Nov 20 2009
In monitoring the wires, I somehow missed the Associated Press story that The New York Times ran this morning under the headline: "Peru's Police Say Gang Drained Victims Fat."
Admittedly, this is a bit ghoulish for end-of-the-week entertainment but you know what they say: Boys will be boys, and ghouls will be ghouls. Here's the first part of the story:
"LIMA, Peru (AP) - A gang in the remote Peruvian jungle has been killing people for their fat, police charged Thursday, draining it from their corpses and offering it on the black market for use in cosmetics. Medical experts expressed skepticism that a major market for fat might exist.
"Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police. He said the suspects, two of whom were arrested carrying bottles of liquid fat, told police it was worth $60,000 a gallon."
This is very alarming, I say, putting down a candy bar. This could be a threat worse than terrorism. If the gang's accomplices come to America, they will discover a bonanza after being in the jungles of Peru, where people are likely to be thin on the ground.
If the fat-robbers quit the Peruvian jungles for the American urban landscape, they could sit outside any fast-food restaurant and wait for their victims to waddle out.
It is not sporting to kill fat people - and entirely unnecessary. The Peruvian cosmetologists just need to open a spa near the beach - called Key Lardo perhaps? - so that larger people can go on a eco-fat-draining tour of the jungle and then rest on a La-Z-boy recliner back at the spa, where they could watch anesthetizing TV shows and give fat like donors who donate blood. This will please both the police and the Peruvian Ministry of Tourism.
Have a great weekend. Don't eat too much. The Peruvians may be coming.
Nov 19 2009
Just kidding.
The only thing I have to say about Sarah Palin today is that she is in the news. I am a newsman. That is why I have been writing about her the last couple of days. It's not because I am in some circle of hell with Maureen Dowd, as mugsy puts it, or loving her or hating her in an emotional fog. How dare he say this when all my fogs are due to beer.
She is in the news. Duh! Get over it, you Reg-ulators. Stop gathering your skirts around you and having an attack of the vapors just because a newsman writes about someone in the news. (I must say, mugsy, I do admire your style, even when your opinions are way off base.)
Someone else in the news is Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. Is it OK with you guys if I write about him? Happy birthday to him tomorrow! Congratulations to him for becoming the longest serving member of Congress in history! Sort of congratulations. The fact is that he represents a mixed blessing.
Members of the GOP like to remind liberals that their champion was once in the Ku Klu Klan. He was. He has repented of it and repudiated it many times over. Anyway, it is a strange complaint coming from a party that thinks the Almighty is one of its members to be so against turning to the good after being aligned with the bad.
Me, I believe in redemption and I'll forgive him that early folly. We all make mistakes - the thing to do is correct them. The planet is crawling with those who haven't made amends and Sen. Byrd is not one of them.
On the credit side, he has been a defender of the Constitution and keeper of the history of the institution he has served so long. At the time of Bush's Iraq invasion folly, he bravely stood athwart the lunacy with a barn-burning speech that will be remembered forever among free, independent-minded people (that is what happens when you are right). He has been a tireless worker for West Virginia.
Which brings us into the debit side of his career. In his time, a geologic age, he has handled more pork than a pig farmer. Good for West Virginia (although it does seem perpetually poor for all the money), not so good for the rest of us.
And I don't think it is a great achievement to work forever. Old and sick at 92, he is rarely seen in the senate these days. Call me age-ist, but I don't think anyone should be in office after age 90. The senate should not be the preserve of guys that look and act like Galapagos turtles.
Congratulations Sen. Byrd. Sort of.
Nov 18 2009
With apologies to myreply and other Reg-ulators whose comments often take me to task in this blog, a nasty job but somebody has got to do it, I return today to the gal of the hour, Sarah Palin.
First a diversionary explanation: I took an instant dislike to the new Newsweek from the moment it came out and it hasn't lessened over time. It used to be a news magazine, more or less; now in its new format it is much more a commentary magazine.
Not far from the first few pages, a plethora of opinionated columns now await any reader looking wistfully for news. As the writer of an opinionated column myself, it may seem odd that I would object to this, but I do. The emphasis on opinion is too much for me to digest. To put it another way, I like dessert at dinner but I don't want it served for all the courses.
This week's edition has Sarah Palin on the cover looking very fetching, in fact so much so that the picture might have qualified as mild cheesecake in a more sedate era. She is dressed in running clothes, which makes no sense until you realize that the photo was originally taken for Runner's World. To add to the fun, the magazine says it wasn't cleared for release to Newsweek.
Typical of its skewered new ways, Newsweek has a big headline superimposed on the cover "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah? She's Bad News for the GOP - and for Everybody Else, Too."
I have no problem with the sentiment but inadvertently this makes wonderful publicity for Sarah herself. She looks hot. She is a martyr of the media. Let's elect her president!
Heaven help us.
But what really interests me is something to the right of Sarah. An American flag. Rumpled up. Discarded like an old shirt. Draped over a chair, which Sarah is leaning on.
This from a standard bearer of a party that wants a constitutional amendment to protect the flag as a sacred item. If a Democrat were to have been pictured in such a flagrant episode of flag etiquette mocked, we would never hear the last of it.
