his taters in beef tallow. I'm all for giving our kids healthy food, but the occasional can of SpaghettiOs isn't going to ruin them. Heck, I ate a boatload of SpaghettiOs when I was a kid, and I was skinny as a rail back then. It wasn't until I made beer the base of my own personal food pyramid that I climbed aboard the train to Fatville. So, in the name of all that is decent, good and holy, I beg of you Campbell's, leave my O's alone.

Tell the whole truth

2009-12-17T10:53:00.004-05:00

Alice Roosevelt Longworth once said, "If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." I always liked that. What I don't subscribe to is the old saying that you don't speak ill of the dead. Perhaps what I really mean is, you shouldn't lie about the dead to make them seem better than they really were. There were two deaths in the past couple of days that I'll use to illustrate that point. Yesterday came the news that KDKA radio talk show host Fred Honsberger had died. To hear everyone talking about him, you would have thought a saint had gone to his reward. As an occasional listener to Fred's show, I thought he was a lie-spewing, truth-twisting, rude and nasty jackass. He was a leader in coarsening and debasing public discourse in our region. Some might say that it was a personna Fred displayed on his program and that he didn't really believe in everything he was saying. Well, in that case, he was a fraud. Take your pick: jackass or fraud. Then, today, we learned of the death of Cincinnati Bengals receiver and former West Virginia Mountaineer Chris Henry, who was fatally injured when he fell from a pickup truck driven by his girlfriend. For those who don't follow football closely, Henry was a sad excuse for a human being when he played at WVU, and he assembled a rap sheet as long as your arm while with the Bengals. But because he hadn't been arrested recently, everyone's talking about him as a "young man who really turned his life around." Really? The guy died while chasing his girlfriend during a domestic dispute. Sounds like a regular Ward Cleaver. I'm sorry that both these men died, especially at their ages, and I feel for their families and friends, but let's not whitewash reality. And let me make it clear that I want the same honest treatment when I die. Feel free to say that I was sometimes (most of the time?) a horse's ass. I believe strongly in telling the truth. ;-)

Something worth screaming about

2009-12-16T12:13:00.003-05:00

Howard Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic Party and onetime presidential candidate, is a bit of a strange bird, but I think he’s absolutely correct when he says the health-care reform bill emerging from the Senate is a piece of garbage because it doesn’t offer consumers a real alternative and actually gives more clout to private insurance companies. Said Dean today in a “Good Morning America” interview, “You will be forced to buy insurance. If you don’t, you’ll pay a fine. It’s an insurance company bailout. This is an insurance company’s dream. This is the Washington scramble, and it’s a shame.” Dean also claimed that the Senate bill, as currently crafted, would allow the insurance industry to hammer older people with higher premiums while still denying people coverage because of pre-existing conditions. If Dean is correct, it’s hard to see a whole lot that’s positive about the Senate legislation. Without any public option, it’s hard for me to fathom that there will be much in the way of cost control. And covering millions more people only because you're compelling them to buy coverage isn’t much of an achievement. I'm really afraid that this process has devolved into such a purely political mess that it might be better to do nothing than to approve a measure that could end up doing more harm than good. If the Democrats are smart, and the jury is still out on that, they would do well to abandon the issue, because by approving bad legislation, they'd be making a silver-platter delivery of a rallying cry for Republicans in the midterm elections. By dropping reform efforts, Democrats could say – and they would be absolutely correct in saying so – that Republicans were a “party of no” who stood in the way of meaningful improvements in our health-care system.

Random thoughts on the boob tube

2009-12-10T11:02:00.003-05:00

A few observations after a night spent watching television:

1. There are times when, despite having a couple of hundred channels to choose from, I can't find a thing that I want to watch on television. Conversely, last night I saw a few good shows. I have to admit that I'm hooked on "Glee!" (I realize that's a somewhat shameful admission for a 51-year-old heterosexual, but it is what it is). And there were a couple of pretty good sitcoms on last night: "Modern Family" and "The Middle." I have trouble sticking with too many shows that have linear story lines, so I tend to watch lighter fare. Are there any shows you would recommend that might be flying under the radar?

2. I saw on SportsCenter that Chad Ochocinco (the former Chad Johnson) of the Cincinnati Bengals was fined something in the neighborhood of $30,000 for donning a cape and a sombrero on the sidelines after scoring a touchdown last weekend. Not on the field, mind you. On the sidelines. The NFL is, more and more, becoming a stiff, corporate "No Fun League," and W&J grad Roger Goodell, the league commissioner, is coming off as a humorless bastard who makes baseball commissioner Bud Selig, who has all the charisma of Harry Reid, look like Will Ferrell by comparison.

3. Does anyone else want to throw a brick through the television when those Jared jewelry commercials come on? They put me on the brink of wanting to retch into the nearest receptacle. I swear that if I were in the market for jewelry, I'd strip some off the rotting corpse of a dead hooker before I'd darken the door of one of their stores.

Enough is enough

2009-12-09T11:51:00.003-05:00

City officials in Washington are still trying to bail out the Titanic with a teacup, and it would seem that if there's any light at the end of this tunnel of fiscal misery, it's from a big, fast-moving train called reality. The approach of elected officials has been an incremental one, including the current move to bludgeon people who park in the city. Council is now discussing a plan under which the price of parking at a metered space would increase from 25 cents for 30 minutes to 25 cents for 15 minutes. On top of that, the city is contemplating a $10 fine for overtime parking, and they'd give violators just two hours to pay that fine before it doubled to $20. And you couldn't even put the $10 fine in one of the courtesy boxes. The fine would have to be paid at the city parking authority office. To say this is onerous is an understatement. And it continues. After five days, the fine rises to $30; after 15 days, it goes to $50. But wait, there's more. The city also is considering a tax - perhaps as much as $3 per space, per day - on all for-profit parking garages and lots in the city, including the Trust Building garage and the one owned by Washington County. Owners of those lots and garages would have to register with the city treasurer as a tax collector and keep strict records of all the taxes taken in. The city already is dunning people who work in Washington with an earned income tax, and that is expected to increase this year. What all this means is that Washington is financially raping people who work or do business in the city, in order to avoiding raising taxes on those who actually live in Washington (also known as voters). But they can't even accomplish that, because now there's talk of raising property taxes in order to make up for a $400,000 shortfall in revenue from the current year. And who is to blame for that shortfall? That would be council and the mayor. They are the ones who approved a budget that included ridiculous revenue projections. For example, the current year's budget called for $220,000 to be generated through building permits. The city has taken in less than $85,000 so far. The city also has fallen $100,000 short of its projections in business privilege taxes. These are not minor mistakes. They amount to borderline fiscal malfeasance and abuse of the public trust. In other words, the city is being led by incompetents. They can continue bending over the people who work in the city, because they're captive victims. But what this situation calls for is bold moves, ones that most likely would anger the very people who get to vote on whether current council members and the mayor get to stay in office. But true leaders do the right thing, not the politically expedient thing. And don't let it be said that I'm criticizing them without offering my own answers. First, eliminate any non-essential services and cut the work force to the lowest possible level in order to meet essential services such as tax collection and snow removal. Second, eliminate any non-required financial outlays. For example, if the city makes an annual payment to Citizens Library, that should stop. Libraries are a wonderful resource, but they are not essential when a city is going into the toilet. Finally, eliminate the paid fire department. You could retain a couple of paid firefighters and supplement them with volunteers. The time for half-assed, piecemeal fixes is over. Either make bold moves, or let the state come in and take control.