"Short Takes"

I asked you to disregard my last post about retirement because I thought it too self-pitying. Ironically, I had more comments on that post than any other one so far. And they were nice comments. I went back and reread it and it wasn't as bad as I thought. There was one typo but it did cover in an honest way how I feel about retirement. It was okay after all. So the moral to the story for me is: don't write them late at night after you've had a bad day. Either that or do write them at night after a bad day.

Short Take # 1

Obama Care and the Supreme Court: Well, as you know by now the Supreme Court vote was 5-4 in favor of Obama Care. The Republicans have vowed to begin a process of repealing Obama Care in 2 weeks. Mitt Romney says he will repeal Obama Care on his first day in office. I have a question: Can Presidents strike down (by themselves) a federal law, upheld by the Supreme Court in just one day? The democrats swear Affordable Health Care is good for America and the Republicans believe it's a disaster.

It didn't have to come to this. If the health Care insurers had self-regulated; controlled their ever increasing premium rates, and stopped their unabashed greed none of this would have been necessary. A front page article in the Union Tribune dated Monday June 25 stated that in California the average annual premium increase was 8% and the actual cost increases to the insurance companies was 3-4%. The point is they’ve been adding more and more profits every year all the while crying poor. The same old tired excuse is "raising hospital costs and doctor’s wages". Why didn't they regulate themselves? Remember Hillary Clinton tried in 1993 to get an affordable health care plan through Congress and boy was she bitch slapped to the curb in a New York minute.

At least 20 years ago, politicians knew about the need for insurance industry regulations but because health insurance companies have one of the biggest and most highly paid lobby groups (next to the Military) nothing has ever been done. It's like their motto was the same motto as AIG and Goldman Sachs in 2006-07 and that motto was: We know what we are doing is blood-sucking greedy and wrong but screw it; we’ll drain every dollar from this scam as long as we can. These people have no conscious what so ever.

Why didn't Bernie Madoff stop at 1-2 million scammed dollars? He could have taken his money and gone to a non-extradition country but NO, he had to have more and more and more. The sucker money was there for the taking and he couldn’t resist taking every dollar he could. He figured he’d take it until they came and dragged him away. He did. Why did he have to have hundreds of millions? Greed!

Edmund Spenser (centuries ago) said: avarice was one of the seven deadly sins. So everyone agrees that costs are out of control, insurance companies are unable to stop their greedy selves, and the 2 major parties have opposite ideas on how to fix things.

A lot of people share the blame: Americans that seem hell bent on having ever increasing poor health, greedy, soulless insurance companies and political parties turning health care into a battle ground for politics instead of working to solve this American Problem. This should have been addressed and fixed 25 years ago.

Short Take #2

The Holy Roman Empire covered the Western Hemisphere about 1900 years ago. They even had an army garrison (more than one) in what is now England. The Romans were everywhere, at the same time. Then the day came when they couldn't afford to be everywhere and they had to contract their forces. They pulled out of England. The troops came home.

I say this because according to the book Suicide of a Superpower by Pat Buchanan, America has a military presence in 130 countries around the world. 700-1,000 bases in total. We have troops still on the Island of Okinawa near Japan. Didn't we win that war in 1945? Why we are still there, and in Japan, Germany, Cuba, Wake Island and the list is endless. I thought we had realized we cannot police the world anymore. I thought since the fall of Communist Russia we didn't have to worry about the insidious bear inching ever closer.

We have to get out of other countries and close down our "American Empire" for these reasons:

1. We can't afford it (we haven't been able to afford it for decades) it’s bankrupting us.

2. We incite people to be against us when we run through their country fighting, and thinking we are doing well by spreading the gospel of democracy and capitalism. Haven’t we learned yet, they aren’t that interested in our democracy and capitalism. Here is what they want from us: our money, our trade, our jeans, and a couple of McDonald’s Franchises. They want us to solve their problems like getting rid of their tyrants but then get out (you can leave the Mercedes).

3. We have major issues to solve at home. Divisiveness, out of control debt, spending, immigration, college costs, education reform and just the overall digging out of a deep hole (recession); these are critical issues we have to fix NOW. We can't solve Country A, B and C’s problems when we aren't solving our own.

