Of Bart and baseball

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.

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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.

And life goes on

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.

Now or never?

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.

Stop the insanity

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.

Health or dollars?

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.

Say it ain't so, SpaghettiOs

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.

Something worth screaming about

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.

A turn for the better?

A few weeks after town hall shrieking was all the rage, it appears that public opinion might be shifting back in favor of health-care reform. A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that opposition to the president’s effort has dropped, with the public now split evenly, with 40 percent in favor and 40 percent against the plans now being debated in Congress. Twenty percent of those polled apparently were too stupid or uninformed to know what they think. Significantly, outright opposition from independents, a group that likely will play a key role in deciding which party will control Congress after next year’s midterm elections, declined from 51 percent to 36 percent. Also, senior citizens are now less likely to oppose reform plans. Republicans, of course, are decidedly in favor of the status quo. My opinion is that unless there is a public option, reform is little more than window dressing, and if I had to bet a large of sum of money right now, my guess is that the watered-down mess that eventually emerges from Congress will have little impact on the health-care problems facing the country, namely cost and access.

What a boob

Because my parents and my youngest brother live in South Carolina, I try to believe that it's not a state filled with crackpots and buffoons, despite behavior to the contrary by public officials down there. Gov. Mark Sanford has been under the hottest spotlight of late, what with his gallivanting around with a mistress while his aides claimed he was on a hiking trip. He must have been somewhat relieved when, during President Obama's health-care speech last night, Republican Rep. Joe Wilson wrested away his title as biggest idiot from the Palmetto State. If you haven't heard, when Obama was noting that health-care reform would not lead to spending of public money on care for illegal immigrants, Wilson shouted out, "You lie!" Politicans on both sides of the aisle condemned Wilson for his embarrassing action, and Wilson later called the White House to apologize. But in an atmosphere in which a recent candidate for vice president can lie about "death panels” and talk radio-fueled imbeciles try to shout down a handicapped woman at a town hall meeting, is it any surprise that public discourse has come to this? Oh, by the way, Wilson (no surprise here) didn't know what he was talking about. There's no move afoot to use public funds to finance health care for illegal immigrants. In fact, current legislation in the House would expressly prohibit it. And Wilson’s intemperate behavior might come back to haunt him at the ballot box. His Democratic opponent in next year's election raised $200,000 following the outburst.

A wise move

After allowing the opposition to frame the debate for weeks, President Obama reportedly is thinking about delivering a speech to outline what he thinks are the important elements that should be included in a health-care reform bill. Republicans have been effective in stirring up angst and anger about the reform legislation, and to this point, the White House has been largely silent or vague about its priorities. It's pretty clear at this point that Republicans in Congress have little interest in compromise on the issue and will never cast their votes for anything resembling meaningful change in the way we pay for health coverage. According to a new Associated Press report, one of the key Senate negotiators on health care, Charles Grassley of Iowa, said in a recent fundraising letter that he needed people’s help to “defeat Obama-care.” That doesn't sound much like a man who is interested in crafting a bipartisan approach to the very clear and very real problems in our existing health-care insurance system. The time has come for Obama to press for approval of the plan he campaigned on. Members of Congress should not be expected to blindly climb on board with the president, but they also should not be siding with insurance companies and their lobbyists at the expense of the American people. And that's exactly what they're doing if they refuse to take bold steps toward a major overhaul of the sick system we have now. And if the members of the president’s own party cower in fear of people like the shrieking town hall idiots who parrot what they hear from lying slimeballs such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

Folks like me who heard the above phrase frequently during our military training are most likely stunned by a story out today that says the Pentagon is weighing the possibility of making the armed forces smoke free at some point down the road. Images of soldiers catching a smoke on the front lines are as old as photography itself, and studies show that military people smoke at a higher rate than civilians. Staff Sgt. Jerry Benson, who is serving with the Army in Afghanistan, doesn't like the idea of a ban. He told the AP, "Your nerves get all rattled, and you need something to calm you down." Benson needn't worry, however, unless he's planning a very long career in the military. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has no plan to impose such a ban. The idea stems from a study commissioned by the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration, and the authors of the report were looking toward a ban perhaps 20 years down the road. Certainly, there are costs associated with smoking, primarily for treating illnesses linked to lighting up. But where do we stop in legislating or commanding healthy living? Will superior officers someday have to follow their men and women home to make sure they're not using too much butter on their rolls? Will they ban beer drinking by the troops? Good luck with that. These are battles that the military probably shouldn't be fighting.

