Monday, September 15, 2014
TO THINK OR ACT AGAINST ISIS - THAT IS THE QUESTION
I didn’t have to listen to the President’s speech last week to register my disappointment with the President’s plan to deal with the ISIS plague, and I’m a blazing liberal, so that’s saying something. Despite my suggestion, there was no way the President was going to offer all his Congressional critics who are itching for another war the option of boarding a military transport, with a standard NRA-approved assault rifle in hand, and get dropped in the middle of ISIS held territory in Syria and Iraq to kill as many jihadists as they please. The President is too cerebral for such a pragmatic solution. He also refused to consider a national sports book to take wagers on which of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Mitch O’Connell or Ted Cruz would wet his pants first when the airplane door opened and the parachute jump light illuminated. My money would be on Ted Cruz, with Rush Limbaugh a close second. The loud mouths usually have the weakest bladders. There’s been no hint from the White House that the President would call out Congressional Republicans for not having the balls to ask the American people to step up and pay for any military action they have in mind, and that’s one place where I’m at odds with the President, because it’s not right for us to ask our military personnel to sacrifice their lives if Americans back home are unwilling to sacrifice their pocketbooks, too. Look, I understand that Sunnis and Shia in the Middle East have been killing one another for the past fourteen hundred years and have developed an hardy appetite for murder and mayhem. I get that other countries are fine with Americans getting killed fighting ISIS because it’s not their kin who get shipped home in pine boxes. What bugs me is that Obama won’t act before thinking. That’s un-American!
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
ANOTHER DRIVE TOWARD FANTASY STARDOM
Being the fantasy football coach of the Shiloh Hogs is agonizing. Only gluttons for punishment willingly choose the role, and even then they come to realize that fantasy coaching is more an addiction than friendly competition among friends.
The fantasy football sites promise to make you feel like a real coach, but they’re just blowing smoke. You can’t chew out your fantasy wide receiver that drops a certain touchdown pass without a defensive corner in sight. You can’t celebrate with your starting tailback when he hits the A-gap in high gear and doesn’t stop until he reaches the end zone, seventy-five yards later. That’s because one of his linemen got caught holding. There are no high fives to dole out when your quarterback reaches twenty-five fantasy points for an afternoon’s work. Some other coach on TV is hogging up the credit. There’s nobody to blame except the man in the bathroom mirror when your kicker sends his 20-yard field goal attempt wide right, when three lousy points would have given you a win. If life isn’t fair, then fantasy football coaching is the poster child for all of life’s inequities.
In fantasy football, there are no team owners offering seven-figure coaching contracts. Fifty-three man rosters are pipe dreams. Game time decisions involve choosing between two rookie cast-offs and a guy who may or may not have recovered from a pulled hamstring. Players who break-out are always sitting on your bench. You can’t throw a challenge flag and the refs ignore your pleas for a time-out, no matter how loud you scream at your TV. Inevitably, your star player suffers a concussion four minutes before game time, when the chance for substituting has expired. Nine out of twelve opponents in your league will have their best performance playing your team. The tenth opponent beats you with only Peyton Manning in her line-up. She drafted Peyton because she thought he was cute. Nobody feels your pain. In fact, your best friends revel in it.
Every fantasy football coach has a hard luck story. I’ve got two. In 2012, I thought I made the playoff after the last game of the season, only to have some NFL scorer change the stats two days later and send me packing. Last year, despite my team’s mediocre 7-6 record, I found my way to the league Super Bowl. At the end of Sunday’s games in Week 16, my opponent led 118-117 with no players remaining. San Francisco played on Monday night and Vernon Davis, fourth among tight ends in 2013, was my starting tight end. I was pumped. I was psyched, and then Vernon laid a goose egg that Monday night and I cried myself to sleep on the living room couch. I vowed right then and there that I was done with fantasy football. That was January.
This is August. I’m an addict, and Antonio Gates is the Shiloh Hog’s new tight end!
