Grumpy Abe's first anniversary

THE WEEK END MARKED the first anniversary of the Grumpy Abe blog. Not with a patio party and presents or anything like that. Has it been a year already? It has, and nobody anticipated more than I did that at some point I would say , to hell with it, and go about my other business. After all, it wasn't my idea in the first place. I knew nothing about the technology of blogging and cared less. Blogging was for the younger hip writers and chatterboxes. But I finally relented at the urging of friends and 333 posts later - having never taken anybody's advice to shut up - Grumpy Abe will begin a second year.

In many respects. it was a reprise of my newspaper/magazine years. The only difference, I suppose, is that I once got paid for what I now do for nothing. It's also been an educational experience that connected me daily to the absurdities of the political world , some of which I could not express in a family newspaper. Big-name infidelity and the domination of Rush Limbaugh, the Great White Whale, over the Republican Party always trumped all else in the national media.

My initiation into blogging occurred a few days before the Democratic Presidential convention and it immediately raised a few eyebrows that it was nothing more than an ad hoc deliverance of liberal propaganda to my conservative friends. The word propaganda morphed into socialism among right-wingers who often struggle with their command of the language. To that extent, I fooled them. Call it what you will - but it wasn't ad hoc. The year also further isolated me from all of the moderns who spoke mostly with tweets when they should have been reading a good book.

One year being a nice round measure of time, I went back over my dog-eared notebooks for a refresher course on what had NOT yet happened when the blog was born. Without trying to arrange history in chronological order - my notes are too scattered - here are some items that I think should make trivial history drawn from the past 12 months:

• The forever accommodating and clownish Rep. Michele Bachmann, the court-jester Republican from Minnesota, monumentally declared that she would vote against the stimulus bill because "we are running out of rich people in this country." At the time, I could only wonder what was the absolute minimum of rich people that the country needed to survive.

• There was John McCain struggling for safe passage to the presidency (a matter of natural selection?) as the GOP's temporary pater familias accusing Democrats of "generational theft," this from the nominee of a party that still claims Abraham Lincoln as its soul in a clear case of identity theft..

• If you really wanted to feel teensy weensy small, you had only to heed Dr. Alan Bess, of the Carnegie Institution of Science, who told us there could be 100 billion planets in our galaxy. And we have all we can do to manage just one!

• This quote from the late John Kenneth Galbraith was somehow revived and would not have pleased the Alan Greenspans of our land: "If all the economists were laid end to end - it would be a good thing."

• It was not until September that we learned that an obscure Alaskan governor, Sarah Palin, might be useful in launching McCain into the White House with a wink and a lack of brain gloss about world affairs. On election day, I heartily thanked Barack Obama for protecting us from the travesty of a hockey mom a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. Why would a major - well sort of major - political party trade on such an unthinkable risk, stooping so low to conquer? And her sponsor, William Kristol, a wily front-and-back channel Neocon, took another hit when the New York Times dropped his column for erratic probity.

• The year also produced a galaxy of names with varying claims to a savaged honor system: Rod Blagojevich, Miss Tia, John Ensign, Bobby Jindal, Mark Sanford, Warner Mendenhall, John Edwards, Joe the Plumber and Wasilla. Jindal, by the way, came and went before I got a chance to really know him.

• George Bush remained the president until January, but by then, he had opted out of the photo-op. He was a reminder of Disraeli's complaint that the British Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, was "sauntering over the destinies of a nation and lounging away the glory of an empire."

• Gadgets called iPhones forced their way into my vocabulary, but I didn't write about them because I could never remember whether the "i" or the "P" was capitalized. Too often I confused the word with a Greek play by Euripides. On the other hand, the only communication that suffered still more the past year was the the slow death by strangulation of the nation's newspapers.

• Some things never changed the past year.Silvio Berlusconi still made light of his young girlfriends, a habit that cost him no more than 2 points in Italy's popularity polls, for which he declared proudly that Italians liked him "the way I am." Can you imagine how the same story would have played if it were an American president?

• One of the winners in the summer months of media attention to health care reform was Dick Cheney, who flew under he radar regarding his ghoulish performance on torture , leaving him apparently still at large.

• The final word on the year cames from George Bush, who boasted in the dismal end that he was happy with how it all turned out for him, explaining: "What matters to me is I didn't compromise my soul to be a popular guy." To which I would respond: "Sorry, George. It wouldn't have worked anyway."

