...at least it is in the Santorum-Casey Senate race.

Santorum has run some of the most brilliant political advertising that I've seen in a long time. His latest TV spot is a response to somewhat slimy Democrat charges that he actually moved from his Pittsburgh area home to one inside the Beltway, but left his children enrolled in a PA public school which they attended online. At one point this involved some pending burglary charges against  local Democratic operatives who were trying to detemine whether his Pittsburgh home was in fact occupied.

(..truth be known, virtually all of our elected representatives, save for those representing Maryland and Virginia are living in the DC Metro for purely practical reasons. Most Senators however are far too long of tooth to have such issues involving school-age children)

The ad features the Santorum children...and there are many...and they are all quite eloquent! They gaze wistfully into the camera, and describe how "some people are attacking our Dad for enrolling us in a Pennsylvania public school"...and it rolls from one child to the next, expanding on what a wonderful father they have, and how he brought them to DC so that he could spend time with them, despite the demands of his job.

Take that...bleeding-heart Liberals! You wanna talk about everything being "for the children"?

Well, here's something for the children...and it is being done for their own children by responsible parents...not for far-away hypothetical children mentioned in some think-tank policy report.

All in all, this ad is a deliciously guilty pleasure for me. A well earned sucker-punch to the Democrat groin. For those of us who remember the filthy James Carville-conceived ads for Bob Casey Sr., this is a long overdue and richly deserved comeuppance.

Santorum has some equally brilliant TV spots running, including a funny and self-depreciating spot that depicts him at a Seniors Polka dance, and one showing an exasperated billboard worker changing the Casey billboard repeatedly as he runs for one office after the next.
But the ones most effective in closing the twenty-point gap (yeah....right!) have been the Blitzkrieg of radio spots that attack Casey savagely for his support of the Senate Amnesty Immigration Bill.
He is hitting traditionally Democratic Pennsylvanians on the issues that matter to them most....
family, faith, jobs, and living up to your commitments.  It is truly refreshing to finally see somebody in the GOP who is fighting and holding firm to his principles.

Sadly Lynn Swann remains almost invisible in the Gubernatiorial race. He could use a little help from the ad consultants who are helping Santorum.

....do not adjust your sets, I am back after being off the air due to technical difficulties. (as Bailey Quarters once famously told a listener to WKRP in Cincinnati..."Sir, how can we make an announcement that we are Off the Air")

Actually, I was out of station for a time, attending to some family matters deep in the American Southland.
(..aah, Jesusland! A refreshing respite from some of the nonsense that I must contend with in my Rust Belt home) Upon returning I found the work on my desk to be overflowing.  Obviously this blogging is a much more challenging enterprise for those of us who are holding down full-time jobs.  But this too shall pass, and it looks as if I've dug myself out of the hole, and can return to my punditry on a more-or-less regular basis.

I suppose that I will have to consider the source on this one...but a report in this morning's UK Guardian is claiming that the Bush Administration has privately told the Israelis that the US is willing to give them a window of one week's time to work their will against Hezbollah in Lebanon.  After that, the article claims that the US will chime in with the usual international chorus of enablers and defeatists, and join the call for a cease fire. If this report is true, it is not only an example of pathetically poor strategy the Administration's part, but it rises to the dizzying heights of hypocrisy to boot.

It is not clear to me how we can possibly set an artificial deadline for the Israelis to wrap-up their campaign in Lebanon, when we ourselves steadfastly resist the notion of any timetable to withdraw US troops from Iraq.  We refuse to do so for good reason, as the case has been repeatedly and stridently made that setting any artificial timetable or deadline, no matter how far out in the future, will encourage the terrorists and insurgents to just hunker down and wait us out.  There is no reason whatsoever to expect that Hezbollah will react any differently once they read their morning copy of the Guardian.  Further, the stakes are much higher for the Israelis, as Hezbollah has clearly demonstrated that Iranian help has brought more than half of Israel within their missle range.

I am hoping that since this report is coming from one of the far-left tentacles of a leftist and anti-Israeli MSM, that aspects of the report are greatly exaggerated.  But it fits the standard State Department playbook too neatly to simply be dismissed out of hand.  I fail to see how the Bush Administration intends to answer its extremist critics like John Kerry and John Murtha on the subject of an Iraq timetable, when we ourselves are undercutting the very same arguements to try and impose an artificial deadline on Israel.   I sincerely hope that the Israelis gave this suggestion the polite and immediate dismissal that it deserves, and will make it abundantly clear to Hezbollah that they intend to hang in there until final victory.  This will place the Bush Administration into an embarrassing corner, and complicate their efforts in Iraq and elsewhere, but at this point they would have only themselves to blame.