The fantasy football sites promise to make you feel like a real coach, but they’re just blowing smoke. You can’t chew out your fantasy wide receiver that drops a certain touchdown pass without a defensive corner in sight. You can’t celebrate with your starting tailback when he hits the A-gap in high gear and doesn’t stop until he reaches the end zone, seventy-five yards later. That’s because one of his linemen got caught holding. There are no high fives to dole out when your quarterback reaches twenty-five fantasy points for an afternoon’s work. Some other coach on TV is hogging up the credit. There’s nobody to blame except the man in the bathroom mirror when your kicker sends his 20-yard field goal attempt wide right, when three lousy points would have given you a win. If life isn’t fair, then fantasy football coaching is the poster child for all of life’s inequities.
In fantasy football, there are no team owners offering seven-figure coaching contracts. Fifty-three man rosters are pipe dreams. Game time decisions involve choosing between two rookie cast-offs and a guy who may or may not have recovered from a pulled hamstring. Players who break-out are always sitting on your bench. You can’t throw a challenge flag and the refs ignore your pleas for a time-out, no matter how loud you scream at your TV. Inevitably, your star player suffers a concussion four minutes before game time, when the chance for substituting has expired. Nine out of twelve opponents in your league will have their best performance playing your team. The tenth opponent beats you with only Peyton Manning in her line-up. She drafted Peyton because she thought he was cute. Nobody feels your pain. In fact, your best friends revel in it.
Every fantasy football coach has a hard luck story. I’ve got two. In 2012, I thought I made the playoff after the last game of the season, only to have some NFL scorer change the stats two days later and send me packing. Last year, despite my team’s mediocre 7-6 record, I found my way to the league Super Bowl. At the end of Sunday’s games in Week 16, my opponent led 118-117 with no players remaining. San Francisco played on Monday night and Vernon Davis, fourth among tight ends in 2013, was my starting tight end. I was pumped. I was psyched, and then Vernon laid a goose egg that Monday night and I cried myself to sleep on the living room couch. I vowed right then and there that I was done with fantasy football. That was January.
This is August. I’m an addict, and Antonio Gates is the Shiloh Hog’s new tight end!
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
A TRIBUTE TO PETER FRANKLIN
[My son-in-law, Peter C. Franklin lost his battle with cancer on August 8th, 2014. This is the longer version of remarks I gave at his memorial service]
I did not wear a suit to this evening’s memorial in solidarity with Peter. I believe in the hereafter, and in my version Peter is wearing a Batman tee-shirt and a pair of shorts, the latter because he no longer has to be embarrassed about wearing compression socks. I wanted to wear a Batman tee-shirt tonight, but it was impossible to find one in my extra-large size. There were a smattering of mediums, but the majority of shirts were small. I think there’s a lesson to be learned from my search: superheroes like Peter only come in small sizes!
Don’t let all the talk about superheroes fool you. Peter Franklin was also a world-class intellectual, but the thing that set Peter apart in my mind was the fact that he was one of the humblest individuals I’ve ever met. Brilliance and humility don’t frequently go hand in hand. With Peter, they did. The guy didn’t have a single conceited bone in his body. The world has lost a true gem.
Peter became my son the first time I met him, not because my daughter, Abby had already told me how crazy about him she was, but because I saw something in the way he looked at her that set my mind at ease. It wasn’t a starry-eyed gaze, a fawning facade or the fake expression of somebody trying to make a good impression. In fact, I’m quite certain he didn’t realize I was watching. What I observed was a young man interested in what my daughter had to say, curious about what she thought, unafraid to challenge her opinions or argue for his own, but not overbearing or disrespectful. Peter exuded a humble confidence that the world is in such short supply of these days, and I could tell by the way Peter and Abby spoke that they valued one another in a way that good people should. Sometimes, you just know that two people are right for each other. I know I did, and I gained a son because of it. Now, he’s gone, and I have to admit there’s a big hole in my heart.
