...A Thousand Words

What a difference a week makes.

I spent most of last Sunday night lamenting the early demise of my national hockey team, and by extension, the nation of my birth. I said they were slow, inefficient and more than likely, overwhelmed by the burden of a country expecting nothing less than perfection on home ice in a sport they proudly call their own. I predicted that even if they made it through the qualifying game unscathed, they would likely be quickly dispatched by a formidable Russian squad waiting eagerly in the wings. Well, to paraphrase the words of a very wise man, may the words you speak always be sweet, because you never know when you may have to eat them.

Turns out I was wrong. Despite shaky goaltending and lackluster defense from some veteran players, Team Canada figured out how to score goals just in time to knock off Germany and Russia. The youth that was so sorely lacking four years ago in Torino came up big against the best offensive player in the game (Russia’s Alexander Ovechkin) and restored some measure of the confidence lost in the shootout to Switzerland and the loss to the United States. And after withstanding a last second Slovakian surge for a 3-2 victory, Canada found itself in a rematch with the United States for the only gold medal that truly mattered to Canadians. (I in no way mean to belittle any of the 13 other gold medals won by the host country, but if you asked ten Canadians if they would give up all those other golds for a single gold in men’s hockey, nine of them would answer yes, and the tenth would be silently offended that you even bothered to ask the question.)

They insisted on doing it the hard way, playing 50 minutes of solid Olympic-caliber hockey, then put an entire nation into cardiac arrest by allowing the United States to come back and tie the game with only 24 seconds left to play. Eight minutes into sudden death overtime, I watched Team Canada captain Scott Niedermayer turn the puck over in front of his own net covered my eyes, waiting for Team U.S.A.s celebration to begin. But it never came. Luongo knocked down the shot and Canada regrouped. Less than a minute later, a diving Jarome Iginla slipped the puck out of the corner to Sidney Crosby, who put immediately put it through the pads of tournament MVP Ryan Miller (no one has been more deserving of that honor in at least 30 years) to cement his place both in history and as a legend to his country.

Sidney Crosby had a rather quiet tournament. Often referred to as the heir to Wayne Gretzky, the superstar spent most his time doing work usually reserved for less distinguished members of a hockey team. He dug pucks out of corners, poke-checked pucks off the sticks of attacking forwards, blocked shots from the blue line and checked opposing forwards from in front of his net. In fact, Crosby only scored two goals in the entire tournament. The first to win the shootout against the Swiss. The second to win the gold medal in overtime against the United States. Paul Henderson, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and now, Sidney Crosby. That’s some damn fine company.

As great a story as hockey was for Canada, was there a more inspiring story for the rest of the world than that of figure skater Joannie Rochette? Merely hours after arriving in Vancouver to watch her daughter skate, Rochette’s mother - and by all accounts her best friend - suffered a heart attack and passed away. Distraught, Rochette considered withdrawing from the competition, and not one person would have second guessed her decision. But after consulting her father and her coach, she decided to stay and skate, to honor the memory of her mother in her own way. So, last Tuesday night, Joannie Rochette took to the ice following a record-setting performance by South Korea’s Kim Yu-Na and skated the performance of a lifetime. She totally Brett Favre’d her short program. And I don’t mean Favre’d in that she took an eternity to decide what she was going to do. On Sunday, December 21, 2003, Favre’s father died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car in Mississippi. The following night, through tears of grief, Favre threw for four first-half touchdowns and 400 yards in a 41-7 thrashing of the Oakland Raiders - in Oakland, for which he earned a standing ovation from notoriously hostile Raider fans. What Rochette accomplished was no less impressive. Not one Canadian would have been disappointed had she decided to leave the games and return home to grieve with the rest of her family. Instead she chose to skate, to do what she had come to Vancouver to do. Her grief played out in front of the whole world, and the whole world cried along with her. Yes, two skaters outperformed her and finished ahead of her in the standings. But the color of her medal didn’t matter to anyone in that arena or anyone else watching on television. Joannie Rochette proved to the world that she has the heart of a champion. And for at least one night, that was better than silver or gold.

And now, back to Washington. I’m depressed already.

Last Thursday, President Obama hosted an healthcare summit with congressional Democrats and Republicans at Blair House, across the street from the White House. It might as well have been held at Little House on the Prairie, or House of 1,000 Corpses. While the President wanted to talk policy, Republicans - most the most part - wanted to talk process, and how because they had been left out of it (even though they hadn’t) they were content to take their ball and go home. Of course, everyone has known since the summit was announced, that the purpose of this meeting was to give each side one final opportunity to draw their lines in the sand before moving forward. Tomorrow (Wednesday) the President will do just that. And if the Democrats have learned anything at all over the past fourteen months they will pass some measure of reform and move on to other business. Because if you you’re going to get hit for throwing a jab, and you’re going to get hit standing still, you might as well come out swinging.