 

My wife had left her copy of Glamour magazine lying on the couch. A time-tested supermarket checkout impulse item, it rarely holds any interest for the male reader (except when the front cover is plugging the “Get in Bikini Shape Spring Spectacular” issue), so ordinarily I would just let it lie.

But on this day, the cover caught my attention (and not just for the comely photo of actress Ashley Judd it contained). It was an article entitled “Outrage: An Entire Generation of Women Wiped Out!” that drew my eye.  Unusually engaging and pithy subject matter for a magazine that typically features articles on what handbags go best with which new Fall outfits, or 39 Ways to get slimmer on a diet of cheesecake and V8.

I glanced around, and none of the family members were in the room. So I closed the blinds, picked it up, navigated through the endless insert cards and perfume samplers, located the article and began to read. It was written by a woman from India, and dealt with the phenomenon of infant sex selection in her country. A worldwide problem that seems to be particularly pronounced in Asia, the cultural biases and traditions which lead parents in the region to strongly prefer male offspring over female is now leading to increasing imbalances in gender ratio, that are about to take social institutions in a brave new and uncharted direction. In some parts of the country, the imbalance in the male-female ratio has exceeded 30% (i.e. the number of baby girls being born has dropped below 700 for every 1000 male babies), which will send a demographic tsumami raging through the society for years to come.  Already problems are emerging with the lack of young women of marriageable age, with the “brothelization” of women (supply/demand forces making women available to those who are most able to pay for them), harassment, increased rape, and a host of other ills.

The article details the painful experience of a 40 year old married woman, who became a pariah to both her extended family and her village in general. The sin that had made her an outcast was the fact that she had given birth to four girls. Her failure to give birth to a boy had made her the universal object of scorn and ridicule (regardless of the fact that X and Y chromosomes are carried by the sperm) and the pressure that her social contacts were putting on her was enormous. The woman recounted the tale of how she kept trying to give her husband a son, and became pregnant with a series of four more girls instead. Because of the societal pressure upon her, she opted to abort each of the four girls, despite India’s law prohibiting sex-selection abortions. Finally, on the fifth try she gave birth to a baby boy, and her life and reputation were redeemed.

At first glance this seems strange for India, which actually has a very good track record of education and advancement for women amongst emerging countries. But the shackles of millennia-old culture are difficult and time-consuming to break, and are having their impact even today. Part of this seems to lie in the traditional “patriarch” position of the eldest son…being the one to take over the leadership of the family, to inherit, and to light his father’s funeral pyre. Lack of a son presages the end of the family. Another is the tradition of giving a sizeable Dowry to the groom’s family when marrying off a daughter. (the article quotes an old saying that raising a daughter is like watering your neighbor’s garden). Although technically illegal, sex-selection abortion goes on with the wink-and-nod acquiescence of Indian doctors, who advertise the practice using ambiguous, between-the-lines language. Although the reason given for the decision to abort will invariably be something else, it is clear that the business of ultrasound gender identification and female termination, is in a full-bore Bull market.

The article goes on to bemoan the fact that such intense disrespect for women can go on in the 21^st. Century, and that more is not being done to put a stop to it. What the article fails to discuss however is, as always, the 900 lb. Elephant in the room….legalized abortion! Legalized in India since 1971, and combined with modern ultrasound techniques, it is gendercide brought to technological perfection. Indeed, the article goes to great pains to point out that baby girl infanticide has a long and well-documented history in India far predating legal abortion, be it with newborns who are fed poisons and left to bake in the sun, or little girls who are blatantly neglected if they become sick (while their brothers get rushed to a doctor at the first sneeze). But it is a feeble and tepid attempt to avert their eyes from the truth. That abominable ancient practice is not nearly so efficient as to skew the population’s gender ratio by a 300 point swing within a couple of decades. For that you need the latest that science and technology can offer. Indeed, once access to abortion is defined as “her right” and “her choice”, no law (including the existing Indian law against sex selection) can be enforced, since the law cannot penetrate that bubble of privacy to define a true motive for her decision. Clearly, legalized abortion is the culprit to blame for this phenomenon to a vast degree.

