Stump: Inspiration for senior citizens

IT WAS WITH a little more than passing interest that I  witnessed the bestowal of the Best of Show award to a shaggy recovering retiree at this week's Westminster Kennel Club dog show in Madison Square Garden.  The against-all-odds winner was a 10-year-old Sussex Spaniel who survived retirement and a near fatal illness to be paraded to the winner's circle for the trophy.  The victor's name was Stump, which was inspired at some time past by the fact that he was thought to look like a tree stump.  In normal moments, that alone would have cost him points.  

Aside from the fact that I am fully charmed by dogs, mostly the mutt variety that can torment you for attention as they did to me  for more than three decades,   I am also aware that in dog years Stump has got to be around 70 years old.  That may not mean much to a passerby but those of us who have joined the septuagenarian crowd have reason to celebrate that a senior citizen like Stump could still compete - and succeed - in a world that is now pretty much in the hands of early teenagers.  

Stump's managers promise to return him to peaceful retirement, which for me has been  a non sequitur as a writer who has resisted   the peaceful languor  of an easy chair.    As for Stump's legacy, some observers are already wondering whether Michael Jordan or Hank Aaron could be inspired to return to their games.  I don't think so.  For some of us, Stump is all of the inspiration we need for a day or two.           

A hunger strike on Capitol Hill?

I'VE BEEN LIGHTLY  distracted from the he-said, she-said, marathon  in videoland over the Obama administration's  economic package that may yet produce a hunger strike by the protesting House and Senate Republicans.   Over in another  unavoidable universe was the A-Rod thing, the Major League superstar  whose salary from the NY Yankees could bail out several banks before breakfast. His real name  is Alex Rodriguez, and like some others in his line of work, he has openly confessed to slipping steroids into his body six or seven years ago.  Unlike some of my sports-minded friends, I haven't spent much time worrying about what this might  do to the purity of the game.  Trying to get professional athletes  in all sports to own up to their off-hours misdeeds is unappealingly time-consuming with little prospect of success.  

So it was with some relief that I happened to see a column by Bud Shaw, the always readable Plain Dealer sportswriter, who seemed to be a tad  blase about the  apocalyptic  rumbling in the sports world over Rodriguez's mea culpa.  "I wonder," Shaw wondered, "why so many Hall of Fame voters see Cooperstown as a shrine and dismiss the fact that generations of players used amphetamines to get themselves ready to play." 

Way back when,   one of the manager's primary responsibilities was to sober up his star pitcher before sending him to the mound.  The late Doc Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates revealed that he threw a no-hitter against San Diego in 1970  while sky- high on  LSD.   Ellis Kinder, the gifted Red Sox righthander, shacked up in a drunken hoot the night before he pitched a stunning game against the Yankees, later admitting that he was a better pitcher when he had loaded up on booze.

That was then.  This is now. Our national sports heroes are having to explain their steroidal silliness in order to succeed in their chosen profession.  Among millionaires it is the sort of sinful excess that can be cross-cultural.  Wall Streeters bulk up not on steroids  but, as we all know, with fat bonuses and other bloated perks of the aristocracy.  The flawed outcome is the same, I suppose.

Oh, while I'm in the other universe, there are other things to amuse us.  At the supermarket checkout the other day, I noticed that the magazine cover stories all were slurped from the same trough: A national obsession with flat stomachs,  and Jessica Simpson's angry response to critics who insist she's too chubby.   Time for a hunger strike, Jessie,  we thought,  as we sheepishly handed the clerk our credit card.  

  

When is a job not a job?

IS MICHAEL STEELE NUTS?   The recently ordained Republican chairman had me running to volumes of dictionaries with his insistence that a government job is not a job but  "work".   I had long believed - and still do - that anybody on a payroll at public expense may be considered  one who is employed by the government, i.e. a job.   That would include safety forces in my town, school teachers, college professors,  the important guys who plow and salt the streets in my neighborhood after a snowstorm - even school crossing guards and cafeteria cooks.  Steele blitzed the language in the presence of ABC's George Stephanopoulos, who seemed as confused as I am about the isolation of a job from "work". It's a curious way of saying things  because one of Steele's first jobs (work?) as chairman will be to clear up charges that his political campaign in 2006 paid his sister $37,000 for catering services that her company never performed.  

Here's to remembering Maine

WITH MAINE'S two Republican senators, Olympic Snowe and Susan Collins, providing just enough  lift against a possible Republican filibuster by supporting President Obama's economic recovery plan,  may we now update an old proverb  to read, "As Maine's two senators go, so goes Barack Obama's hopes for a strong national economy"?  I'll raise a glass to that! 