It’s a testament to Peter’s diverse interests there are so many things in my daily life that remind me of Peter. Whenever I see somebody wearing a superhero tee-shirt, I think of Peter. If I hear about Toronto’s crazy mayor or the Comic-Con Convention, I think about Peter. Whenever I pass the classics section in a bookstore, Peter’s face comes to mind. I even think about him in the supermarket. There’s a case in the vegetarian section where black bean vegetarian burgers are kept. Peter once assured me that those burgers were very tasty, and I assured him that there was not enough ketchup in the world for me to eat one!
A few days ago, I was writing at the desk in my den when my gaze fell upon the bronze paperweight that Abby and Peter gave out at their wedding last year. The paperweight bears an inscription from a line written by the poet, E. E. Cummings – “Love is the voice under all silences.” As I pondered that inscription, it occurred to me that while Peter’s physical voice has been silenced, the voice behind his love has never been louder. If you allow yourself, you can hear that voice, you can feel it, you can be warmed by it, and it will comfort you for as long as you live!
I did not wear a suit to this evening’s memorial in solidarity with Peter. I believe in the hereafter, and in my version Peter is wearing a Batman tee-shirt and a pair of shorts, the latter because he no longer has to be embarrassed about wearing compression socks. I wanted to wear a Batman tee-shirt tonight, but it was impossible to find one in my extra-large size. There were a smattering of mediums, but the majority of shirts were small. I think there’s a lesson to be learned from my search: superheroes like Peter only come in small sizes!
Don’t let all the talk about superheroes fool you. Peter Franklin was also a world-class intellectual, but the thing that set Peter apart in my mind was the fact that he was one of the humblest individuals I’ve ever met. Brilliance and humility don’t frequently go hand in hand. With Peter, they did. The guy didn’t have a single conceited bone in his body. The world has lost a true gem.
Peter became my son the first time I met him, not because my daughter, Abby had already told me how crazy about him she was, but because I saw something in the way he looked at her that set my mind at ease. It wasn’t a starry-eyed gaze, a fawning facade or the fake expression of somebody trying to make a good impression. In fact, I’m quite certain he didn’t realize I was watching. What I observed was a young man interested in what my daughter had to say, curious about what she thought, unafraid to challenge her opinions or argue for his own, but not overbearing or disrespectful. Peter exuded a humble confidence that the world is in such short supply of these days, and I could tell by the way Peter and Abby spoke that they valued one another in a way that good people should. Sometimes, you just know that two people are right for each other. I know I did, and I gained a son because of it. Now, he’s gone, and I have to admit there’s a big hole in my heart.
It’s a testament to Peter’s diverse interests there are so many things in my daily life that remind me of Peter. Whenever I see somebody wearing a superhero tee-shirt, I think of Peter. If I hear about Toronto’s crazy mayor or the Comic-Con Convention, I think about Peter. Whenever I pass the classics section in a bookstore, Peter’s face comes to mind. I even think about him in the supermarket. There’s a case in the vegetarian section where black bean vegetarian burgers are kept. Peter once assured me that those burgers were very tasty, and I assured him that there was not enough ketchup in the world for me to eat one!
A few days ago, I was writing at the desk in my den when my gaze fell upon the bronze paperweight that Abby and Peter gave out at their wedding last year. The paperweight bears an inscription from a line written by the poet, E. E. Cummings – “Love is the voice under all silences.” As I pondered that inscription, it occurred to me that while Peter’s physical voice has been silenced, the voice behind his love has never been louder. If you allow yourself, you can hear that voice, you can feel it, you can be warmed by it, and it will comfort you for as long as you live!
Thursday, July 24, 2014
ANOTHER BOTCHED EXECUTION
When the state of Utah executed Gary Gilmore by firing squad in 1977, I remember thinking that Utah’s method of putting a capital murderer to death was barbaric and constituted cruel and unusual punishment. A large segment of our society was agreed with this opinion, too. The publicity surrounding Gilmore’s execution fueled an already widespread discussion about alternative methods of imposing the death penalty, and later that year the state of Oklahoma enacted legislation authorizing death by lethal injection. Subsequently, the state of Texas followed suit, and in 1982 became the first state to execute a prisoner using that method. The notion of putting a convict to sleep and then stopping the convict’s heart seemed like a humane way to bring about the prisoner’s death.