Since Glamour and its sister publications have been pushing legalized abortion-on-demand as a sacrosanct Constitutional right in the US for over three decades, it seems they cannot bring themselves to point out the obvious. Instead they are going to extreme lengths to try and shift the blame elsewhere. Indeed, there appears to be a loose alliance of women’s media which has been pushing in unified voice the line that “George W. Bush, by opposing partial-birth abortion and the over-the-counter morning after pill, is forcing women into second-class serfdom, removing our rights and turning back the clock to the 1950’s”, for several years now. It seems that in the mind of the dedicated feminist, there are no limits to cognitive dissonance when it comes to the subject of abortion…even if it results in the extinction of the very group of people that you are trying to elevate. It appears that feminists are so ideologically wedded to the practice of abortion-on-demand, they are unable to deal in a clear-headed way with it’s ultimate results. Once we start to pluck at the fibers of natural gender distribution, the whole ball of yarn can unravel very quickly indeed.

 

By now nearly everyone is familiar with Boston’s infamous Big Dig Project, the multi-billion dollar boondoggle that involves the routing of an I-95 bypass, largely via tunnels under the city. Generating a record amount of cost overruns, even for a public-works project in Democrat/Union-rigged Massachusetts, of late the Dig is becoming even more notorious for shoddy workmanship, that has now become a literal hazard to life and limb.

Alas, the Big Dig is but a very large and glaring symptom of a nationwide public works pork addiction. Case in point is a project that was just given the green light in the City of Pittsburgh, which I shall refer to here as The Little Dig. This is a Federally-funded mass transit project which has the objective of extending Pittsburgh’s “T” light-rail system from its current terminus under Gateway Center in Downtown Pittsburgh, over to the recently constructed Heinz Field –PNC Park stadium complex on the North Side.

(The need for this light rail system was questionable in and of itself. Constructed in the early 1980’s, and made famous in the Hollywood film Flashdance, the system serves only the southern suburbs, running from a mall 8 miles south of Downtown, through various neighborhoods, through a tunnel and over a bridge to Downtown, where it runs underground for five blocks, making a grand total of 3 stops. Wedged between 2 rivers, Pittsburgh’s Downtown area is very compact, and it is possible to walk from any point there to any other point in no more than 10 minutes. The“T” replaced an above-ground trolley system that had existed for a century. It was sold to the public as a modern alternative to the traffic obstructing and arcane street cars. Curiously, the sitting Mayor of Pittsburgh had proposed to rebuild the trolley system during his last campaign, as a sop to construction unions and their multitudes of laid-off workers).

Achieving this "T" extension requires taking the rails across the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh’s North Side, a distance of roughly 800 feet. Instead of routing the tracks over one of 4 existing bridges in the area, (or even constructing a new dedicated bridge), the Port Authority of Allegheny County proposes to route the “T” through a tunnel under the Allegheny River, for an initial estimated cost of $435 million. (by my calculations, roughly $540,000 per linear foot).

As in all such projects, the cost can be expected to run substantially higher by the time it is complete. Ordinarily such public works pork is celebrated by the overpaid but lightly employed Union Democratic construction tradespeople who populate the area. Despite this history, the project has become highly controversial. Allegheny County residents already pay some of the highest local taxes in the nation, and there is a long-running row over high property taxes which continues to simmer. The City of Pittsburgh is in some virtual form of municipal bankruptcy, and whether the bills get paid or not is largely a quarter-by-quarter proposition. The project will be 80% Federally funded, leaving 20% to be paid for with local funds, the origin of which is uncertain. The stadiums to which the service is to be extended remain controversial in and of themselves. In a 1998 referendum, regional voters shouted them down strongly (by a 5:1 margin in outlying counties!). Despite this, the local and state politicians put their heads together and constructed Stadium Plan B (translation….”we recognize that you all said no, but we are doing it anyway). That open wound, combined with a 14th consecutive year of Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball futility, has left the populace wondering just why they would spend an additional $435 million on something they did not want in the first place. (they don’t see why they should give the Pirates a free stadium and a trolley tunnel, when they cannot even salvage one game against the Kansas City Royals). Since Steeler Football is seen as a prime tailgating event, public transit does not appear to be in the equation there either. And Pittsburghers, being descendants of a thrifty, working-class lot, seem offended on the face of it by the idea that you should need an expensive train system to get across the Allegheny River, when it can be reached by foot from Downtown within a few minutes time. Certainly, if we are going to spend $435 million in public funds, can’t it be put to a better, more practical use?

Playing defense against these criticisms, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato, (normally a fairly rational and sober guy for a Democrat) appeared on Pittsburgh television. He proceeded to defend the decision thusly:

- 80% Federal Funding for this project had been approved quite awhile ago, and all of those funds were approved, earmarked and in place.

