Computer blues.

This week’s posting is late because an evil worm — not to be confused with a dangerous virus cousin — slipped through numerous anti-virus protections and crashed our main computer at some point overnight Tuesday.

It’s a helpless feeling.

For a moment, access to e-mail and the Internet ceased. All those quick hits to the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Peoria Journal Star, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington Monthly, New Republic and Daily Dish Web sites — forget about it.

I was actually unwired.

Now I’m not providing all the exact details. My wife primarily uses our relatively new Dell laptop while I share our older Dell “main frame” with 7-year-old daughter Nicole. Nic also has Internet access on her handy EeePC, but prefers surfing her favorite sites on the larger Dell because it can take her to more places without freezing or not having enough juice to do the job.

So once Marguerite finished with the laptop Wednesday morning, I could carry on with my usual A.M. computer routine except for one little detail: This blog posting remained hopelessly locked in computer limbo on the worm-infested hard drive.

There this the blog post remained until Friday morning, when Christopher from Centerpoint Computers (2340 West Grandview Blvd., Suite 2, Erie) called to say the hard drive was cleansed, scanned, worm free and ready to go.

I found Centerpoint Computers in an old Talking Phone Yellow Pages. Centerpoint’s ad is just below Erie Computers. I didn’t flip a coin. I simply chose Centerpoint because I suspected Erie Computers couldn’t do the job as quickly as Centerpoint (sorry Erie Computers if I’m wrong.)

I called Centerpoint Computers (814-838-4600) at 10 Wednesday morning. Christopher, a clearly sharp chap and a classic computer nerd (I mean that in the cool way), urged me to bring the hard drive to the shop, gave me directions to the Millcreek office (38^th Street to Grandview Drive, two quick lefts from Fairview).

I called twice to check on the special $60 infection package and picked up the hard drive Friday morning after Christopher’s call. By 11:45 that morning, I was back up and running online. (So from my admittedly limited perspective, Centerpoint Computers comes highly recommended.)

You get comfortable with your own computer. It’s like you know the computers moves and capabilities. The keyboard keys feel just right.

Our laptop is a perfectly fine computing machine. It does most things our main Dell desk model does, but I really don’t use it enough to feel completely comfortable.

That’s computers.

I can remember our first home computer. Marguerite and I were working at the Peoria Journal Star and living in an old brick house in 1989. We bought a hideously expense Radio Shack computer that came with a pioneering Microsoft Dos operating system that we could never — ever! — figure out how to use.

Do you remember how thick those MS Dos operating manuals were, and that hopeless feeling in your stomach when you recognized a new world you couldn’t operate in?

We basically used the Radio Shack dinosaur for word processing purposes for work and amusement. This was, remember, way before e-mail, laptops, Windows operating systems and Macs. So we didn’t know what in the hell we were doing.

Life back in 1989 also meant no cell phones, BlackBerrys, Palm Pilots,  Internet Web sites and Google. Hell — there wasn’t even chat rooms or porn to find via computer.

The list is endless.

How did we live and work and exist?

Interesting question. So I Googled “How did we live without computers” and spotted this from a Web site called HostgatorReview.org.

Here’s their answer:

The World Wide Web makes it possible for anyone to access information. This is what changed the face of the world. Without this, you cannot use the Internet or vice versa. This is known as the greatest invention in the world, because it made people connect instantly at such a low cost. This method was the email, and it brought the world together. There have been a lot of users with this medium, as you can find just about any information through this. It would cover everything in the world, from entertainment to education. The web site will be hosted on the server, and this site will be offered to the world through the World Wide Web.
As of now, no one can live without this facility today. There has been a lot of speculation about whether anyone would want to stop the use, as there is a lot of unnecessary information about the world. People use it for various illegal purposes, but this is not stopping anyone. The use is only increasing every day.
Somehow this has drawbacks as well. Piracy, pornography, hacking and the list is endless. But a lot of users are now looking at this medium for businesses today. Although a lot of harm is being done with this, not much effort is being taken to stop the use of certain activities on this. A lot of people have become addicted to the use.
A lot of people from the old school of thought are against the use of the World Wide Web, as they feel it destroys the extracurricular activities. But people are overlooking this face, as the positive aspects are overshadowing all this. No one could actually imagine what the world would be when it comes to a situation where this medium is not available. When one tends to look for information today, there is only one place that we all turn to. That is, the www. The libraries and every other place have all taken a back seat. This is something quite interesting to look at, as even youngsters are turning this way. A lot of children who are even below the age legally are beginning to use the www for various reasons.This is a cause for concern, but still being overlooked by many. The World Wide Web has however connected the world in many unimaginable ways.

Joe Lieberman Sticks Finger In Obama’s Eye — Again

Connecticut’s egomaniacal Independent U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee for one very simple reason: President Obama said so.

Recall that Lieberman — a former running mate to Al Gore on the 2000 Democratic presidential ticket who would have been vice president if not for the Florida vote count fiasco — actually campaigned against candidate Obama throughout the 2008 campaign.

If that wasn’t enough for furious Democrats to stomach, Lieberman actually stood on the same stage with Republican presidential candidate John McCain and took turns trashing Obama. He did so in such strong language that Senate Democrats intended to take Lieberman’s chairmanship away. In hindsight, they should have done it.

But President-elect Obama, ever practical and pragmatic, convinced Democrats that retribution against the opportunistic Lieberman wouldn’t send the right post-election message. And as satisfying and richly deserving as punishing the traitorous Lieberman seemed, Democrats needed the guy’s vote.

Which naturally, frustrated Democrats couldn’t get while trying to overcome a Republican filibuster during the exhausting health-care reform debate when the public option remained a possibility.

So Senate Democrats weren’t surprised when Lieberman subpoenaed the Obama administration for information into the panel’s investigation of last year’s Fort Hood shooting massacre. Lieberman and Senate Republicans especially want to eyeball accused mass murderer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s personnel file and service record.

The Pentagon says no-can-do. Making the information public could adversely affect prosecuting Hasan for killing 13 people.

More interesting, though, is the fact that Lieberman rediscovered his oversight responsibilities only after a Democrat won the White House, something the senator conveniently forget during the final two years of the Bush administration.

You got to love Steve Benin’s daggers in Washington Monthly’s Political Animal column. A taste:

But stepping back, I can’t help but notice that Lieberman, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, didn’t start taking his responsibilities seriously until President Obama — the one who helped Lieberman keep his gavel in the first place — took office. In 2007 and 2008, Lieberman was in the same position, and refused to engage in oversight of the Bush/Cheney administration. Questions arose, for example, into internal White House deliberations from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and senators were prepared to subpoena the administration. Lieberman rejected the effort. When his House counterpart, Henry Waxman, delved into the Pentagon’s propaganda operation, Blackwater’s activities in Iraq, and the controversy surrounding missing emails from the Bush White House, Lieberman chose not to do any oversight at all. For the entire year of 2007, Lieberman’s first as committee chairman, the Connecticut Independent didn’t launch any proactive inquiries into administration controversies at all. No subpoenas, no hearings, nothing. But now Lieberman has discovered he wants the White House to give him answers. What a coincidence. Yesterday’s subpoena requests the documents be made available by next Monday. The administration is expected to ignore the request.

Just The Kind Of Editorial Nobody Wants To Write Or Read

I wrote my share of scold editorials, where the tone and point comes down to your basic “come on — get your act together.” These editorials aren’t easy to write. The key is to produce and mix effective, but measured frustration with just the right dash of outrage and some solutions.

Here is an editorial from Tuesday’s Philadelphia Inquirer over a recent incident at a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park that made national news:

The Phillies were right to apologize to the family of an 11-year-old girl who was allegedly vomited on intentionally by a fan during a game last week. The team made a classy offer to play host to Michael Vangelo and his family at a game, let them on the field to watch batting practice, and treat them to dinner. Now, more needs to be done to limit unruly fan behavior.  If eyewitness accounts are correct, then Matthew Clemmens, the 21-year-old who threw up on Vangelo’s daughter, is an extreme example of the boorish behavior at Citizens Bank Park. The alleged actions of Clemmens and a buddy leading up to the vomiting incident are all too common. For several innings, the two were seen drinking, cursing, and spilling their beers on others. That’s a typical day at the ballpark for too many fans. The Phils’ winning ways, combined with an attractive new ballpark, have transformed the games into a hot attraction. But on many nights, the scene – especially in Ashburn Alley, the concourse, and at McFadden’s, the bar attached to the ballpark – resembles last call on Bourbon Street. Drunks stumble about, cursing like sailors, and itching for trouble. It can be an intimidating scene for many families, and for any fan who dares to wear an opposing team’s hat or jersey. To be sure, the majority of fans come and go without incident. Indeed, good samaritan Chris Kallmeyer caught a foul ball and gave it to Vangelo’s daughter after the vomiting incident. But it was Clemmens’ alleged actions that made national news. The incident has burnished the reputation of Philadelphia sports fans as obnoxious louts. It was less than a year ago that a 22-year-old man was beaten to death outside the ballpark after a group of drunken fans argued over spilled beer. That’s why the Phillies need to be much more aggressive about cracking down on the drunken behavior at the ballpark that is turning away many baseball fans. Some good ideas include further limiting tailgating before the games, and being more aggressive about barring intoxicated fans from the ballpark. The team may need to beef up security, and consider ending beer sales earlier during games. Concession workers also need to be more vigilant about ensuring that beer customers are 21 or older.  Another suggestion is that police should check the sobriety of drivers leaving the ballpark. That could deter excessive drinking and ensure safer roads. Clearly, the Phillies organization needs to do more. The behavior of some drunken fans is spoiling the fun for everyone else.

Tiger Woods behaved like a jackass. Agreed?

The guy made a fool of himself, and worse, his poor, mortified wife. Does anyone, including Woods, dispute this fact?

Woods behaved like the worst sort of hound. Nobody need feel sorry for this man. He deserves the repeated kicks in the gut that are still coming. Forgive him or not.

Yet, the more I think about it, there is something rather bizarre about the continued media backlash against Woods. No matter how many apologies, mea culpas and confessional slashed veins Woods offers up, it’s apparently never going to be good enough for some pious sports journalists.

I have to ask: What more can Woods do to satisfy critics who apparently won’t be happy unless he confesses his marital crimes and concedes that he behaved like the worst sort of freakish cad until his dying breath?

So I’m coming around to a dramatically different viewpoint: What Tiger Woods should do now is simply say “the hell with it. I’ve done my apologizing. I’m moving on. Are you?”

No, this doesn’t mean Woods doesn’t have to live with what he did until his dying day. You think Elin Woods will let him forget? The fact is Woods might very well become a perpetual punch line for the rest of his life. I don’t really believe this will happen, but if does, so be it. Woods asked for it.

But this is getting weird. At least with the golf media, all seemed largely forgiven after Woods’ April 5 press conference at Augusta National during Masters week. The World No. 1 answered every question openly, honestly and even added extra doses of humility and humor for dessert. The golf scribes seemed prepared to say Tiger did fine. He answered what he’s going to answer, so let’s play golf and understand we’ll never really know what happened on Thanksgiving night because Woods isn’t going to share.

Would you?

And it sure seemed most media types were ready to move on after Woods shot a dazzling Masters first-round 68. Woods was back on a golf course where he belongs, flashing the occasional smile to a cheering, forgiving Masters gallery. For a brief, fleeting moment there, it sure seemed like the only people Tiger Woods had left to answer to were his wife, young children and his mother.

But then something happened at Augusta National. Woods started to fight his swing. That first-round 68 was followed by  frustrating second and third round 2-under 70s. Woods became flustered. Woods  got mad. He said an unfortunate word or two before finishing with a remarkable 3-under-69 during a final Masters Sunday round when he had no clue.

But come on — did anyone really believe Woods could alter his emotional personality overnight? The answer is, apparently and strangely, yeah.

So after the moral police popped up unexpectedly during Masters weekend, it’s now clear that Woods is going to have to let time do the moving forward. There are those — CBS’ new morals judge Jim Nantz for instance — who expect the volatile Woods to transform that alter-competitive personality into another smiling, happy-go-lucky Phil Mickelson.

That temper? Get rid of it now.

The swearing? Stop it immediately.

And don’t you dare, Tiger Woods, think about throwing a club in the air.

Jeez — you think the guy had committed a felony.

In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. CBS, the Golf Channel’s normally sober Rich Lerner and scattering of golf columnists (Mike Lupica, John Feinstein) couldn’t wait to dig up those old, tired and cliched competitive and personality contrasts between Woods and Mickelson. You know them:

The scowler vs. the smiler.

Good vs. evil.

And the new one: Philander vs. family man.

Don’t get me wrong. Mickelson isn’t at fault here. He didn’t dream up the family guy winner vs. the hound-dog loser comparisons Nantz and some golf columnists regrettably surrendered to after Mickelson’s big-time 5-under, bogey free final round gave him his third green jacket.

Confession here: I’ve never been a big Mickelson guy.

Lord knows, outside of Woods, there hasn’t been a greater pure golfing talent than old Lefty. But what  annoys me about Mickelson is the young Andre Agassi element infecting his golfing personality. That is, like Agassi, Mickelson stubbornly committed himself to the “I’m going to do it my way” approach to a game that is all about percentages. Like grabbing the driver on the 18^th tee at Winged Foot in the 2006 U.S. Open and throwing away a major championship.

And take that incredible shot on No. 13 Sunday afternoon at Augusta. There sat Mickelson’s drive in the pine chips in between two large trees. Mickelson led the Masters by two shots and claimed all the tournament’s momentum with 6 holes to play.

The safe and smart shot for Mickelson was laying up about 140 yards and playing to his excellent wedge game to set up birdie. But Phil, being Phil, decided to take a 6-iron and lash it through the two trees, over the pond guarding the trick 13^th green.

Incredible shot! Mickelson’s ball cleared the water by maybe three feet and came to rest some five feet from the hole. What an insane risk. Barely heard a word about it from the CBS gang.

When asked why in the name-of-Greg Norman he didn’t just lay up like any sane golfer, Mickelson couldn’t resist.

“A great shot is when you pull it off. A smart shot is when you don’t have the guts to try it.”

What Mickelson still doesn’t get, one reason why he has 4 majors and Jack Nicklaus has 18 and Woods has 14, is Mickelson didn’t have to pull it off.

What? The guy never heard of risk reward?

That said, Mickelson played one of the greatest final rounds in major golf history. Going bogey free after three hellish par saves at Nos. 9-10-11 will go down in major championship golf lore. Which makes you even shake your head even more at the guy who risked it all with a two-stoke lead in between those trees at No. 13.

Now I, too, was touched by seeing Mickelson’s wife, Amy, hugging her husband after he won the Masters. Amy Mickelson is obviously going through hell in her brave breast cancer fight. It was a sweet, well-earned Masters win for the Mickelson clan.

But that didn’t mean Nantz and others had to turn the tables and pile on all over Woods. Sure, Woods behaved like a jackass and a classic cad heading into Thanksgiving night. The entire world knows that now. But did that provide license for Nantz and Lerner to weave the good family man vs. the evil philanderer tale after Mickelson’s victory? What should have been a completely celebratory moment for the Mickelsons became something inappropriately mean-spirited.

Did Woods really deserve that?

Woods played remarkable golf after a nearly five-month layoff. He was clearly emotionally drained by Sunday while also losing touch with his golf swing. That 3-under 69 he posted with a pair of eagles was a spectacular lesson in golf resiliency.

But what Woods received afterwards wasn’t congrats or well done. No, Woods was “snarky” to CBS’ Peter Costis in an interview after the final round. Feinstein saw more bad Tiger Woods than new Tiger Woods. Gosh, did anybody else notice the guy finished fourth after a five-month layoff?

New York Times Media columnist Richard Sandomir captured the contrasts in this odd plot twist CBS took by turning the Masters final round into a family values story (Family Values Become a Focus at Augusta).

A taste:

Woods had cheated on his wife; Mickelson won for his wife, Amy, who has breast cancer and was in the gallery for the first time this season to watch her husband. Moments after a CBS camera spotted Amy Mickelson beyond the ropes of the 18th green, her husband birdied the 18th hole to win, and his joy turned to tears. CBS’s Jim Nantz echoed his “There it is, a win for the ages” declaration for Woods at the 1997 Masters when he said of Mickelson, “That’s a win for the family.” It sounded scripted yet sounded right. Earlier, David Feherty, the on-course reporter, ad-libbed an even better comment when he noted that the pink ribbon Mickelson wore on his cap was “for his beautiful wife, Amy, and his beautiful mom,” who also received a diagnosis of breast cancer last year.