I guess rogues and mavericks just get a pass.
Nov 17 2009
Today is the day that Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" is being released. It is probably too late to say: "Axeman, spare that tree." My only regret is that it doesn't cost more. I figure that most people will buy it just to irritate people like me. Not that I am irritated, but it would be nice to think that they paid more money than they should for a decorative door stopper. This book is sure to a prove a variant on what was famously said about Rolling Stone magazine: Written by people who can't write for people who can't read.
We are put on this planet for only a short spell and many, many good books await our reading before we draw our last breath. To read Sarah Palin's book is to have grand delusions about our mortal span. In truth, life is too short for reading such a work and I would say the same about Bill Clinton's book.
In both cases, as my friend Andy observed today, you know exactly what you are going to get. The only surprise is that you did it anyway.
Before the last election, I sat down and read the autobiographies of John McCain and Barack Obama (in his case, the first book he wrote). I confess that I did learn new information, perhaps because both had lived interesting lives beforehand. If Sarah Palin were to run for president, that might justify reading "Going Rogue." Until then, I reckon the rogue thing to do is to ignore it.
Nov 16 2009
Today on PG+, Jack Kelly finally got off his sick bed to debate me on the subject of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the decision to try him in a civilian court in New York City.
(PG+ can be accessed for free today - Monday - so you can check this out. After doing so, please don't tell me I can't type. This I know.)
I have certain reservations about this decision myself. If KSM, as Jack insists on calling him, is found not guilty, espcially on a technicality, the Obama administration will be in a sorry place.
But I sort of like the call. Far from being a wild radical, Obama is usually altogether too cautious. Yes, I understand the caution on Afghanistan - his predecessor was of the fools-rush-in-where angels-fear-to-tread school and we don't want that. But on other issues he has been timid too - when he should just end the Cuba embargo, junk don't ask, don't tell, etc. and etc.
By refreshing contrast, this is bold. It completely rejects the politics of fear that held sway for too long after 911. It sends a clear message to terrorists. We are not afraid of you. We are going to put this cat on trial in New York City, the very place he should answer for his crimes, and we won't be intimidated.
My only fear is not terrorists targeting New York City - let's face it, New York City is always going to be a prime target - it is the chance that he has been water-boarded so much (ie., tortured) that some judge will call a halt to the prosecution's case. That would be a torture for the rest of us.
But if he is convicted, as I expect he will be, no one could plausibly say he faced a kangaroo court. That is good.
Nov 13 2009
It's Friday the 13th but we could have worst luck - the world might end. But then again, it might not.
The problem with merchants of doom is that they are so full of doom. Ever since they found out that the end of the Mayan calendar comes just before Christmas 2012, they have been hyping the end of time. That's certainly going to do wonders for holiday shopping that year. Everybody will leave gift buying until the last minute just to see if the world does end - after all, there's no point in buying any gifts if the tree and all the decorations are going to be destroyed in a global calamity.
Maybe it won't be the end of the world that year, just the end of shopping. In any event, I am not too worried. What did the Mayans know anyway? Did they know anything about the NFL calendar? If the NFL calendar should stop without warning, then civilization as we know it might indeed be on the brink of extinction, at least in Pittsburgh.
Fortunately, by the time 2012 rolls around, the whole idea will seem ridiculous - thanks in part to the movie 2012, which the PG's Barbara Vancheri declares in her review this morning a disappointment (I trust her judgement; her taste in movies often mirrors my own).
To paraphrase the poet, this is how the world ends, not with a bang but with over-the-top special effects.
On that happy note, I wish you an uneventful weekend.
Nov 12 2009
When I am not writing a column or this blog, or debating conservative colleagues on PG+, or generally running around like a blue-arsed fly (as they say in the old country), I write some of the anonymous editorials that appear on the Editorial Page of the Post-Gazette. They are written in such a sober and official voice, different from my personal writing, that you may not know which ones were authored my me.
It's quite easy to tell. I write the ones you agree with - or so I would have you believe, because I already get enough grief from my other stuff.
But I can tell you what I don't usually write: Any editorial about property taxes in Allegheny County. That's because I don't agree with the Post-Gazette's position, which has been supportive of Common Pleas Court Judge R. Stanton Wettick's order to begin anew the process of assessments that were frozen by County Chief Executive Dan Onorato.
I am generally supportive of most of the PG's editorial positions - which is good because it makes it easier to work here - but on the subject of property taxes I offer a respectful dissent. You could say that my dissent is motivated by self-interest and you might be right. I live in Sewickley and Sewickley residents always end up getting socked when the discussion turns to "paying a fair share" of taxes.
In my view, there is no fairness about it. In fact, there is no there there, as Gertrude Stein, who was born on the North Side, once remarked (but about Oakland, Calif., not property taxes). Assessing homes is more voodoo than science, if you ask me. I know I will end up paying a lot more when the guesstimates are in.
The most iniquitous part is that if your house goes up in value, you don't reap the benefit until you sell it, but by then it could very well have gone down in value (as we have seen recently). Needless to say, you don't get a refund for the years you spent being overcharged.