This just in: Obama wants to eat our dogs and rape our cats

I watch a fair amount of comedy programming on television. Let's face it, life can be tough, and a few laughs don't hurt. But the funniest thing I've seen in ages was a commercial I caught last night. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxFC9Af3W1U In fact, I was laughing out loud, even though I don't think it was intended to produce that response. The ad in opposition to health-care reform was paid for by the Family Research Council. The group was founded by noted hatemonger Rev. James Dobson. I went to the FRC Web site, and for the life of me, I couldn't find any actual research. Perhaps they just periodically ask their followers if they still love Jesus and hate Obama. But back to the ad. It features an elderly couple sitting at a kitchen table and looking like they'd just eaten a truckload of cat droppings. The guy is holding a piece of paper that looks as if it came from the government. He says, "They won't pay for my surgery. To think that Planned Parenthood is included in the government-run health-care plan, and we’re spending tax dollars on abortion. They won't pay for my surgery, but we’re forced to pay for abortions." Pretty nifty how they managed to stuff the word "abortion" into the ad twice within five seconds. At that point, it looks as if he's going to get down on the floor and writhe about. Then, the voice of a breathless woman says, "Our greatest generation denied care. Our future generation denied life." She asks that you call your senator to make sure this reform effort is stopped in its tracks. As I understand it, no one is going to be required to sign on with a plan that covers abortions. And do these people really think that there are not already health insurance companies that cover abortions? Also, if you don't like the public option that could come to fruition, don't choose it. And if you don't want an abortion, don't have one. Honestly, I hadn't seen this much hysteria, fearmongering and misinformation in a 30-second ad since the Bush re-election campaign in 2004. And, lo and behold, I heard last night that the old "turd blossom" himself, Karl Rove, has signed on to help the Republicans kill health-care reform. I'm sure more great comedy programming lies ahead.

Where are a rope and a stout limb when you need them?

We've all had our "weeks from hell." Let me tell you (bore you) about mine. It all started on Wednesday, July 23, when I had to start preparing for a routine colonoscopy the next day. The process goes like this: About 3 p.m., you take a few Dulcolax tablets. A couple of hours later, you start gulping down glasses of Gatorade that has been mixed with a whole lot of a powdery laxative called Miralax. I was instructed to use 255 grams of Miralax, which is a whole tub of the stuff. I looked at the bottle, and if you're just trying to prod balky bowels, you use 17 grams. Needless to say, once the Miralax kicks in, it's a pretty good idea to be in the vicinity of a toilet. By midnight, I felt as if Mike Tyson had used me for a heavy-bag workout. The next day, I go in the for procedure, and despite the IV drug they gave me, I wasn't quite out of it when the doctor went to work on me with the tube. It felt pretty much like he had stuffed a couple of wolverines up my wazoo. Fortunately, the drugs kicked in shortly thereafter, and the next thing I knew, a nice lady was handing me a Coca-Cola. They also advised that the good doctor had snipped off a couple of polyps while he was "in there," so it wasn't just a casual tour of my lower intestines. After that, I'm figuring that life has to be looking up. Ha ha. It was shortly thereafter that the electrical system in my house began to behave in a strange manner. Out of the blue, half the house would periodically go dark. Just as mysteriously, it would go back on. Sometimes, if the air-conditioner kicked on, that would jump start the part of the house that was dark. I'm still in the process of trying to figure that one out and solve the problem without having to take out a loan. Then, the first of this week, the upstairs toilet and I had an epic two-day battle. I finally won, with the help of an Internet cure found by the missus that included hot water and Palmolive. In the midst of my jousting with the "royal throne," my son calls me at work to advise that something "really bad" has happened to the push mower. He tells me that there's some oil on the deck of the mower. When I get home, I tip it up to see if there's any damage underneath, and when I do that, all kinds of oil and large chunks of metal come out of the side of the engine compartment. Nice. I fully expected a plague of locusts or snakes the last couple of days, but all is quiet. And I got a call yesterday telling me those polyps I had snipped off were benign, so maybe things are looking up. Nevertheless, I'm still on the lookout for lightning bolts, and next week I get to take my car to the shop. Oh boy.

But you can feel free to keep paying more

If you think you're doing your body some good by buying organic food, think again. Reuters reports that a study conducted by researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has found that organic food has zero nutritional or health benefits, when compared with non-organic food. The study noted that consumers are paying more, sometimes a lot more, for organic food. I'm not one of those people. From what I've seen, organic food is typically smaller and, for lack of a better word, crappier, than the chemically enhanced versions. But if you want to feel good about your effect on the environment by eating the organic stuff, feel free. In the meantime, I'll be eating nice big vegetables and tasty chemically altered meat.