Robart moment: Falls Tea party

WELL, THE folks at Cuyahoga Falls City Hall must be in a stage of extreme ecstasy today. A Tea Party event Wednesday evening drew thousands of protestors to damn the federal government and put an end to taxes, government programs, deficit spending and the Obama Administration. Republican Mayor Don Robart, one of the event's leading citizens as well as a government employe himself, told an interviewer that people are fed up with the "massive increase in government" and failed Obama programs like the stimulus package's "lack of effectiveness" and the "health care thing." He hoped the Tea Parties would continue to flourish.

From the reports I read, there was the usual amount of attacks on socialism, and a Hitlerian president, much of it inspired by medieval crackpots like Glenn Beck. But Robart was obviously out to inspire the crowd, without regard to the fact that he was biting the hand that has long fed his island-like political enclave. For starters there has been the flow of federal cash into community projects. And even his proud guest, the Cleveland Orchestra's summer visits to Blossom Music Center, depends on cash from the National Endowment for the Arts, for which it is ever grateful.

When the mayor starts obtusely condemning cash flow from D.C., he is clearly out of his league. He could prove me wrong, of course, and simply reject one more dollar from those...um... socialists in Washington.

FOOTNOTE: While the stimulus program was being declared DOA, two items might have caught somebody's attention when they weren't raising their fists at the Tea Party. Stimulus money created summer jobs for more than 13,000 Ohio young people. Oh, and Bill Seigferth, president of Akron Education Assn., reported that stimulus money opened 73 new teacher jobs in the city. And in the same batch, General Motors said the Cash for Clunkers program has been so successful that it will return more than 1,000 workers to their jobs in Lordstown.

The econmy isn't out of the woods yet, but are Robart and friends so blind not to see a little daylight that will mean a lot to other folks. The answer: Yes.

On how not to be a good sport

THE CLEVELAND BROWNS' decision to charge $25 for parking might encourage fans to take alternate action and dock their cars at the Lake Erie marina. It's something to think about when the team's new coach, Eric Mangini, laments that uninspired practice sessions mean that the players are tired.....One other pro football note: Brett Favre is tiresome.

Auto fatalities vs. life expectancy in U.S.?

WE NOW KNOW why the U.S. lags so many other countries in life expectancy. It has nothing to do with the comparative quality of our health care. Rather, we lower our longevity rate because we have more homicides and auto fatalities. At least that's an argument by conservative columnist Steve Chapman on today's Beacon Journal Op-Ed page. Right.

In a half-page spread that reads like an emancipation proclamation for our entire health-care industry, Chapman cites a study by two conservative academics in a book that came out in 2006 titled The Business of Health. The authors are Robert L. Ohsfeldt, a professor in the Texas A&M School of Rural Health who once worked for Eli Lilly; and John E. Schneider, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa.

Although I haven't seen anybody argue that our health care is shabby - it's not! - quality is one of the defense arguments for those who oppose health care reforms - as does Chapman when he cites homicides and auto accidents. The issues are cost containment for all and coverage for the uninsured, whose health care cost is now passed on to hospitals and those of us lucky enough to have Medicare, an idea once disdained by Republicans who are now out to minimize or defeat reforms. In Chapman's long argument to the jury, I noticed that he carefully avoided the cost issue for all of us as a burden that is driving some workers to give up their insurance coverage altogether because they can't afford monthly company co-pay of $600-$7oo.

All of this recalls the time when a lunch partner defended some horrendous big U.S. casualties in Iraq by citing the number of Americans killed on their highways at home.

Oh, well. The national media (read: television and op-ed columnists) are having a yummy time focusing on a Mr. or Mrs. "X" at Town Hall meeting suggesting that Obama ought to leave the country or that free medical coverage is not covered in the Constitution. Oh? Nor is Medicare and Social Security. Socialistic? You bet. Everybody who wants to give them up, raise your hand.

The curse of Moses Cleaveland

• MORE THOUGHTS AFTER HOURS OF YARD WORK:

• A friend who is a Cleveland sports fan raises troubling questions after each loss, among them: What is it about Cleveland? A... It's the Moses Cleaveland curse! When the surveyors drew up the first maps of the settlement founded by Cleaveland, they dropped the "a" from his name. Horrified, he cast an eternal curse on the place. Or something like that. Won't make any difference whether Quinn, Anderson or Kosar is the quarterback. Moses was here first.
• As the White House hopes for a public option in health care continue to vaporize, I'll have to repeat my theory that Democrats have no guts, and Republicans have no conscience. The second part of that is that Republicans take no prisoners while Democrats willingly allow themselves to be the prisoners.
• Now that former congressman Dick Armey is making the rounds with his bloated Texas-size ego guiding the narrative of Tea Parties, he would seem to be a perfect dance partner for another Texan, Tom DeLay, in a record breaking 20 second marathon on the ballroom floor. What is it about Texas?
• Imagine how much better life would be if all of the things promised by the TV commercials were really true. Even half-true!
• Pity the poor company executives who are giving up choice seats for themselves and clients at baseball games because they don't want anybody to think that they are wasting big dollars on corporate excesses. Seems a rather strange sacrifice to me since millions of corporate dollars are being wasted on the .221 hitters in the dugout.

