Highlights from our trip to the Vancouver Aquarium.
"What 'chu talkin' 'bout Willis!"
I’d like to start with a few remainders from last week. In watching the post-speech analysis of President Obama’s announcement of a military “surge” in Afghanistan, I somehow neglected to assail my brain with any commentary from Fox News. My bad. So in checking out some of the highlights later on in the week, two things in particular caught my attention.
First, in a feeble attempt at mockery, Karl Rove wondered allowed why it took the President 80-some days to decide to increase force levels when he and the previous administration defeated the Afghan Taliban in only 52 days. With all due respect to Karl Rove - and by “all due respect” I mean absolutely none whatsoever - if the previous administration had defeated the Taliban in 52 days, we certainly wouldn’t need to send 30,000 more American soldiers eight years later, would we.
Second, Glenn Beck. As much as I hate to legitimize him by even admitting to his existence, sometimes the things he says are so stupid that I have to repeat them in writing just to make sure it makes as little sense when I write it as it did when I heard it. In discussing the President’s decision, Beck launched into a parable about how, at the beginning of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln couldn’t find a general to fight the war the way he thought it should be fought. They all told Lincoln it couldn’t be done, so Honest Abe dismissed general after general until he finally found several (Grant and Sherman) he could trust to carry out his orders. The lesson we as a nation are to glean from this history lesson, according to Beck, is that the President should ALWAYS listen to the generals and give them whatever they deem necessary to fight the war. Incredulous, he then demanded to know just who this President thought he was, that he could arrive at some kind of decision on his own. Uh huh. Well, to answer the second question first, I would assume that President Obama believes he is the President of the United States, and therefore by extension, Commander In Chief of the United States Armed Forces. It is my understanding that such a position entitles him to determine military strategy. And again, with all due respect to Glenn Beck’s astute analysis of the Civil War, the lesson of his parable - if there is one - is that if a leader is surrounded by naysayers and malcontents, said leader should throw those bums out and find capable people who share his/her vision and are willing to carry it out! Is there something in the water over there at Fox?
This past Monday, Bank of America announced they will begin to repay $45 billion in funds received from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Later that day, the Treasury Department announced that estimates revised for an improving economic outlook now peg the cost of the TARP at $500 billion, approximately $200 billion LESS than originally budgeted. Pretty good news, huh? Yeah. What’s the quickest way to spend $200 billion you don’t have? I don’t know, let’s ask Congress, shall we? Today (Tuesday), on the heels of the White House “Jobs Summit” last week, President Obama announced a plan to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $170 billion the TARP “surplus” to fund tax cuts and job creation programs. Sigh. Earth to Congress, we are already spending $900 billion in borrowed money on a job creation program called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act! Like many pundits, I fully support the stimulus package. I believe it was necessary and I know for a fact that it is working. I am staring at six to eight weeks of overtime through the holidays due to the effectiveness of the ARRA. But, the ARRA - like the TARP - was supposed to be an emergency measure to jump start the economy and stabilize the banking system respectively. Those billions of dollars are NOT free money - especially the TARP. It is NOT the equivalent of finding a suitcase full of Franklins stuffed in your mailbox. Any money recovered from financial institutions should be used to pay for the cost of the program, and any profit made on those institutions should be used to close the budget deficit. At some point, our creditors (read China) are going to demand that we show some kind of fiscal responsibility/restraint, or they will demand higher interest rates in order to continue to finance our debt. Less than half of the stimulus funds have been spent to date, the market is up, and unemployment appears to be on it’s way down. At least let that money work its way through the economy before we insist on dumping a new pile of IOUs into the system.
I’m a little burnt out on the healthcare debate. At this point I almost expect Senate Democrats to find some way to screw up the entire process and blame everyone but themselves. But, word is that this evening they have reached a compromise which they will send to the Congressional Budget Office to be scored. The negotiators are unwilling to reveal any details at this point, so no one yet knows what this compromise entails. While it is safe to assume that Republican will oppose it (as they will oppose any and every attempt to reform... well, anything) we will have to wait and see if the compromise is something that can make it to the President’s desk for a signature.
I considered placing this next topic in the football section, but it really is about so much more than football, so I decided to discuss it here. Much has been made in the National Football League over the past several weeks about head injuries - specifically concussions. Following recently published reports concerning the long-term effects of concussions on the mental and physical health of football players suggesting that repeated blows to the head may lead to increased instances of permanent brain damage, Congress took time out of their busy schedule to question the league about what they intend to do to mitigate the problem. To be fair, the league has known for years that brain damage in football players might be an issue, but prior to this fall, the government has refused to get involved. Well, nervous about having the league’s anti-trust exemption examined, Commissioner Roger Goodell introduced a new set of safety guidelines designed to more or less protect football players from themselves by preventing them from re-entering a game - or even playing in a subsequent game if they exhibit signs of a concussion. However, in order for the rules to be effective, players must still be honest in answering doctor’s questions. Here in lies the problem.