Gallup trumps stimulus naysayers

FOR THE PAST couple of weeks - maybe as far back as the moment that President Obama stepped into his morning shower for his first day in office - the Washington media have resorted to their Chicken Little act:  the sky was falling on the president's stimulus plan because his Republican opponents had cleverly stolen the story line.  Imagine that.   However,  the only thing that fell menacingly  in my neighborhood was day after miserable day of snow.  That,  plus the  credibility of the Beltway media that apparently believe everything they hear from the Republican side of the aisle.  

The moment of truth arrived in the latest Gallup poll.  It told us that 67 pct. of  Americans supported Obama's handling of the economy, but only 31 pct. favored the Republicans. Not even close.  The marquee media,  John McCain, Lindsey Graham and the other stumbling  downfield blockers should now use their last timeout to talk things over.  Robert Gibbs, the president's press secretary, pointed out a phenomenon that overtook the media long before Obama became a household name.  He said there's the "conventional  wisdom" of the Capital press corps,  and there's the reality of America outside the beltway.

 Fair warning to those who rush to judgment as their faces are being powdered for the cameras. Even the expensive cosmetics won't disguise your foolish ways.  

The joy of miserable statecraft

WHEN PRESIDENT Obama offered to extend his hand to America's enemies if they unclenched their fists, he may also have been preparing to encounter an army of Republican clenched fists in Congress. And that's exactly what he has faced in trying sell the stimulus bill to the minority Republicans still locked in a failed pre-election mode.  The most militant  voices emerging from their gated community is Obama's old nemesis, John McCain, who was fond of saying in measured avuncular tones how he could accommodate Democrats on Capitol Hill.  But without the aid of a full moon, he has since morphed as  a textbook example of bipolarity in assuming his party's leadership role in his frenetic attempt to scuttle the bill. 

McCain's idea of a progressive, economically sound America is hardly a newly assembled work-in-progress.  In fact, it's not even original with him but is lifted in its entirety from George Bush's playbook.  He wants an extension of Bush's tax cuts plus a lot more added on.  To a fellow like me, who still has penny wrappers in my office cabinet,  I don't know how it would help much to extend the tax cuts that only made matters worse under Bush.  If you think otherwise, just one figure should discourage you: 598,000 jobs lost in January alone.  

Still, there was Maverick McCain rising to the Senate rostrum to declare: "This bill has become nothing more than a massive spending bill. To portray it as  stimulus flies in the face of reality."   If he had said he was sore because the president had endorsed the Steelers against McCain's home state Cardinals, I could understand that.  In professional football, there are never any hands to extend across the aisle.  Trash talk is socially acceptable.  Now that's the face of reality.

But McCain was denying the obvious in the stimulus bill, and Obama felt it  necessary to correct the senator about the goal of the bill.  Of course, the president said, it was a spending bill.  Always has been  and always will be. 

McCain hasn't fought the battle alone. South Carolina  Sen. Lindsey Graham, who tagged along with McCain throughout the campaign and was probably responsible  for making  sure that the shirts got to the laundry on time, was ungentlemanly graphic. "This bill stinks," he barked.   He also accused Obama of being "AWOL on this bill,"  which must have deep roots in a southern dialect because nobody's sure what the senator meant.  

Asked why he plays so many grim operatic roles, Placido Domingo said, "I like being miserable on stage."

That may also  explain where we are with McCain-Graham these days.  

Sunday morning e-mails...

MAX ROTHAL'S morning routine has taken a significant turn since some people foolishly decided that  Akron's only salvation lay in recalling Mayor Don Plusquellic from office.  Each morning or so, Rothal - the usually unflappable city attorney - finds one or more e-mails demanding satisfaction from a long-time nemesis, Hudson real estate man Robert Smith.   The fellow has apparently thrown in with Atty. Warner Mendenhall to create costly havoc to the Plusquellic Administration with their recall movement.  "I even see some e-mails that were sent on Sunday morning,"  Rothal said.  "The guy never stops."

So what does Mr. Smith want in what appears to be a non-stop search-and-destroy mission? "Oh, public records of this and that, documents and other things,"  Rothal says, unhappily.  And of course, because they are public records, Rothal won't refuse Smith's requests.  "But it goes on and on," he says, "as we have our  staff at City Hall try to locate the records that Smith wants.  It's time consuming and it's costly.  It takes people away from the jobs they normally do." 