It’s the easy cliché to fall into and CBS, especially Nantz, fail hard for it. And if this ascent into the moral high ground wasn’t enough, Nantz took it upon himself to take it a step farther as Sandomir duly noted:

On Saturday, he said he was disappointed in Woods’ frustrated outbursts, although most would not call his words very profane. On Sunday, Nantz came off as a scold when he called the language “foul.” Even some of Nantz’s colleagues said Sunday that Woods seemed less himself when he was not exhibiting his emotional side.

This is dangerous territory for Nantz and Woods’ other critics. Woods obviously turned out not to be the man and husband we thought he was before Thanksgiving night. Remember though, there was little, if any, evidence to hint otherwise.

Yet, the same goes for Mickelson, doesn’t it? Is Nantz, who himself is recovering from a very nasty, public divorce, willing to stake his reputation on Mickelson’s private life?

The fact is we didn’t know Tiger Woods. The fact remains we don’t know Phil Mickelson either.

Now Woods can do plenty to repair his reputation. He can play his normal schedule of tournament golf and it wouldn’t kill him to go to a tournament or two he hasn’t play in years or before.

He can smile more.

Improve that body language.

Swear under your breath.

And winning golf tournaments won’t hurt a bit.

Woods’  astonishingly crazy behavior before Thanksgiving night won’t ever be totally forgotten. But it will fade away. That is a fact Jim Nantz might want to keep in mind as he holds Woods to his own new, lofty standards.

Who In The World Listens to Newt Gingrich?

I can remember chuckling back in 1995 when then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich began making trips to New Hampshire to explore the laughable possibility that he might be able to win the Republican presidential nomination.

Remember? Gingrich would go on “Meet the Press” and say he was only going to New Hampshire to see a moose. Funny stuff.

Ah, here we go again. Twelve years after Gingrich was pushed out of the Speaker’s office,  some clueless pundits and political reporters are once again talking up Gingrich as a credible 2012 presidential contender.

Yeah — like that might happen!

I don’t get why anybody, even conservative Republicans, bother listening to Gingrich, who is about as relevant as Dan Quayle. Here is “presidential candidate” Gingrich on President Obama’s radical presidency:

The president of the United States  - the most radical president in American history – as now thrown down the gauntlet to the American people. He has said “I run a machine, I own Washington, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Now that’s where we are. But I want to remind you as a historian  that there are two rules. The first is that elections have consequences, and therefore 2006 and 2008 has a consequence – the consequence is Obama, Pelosi and Reid. However, consequences lead to elections. So here’s my promise – if we will go out and recruit at every level…if we’ll work as hard as we can from now until election day, not giving up a single day, when we win control of the House and Senate this way, stage one of the end of Obamaism will be a new Republican Congress in January that simply refuses to fund any of the radical efforts.

Laughable, really. Now I’m not the only one wondering why anyone pays attention to this guy. Catch The Economist’s Democracy In America column on Gingrich’s Obama is a radical comments (nice catch). Here is a taste:

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen academic credentials put to such hackish ends as Newt Gingrich did today: Really, Mr Gingrich? That’s what your doctoral work on Belgian education policy in the Congo taught you? That Barack Obama is the most radical president in American history and we should vote Republican? The Republican Party’s pell-mell flight from intellectual seriousness is the most worrying problem American party politics faces. It’s not that the two parties have radically different ideas. The median voter of each party is not so distant from the median voter of the other in normal times. The real problem is that a man who considers himself the intellectual heavyweight of the Republican leadership is now willing to say things like the above.

The New Republic’s Jonathon Chait, who spotted The Economist column on Gingrich, asked a question the media should be answering:

On the subject of Gingrich, here’s one thing I don’t understand. John Edwards’ philandering has made him a public pariah, understandably so. But Gingrich’s marital behavior was probably even more disgusting. He cheated on his first wife and told her he wanted a divorce while she was recovering from surgery for cancer. He subsequently cheated on his second wife with a much younger aide. It’s fairly amazing how Gingrich has managed to avoid any stigma from this. He’s just a conservative “ideas guy.”

Guess What? All Those Federal Bailouts Are Working

It seems like forever since President Obama walked into the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2009, and came to terms with his new reality. In order to prevent a full-scale economic catastrophe that failing banks and a crushed financial system threatened, the new president swallowed hard and decided to invest taxpayer money to save America’s collapsing financial system. It had to be done and nobody liked it or cheered. But the grim reality was that the alternative – a potential world-wide financial meltdown and depression – couldn’t be risked despite the bailout’s universal unpopularity.

Not that Obama and Democratic congressmen and congresswomen like Erie’s 3^rd District Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper get any credit for saving the financial system and preventing that meltdown and depression.

But that could change. More and more evidence makes it clear that not only did the bailouts work, the bailouts won’t cost nearly as much as early critics warned.

Here is the good news from New York Times business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin (Imagine the Bailouts Are Working).

A taste:

Every couple of months the Treasury Department takes a moment to strategically leak some good news about the bailouts. It happened again on Monday, when a Treasury official told The Wall Street Journal that America’s coffers would be only $89 billion lighter after all accounts were settled from the rescues, down from an earlier estimate of $250 billion. It’s enough to make us all feel rich, isn’t it? Inside the Obama administration, there are whispers of even greater optimism, with some officials suggesting that if the economic recovery continues apace, the bailout program could eventually turn from red to black. That may seem far-fetched to anyone who remembers the dire predictions about banks like Citigroup, but the numbers tell a different story. The government’s $45 billion investment in Citigroup alone is on track to make a profit of nearly $11 billion, plus $8 billion or so in interest and other fees. People inside the administration no longer refer to Citigroup as the “Death Star”; now it is a “profit center.” Of course, we’re still expected to lose $48 billion on the government’s rescue of the American International Group. But two people close to the board suggested to me that as the company recalculates the value of assets in its portfolio that were once considered “toxic,” the government could actually claw its way back to even on that investment, if it holds on to its stake long enough. A year ago, by the way, these same people told me they expected the government to take a “$100 billion bath” on its investment in A.I.G. And then there are the banks that have settled up with Uncle Sam, like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. We’ve gotten all our money back from them, along with several billion dollars in interest.

Here is a little driving exercise for you while driving around the Erie region: Keep an eye out and count how many Confederate flag images you see in rear truck windshields. While you’re at it, count the Confederate Stars and Bars images on car bumper stickers. Now ask yourself some questions:

Did you ever wonder what the drivers in these Stars and Bars toting-vehicles are trying to say with these provocative Confederate images?

Are they saying, for instance, life would be so much better if the slave-holding South had actually won the Civil War?

Or, are they saying the United States would be a better place in the Confederate States of America shared a border with Mexico.

Or, are they saying something about race? And you know what that means?

Or, did you ever wonder what black citizens think when they see white citizens driving around with Confederate images on their vehicles or wearing them on tee-shirts?

Please think about that one.

These questions are suddenly relevant again after the Confederacy has yet again bounced back into the news thanks to Virginia’s newly clueless Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell. McDonnell, who managed to fool Virginia voters into believing his previously stated, right-wing obsessions were safely closeted by his new moderate Republican persona, suddenly declared April to be Confederate History Month in Virginia.

As the Washington Post reported, McDonnell stirred this volatile racial pot even though “the two previous Democratic governors had refused to issue the mostly symbolic proclamation honoring the soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War. McDonnell (R) revived a practice started by Republican governor George Allen in 1997. McDonnell left out anti-slavery language that Allen’s successor, James S. Gilmore III (R), had included in his proclamation.”

And somehow, Virginia managed to thrive without its Rebel-cause.

Here is the original proclamation issued by McDonnell:

WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse; and

WHEREAS, Virginia has long recognized her Confederate history, the numerous civil war battlefields that mark every region of the state, the leaders and individuals in the Army, Navy and at home who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today; and

WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to reflect upon our Commonwealth’s shared history, to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present; and

WHEREAS, Confederate historical sites such as the White House of the Confederacy are open for people to visit in Richmond today; and

WHEREAS, all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed by the insurmountable numbers and resources of the Union Army, the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace, following the instruction of General Robert E. Lee of Virginia, who wrote that, “…all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace.”; and

WHEREAS, this defining chapter in Virginia’s history should not be forgotten, but instead should be studied, understood and remembered by all Virginians, both in the context of the time in which it took place, but also in the context of the time in which we live, and this study and remembrance takes on particular importance as the Commonwealth prepares to welcome the nation and the world to visit Virginia for the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the Civil War, a four-year period in which the exploration of our history can benefit all;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Robert McDonnell, do hereby recognize April 2010 as CONFEDERATE HISTORY MONTH in our COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.

Yippee! Hear the rebel yells?

McDonnell, whose fake GOP moderate creditability is rapidly becoming undone for all Virginia to see, unconvincingly insists he reversed state precedent here simply to boost Virginia’s tourism efforts.

Maybe the governor’s wife and kids are buying that one, but what McDonnell is doing with this pandering nonsense represents nothing more than throwing a bone to his conservative base, who already loves him. Compound this foolishness is McDonnell’s inexplicable decision not to mention Virginia’s ugly slavery history in his obnoxiously pandering proclamation. McDonnell incredibly said he omitted any mention of the direct cause and the reason the Civil War was fought because “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”

Really? Don’t you wish McDonnell had bothered to ask just a few of Virginia’s black citizens what that slavery omission says to them? Virginia’s former Democratic governor. and the state’s first black chief executive Douglas Wilder, whose grandparents were slaves, and who for some reason actually supported McDonnell in the 2009 election, did just that.

“Confederate history is full of many things that unfortunately are not put forth in a proclamation of this kind nor are they things that anyone wants to celebrate. It’s one thing to sound a cause of rallying a base. But it’s quite another to distort history.”

Considering all the history in play here, these are relatively tame words from Wilder, who must be kicking himself for supporting a bonehead like McDonnell. After two days of nearly universal outrage and less tame language by critics inside and outside of Virginia, McDonnell buckled like a rookie quarterback and decided to include something about Virginia’s brutal and extensive slavery history in his pro-Confederate proclamation message. Here is the new language:

“The proclamation issued by this Office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission. The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed. The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation. In 2007, the Virginia General Assembly approved a formal statement of “profound regret” for the Commonwealth’s history of slavery, which was the right thing to do.

Talk about your dollar short.

When dealing with the Confederacy’s violent history, there is nothing wrong with admiring the bravery and skill Confederate soldiers displayed in numerous battles in Virginia and throughout the South.

I have over 100 books on the Civil War lining walled bookshelves in our house. Lots of them focus on Confederate generals, Confederate battlefield victories and the often heroic Confederate soldiers who fought so bravely for an abhorrent cause.

From my own experiences, I’ve enjoyed reading and studying how legendary Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee conducted his battles and led his Army of Northern Virginia to stunning victories before Grant and Union might defeated him.

You can, as I do, admire Lee for his impressive tactic skills, renowned personal battlefield leadership and keen killer instinct while hating the ugly cause Lee fought so valiantly for in the Civil War. I can’t read a word about Lee or any Southern general or soldier without remembering these men were fighting and dying to keep black men and women in human bondage. And while I read glowing accounts of Lee’s successes and victories, never for a second do I forget his wife’s family remained one of the great slave-owning families in the South.  Heroic that is not.

So when McDonnell tried unconvincingly to suggest that slavery was merely only one of the issues pushing the North and South to arms  in the Civil War, the governor indulged in the times-tried tactic of Confederate sympathizers.

I remember grade school textbooks in Missouri saying that crucial economic issues, and not slavery, primarily drove the North and South to war. That ignorant revisionism doesn’t work any longer. Never forget that slavery — that is inexpensive human labor forced through slavery – was the foundation of the Southern and Confederate economy. Understand Southern states left the Union only after the anti-slave Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election.

So what McDonnell and his ilk are selling by defending and celebrating the great Southern Lost Cause is nothing less than naked appeals to white power supporters and white supremists. And what those dreadful appeals are saying is what Lee and the Confederacy fought for remains somehow worth honoring.

What McDonnell wants honored is the Confederacy existed and fought to preserve slavery. That is a historic fact no matter how inconvenient for McDonnell and his supporters’ appalling  political motives.

The Confederate Stars and Bars carried by those men in gray, who died in Virginia, throughout the South and at Gettysburg were fighting to keep black men and women in chains. McDonnell knows that all too well.

My question is do the individuals who place the Confederate Stars and Bars on their windshields and drive around the Erie region realize that? What are they actually saying through those Confederate images?

I think we know the sad answer.

Holy Maverick! What Happened To John McCain?

New Year’s Eve 2007: Over cocktails, the conversation with my father-in-law and two brother-in laws — good Republicans all — remains strong in my memory. They wondered what GOP presidential candidate the guy who tends to vote for Democrats was most comfortable with heading into the 2008 presidential election.

Easy, I told them. John McCain.

Now recall that McCain, the original Republican presidential frontrunner, wasn’t in a strong position at that point heading toward the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary. A disastrous summer led most pundits and political types to rule out McCain’s chances for the nomination. By any definition, the McCain campaign was floundering and all but dead.

Rudy Giuliani was leading in most GOP polls. How scary is that?

The usual suspects — Mitt Romney, Mike Hucklebee, Fred Thompson — were languishing in what seemed a lousy political season for all Republican candidates.

McCain still towered above them all on a purely status level even as his campaign seemed dead and it became obvious the Arizona senator didn’t know, or particularly care, how the economy actually worked.

McCain still struck me as the lone the grownup in the room for the Republican presidential field.

Wow was I wrong on so many different levels. So what happened to the guy who lost to ultimately lost the presidency to Barack Obama? The New Yorker’s Hendrick Hertzberg goes looking:

The moral decline of John McCain continues to be a lamentable spectacle. Having repudiated his best decisions–decisions like opposing torture and supporting immigration reform–he has now dramatized his degradation by doubling down on his worst choice ever.

It is overwhelmingly McCain’s doing that Sarah Palin is a figure of national and international consequence, even if some credit must go to Bill Kristol and his shipmates. And a bit to Palin herself, too, of course–not every unsuccessful vice presidential nominee manages to go global. As Tina Brown notes in a Daily Beast commentary, the winsome ex-governor “used the celebrity he bestowed on her to become the La Pasionaria of the No Spin Zone crowd.”

“By using Palin to pander to the Tea Party,” Brown of The Beast writes,

McCain showed his willingness to repudiate everything that made him special, just so he can hold on to a Senate seat. It’s like the Hanoi Hilton in reverse: He held out under physical torture, but under political torture it seems he’ll say and do just about anything.

Sad but true.

McCain’s choice of a running mate was awful, but other Presidential nominees have blown it as badly or worse over the years. In 1864 President Lincoln screwed up royally by dropping Hannibal Hamlin (no Pericles himself) from the ticket and substituting Andrew Johnson. Lincoln did this for eminently Broderish reasons of “bipartisanship” and “balance”–Johnson was a border-state Democrat. Unfortunately, he was also a drunk, a bully, and a virulent racist. Lincoln’s mistake was later compounded by the Senate, which failed to convict President Johnson and remove him from office after the House had, quite rightly, impeached him.

Then there’s the sainted Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom historians have never really held to account for his choice of Richard Nixon in 1952. The young (if not youthful) Senator Nixon had earned notoriety via the Hiss case, but it’s unlikely he would ever have become a serious threat to the nation and the world without the General’s assistance. Eisenhower gets a free pass for several reasons, including his obvious lack of enthusiasm for Nixon in 1960, his later quiet regrets, the fact that we all like Ike, and the now widespread view of Nixon’s presidency as a wash, with the goes-to-China gambit and a set of relatively liberal domestic policies (relative to those of later Republicans) seen as offsetting Watergate and mass murder in Indochina.

I’m not even considering the running-mate choices of Presidential nominees who didn’t get elected (the John Brickers, the Bill Millers) or those of Presidents who got elected but left office alive: Elbridge Gerry, Schuyler Colfax, Spiro Agnew, and Dan Quayle–to say nothing of Dick Cheney, who, in addition to being the worst Vice-President ever, was also the worst de facto President.

One prefers not to think about what the state of the nation would be right now had McCain had been elected and then hit by a Secret Service SUV with a sticky accelerator. Even with Fox News and not the Oval Office the current workplace of the Alaska Athena, Brown is putting it mildly when she writes of McCain, “It’s not impossible that Palin will turn out to be his most enduring legacy.”