4. All the lamentations over how cash strapped our education system is when if we would just bring most of our troops home like the Romans did centuries ago and cut military spending we would have all the dollars we could ever want to run the very best schools with the very best professionals. We despair over what a crummy education many kids are getting but we cut education to the bone, adjunct teachers instead of hiring full time, cut back on teaching days and put everyone through the annual pink slip horror story and offer little hope. We have the fucking money but politicians choose to spend it on maintaining marines on Okinawa.

To be fair we should be always vigilant because even though Japan has no military and Pearl Harbor doesn't appear to be in imminent danger from sneak attacks you can never be too cautious. Those Okinawan s could be planning a midnight raid right now on San Francisco.

Bring the troops home. Put an end to the empire.

"Freudian Slips"

The father of Modern Psychology was Dr. Sigmund Freud (Swiss). His most famous work was the 1900 work Interpretations of Dreams. It laid out his theories on dreams, the conscious and the unconscious. Over the years, an expression has come into the English language: “The Freudian Slip". Freud, however, never gave his name to any of his theories preferring to call all his ideas psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, virtually all  "slips of the tongue" or unintended speech has been lumped into the catch-all phrase “The Freudian Slip".

In every day terms a "Freudian Slip" is when you say something that you did not intend to say. For example: a pretty woman says to a man would you like some bread and butter and he says, "of course I would like some bed and butter". Was it merely a mental lapse that he said the wrong word or was he thinking I'd like to sleep with her? There is a difference between a hidden thought and a subconscious one. Hidden thoughts are where you really are thinking sex (in the example) but just didn't want to say anything about sex. Subconscious thoughts are where you are not even aware that you'd like to have sex with the woman and it surprises you when the suggestion of bed (sex) just "pops" out unexpectedly.  In summary: a hidden thought is one where a person is aware of what they think but are trying to keep these thoughts hidden and the subconscious thought is one where a person has a thought(s) but don't "consciously” know they have them.

That gets me to two recent, eye-popping, "Freudian Slips" that Presidential candidates Romney and Obama have made. First: Mitt Romney's line about class size not being a significant factor in quality education. Surely Mitt doesn't believe that and in fact he quickly backed off that position, claiming he meant something else. Did he? Then there was Barack Obama's line about the private sector doing just fine in today's economy. That line immediately hit a lot of nerves and to this day even Obama laughingly says "what was I thinking"? Both candidates gave us unintended speech in a big way, but why did they? 

 It could matter more than merely dismissing it as “no big deal”.

If  Mitt Romney believes that the number of students in a class doesn't affect learning then that is really troubling. It can't be good for Americans can it? It would indicate he is really out of touch with an important component of American life: education. There is no study that supports what he said and countless studies with the highest quality of research that all say class size is crucial in learning. What else does he believe that he keeps hidden but tells the people what he needs to get elected?

What about Obama? Let's face it if you've look at the numbers, he, Michele and their kids have been living the high life in the White House. 800,000 dollar weekend getaways, parties, I can't begin to list how cushy life has been for them. They are not feeling the pain that the average american is "out there". So when the President says the private sector, is doing just fine what is he saying? Is he saying he thinks we are doing fine when it’s universally understood that most "we’s" are not? Is it a reflection that he is doing fine? Is it an indication he doesn't really have a clue how the average american is doing? Is it an indication he doesn't really care how the average american is doing?

If on the other hand what if what they both said was not a hidden belief but a subconscious one that just, "popped out" then that may be even more troubling. 

Here's why: if Romney believes good education has no correlation to class size then what else about American Education does he believe? How out of touch with this topic is he?   How could he be that far off? And if he is that far off in his thinking on education what else has his privileged life insulated him from? Does, he think American workers shouldn't have unions, that everyone not working is a slug, that women should be homemakers? Probably not, but that is the tricky thing about the subconscious, it affects us and we often don’t know how or why? Freudian slips can be a brief glimpse into a person’s deeper conscious. I don’t want a President with a deep seated belief that most American schools are like the ones he went to or that his kids went to. You know the privileged, private schools where class size probably didn’t matter that much. He might not be connected to the average american like his critics have said. It’s something to consider at least.

What if what Obama said was a momentary glimpse into his subconscious? What if  deep inside he thinks that if he is doing just fine, well everything (and everyone) else is doing just fine. He’s been criticized for not having done enough for middle class americans in 3 ½ years. Could it be he doesn’t really see/feel economic hardships in heartland America because well, he has a great life? Could it be he doesn’t see that much of an urgency to get the economy fixed because down deep inside he thinks Americans are doing just fine. Is that why he spent a year pushing Obama Care very little on the economy? Is that why he gone golfing 100 times since taking office and Americans linger in distress? Probably not but it is something to consider.