 Largely, it's a fishing expedition that leads to nothing other than more requests in an effort to find something that might embarrass the mayor in a recall ad. Another word for it is "pestering" at public expense, both the records' searches and the cost of a special election if  Mendenhall and his cronies follow through on their threat.  

Frankly, it's hard to know the motives behind the notion other than Mendenhall has a vendetta against Plusquellic, regardless of  how it might harm to stability of the city at a time  when economic survival is on everybody's mind.    Plusquellic,  after all, was one of  a group  of mayors who have been meeting with President Obama and congressional leaders to get a share of the stimulus money for their cities and has repeated his proposals on national TV  this week.  It's hardly a time to be bombarding  the mayor's administration with ludicrous requests and political threats.  That says a lot about the ones who recklessly remain unconvinced of the gravity of  the current economic crises, don't you think?   

Basketball for dummies

HAVING NOW personally guided the Steelers to another breathtaking Super Bowl triumph, I've turned to a little R&R  by checking in briefly on pro basketball games. To be sure, I know little about how the game is played and am satisfied to be an occasional witness at the entry level. I'm not even sure where the back court or front court is, and the rabid announcers never explain their technical references.   But I must ask:   Why must a pro basketball game be interrupted every 120 seconds for a three-minute  timeout in which all of the players stand in a tight circle at the bench and nod  in agreement about something?  As a livelier supplement to the game, I've come up with an idea called Roundball Roulette.  Turn off the game, walk to the kitchen for a glass of water  (or whatever)  and return to resume watching the game.  You may be surprised to discover how often you see a commercial instead of players running up and down the floor.  If you get three commercial breaks out of five, you win the leftover popcorn from the football season. 

Three was a little crowded

'TWAS QUITE a trifecta at the White House Tuesday. Tom Daschle got waylaid in heavy Capitol Hill traffic (Good riddance!) President Obama nominated a Republican senator, Judd Gregg, as his commerce secretary (We can hope!) and the president conceded in an NBC TV interview that "I screwed up" in the Daschle choice. (Wow! Never heard that kind of talk from the previous administration. That's change that I can believe in.)

With nannies, unpaid taxes, unreported limos etc., you begin to understand that the Washington scene is as perilous as the road to the Baghdad airport. Simply too much soft-earned money lying around as a growth industry. Even the IRS can't catch up with all of the double bookkeeping and off-the-books income that can make a rather straightforward-looking guy or gal an overnight millionaire. Tempting, huh?

So what did Daschle, a veteran of Capitol Hill politics, expect to gain before he had to flush himself out from the crossfire of Democrats and Republicans? You have to wonder why he was trying to fill in an inside straight while staring at a full house. And how many others on both sides of the aisle murmured, "There but for the grace of God..." and tip-toed home to their wives, or whomever. All of this while the economic news worsens grotesquely every day. California, the eighth largest economy in the world, is broke, gridlocked between the governor and the legislature with a $42 billion deficit and the nation's worst credit rating.

Is the gridlock an anomaly of a formerly wealthy state. Or does it foreshadow something much worse for the whole country from the nastiness that's occurring daily in D.C.? Time for somebody to pause and lead the Pledge of Allegiance.

Malkin's "Bend Over" Republicans

IN OUR continuing effort to keep you posted on the imaginative mutterings of right-wing commentators,  you should be aware that they have created a new designation for Republicans who might, from time to time, vote with Democrats on Capitol Hill.  In the words of Michelle Malkin, a columnist of sorts who reports menacingly from her native residence  in Jurassic Park, these turncoats are "Bend Over Republicans," or "B.O. Republicans" for short.  I needn't go beyond that in disclosing the horrifying connotation for people who...um...bend over, whether in a congressional cloak room or a shower stall.  So that is the current way at looking at things from the far right when 19 or so Republican senators supported the nomination of Eric Holder for attorney general.  I think the term was added to the lexicon by Rush Limbaugh, who has taken the time to accuse President Obama of lying by exaggerating the depths of our economic troubles. 

I think we can expect a lot more of these internecine assaults by Limbaugh, Malkin and others on Republicans who just might find something on which to agree (Good grief!) with Democrats.  It's their way of mindlessly doing what comes naturally for the visitors who stop around your family business to  collect their monthly protection dues.   With these ideological dinosaurs on the loose, it is now certain that there won't be much work for the GOP's new chairman, Michael Steele, to perform  as the party's ideological placebo.