Postscript:  Holy Maverick Part II! McCain The Maverick Denier

John McCain isn’t really a maverick. Never was one, really. Who said? John McCain told Newsweek:  “I never considered myself a maverick. I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”

This is sad, so sad. Talking Point Memo provides the video to prove otherwise. Take a look: McCain Declares Himself The ‘Original Maverick’ In 2008.

Augusta National Rips Woods A New One

There are going to be some among us who won’t ever look at Tiger Woods without thinking about all those women. Understandable.

Many women will always have trouble looking at Woods without shaking their heads about all those women. Perfectly understandable.

My own view is Woods apologized, and apologized again, and accepted responsibility for his reckless behavior. And now after his 40-minute press conference at Augusta National on Monday, isn’t it time to say enough and let Elin Woods deal with her husband?

That view is clearly not shared by Billy Payne, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club who used his annual Masters address to sanctimoniously tear into Woods the day before he teed off in the Masters’ first round. One must assume he speaks for Augusta National’s  elite membership.

In a prepared statement, Payne said among other things, Woods had:

“Disappointed all of us, and more importantly, our kids and our grandkids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children. His future will never again be measured only by his performance against par, but measured by the sincerity of his effort to change. I hope he now realizes that every kid he passes on the course wants his swing, but would settle for his smile.”

This coming from a man who represents a club that still refuses to allow and accept female members. A club that until 1975, declined to allow black PGA players play in the Masters. In the spirit of don’t stop attacking when you got a man down, many golf writers and commentators said they liked and agreed with what Payne said about Woods.

But the great New York Times columnist George Vescey spoke for many who believe Tigers Woods has suffered and apologized enough (Thanks for the Tasteless Sermon)

Here is a taste from Vescey:

Just asking, but would Payne have been so quick to deliver his little sermon to a white golfer who was caught straying? My guess is that some kind of double standard whacked Tiger Woods on the backswing. How dare he stray after all they’ve done for him?

This golf tournament, in the person of its top official, has delivered a needless moral rebuke to a man who has opened his veins in public twice in recent weeks, admitting he had broken his marriage vows, admitting he was taking treatment for an addiction.

That was not enough, apparently. Here we all were in the last few weeks, sucking our thumbs over whether the gallery would be polite to a man trying to play golf and save his marriage at the same time. But the problem was not the fans, nor was it the credentialed golf media, always so respectful. Even most bloggers out in blog-land understood this is a complicated and personal issue.

I’ve never met George Vescey, but I worked with his son in the Peoria Journal Star sports department. I know and like his daughter, who does important legal work for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.

Their father never wrote a more honorable column than this one.

Postscript: In his first tournament in five months, Tiger Woods shot his lowest Masters first-round score in his career Thursday, dazzling Augusta National galleries and an ESPN television audience with an impressive 4-under-par 68.  Woods missed short birdie putts at 2, 11, 16 and 18 that could have easily turned this round into a 64. The best golf columnist in the business, the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell, provides his take Day of thanks. Here is a taste:

On the first hole, when introduced, Woods was met with enthusiasm: cheers and calls of “Go, Tiger” and “Come on, Tiger.” And, throughout the early holes of his round, he was greeted warmly, but not quite fanatically, not with the thunderous roars that, even on Thursday, have marked the first rounds of anyone named Arnie, Jack or Tiger. After one fan on the second hole yelled, “Give ‘em hell, Tiger,” a man nearby said to the woman next to him, “It takes all kinds. ‘Give ‘em hell?’ Come on.” Yet that’s exactly what Woods gave ‘em. On an afternoon with light rain and a treacherous swirling wind in the pines, Woods reminded the world outside of golf why the arc of his life — its triumphs and, now, its miseries and mortifications — matter to so many. No one inside golf ever forgot. If he hadn’t missed three putts of five feet or less on the back nine, and lipped out a nine-foot eagle putt at the 13th hole, too, he might conceivably have shot a 33-32 — 65. “The tees were up. You could be pretty aggressive. Guys were just tearing this place apart,” said Woods. “I hit the ball well all day. If I could have putted well, it could have been a really special round.” As if it wasn’t unique enough.

Still betting against him.

In reaction to the March 26 blog’s lead item on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (“Call Nancy Pelosi The Giant of the House”), the following comment was posted by a “Jerry,” who was trying to reassure nervous ErieBlogs users that I was not a credible threat to hijack the site for my own nefarious political agenda.

Here is the post in case you didn’t see it:

I wouldn’t complain too much about the political commentary on this site. It’s not as if Bryan Oberle is offering his own opinion, but rather he’s cut-and-pasting “tastes” of other people’s opinions and indulging in a hefty helping of me-too-ism.

The Ezra Klein article is particularly poor anyway. The bill will be upheld as constitutional because conservatives and Republicans have supported individual mandates? What? Citing the legality of the Massachusetts mandate is fine if you can’t grasp federalism.

In any case, this is why journalists make poor commentators anyway. They went to school to learn how to write commentary, but they lack the knowledge base to make intelligent commentary. Bias? Let’s call it laziness instead. Bryan Oberle thinks one way because Ezra Klein thinks that way because Dave Weigel thinks that way. The cut-and-pasting that Bryan uses makes that all too clear.

Now I’m not going to go to the mats over Jerry’s dissing journalists for being “poor commentators.” More often than not, deciding what is good or bad commentary depends on whether you agree with the commentator’s view. And Washington Post domestic affairs blogger and Newsweek columnist Ezra Klein doesn’t need any defending by me, although I still haven’t heard any independent or credible view that Republicans have a chance in hell of convincing federal courts that Congress doesn’t have the constitutional standing to pass comprehensive health-care reform.

As for the cut and pasting from other blogs or newspaper articles that Jerry mentioned, guilty I plead.

In the process of starting up this blog two months ago, I’ve established a basic blog format. I will write a lead item, roughly around 800 words or so, which not un-coincidently is the average size of your basic newspaper column.

Sometimes I will add a link or two to this lead item, pointing out something, let’s say, Andrew Sullivan on the Daily Dish blog wrote or linked. In the case of the Pelosi item, I offered two links for interested readers. I also broke out sections from the links to offer readers a chance to read another view. This is common practice in numerous blogs, including the Daily Dish, the New Republic, the Talking Points Menu and the Washington Journal.

Forgive me, but I like the format.

Bear with me here. I approached this blog as a writer who wrote newspaper columns of various forms for nearly 25 years. So naturally, I basically see a blog as a column that doesn’t run in a newspaper.

I prefer long, varied blogs that touch on numerous points and issues: politics, sports, movies, local news, the Erie Times-News, my wife and daughter, my extended newspaper family and friends.

I also liked the user-friendly way the Daily Dish makes a brief point — then offers concurring and dissenting blog links that offer readers the opportunity to continue or build on the debate.

So if Jerry views this blog as nothing more than cut and paste vehicle that makes me no danger to the political purity of ErieBlogs.com, that’s great. I would point out that the Pelosi lead item was roughly 80 percent my words and thoughts, and 20 percent excerpts from the links to the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait and Talking Point Menu.

In the next three items in the 2,200 word blog, I did offer more views from outside links than my own perspectives. That’s because the stories or issues presented struck me as materials worth looking at for readers with the time and inclination to go read them.

Some might, at this point, ask a simple question: Just what is a blog? Good question. For the sake of argument, let’s use online encyclopedia Wikopedia’s definition as a starting point for a blog definition:

A blog (a contraction of the term “web log“) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

This strikes me as an outstanding description for blogs. They come in all shapes and sizes. Or, perhaps more to the point here, blogs are any darn thing an individual blogger wants them to become.

So in my case, I start a weekly blog off with a newspaper-like column lead item, and offer a few links and breakout items to either bolster a point or offer a contrasting view. This is flexibility most newspapers can’t offer due to space concerns and a generally misplaced belief that readers won’t read anything longer than 300 words.

I offer my views — for what their worth — in that main lead newspaper-like item and sprinkle more thoughts and perspective throughout the blog while focusing on offering interesting and useful links and breakouts.

Please let me know what you think.

Postscript: More evidence that Republican attorney generals are throwing away taxpayer dollars in a reckless losers’ huff over health-care reform, here is the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen in his Political Animal.

FRIVOLOUS HCR LAWSUIT’S SCARCE DEFENDERS…. Finding an ambitious, far-right state attorney general willing to waste tax dollars challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is easy. Finding legal experts who think their case has any merit at all is surprisingly difficult.

The University of Washington tried to organize a debate on whether the health-care reform bill is constitutional. But it couldn’t find a law professor to argue that it isn’t, reports the Seattle Times.

“I will say that we tried very hard to get a professor who could come and who thinks this is flat-out unconstitutional,” said the moderator. “But there are relatively few of them, and they are in great demand.”

Even a former Bush/Cheney U.S. attorney was on hand, and he agreed that the Republican litigation not only lacks merit, but should be “seen as a political exercise.”

Elsewhere, however, Republicans continue to take the frivolous lawsuit seriously. In Georgia, for example, state Attorney General Thurbert Baker (D) said he would not waste taxpayer money on the case that no serious person can defend. As of yesterday, 31 Republicans in the state legislature had signed a resolution calling for the AG’s impeachment. Seriously.

“It’s a disappointing response by some members of our legislature,” Baker said. “I don’t think it speaks well for the future of this state or the image of Georgia.”

You don’t say.

As of now, 14 states, thanks to conservative attorneys general with time and public resources to waste, are pushing a lawsuit against the new health care law that even conservative legal experts consider a weak joke. It was 13, but Indiana’s AG signed on this week.

‘Wrong-way Will’ Challenged On Absurd Filibuster Position

George Will is a good columnist – when he isn’t trying to be a political pundit or commenting on world climate change. In my former post as Erie Times-News Editorial Page Editor, I ran Will (and political columnist David Broder) on Thursdays and Sundays for 10 years.

Will, unlike, let’s say, Charles Krauthammer, who I ran as well in the Erie Times-News Op-ed Pages after a trade up from Cal Thomas, generally avoids being a Republican partisan. Recall that Will was one of the first conservative columnists to identify the Iraq war as a major American foreign policy blunder. He also quickly turned on the American war in Afghanistan while later warning President Obama to get the hell out of Dodge.

But on Feb. 25 in the Washington Post (When the filibuster is the enemy) as the Republican minority in the U.S. Senate continued to use the filibuster as an unprecedented obstructionist weapon, Will’s strange column defending GOP senators wallowed in partisan shrillness. It couldn’t make any sense otherwise.

A taste:

Liberals say filibusters confuse and frustrate the public. The public does indeed mistakenly believe that government is designed to act quickly in compliance with presidential wishes. But most ideas incubated in the political cauldron of grasping factions are deplorable. Therefore, serving the public involves – mostly involves – saying “no.” The Bill of Rights, like traditional conservatism, effectively pronounces the lovely word “no” regarding many possible government undertakings – establishment of religion, unreasonable searches and seizures, etc.

The fiction that government is “paralyzed” by partisanship is regularly refuted. Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Bush reached across party lines in 1986, 1996 and 2001 to pass tax reform, welfare reform and No Child Left Behind, respectively. The $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program and the $862 billion stimulus were enacted with injudicious speed.

Invaluable New Yorker editor Hedrick Hertzberg didn’t buy what Will was selling in his ludicrous filibuster defense. Hertzberg’s response is worth checking out at Wrong Way Will.

A taste:

At a minimum, then, if words have meaning, the filibuster rule’s requirement for sixty per cent of the entire Senate membership, no matter how many senators are out sick or what have you, is patently unconstitutional. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Supreme Court is about to declare it unconstitutional. Even a Court not dominated by ideologues willing to appoint Presidents by fiat would hesitate to reach that deeply into the innards of the Senate.

The fact that the Senate “may determine the Rules of its Proceedings” does not mean that the rules of the Senate are the highest law of the land. Those rules, after all, can be changed by a simple majority at the outset of a new Congress. Would it be permissible for such a majority to adopt a rule that cloture can be invoked–or bills passed, or some other “business” conducted – only with the concurrence of ninety per cent of the Senate? Or a hundred per cent? Mr. Will?

One more observation on this point. The filibuster also makes nonsense of the provision in Article I, Section 3 that allows the Vice-President to cast a vote when the Senate is “equally divided.” If the Senate is “equally divided” on a motion to end debate, the motion simply fails. So the filibuster rule decrees.

Pennsylvania  Government Is Really Bad,  But There Is Illinois

I wrote more than one Erie Times-News column comparing how corrupt state governments remain in Pennsylvania and Illinois. I never could really decide whether pols representing us in Harrisburg were worse than the pols that represented me in Springfield years ago. You could flip a coin and not be wrong.

The clinching argument comes back to this shameful reality: The last two Illinois governors are going to spend time in jail. Republican George Ryan is already there for assorted abuses and crimes; Democrat Rod Blagojevich, who was impeached last year for placing President Obama’s Senate seat appointment up for the highest bid, goes on trial in June. He is going to jail.

In the March 27 New York Times, the paper’s former editorial page editor Gail Collins examines the Land of Lincoln’s corrupt ways (Nothing Is Easy in Illinois).

A taste:

But about the lieutenant governor.

I have always been particularly interested in this office since I nurture a secret ambition to become a lieutenant governor one day myself. I am really pretty well qualified since I am extremely good at waiting around for something to happen.

Gov. David Paterson of New York, a former lieutenant governor who moved up after another scandal-resignation, is now engulfed in all sorts of scandals himself. If he decided to resign, it might open up a window to my long-cherished dream, while also allowing my state to finally beat Illinois in the race for the most dreadful political culture in the country.

However, Illinois has not been standing still. It held the primary for state offices at the beginning of February, which is not a time when people are in the optimal mood to go to the polls. The Republicans wound up with a gubernatorial candidate who once called the minimum wage “government intrusion.” For the Senate, Democrats got the son of a Chicago banking family whose bank seems about to fail.

Then there was the No. 2 slot. In Illinois, the candidates for lieutenant governor run all by themselves in the primary. Then the winner is yoked to the gubernatorial nominee on the ticket in November. Would-be lieutenant governors tend not to be household names, so the results of these primaries can be peculiar. (In 1986, Democratic voters nominated a 28-year-old follower of the extremely strange Lyndon LaRouche. This happened on a night that the Chicago LaRouchians were busy holding a mock exorcism in front of the home of a religion professor they had decided was a warlock. The gubernatorial nominee, Adlai Stevenson III, was so horrified that he bolted the ticket and ran as a third-party candidate. Everybody lost.)

This year, on the Republican side, the lieutenant governor winner was one Jason Plummer, a 27-year-old heir to a lumber fortune. He had virtually no prior political experience but stressed his leadership training as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserves. Postelection scrutiny showed that Plummer had received his commission three days after announcing his candidacy last September.

Democratic voters, meanwhile, picked Scott Lee Cohen, who turned out to be a pawnbroker with a former steroids abuse problem whose ex-wife charged him with failure to pay child support and whose ex-girlfriend once claimed he threatened her by holding a knife to her neck.

On the plus-side, the results inspired the Legislature to move the primary to March.

What In the Hell Are These Guys Drinking?

I have to share this from Steve Benen’s Washington Monthly Political Animal department (www.washingtonmonthly.com). I’m not making this stuff up:

QUOTE OF THE DAY…. Most of the far-right arguments against health care reform are either wrong, stale, or both. What we really need is some new far-right arguments to help keep things interesting. Oh, here’s one now.

On Glenn Beck’s radio show this morning, guest-host Doc Thompson explained his belief that he, as a white person, is a victim of racism inherent in the new Affordable Care Act. You read that right.

Alex Seitz-Wald, thankfully, transcribed the relevant portion. “For years I’ve suggested that racism was in decline and yeah, there are some, you know, incidents that still happen with regards to racism, but most of the claims I’ve said for years, well, they’re not really real,” Thompson told listeners. “But I realize now that I was wrong. For I now too feel the pain of racism. Racism has been dropped at my front door and the front door of all lighter-skinned Americans.

“The health care bill the president just signed into law includes a 10 percent tax on all indoor tanning sessions starting July 1st, and I say, who uses tanning? Is it dark-skinned people? I don’t think so. I would guess that most tanning sessions are from light-skinned Americans. Why would the President of the United States of America — a man who says he understands racism, a man who has been confronted with racism — why would he sign such a racist law? Why would he agree to do that? Well now I feel the pain of racism.”