DeLay dancing with stars in his eyes, etc.

GRUMPY ABE'S THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY:

• After watching the painful evolution of a health care reform plan, I have concluded that there may be some things on Capitol Hill that money can't buy. But offhand, I can't think of any...
• Now that a desperate audience seeking TV world has invited Tom DeLay, a scoundrel of the first rank, to appear on Dancing with the Stars, may we next see a guest appearance by Sarah Palin on Jeopardy? I would pay to see Rush Limbaugh as a pole dancer at Tony Soprano's Bada Bing. Hokier than DeLay on Dancing with the Stars? I think not.
• How many more national sponsors must Glenn Beck lose before Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, always the bottom-line guy, decide to replace him with old Frankenstein movies to lighten up the fare?
• Wednesday evening's Tea Party on the Riverfront Mall in Cuyahoga Falls will doubtless have a lot of fussn' about government and taxes in general. As I have mentioned earlier, it is billed as "non political" even though Mayor Don Robart and a legislative candidate, both Republicans, are featured speakers. But considering how much federal and state money has touched down in the city, it might be unwise to complain too much about some of the hands that are feeding the Falls. One example: a $750,000 "neighborhood stabilization" grant from Uncle Sam. Well, as Nikita Khruschchev was fond of saying, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is negotiable."

It depends on whose race is being gored

THERE WAS A story and photo in Sunday's paper that reported the arrest of a 20-year-old woman who was charged with a bank robbery attempt in Cuyahoga Falls. Aside from the oddity of a young woman being the suspect, I also noted another element in the case: she was white.

We are at a time when racial innuendo and worse appear to be on the rise with a segment of the public particularly abusive about Barack Obama's arrival at the White House. That was demonstrated once again by the North Canton police dispatcher who e-mailed a photo-shopped Air Force One with the N-word on the tail. She couldn't stop laughing, she said. Oh?

So I had to wonder how many of the white readers reacted when the picture of a young white woman accompanied the robbery story. Were they as indifferent to the woman's skin color as they might have been if she had been an African American, Asian or Latino or anybody else not in the the reader's comfort zone? . How many would have felt at least a tinge of bias because a crime suspect wasn't white? You know, those people are always causing trouble. On the other hand, how many, by knee-jerk definition, would have looked at the young woman's picture and concluded that all white people are criminals? Just asking.

I can't attempt to answer these questions, other than to sense that some whites won't share the guilt for another white who has gone astray but do not hesitate to condemn an entire race for stereotypical criminality. In this instance, the young woman was white. I doubt that her skin color bothered anyone. On the other hand., if she had been.....well, that's how ingrained racism works. Right?

Newspapers and Grassley-roots protests

LIFELESS ALONG THE HEALTH CARE FRONT:

Although the health-care reform issue has been hotter than your outdoor grill this summer, the hometown newspaper coverage leads me to wonder about the papers' priorities. In today's Beacon Journal, for example, there was no mention of it at all. It didn't exist in the news columns although one letter writer on the editorial page did have something to say about it. (As we used to scream when a baseball fan in the stands caught a foul ball, "Sign her up!")

Incidentally, the paper's omission occurred at the time when a new development in the noisy debate over "death panels" was being reported in the Plain Dealer and other media. The misstated panel has been omitted from the bill being written in a Senate Finance Committee.

Perhaps even worse than the absence of a story was the lopsided story published by the Zanesville Times Recorder that reported the comments by a group called the Zanesville Patriots who were protesting at the Zanesville office of U.S. Rep. Zack Space. They raised the usual number of ill-informed questions about the issue, with one quoted as worrying that if her father has a third heart attack, "they'll just tell us to pull the plug."

The problem here is that the reporter never added a line or two to balance these attacks with what reform proponents have said to set the record straight. At this point it's questionable whether the complaints will fade away even with the the so-called death panel withdrawn. When they run out of questions in the assault on President Obama, they'll simply invent some more.

Health-care footnote:

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican serving on the Senate Finance Committee preparing a reform bill, is a stand-out recipient of the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award after reporting the withdrawal of the "death panel" language in the draft, saying:

"We dropped the end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.

Senator, a reasonable question: And who has been, eh, "misinterpreting" the language of the bill with death-panel warnings in your public speeches more than you, sir?"

The bill should include medical insurance coverage for incoherence.

