"Let My Redskins G0"

The Political Correctness Police are at it again. Political Correctness began in the 1990’s and I thought it was a bad idea at the time and have really come to see it as awful. An off shoot of PC is that we now live in a world where anyone can be offended by anything anyone says at any time. The ridiculousness of the situation is found in the current brouhaha about the professional football team the Washington Redskins.

The Redskins have been a team in the National Football League since 1937. They have always been the Redskins. They have a cool logo and some say the best uniforms in the league. But hold your painted horses. The nickname refers to American Indians and there is a strong move to force the team to change their name. The push is coming from do good PCP  white folk than it is the Indians themselves. (Side bar:  why no such complaint about the Kansas City Chiefs, Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians though?) The owner of the Redskins Daniel Snyder says the name stays. He doesn’t intend to change it.
We know from past experience the morally upright citizen brigade will not stop hassling him until he is forced to cave.  He’ll do it as much as anything to stop having the migraines this misguided bunch of smug puritans give him.

 Since the team is based in Washington DC what could they be renamed? If you choose a name that embodies the nation’s capital you’d go with: weasels, snakes, lobbyists or grifters. But  that would be the one thing these dysfunctional congressmen would unite over. They would demand a name change too. So, maybe go with The Washington Statues.  But if Snyder has to drop the nickname Redskins  you know other teams will surly feel the prickly rash that is the PCP. In an effort to get ahead of the PCP, I have selected six of the teams likely to be targeted as PC offenders and have come up with suitable alternate nicknames. Here they are.

1.        The New Orleans Saints will have to change their name. I am surprised the Vatican has not raised holy hell about a football team being called the Saints. The very idea of large men grappling with one another, piling onto each other, slapping fannies, sharing showers, rooming together and becoming “tight knit units” must make all Catholic priests queasy.  Then again maybe not! They should be given a name that offends no one but carries the spirit of Louisiana. Let’s rename them:

The New Orleans Gumbo.

2.       How have the New York Giants been allowed to exist? I mean using terms like midgets, dwarves and munchkins has long been declared a PC no no. I mean would a howl go up if they were called the New York Dwarfs ? Oh yeah!!  Well, Gigantic-ism is a recognized medical condition and huge people don’t want to be called giants so that name has to go. What can replace it?  At first I thought “Cabbies” but I realized that the handful of cabbies in NY that do speak English would quickly hear about it and soon thereafter anyone wearing a NY football cap would possibly get run over. So instead let’s go with this: The New York Uber Liberals. That accounts for most of the people living there anyway.

3.       Baltimore Ravensis a NO go. This name is a sacrilege. Number one it’s disparaging the raven (crow). But more importantly it’s a slap at the great American writer Edgar Allen Poe. He was living in Baltimore when he wrote his famous poem “The Raven” and he was paid only 12 dollars for it. He was ripped off then and now his beloved Raven is nothing more than a decal on a football helmet for God’s Sake. Disrespected in life, humiliated in death. “Quoth the Raven, nevermore” Let’s do the right thing and rename the team the Baltimore Crab Cakes.

4.       The only reason Cleveland still calls its team the “Browns” is because Hispanics don’t watch football. If they did they would have been all over this like salsa on chips. “Browns”? “Browns”? My God, how has this insult managed to get by the PCP? When Hispanics finally are enfranchised this name will be adios amigos en via con Dios. But what name should they get? Hmmmm How about something in keeping with Cleveland like Bores or Losers? No, that strikes too close to home and will offend too many. here is a safe Cleveland name: The Cleveland Hope. Why? Because the only famous person to ever come from Cleveland was Bob Hope.

5.       Another egregious offender is the Dallas Cowboys. First of all they are football players not cowboys and in fact these footballers wouldn’t know a bull from a cow. (For that matter I don’t either). And why slam cowboys. Weren’t they the noble heroes from the old west? Didn’t they fight redskins (oops sorry) and tame wild, dark, mysterious, nether regions like the Brokeback Mountains?  Dallas needs a name in keeping with the heritage that is Dallas like: Drinkers, Gunslingers, Gamblers, or Southfork. But no, too many Dallasites would read themselves into those names and it would be “shoot out at high noon” time. We’ll have to settle for this tamer version:
       The Dallas Hooters (you know hoot and holler)

6.      Lastly, the stupidest name in the NFL (NO not the Green Bay Packers, which by all rights is weird enough. I mean packers? Does that refer to movers, meat –packing or prison? I am referring to the Houston Texans. It’s not PC offensive but what kind of idiot name is that? It’s like saying the Salt Lake City, Utah's, Las Vegas, Nevadians. or the St. Louis Kansians.  It’s goofy. Since Texas executes more people each year than all the other states combined (except sparky friendly Florida) let’s call them:   The Houston Needles
       BP

   

"Iceberg Right Ahead"

 

Sometimes I think any story we get out of Washington DC is like an ice-berg. You only see the top 1/3 of a berg, 2/3 of an iceberg is below the surface. Here is a case in point: The Bowe Bergdahl trade for Taliban Prisoners.

