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Benson: Truth in Advertising



Steve Benson, the thin-skinned Arizona Republic cartoonist, bristles if you address him as "young man,"  protesting that he's a grandfather.  Maybe he's just lucky or uses "Just for Men" because his Arizona Republic picture features plenty of dark hair for a granddad.   Judge for yourself and let Steve know what you think.

It's fair to say, though, that Steve doesn't take after his grandfather, Ezra Taft Benson.  Probably the only time Steve prays these days is when he gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror and thanks Almighty God for that.

Homer: Steve Dilbeck

"Arguing that Clayton Kershaw just pitched the best game in history."
http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/dodgersnow/la-sp-dn-dodgers-clayton-kershaw-best-no-hitter-20140619-story.html

Get serious Steve Dilbeck:
1.  It's the Colorado Rockies who hit a buck fifty when they're not playing at Mile High Field in Denver. 

2. It's Dodger Stadium where nobody hits at night.

3. It's a no-hitter not a perfect game.

4. It's not the World Series.  It's a meaningless midseason game between two mediocre teams.

5. It's the Rockies

This is the perfect example of a HOMER, ie, a hometown sportswriter, Steve Dilbeck, hyping the hometown team.  "Listen, the Rockies are a good-hitting team, but they were a deer in the headlights."   At home in their hitter friendly ballpark, the Rockies have 12 players batting over .300.  Their star Troy Tulowitzki is batting .477.  Playing away in other peoples ballparks the Rockies have only three players batting over .300, and two of them together have played in a total of 8 games.  Star Tulowitzki is batting .252 in away games. 

Pitching in hitter unfriendly Dodger Stadium, all the Dodgers pitchers look like they're headed for the hall of fame.  Pitching on the road, they look like a group of good pitchers.

Sandy Koufax pitched the best game I've ever seen pitched.  It was game four of the 1963 World Series against the New York Yankees.  In a day game at Dodger Stadium when the field is hitter friendly,  Koufax beat Hall of Famer Whitey Ford by a score of 2 to 1.  The Yankees scored their only run when Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle hit a home run.  Koufax held the heavy hitting Yankees to six hits, including two each by perennial all stars Bob Richardson and Elston Howard.  Two words sum up why Howard as a young player never played enough to make the Hall of Fame: Yogi Berra.

Don Larsen's World Series perfect game is the best ever.  He beat the best Dodger team ever, and one the great baseball teams of all time in 1956:  Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella (my favorite Dodger), Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo, Jim Gilliam, Duke Snider.  The only Dodger in the lineup that day, including the pinch hitter Mitchell, who wasn't an All Star was Sandy Amoros, the left fielder.  Four of the 1956 Dodgers are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Pipeline Malarkey

Aren't the folks who oppose the natural gas pipeline from Tucson to Mexico (Republic 5/5/2014) getting a little carried away when they claim the pipeline right-of-way will open up a new route for drug runners and illegal immigrants.  The Republic's own map of the project shows the pipeline follows the route of state highway 286.   Who's kidding who.  An LA Times story from a few years back featured  Sasabe, Mexico as the jumping off point for smugglers of all kinds using the highway 286 route (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/18/world/fg-mexborder18), .   Moreover, how much environmental pollution will there be from a pipeline where there's already a road and actually not much vegetation.   Probably a lot less than what clean natural gas can eliminate from the Mexican power plants burning dirty fuel and polluting our Arizona air.  You'd think environmentalists would be overjoyed that Mexico is doing something to eliminate greenhouse gases.

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In 2000, according to the DEA, some 50,800 pounds of marijuana were seized on Tohono land. By last year, the figure had soared to 192,225 pounds. Other authorities put the number even higher. More and more Tohono themselves, meanwhile, have been caught up in the drug trade. "Young Indians," says Coulson [DEA], "carry it over to drop houses" from which the pot eventually finds its way to the streets. 

 

Most every family, it seems, has been touched by drugs, including some of the reservation's most elite. In September, Tohono O'odham police stopped a 1996 Chevrolet Lumina for speeding and discovered six bales of marijuana under a blanket in the trunk. The driver, 39-year-old Nicholas C. Juan, was arrested and now awaits trial. He is the brother of Vivian Juan-Saunders, the Tohono chairwoman.

