Obama 3 Dogma 0

Continuing to deliver on promises made to the American public during his presidential campaign, President Obama announced that he was going to overturn another of President Shrub’s rigidly dogmatic public policies and allow funding for research on new stem cell lines. There is the predictable hue and cry from the right over the “sanctity of human life,” which to them means the sanctity of their right to interfere in your life. Apparently those suffering from Parkinson’s, heart disease or diabetes are much less sanctified. Empathy for actual people has never been this group’s strongpoint. Lest anyone misunderstand this blog’s point of view, Real People > Minute Glob of Cells.

This follows several other progressive decisions from the first month of Obama’s presidency that lifted public policy from the grips of the Self Righteous Right.

There were the two ridiculous abortion policies overturned: the so-called “Gag Rule” which withheld funding to any international group that provided or even mentioned abortion, and the “Conscience Rule,” which allowed doctors to refuse to perform abortions and pharmacists to refuse to fill contraception or “Morning After” prescriptions. The latter part of this always struck me as asinine, if not criminal. It’s like if a vegan was a cashier and refused to ring up your bologna sandwich.

Both of these violate what I consider to be the values of my primary philosophy, which is where one person or group does not get to insert their morals or values into my life. In other words, it’s the Mind Your Own Goddamn Business philosophy. I have no problem with people believing in or taking comfort from any belief system they want. The problem I have is when they try to make their particular belief system public policy for the entire nation, godless heathens and all. Our nation was set up to ensure that that never happens... namely the separation between church and state.

Name one successful Theocracy out there. I can think of Iran or the Taliban, who have been successful in covering their women with bags, but not successful by any reasonable standard. Funny how these are two of the nations or organizations that we most vilify, yet here these people are, trying to be just like them. I say, you want a Theocracy, go to where the Theocrats are. I’ll even provide the sunscreen.

Quick Thought

You know the fastest way to convene a meeting? Pass a little gas in your cube or office. Guaranteed quorum every time.

On a related note, if you have to take a smash and then only go a little bit, would that be considered a "smush"?

The Victory Lap

I just finished watching the official NFL highlights DVD for the Super Bowl XLIII Champion Pittsburgh Steelers. List price is 24.99, but to any real Steelers fan, this disc is worth twice that. I watched the last half through very watery eyes. The footage and the narrative are brilliant.

All the stupid things we fans do… the efforts we make to wear our “lucky” apparel… the lengths out of town fans go to in order to watch the game when it’s not on local TV, or the numbing environments we endure to attend a game during bone chilling cold, or soul soaking rain are all worth it when we get to relive a championship like this that validates us as fans and as Pittsburghers.

Random thoughts:

* This collection of highlights points up that Nate Washington made a hell of a lot of plays this year. We are going to miss him more than we expect.

* There was a plethora of tooth-rattling hits this year, both defense and offense. Hines’ hit on that rookie Bengal was both lethal and necessary. Despite all the criers, there was nothing cheap or illegal about it. Hines hit the guy just as the defender was reaching for the runner, hit him straight up on the button. Rookie’s got to learn to keep his head up. Bet he doesn’t make that mistake again.

Ryan Clark was a one-man wrecking crew late in the season. I bet Willis McGahee is still wondering why hears a phone ringing. And Limas Sweed made his bones in a very timely manner, namely 4 plays after dropping what would have been a long touchdown bomb, by blowing up Cory Ivy just as he was reaching for Heath Miller.

* Despite all the sacks by Defensive Player of the Year, James Harrison, he was held so often he could have doubled his sack total if not for said transgressions.

* Mike Tomlin is the coolest coach, if not human being, in the NFL. These guys are going to knock down walls for him for years to come.

*Ben Roethlisberger is a goddamned magician. He made more plays out of nothing than anyone I’ve ever seen. Sure he sometimes holds onto the ball far too long and ends up sacked; but without that devil-may-care attitude, he wouldn’t have made the dozens of plays that made the Black and Gold faithful lose our minds with joy.

* As the credits rolled over footage of the Champions Parade and the tears in my eyes made my vision blurry, there is no greater microcosm of the relationship between the Pittsburgh Steelers and their fans than the footage of Troy Polamalu diving from his ride into the outstretched arms of the crowd… total and complete trust. If you think about it, any number of bad things could happen to a pro athlete in a situation like that. But Troy trusted the throng of celebrants not only to catch him, but to deliver him unscathed back to the car from which he hurled himself. And those people would rather die than to let any harm come to their beloved Samson-haired number 43.

I can’t wait to see what next season brings us. Bill Cowher had a problem getting his team in the right mindset to repeat. I don’t think Coach Tomlin will have such problems.

