Women Ogling Women's Bodies

Thank you very much, AZ Republic (10/29/13), for alerting us to research saying girls as well as boys are ogling women's bodies,  a vice attributed to our sex-charged culture.   When we take our children to see The Nutcracker ballet this Christmas,  I will admonish my children only to look at the ballerina's faces.

China: The Dangerous Trading Partner

Communist China's recent and reckless sabre rattling in the South China Sea and East China tell us that China is an unstable trading partner and unreliable manufacturing location.  American companies like Apple and Walmart need to relocate that supply sources from Communist China to America and Mexico. 

Steve Dilbeck - California Knucklehead

For want of anything intelligent to say or simply a genetic disposition to boorishness,  Steve Dilbeck of the LA Times calls Arizonans "knuckleheads," a reckless generalization.   Los Angeles may have Clayton Kershaw, a fine pitcher who's never been to college.   Arizona has Roger Angel. 

Firstly, to paraphrase Russell Baker,  people become journalists because they are mathematically challenged, need an occupation less intellectually demanding than engineering or medicine, and aren't motivated enough to get up early in the morning to do something productive like work on a farm.  Of these, the most marginal are left to babble about sports.

Next, California would be better served if its babblers toned down the babble and urged the knuckleheads in their state to stop killing each other over baseball games.   Aping the public bad behavior of its brawling sports teams.  Arizona is the least of California's problems.

Last, Mr. Dilbeck's defense of boorish behavior by Dodgers baseball players, i.e., urinating in a public swimming pool and bragging about it, is substantive evidence that its newspapers employ individuals with a genetic disposition for boorishness and who are very much a part of fueling the mayhem in California.

But perhaps I'm mistaken.   Mr. Dilbeck, being one, is probably California's foremost authority on knuckleheads.

*   *    *   *   *

How sad for you and Mr. Dilbeck if you think Dr. Angel is a sportswriter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Angel

Lower Expectations

We've attended the Arizona Opera for many years.   So did my wife's friend, the priest who baptized my son and his longtime friend and opera date.    The priest's opera buddy was very much unknown back then and we were the only people the priest and his date had to talk to during intermissions.   After the opera we'd escort them back to the diocese parking lot where they parked their car.   I was the closest thing they had to a security detail.   Back in those days I was more than enough to drive off the stray homeless guy who tried to ask the priest's opera buddy for a date.    This little convoy went on for years until the priest's opera date won an election earning her a limo and a better parking space and bodyguard than me.

Years later sitting in the airport waiting for a ride back from grandma's house in Boston I look up and who do you think is sitting right next us?    Our opera buddy and her new bodyguard.   I leave "celebrities" alone.   She never got around to acknowledging us.   I admit that I'm pretty forgettable, but my wife isn't.   And what Arizona politician would pass up the opportunity to kiss an Arizona baby.

Living in a Crazy World

A Native American tribe that has no connection to Phoenix whatsoever, except the phone number of a lawyer who can drive a moving van through a pinhole in the law, can build a big a casino in Glendale.    A local hospital that used to be run by caring nuns but now is owned by a big medical conglomerate headquartered in  San Francisco can run a multi-million dollar raffle complete with a big TV media campaign.  An American Legion post that's been serving veterans in Phoenix for generations can't have a few slot machines to entertain the old timers and keep the doors open.  We live in a crazy world. 

Steve Benson calls Nurses Pigs

Regarding Steve Benson's cartoon (5/22) depicting Medicaid recipients and providers as pigs, most of the recipients are children and mothers.   Most of the providers are nurses and very dedicated.  I know my wife is one.   I don't always agree with Steve, but I'd never call his children and wife pigs.   "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last..."

District 9

The voters of Arizona District 9 sent Kyrsten Sinema to represent them in the United States Congress, its first openly bisexual member.   They made a science fiction movie about District 9; it was set in South Africa for dramatic effect.  No wonder they call us Zonies.

Nobody Here Speaks Portuguese Anymore

The beautiful Latin hymns of my childhood are gone.   The lilting Gaelic of my grandmother and her sisters is a fading memory.   My wife was a grown woman before she discovered her grandmothers were Portuguese and Spanish.   In New World Italian families daughters-in-law were expected to speak English and cook Italian (lucky for me).

I recognized a new contractors accent.   You're from from Brazil.   Why the subject of Portuguese came up I don't remember, but she asked if my family spoke it.  Sorry, no, nobody here speaks Portuguese anymore.