He isn't the first member of the chairwoman's family to be caught drug-running. Her sister, Mary Juan, was arrested in May 1999 by U.S. Customs officials after they discovered 15 bales of marijuana stashed in her Pontiac Grand Prix and in a shed on her property. Mary had once been a tribal judge. She was convicted in federal court and spent a year and a day in jail. She's out now, raising her three grandkids--her daughter-in-law, busted with her six years ago, moved off the property.

 

(http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jan/08/magazine/tm-tohono2)

 

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“The third is a language that is a mystery to me and perhaps to some of your other readers. It has a degree of importance if it suggests the nationality of a group, other than Mexican, traversing that dangerous stretch of America,” wrote Godfrey Harris of Los Angeles.

The photo was taken by Scott Olson of Getty Images, and he did not address the language question in the caption information he supplied. After readers inquired, a Times photo editor contacted Olson, who in turn checked with the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol to get the answer:
Tohono O’odham.

(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/readers/2010/07/mystery-language-on-a-border-sign.html)

Millennial Marxists: The New Class

The Republic's Phil Boas probably doesn't need me to defend him against accusations of "intellectually laziness" by a defender of "Millennial Marxists."  However, young Marxists and their supporters really do need to read more.  Start with Milovan Dilas's The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.   Dilas was Marshal Tito's right hand  man until Dilas became disenchanted with Communism.  Dilas was appalled by Communist rulers who were installing themselves as the new privileged class instead of delivering economic equality and socialist democracy they promised the people.  George Orwell, another disillusioned Marxist, explored some of the same themes in his famous works Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.   The prescient insight of Orwell and Dilas is astonishing when we examine the state of Communism today.  Far from delivering political and economic democracy, the remaining Communists states, e.g., China and Vietnam, are ruled by self-perpetuating (nepotism) political elites who control all the state's wealth and power.

The charge by defenders of "Millennial Marxists" that capitalism is responsible for all the world's wars and troubles is particularly galling.   Not only did Mr. Boas neglect the carnage inflicted by Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh and Giap, but he did not explore Stalin's role in starting World War II.  It was Stalin after all who allied with Hitler to invade and divide Catholic Poland between them.  Moreover, though Marxist historians are quick to blame Roosevelt and the Pope for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust, no Marxist is interested in examining how very close the Red Army was to liberating Auschwitz and Warsaw in 1944 when Stalin called of his offensive so that the Germans could finish off the troublesome Poles and Jews for him.

Intellectual laziness isn't the problem here.  The problem is egregious intellectual dishonesty.

What AZ Legislators and California Gangbangers Have in Common

What do our state legislature and California gangbangers have in common.  They both think it's a good idea to walk around with a gun tucked into your pants, with enough showing so that people know you're "packin."   I can't tell you how disturbing it is to walk into a popular Arcadia fast food restaurant and pass a teenager with a gun tucked into his pants headed for a car with California license plates.   The pants were so loose it's surprising they could hold up the gun.  Was he just a teenager strutting his manhood for his gangster pals, or a Jared Loughner stalking his next victim?  How the heck was I supposed to know.   I don't care if a rancher needs a gun to keep the coyotes at bay or someone wants to go turkey hunting, but there's got to be limits.   I am way done with shooting at people and being shot at.   I am now too old to duck for cover and would like a little peace of mind in my old age.

Krauthammer and the Crimea

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-obama-vs-putin-the-mismatch/2014/03/27/e26a27f2-b5d5-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html

Charles Krauthammer who was born in New York City and grew up in Montreal sat out the Vietnam war when he was still an able bodied man.  Now he wants our children to shed their blood in faraway Crimea fighting Russians of dubious character defending Ukrainians led by people of dubious character.  My answer is NO.

Scotland and Crimea

I've never found explanation anywhere on why the US cares about Crimea seceding from Ukraine, but isn't sending the Marines to Scotland to stop their vote to secede from England.  Maybe it's because England has been taken over by Russian oligarchs and aiding Scottish secession is about the most meaningful thing the US can do to annoy the Russians.