A lot has changed since 1982. World-wide, only a handful of countries employ the death penalty, and the multi-national pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs typically used in the lethal injection process are no longer willing to sell those drugs to American states that still have the death penalty on their books. As a result, those states have had to secure the drugs used in their executions from unregulated compounding pharmacies, and the track record of those pharmacies has been woefully deficient in providing drugs that will bring about a death row inmate’s demise without the cruel and unusual suffering that the Eight Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits.
Yesterday’s botched execution of Joseph Robert Wood III by the state of Arizona was just the latest in a string of gruesome executions conducted by states over the past two years using ineffective drugs secured from compounding pharmacies. Instead of a short, painless procedure that was supposed to take around ten minutes to bring about Wood’s death, Arizona’s procedure took almost two hours, during which time Wood repeatedly gasped for air. When will this kind of torture end?
I believe that state-sanctioned execution of prisoners is wrong and should be eliminated, but barring the elimination of the death penalty, I also believe that a prisoner’s execution should be carried out without torture and in the most painless way possible. In retrospect, Gary Gilmore’s execution by firing squad seems a lot less cruel and barbaric compared to what states have been doing today.
A lot has changed since 1982. World-wide, only a handful of countries employ the death penalty, and the multi-national pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs typically used in the lethal injection process are no longer willing to sell those drugs to American states that still have the death penalty on their books. As a result, those states have had to secure the drugs used in their executions from unregulated compounding pharmacies, and the track record of those pharmacies has been woefully deficient in providing drugs that will bring about a death row inmate’s demise without the cruel and unusual suffering that the Eight Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits.
Yesterday’s botched execution of Joseph Robert Wood III by the state of Arizona was just the latest in a string of gruesome executions conducted by states over the past two years using ineffective drugs secured from compounding pharmacies. Instead of a short, painless procedure that was supposed to take around ten minutes to bring about Wood’s death, Arizona’s procedure took almost two hours, during which time Wood repeatedly gasped for air. When will this kind of torture end?
I believe that state-sanctioned execution of prisoners is wrong and should be eliminated, but barring the elimination of the death penalty, I also believe that a prisoner’s execution should be carried out without torture and in the most painless way possible. In retrospect, Gary Gilmore’s execution by firing squad seems a lot less cruel and barbaric compared to what states have been doing today.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” ― Sarah Cook
RAPING THE CHILDREN OF CENTRAL AMERICA
You can rape a child for $250 dollars! Maybe that’s an exaggeration. You can probably do it for a lot less at the Texas / Mexico border, and then you can watch the youngster get shipped back to Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras where they are likely to get raped again, or perhaps more humanely, killed by one of those country’s violent drug cartels that prey on youngsters like hawks on mice. If you’re disgusted and repulsed by the notion of paying to rape a child, maybe there’s hope for you, but not if you’re going to turn a blind eye to the calamity that is occurring at our nation’s southern border or the callous indifference a majority of Americans are displaying in refusing to offer a helping hand to thousands of children in desperate need of a safe and nurturing place to live.
The children of Central America are not migrating northward with an instinctual drive for a cooler nesting ground, like Canadian geese in a National Geographic documentary. They are not fueled by a tourist-like desire to see Disneyland. Nobody treks on foot through the desert of death to shake the hand of Mickey Mouse. On the contrary, the children of Central America are chased by violence from the very bosoms and homes that gave them life. They are driven by poverty and starvation and a loss of hope into the unforgiving deserts of northern Mexico. If by chance they find themselves at the edge of the land flowing with milk and honey, they will also face the wrath of God’s American followers, who stand ready to rape their souls with hate and send them home again.