In a related story, news organizations spent considerable ink discussing the findings of recent polls in which the popularity of the Senate healthcare reform bill was pitted against the individual elements of said bill. When asked if they supported the Senate bill in its current form, a majority (mid 50% range) indicated they did not. However, when asked about whether or not they supported individual reform measures contained within the bill, (for example, no denial due to pre-existing conditions, expansion of hig-risk insurance pools and applying strategies to reduce fraud and waste in the Medicare system), an overwhelming majority - in some cases in excess of 70% - claimed they did. So, this could mean one of two things. Either a majority of Americans are idiots and don’t realize they are opposing the very same initiatives they are supporting, or there is something about the form of the bill itself that turns people off. In an interview with NPR Wednesday afternoon, Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander summed it up this way (to paraphrase): “of course people are in favor of all those ideas, but when you tell then that in order to get them they will have to pay higher taxes, cut medicare, reduce the quality of service and add hundreds of billions to the federal debt they turn against it and say we should start over.” In other words, when you take any set of good ideas and lie to people telling them that those good ideas will bankrupt their children, pull the plug on grandma and usher in armageddon, most will completely freak out and act against their own interest. No organization is better at peddling fear of things we need not be afraid of than this crop of congressional Republicans. Unfortunately, no organization is worse at selling the merits of positive change than congressional Democrats.

The opposition continues to tout this number of more than 50% opposition to the Senate healthcare reform bill. But, like almost everything else Republicans have peddled during this entire process, that majority opposition is a little disingenuous. The polls do not ask that majority why they oppose the bill. And buried in that number is a significant number of respondents who oppose the current Senate bill because they feel it does not go far enough to control costs, expand coverage and limit the power of the insurance companies. There are many who are opposed to this bill because it never bothered to discuss the concept of a single-payer system and eliminated some sort of public option very early on in the process - an idea that continues to poll much more highly in many, if not most districts than the bill itself. It is not a stretch to say that those people - in spite of their distain for a bill sorely lacking in terms of their core issues - would still prefer some measure of reform to pass as opposed to no reform at all. Right now, Democrats have absolutely nothing with which to rally their base. Healthcare legislation would give them at least ONE thing to fight for in November. Passage of some type of healthcare reform will be far more beneficial to Democrats than abandoning the process altogether.

This past Friday the Senate was scheduled to pass an extension of unemployment benefits to over a million people that were due to expire over the weekend. This were going well. Majority Leader Reid worked out a deal with Republicans to pass the extension and brought it to the floor for passage under unanimous consent. Enter Kentucky Republican Senator Jim Bunning. While complaining about the college basketball game he was missing by making the motion, the former hall-of-fame Major League pitcher decided to object to the passage of the bill, demanding that Congress either cut spending or raise taxes by 10 billion dollars to pay for the extension. Bunning’s action stalled passage of the legislation, causing the furlough of 2,000 federal transportation employees and denied the unemployed the ability to apply for benefits or for the COBRA health insurance extension. Bunning claimed he was not opposed to the $10 billion extension, he just didn’t want it to add to the deficit. Now while the merits of Bunning’s argument are certainly debatable, it seems somewhat, “cold” to bicker over process while firing 2,000 more workers in an economy where 9.8 percent of the work force is currently unemployed. I’m sure all those people who were told not to bother showing up for work Monday morning are just broken up over the fact that you missed that Wildcats game while signing their pink slips.

General Motors announced last week that they will be shutting down the Hummer brand after a deal with a Chinese firm interested in purchasing it fell through. I have only two words to describe my feelings toward the demise of Hummer. Good riddance. I sincerely hope General Motors rebounds substantially and soon, so that all the workers displaced by the closing of Hummer plants (particularly here in Indiana) might find work. But I have never been happier to see a vehicle disappear than I will be when Hummer is gone. They symbolized the worst General Motors had to offer. Hopefully, by relegating the Hummer to the same scrap heap as the Hyundai Pony and the Ford Pinto will do for GM what it did for Hyundai and Ford.

Finally, last week a trainer at Sea World was killed when a killer whale grabbed hold of her ponytail and dragged and held her underwater. As much as we as spectators enjoy watching these animals do tricks and flips and splash us with their tail flukes during their shows, we need to remember that they are indeed, wild animals. And perhaps the wild is where they belong. Although they may seem cute and cuddly from a distance, they are bigger, stronger and faster than we are, and they really don’t understand how frail we human beings actually are. They aren’t mean, or cruel, just wild. Wild animals are unpredictable, and in working with them, bad things are going to happen. All the evidence points to incidents like this being rare. Let’s pray that is indeed the case.