- We inquired through Federal agencies and the Pennsylvania Congressional Delegation, and there is absolutely no way under the law to redirect that $435 million for other uses.

- If we decline the 80% Federal Funding at this time, the funds will go to the next project down their list, in another city. It is a “use it or lose it” proposition.

- Federal law has changed, and this will be the last mass transit project that will receive 80% Federal funding. If we try to do this in the future, the best we can expect is 60% Federal funds.

- Once a spur is conducted to the North Side, it becomes a logical jumping-off place for an extended light rail system, serving the Pittsburgh International Airport (provided that the 17 miles at $550,000 per foot can be ever be achieved with the Feds only kicking in 6/10).

- and the oldest chestnut….if we don’t do it now, construction costs will only continue to escalate in the future.

It is impossible to give a more succinct summation of the entire nexus of the problem with Federal “Earmark” funding. The money is “earmarked” from on high, and local officials have absolutely no discretion to redirect the monies to more urgent projects, no matter how badly needed. Additionally, since none of the projects is funded 100% by the Federal government, they tend to drag local governments into debt (often followed by tax increases) that they would ordinarily not otherwise accrue. And it forces billions of dollars of state AND federal tax money into boondoggle projects which, even by a layman’s visual reading of the obvious, seem impractical. The Federal money is a cure that is worse than any of the existing diseases.

It is amazing how politicians will trot out their own sorry history on cost overrruns and turn it into an arguement in favor of starting a project right away! Ditto the stale false-choice given by the use-it-or-lose it scenario that they set up.  (well...if we don't build it, those bast__ds down in Baltimore will get it for a new ship launch....) I would however give Mr. Onorato kudos for his deft attempt to slip the blame for this turkey off on fiscal conservatives in Congress. (“since they are cutting my funding rate to 60%, we have no choice but to do it now”). That bit of open-field dodging could make him a finalist for the 2006 William Jefferson Clinton Award for Rhetorical Slickness!

 

Any blogger out there who has been stung with the criticism that they are mere rank amateurs when it comes to political strategizing can take solace this morning, thanks to the usual suspects, the RINO’s who currently populate the US Senate.

I awake today stunned by a Fox News story about yesterday in the Senate. Having previously and begrudgingly agreed to begin building at least some portion of a security fence along our southern border, yesterday they killed the appropriation for that very same fence! In short, they were dragged kicking and screaming to some sort of acquiescence to building a fence, but then simply refused to put any money into the project. The sheer political density of this act left me stunned and frozen in my chair. I guess they felt that they had not done sufficient political damage to themselves with the immigration debacle thusfar? The only possible way I see for them to make this any worse would be to start stepping up to the microphones and feigning this as an act of fiscal responsibility…and I am not altogether sure they will not try!

My instantaneous opinion was that this act was going to touch off a raging political wildfire, which may ultimately consume them. If there is one characteristic of the elitists in the Congress that absolutely sets off the average Joe out there in flyover country, it is this double talking, mealy-mouthed proclivity to say one thing and do another, which they are prone to demonstrate on so many occasions. Perhaps the greatest example of this was the Great Discharge Petition Follies of over a decade ago. This underhanded little dodge would allow Senators to go to their home states and thump their chests in front of their constituents, bragging about how they were supporting some popular piece of legislation. Yet at the same time, they would refuse to sign the Discharge Petition that would release that same piece of legislation from committee for a floor vote. It was the ultimate act of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too, at least so long as nobody found out about it. This inside-the-beltway Statue of Liberty play went on for decades, until finally being outed by talk radio in the late ‘80s. The outrage created by that revelation, combined with the House Post Office Scandal and Clinton tax increase, created the perfect storm that swept the Republicans to a majority in 1994 (in what the late Peter Jennings famously termed “a temper tantrum”)

Well, people are prone to start throwing temper tantrums whenever you demonstrate your opinion that you think they’re stupid. In my view, that was a major cause for George W’s popularity dipping into the 30’s earlier this year…he took the widely unpopular stand on amnesty, and when he began to feel some blowback, his administration staged some purely theatrical raids on a pallet factory in Florida. (in that sense, he would have been far better off to just stick to his guns on what he really believed, and not go poking the hornet’s nest in such a ham-handed way). In a sense, maybe John Kerry can be forgiven for saying that he “voted for it before I voted against it”, as that appears to be standard operating procedure for the Senate. This story is now percolating around the alternative media, and I am sure that most of the American populace will be suitably outraged by dinner time.