Flash Flood

The river was in such a rage
its waters had reached the flood stage.
I grabbed my old paddle
and tried to skedaddle
but a canoe I forgot to engage.

Clay Thompson: Skandal im Sperrbezirk‏

Eten drinken slapen!  Skandal im Sperrbezirk‏!

(Eat, drink, sleep!  Scandal in the prohibited area!) 

Sit on the porch in the sun in a worn out old robe.  

Scare a few hummingbirds.  Sip a few beers, trying to recall Rosi's number.

Und draussen im Hotel D'Amour
langweilen sich die Damen nur
weil jeder den die Sehnsucht quält
ganz einfach Rosis Nummer wählt

Und draussen vor der grossen Stadt
steh'n die Nutten sich die Füsse platt

Skandal im Sperrbezirk
Skandal im Sperrbezirk
Skandal - Skandal um Rosi

Steve Benson's Lewd Pope Caricature

You be the judge.

Be Like New Hampshire: Do Nothing

Rep. Martin Quezada's Republic column (3/9/2013) arguing for continuing Voting Rights Act preclearance is disengenious and ungracious. Federal protections didn't gift Rep. Quezada an uncontested seat in the Arizona House, the citizens of Arizona did when they established the Independent Redistricting Commission. Rep. Quezada claims that Arizona could get out from under the preclearance requirement by changing its ways like New Hampshire recently did. Really? New Hampshire didn't do anything except point out to the federal government and courts that it was silly to apply the Voting Rights Act and preclearance to New Hampshire in the first place. The New Hampshire in question is ten tiny towns that are 98 pecent white. The biggest has a few thousand citizens and the smallest has nine. The sin that got them on the federal watch list was to have less than 50 percent voter turnout in the 1968 election, when a cold and fog enshrouded New Hampshire was going for Nixon anyway and a lot of the voters decided to stay home. Nothing's changed much in New Hamsphire since then except a lot of people (like Joe Arpaio) with better voting habits have moved there from Massachusetts.  

Latest Hoot: RepublicTells Mayer How to Run a Technology Company

In the latest and greatest hoot, the AZ Republic enlisted a couple of unknown management consultants to advise Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo.   Mayer's sin is telling technology employees that they need to show up at the office for work without first asking for their input on the mandate.

Hello!  Mayer isn't just a pretty face.  She rose through the ranks of software engineering to become a top executive at Google, one of the most successful technology companies in the history of the planet.   Mayer is one of the people, if not the principal person, responsible for Google unseating Yahoo as the search technology that almost everyone uses to surf the Internet.

If you already know the formula for running a successful technology company it might make your new employees feel good to ask them how they feel about using it, but what do you do when they say no?   Say: "Ok, fine, we'll just keep doing the things we do, failing and losing money, while Google beats our brains out."

Who won the Vietnam War

They walked the rounds in on us
methodically adjusting the range
just like we'd been trained to do.
TANKS! Sweet Mary, Mother of God!
They have TANKS!
-- Battle for the Dong Ha Bridge, South Vietnam, 1972

Noting that a Starbucks coffee shop has recently opened in what was once known as Saigon, a Repubic letter-writer (1/13) asks why 58,000 Americans died during the Vietnam war. My question of many years remains unanswered, too. In 1972 almost all American combat forces had been withdrawn from South Vietnam. Although America had conceded defeat, the Communists in the North hadn't gotten the message. They procured hundreds of PT-76 and T-54 tanks and hundreds of 130mm artillery guns from their Soviet allies, and launched a very contenvional military attack on the Vietnamese in the South. If Vietnamization had failed and America was defeated in 1972, something America's left can't stop telling us, why was a massive Soviet and Chinese backed in invasion from the North necessary?  It took three years for the North Viethamese supplied with even more tanks and artillery by their Soviet and Communist Chinese allies to defeat the South Vietnamese. AK-47s, tanks and artillery may be able to force a government on people who don't want it, but they can't stop people from yearning for an American cup of coffee. 

New Year's Resolution for the Republic‏

In the New Year the Arizona Republic should resolve that it will be an alternative to the endless river of humorless "Progressive" and "Conservative" logorrhea we call the media. The Republic will feature the curmudgeons Clay and Doug, and hire an excorist to prevent Doug from being taken over by the Dark Side and Darth Hannity.