Sure you do, Doc. Sure you do.

Sadly, I think Doc Thompson believes this racist nonsense.

They don’t list Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s height on her official House Web site. No fighting weight either. One could surmise that Pelosi is maybe around 5-foot and 110 pounds. Maybe.

But after the U.S. House voted to pass the Senate’s comprehensive health-care reform bill on Sunday, March 21, Pelosi — often called the most powerful woman in America even before that historic  bill passed – re-emerged this week as a legitimate political giant.

My heavens what are creative conservatives attackers going to call her now?

Recall that earlier this month, right-wing talk show buffoon Rush Limbaugh actually compared Pelosi to Osama bin Laden, telling his listeners that, “Mullah Nancy Bin Pelosi … is no different” than those who “convince all these people to put bombs on their kids.”

My, my:  How clever.

In one sense, though, you can see why Limbaugh and his conservative pals are so frustrated and furious.

Health-care reform was dead — and then it wasn’t.

Democrats were toast — and then they weren’t.

The very fact that a comprehensive health-care reform package actually passed and was signed into law by President Obama represents a legitimate political miracle.

Remember that few House members cared for the Senate bill. Many more openly despised it.

Yet Pelosi — aided greatly by the president’s arm-twisting muscle and public cheerleading  — managed to convince reluctant House members that it was not only in their best interests to swallow hard and pass this deal, but that it indeed represented the last chance to achieve that first giant leap toward comprehensive health-care reform.

And, by the way, Pelosi and the president added, if House members didn’t pass the bill, God help them in November because they couldn’t.

So 219 House Democrats took the plunge Sunday, did the right thing, voted for the Senate bill and the reconciliation fixes and immediately transformed Pelosi into a legitimate health-care reform hero.

Then, those formerly reluctant Democratic House members came back and did it again Thursday to clean-up some Senate reconciliation fixes.

Talk about a wonderful birthday for Pelosi, who turned 70 on Friday.

Naturally, the Democrats’ triumph gave GOP campaign strategists an idea. You can almost see the imaginary light bulb click on. The National Republican Congressional Committee still believes one key to victory in November’s midterm elections is to run against “scary liberal” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. They even dreamed up a spiffy new Web site to raise money for the effort.

The Talking Points Memo blog, with the screaming headline GOP Targets Nancy Pelosi As Public Enemy No. 1, details the renewed effort to villainize the speaker.

Here is a taste:

She’s been dubbed the most powerful speaker in a century, and was singled out by President Obama as being a critical force for passing a sweeping health care reform overhaul. But for the Republicans, she equals fundraising gold – a San Francisco liberal who fires up the base and creates an endless supply of photo fodder.

GOP pollsters find that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is one of the most recognized Congressional leaders in decades. That’s one reason the term “PelosiCare” has found its way into Republican mailers and television ads, and GOP sources tell us that will keep up in the coming months.

“The voters cannot fire Barack Obama in November but they can fire Nancy Pelosi,” said Wes Anderson, a GOP pollster who contracts with the Republican National Committee. “The only other person voters are as concerned about is President Obama. They find she shares his ideology but not his charm.”

Republicans trotted out this time-honored tactic in the 2006 midterms when Pelosi was merely the House Minority Leader and the presumed next speaker if Democrats retook the House. Which is what the Democrats did in November 2006, and the Pelosi demonizing intensified after she became the first female Speaker of the House.

Republicans tried this doomed strategy again in the 2008 and watched Democrats gain unprecedented majorities in the House and Senate while Obama won the presidency.

And Republicans are apparently plotting to try this failed strategy yet again this fall even as Pelosi receives rave reviews for providing the tactical legwork and muscle that built momentum for House Democrats to pass the Senate’s flawed comprehensive health-care reform bill.

A taste from the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait’s blog (Chait concurs):

One of the subplots of the health care story is that everybody has woken up to the fact that Nancy Pelosi is an extremely effective Speaker of the House. The House is a pliable, majoritarian institution, so it’s not unusual for a Speaker to wield a lot of power (conversely, it is rare for a Senate Majority Leader to be seen as powerful.) Still, even correcting for that, Pelosi deserves enormous credit for the health care bill. In the wake of Scott Brown’s election, she stayed clear-headed when Democrats all around her succumbed to panic.

Pelosi lacks much in the way of eloquence – her speech last night, like her Blair House remarks, was borderline cringe-inducing. But the combination of President Obama as the chief public explainer and Pelosi running the show behind the scenes is an extremely formidable combination.

Now Pelosi’s greatest crime in the eyes of the Republican propaganda machine, besides happening to be a gifted female politician, is she also happens to call San Francisco home.

You know — where all those gay liberals hang out.

So scary!

The lame Republican efforts to demonize Pelosi as some frightening San Francisco liberal that could actually scare Americans into voting for GOP congressional candidates remains laughable.

For starters, most Americans wouldn’t know Pelosi if they ran into her at Wegmans. And most of the Americans who do know Pelosi realize she’s nothing like the false portrait Republicans waste time and millions trying to paint.

That Pelosi still isn’t a household name is too bad. Even before becoming speaker, Pelosi was a formidable political presence in the House. Think about it: Do you realize how skilled and tough Pelosi had to be to rise through the ranks of the male House Democratic Party hierarchy? Think about how many cantankerous old bulls she had to challenge, fight and defeat.

Now sure it’s true, Pelosi is a liberal. So be afraid if you want.

But Pelosi really is what every successful Democratic leader must become: She is at heart a master pragmatist. In the unwieldy governing Democratic coalition, filled with liberals, progressives and Blue Dog moderates, limousine liberals needn’t apply for work.

The unfortunate reality is most Americans don’t know and won’t care about that political miracle Pelosi pulled off in the past two months.

But please remember this health-care reform was universally deemed a lost cause following Scott Brown’s shocking Massachusetts special Senate election victory. A victory, mind you, that robbed Democrats of its 60^th filibuster-breaking vote. The Democratic Party sky was indeed falling.

Yet Pelosi realized her caucus couldn’t credibly stand for re-election with a controversial health-care vote without a real health-care reform law. She joined forces with the president and Senate Majority Harry Reid to rescue what rightly should have been a historic lost opportunity for health-care reform and a near fatal blow for congressional Democrats in November.

It’s an astonishing achievement for Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

As the lights shine brightly now, Pelosi is something of a reluctant political star. She isn’t particularly articulate. Her sound bites are seldom  memorable. She isn’t a favorite on the Sunday morning news talk circuit.

But what  Pelosi remains is a winner. In America’s political battlegrounds, that is all that matters. Because winners gets things done in our democracy. And in the past two months, Pelosi got health care done in a big and historic way.

And you know what I see looking at little, ol’  Nancy Pelosi? I see a true giant of the House.

Dahlkemper Makes The Right And Brave Votes

Because I’ve done some work and hope to do some more for Erie’s 3^rd District Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper’s re-election campaign, I haven’t blogged about the congresswoman’s delicate position in the recent health-care reform debate.

Abortion is an intensely personal issue that affects politicians in different ways. In Dahlkemper’s case, she struggled mightily on how to vote on both the House’s original bill (voted for it), Sunday’s House passage of the Senate bill (voted for it) and Thursday’s reconciliation Senate fixes (voted for it).

In the end, Dahlkemper felt comfortable enough with the Senate bill’s abortion language and President Obama’s executive order reinforcing the Hyde Amendment’s federally-funded abortion prohibition, to vote for comprehensive health-care reform.

This is what matters.

Now what does Dahlkemper get for her brave votes? Scores of threats and hateful phone calls to her congressional offices. See Erie Times-News reporter John Guerriero’s story in the Erie Times-News (Inundated with threats).

Is There A Legal Case Against The Health-Care Bill?

Here is the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein’s smart take on whether there is a legal case for Republicans to make:

With the votes counted and the legislative battle finishing, conservatives are turning to a different branch of government to fight health-care reform: the courts. Their most promising tactic was to argue that “deem and pass” would be unconstitutional because the House and the Senate passed slightly different versions of the same bill. Previous challenges on those grounds had failed, but this is a different court and health-care reform is a different beast. But then the House rejected deem and pass and voted on the bill through the normal order. Undeterred, conservatives – most prominently Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s ambitious attorney general – are planning to file suit against the individual mandate.

So is this – or any of the other challenges being contemplated by conservatives – likely to work? The basic answer is that the Supreme Court does not like to invalidate important laws passed by Congress. But for a more thorough look, see this article by Dave Weigel (who will soon be my colleague here at The Post!).

To put it very simply: This is good politics for conservatives but an unlikely legal strategy. And as Dave’s article makes clear, the politicians pushing it know that as well as anyone. Two of the grounds for challenges that most excited conservatives (“deem and pass” and the Nelson deal) will not be relevant to the final bill, as “deem and pass” wasn’t used and the Nelson deal is going to be erased in reconciliation. That means conservatives are largely left with the individual mandate – an idea developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation and passed into law in Massachusetts by Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney – and that’s very unlikely to be repealed.

It’s also less important if it is repealed. The virtue of challenging how the law is passed is that a successful effort could invalidate the whole thing. Not so with the individual mandate, which is a small (though important) piece of the bill. If the unlikely happened and the mandate was repealed, you could simply replace it with something like this and the bill would work very much as intended.

And as a final note, let me propose a new rule: No conservative who supports these legal challenges can complain about activist judges ever again.

Amen to that.

Tires-to-Energy Trouble In Chicago Suburbs

Erie Renewable Energy LLC’s proposed $370 million tires-to-energy plant has some company in controversy. The Chicago Tribune recently reported (tire-burning) that “Illinois lawmakers are moving to include tire burning in the state’s definition of renewable energy, a change that would benefit a south suburban incinerator with a long history of pollution problems.”

Here is a taste from reporter Michael Hawthorne’s story:

Adding the “incineration or burning of tires” to a measure intended to boost wind and solar energy would clear the way for Geneva Energy to reap lucrative green energy credits for its troubled incinerator in Ford Heights, one of the poorest suburbs in the U.S.
The legislative change also would make the tire burner a player in the growing market for renewable energy in Illinois, where power companies must get at least 10 percent of their electricity from green sources by 2015 and 25 percent by 2025.
Originally sponsored by Rep. David Miller a Dolton Democrat running for state comptroller, the measure would give tire burning, which generates large amounts of toxic air pollution, the same status as pollution-free wind and solar power. It apparently is designed to benefit the state’s sole tire incinerator, in Miller’s district.
A House committee approved Miller’s bill last week, days after an investigator from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency‘s civil rights division interviewed state officials about the tire burner. The agency is probing whether Illinois violated environmental justice laws by allowing the incinerator to operate in Ford Heights, a small village about 25 miles south of downtown Chicago, where more than 95 percent of the population is black and half live in poverty.
If the legislation pending on the House floor is approved, it would not only add tire incineration to the state’s renewable energy law but also revoke a specific ban that says green power “does not include the incineration or burning of tires.”

What is interesting here is that final paragraph. The EPA’s interest here could also have ramifications for Erie Renewable Energy LLC’s proposed plant on 60 acres at the former International Paper site.

It seems clear the federal government is taking a serious interest in how individual states regulate tire-burning facilities. That means whatever Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection ultimately decides on Erie Renewable’s proposal might not be the last word.

Yes, elections do have consequences. In this case, the federal variety.

March Madness! The Big Dance?

Duke?

Syracuse?

Kentucky?

Kansas?

That’s my Final Four.

Yeah — I know — it’s also most of America’s Final Four.

Can’t go wrong with Kansas winning the whole thing, either, by the way.

I covered one NCAA Men’s Tournament Game in Atlanta back in 1988 for the Peoria Journal Star. I followed Bradley University’s Top 20 team down to the Southeast Regional for a first-round game against Auburn.

It was an interesting cast of characters gathered in Atlanta that March 22 years ago.

Bradley was led by Hersey Hawkins, a gifted, gentle soul who shared the 1987-88 National Player of the Year honors with Kansas’ Danny Manning.

Bradley, an underachieving team under former NBA coach Stan Albeck, blew a 14-point lead and lost to a very ordinary Auburn squad led by its moody star Chris Morris.

Hawkins, the NCAA’s leading scorer, scored 44, but didn’t get a chance at a game-winner when Auburn’s Terrance Howard stole a passed intended for Hawkins in the games final seconds.

Looking back, it was clearly a game Bradley had no business losing. But this talented team’s inattentive personality allowed an inferior team to stay close, and ultimately, win.

That Laissez-faire attitude was clearly a direct reflection of its head basketball coach. Albeck, longtime NBA followers will remember, was actually a very effective NBA coach for the San Antonio Spurs and New Jersey Nets. But Albeck badly misread Chicago Bulls  owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s views on how much Michael Jordan should play coming off a stress fracture late in the 1985-86 season. Instead, Albeck followed Jordan’s wishes to play and put on a spectacular display in an entertaining first-round playoff series loss against the Boston Celtics.

Albeck was subsequently fired, and replaced by Doug Collins, who was subsequently fired, and replaced by Phil Jackson. Six NBA titles in eight years followed for Jordan and Jackson. Albeck coached Bradley for three more indifferent seasons before being let go after his contract expired. He last worked in the NBA as a Lenny Wilkens assistant in Toronto.

Ironically, Collins was a 1972 Olympian and an All-American at Bradley’s arch-rival Illinois State. He later coached Jordan again with Washington. Collins remains the best NBA analyst in the business.

As for Hawkins (a Chicago native), he went on and became the 6^th pick in the ’88 NBA draft by the Los  Angeles  Clippers before being traded for Charles Smith.  Hawkins  joined a nice Philadelphia 76ers team featuring bruise brothers Charles Barkley and Rick Mahorn. Hawkins later started for the Seattle Supersonics, who lost to the Bulls in the 1996 NBA Finals. In between, Hawkins played two seasons for the Charlotte Hornets  before retiring after one season with the Bulls.

Morris, a long, athletic player, went No. 4 in that ’88 draft to the New Jersey Nets and quickly disappeared into the NBA mediocrity abyss.

Manning was drafted No. 1 by the  Clippers and enjoyed a successful, but injury-plagued NBA career. By the way, Manning’s Kansas team went on to beat  Stacey King-led Oklahoma in the 1988 NCAA Championship game. Oklahoma, coached by folksy Billy Tubbs, would have played Bradley if Hawkins could have somehow got the game-winner against Auburn. King later went on to win rings with Jordan’s Chicago Bulls.

Postscript:

Here’s the great Los Angeles Times Page 2 columnist T.J. Simers’ very different take (T.J. Simers: NCAA tournament is cause for a friendly wager) on the NCAA Tournament. A taste:

The daughter and Ann Meyers Drysdale have so much in common.
They are both women.
Ann is in something like eight Hall of Fames, a basketball superstar in high school and college, earning $50,000 and a three-day tryout with the NBA Indianapolis Pacers and a silver medal winner in the Olympics.
The first time the daughter played basketball, she tripped over the half-court line and fell. Later she would stumble over one of those recessed cracks in a sidewalk, and fall on her face, which explains the scar on her forehead. She loves watching the Olympics, though.
Ann has been analyst on TV for nearly three decades, and helped guide the Phoenix Mercury to a WNBA title as GM.
The daughter lost her job on radio and is presently unemployed.
Ann lived in Wheaton, Ill., home of John & Jim Belushi, Bob Woodward and
The daughter has no such interesting story to tell.
But both Ann and the daughter are dreamers.
And they are teaming to pick bracket winners in the annual father-daughter Page 2, for eight years, skating the same pond as Page 2, city administrators obviously waiting for just the right moment to unveil a placard marking the spot. Her brother, Mark, was in the same class as Page 2 at St. Michael’s. NCAA tournament jaunt to Mandalay Bay for the benefit of boys’ or girls’ clubs, depending on the winner, like the gals have any chance against Page 2 and Jay Rood, the guy who sets the betting lines for all the MGM Mirage sports books and monitors where all the smart money is going. Should the women be losers, $1,000 will be donated in their names to a boys’ club with the sincere hope this also doesn’t mean the daughter is moving back in with mom and dad.
Frankly, I found it surprising the daughter went to Drysdale for assistance, what with the next mayor of L.A., governor of California and maybe president of the United States available.

Happy Madness!

Priest Abuse Scandal Strikes At Vatican’s Main Resident

Back on October 6, 2007, I wrote a column in the Erie Times-News railing against the American Catholic Church’s appalling reaction to a nationwide priest sex scandal. Dioceses across the nation are still paying and feeling the financial, criminal and moral consequences.