The problem for the Democrats has historically been that they have engaged in these philosophical gymnastics so frequently and with such gusto that people are now totally confused on where they do indeed stand on any issue (…providing they do actually have a position). The bigger risk for the GOP is that the “yuk factor” of voting for the fence but against the money is so extremely high, the electorate is liable to look at this fall’s election as just one big opportunity to go in and pull the giant flush lever. In their view, if the Republicans in the Senate cannot advance pieces of the agenda that enjoy vast popular support, then they are just as well to not be there. They can be punished by being relieved of their power and their perks, and maybe they will learn better for next time. If the Democrats do get control, the status quo on the ground (endless gridlock with the more conservative House) will change little.

Equally stunning is the fact that members of the Senate appear to have chosen this particular third-rail on which to relieve themselves. Public sentiment on this issue is running so strong (80% support in virtually any poll you can find) that the tsumami of popular anger thus generated would appear to be of staggering proportions. This should eliminate immediately and forever all doubt as to why the GOP is regularly referred to by many of it’s own followers as “The Stupid Party.”

I might be a bit more sympathetic to the “giant flush lever” theory if the nation were at peace, and there was no issue on the table so pivotal that the country could not endure two years of Dem-inspired foolishness up on the Hill. But the nation is at war, and the stakes are getting higher every day and with every headline. A Democrat controlled Senate might start cutting a lot of appropriations for the GWOT, leaving us all much more vulnerable even that with our current border situation. If my Big Flush theory holds true we may all end up paying a much greater price in the long run than whatever this fence appropriation would have cost us yesterday.

If you ask Yogi today, he will no doubt tell you "It isn't over until it's over....and sometimes, it's not over even then!"

I am referring to today's Matt Drudge flash that Valerie Plame is filing a civil suit against Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove.  This comes a scant 36 hours after journalist Robert Novak broke his silence, and revealed that he learned initially of Plame's employment from her husband's entry in Who's Who in America.  I haven't seen the brief, but suspect that she will be claiming punitive damages for mental anguish, pain and suffering, loss of income from future Secret Spy missions to which she can not now be assigned (and the movie rights implied therein), etc.

Alas, the fever-swamp Dems simply can't bring themselves to walk away from Fitzmas.
In saner times, the Prosecutor would have concluded "no harm, no foul", and everyone simply would have walked away.  But this one simply cannot be allowed to die, due to it's handy utility as a prime Moonbat fund raising tool.  Nor do I suspect that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson can bear to see their 15 Minutes of Fame (which has already passed into multiple overtimes) coming to an end.   This story has taken on Urban Legend status in Moonbat circles, (like the Jersey Devil, or alligators in the Manhattan sewers, or Diebold voting machines that receive secret encrypted signals from Air Force One), and simply can't be allowed to die.

Since our civil court system is capable of grinding out discovery in such cases for many years, the goal is obviously to keep this preposterous charge in some form of public view until the '08 elections, giving biased editorialists more opportunities to launch scurrilous attacks on the Bush Administration's character.  Having promised them Cheney's head on a stick, I suppose the party hacks who have benefitted from this tale cannot bring themselves to disappoint their minions entirely. It will probably get a quiet dismissal sometime during the summer of '09, by which time Bush will be spending days in front of his grill in Crawford, and the mad-dogs of Fitzmas will have moved on to other things.

Do you think she has retained John Edwards to handle her case?

 

I am finding out that learning to blog is in some ways just like learning a new language.It has its own rules of style, structure and usage. Just like learning a foreign language,this challenges you to adapt your thinking to a new paradigm. (I experienced this while taking French all the way through high school, only to learn at the end of the day that nobody really wanted to talk to the French)

Case in point….while attempting to post to my blog yesterday, I got an alarming message in bold, red letters at the top of my page….”You have used language that is inappropriate!”

Who, me? Certainly I would never engage in an obscenity-laced diatribe in a public forum…(although I do understand that is becoming a big problem in the blogosphere,and I certainly understand Townhall.com’s desire to police it). Obviously the template had been downloaded with it’s own version of George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can’t Say on the Air”….except that nowhere on the site does it tell you what those words are, nor how many. Nor does the utility do you the service of highlighting the offending words so that you can remove them.

I read and re-read the piece, and could only come up with one suspect. I had been relating a story where the protagonist had yelled out the insult, “You Guys S***!”(rhymes with “duck”). Granted, that should not be in there…although it was a factual account. What was once a fairly obscene term is now tossed around so casually that we have all become largely numb to it. So –snip-….away it went.