As I alluded to last week, men are can be idiots. This comes as no surprise to women, but many men either don’t realize this fact or choose to ignore it. Boys are raised and conditioned by society to be tough and fearless, regardless of the circumstances. This often translates into men getting into fist fights, skateboarding behind cars on the freeway, refusing to show emotion and refusing to go the doctor - even if something is seriously wrong. Because if you get knocked don’t and don’t get right back up, you of course are less of a man. Especially if the other people can’t see whatever it is that knocked you down. We have also conditioned ourselves to believe that it is perfectly normal for a 220-pound man traveling north at 10 feet per second to collide with two 250-pound men traveling south at 9 feet per second twenty-five times per game and suffer no ill effects. The physics are even more astounding for 330-pound offensive lineman butting heads separated only by thin shells of plastic and foam with 315-pound defensive lineman for 30 minutes every Sunday. The fact is, the human body simply was not designed to sustain that type of impact without any damage. Yet because players are expected not to let a little thing like pain slow them down, most play with minor to moderate injuries week in and week out. Now, it’s one thing to continue to play with, say, a broken hand, because you know the worst you can do to it by continuing to play is perhaps break it again. But continuing to play with a damaged brain is an entirely different issue and MUST be treated as such. Unlike bones, nerve cells do not heal once they are damaged. If you lose your mind, you can NEVER get it back. I understand the desire to be on the field and in the game with one’s teammates. But players need to understand that it is just that, a game. The average player enters professional football at the age of 20 or 21, and his career lasts only three to five years. Many of these guys have wives and children and families that will require functioning husbands and father 30, 40, even 50 years after their careers are over. We all know that football is a dangerous sport and by stepping on the field every week all the players accept some measure of risk. But while a player who has suffered a head injury is sitting in the locker room considering whether or not to lie to doctor about how he feels, he needs to ask himself whether 30-minutes of bravado is truly worth 50-years of diminished mental faculties.
My NFL Thoughts for Week 13.
The Colts won another game on Sunday. Yawn. Wake me up when they reach the Super Bowl. Indianapolis is now 12-0, and is beginning to talk about resting some of their player in preparation for the playoffs. Every single time some “expert” brings this nonsense up I find myself screaming at the television. Over the past decade the Colts have reached the playoffs eight times. Leading up to seven of those playoff runs, Indianapolis rested its star players in the last few regular season games. In all seven of those runs they were eliminated prior to reaching the championship game. During one of those eight runs they were unable to rest players before the playoffs. That was the year they won the Super Bowl.
Every now and then a great football team finds itself in a game it really should lose. It happened to the then 12-0 Patriots against Baltimore in 2007. And it happened to the 11-0 Saints in Washington on Sunday. New Orleans never lead during the game, made more mistakes than an undefeated team should at this point in the season, and tackled so poorly one might have thought Washington’s running backs were covered in butter. Yet somehow, someway, the Saints hung around long enough to take Washington to overtime and beat them on a field goal, preserving the perfect season. Looking forward to watching these guys play in February.
Washington had ample chances to win that game and crush cajun dreams of perfection. In spite of having an interception returned for a fumble returned for a touchdown and an overtime fumble that probably wasn’t, all the Redskins had to do was kick a 23-yard field goal with a minute-and-a-half remaining in regulation. But, in the same way good teams find ways to win, bad teams just seem to find ways to lose, and Washington missed a field goal that even high school kickers are expected to make on a regular basis, and turned the game over to a team that at least on this day, probably didn’t deserve to win.
The Dallas Cowboys kicked off December the same way they have since the mid-90s - by losing. And the prospects for turning it around don’t look too promising, with three of their four remaining games against some of the league’s better teams. It’s always somewhat of a trying month in my house. At least this year my wife has the Saints to console her this year, although a week from Sunday is going to be pretty tough.
Both the Patriots and the Steelers - perennial NFL powerhouses - lost again on Sunday to teams they should have defeated handily. Ever since losing to Indianapolis three weeks ago, New England has looked lost on the field, its offense doing things out of character and its defense virtually non-existent. For Pittsburgh, even the return of their two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback failed to lift them to victory over some dude named Bruce Gradkowski (who?) and the Oakland Raiders. It should now be painfully obvious, if it wasn’t before, that without Troy Polamalu, the Steelers are a shell of their former selves, and without JaMarcus Russell, the Raiders might be able to contest a few games.
What a difference a year makes for 2008 rookie sensations Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco. Last year their teams rolled easily into the playoffs. This year Atlanta and Baltimore find themselves on the outside looking in, needing other teams to lose in order to make the post-season. Neither of these teams need to worry about the future of their franchise quarterbacks - they’ll both be fine, but this is certainly a setback after last year’s progress.
This just in. The Cleveland Browns are still awful. More so than the Detroit Lions.
My Super Bowl Picks for Week 13: New Orleans Saints vs. Indianapolis Colts.
Finally, on Tuesday morning in southern California, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson debuted the world’s first - and only - commercial spacecraft, seen here.
For at least $200,000 each, six passengers will be treated to a 2 1/2 hour flight during which time they will see the curvature of the earth and experience about five minutes of weightlessness. That’s right. At least $200K. Five minutes. That’s it. I’m vaguely underwhelmed. Seriously. I can go down to the YMCA and float weightless in the pool for 2 1/2 hours for substantially less than a quarter-million dollars. Call me when you can teleport me to the space station.