My column’s thrust was the that Los Angeles Diocese’s idiotic plan to force some poor Santa Barbara nuns to sell their convent homes to help pay the diocese’s settlement payouts  symbolized how the  Catholic Church had so lost its way. By the way, those legal bills and settlements were built up by lawsuits spurred by the  Catholic Church’s insane plan to transfer pedophile priests to unsuspecting parishes, where these abusive men sexually abused still more innocent victims.

The Erie Times-News was inundated with hundreds of letters to the editor after my column ran, trashing and calling me  unprintable names. We ran a whole op-ed page full of these letters.

Now news breaking in Germany focuses on how Pope Benedict XVI handled the transfer of  an abusive priest to yet another unsuspecting parish when the Pope (Joseph Ratziner) was a German bishop.

This is more horrific news for the Pope and the Catholic Church. Read about it in Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog How Is The Pope Different From Cardinal Law?.

Thanks to the Daily Dish for this excerpt:

A priest is discovered to have been actively molesting children. His superior is notified in 1980. One of the things he is told of is the priest’s forcing an 11 year old boy to perform oral sex on him. The superior does not contact the police. He approves a transfer of the priest to a different city, where the priest is required to undergo therapy but is also subsequently able to resume his work with access to children. Six years later, the priest is again found guilty of abusing children. This time, he serves a sentence, but he is subsequently allowed to resume work as a priest, with the church authorities hiding his past from future parishes, and is only removed from his position three days ago. Joseph Ratzinger was the superior, he reviewed the man’s files in 1980, and he was subsequently in charge of reviewing all sex abuse cases as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine Of The Faith in Rome. He was integral to the policy of hushing up as much of this as possible.

Here is a New York Times story on the firestorm Irish Catholic bishops are confronting (Irish Cardinal ‘Ashamed’ of Handling of ’75 Abuse).

Will Tiger Woods Be Tiger Woods At The Masters?

Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon asked this question after the World No. 1 announced he would return to golf after a four-month layoff (Right move for Tiger?).

A taste:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled he’s coming back. Once again, Tiger’s sex life is none of my business and really none of yours either, unless you’re sponsoring him. I’ve never once watched him swing a golf club because he could sell me a Buick (though I own an Enclave), or razor blades, or golf shoes (I’m basically a FootJoy guy). I watch because with a club in his hand he’s a sporting genius. In his absence, I’ve stopped watching golf. I didn’t say I watch less; I find that I don’t watch at all. And it’s not a conscious thing, like I’m boycotting the game because Tiger’s away. In fact, over the last 15 years I’ve watched golf pretty much every single week between late January and late September. Tiger only plays, what, 19 or 20 tournaments a year and I watch closer to 30 a year, which means he’s not there one-third of the time I’m tuned in. But I’m not watching now. The dramatic drop in television ratings suggest I’m not alone, either. Professional golf has been on life support all season. It’s in more trouble now than pro basketball was when Jordan retired from the NBA. Tiger, and this isn’t debatable, is bigger than the game. Or at least he was. Time will tell whether he can summon that again. But he’ll be bigger than the game when they tee it up at Augusta. Just look at the numbers. I’m not talking about the 20 million or whatever number it winds up being who will watch the Masters out of tabloid curiosity. I’m talking about the addicts like me, the week-in, week-out fanatics whom Tour ratings depend upon. Golf grew dangerously dependent on the talent, personality, marketing and, ultimately, the remarkably clutch championship performance of Tiger Woods – and now the game is stuck. How soon we’re going to see that Tiger Woods is the larger concern. And I find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to imagine that we’ll see him at Augusta in a few weeks. The last time he came into a tournament with huge emotional baggage he missed the cut, at the U.S. Open following the death of his father. Now, after an arguably greater emotional disturbance (not to mention the disruption of professional routine), he’s supposed to just walk on the course and win? I can’t see it.

I can.

Good points from Wilbon. Here is a thought or two:

- Since winning the Australian Masters back in November, Woods has actually only missed four PGA Tour stops he normally plays: San Diego at Torrey Pines, the match play event at the Scottsdale TPC, Miami at Doral and Arnold Palmer Invitational at Orlando’s Bay Hill.

- Woods has won the Masters four times, most recently in 2005. As ESPN’s Andy North pointed out, the key for Woods will be the state of his marvelous short game.

You take the field. I’ll take Woods.

McEnroe (‘Mac’) Takes the Stage

McEnroe, a Golden Lab-Siberian Husky mix hereby known as Mac, joined the Oberle household on March 13. Mac, a stray Marguerite rescued from Erie’s A.N.N.A. shelter, was apparently abandoned by its previous owners, although there is a chance Mac could have ran away.

Mac’s former owners did a nice job with him, other than either abandoning or losing this pleasant pouch. He is well-trained and responds eagerly to sit, stay and come commands.

I wish there was better news to report on our soon-to-be 9-year-old Westie’s reaction to her new doggie roommate. Furious and confused, Asta quickly barred Mac from her bedroom, which also happens to be our bedroom.

This is complicated.

Mac is sharing sleeping quarters with 7-year-old daughter Nicole, whose successful campaign for a new dog intensified when we lost our first Westie Fala back in August (Remembering Our Old Gal’s Life And Death

The irony here is Asta encountered a similar reaction from Fala when we brought her home back in June 2001. Poor Asta endured a nearly 6-month intimidation campaign by Fala that only ceased when Asta became big enough to convince her Westie nemesis that it was time to give up.

Mac, who is roughly 10 times bigger than Asta, isn’t quite sure what to make of this persistent little white dog. Asta charges and nips at Mac whenever he tries to get back in the house. Asta turns into Mr. Wolf when Mac tries to enter the master bedroom.

But Mac, despite a nasty scratch or two, is holding his temper, declining to use his overwhelming size to show Asta there is a new sheriff in the house.

So far …

Our capacity for stupidity seems endless.

It’s 10:30 Tuesday morning. On the way to the kitchen, I looked out at semi-frozen Lake Erie from the living room picture window. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There, maybe 200 yards out on the now thinly frozen Great Lake, was a cross-country skier and a dog.

The temperature was near 50 degrees.

At roughly 500 yards out — in clear view of the apparently clueless cross-country skier — was a burgeoning patch of blue, open lake. The ice covering Lake Erie was slowly, but clearly melting and breaking up.

Indeed, as the cross-country skier and dog moved across the lake, cracks on the ice covering Lake Erie were nearby and clearly visible.

“What in the hell are you doing,” I mumbled to myself.

Perhaps this cross-country skier simply wasn’t paying attention to the condition of the thinning Lake Erie ice.

Perhaps this cross-country skier didn’t realize it was 50 degrees with the sun blazing in rare, late winter glory.

But more likely, that crazy cross-country skier was out on dangerous Lake Erie ice simply because the temperature was so unseasonably warm and pleasant.

Now the fact remains most of us engage in some form of reckless behavior every day.

Some still drink and drive even though the consequences are obvious and the chances for calamity are real.

Some still smoke cigarettes even though anyone lighting up knows the potentially deadly ramifications involved in this unhealthy, disgusting habit.

What are we thinking?

Perhaps it’s something of a cliché to say life is all about choices, yours and mine. But trite or not, this simplistic cliché remains exasperatingly true.

It’s the reason I still occasionally drive and talk on my cell phone. I could — and obviously should — pull over on the roadside, or wait until I’m safely in a parking lot. What could possibly be so important to justify risking life and limbs? And it’s not just about my life or limbs. This behavior obviously endangers others. Many of us still decide to do it knowing the possible consequences.

I’m not alone. Today when you venture out on the roads,  count how many citizens are driving and talking on their cell phones. Take a look and see how many drivers you see fumbling with their Blackberries trying to answer a text message.

Who can honestly say this not dangerous?

Irresponsible, personal choices like these explain why even with decades-old seat-belt laws still on the books, many drivers and passengers still stubbornly refuse to buckle up to protect their lives.

For the sake of a little more comfort, many continue to place themselves needlessly at risk. No city or state laws are going change these terrible decisions. Frightening statistics proving the deadly folly in driving or riding in a vehicle without wearing a seat belt aren’t enough to stop such senseless behavior.

But a tragedy, an unfortunate, reckless tragedy, that hits so close to home, does have the emotional pop to alter behavior. And perhaps even retelling events surrounding such a life-altering tragedy can itself influence behavior change.

It’s worth a try.

I never used seat belts before March 1988. I was working as a sportswriter at the Peoria Journal Star covering the Missouri Valley Conference Basketball Tournament. Bradley University, led by a gifted All-American and future NBA star Hersey Hawkins, would capture the conference title and eventually play and lose to Auburn in an NCAA Tournament game in Atlanta.

All this seemed dramatically  important before March 4, 1988.

During that basketball tournament weekend in Peoria, Ill., the Journal Star’s award-winning daily metro columnist, Rick Baker, left the Hofbrau House tavern late on a Friday afternoon. Baker placed his 10-month-old son, Russell, in a child safety seat in the backseat, and headed for his Woodford County home across the Illinois River from Peoria.

Baker decided not to wear his seat belt. As Baker’s SUV crossed the bridge spanning the Illinois River, his vehicle became involved in a deadly three-car accident. Baker was ejected from his vehicle and killed instantly. Amid the wreckage sat his infant son, still secured safely in that child safety seat in the backseat.

There wasn’t a scratch on 10-month-old Russell Baker, who turns 22 this year.

I have used a seat belt every single day since that horrible March day. I buckle up in backseats, passenger seats and drivers seats.

I don’t think about Rick Baker’s tragic death very often. But I thought about him when I witnessed that knucklehead skiing on Lake Erie Tuesday as ice melted all around him. I thought about Baker later that day when I told 7-year-old daughter Nicole to please buckle up. Again!

I’m going to tell Nic about what happened to my newspaper colleague, Rick Baker, 22 years ago.

I’ll tell her about his wife and my former Journal Star colleague Terry Bibo-Baker, the mother of Baker’s fatherless son, who took over her husband’s newspaper column and continues to write it today.

I’ll tell her what a gifted columnist Baker was, and how tragic his death remains  all because he didn’t use a seat belt that March day.

I’ll tell Nic why I use a seat belt every time I get into a car. And whey her mother does the same. And why she must.

I’ll tell her about the story her mother wrote in the Peoria Journal Star the day after Rick Baker was killed because he didn’t use a seat belt. How her mother’s story detailed Baker’s rich life and what his award-winning column meant to the thousands of readers who read it three or four times a week.

So yes, we all do stupid things every single day.

But please — buckle up anyway.

‘Another Sack: Big Ben Courts Trouble And Finds It Once’

Speaking of bad choices:

That headline towered over an editorial in Tuesday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Ben Roethlisberger, who already owns two Super Bowl rings, apparently remains committed to making poor choices off the football field.

Whether the Steelers gifted quarterback escapes criminal charges this time hardly seems the point in an odd way.

The questions football fans are asking today focus on decision making:

What was a famous 28-year-old NFL quarterback doing hanging out in a college bar in Georgia?

What is a 28-year-old man doing messing with twentysomething college girls?

Roethlisberger is no stranger to trouble or bad choices. He is already involved in a messy civil suit in Reno, Nev., over an alleged sexual incident. Roethlisberger nearly killed himself several years ago in a nasty motorcycle accident because he wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Here is that PPG editorial. Sums up what Steelers Nation is experiencing:

When Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger does something stupid in the off-season, which the latest news suggests is becoming a habit, that knife plunges straight into the heart of the region. Before Friday, the fans had already felt the tip of that blade too many times before.

In June 2006, the quarterback almost killed himself on Second Avenue near the 10th Street Bridge in a motorcycle accident while riding without a helmet.

Last year, a 31-year-old resort hostess employed by Harrah’s Lake Tahoe alleged in a civil suit that Ben Roethlisberger had raped her in his hotel room while he was attending a charity golf event in July 2008. The woman never went to police and her claim, still in the courts, may turn out to be frivolous. At the very least, though, it seems Ben Roethlisberger got himself into a situation that someone in his position should have known to avoid.

That lesson apparently was not learned. Now, less than a year after the Nevada trouble became public, a woman has come forward to say she was sexually assaulted by the Steelers’ quarterback – only this time the accuser, a 20-year-old college student, went to the police.

For the moment, he has not been arrested or charged but the police in Milledgeville, Ga., not far from the quarterback’s summer vacation home, have undertaken an investigation – and he has responded by hiring a high-powered team of Atlanta criminal defense attorneys.

Because mistaken identification seems unlikely in this case – whatever else he is, Big Ben is not easily confused with someone else – only two possible scenarios seem to present themselves. The quarterback did something bad or the woman made a false charge for whatever reason.

But even with the presumption of innocence, it is hard to be tolerant of the apparent fact that he put himself into another position where trouble was a potential member of his party. What is a 28-year-old superstar doing cruising the bars in a college town late at night? With no thought for himself or his fans, this sack is on him.

Is Anybody Really Listening To Liz Cheney? Anyone, Please?

Don’t want to waste much time on Liz Cheney, the former low-level Bush State Department official,  now focusing her professional life on the arduous task of rehabilitating her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, while defending fun stuff like torture.

After Liz Cheney all but accused nine Obama Justice Department lawyers of treason for representing alleged terrorism suspects, legions of high-level attorneys on the right and left have rushed to their defense. Lawyers including former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr!

Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson does yeoman work explaining democracy’s messy facts to Liz Cheney (Malign lies).

A taste:

A group that Liz Cheney co-chairs, called Keep America Safe, has spent the past two weeks scurrilously attacking the Justice Department officials because they “represented or advocated for terrorist detainees” before joining the administration. In other words, they did what lawyers are supposed to do in this country: ensure that even the most unpopular defendants have adequate legal representation and that the government obeys the law.

Liz Cheney is not ignorant, and neither are the other co-chairs of her group, advocate Debra Burlingame and pundit William Kristol, who writes a monthly column for The Post. Presumably they know that “the American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams’ representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre” – in other words, older than the nation itself.

That quote is from a letter by a group of conservative lawyers — including several former high-ranking officials of the Bush-Cheney administration, legal scholars who have supported draconian detention and interrogation policies, and even Kenneth W. Starr – that blasts the “shameful series of attacks” in which Liz Cheney has been the principal mouthpiece. Among the signers are Larry Thompson, who was deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft; Peter Keisler, who was acting attorney general for a time during George W. Bush’s second term; and Bradford Berenson, who was an associate White House counsel during Bush’s first term.

Rick Santorum’s Real, Laughable Presidential Illusions

I realize every U.S. Senator believes they have a God-given right to become a presidential candidate. If Ralph Nader can do it, why not one more esteemed United States senator?

So in this historic Senate context, does former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum’s recent trip to the presidential caucus state of Iowa, and his upcoming trek to the first presidential primary state of New Hampshire, really seem that preposterous?

Well, yeah.

For starters, the vast majority of Americans have no idea who Rick Santorum is: No clue. And note again that the Americans who know Santorum best — that is, Pennsylvanians who elected him to the Senate in 1994 and 2000  — unequivocally, and with a certain amount of glee, showed Santorum the door in 2006 while rewarding Bob Casey with an 18-point landslide Senate victory.

Go ahead – find me a credible presidential candidate with that kind of humiliating voter rejection on it.

But for more kicks, take a look at a story detailing how some Republicans are apparently questioning Santorum’s commitment to the GOP’s rigid anti-abortion litmus test (Santorum fights back in Iowa)

Postscript

I lead a tense debate during an Erie Times-News Editorial Board endorsement meeting in early October 2006. The question on the table: Should the Erie Times-News endorse Santorum or Casey.

After going around the room among the eight members, the board quickly became locked in a four-member tie.

I desperately tried to point out that in Santorum’s 12 years in office, our editorial pages remained a ruthless critic of the senator’s policies and undisciplined behavior. I explained that if we did endorse Santorum, the Erie Times-News risked becoming a laughingstock as one of the few Pennsylvania newspapers endorsing Santorum.

One board member actually argued that we should endorse Santorum because he was going to win (suppressed laughter in room), and because Santorum was a better candidate than Casey (more suppressed laughter), who would help keep America safer (even more suppressed laughter) than Casey.

This Editorial Board member, while urging the rest of us to come to our senses and vote for Santorum (much headshaking), concluded his pitch by saying keep this in mind:

Santorum makes regular morning appearances on the Imus show (audible groans here). This board member wasn’t joking.