I tried again, and got the same ominous red message. What could it be now?

Since there was now nothing obviously obscene in my post, I emailed the webmaster at townhall.com for some advice. None was immediately forthcoming. Not a problem,as with the dozens of new bloggers signing up every day, I am sure that he has his hands full. So I thought about the problem some more, and decided to post my work piecemeal, a few lines at a time, until I got the alert again and could have some clue as to what the offending word might be.

So off I went, and continued to find myself censored by the template. Like a crime victim in front of a line up, I carefully scrutinized each and every suspected offender.

Whitesnake – a reference to the hair-metal band of the late ‘80s. Was cogent to the story, but perhaps Mr. Post Editor does not like that….and it is just as easy to substitute the name of any other similar rock band, so away that went.

Pregnant – which I used in the phrase “a pregnant pause”….I guess it’s possible,  but this is not a 1950’s episode of I Love Lucy, so highly doubtful.

Cold-C*** (term for the male chicken) – ah, that must be it! Need to find some other word to hit, smack, strike or assault someone. Make the change and hit publish….drat, still no good!

President Bush – well, for sure, that one is loaded….but this blogging is going to be a very difficult enterprise indeed if I cannot refer to the sitting President of the United States without finding myself muzzled….so it goes in the “unlikely” pile.

Gitmo – as in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I am not up on the names of all of the latest toys available over at Spencer’s…is there one possibly called a Gitmo? I know people whom I could ask….but probably shouldn’t! Think that one stays!

Shove – as in to physically apply pressure to someone and move their body from its current position. Maybe Mr Editor thinks I am trying to tell someone to “shove it”?
No, it looks like the template is willing to accept that one.

“Go FDR on them”- as in to emulate the example of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and ignore (or threaten to ignore) Supreme Court rulings that clearly infringe upon the Constitutional powers of the Executive. Could the phrase “Going FDR” one someone mean something unseemly? I could find out, but it would involve asking the same people who are buying their Gitmos in plain brown wrappers. Think I will just tweak this one a bit.

Crazy – I used this to refer to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the leader of Iran. At the same time I referred to Kim Jong Il as a “looney”. Both are certainly descriptive. Maybe they don’t want you posting words like crazy and looney, to avoid juvenile name-calling battles on the blog? This is going to be a very tough job if you are not allowed to say crazy, looney or Bush!

Bl_w (just as Lauren Bacall once said…put your lips together and ….) Eureka, I have found it! This was a reference to Ahmadinejad’s strategy to continually bl_w off deadlines to cease uranium enrichment. Snip it out of there, and presto…up goes the post! Hard to imagine a simple little thing like expelling air through your pursed lips could cause all this trouble! I guess it will be hard to blog about terrorists, since you can’t say "bl_w up", or talk about the big weekend bl_w out sale at Penneys!

I actually found this to be a worthwhile exercise, as it forces you to really think carefully about the language that you are using. I was amazed to see how many words I used on a regular and casual basis which also had some unseemly hidden meaning. The number of words that fall into this category seems only to be accelerating, as our culture continues to coarsen amidst a flow of rap lyrics and “R” cable movies. There are so many such words now that it is difficult to think of them all on a continuing basis. I think this would be a worthwhile exercise for many in the Media. (Howard Stern comes to mind…but his head would likely explode by the time he was done with it). Vin Scully, the legendary Dodgers announcer, was recently called on the carpet for refusing to read a promo for Fox’s “Best Damn Sports Show, Period!”. In his day, you just did not use that word on the public airwaves! I guess we could all learn a thing or two from Vin Scully.

There is an inherent value in trying to purge your language of prurient content. It is like stepping back into a simpler, gentler time. Like going back to the days of Leave It to Beaver.

I’m allowed to say Beaver, aren’t I?

 

It is one of those stories that gets passed around annually at each holiday gathering, gets told and retold again, and eventually makes its way into the annals of family lore.

It was the late 1980’s, and my brother-in-law was playing with a local Hair Band on a college campus in America’s heartland. He and his band-mates, clad in long and shaggy, mullet-style manes, accented generously with Spandex, would play the local bars and hangouts on weekends, covering tunes from all of the chart-topping mega-Hair-Bands of the day…..Van Halen, the Scorpions, Night Ranger, Poison…..and of course, the ultimate hot-rotation rock-and-roll band of that era, Bon Jovi.

