In Search of Humility

So, last night there was a bit of controversy in the first game of the World Series. A double play ground ball was hit by one of the Red Sox. If properly executed, the Cardinals would have gotten out of the inning unscathed. Instead, the shortstop completely missed the ball. It glanced off of the webbing of his glove. Bases loaded. Except the umpire who was standing 5 feet from the play with a perfect view inexplicably called the runner out. As you might expect, Red Sox nation proceeded to have an apocalyptical fit. But, because this is baseball, sanity and justice would prevail. Immediately after the horrible call, the other five umpires converged on the second base bag. A conference began, in which a unanimous conclusion was drawn that Dana Demuth had in fact made a bad call. The call was reversed, order restored, whereupon Mike Napoli hit a bases clearing double. None of this is to say that Mr. Demuth is a horrible umpire. He just made a mistake.

As I watched this unfold, a thought passed through my fertile imagination. What if politics worked this way?

What if the Republican Party after 9/11 would have gotten together and said, “You know, these terrorists are real bastards and all, but do we really want to fight a ground war in freaking Iraq? And, I know we’re all scared right now, but this Patriot Act thing might really come back to bite us in the buttocks one day. Why don’t we all calm down a little, and take some time to think this all through?”

What if the Democratic Party after the roll out of HealthCare.gov would get together and say, “Holy Crap! How do you spend 650 billion dollars on a website and end up with this? Listen guys, I know that most of us have wanted Socialized medicine for all of our lives and all, but this Obamacare business is a train wreck. Do we really want to be associated with such a colossal disaster? How about we go back to the drawing board and design a bill with 200 instead of 2000 pages?”

Although baseball is clearly showing us the way, the above two scenarios will never happen because it would require basic humility and an admission of error.

Never gonna happen.

It's All About The Women

It’s been four days since my last blog. For me, that’s a long time. The simple fact is that I’ve had nothing to say. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally a fog descends over me. For two or three days at a time, everything seems heavy, my movements become leaden. It becomes a colossal effort to think critically. I never know when such days will come, and they leave me as abruptly as they arrive. This morning, for example, life is lighter.

It occurs to me that those of you fond of psychoanalysis will have a field day with that paragraph.

So, this morning I have learned that Denmark has been declared the “happiest nation on earth”, by some United Nations outfit who arbitrarily declared itself the judge of such things. Why are the Danes so happy? Apparently, it’s all about the women.

In Denmark, women are fully represented in government. They even have a female Prime Minister. Their most popular TV show also features a female Prime Minister. Women in Denmark contribute a much higher percentage of household income than women in the U.S. When a women has a baby, she is given 52 weeks of paid maternity leave, then when she does go back to work, her child gets free day care. The Danes have free health care, and they use the heck out of it, the average Dane consulting with his or her primary care physician 7 times a year. So, it would seem that the Danes are happy because they enjoy cradle to grave Socialism. No mention is made in this “Happiness Survey” as to whether the Danes are pursuing this happiness or having it presented to them by enlightened government programs, but the suggestion is very clear that it is the latter. No mention was made of what kind of tax burden is borne by the happy Danes, so I had to do a little research. The Danes pay income taxes at a top rate of 56%. In addition, there is a VAT tax on all purchases which amounts to a 25% sales tax. This year, a new tax was added on fatty foods that would make Michael Bloomberg proud. By comparison, our top tax rate is 39.4%, and our sales taxes vary by state by average around 5%. The American idea has always been, keep more of your earnings, go out there and pursue your own happiness wherever you can find it. The Danes philosophy seems to be, give us your money and we’ll provide your happiness.

Of course, the happy Danes do have a couple of peculiar advantages over us melancholy Americans. First, they aren’t expected to be the policemen of the world. They don’t have a military budget that chews up 25% of their GDP. Secondly, Denmark has no aggrieved minority; they don’t have to wrestle with a melting pot of nationalities, those teeming masses yearning to be free, a melting pot that hasn’t melted much over the last 30 years. So, there’s that.

But, give the Danes their due. They have learned something as a nation that our grandmothers and mothers, wives and sisters have been telling us for years. When momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Week in Review

The Week In Review:

Government shutdown ends, and within minutes the National debt clock, which had been mysteriously stuck on $16,800,000,000,000 for months, suddenly bolted upward by $328,000,000,000. We continue to be assured by all the smartest people that this is, in fact, a good thing, or at least, not a bad thing. Would the last person leaving the Republican Party please remember to turn out the lights?

Major League baseball seems to already have found a successor to Mariana Rivera, in the long-faced Japanese closer for the Boston Red Sox, Koji Uehara. Like Rivera before him, Uehara struggled early in his career until miraculously becoming unhittable around 3 months ago. His five out save in game five of the ALCS was as overpowering as any I’ve seen in my 45 years of watching baseball in the post season, prompting me to declare on Facebook that Uehara=Sayonara. The fact that my son didn’t chastise me for latent racism for the remark must mean that I am growing as a person.