So the Erie Times-News stumbled forward and endorsed Santorum. Casey won the election (59 percent to 41 percent), out-polling Santorum 2,392,984 to 1,684,778 votes.

I’m sure Don Imus remains very proud.

Before transferring my journalism flag to the entertainment and opinion pages, I did my newspapering as a sportswriter for the Peoria Journal Star. While I loved the actual work, I came to detest the hours. And the nights. And the weekend assignments. And the fast food.

And come to think of it, I didn’t much care for the air travel, or dealing with cranky coaches, or early Saturday evening deadlines or moody athletes.

So as I read Erie Times-News sports columnist John Dudley’s lengthy Sunday column  (www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010302289912) aggressively cracking on Indianapolis Colts star safety and former Cathedral Prep football hero Bob Sanders’ irritable disposition, I recognized the impatience driving those strong words.

Here is a taste from Dudley’s column. This is not for the faint of heart.

Yeah, I know this will sound like sour grapes from scorned media types. But I don’t need Bob Sanders to like me. I don’t even need him to know my name. I just need him to answer my questions – or not – without throwing a tantrum.

Sanders could have politely declined to say how much it cost him to put computers and printers in technology labs at Wilson Middle School and McKinley Elementary.

Instead he had his flak fetch a folder and look it up, and, with a glare, he confirmed the figure was about $20,000.

Then he turned angry, demanding to know why we needed that information.

Gee, Bob, I don’t know. Maybe because we are in the information business?

By the time he was done, Sanders had told me to never write about his contract again ($37.5 million over five years).

He said he is sick of reading about how often he is hurt. (He has played in 41 of a possible 80 regular-season games during his NFL career.)

That, as Jim Rome might say, is a big-time smack down.

Now I worked with Dudley at the Erie Times-News for years. As Erie Times-News readers have undoubtedly noticed, John has a caustic sense of humor that could be easily mistaken for an affable grumpiness. I like him.

John is also a gifted sports columnist who also happens to write the best Good Morning columns at the paper (these are not easy to do). While we were mostly the “Hi, how are you doing” kind of work colleagues, we did have one memorable e-mail exchange back in 2006.

Dudley, like numerous sports columnists that summer, including the New York Daily News’ mega-media-star Mike Lupica, wrote pre-U.S. Open columns on Phil Mickelson’s opportunity not only to win his third straight major, but to actually take the improbable step toward succeeding Tiger Woods as the world’s top golfer with his own “Tigerslam” (four straight non-calendar year majors that Woods achieved in 2000-01).

My intention here isn’t to call out Dudley or Lupica for getting way ahead of golf reality. Who knew Mickelson would give away that U.S. Open by slopping around Winged Foot’s final hole? (Phil’s Phailure will hurt for a while )

The context here requires refreshing. Recall that Woods lost to Mickelson in a frantic final Sunday at the Masters back in April 2006 just before the death of his father. That came after Lefty won the PGA Championship at Baltusrol the previous August. Besides the fact that Woods had won 10 of his 14 professional majors at this point compared to Mickelson’s 3, it struck me that Dudley, Lupica and scores of writers were also forgetting Woods won the Masters and British Open in 2005.

So as a former golf scribe myself, I e-mailed notes to both Dudley and Lupica, pointing out why Mickelson simply wasn’t on the same golf page as Woods no matter what happened at Winged Foot.

Postscript: By the way, Geoff Ogilvy won the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot after Mickelson blew that one-stroke lead with his infamously unforgivable double bogey at 18. Woods missed the U.S. Open cut in his first tournament since the Masters and his father’s death. Woods then won the British Open and PGA Championship later that summer.

Dudley responded with a pleasant, well-argued e-mail that basically pointed out that he didn’t mean to suggest Mickelson was as good as Woods (at least not yet). Instead, Dudley wrote that he simply wanted to challenge the notion that Woods intimidated every player by merely teeing up at the first hole. That Mickelson wasn’t one of those lame guys who crumbled before the great Tiger Woods. Point taken.

Now forgive me for taking the long road to the point, but here it is: I never heard from Lupica, which surprised me. Most newspaper types might be slow to respond to argumentative readers looking for a fight, but most writers will tap out a response to folks in the business. Folks who take the time to type out an e-mail. For instance, the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan and the late, sorely missed David Halberstam cheerfully answered e-mails I sent to them.

That’s called professional courtesy. The point here being Dudley is a pro.

So no, I have no real beef with Dudley’s column on Sanders. I don’t know the guy and certainly have never worked with him. Dudley does. While reading the column, it did occur to me that part of Sanders’ unusual exasperation with his lucrative contract remaining so very public stems from simple frustration. I’m betting he gets hit up constantly for “loans” and handouts. But even if this is true, that certainly isn’t Dudley’s problem.

My only quibble with the column is timing. Pounding on Sanders the same weekend the guy is in town to deliver free computers and printers opened up Dudley and the Erie Times-News to nitpicking critics who welcome the opportunity to correctly point out nobody cares if Sanders isn’t nice to sportswriters. And as you read before, Dudley made that point himself.

I do wonder if somebody thought to ask whether there was a more appropriate time to run that Sanders column. Did somebody wonder out loud if cracking on a local hero in town doing good deeds seemed sort of mean-spirited?

In any case, Dudley is a big boy, who understands that taking heat comes with any column gig. And to be fair, all that heat would come if the Sanders column ran next week or the week after.

Whether you think Dudley and the Erie Times-News were off base or not, I just want to make it clear that Dudley is very good at what he does. Keep in mind that an honest disagreement with Dudley for calling out Bob Sanders doesn’t change that fact that this guy writes a helluva a sports column four days a week.

You ought to try it. From personal experience I’m telling you it ain’t easy.

Endless Health-Care Reform Debate Nears End Game

Even as congressional Republicans scramble for even more creative ways to frighten House and Senate Democrats into figuring out a way not to pass a comprehensive health-care bill and get it to President Obama’s desk later this month, a serious, doable plan is finally on the table.

Washington Monthly’s must read “Political Animal” by Steve Benen details how the Democrats’ health-care reform endgame materialized:

Sen. Tom Harkin told POLITICO that Senate Democratic leaders have decided to go the reconciliation route. The House, he said, will first pass the Senate bill after Senate leaders demonstrate to House leaders that they have the votes to pass reconciliation in the Senate. Harkin made the comments after a meeting in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office including Harkin and Sens. Baucus, Dodd, Durbin, Schumer and Murray.

By agreeing to pursue reconciliation, the Senate leadership almost certainly believes it will have the 51 votes needed to approve the budget fix. This makes sense – even center-right Dems have been coming around on this procedural question in recent weeks, frustrated by Republican obstinacy.

I should emphasize, for any lawmakers or reporters who may be reading, that by agreeing to the majority-rule route, Dems aren’t talking about passing health care reform through reconciliation. Health care reform was already approved by the Senate in December, and it passed 60 to 39 through the regular ol’ legislative process. No tricks, no abuses, nothing unusual at all.

Rather, reconciliation will now be used – if all goes according to plan – to approve a modest budget fix that will improve the final reform bill.

In terms of institutional wrangling, Harkin’s green light for reconciliation should help encourage House Dems to go first, as some House leaders seem prepared to do

Now health-care reform is obviously hard work and complicated politics. If health-care reform were easy, another Congress and another president would have long ago provided insurance for most Americans, barred insurance companies from not paying health-care bills when you get sick and made darn sure insurance companies couldn’t refuse to provide insurance due to pre-existing conditions.

But no previous Congress or previous president managed to get two comprehensive health-care reform bills passed in the House and Senate.

After President Obama backed the tactics spelled out by Benen, House and Senate Democrats will have to provide all the hard votes while clueless Republicans sit it out on the sidelines.

I’m not feeling sorry for these under-the-gun Dems. Hell, aren’t Democrats in Washington to make hard votes and hard choices. Surely they’re not hanging out in the nation’s capital because Washington is a swell place for a second home.

So I wish jittery Democrats would recall President Kennedy’s words way back on Sept. 12, 1962, in his legendary speech at Rice University Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

OK, maybe this isn’t the best analogy, but you see the point? Did Democrats go to Congress to solve hard problems and make hard vote? Or did they go there to fret over re-election?

You Know You Want It: Even More Tiger Woods …

Doug Ferguson is the tireless Associated Press sportswriter who chronicles golf news from virtually every PGA Tour stop every single week. Notice those PGA Tour tournament briefs you see in the Erie Times-News Wednesdays through Mondays? They come from Ferguson’s keyboard.

So because Ferguson covers the PGA Tour every week, he probably knows Tiger Woods better than any journalist. That’s why it might matter when Ferguson reports that Woods is back home from rehab and a family counseling session in Arizona (Tiger home from counseling).

Home is Orlando, Fla., at Woods’ gated Isleworth community. According to Ferguson, Woods is hitting golf balls at Isleworth and taking the steps toward getting into something resembling a golf routine. And an interesting note here: Wife Elin was watching as Woods did his work on the range.

Meanwhile, Woods’ buddy, Isleworth neighbor and fellow PGA Tour pro Charles Howell, ran into Woods on the Isleworth range. Here is what the New York Times Larry Dorman reported:

“(Woods) He looked real good and seemed fine. He seemed to be in good spirits. We spent quite a while talking. He looked like he always has. And he seemed like he was hitting it the same as ever. It was all good.”

I know this is all probably a reach. But I just want the guy back on the golf course. I suspect so does Elin Woods.

Pennsylvania’s Gambling Push Finds No Fans At The Inquirer

While serving as the Erie Times-News Editorial Page Editor, the newspaper’s Editorial Board remained consistently supportive toward both slots gambling and full-blown casino table gaming. Our position at the time, and as far as I can tell the paper’s position now, goes something like this: The Erie region isn’t in any position to quibble over an industry that creates thousands of jobs while producing millions of dollars in private and government investments in the region.

In other words, the Erie region can’t afford any weepy concerns over the morality of legalized gambling.

So a very different regional perspective on gaming in the commonwealth is revealing. The Philadelphia Inquirer hates legalized gambling. In a blistering editorial Tuesday (Editorial: Leaving Las Vegas) on a proposed Philadelphia casino development pitched by Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, the Inquirer comes out guns a blazin’.

A taste:

Wynn is scheduled to appear before the state Gaming Control Board tomorrow to outline his plans to build and operate Foxwoods. Gamblers expecting a casino remotely like the $1.6 billion Bellagio resort that Wynn built in Las Vegas will be sorely disappointed.

Wynn’s plan calls for a low-budget casino more fitting to its lousy waterfront location in South Philadelphia, not far from a Wal-Mart.

Gone are the original plans for a hotel that could at least attract gamblers from out of town to help bolster the city’s tourist trade. Instead, the latest Foxwoods incarnation will just be acres of slot machines and scores of table games aimed at the locals living paycheck to paycheck or on fixed incomes.

Wynn made some goofy comments last week about building a “dandy” casino for all the area Italians, Jews, and other ethnic groups that like to play craps and gamble. For good measure, Wynn he said he plans to include a Vietnamese restaurant for Asians who live in the area. Nothing like a politically correct casino.

The place sounds so cheesy it’s not even clear that Wynn will put his full name on the joint. Instead, he is considering putting just his initials on the casino.

This proves again that the only difference between Erie and Philadelphia isn’t just that big old Great Lake in my backyard.

One more sad dog tale …

Momentum for adding a second dog to our family remains in a temporary holding pattern. Daughter Nicole has pleaded, begged and lobbied for another pouch for years. That campaign intensified in August after the unexpectedly crushing loss of our brave West Highland White Terrier, Fala.

Nicole’s mother remains sympathetic to Nic’s crusade for a second dog. Marguerite’s motherly instincts kick in here. She rightly believes Asta — our second and not so brave Westie — needs a companion canine to hang around the house.

By contrast, I strongly resisted adding a third dog while Fala proudly roamed the grounds. I contended, with some justification I think, that our house really couldn’t handle a third four-legged mammal.

Now, with Fala gone and Asta firmly entrenched in the rank of senior-citizen-dog-status, Nic isn’t buying “the house is too small argument.”

And although I realize I will ultimately lose this unwinnable family battle, the truth is I’m simply not ready to replace Fala. I’m still recovering from that brutal day in August when we lost our old girl.

Fala was our cancer dog. Home from New York for a Christmas break after a first round of chemotherapy back in 1997, we met Sunday golfing buddy Ed Mead’s cheerful Westie during a brief visit. After we left, I innocently mentioned to Marguerite that if we ever decided to add a pouch to the family unit, a lively Westie might be the appropriate breed.

So we returned to our old Lake Shore house that May. On June 10, we brought home a tiny Westie puppy that I insisted on naming Fala after President Franklin Roosevelt’s famously temperamental Scottish Terrier.

We were repeatedly told by Fala’s breeder that Westies were notoriously strong-willed breed. You must be tough with her, the breeder warned. “Don’t let her push you around or that Westie will rule your house.”

Within days, it became clear enough who would prevail in this battle of wills. It wasn’t the human masters. Fala’s zest for mischief and her unexpected skill for the hunt charmed us into allowing our bossy Westie to assume a household leadership role, briefly at the Lake Shore house, and ultimately, at our new, two-acre Fairview spread on a sagging bluff overlooking Lake Erie.

I think Fala loved the new place even more than we did. While we looked on in horror, our little puppy quickly figured out she could navigate her way down the bluff to our rocky beach, often loaded with the rotting, dead fish Fala loved to roll in.

While terriers are supposed to focus on digging up critters living underground, Fala used hunting lessons from a Lake Shore neighbor’s old cat to bring home quarry ranging from hapless squirrels, unfortunate baby bunnies or out-gunned mice. And when Fala wasn’t busy treeing alarmed turkeys and keeping the property free from marauding deer herds, she formed a complicated relationship with our neighbor’s Golden Retriever Bridget (I remember shuddering while these two crazy dogs ran fearlessly out on treacherous Lake Erie snow dunes).

Soon enough, Marguerite decided Fala needed a Westie companion for company during workdays. Into our world in June 2001, the howling puppy Asta, named after the Wire-Haired Fox Terrier from the classic “The Thin Man” movie series.

After initial hostilities between the two stubborn Westies mostly ceased, the Fala-Asta show opened in the Colony Association. Asta began life as a relentless roamer, leading Fala on numerous unauthorized adventures, bringing phone calls from neighboring Wolf Road homeowners and Lake Shore residents, asking if two white dogs with our phone number on their tags were ours. After two years of these fetching expeditions, Asta finally settled down and learned to be a homebody.

Life with these two canine characters went along happily until we noticed Fala slowing down two summers ago. The vet said arthritis would halt her impressive jumping exploits, forcing her to settle down a bit in her senior years.

By last summer, a successful trip to the Animal Ark Animal Hospital in June stirred hope that Fala could give us a few more years. By August, a nasty, expanding growth in her stomach rocked our household.

A confession: I still mist up six months later when I think about that terrible August day. The growth (cancer no doubt) apparently pushed into Fala’s scent glands, creating a nasty smell even repeated showers couldn’t subdue. A call to the Animal Ark hinted at a possible fix.

The day before I took her in to the Animal Ark, Fala enjoyed a great day. She chased squirrels. She sat for hours in her favorite spot in the bushes next to our garage, happily soaking in the rays. She barked at a visiting eagle standing guard in our tree overlooking the lake

But the next morning, it became clear our girl knew something was up. When we arrived at Animal Ark, Fala refused to go into the building. Interesting. Back in June, Fala didn’t offer any resistance while Asta attempted several fruitless escapes.

This time, though, Fala seemed to sense this vet trip was different. Marguerite arrived later in the morning and we went into the examining room. Fala licked the nurse who weighed her. Fala calmed down after Marguerite put the muzzle on her.

The vet came in, quickly noticed the growth in Fala’s stomach and asked about her appetite. We both told him that she was eating and drinking normally. But then, he stunned us with a painfully quick diagnosis that spelled the end for our old girl.

“What do you want to do,” the vet asked.

Stunned, Marguerite and I huddled. We were both choking up, not really believing this was happening. I couldn’t talk. Marguerite told the vet that yes, there was only one choice here.

I wanted to grab Fala and get the hell out of there. I tried to tell Marguerite that we had to get Fala home, at least for a couple of weeks, or at least for the weekend.

But I couldn’t talk.

We petted and hugged our gal. Fala licked Marguerite’s hand and face one last time. Then, it was over.

A half hour later, I texted a message to Marguerite: “Did we let our gal down?”