Look we all have done "slip ups". Call the one we are with the name of the one we used to be with and often these “slip ups” are embarrassing and some can even be funny. However, saying class size doesn't matter or that private sector Americans are doing just fine is not a misused word here or there. They are awfully clueless statements from two candidates that are trying really hard to get you and I to believe that they are "clued in" on what's going on in the world.

The only thing worse that they could have said would have been if Romney had said: hey let's get rid of all teachers, the kids can teach themselves or if Barack had said: the average American has never had it so good"!

Finally, I sincerely hope both were tired, distracted, missing their spouses and kids, hungry, overwhelmed or some plausible explanation. Tired, distracted people can say weird things. Let's hope what each said was not a "Freudian Slip". One of those: I do believe it but didn't want to say it or I do believe it but didn't even know I believed it until it just "popped out". It's one thing for me to say some off the wall thing like maybe we should cut federal spending before we all go under. You could say, “That Will, what a nut”! But when seasoned Presidential Candidates say goofy things we have to hope they didn't really believe what they said either consciously or subconsciously. 

Oh, Doctor Freud…….

Paging Dr. Freud.........paging Dr. Sigmund Freud!

"Happy 100"

This is my 100th blog write. When I started, I thought, what will I write about? I didn't want mine to be about the family vacation or ten steps to the perfectly mowed lawn. 

It took a while but I soon picked up steam. Now that I am more comfortable with not working full time, I might get to my second hundred sooner than I did the first one hundred. My goal this next year is to somehow improve The Bailey Post. More readers, a better layout, more pictures when appropriate and some links are just some of the things I want to incorporate. Some writer's will get into the “make the site look good” thing before they settle into what they want to write about. I wanted to be sure I was committed to writing the blog and that I would have something to say before I did anything else.  If you have any ideas I would love to hear them. I am pretty good at the computer but not "Linda" good. 

For years I had people tell me, "Hey, you write well you should write a novel. I tried. I did 3 chapters about a kid growing up listening to his Philco radio at night to the great Harry Caray and his broadcasts of both the Kansas City Athletics and later the St. Louis Cardinals. How those long, hot, Nebraska summer nights were made bearable by listening to Harry's mangling the English language and his wonderful "Holy Cow’s" How the boy would close his eyes and visualize his being either at Sportsman's Park (Cardinals) or Municipal  Stadium (A's). Roger Maris, Bob Cerv, Norm Siebert, Gus Zernial and many others. The boy falls in love with baseball, Harry Caray and most of all with sports announcing. The kid grows up to become a baseball announcer and is finally teamed up with Harry Caray in Chicago doing Cubs games. 

I thought it would make a great boy grows up story, combined with pursue your dreams story. But after 3 chapters I realized that while it might be a good idea I was bogged down in details and in the end I realized I wasn't very good at telling a story. So I copyrighted the basic story line (in case I become a good story teller some day) and went back to social commentary and satire in my blogs. I have printed off each blog entry and have been compiling them in a big binder. Why? I don't know really. There are a gazillion bloggers out there and many are professionals so my humble efforts fall into the memoir (at best) category that maybe my son would someday want to look at.

My next blog is going to be about Sigmund Freud's concept of the "Freudian Slip" as it pertains to both Romney, and Obama.

Thanks for reading some of my first 100.

WB

" Could Less be More"?

The May 14th edition of Newsweek has a powerful article on how obese Americans are getting. The cover shows a fat baby (most are) holding a big box of French fries with the caption: "When I grow up, I'm going to weigh 300lbs!  Help!" Help indeed.

Look, all of us know obesity has become a big (no pun intended) issue in this country and is growing (no pun intended) each year. Health issues abound with the growth in girth. The article points to all the "usual suspects" carbohydrates, salt intake, larger sized meals, chemicals in processed food and so forth. It did take aim at one usually left out culprit and that is sugar. Fructose and every other form of sugar is simply no good for us. When was the last time you ever heard a doctor say: now, make sure you have a spoonful of sugar every night before bedtime. No doubt all of these food maladies are at the heart of the growing, and growing problem. (Pun intended) However I contend our tech culture and sick society are as much to blame.