Bowe Bergdahl an Army private when captured (promoted to Sgt. in absentia during the last five years) was traded for five “master minds” of the Taliban that had been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for at least six years. The official story is: The US had been negotiating for five years to make a trade for Bergdahl and that on or about May 29^th of this year our “people” concluded he was in bad shape physically and might not live much longer, so negotiations were intensified and voila a deal was arranged in two days. He was handed back over to the US on May 31st. The official explanation of the hurried up negotiations and also illegally bypassing Congress (which by law has to sign off on anyone released from GITMO) was that “we never leave a man behind”.

BUT I WONDER:

Why (really) for the sudden hurry up? Given the fact that a week after he was back in US hands it was reported he was up and around in a German hospital and in good physical condition. What death-bed person is fine in less than a week? Given the fact that his fellow troops said he walked away from his post five years ago after several rants to his parents, friends, and fellow soldiers about how much he hated the Army, our being in Afghanistan and how much he hated America in general. It could be argued that we didn’t leave him behind, he was captured leaving America behind. Another issue is this:

Wasn’t Bergdahl already left behind? On any given day out of the last 1500+ days he was in captivity he could have been killed. If they had killed him a year ago, he would have been left behind, yes? This last year there was supposedly very little (if any) negotiations going on at all? Does that sound to you like a committed effort to not leave someone behind? I mean we are to believe that we MUST get him right now because we don’t leave soldiers behind BUT you left him behind the previous 1500 days or more.  So if he had looked healthy on the video he'd still be there? That’s a big HUH to me. If negotiations could get done in 2 days why didn’t we pull this off four years ago? I’m not saying the story as told to us isn’t true in some respects but it leaves me with a feeling of what’s the real story here? What is the 2/3 of the story below the surface??

                

"Break on Through to the Other Side"

It’s been almost two months since the last Bailey Post. The longest inactivity since I began the Post in 2010. My last Post made some readers pretty unhappy, and made me frustrated too. So for about three weeks I thought I would just pull the plug and let the Post die a natural death. Then I heard Paul McCartney’s song “Let it Be”.  “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom, let it be”.

So I decided to just let things be.                             

I began having a certain dream about 3 1/2 weeks ago. It was a dream with three versions. Each version of the dream I had several times.

In the first version of this dream I am in Poway; I am running late in the morning, and wanting to get to work. I get in my car which an older model, a bit weathered but still strong and running well. I head off to work and as I am driving I come to specific corners in the road where I have to decide which direction to go. I’m pissed that I can’t remember which turn to take. I choose the direction I think I need to go but it takes me to a dead end (a cul de sac) and of course I have to retrace my steps and try again. In one of these dreams I went back to the place where I made the error and inexplicably chose the exact same wrong direction and ended up in the exact same dead end cul de sac. That was my first dream.

(Dream Two) This is the same dream exactly except what prevents me from getting to work is road construction. I have to detour and then detour again, slow-down and it feels like I’m never going to get to my job. I'm feeling the time crunch. This is also frustrating and I keep thinking (in the dream) why does there always seem to be construction all the time? Can’t I choose a way without road work?

The third and as it happens final version is: again I am anxious to get to my job and I ‘m driving the same car but all of a sudden as I go through a hilly section, the hills around me burst into flames. A fire on this side, another one blows up on the other side and fire up ahead. All around me there is fire and smoke.

 I know I should stop and go back, but I’m so frustrated at there always being something that gets in the way, and I really want to get to my job so instead I step on the gas and decide I’m  going on no matter what. I just keep going.

My therapist from the prestigious counseling firm of Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe; was so excited when I told him about these three dreams, he wet himself. No he didn’t but he was excited. He told me this:

Poway: Because it’s a familiar place

My job: Wanting to complete something, a project or purpose

Older Car: Me (enough said about that)

Wrong directions: Me repeating decisions that I made in my life that didn't work out and being frustrated with me.

Road construction: I’m undergoing construction, and repair, it slows me down but is necessary.

Burning hillside: Sometimes if you do what you want to do, not everyone is going to like it. People can get angry at you.

What he was most happy about (and so was I) is that I kept going in my car. I didn’t let obstacles make me stop or turn back. I didn’t give up.

All by way of saying, I am going to keep doing The Bailey Post.  I ‘d rather have a few readers that enjoy a laugh now and then and/or something to think about than have more readers and always be wondering who’s going to get mad at me for this posting? N’cest pa?

After this posting, I have two other short ones to post. Then I am going to retool the Bailey Post.

I’ll try a different look, use a different (hopefully better) blog service. For those that might stay with me, thank you. I will try to get TBP to take a step up.

Will