Marguerite texted back: “No we didn’t let our gal down. We made a decision she couldn’t make. Fala was suffering.”

I knew this was true then. I know it’s true now. But I still wish we would have grabbed Fala and taken her home.

Didn’t our old gal deserve that?

I guess what it really comes back to is I never expected to feel this guilty.

Why Wouldn’t We Want To Insure 30 million Americans?

Well — why not?

There are smarter citizens among us who can better explain why America desperately needs health-care reform. The point I always come back to — a point I don’t see enough pundits or political reporters making – is 53 percent of the American people voted for health-care reform on Nov. 4, 2008, when they voted for Barack Obama.

That is 66,862,309 Americans who voted for Obama and health-care reform

Now one of those smarter citizens is Washington Post Economic and Domestic Policy blogger Ezra Klein. Heading into Thursday’s staged health-care reform summit between President Obama and congressional Republican and Democratic leaders, Klein explains there really is no longer any time for a credible bipartisan compromise (Ezra explained).

I like this take:

Congress has a few, final months before everyone scurries home to campaign for 2010. And they want to spend those months forcing Republicans to take difficult votes on jobs legislation, not arguing over whether Medicaid is solvent enough for a major expansion.

More importantly, there’s no political upside in starting over. The right will still cry “death panels!” and let loose the dogs of tea, and the left will savage them for failing to pass health-care reform despite controlling the second-largest congressional majority since the 70s. There’s a policy argument here in that a fallback plan will cover more people than no plan will cover, but if covering people is what the Democrats want to do, they’ll pass the comprehensive plan, which both covers more people and actually gives them a major accomplishment.

At this point, health-care reform either passes or it dies. Democrats are all in on this one. They know it, Republicans know it, and maybe more importantly, they know the Republicans know it. Letting health-care reform fail is indistinguishable from conceding the 2010 election. There’s no real fallback plan. If Democrats fall back, they fall.

Aside: My jaw-dropping experience with America’s broken health-care system came in the summer of 1997. The health-insurance company for Times Publishing Company employees refused to pay for $7,000 of the $10,000 surgeon’s bill covering a nearly 9-hour operation. The nearly 9-hour operation that removed a grapefruit sized tumor, saved my right leg and my life.

Get this: The insurance company actually refused to pay our surgeon for actually removing the cancerous tumor threatening my leg and my life.

The reason: The tumor removal didn’t meet industry standards for treating my particular strand of bone cancer. In other words, health-care industry bean counters figured out a way not to pay my surgeon to save $7,000.

I wish I was kidding.

Yes And Sorry:  One More Tiger Woods Take

Tiger Woods looked mortified (Tiger Woods’ full apology).

Tiger Woods looked like a shattered husband and son, telling his wife and mother that he was so terribly sorry for his unacceptable and inexcusable behavior.

Tiger Woods looked at the camera on Feb. 19, and told the world — you, me, millions of Americans and television witnesses throughout the world – that he accepted responsibility for acting like a jackass.

Yet incredibly, reaction to Woods’ 14-minute confessional remains mixed.

Woods was too robotic. Hello. He is — pay attention — a golfer, not an actor.

Woods’ performance was too rehearsed. What did critics prefer? A rambling, teary-eyed Oprah special.

I’d suggest Woods’ blood-thirsty critics imagine walking into a room full of friends, work associates, and for God sakes, their mothers, and try pulling off what Woods did. Think about — really think about what Woods did that day.

Miami Herald sports columnist/blogger Greg Cote got it exactly right (Miami Herald’s Cote praises Tiger, blasts media), asserting that nothing Woods could say or do would ever satisfy these critics. Some strong points here by Cote:

Woods would have been lauded had he presented the very same message in a traditional news conference, saying the same things, but interrupted. Woods also would have been hailed had the same words verbatim been met by the nodding, doe-gaze of Oprah Winfrey or been uttered under the august umbrella of “60 Minutes.”

Instead, Tiger’s solo confessional was met with derision and scorn because he dared to present what he needed to say on his terms. This was no news conference, but it was not merely a perfunctory statement, either. It was honesty we have never heard from so prominent an athlete. It was a very private man forcing himself to be very public about something very embarrassing.

I give Woods credit and do not think doubt should be cast on his message by any of the peripheral nonsense the critics focus on. The hand-picked audience, the prepared notes, the hokey blue curtain.

You can believe sex addiction is more excuse than illness. You can think Tiger a dirtbag for the way he put himself ahead of his family and was two-faced to fans. You can wonder if his reference to Buddhism on Friday was just a convenience.

Tullio Arena Desperately Needs That $42 Million Refurbishing

The Kerns and Oberles went to Disney’s “Finding Nemo” ice show Sunday at Tullio Arena. The ice show’s staging and performances were quite good. Our girls loved the show. But Disney’s extortion-like prices on souvenirs and refreshments bordered on the obscene.

For instance – $12 Nemo snow cones!

Now the first thing you notice at Tullio Arena is, well frankly, the grime. The place is just old and dirty.

And the seats!

I’m just a tad under 6-foot tall, but I nearly swallowed my knee trying to sit down. When Scott arrived a bit late with his two daughters, I heard a gasp when he sat down. Scott is a lanky 6-foot-3. He looked like a tall guy in a clown car sitting in those cramped arena seats.

So it came as a some relief to see Kevin Flowers’ follow on the Tullio lobby fire in Wednesday’s Erie Times-News (Tullio fire will not derail hockey game or long-term plans.

Construction on the $42 million Civic Center renovation project is scheduled to start this spring or summer, according to Flowers’ story. The project to restore one of the Erie region’s most important regional assets should be completed by 2012. As Flowers reported, “the renovations seek to create a multiuse entertainment complex, expand and improve interior space and create a parklike atmosphere outside.”

And please – don’t forget those new arena seats.

Phil English Checks In With A Correction

Former 3rd District Erie Congressman Phil English checked in and pointed out an error in last week’s blog (“Small World Moment Leads to Ray LaHood”).

English pointed out is that he did indeed proudly sign Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America in 1994.

Mea Culpa.

I still remember that sickening panic 21 years ago when my passport went missing. The Bradley University men’s basketball team was leaving for Tokyo to play in a college basketball tournament in 10 days. Repeated, methodical, desperate searches throughout our Peoria townhouse failed to uncover that little blue passport with the Japanese visa stamped inside.

Without that passport, I couldn’t accompany the university’s traveling party on the long journey to the Japanese capital in December 1988. While this wouldn’t have signaled the end of the world, such a circumstance was problematic for career growth.

You have to understand that in Peoria, Ill., a midsized, central Illinois city located on the Illinois River, interest in Bradley University basketball is rivaled only by the fortunes of Caterpillar Inc. And despite the fact that this Fortune 500 Company is headquartered in Peoria, and still employs 16,000 people throughout central Illinois, it remains a close race between Bradley basketball and the giant earthmoving manufacturer over who pushes the needle the most in central Illinois.

So considering my primary job at the Journal Star required chronicling every detail surrounding this basketball team, missing this trip to Tokyo wasn’t an acceptable option.

But the stars were properly aligned this time. In 1988, Peoria’s congressman was a pleasant man named Bob Michel, a moderate Republican who also happened to be the sitting U.S. House Minority Leader. Michel’s Chief of Staff was a man named Ray LaHood, who is now serving in President Obama’s cabinet as Secretary of Transportation.

The woman in Rep. Michael’s office that December day couldn’t have been more reassuring. It seems there was an important staffer in Michel’s Washington office who personally supervised these frequent passport mishaps.

That important staffer was LaHood, who called me at the Journal Star newsroom three days later. A new temporary passport would be there in a few days, LaHood happily reported.

Now it didn’t hurt my cause that both Michel and LaHood are proud Bradley graduates, who remain living metaphors for that institution’s unique relationship with Peoria. But as I look back on that brief phone conversation with LaHood 21 years ago, one thought stands out: The world really is a pretty small place.

LaHood’s life-altering political journey remained six years away in 1988. In 1994, Michel, an engaging World War II hero universally admired for his warm, common touch, was horrified by the fire-breathing  House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich’s hyper-aggressive partisanship. Recall that Gingrich, with Michel staying on the sidelines, guided the Republicans’ ultimately successful campaign to win the House in 1994.

Michel, who never served in a House majority, announced earlier that year he would retire from the House after 39 years in the body. LaHood, a career congressional staffer, returned to central Illinois, ran for Michel’s Peoria seat and won it easily in the Republican’s historic 1994 election windfall.

It turned out LaHood was an old-fashioned American politician.  Old-fashioned in the sense that LaHood easily made friends on both sides of the aisle and get this – actually enjoys working with both Republicans and Democrats. Yes, that does sound strangely like all that bipartisan stuff we’re reading about lately.

LaHood didn’t, and doesn’t, view governing and government as some great ideological crusade between liberals and conservatives. No, LaHood — like former moderate Erie Congressman Tom Ridge and Michel – served in the House with a quaint idea that voters elected them to make tough decisions and cast difficult votes with their best interests at heart.

LaHood didn’t win Michel’s seat to score points for Gingrich’s grand ideological vision. Indeed, LaHood was one of only three Republican House candidates who did not sign Gingrich’s Contract With America in 1994. LaHood also became a member of the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership. In today’s Republican Party, this moderation stuff makes LaHood seem like an unrecognizable alien.

The picture I’m drawing here doesn’t look familiar these days after Indiana’s two-term U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh unexpectedly decided to retire, citing the Senate’s usual institutional dysfunction and recent descent into nasty partisanship.

Now I’m not particularly sympathetic to Bayh’s whiny exit. The Senate was largely dysfunctional when Bayh’s legendary father served there. While it’s true obnoxious Senate Republicans are abusing antiquated filibuster rules in ways that no previous minority ever did, the solution for Bayh and whimpering Senate Democrats isn’t running away and retiring (exit speech). Democrats could try fighting back and figuring how to reform cloture rules.

But what interests me here is the regrettably unusual example LaHood continues to set in Washington. LaHood just doesn’t understand why elected public servants can’t serve and legislate with the occasional smile and a friendly hand held out in a bipartisan, professional manner.

Obama, whose own bipartisan inclinations became well known in his brief time in the U.S. Senate, came to know LaHood when both served in Illinois’ congressional delegation. What Sen. Obama undoubtedly noticed is the only thing that really interests LaHood is results. Practical, pragmatic achievements that help Americans confront their daily problems. Obama also noted LaHood’s history of working with Democrats, and that the Peoria congressman founded a series of congressional retreat events designed to create a new collegiality in the House between the two parties. That nobody really took these retreats seriously says more about LaHood than his cranky House colleagues.

LaHood isn’t a polished, articulate politician like his Democratic presidential boss. Back on Feb. 3, LaHood earned some well-deserved Obama wrath after he told a congressional committee that the best thing Toyota car owners could do after the company’s 2.3 million sudden acceleration recall was “stop driving” their cars.

I’d wager Obama was laughing even as his staff took LaHood to the woodshed. LaHood was just saying out-loud what most Americans were thinking themselves about the Toyota disaster.

What’s wrong with Washington isn’t the dysfunction Evan Bayh bellyached about the other day. Washington and Congress just need more politely professional men and women like Ray LaHood doing the people’s bidding. Bidding that doesn’t always require yelling, accusations and scoring partisan points.

LaHood, who will tell you he is no transportation expert as Transportation Secretary, serves at the president’s pleasure for that very reason. If Obama wants an administration that reaches out with a bipartisan hand, he needs a bipartisan or two in his cabinet. Like Ray LaHood.

Why Didn’t Evan Bayh Just Stay And Fight It Out?

Whiny senators have come and gone ever since the Republic’s founding, many muttering like Evan Bayh about how long it takes to get even the basic stuff done in the Senate.

While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, his GOP cronies and independent know-it-all Joe Liebermann have plenty to answer for with their damaging filibuster obstruction since Obama took office in January 2009, Indiana’s junior Democratic senator didn’t have to take his ball and run home. On Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish blog, James Fallows offers an excellent alternative for Bayh and other like-minded Democrats to consider (What Does He Have To Lose?).

Fallow also writes this about Bayh:

“If he really cared about his Indiana constituents and their problems through that time, great! But if so, how can he walk away with this kind of careless disregard about whether, in the style of his departure, he is smashing up things that had said were important to him. If, on the other hand, these issues and people never really mattered that much, and public life had been a kind of popularity contest – well, that may be true of a lot of politicians, but they don’t like to reveal it quite this bluntly.”

Aside: Bayh’s father Birch was a legendary Senate liberal who served three terms as Indiana U.S. Senator before losing to Dan Quayle in the 1980 Republican Reagan landslide. Bayh was influential in the passing of Title IX to the Higher Education Act, guaranteeing women equal opportunities in sports and academics in public education. Bayh was the also the primary Senate force behind two landmark constitutional amendments:

The 25th Amendment established news rules for presidential succession and disability.

The 26th Amendment established the new minimum voting age of 18.

This is why nobody is saying “like father, like son” about Evan Bayh.

What Tiger Woods Better Say And It’s Not ‘I’m So Sorry’

From Hall of Famer Tom Watson to all the usual talking head suspects, advice for Tiger Woods is readily available in the unlikely event the world’s top golfer elects to listen.

I don’t particularly care if Woods offers some boiler plate apology Friday morning in the clubhouse at the Tournament Players Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. The only person who deserves that apology is still Elin Woods.

Here are words I desperately want Woods to utter Friday:

“I will return to the PGA Tour next month at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.”

Before Team Woods announced that their man would be making a public statement Friday, columnist Gene Wojciechowski filed an interesting column on www.ESPN.com weighing all the various possibilities for the World’s No. 1 golfer’s return to the PGA Tour.

Especially interesting are Wojciechowski’s thoughts on Watson’s surprisingly churlish comments on Woods.

“Woods’ 2009 season didn’t start until late February, so his absence this time of the year isn’t unprecedented. But the circumstances are. A reconstructed knee dictated his schedule last season. A personal life in chaos dictates it this time. Meanwhile, a growing conga line of players wonders out loud why Woods hasn’t spoken publicly about his situation. Tom Watson, whom I admire and respect, went so far to say recently that Woods must ‘take ownership of what he’s done. He must get his personal life in order.’ This from the same Watson who fiercely protects his own privacy, who has dealt with the heartache of divorce, and who successfully battled alcohol-related demons. Watson, more than anyone, should know that taking ownership of your personal life is exactly that – personal. Come to think of it, I don’t recall him issuing any weekly updates during his marital difficulties.”

What Woods better not say Friday is “I don’t know when I’m going to play golf again.” Nobody wants to hear that.

‘These Aren’t The Droids You’re Looking For’

I missed seeing the original “Star Wars” back in 1977. If it wasn’t sports or newspapers, I didn’t care. But a friend talked me into seeing “The Empire Strikes Back” three years later.

Wham, bam! I was hooked like a Lake Michigan Coho.

So we experienced a rite of passage moment over the Presidents Day weekend. After 7-year-old daughter Nicole brought home several “Star Wars” books from the library, we jointly decided it was time for her to watch the movies.

After lunch Friday — no classes in the Fairview School District because, I guess, Presidents Day was Monday! – Nic screened “Star Wars.” After I confirmed that the white-clad Storm Troopers were actually the bad guys, and answered inquiries on what happened to Luke Skywalker’s parents, Nic settled back and loved every second. I was silently thrilled.

Nic finished “The Empire Strikes Back” by 5 p.m. that Friday, armed with questions about Yoda’s mysterious hint that there was another desperate hope for the out-gunned rebel alliance besides Luke (twin sister Princess Leia), and whether or not Darth Vader was somehow related to Luke (yes, dear old dad). Then after gymnastics Saturday, Nic watched “Return of the Jedi” with rave reviews afterwards.

George Lucas didn’t make it easy for 7-year-olds. I tried to explain why Lucas identified those first three “Star Wars” as Episodes IV, V and VI. And I tried to prepare her by explaining the three newest “Star Wars” movie installments, while entertaining, weren’t in the same league as the original three. I also took a crack at explaining why these were Episodes I, II, and III, and not VLL, VIII, and IX.

Nic didn’t care. Like her Dad back in the summer of 1980, Nic’s hooked on “Star Wars” just like that Lake Michigan Coho.

* Read film critic Roger Ebert’s “Star Wars” review (Star Wars), first published on Jan. 1, 1977.

Is There Really A Runway Extension In Erie’s Future?