When I was growing up in Nebraska, I would leave the house after having had a bowl of cereal with the admonishment to be back for lunch. After a lunch (a sandwich and some Kool-Aid) back out we went until it got dark which meant dinner time. I would be outside playing sports, running around, probably no less than 6-8 hours a day virtually every day in summer and on weekends. We'd play baseball for 3 hours at a stretch, basketball for a couple of hours and so forth. I was not a fat kid. None of the kids I played with were fat. In fact I think one reason I have had good health all my life is the unprocessed food I ate, and the amount of fresh air and exercise I got.

Not so today because two things converged at the same time somewhere in the late seventies to early eighties and that was the advent of technology related devices like video games combined with the fear parents had about letting kids outdoors. We seemed to be a an era (then) of increased child abductions, child murders, kids’ faces on milk cartons (meant they had disappeared) and paranoid parents everywhere. The fact is there were instances where kids were snatched right off their doorsteps and murdered. Add to that fear the hysteria about child abusers on every street corner, and parents decided they needed to watch their kids more closely, all the time. They decided maybe kids needed to entertain themselves "indoors". 

I first began to notice how weird things were when I saw that parents had their kids tethered to them (literally) outdoors and that they never let them out of their sight. Hyper worried parents plus the availability of Nintendo, and Sega Genesis and other video games meant kids now stayed indoors, sat on their keisters and played games for hours. Kids had play dates at Chucky Cheese which meant more video games. Every kid in America had to have their own TV in their bedroom and that meant even more hours of TV watching. If you told them to "go out and play" they looked at you with a puzzled "what do you mean" look. There weren't very many friends outside to play with. It was easier for parents to doing their kid-hovering indoors.

As these kids grew up their attention was diverted to IPods, IPhones, Video rentals, CD players, and camcorders. The sitting generation grew up sitting more than ever. If they didn't go into sports they became couch potatoes. What is the cheapest food you can serve your kids? That's right crap in the form of: happy meals, Kraft macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, and so forth. These foods tasted great, kids didn't complain and they were easy to  prepare (Re: microwave). Since single parents and in a lot of cases both parents worked; eating dinner at home became very problematical (it took 2 parents working to afford the 3500 square foot home, 2 cars, the boat, TV's in every room). The thinking was, I'm too tired to make a nutritious dinner at home so I'll stop by KFC on the way home and get dinner. That’s right some fried chicken, mashed potatoes and a biscuit for my kid that has been sitting on his/her behind all day.

Don't think the fast food chains didn't notice the change in parenting models. Suddenly there were toys in every kid's meal. Hell, the kids would eat the crap for the toy and the toy kept the kid quiet. It seemed a Win-Win for everyone except, of course, for the kids growing up in a sedentary lifestyle that would be next to impossible for them to break away from and simultaneously make them health risks. It was a perfect confluence of many separate, individual bad ideas at once. It's true a parent did have to be careful of where their kids were, although not nearly to the extent most parents (including me) thought and it was true that you were tired as a single parent, or 2 parents working and you did cut corners on quality of food etc. It wasn't 100% the parents fault. Not much worked in parents favors in those days. Having said that, let's be honest many parents were self-centered and copped out on quality time with their kids, and copped out on making sure their kid(s) had nutritional meals.

Humans need to move; early man didn't survive in a Darwinian world by being sedentary. I think the proliferation of health clubs, and fitness centers are because most people want to feel fit and healthy. Why else would a person run in place on a stationary tread mill (think about what a "tread mill" is the very essence of going nowhere) except stupidity or a desire to be healthier and fitter? 

We need better food, we smaller proportions, we need to be outdoors, we need safer streets so our kids can be outdoors, we need to limit access to technology that promote sitting. We need to quit making food our comfort. Food should only make you happy if you are really hungry and eating relieves a sense that you are going to starve. Food isn't our friend, our consolation, our salvation, or our deliverance. Don't buy another electronic device until you first spend money on a fitness club membership and every night you sit watching TV balance it with another night where you go do something physical. 

We are an anxious nation of over worriers, compulsive personalities that are bored senseless, just killing time and ourselves in the process. We have to get with it, we have to get moving and raise the next generation to believe running a mile is better for them than killing 100 people on the 3d version of "The U.S. Conquers the World” video game. Please if you are under 40 years of age, don't let you or your kids end up on the cover of Newsweek 20 years from now as the person they warned us about".