It’s sickening to read about those wealthy passengers in Titanic lifeboats who refused to pluck third class passengers from the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, because they were afraid of what might become of their possessions. It’s unpleasant to think about such cruelty, but cruelty hasn’t changed much since the Titanic went down. In fact, it’s alive and well in America today.
Equally vexing are pompous politicians who thump their chests and declare that all life is sacred. They don’t believe that notion for one moment! Most Americans don’t either, especially when that life originates from Central America and shows up on our nation’s doorstep with an outstretched hand. Nothing turns us off faster than a neighbor in need from the other side of the tracks. In fact, rotting corpses get better treatment from maggots, and at least the maggots are doing a public service, which is more than can be said about Xenophobic Americans and the politicians who are fanning the flames of hatred at our southern borders.
The children of Central America are not migrating northward with an instinctual drive for a cooler nesting ground, like Canadian geese in a National Geographic documentary. They are not fueled by a tourist-like desire to see Disneyland. Nobody treks on foot through the desert of death to shake the hand of Mickey Mouse. On the contrary, the children of Central America are chased by violence from the very bosoms and homes that gave them life. They are driven by poverty and starvation and a loss of hope into the unforgiving deserts of northern Mexico. If by chance they find themselves at the edge of the land flowing with milk and honey, they will also face the wrath of God’s American followers, who stand ready to rape their souls with hate and send them home again.
It’s sickening to read about those wealthy passengers in Titanic lifeboats who refused to pluck third class passengers from the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, because they were afraid of what might become of their possessions. It’s unpleasant to think about such cruelty, but cruelty hasn’t changed much since the Titanic went down. In fact, it’s alive and well in America today.
Equally vexing are pompous politicians who thump their chests and declare that all life is sacred. They don’t believe that notion for one moment! Most Americans don’t either, especially when that life originates from Central America and shows up on our nation’s doorstep with an outstretched hand. Nothing turns us off faster than a neighbor in need from the other side of the tracks. In fact, rotting corpses get better treatment from maggots, and at least the maggots are doing a public service, which is more than can be said about Xenophobic Americans and the politicians who are fanning the flames of hatred at our southern borders.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
ON THE PATH TO CIVIL WAR
The other day I was running errands in my car when I pulled up behind a guy with a bumper sticker on his car that read:
“IMAGINE A WORLD WITH NO LIBERALS ☺”
What drives such hatred? Is it really just ignorance, or a sign of the growing animosity that has poisoned political discourse to the point where another bloody civil war is inevitable?
I wonder how that guy would react to a bumper sticker with this message:
“THE ONLY GOOD CONSERVATIVE IS A DEAD ONE”
You could replace “conservative” with “republican” and make the same point, except that liberals don’t generally resort to the kind of mean-spirited hatred that ultra right-wing conservatives and republicans have adopted as their rallying cry.
A lot of people brush-off the suggestion that another civil war is coming, but I’m starting to think that there are a lot of conservatives and republicans in this country with itchy trigger fingers on their weapons, and after the first shots are fired, there will be a lot of dead liberals bloodying the streets.
I hope civil war doesn’t come, but I wouldn’t bet it won’t.
“IMAGINE A WORLD WITH NO LIBERALS ☺”
What drives such hatred? Is it really just ignorance, or a sign of the growing animosity that has poisoned political discourse to the point where another bloody civil war is inevitable?
I wonder how that guy would react to a bumper sticker with this message:
“THE ONLY GOOD CONSERVATIVE IS A DEAD ONE”
You could replace “conservative” with “republican” and make the same point, except that liberals don’t generally resort to the kind of mean-spirited hatred that ultra right-wing conservatives and republicans have adopted as their rallying cry.
A lot of people brush-off the suggestion that another civil war is coming, but I’m starting to think that there are a lot of conservatives and republicans in this country with itchy trigger fingers on their weapons, and after the first shots are fired, there will be a lot of dead liberals bloodying the streets.
I hope civil war doesn’t come, but I wouldn’t bet it won’t.
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