The Erie Times-News headline (“Erie airport project clears hurdle”) jumpstarted the memory bank. The first editorial I wrote for the Times on the Erie International Airport runway extension project was published back in 1998. The final runway extension edit I wrote ran in 2008. Since then, Times-News Public Editor Liz Allen and editorial writer Pat Cuneo have composed several editorials, stating the same familiar objectives and the same old message: Extending Erie International Airport’s runway is the most crucial project confronting the Erie region (I’d say a community college was a real close second).

The need for the runway extension is real and so are the stakes for the region. But cynical readers, realizing how long and frustrating this project remains, understandably identify the irony in describing any project that has been talked to death for 12 years as urgent or crucial.

So there is Erie Times-News staff writer John Guerriero’s story (Erie airport project clears hurdle), detailing the latest obstacle cleared again by ever reluctant Millcreek Township supervisors.

As Guerriero reported:

“Tyrone Clark, of MGC-Erie, a public-outreach consultant on the project, said the revised plans were not a problem. ‘This project continues to move forward,’  he said. The Erie Regional Airport Authority expects to advertise the first construction bid package in early summer.”

Cross your fingers, but please don’t hold your breath.

Now maybe it’s just me, but after reading the detailed stories, penetrating columns and sassy blogs painstakingly detailing how the Tea Party movement could forever alter American politics, all those despicable images depicting President Obama wearing Hitler mustaches re-emerge in all their hateful excess.

So call me skeptical.

I know, I know: These Tea Partiers are all mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. So naturally, this means the normal rules guiding basic public discourse don’t apply to their “revolutionary” movement. That it’s perfectly rational to rant and rave while carrying posters with images portraying the president of the United States sporting a Hitler mustache, or signs stating that the president’s health-care reform plans somehow resemble some horrifying Nazi medical experiment.

Nazis! Really? Americans are supposed to take this movement seriously?

A question: Did the Tea Party protestors carrying these Obama Hitler posters understand the true enormity and scale of Nazi Germany’s unspeakable crimes against humanity? You know — the Holocaust and 12 million dead, including six million Jews!

Did they understand the monstrosity involved in Hitler’s savage atrocities? You know — World War II, slave labor, death camps, the Gestapo.

Now I realize this is the old news, but any attempt to try and take the Tea Party movement seriously begins, and frankly, ends with these images (CNN Panel on Hitler and Obama’s Health Care Reform).

Now obviously this “movement” can’t be ignored. Up against all the Super Bowl weekend revelry, you might have noted that the new grownup Tea Party movement held its first national convention in Nashville highlighted by ex-Alaska governor and 2008 Republican Party vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s saber-rattling Keynote Address (Sarah Palin Keynote Speech at National Tea Party Convention).

It seems senseless to dwell much on Palin’s anti-Obama tirade. The national media took on that responsibility. So anyone willing to buy into Palin’s sound-bite driven Obama attack surely won’t be interested in any fact-checking exercise.

The fact checking, and eventually accountability, will come. Then, like all the other John Edwards-like populists operating on false pretenses, politicians like Palin are ultimately exposed and ruined by their own narcissistic excesses. Or in Palin’s case, clear evidence of an expanding cult of personality taking shape.

It’s already abundantly clear Palin remains damaged goods after resigning her Alaskan governorship last summer 18 months before her only term ended. In a Washington Post-ABC poll conducted during the Tea Party Convention from Feb. 4-8, “55 percent of Americans have unfavorable views of her, while the percentage holding favorable views has dipped to 37, a new low in Post-ABC polling,” according to the Washington Post.

But if Palin, whose instinctive political talents and knack for nailing crowd-pleasing sound bites shouldn’t be underestimated by GOP presidential wannabes, does ultimately attempt to win the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination by riding the great Tea Party wave, she must carry all the negative baggage that comes with all that grassrooty energy.

And that baggage multiplied with potentially radioactive ramifications after the Feb. 4 Tea Party Convention’s opening speech by former Colorado GOP congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (Tom Tancredo opens up Tea Party event).

Tancredo, in his familiar snarky tone, opened his rant by calling President Obama a “socialist ideologue” who was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”

In other words, those millions of ignorant Americans who voted for Obama were somehow duped into voting for a black man?

“People who could not spell the word vote or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House – name is Barack Hussein Obama,” Tancredo told a cheering Tea Party convention crowd.

To fully comprehend the hateful, raw racism invoked by Tancredo’s twisted ravings, you must revisit America’s shameful Jim Crow past.

Literacy tests were used primarily by the former southern Confederate states to prevent black Americans from voting for over 80 years. From the late 19^th Century into the early 1970s, a hideously complex system established by state governments prevented the vast majority of black Americans from voting.

According to the Veterans of the Civil Rights website, “prior to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, Southern (and some Western) states maintained elaborate voter registration procedures whose primary purpose was to deny the vote to those who were not white. In the South, this process was often called the “literacy test.” In fact, it was much more than a simple test, it was an entire complex system devoted to denying African-Americans (and in some regions, Latinos) the right to vote.

“The registration procedures, and the Registrars who enforced them, were just one part of this interlocking system of racial discrimination and oppression. The various state, county, and local police forces – all white of course – routinely intimidated and harassed blacks who tried to register. They arrested would-be voters on false charges and beat others for imagined transgressions; and often this kind of retribution was directed not only at the man or woman who dared try to register, but against their family members as well, even the children.”

Incredibly, federal courts throughout the South were still enforcing compliance of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on state and county governments into the early 1970s.

So what exactly is Tancredo charging? Nothing less than the 66,862,309 million Americans (53 percent) who elected Barack Obama president on Nov. 4, 2008, were too dim-witted to understand what they were doing. That the American election process needs a new literacy test to weed out unqualified voters out from the electorate.

(Note to Tancredo and racists of his ilk: The majority of Americans who voted for Obama (43 percent) were — gasp — white.

These are the Tea Party coattails Palin will carry if she eventually decides run for president. Racist coattails most Americans — even those who didn’t vote for Obama — won’t look favorably on in the 2012 general election.

Does this mean the Tea Party movement is essentially a political force built around racism? No. But there are millions of Americans who are frightened and hurting as they try to survive in this dreadful economic climate. Anger leads to fear and fear encourages boneheads like Tancredo to spread their racial twaddle that some beleaguered citizens are tempted to accept. And with the first black president taking office during a scary economic calamity, it’s an all too easy racist sale for snake-oil salesmen like Tancredo.

This rubbish is what the Tea Party movement defends or ignores as it attempts to evolve into a credible political movement. This is what Palin and the Republican Party will have to swallow, live with, and ultimately answer for, if they don’t simply state that racism, hateful Hitler imagery and boneheads like Tancredo won’t be tolerated.

Pulitzer-prize winning Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page rightly declared that Tancredo is the “Tea Party crankpot.” But crankpot suggests that Tancredo’s racism is basically a harmless distraction that can be ignored, and even allowed to stand, without condemnation.

There is nothing harmless about Hitler metaphors, racism and literacy tests. These are the ugly fringe elements in the Tea Party movement that Palin and the GOP will either have to accept or denounce and live with the consequences.

This sure seems like an easy call. But Palin and the GOP’s silence is deafening.

‘M*A*S*H’ Finale Meets Its Super Bowl Fate

By the time CBS’ “M*A*S*H” series finale aired on Feb. 28, 1983, the 105.97 million Americans who tuned in watched an exhausted television series taking a last, dying breath after a popular 11-year run. Long gone were the glory days after “M*A*S*H” debuted on Sept. 17, 1972, when series creators faithfully following Robert Altman’s groundbreaking 1970 film.

After the television series’ fifth season, when Larry Linville’s expertly drawn Frank Burns (also played deliciously by Robert Duval in the film) left the series, “M*A*S*H” had already lost its Altman mojo.

So it comes with some relief that the New Orleans Saints’ 31-17 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in the Feb. 7 Super Bowl telecast is now the most-watched television program in history. Some 106.5 Americans at some point watched that CBS telecast (Super Bowl Dethrones ‘M*A*S*H’ as Most-Watched Show in U.S. History.)

In the above New York Times media column, Richard Sandomir quotes an Alda e-mail, stating that, “I’m happy for New Orleans. I want to see that city come out first in every way that it can, even if it means giving up a record that ‘M*A*S*H’ held for a long time.” But, he said, “don’t give me the Magnanimity Medal yet.” He wonders about Nielsen Media’s ability to account for the effect of large groups gathered around TV sets to watch major events.”

Television’s Hawkeye has a point. The rating “M*A*S*H” earned 27 years ago in the pre-cable television era dwarfs what the record CBS Super Bowl telecast achieved in terms of households reached.

But don’t blame Alda for his understandable defensive posture. This multitalented actor, writer and director directed that weepy two-and-half hour series goodbye.

Edwards Fooled Millions into Believing a Lie

John Edwards name popped up earlier, but there won’t by any lengthy dissecting of the Democratic Party’s 2004 vice presidential candidate’s crash-and-burn self-destruction that could still land the former North Carolina U.S. senator in jail.

Let’s just simply say that Edwards represented only the latest Kennedy-lite candidate nostalgic Democrats love to gravitate toward in perennially misguided efforts to find that youthful JFK magic. Edwards became what many Democrats wanted him to be with flimsy supporting evidence.

Edwards was always a woefully inexperienced national party candidate, who provided snappy sound-bites and looked smashing in his expensive Italian suits. I remember back in the early 2008 president primary debates, watching Edwards with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and noting the candidate simply lacked any comparable stage presence. Edwards just seemed painfully diminished standing on stage with the next president and secretary of state.

A non-Democrat who also bought into the Edwards myth is pundit Andrew Sullivan. On his widely-read Atlantic Monthly Daily Dish blog (My John Edwards Failure), Sullivan eloquently examines how Edwards managed to fool even a clever, clear-headed British émigré intellectual like himself.

Sullivan doesn’t stand alone.

Swashbuckling Lefty Won’t Fear Bogeys

The old golf writer in me will dare offer the occasional view from the links.

So after watching Phil Mickelson slop his way through two early 2010 PGA events in San Diego and Los Angeles, I was struck again by a major difference between Mickelson and his legendary nemesis Tiger Woods.

Mickelson, who possesses every bit as much pure golf talent as the world’s No. 1, generally treats bogeys has occupational hazards rather than an odious enemy to avoid at all costs.

By contrast, Woods considers bogeys something akin to a war crime. Woods detests making bogeys while regarding pars as trusted old friends. Mickelson seems to view pars with an indifference that borders on golf defiance. Lefty just doesn’t place the proper value on skating away with safe pars.

Don’t take this as some dumbing-down theory explaining why Woods is likely to end his career as the greatest golfer in history while Mickelson retires as the unlucky, risk-taking left-handed Greg Norman.

Woods is simply a far more engaged and intense competitor than Mickelson, and perhaps the greatest clutch player any sport has ever produced.

Yet, Mickelson could at least cut his losses by finally cultivating a good, old-fashioned hate for bogeys. That is an element in course management Norman never developed. Mickelson, who turns 40 on June 16, doesn’t appear interested in learning percentage golf any time soon.

You Go, Meghan McCain

There is much to find irresistible about John McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain. Not only does she regularly call out her woefully out-of-touch, dear old dad, but she also picks fights with the Ann Coulters and Michelle Malkins out in Punditryland.

But Feb. 8 on ABC’s “The View,” (“The View” : Meghan McCain Blasts Sarah Palin and Tea Party Movement), McCain did what Sarah Palin other Republicans have failed to do. McCain scolded Tea Party leaders for allowing racists like Tom Tancredo to infest their movement.

“It’s innate racism, and I think it’s why young people are turned off by this movement,” McCain said. “And I’m sorry – revolutions start with young people, not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can’t say the word vote in English. This rhetoric will continue to turn off young voters, and anybody that says different is smoking something — period.”

McCain just might have a bright future in the family business.

Our neighbor Patty Riley is also, I’m happy to report, a fan. Several times over the past 10 months since I left the Erie Times-News, Patty asked when I was going to start writing again.

“Why don’t you blog somewhere,” Patty cheerfully suggested back in the summer.

Great idea. But I wasn’t ready.

After 13 years working for my wife’s family newspaper, I left on terms that can best be described as painfully challenging. I remain a proud Times Publishing Company shareholder, the Mead family-owned company that publishes the 122-year-old Erie Times-News every single day.

Now I concede that leaving the newspaper right smack in the middle of a ghastly recession didn’t represent the best timing. And no, desperate companies and welcoming employers aren’t leaving many phone messages asking when, and on what terms, I might come to work.

There were some nibbles. I interviewed recently with Erie Insurance for a position in that Fortune 500 company’s corporate communications department. I’ve done work for U.S. Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper’s re-election campaign and continue discussions on doing some more in the spring.

But mostly, I’ve been starring in a more sedate version of Michael Keaton’s “Mr Mom” (www.imdb.com) vehicle with my happy 7-year-old daughter.

I take Nicole to the bus stop every morning and pick her up at the bus stop every afternoon.

I check her homework after she settles in after school and get her a snack before a quick game of Wii tennis.

I do the prep work to get Nic ready for Friday spelling tests.

I take Nic to her weekly visits at the new Erie County Library branch in Fairview on Thursdays and transport her to ballet class in Erie at the Martin Luther King Center on Wednesdays.

Back in the summer, I watched Nic dutifully engage in countless lessons to become a solid swimmer who could leap off the diving board and handle herself well enough in the deep end that the ever-vigilant lifeguards finally left her alone.

And on Tuesday mornings at 9 sharp, she hit a few tennis balls with her pal Olivia. It was hilarious to watch this daring duo take over these lessons from their agreeably-charmed intern instructors.

But the summer’s lifetime moment occurred on a sunny morning in June. Even though Nic firmly maintained that I was “too hard” on her,” and that she could never ride a bike like Olivia, I watched Nic ride her pink two-wheeler all the way over to Barry Grossman’s house in a memorable “Kramer vs. Kramer” coming of age moment.

(This was before Grossman became Erie County Executive. And no, I haven’t spotted any county snowplows clearing the new county executive’s lengthy driveway).

So I’ve relished this extra time watching our cheerful second grader grow and learn and laugh and cry as she rides the main express trip toward her teens.

But then, and just like that, I wanted to write again.

After writing some form of a weekly newspaper column for nearly 25 years, I missed the pleasures and tortures involved in confronting a blank computer screen. I can’t say exactly when I decided to start writing this blog, but in recent months, as winter drags on, and Lake Erie freezes and unfreezes, I just felt like writing something other than e-mails.

Maybe the writing bug clicked after I called Patty two days before Christmas to ask her for an emergency ride to Fairview Chrysler so Nic and I could pick up the Grand Cherokee.

Or maybe I decided to pony up to the keyboard for the hundreds of Erie Times-News readers who somehow found my new e-mail address (oberleb@gmail.com) and sent messages asking when I might start writing again.

So I’m writing this blog for them. And Patty. And myself.

Because the deal here is rather simple: Writers have to write or they’re just readers.

Pick Up The Clubs, Tiger

Over beer, some fine Chianti and a turkey chili dinner just after the New Year, our pal Amy asked “The Question.”

“What do you think about Tiger Woods”?

Now I’ve played a few rounds with Amy, and drank hundreds more at our house and her house and a couple of houses in Mexico.

So I was fairly certain she didn’t expect me to assess Tiger’s short game. What follows in the perfect answer to Amy’s question.

In a blog on www.washingtonpost.com, the perennially witty Joel Achenbach artfully expressed the only pertinent point on one Eldrick Woods.

“The argument has been made a million times in the past two months that Tiger held himself up as a great guy and squeaky-clean family man, and earned all that endorsement money, and has now been exposed as a fraud and deserves whatever humiliation and agony he has endured. Weirdly, despite spending a fair amount of time staring at the TV, I somehow missed all the Tiger Woods Christmas Specials where we joined the Woods family as they sipped eggnog and discussed what’s going in the stockings. I barely knew the guy had kids. The one thing for sure is that he hasn’t faked beating the crap out of Phil Mickelson and everyone else for the last 13 years.”

Exactly.

Obama vs. House Republicans

President Obama’s visit and subsequent Q&A at the House Republicans Baltimore retreat Jan. 29 continues making the YouTube rounds. No need for more punditry spin here, other than noting the president’s satisfying verbal beat down on Indiana’s grating Mike Pence is worth watching over and over again.

So if you haven’t seen Obama and the House Republicans going at it, get to www.youtube.com.

You can’t miss it. And you won’t regret it.