Farewell, cruel blogging world

Do not adjust your screen. This blog service has been temporarily discontinued. I am putting my brain on ice while I take a well-deserved vacation.

Please reconvene here on Thursday, Aug. 13, when I will return fit, tanned and ready.

Best wishes,

Reg

Now batting for the Pirates ...

In light of the Pirates getting rid of their best players as a recipe for future success, a novel theory to say the least, I thought you might be interested in my recent visit to PNC Park.

I was sitting in Row B, Section 123, behind the third base dugout, just minding my own business, eating a hotdog and drinking a cold beer, for which I had previously obtained a mortgage. The Bucs' manager came out and spied me there and a look of recognition came over his face. He came back into the seats.

"Say, aren't you the fellah that writes a column for the paper? It seems like I remember you play cricket," he said.

"Yes," I said modestly. "That would be me." I didn't have the presence of mind to tell him that I don't play cricket very well.

"Come back with me," he said. "We are looking for someone to play for us today and I reckon one ballgame is very much like another and it's not like we want to win or anything."

Well, I was shocked and flattered. "But why?" I said.

"Because after all the recent trades we are a bit short of players, especially veterans. And you look so old you could probably get a pension."

He went on to explain that this was the start of a new crowd-pleasing program called "Be a Bucco for a Day."

Well, I was game, so I went into the player's dressing room where they equipped me with a uniform. I was disappointed to see that instead of Henry written on the back, my uniform was borrowed from somebody else - some guy named Generic. But who was I - a Bucco for the Day - to complain?

They had me play left field. I felt this was type-casting but again I offered no complaint.

My first at bat was a real experience. This was the Major Leagues and, boy, those pitches were fast. By the time the second ball came over the plate for a strike, I was still swinging at the first one. I didn't even see the third strike.

It wasn't an auspicious start but I resolved to do better. On the plus side, I found that fielding wasn't a problem. With most of the Pirates understandably in a funk, the other team's batters mostly hit home runs, which didn't require any action on my part.

When I finally came up to bat the second time, I was ready. My plan was to swing early. In fact, I began swinging when I was still in the on-deck circle. It worked a treat.

The pitcher looked very surprised - as well he should - as the bat cracked and the ball flew deep for what would normally be an easy double. Unfortunately, that hot dog and the beer had slowed me up to the point I couldn't win the pierogi race if I were the only pierogi.

As it happened, I didn't make first base - which reminded me a bit of the old days when I was dating. But the thing is that I was just out. Another two or three seconds and I would have been safe at first.

Well, that's how it goes in the old ball game and I knew that I had not disgraced myself. I had shown promise.

As it turned out, this was my undoing. In the 8th inning, just before another turn at bat, the manager came up to me with the bad news: "Sorry, Reg, but you have been traded."

I was flabbergasted. Yes, my flab couldn't stop flabbering with shock and indignation until I was utterly gasted.

I managed to ask why. "Because you are a veteran player who showed he could swing the bat," the manager said. "We had to get rid of you. It is one of our operating principles."

Later, I learned that I had been traded for one bat boy and a perogi from the minors. So at least they got their money's worth.

I don't think I'll be returning to the Pirates lineup anytime soon - the way things are going, perhaps not even as part of the crowd.

Jokes aside, pay the state workers

Count me among those who have made fun of government workers over the years. But count me also as very sympathetic to the plight of those state workers who have had their paydays postponed because of the current budget impasse, as detailed in this morning's story "State Workers Rally for Budget Passage."

If state workers are not being paid, then state lawmakers should not be paid either. As the bar girls used to say in old Saigon, "no money, no honey."

The situation is intolerable. How are people expected to pay their bills?

Enough already, politicians. Pass the darn budget, which is the job you are being paid to do.

Sessions ends the terrible suspense

The nation's long wait is over. I see that the chief Republican inquisitor in the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearing, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, has come out and said he won't vote for the first Hispanic nominee for the Supreme Court.

Well, there's a surprise. You could knock me over with a feather.

Come to think of it, though, this announcement is welcome. It has broken the intolerable suspense.

After all, if he had actually decided to vote for her, putting aside his own racial baggage in the process, that would have been real news: Trumpets would have sounded, the sky would have been full of a heavenly chorus and the graves would have given up their dead - and this would have been inconvenient for a lot of us.

As it is the world remains on its foundations, solid and predictable.

A note now to some of the faithful readers of the blog:

To Little Minx: There are worse things than being called an absolutist. You are still No. 1 in the minx category of those who react to the column. Keep minxing.

To Titan Lee: I applaud your scholarship in collecting pithy quotes of mine. And let me just say, because none better is available to say so, what a fountain of truth they are. Why, I think many people standing in the middle of the road would agree with many of those statements - the only ones who would disagree would be those standing off on the grassy verge.

But what's your point? That I am not even-handed? Did I say that I was? I call 'em as I see 'em, but of course every columnist occupies a different place behind the plate - Jack Kelly does it his way, I do it mine. So the world turns, matey, so the world turns.