As he tells the story, late one Friday evening, a self-appointed music critic at the bar, (who had been there too long and had had a few too many), decided to give a more demonstrative expression of his feelings about the band’s performance. After heckling he and his band mates from the bar for some time, with such witty and sardonic expressions as “You Guys ****!”, the inebriated critic eventually decided to approach my brother-in-law and make things a bit more personal.

He walked up to him after the last set, broke directly through his space-bubble and went nose-to-nose with him, continuing to critique his performance in very crude terms. At this point my brother-in-law decided on a gentleman’s response, telling the guy that he was drunk out of his mind and needed to just go away and sleep it off. At this point the critic became enraged. He thumped my brother-in-law hard in the chest several times and glared at him, as if to say “Oh, yeah? Make me!. When this did not elicit the desired response, he persisted in shoving him in the chest repeatedly, and began shouting in a loud and agitated voice, “What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?”. (this was intended as a sarcastic dig at the hair and costume that he was wearing at that moment). When my brother-in-law did not immediately fight back, the guy continued to shove him harder and more frequently, repeating for all in the room to hear….

What’ cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?

(shove)

Huh? What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?

(shove)

After each round of this there was a pregnant pause, while all in attendance waited anxiously to see just what would happen next. It went on for quite a few rounds. After weighing for some time his chances against a drunken lout nearly twice his size, my brother-in-law decided it was not worth the effort, and simply walked away. After all, it was just a campus bar and some cover tunes, nothing worth spending the next few months in traction over. The incident was quickly consigned to history, along with his music career (and his hair).

My brother-in-law likes to tell this story at family gatherings, perhaps for amusement, perhaps with a wisp of regret that he did not decide differently and take a swing at the guy. For whatever reason, that phrase has ensconced itself in our family’s lexicon, whenever someone is being challenged or dared in an aggressive way….”What’ cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?”

Whether a cousin has just been beaned in a baseball game, or an aunt has just discovered a fraudulent charge on her Visa account, or an uncle has had his house egged by the neighborhood kids, someone in the extended family will invariably say to them, ”What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?” as a rhetorical call to action. Everybody knows what it means. My brother-in-law has mixed feelings about this. (his preschooler, after overhearing this story at the adult dinner table, has taken a particular liking to it whenever she is being scolded for testing the limits of parental authority, much to his chagrin).

This story has been much on my mind lately as I’ve watched the Bush Administration and its response to current world events. It seems that every time I look up, the President is again being shoved in the chest by an aggressive bully, getting in his face and shouting, “What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?” And, just like everyone in that 80’s bar, America and the world keep watching and waiting anxiously for a response.

The New York Times leaks details of a classified terrorist surveillance program…(shove)!

“What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?”

The Times then leaks the details of a highly sensitive, classified program to track terrorist financing….(shove)!

“What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?”

The patrons wait for a response…will there be a counter-punch? A prosecution? A Grand Jury? A concrete response of any kind?

Time Magazine brazenly declares on its cover that the Age of Cowboy Diplomacy and the Bush Doctrine are dead…..(shove)!

“What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?”

The Supreme Court reverses the US Constitution and 60 years of precedent, and tells the President that he cannot hold tribunals for terror detainees at Gitmo…..(shove)!

“What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?”

Now he can’t let that one slide, can he? He’ll have to ignore them, act as Franklin Delano Roosevelt would and proceed with the tribunals anyway, right?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the crazed, apocalyptic leader of Iran, strings along the UN and the World after he ignores deadline after deadline on uranium enrichment.....(Shove)!

“What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?”

Kim Jong Il, the loony leader of the North Korean prison state, makes good on his promise to begin firing missiles over his neighbors’ heads, towards a long-fantasized impact in Hawaii…..SHOVE!

“What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?”

Ooooh…..he’s just gotta respond to that one, right??

The pregnant pause after each shove just keeps getting longer and longer….leaving one to wonder, are we just waiting for some spectacular, brilliant, yet-to-be-seen-or-believed response to all of this? One that will deliver a sharp comeuppance to all of the bullies in one fell swoop? Or has the President, like a tired band member confronting the drunk at the end of a long performance, just decided he’s had enough, its not worth the aggravation, and it’s time to just walk away?

The problem is…unlike my brother-in-law and his band, President Bush does not have the luxury to walk away from these challenges, or America and the World will enter a dark period of incredible peril. He cannot allow brazen challenges from the partisan press and the courts to undermine his authority to prosecute war, lest all future Presidents find themselves hamstrung under similar circumstances. He cannot let bureaucratic quislings undermine crucial national security programs, just because Rumsfeld or Rice did not give their latest white paper all due consideration. If he does, government ceases to function. He cannot let crazed dictators skip merrily along the nuclear path, lest we wake up some day to find that Yemen is holding our Foreign Policy hostage, while Guatemala has taken out Belize with an ‘H’ bomb.