A 17 year old girl caught shoplifting in a New York City Victoria’s Secret, was found to be carrying a dead baby in her shopping bag. Her story initially was that she had experienced a miscarriage earlier in the week, but upon further investigation, it was discovered that the child was born fully formed and viable at 8 and a half pounds. The 17 year old mother of a two year old boy could be charged with murder in addition to shoplifting sexy lingerie and makeup, officials say. A spokesperson from Planned Parenthood pointed out that this whole disturbing incident could have been avoided by a safe and legal abortion. A spokesperson from Health and Human Services pointed out that the shoplifting charge could also have been avoided if only lingerie were on the approved essential purchases list for the Food Stamp program.

My week dramatically improved this morning when Pam made apple pancakes with apple syrup along with thick pepper encrusted bacon. A spokesperson from Michelle Obama’s Fitness and Nutrition task force pointed out that by consuming such a breakfast, I have most likely taken 22 hours off my expected life span. My reply to this news is that if I have to read very many more stories about 17 year olds carrying around dead babies at Victoria’s Secret, my demise couldn’t come soon enough!

Welcome To Our Future

 The 16 day shutdown of 17% of the Federal Government is now over. All of those furloughed workers are back at work and will be given back pay, an angst-filled 16 day paid vacation, courtesy of the American taxpayer. The National Parks will reopen. Obamacare escapes unscathed, and now the government can borrow money again, our National debt, free once more to continue its skyward trajectory without the pesky intrusion of a debt limit. Meanwhile, 16 days after its rollout, the State of Delaware yesterday celebrated its very first successful Obamacare enrollee. I’d say that things are going swimmingly.

Bill Clinton famously stood before a joint session of Congress in 1996 to declare that the era of big government was over. Aside from the fact that it wasn’t true lies the fact that it can never be true. Government, like the universe, is and will ever be a constantly expanding project. Ronald Reagan himself, perhaps the greatest champion of limited government ever to occupy the Oval Office presided over an eight year expansion of the state. All anyone of Libertarian sensibilities can hope for is a slowing of its growth, and now with the arrival of the mother of all entitlements, Obamacare, even that hope has been crushed. Republican stunts like this shutdown/defund Obamacare disaster are nothing more than tilting at windmills. Don Quixote vs. Leviathan.

But I struggle mightily, against all evidence, to remain an optimist. There are benefits to towering debt, escalating interest payments and exploding actuarial assumptions. There will be less and less money available for military misadventures abroad. Twenty years from now when 40% of the budget is consumed by interest payments on the debt, future President Kardashian will think twice before sending troops to the Middle East since the budget for such adventures will be $ 32.99. Its past time that our Defense budget got scaled back, and now it will have to be. Ultimately, people in democracies get what they want, and the American people have for the past 50 years, more often than not, voted for the guy who promises the most stuff. Now, we are scrambling around, shutting down the government, trying to figure out a way to pay for it all. Welcome to our future.

Twenty years from now, we will all be paying higher taxes for all levels of government, and I do mean all of us, not just the evil 1%. Our National debt in the year 2033 will make our present debt look like a rounding error. But, at least our health care will be free, and besides…I’d still rather live in a totally broke America than anywhere else. At least we aren’t Bangladesh.

Remember, I’m an optimist.

Hey Bob Costas..What About Us?

I was watching the baseball game the other night so I missed it. I missed Bob Costas’ scolding sermon to the nation about the appalling fact that in 2013 we still have a sports team named the Redskins. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, now that Bob has broached the subject, there are a couple of other offensively named teams that need to be held to account.

You don’t have to be of Scandinavian descent to be offended by this violent marauding caricature of an entire ancient culture. Yes, the Vikings were known to raise a little hell back in the day (sorta like American Indians), but is this really a fair and wholesome way to honor an entire race of people? It would be one thing if the Vikings were a team from Arizona or Tennessee, but the team is in Minnesota for corn’s sake! Talk about rubbing their faces in it? Appalled doesn’t even begin to describe what the good people in Minneapolis must be thinking.

Then there’s this hideous affront to civility. Being of Irish heritage myself, this one hits close to home. Notre Dame’s Leprechaun mascot is possibly the second most racist symbol in America next to the Confederate flag, playing up as it does that most ancient slur, that of the Irishmen as drunken brawlers. Cannot the Irish be depicted as great poets, inspired musicians and dancers? Must it always be the Irish as undisciplined pugilists? Yes, I’m aware of the old adage about God creating whisky to keep the Irish from ruling the world, but this is 2013 and past time to overcome these hateful stereotypes.

So, preach it Bob. But I hope your next rant will include a little indignation for people of pallor. Surely Scandinavian and Irish Americans deserve better.

Where Have you Gone, Jimmy Braddock?

None of us get to choose the times in which we live. From a cultural and aesthetic standpoint I am a man of the 1940’s, with its grand struggles, big band music and fedora hats. I would have been equally happy as a twenty year old in the 1770’s amidst the revolutionary chaos of our nation’s birth. But, I live in the 21^st century, in a country that no longer makes sense to me and from which I feel increasingly estranged.