Obama's beer bash

The great Cambridge arrest furor now appears to be heading for a conciliatory beer in the White House. As you know, beer is not just for breakfast anymore but can be used to settle grievances.

If President Obama's kegger with the easily offended police officer and the easily offended professor goes well, perhaps the stimulus plan can pay for barrels to be rolled down to the nation's divorce courts, where the bitterness is begging to be drowned in froth.

Of course, some readers will say that beer (and its alcoholic accomplices) is a major factor in causing the very domestic disturbances that cause divorce. Sadly, they would be right - so the moral is, drink responsibly and forgive and be tolerant of the mistakes of others.

In the comments section on my last posting, Ladyburg takes offense that good old Reg refers to right-wing ratbags. She asks what I call the extreme left-wingers.

Happy to oblige. They are ratbags too. I called them that as recently as last month in a column about G-20 protesters, which made me odious in the left-wing ratbag community.

I am always amazed, however, whenever conservatives accuse me of name calling. The right wing has a talk-radio empire that has turned name-calling into an art form. In this context, it takes some nerve to question me when I call a ratbag a ratbag.

This confirms me in my suspicion that conservatives are a people who hand it out pretty good but can't take it.

It's enough to drive a man to drink.

Foolish Obama

An unhappy caller this week accused me of "being in Obama's pocket." Well, Obama must have big pockets because I am a bit of a load these days.

If I may give Obama's pocket a break for a moment, let me just say that I believe the president acted foolishly by taking the side of his friend, Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, when asked in his recent press conference about the infamous incident in which the professor was arrested in his own house by an officer sent to investigate the report of a break-in.

My colleague Tony Norman, in his column this morning, translates what went down like this ... "he was arrested for raising his voice instead of acting deferential in the presence of a cop."

Maybe. Maybe not. My instinct tells me that there are two sides to this story. It may even be that both sides were wrong, not just one.

Pretty much everybody knows that cops profiling blacks is a well-documented practice - it doesn't happen all the time, it doesn't involve all officers, but it does happen. That is why police go to classes that stress professional behavior. It turns out that the officer who made the arrest in this case actually teaches such a class - which ought to give everybody who has rushed to judgment pause, as should the news that a black officer on the scene backs the action of his white colleague.

Of course, it is ridiculious that a man was arrested in his own house --- and the fact that the disorderly conduct charges were dismissed speaks to that.

But who provoked whom? The truth is that we don't really know the precise facts of this unpleasant exchange. Indeed, it could be that the officer was unconsciously making racial assumptions despite his training. But it also could be that the professor in his own mind had profiled the white officer as a bigot with a gun.

Whether you are black or white, it is not really smart to raise your voice to any officer, especially one who has arrived to help you. I wonder how far a little courtesy on either side might have gone to defuse this.

This much is clear: Obama should not have waded into this, as the White House damage control functionaries now seem to realize. Any more of this and I might get out of his pocket entirely (joke alert for right-wing ratbags).

Now for something completely different: More evidence that the world has gone mad....

JERUSALEM (AP) - For centuries, people have stuffed prayers written on scraps of paper into the ancient cracks in the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. In recent years they could fax or e-mail their prayers - and now they can tweet them, too.

The Western Wall now has its own address on the social networking service, Twitter, allowing believers around the globe to have their prayers placed between its 2,000 year-old-stones without leaving their armchairs.

The service's founder, Alon Nil, says petitioners can tweet their prayers, and they will be printed out and taken to the wall, where they will join the thousands of handwritten notes placed by visitors .....

Is a smaller Legislature better?

Nobody has done a better job than PG columnist Brian O’Neill of hounding that sorry bunch of self-serving and short-sighted barnacles known as members of the Pennsylvania Legislature. His column today titled "Smaller Legislature Would Lead to ‘Better Business’ is another in a long line of his columns holding deserving officials’ feet to the purifying flame.

Hurray for Brian, a wonderful and industrious writer and a good guy to boot. But as much as I recognize the disease, I am not altogether sold on the prescription — to wit, reducing the size of the Legislature. Such a move would surely save some money but probably not as much as people think — and there would be a cost.

The General Assembly is big because the commonwealth is big. People like to have their state reps perform all sorts of services for them — handle minor bureaucratic problems and the like. Fewer reps means more constituents, means fewer locals back home kept happy — and this despite the bigger staffs which will surely come to handle more constituents, thus reducing the savings promised by shrinking the General Assembly.

While I am no political scientist, (I just play one in the paper), I think a smaller General Assembly would change the nature of representation in a fundamental way. The commonwealth is not only but big but also largely rural.

To satisfy the principle of one person, one vote, those rural districts would become even bigger — and might have to take in more towns and even cities.

The rural vote is a conservative vote but if urban areas start to creep in, it’s possible that conservative vote might be diluted. That’s fine by me — so much reactionary legislation seems to come from professionally unsophisticated lawmakers in rural districts — but I wonder what it does to the cause of properly representing the people of Pennsylvania.