One of the most admirable and impressive traits of the Bush Presidency has been its fearless resolve to act in the face of great challenges, the Lilliputian efforts of the Press, American Liberals, and the World Community notwithstanding. His bold moves to go after the terrorists in Afghanistan, in Europe, in Miami and Detroit, in chat-rooms and banking parlors, and in settling our long-delayed score with Saddam Hussein, are the stuff John Wayne legends are made of. Instead of celebrating his successes, this seems to have only emboldened his domestic and foreign opponents to start throwing the monkey wrenches with increased vigor. Unfortunately for the President, the stakes in this game have only continued to ratchet upwards, and he simply does not have the luxury of hesitation or vacillation at this critical late hour.  As the Iron Lady of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher, once told his father, “This is no time to go wobbly, George!”

And yet, wobbly is just what he appears to be, and we can only grow more anxious and apprehensive as these provocations continue to pile up without a response. How many more shoves in the chest is he going to take, and how much farther is the bully going to try to push him? The next move is yours, Mr. President. America and the whole world is holding its breath, waiting and watching nervously to see…

“What’cha gonna do, Bon Jovi?”




UPDATE....After putting this post to bed, I've learned that the Bush Administration today has backtracked from their long-held position that Gitmo detainees are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention.  They are now going to extend them some of those protections.  Arlen Specter is out there saying that it's not enough.  This is not looking good!

So this is what all the fuss is about?? 

Welcome to the Buckeye McFrog Blog, my new home on the web.  I will endeavor to be as entertaining and insightful as possible in my posts.  A short bio about me follows below.  I will do my best to maintain a respectful monologue, and to not allow my harsher, more biting satrical instincts to get the better of me.   I apologize in advance should any of that stuff slip through.  (a former boss of mine, who was from India, once remarked that my humor tended towards the harsh and cutting side, and was perhaps even downright mean.  I have tried my best to heed his observations and his advice....after all, these folks invented Karma ;)

The Frog’s Bio:

Ohio-born Steelers Fan (sorry, Hugh!)

My handle is a reference to both my birthplace and my ethnic heritage(..and yes, we don’t really like to talk about that last part..) Child of the ‘60s, raised in the ‘70s amidst Brady Bunch hair, granola and avocado/burnt orange kitchen decor. Likewise raised on the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, religion-is-dead, war-is-wrong-and-America-is-evil Pap that dominated the popular culture at that time. Sadly bought into most of that. Then Jimmy Carter got elected, found myself sitting in school with thermostat set at 55 and half the light bulbs removed. Moved on to a high school that served as research setting for Cheech and Chong movies. Was part of that 4% who did not get Free or Reduced-Price lunch (Dad wouldn’t hear of it!) Got my first job with a nonprofit, working for less than the sacrosanct Minimum Wage (started at $2/hr., after 90 days got a raise to $2.50 and was damn happy to get it). Worked with a number of retired men from the neighborhood, all of them WWII Vets. Got a life-changing education in what war and sacrifice are all about. Also learned to never work for nonprofits. Moved to a large public university where I was forced to endure scurrilous daily attacks on Reagan. Noticed entire library seemed to be devoted to the proposition that Communism and Marxism were about to triumph and were the wave of the future. Worked summers doing landscaping for two Entrepreneurs who were Vietnam Vets, learned more about courage and sacrifice, and to detest and loathe the weasels who stole their victory and spat upon them. Also learned what FICA matching meant. Drifted away from Church, and then ever slowly back into it. Matriculated, moved on and got a real job. Came home late one night to see Tom Brokaw on TV in front of a conga-line of people dancing on the Berlin Wall. Lost bet that I’d be at least 87 before seeing that. Went to Florida on business, bought a $5 transistor radio, and discovered Rush Limbaugh two weeks after he went on the air. Flew back to the Midwest and cast my first GOP vote, which helped to oust our very liberal Democrat governor in an upset. Have steadily and consistently been evolving to the right ever since, to where I now proclaim myself to be a solid Conservative. Registered Republican in an area where all of my neighbors are Democrats, because at some point a Labor Union told them to be. Married, 2 kids, work in the HR/Recruiting/Staffing business. Have a brother whose blog ended up in a Syllabus at a UK University for a course on “Right-Wing Extremist Political Movements”. I envy him!