The "Sin Bin"

I love ice hockey. Probably goes back to my youth slipping and sliding on frozen ponds or trying to play baseball on frozen fields or just because it's the ignored major sport. (By the way my L.A. Kings are in the Stanley Cup finals for the first time since 1993 GO Kings!)  One key feature of ice hockey that you don't have in other sports is the penalty box. If you foul in basketball you stay in the game, same for soccer, football and so forth. NOT ice hockey, the rule violator goes to the penalty box and his team plays "short-handed". The more serious the act of thuggery or rules violation and the longer you stay in the penalty box. It's just like a 3 year old having to do a time out or as I liked to tell my son: Austin that's 5 minutes in the penalty box. In professional ice hockey the penalty box is unofficially referred to as the sin bin. Well, I have compiled my list of some people that should spend time in the sin bin and why.


TO THE PENALTY BOX


John Moores the owner of the San Diego Padres, a game misconduct and ejection. Here is a guy that first of all lied to the fans of San Diego by telling them that if they voted for public funds for Petco Park he would consistently put a competitive team on the field. Wrong-o John. In the ten years we've had the park 2 good teams, 2 so,so teams and six awful teams and this year will be the worst. He's been an absentee owner and he's changed batting coaches as often as new borne gets a diaper change. Then there was his messy, creepy divorce and the bungled ownership transfer to John Moorad. All of that and still he will leave town with 400 million in profit. If we never see that Texas pin head again it will be too soon.

Magic Johnson and his investor group to the penalty box for high sticking. This group stupidly paid 2+ billion dollars to buy the L.A. Dodgers. No team in baseball, not even the Yankees, were valued at even 1 billion. Now the market is skewed more than Rush Limbaugh's views on college girls. Within weeks the lowest valued teams jumped 200-300 million more in value. Even the sad sack Padres went from 480 million to close to 700 million seemingly overnight  How in the wide, wide world of sports did Bug Selig (commissioner) allow this to happen? Oh yeah, that's right, his daughter owns a smaller market team the Milwaukee Brewers so his daughter just gained 200+ million dollars in equity. That's why the best interests of baseball and the fans weren't served.


Mitt Romney to the penalty box for interference. He recently said lower class sizes in schools don't make a difference. Higher classes, lower classes to Mitt it's all the same!  Of course, every study ever done on this proves him wrong and you'll not find 1 educator in 10,000 that agrees with him but I guess Mitt knows more. Of course his kids probably went to private schools where the class size ratio was 10-1 and he assumed the A's they got were only because of how brilliant they were and not class size.

Tony Gwynn to the penalty box for delay of game. I love Tony as do most San Diegans but in all seriousness he's been coach of the SDSU baseball team for 10 years and has one NCAA  playoff appearance to show for it. In fact in those 10 years the team's overall record is well under is under .500. Go have fun with Padres Tony and let the Aztecs get a new start.

Greg Williams and Johnathan Vilma to the penalty box for boarding.  In ice hockey when one player "boards" another player he hits him from behind and drives his head into the boards. Open thuggery on ice. These two clowns did the equivalent (of boarding) in pro football with their Attila the Hun bounty program. To rant a rave about wanting to club a guy in the head that had just recovered from a concussion should be subject to arrest for assault and battery. Instead they were only "suspended". They both lied about their activities and only when confronted with evidence did Williams admit he was wrong. Vilma still refuses to admit he did anything wrong. If being stupid were a rules violation, Vilma would be in the penalty box for life.

The Green Hornet's Illustrator to the penalty box for off sides. When a player crosses the red line before they should it's off sides (in hockey) and the Green Hornet's current illustrator has prematurely crossed the line by deciding to do a comic where The Green Hornet comes out of the closet and is openly gay. Page 2 we see the Green Hornet and his "friend" walking off together (probably to an IKEA home show) he in his costume and his friend clinging to him Kim Kardashian to fleeting fame.
Look, all the skin tight, cape wearing heroes that "can't allow themselves to have a relationship with a woman" (Spider man, Batman, Phantom etc) are suspect right off the bat BUT never has an illustrator felt the need to say it openly. What next Wonder Woman presented as a type A  personality, an aggressive uptight bitch with a whip in hand dishing out punishment to bad boys? Uh.........Uh.........OMG!