I saw this picture, the logjam of overflowing shopping carts abandoned in an aisle at a Walmart somewhere in Louisiana. There was a video of how they got there on YouTube. As I watched, I felt myself recoiling from the world. I tried to conjure up some degree of detachment, to place some emotional distance between me and the story. I read all I could find about the details, hoping to find some mitigating circumstance that would provide me with some intellectual cover. The more I learned, the worse I felt. What I was trying desperately not to believe about the pictures became more and more untenable. The pictures did in fact tell the unfiltered truth, a thousand word tale of what has become of shame in my country. It has vanished, cast off by a people seduced by entitlement.

The facts are few and uncomplicated. The Louisiana Food Stamp EBT debit card program temporarily malfunctioned, suddenly removing all credit limits. Word of the glitch began spreading like wildfire among beneficiaries of the system. Literally within hours, Walmarts in two Louisiana towns became swamped with customers loading up all the carts they could manage to handle, stripping inventory off the shelves. Walmart officials made the mistake of honoring the purchases anyway. When the temporary glitch was finally suddenly fixed hours later, shoppers simply walked away, leaving carts burdened with perishable food abandoned in the aisles. One man racked up $700 worth of goods on his EBT card which carried a .49 credit balance before the windfall.

In America today, it is a dicey business to set about criticizing this sort of thing. Charges of insensitivity or worse, racism, often follow anyone who complains about Food Stamp fraud. In fairness, many who do most of the complaining are actual racists. Still, I read stories like this and something inside me screams out, no, no!! this is just wrong, no matter who is doing this, it’s just wrong!!

I think of Cinderella Man. I remember the look on Jimmy Braddock’s face as he stood in line to get his first public assistance payment. He was at the end of his rope. His family was starving. The money would save their lives. And yet, the shame on his face, the humiliation of having been reduced to charity was almost too much to bear for such a proud man. The most powerful scene in the movie was when, after winning his first big payday fight, Braddock stands in the line again; only this time he’s holding a wad of cash which he gives to the teller, paying back every dollar he received down to the penny. The year was 1936. Today those lines don’t exist. There’s only an EBT debit card, and when that card malfunctions, a feeding frenzy ensues.

I’m not one of those people who think Food Stamps are evil. There exist in this country people who through no fault of their own are in dire straits and desperately need help. We as a people do have a moral obligation to help the least of these, our brethren. But when I see this picture, I see less and less funds available for the truly needy. Because of the greed of people savvy and energetic enough to drop everything and run to Walmart to take advantage of a glitch in the system and yet not energetic enough to find work, these are the people stealing from the needy.

But, this picture will not change anything. This is the country I live in, the land of the free and home of the brave. But it has not always been so. There used to be millions of Jimmy Braddocks.

One Pitch

Day seven of the most miserable weather in Short Pump, Virginia in recent memory happens to be Columbus Day. That means that the banks are closed, the mail doesn’t run, and the government is shutdown. No, wait, the government is already shut down. Does that mean that when it reopens, the union will demand an additional day off as compensation for missing one of their nine paid holidays?

The only thing that redeemed this past weekend was last night’s baseball game between The Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox. I watched the game, I saw what happened, and I still can’t believe it. Through the first 16 innings of this series the Tigers pitching staff had made the Red Sox look like an American Legion team. Between Anibal Sanchez and Max Scherzer, 30 Red Sox hitters had struck out. I can’t remember a more dominating pitching performance in the post season. Down 5-1 in the eighth inning after losing game one, the Sox were on the verge of being swept in their own ball park and looking awfully bad doing it. But there I was watching the Sox somehow load the bases. Tiger manager Jim Leyland then brings his fourth pitcher of the inning in from the bullpen, while David Ortiz strides to the plate looking bored, almost disinterested in the proceedings. Fenway was rocking, the fans were going wild, but Big Papi looks like a man who would rather be back in the clubhouse watching Breaking Bad. Reliever Joaquin Benoit decided to throw Ortiz a changeup on the first pitch, and when the ball ended up in the mitt of the Boston bullpen catcher, Fenway Park was transformed into a madhouse. Big Papi, as he’s done 15 times in the post season, rounded the bases slowly, zero emotion registering on his face, while his teammates jumped up and down like a Little League team after beating the Taiwanese. One inning later, The Sox win on a walk off single by Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who no one will remember twenty years from now. This night was about Big Papi and the magic of one swing, a grand slam home run that brought Boston back from the dead.

Yes, I know that most of America was watching the Cowboys and the Redskins playing a meaningless football game. Yes, I get it that baseball is a shell of its former self, that it has fallen far behind football and maybe even basketball in the imaginations of American sports fans. But for me, nothing in sports can match the sheer emotional drama of one pitcher and one batter going toe to toe with the game on the line. It is ironic that in this most emphatically team sport, the issue so often comes down to an individual match up, the balance of a game, even a season comes down to one pitch, an ill-advised changeup launched into the night by the most clutch hitter in Red Sox history.

God bless baseball.