And what sort of tax is it that penalizes you if you should renovate your house and make it better?
In the Allegheny County context, there is another outrageous pill to swallow. Other neighboring counties, indeed many counties elsewhere in Pennsylvania, haven't done a reassessment since Noah built the ark. In essence, then, Judge Wettick insists that we have to be the most pure ones, more Catholic than the pope. Why us?
But what to do? Until I lived in California, I always thought the Proposition 13 remedy was unfair. It takes your assessment from the sale price of your house and limits taxes rising by no more than a small percentage every year. Prop. 13 was too severe but it did pass muster with the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992. The fact is that what someone is prepared to pay for your house is the only true assessment than can ever be reached.
I know that death and taxes are always with us, but these taxes are killing us.
Nov 11 2009
This Veteran's Day morning found me at the Marriott near Mellon Arena with hundreds of other people attending the breakfast annually sponsored by the Friends of Danang, a local group started by Vietnam veterans to help the people of the country they once fought in.
It is a wonderful organization. While I am not officially a member, I do sometimes attend their monthly meetings in the Strip District. Call me a friend of the Friends of Danang,
This morning's keynote speaker was Marine Maj. Gen. Thomas S. Jones, who served in Vietnam, Iraq, Haiti as well as the Pentagon. On an exchange tour, he also commanded a commando company of the British Royal Marines.
The general turned out to be a fantastic speaker. His was a strictly non-political speech but it was by turns interesting, funny and inspiring. It was really a motivational speech and that is not something I would normally like, but there's no denying greatness. He got a standing ovation and I enthusiastically joined in.
As it happens, I have long been impressed by senior U.S. military officers. I can't say I have met many but the ones I have met over the years have been unfailingly smart. I haven't met Gen. David Petraeus but by all reports he is very impressive too.
But why am I telling you this? I have my devious purpose: To challenge certain ideological assumptions.
In some quarters, it is believed as a matter of holy writ that only private enterprise free of the dead hand of government can produce a managerial elite. According to this theory, bureaucracies cannot deliver inspirational leaders to motivate superior effort.
Yet the military is nothing if not a huge, government-sponsored bureaucracy. It is, in fact, quite socialistic in its makeup. Supposedly classless, it has its own class structure - instead of party officials and peasants, it has officers and other ranks. It has no profit motive to drive efficiency.
Yet while socialism fails, the military succeeds wonderfully. Of course, anybody who has served knows about the term SNAFU - the polite version of which is Situation Normal All Fouled Up - and about the urge to salute anything that moves and paint anything that doesn't. Yet, by and large, the U.S. military is an organization to be justly proud of.
That it does succeed ought to confound some people in their ideological belief. It seems that the dead hand of government isn't invariably dead.
Attention! Something for you Reg-ulators to chew on: If the military can prove an exception, maybe there can be others. Maybe, just maybe, government sponsored health care can work after all.
Nov 10 2009
Have you ever worried that the car wash will damage your antenna? In Australia (National motto: No worries!) this thought did not concern the four gallants mentioned in the story below. I post it just to give you a laugh, as recent comments have indicated that certain among you have misplaced your sense of humor. My knowledge of Australian culture leads me believe that beer was involved.
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) - It was just a routine car wash. Except there was no car - and no clothing.
Four Australian men who allegedly undressed and soaped up at a car wash have been charged with exposure and public nuisance.
Police say the two 19-year-olds and two 23-year-old men paid for a wash before stripping nude and cleaning themselves in the soapy water while their female companions took photos.
Police arrived mid-cycle after being called Sunday by Smart Wash operators in the town of Biloela in the state of Queensland. The four men are due to appear in court next month.
Nov 09 2009
I am a little out of the swing of the news. I returned yesterday from Schenectady in upstate New York, from the weekend wedding of my cousin Reggie's daughter, Vanessa. The last time I was in Schenectady was four years ago when my son played his last lacrosse game against Union College. His team lost that day and it rained. This was a happier occasion.
It's beautiful country up there, even if the towns tend to be run down. Schenectady is among those that have seen better days but we stayed at a picturesque old inn, the Glen Sanders Mansion on the Mohawk River, which traces its history to 1658. This is where the reception was held,
The wedding was celebrated about a mile away in the First Presbyterian Church, which itself dates to 1760, older than the United States. The church is beautifully, breathtakingly simple. It was a great setting for a wedding.
My cousin Reggie, who lives in Atlanta, is my only American cousin. When friends and relatives called out, "Hey, Reg," we both turned around.
While I was turning around, Rep. Jason Altmire, said to be a Democrat, was taking the hand of the health insurance industry in unholy matrimony while other defenders of the dysfunctional status quo served as his attendants. Till electoral death do they part. That may come sooner than he thinks.
Silly man. He let the House health-care bill pass without his vote, which will be long remembered by those who sent him to Washington in the first place. And it will be quickly forgotten by the conservative constituents he sought to appease. Given any sort of conservative Republican choice, they will abandon him in a heartbeat.
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