So can nothing be done in the way of meaningful reform? Yes, I believe so. I am starting to wonder whether term limits might do more for reform than taking an axe to the Capitol.

I think the problem with state lawmakers is less how many there are than what they do. What they do is a function of the fact that they are in Harrisburg to make a career of politics. Suppose it wasn’t a career but merely a type of public service for just a few years? Un-career lawmakers may not be so protective of all the perks — the cars, the pensions, the health care — that drive people crazy.

What say you, oh great tribe of Reggie-ulors?

In praise of plumbing

So you didn't much like the quiz in my last posting? Oh, well, I'll try some bathroom humor to lighten you up. If that doesn't work, it will just go to show we have nothing in common.

No story in the paper recently gave me as much relief - figuratively in my case, no doubt literally in the case of the participants - than the one titled "Broken Toilet Is Fixed on Crowded Space Station."

Plumbing problems are always a pain. Knowing how much it costs to get a plumber on a Sunday, I was concerned about the national deficit if it came to getting a plumber to make a call in space. In the event, the Space Station commander and a flight engineer replaced some parts in the damaged loo and, Houston, they had lift off, or seat off as the case maybe.

When I crossed the Atlantic in the sloop Amerigo in 2002, one of the two heads broke mid-ocean, which terrified me as much as anything on the voyage - the big seas, tropical storms, the threat of hitting half-submerged objects. If the other head had broken, we would have been up an ocean without a paddle.

I just love plumbing. I am all for roughing it in the wilderness or visiting foreign counties so long as nice conveniences are convenient. My theory is that the older we become the more fond we are of clean and comfortable commodes. When all else has failed, that is the one thing we still have to go on.

Where do you stand politically?

As the responses to my last posting about public prayer demonstrate, I am to the right of some of my readers on some issues, despite all those who write to denounce me for being a liberal.

I think, for example, that First Amendment Constructionist well and truly belled the cat in his reply - the cat being Little Minx. Sorry, Little Minx but I reckon you lost that argument. There is a tension between the establishment of religion and the free exercise of religion but I think the writers of the First Amendment would be shocked by the absolutism of your argument.

But this exchange got me thinking about people's sometimes unpredictable political views. A friend of mine recently sent me a quiz that purports to identify where people stand on the political spectrum. Here is the note that came with it. I can't vouch for the claims made on its behalf but it did seem interesting to me.

 So, you think you know where you stand, politically. Think again. The result from this short test may surprise you and give you some food for thought.

You'll be asked just 10 questions, and then it instantly tells you where you stand politically. It shows your position as a red dot on a "political map" so you'll see exactly where you score.

The most interesting thing about the Quiz is that it goes beyond the Democrat, Republican, and Independent.

The Quiz has gotten a lot of praise. The Washington Post said it has "gained respect as a valid measure of a person's political leanings." The Fraser Institute said it's "a fast, fun, and accurate assessment of a person's overall political views." Suite University said it is the "most concise and accurate political quiz out there."

Click on the link below...

http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html

And where did I come out? That would be telling.

Say a little prayer for me

The story by Tom Barnes Sunday described how a minister was not allowed to open a state House session with a prayer that ended with the words " In Jesus' name, Amen." He said that he had been told that the name of Jesus was "offensive."

It wouldn't have offended me but then I wouldn't have been offended if he had wanted to pray in Allah's name. My view is that prayers are not binding on the rest of us and common decency requires tolerance, just as you wouldn't sit down during the playing of another country's national anthem.

So my reaction to the story was here we go again .... something to get riled up about while other problems - such as a state without a budget - remain unresolved.

It seems to me that the silliness and waste of time of such disputes could easily be avoided if all parties recognized two obligations when someone makes a public invocation.

One obligation belongs to the person making the prayer. My advice for ministers is this: Don't force your opinions or your religion onto others. A prayer in such circumstances is meant to bring people together, not force them apart on sectarian lines.

I am sure the Almighty knows that in your heart you are speaking to Him. Being non-denominational in such circumstances is the peaceful and courteous thing to do and conforms to the teaching of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

The second obligation belongs to those who hear the prayer. Listeners: Don't be the Taliban. If someone mentions their God by name, show respect and tolerance. A fleeting reference hurts no-one and is more honest. The minister in question should have been allowed to say Jesus' name.

Of course, give them an inch and some zealous people will take a mile. Tom Barnes' story mentioned another prayer sometimes said, one that is more a right-wing political statement than a spiritual appeal. That's the danger of this, but most people are more sensible than that.

In the days when I used to go to Pittsburgh Rotary Club meetings, a Presbyterian minister from Mt. Lebanon was often asked to say the invocation. He had a neat little way around the problem.

He would say a non-denominational prayer and then gracefully add - as a gentle nod to the non-conformists and non-believers out there - that "I pray in the name of Jesus Christ." He emphasized the "I" - which was his way of saying that I have my beliefs and I know you have yours and blessings be upon all of us.

Seemed fair to me.