Regardless I and millions of other Steelers fans across the nation and across the world will be watching, yelling, waving our towels, dying a thousand deaths and giving our hearts, our souls and our Sundays so that our team can compete for lucky number 7.
Here we go Steelers, here we go!

Quick Thought for a Saturday

You know it's a sign of the Apocolypse when you hear Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" playing in the grocery store. I wonder if the manager realizes that his customer's median age is probably about 85... Or maybe he does, and this song is played as a public service.

The Paper Chase

It’s getting harder and harder to justify subscribing to the newspaper any more. It pains me to say that because I’ve been a newspaper guy since I was a kid.

My mom and dad always had a paper delivered, sometimes two, so I was probably in grade school when I picked up the habit. I always made it a point of reading (or at least thumbing through) each section, because Dad always accused me of just reading the comics.

When we lived in Northwest Ohio, it was an evening paper that was delivered to the box out by the road. I can remember sitting on the porch waiting for it to come. I’d bring it back and just be settling into the day’s news when Dad would come home from work.

Dad: Ok, let’s have the paper.

Me: But I went and got it and I just started reading it…

Dad: How many bills have you paid for the paper?

Me: None, but…

Dad: Let’s have that paper…

Sigh…

Anyway, as soon as I went out on my own, no matter how shitty my job was, I always got the local paper. It was a different time… There was no Internet or much in the way of cable news. (Other than a fledgling CNN.) If I wanted to know what was going on in local or national politics, or sports beyond the city limits, the newspaper was it.

And of course there were comics like Doonesbury, Bloom County, Calvin & Hobbs… classics all.

Today, newspapers are practically obsolete. I still get the Baltimore Sun but it’s quickly becoming The Incredible Shrinking Paper. They just cut the size back again… any smaller and they can just mail it out as a pamphlet. Whenever you hold it up to read, the pages curl. They’ve gutted their staff… well, their writing staff. There seems to be no shortage of ads so the salesmen must be OK. But a number of columnists I used to enjoy reading have moved on or bought out.

The sports section is atrocious. I think the theory is, “if it happens outside the beltway, it isn’t newsworthy.” Unfortunately I think this is the one instance of the paper correctly reflecting the view of Baltimore people. But the newspaper is supposed to support the greater good. There IS a world out there and not everyone living here is FROM here. What passes for hockey coverage is… well... there IS no hockey coverage. They have maybe a two-sentence paragraph if the Washington Capitals played. There’s about a square inch where they run the line scores (provided the games are Eastern Time Zone). Every couple of days, they show the standings. There are a couple of pages for lacrosse and high school sports though, which no one cares about unless they have a kid playing. So can you take a couple square inches away from the titty-bar ads and run the standings please?

I enjoy my newspaper routine. I read the front and metro sections each morning with my Diet Coke… oop, wait… they combined those two sections into one. For some reason, they have the “World News” in a different font. That’s what passes for “exotic” in Baltimore. On my subway ride into work, I read the Sports and Entertainment sections. At lunch I do the crossword and sudoku puzzles, and time permitting, the Jumble. If I can see them, that is. The size of the puzzles has shrunk along with the paper. Makes me keep my pencils sharp, I tell ya…

They’ve totally killed the comic section. It used to span two full pages. But through cost cutting and attrition, about a third of them are gone and the rest have been crammed into one page. Even the Sunday comics have been stuck inside the TV Guide section. The panels seem even smaller than in the daily comics. Opus made it out just in time.

The Sun used to have great regular columns on Consumer Protections, Computer Issues, Commuting, Home Life, and a great editorial cartoonist… all gone. All we hear is that no one is getting the paper, so they have to reduce staff and materials to cut costs. Which causes more people like me to stop getting the paper. Which causes more cutbacks… and on we go, down this spiral of self-fulfilling prophesy, until the paper folds.

Right now, I get the meat of my information from news sites on the Internet. There’s really nothing that the newspaper provides me that I can’t get elsewhere for free.* It’s just a matter of time before I “pull the string”, (or is that “cut the cord?”) and give up my paper. I suppose I could find something else to read in the morning (and maybe get to work on time more often). I could get a crossword book for lunch.

I guess I’d just miss the routine. Getting the paper has always seemed like The Adult Thing To Do. Serious people read the paper. Intelligent, inquisitive, involved people read the paper. **

Sigh. They used to, anyway.

* ”Free,” as in “with an internet account.”

** Plus the morons who write in to the editor. (Obviously I call them “morons” because they haven’t run any of my letters yet.)

The Real Penalty Box

The Maryland State Senate passed a compromise bill yesterday, to limit, rather than repeal, the State’s death penalty.