The GOP's fascination with death

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY - the party of Lincoln's towering wisdom and of Reagan's Morning In America and of the earlier Bush's Thousand Points of Light and of the later Bush's "compassionate conservatism", remember? - has now become a party preoccupied with death. It has been the source of such terms as "death tax", which, when applied to, say, an unemployed assembly line worker, would heavily tax the surviving family's fictitious multi-million dollar estate upon his untimely death. Having settled that question of liberal fatalistic policy, the GOP turned to "death panel" , courtesy of Sarah Palin, the Party's new Aphrodite who is certain that her infant son would be dead in the hands of the New Socialists out to reform health care. Other Republicans have mindlessly tacked up similar death notices for Ted Kennedy and Stephen Hawking.

Most recently arriving is from the lips of Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican, who has plastered the health reform issue with the term "death counselor" . This is not to mention the rowdies who argue that democracy is ready for extreme unction or the fellow who said the best immigration reform would be to send Mexicans back home with bullets in their heads.

America's frontier days have returned as bold gun toters, covered by law, turn up at town hall meetings to prove they can rightfully bear arms.

One strains to find a Republican on Capitol Hill who has the courage to stand up and say this is not to way to find common ground on significant issues. The place is crowded with Faustian characters who are willing to trade their souls for personal gain and the most convenient distance between two points is paved with lies.

Yesterday, for example, there was Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican rising at a public meeting to denounce the White House's health reform efforts. Grassley, a member of a committee drafting health care legislation, bowed at the altar of Sarah Palin by declaring that the White House was out to "pull the plug on grandma." I would think he was kidding, but he is an older white guy who doesn't appear to smile very often. (Only, perhaps when he receives another big chunk of money from the health insurance companies).

Republicans, of course, like to point tot he Blue Dog Democrats as the major obstacle to Obama's ideas - some of whom are also on the A-list of these companies. That's true and equally despicable, but they don't show up at meetings to petrify their audiences with death threats. The only effective rhetoric that has benighted so many people these days has been coming from the GOP since the November election. Often inflammatory with a carefully staged undertow of racism, it suggests that the Republican operatives in D.C. have nothing more to offer Americans than persuading them that the world is flat or that the Russians are coming.

In a profession, which in some precincts could be considered the oldest, where exaggeration, hyperbole and free-style fudging by both sides are more than acceptable behavior, the modern Regional Republican Party has ventured well beyond that to offer us one of the most shameful performances in modern history. Disgraceful, to be kind about it.

If you are a true believer in your party's direction, and this angers you, I can assure you that I'm not the problem. It you want to know where the trouble lies, look into your mirror.

Here they come - without the crumpets

WELL, THERE'S going to be some light "family oriented" discussion (and doubtless heavy breathing!) about tea next Wednesday evening on the Riverfront Mall in Cuyahoga Falls. It's billed as a Tea Party by an outfit called Summit912, a protest group inspired by weepy Political Philosopher Glenn Beck , the bizarre talk show figure who most recently suggested that Nancy Pelosi be poisoned.

The area group was founded by Amy Schwan, of Akron, who told a Falls news reporter that"we've been mad for a long time. Glenn Beck just motivated us to get off our butts and start to do something." Cool.

The event is being promoted as a non-political "meetup" and family affair to talk about - it says here on the 912 website - "over-taxation, nationalized health care, cap and trade and individual rights." Cool again. But why does it bill itself as "non-political" when the site carries an exhibit of an item called "The Clock. How many days Obama has left" and goes after all of the hot-button issues aimed at you-know-who? Not cool.

According to the Falls reporter (Schwan didn't return my calls), Schwan said Summit912 (Beck's reference to the day after 9/11 - at least he can read a calendar accurately, if nothing else) the Falls was chosen for the tea party because it has a Republican mayor, Don Robart, who only incidentally will be one of the speakers along with Frank LaRose, a Republican legislative candidate. I confess I do have trouble separating speakers with clear political IDs from politics. If they had wanted to liven up the party they should have invited, as a bipartisan outreach, Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic. Now that would be cool.

I did check in with Alex Arshinkoff, the Summit County chairman, who forcefully denied any connection to the tea party. "I don't know anything about it," he asserted. "It's not a Republican Party event." But he did give it the party's Good Housekeeping seal of approval. "I am happy that they are having it. There are not a lot of right-wing Republicans in the Democratic Party and there are not a lot of left-wing socialists in the Republican Party." It's one of those careful separations of wheat from chaff, I think.

So we're back to politics, which is what I figured as soon as I read about Summit912. Cool - if not entirely forthcoming about who they are. And don't count on crumpets.