The salient details are that the death penalty may not be sought where the only evidence is from eyewitnesses, and may be sought only when there is DNA evidence, video evidence or voluntary videotaped confession. (I wonder who agrees to that?)

I’ve always been ambivalent about the death penalty. On one hand, I think that there are some crimes so heinous that the guy just needs killing. I don’t need to site a bunch of ugly examples… you know the kind of crimes I mean. A person capable of such atrocities is beyond rehabilitation, and just needs to get in a hole in the ground.

On the other hand, there’s the staggering misapplication of the death penalty. Anyone with enough money to afford a good lawyer is not going to be put to death, period. Economics, race, class… all of it plays into a situation that cries out for unflinching evenhandedness. Further, I don’t see a shred of evidence that it deters anyone.

Most important, though, is our nation’s habit of convicting the wrong people! The Innocence Project has what, over a 130 death row cases overturned with DNA evidence? I can’t think of anything more chilling than the prospect of a truly innocent person being killed by the government. That just can’t happen in a “free” society. Not to a single person, period.

So I don’t have a problem with this compromise bill. It keeps the death penalty around for those slam-dunk cases that truly need it and mitigates the chance of it being misapplied. I think that’s the best we can hope for and it’s the kind of pragmatic compromise that this country could use a lot more of. Now whether the House of Delegates will get on board and pass a similar bill is another story. Somehow, I kind of doubt it.

Aural Arguments

I listen to an MP-3 player on the way to and from work. I set the player on “random”, so it’s always a surprise which of my 2900+ songs (or comedy bits) turns up. Although I try to keep the volume down so to not damage my hearing any more than it already is, every once in a while, in a place like a quiet elevator, someone can hear what I’m listening to. And it always something I’d rather people not know I’m listening to. Like the other day “Dancing Queen” was playing and a lady in the elevator says, “Oh, I love that song.”

I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know why that’s on there… And I can’t really even hear it because my ears are still ringing after the Metallica that was just on.”

Tricking Our Nation's Youth

Vegetables are in the news again… this time, it’s a study that finds that kids eat more vegetables if the have a cool name. It goes on to list X-Ray Vision Carrots, Power Peas and Dinosaur Broccoli Trees as names that got 4-year old kids to eat as much as 50% more of the vegetable.

Sorry, but color me dubious. I can just see what would have happened if my parents tried that crap on me.

Mother: “Here, honey, try some of these nice Dinosaur Broccoli Trees!”

Me: “Only if you want 50% more Super Technicolor Hurl all over your nice lacy tablecloth…”

You just can’t hide “heinous”, no matter what you call it. If cheese sauce can’t fix it, it can’t be fixed.

This reminds me of a story from when I first moved to Baltimore. I had quit my lousy retail job in New York and moved here to try to kick-start a new life and I was staying with my brother and his wife until I could get back on my feet.

One night after I had just started working again, I came home for dinner to the unmistakable smell of the heinous broccoli. No big deal… I could live with it on the table… no one was forcing me to eat it. (It pays not to be four years old sometimes.) So my sister-in-law puts down a big bowl of ravioli in a white sauce. Mmmmmmm, yummy. Funny, I didn’t see any of the dreaded broccoli, but whatever. Time to go to town on this ravioli. I took my first bite and …

{Clench}

My stomach totally seized up. Broccoli… it’s in there somewhere…
I looked inside the ravioli and didn’t see anything… I looked around the table. No broccoli in sight, nor was there anything else to eat. I didn’t want to make a fuss… I figured I’d just try to gut it out and finish my ravioli. I took another bite…

{Serious, almost about to hurl, clench}

No way… it was not going to go down quietly; this was going to get messy.

My brother must have seen my stricken expression and asked what was wrong.

I said, “Is there broccoli in this?”

My sister-in-law said, “I made it with Cream of Broccoli soup…”

Bingo. There’s the culprit.

My brother offered me some breaded chicken patties as an alternative. Sold!

So that was that…mystery solved, hurl avoided and lesson learned. Also, I figured it was just about time to get my own apartment.

Picture by Becca Bond

The Real “Rest of the Story”

Long time radio commentator Paul Harvey died yesterday. That means there will be the inevitable circulation of the essays he allegedly wrote and broadcast on public prayer, a review of The Passion of The Christ, his Prayer for our Nation, or that Mel Gibson was the inspiration for the move The Man Without a Face; and all of which are untrue. All were either written by someone else, or are complete fabrications.

Just trying to get out in front of this one…

No More Illusions

You know you no longer live in a "bachelor pad" when you see this sights like this on a regular basis...Happy Sunday...