Category: Punditry

A little seltzer down your pants

RIP David Lloyd.

He wrote the funniest ever sitcom episode, "Chuckles Bites the Dust" for the "Mary Tyler Moore Show."

"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants."

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Category: Punditry

Ft. Hood shooter: Army and jihad didn't mix

Despite all the politically-correct tiptoeing around, it looks as if the Ft. Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, dipped his toe in the waters of radical Islam. He exchanged emails with a U.S.-hating imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, a wannabe Osama bin Laden. And authorities are almost certain Hasan defended suicide bombings against American troops, an indication he was off his rocker.

Hasan was upset, among other things, about going to war.

Here's a tip: If you don't want to go to war, don't join the Army.

Anyway, I believe the analysts who say Hasan's kind of terror will be around 50 years or so before it plays out, and the West is no longer seen as Satan. Long wait.

Here for Hasan.

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Category: Punditry

Obama, golf and gender-specific sport

President Obama is outscoring George Bush in one category: Most golf games played by a commander-in-chief. Critics delighted in accusing Bush of his laid-back approach to the presidency. As it turns out, Obama has already played 24 rounds of presidential golf,a tally it took Bush nearly three years to reach.

Obama is blamed for golfing and basketballing mostly with men. I don't blame him for that. That's what guys do: work out with other guys. Sports are segregated by sex on just about every level, including high school, college and pro teams. Girls play like girls. Boys play like boys.

If there were true equality in, say, football, 300 pound women would be allowed to try for MSU football scholarships.

Curves, the popular workout system, bills itself as a gym for women, with no hint of allowing men members, despite being a public facility. Nobody much cares. Because that's what women do: work out with other women. Reminds me of the Detroit Athletic Club, which was once all men but in 1987 was nudged into allowing women.

Here for golf.

Category: Punditry

The Great Balloon Caper: American ingenuity

Gotta hand it to homemade American ingenuity. The guy that built that helium balloon -- once believed to be inadvertently carrying his kid in free flight -- crafted a machine that could both fly and land softly. Ala the Wright Brothers.

NASA should cozy up to the balloon designer, Richard Heene. Imagine what Heene could do with some of NASA's research loot.

Video below.

Category: Punditry

Needed: Tougher laws to protect men from violent women

"You've helped so many women step out of the darkness."

Vice President Joe Biden, talking to women celebrating the 15th anniversary of the federal Violence Against Women Act.

Sadly, however, the country has not caught up with the times and also passed a comparable Violence Against Men Act. There's no specific federal protection for men.

I raise the point because, a number of years ago, the Detroit News reported a substantial numbers of police reports on domestic violence were filed by men against pushyv, iolent women. I forget the exact number. But men filed somewhere just under 20 percent of domestic violence complaints, in The News' survey.

Plus, The News, reported, none of the Metro Detroit domestic abuse shelters accepted men who were beaten up. The shelters had taken federal money and, by doing so, were mandated not to discriminate on the basis of gender. But they did anyway.

Having a gender-specific violence law is not all that logical, in the first place. If you get punched, you deserve the same level of protection, no matter what gender ye be. As it stands, women are getting a higher level of protection and redress if they are hit or otherwise abused.

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Category: Punditry

Free Roman Polanski

There's no credible purpose in hauling director Roman Polanski back to the U.S. in a 32-year-old California rape case. Polanski is 76. The girl -- then 13, now 45 -- is quoted saying she forgives Polanski for that infamous 1977 night in Jack Nicholson's home. She apparently doesn't want him jailed and says a new round of court stuff will harm her and her family.

She raises the question: What's to be gained by jailing an old man after all these years? California has been ordered to turn loose up to 40,000 felons due to prison overcrowding. So having a felon No. 40,001, Polanski, also loose is not a big deal, numerically speaking. As one writer noted, perhaps California could use the prosecution money to restore services cut in recent, drastic budget woes. As in: Feed and cloth a thousand more kids, as opposed to jailing an old man.

The 1977 case is blanketed in controversy, including the actions of the presiding judge. The prudent way out is for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to note the sentiments of the victim and pardon Polanski. Like when Bill Clinton pardoned politically-connected fugitive Marc Rich, who at the time was on the federal most-wanted list. Or when George Bush II commuted Scooter Libby's sentence. Two legal presidential acts, yes. Justice, you decide.

Whatever the outcome of the Polanski case, no doubt the director has had an roller-coaster life. Academy Award winning director. His mother died in Auschwitz. He himself escaped Nazis and Krakow ghetto. In 1969, the Charles Manson nut brigade killed Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate.

If there's no statute of limitations on carrying out arrest warrants, there should be.

Spare me the arguments about arresting Polanski to serve justice. The legal establishment skirts justice every day in order to cross the T of legalities -- as in laws prohibiting cocaine and crack. They are forms of the same drug. Yet crack users get much tougher jail sentences than cocaine users. Justice and law are not necessarily synonymous.

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Category: Punditry

Pssst! We're fighting two wars. Pass it on.

President Obama makes a big push for health care reform this week. He's having the same trouble that President Bush had getting through the GOP's private accounts in Social Security.

As a number of commentators have noted, big reforms generate big opposition.

When it comes to health care, many seniors aren't convinced. Medicare mostly works for them. So why change? Plus, there's no credible proposal to pay for big-ticket reforms -- other than put the country further in hock.

Meanwhile, two endless wars rage on. Perhaps we should finish the wars before draining resources and attention for expensive domestic programs.

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Category: Punditry

Wal-Mart: The good, the bad and the savings

Wal-Mart plans to bring 1,500 more jobs to Michigan. Wal-Mart bashers might want to rethink their tack. The jobs counter a trend that shows the state drowning.

Charles Fishman's book, "The Wal-Mart Effect," goes deeply into how the outfit operates. He writes up the good and the bad but the book ultimately tilts against Wal-Mart. However, after reading it, I think the facts, on balance, favor Wal-Mart, whose practices have even done a lot to eliminate waste and clean up the environment. It depends on how much weight you give to the aspects of the Wal-Mart equation.

Your feeling on Wal-Mart,for example, may depend on whether you more highly value deep discounts or higher wages for Wal-Mart employees. The company is credited with saving consumers $30 billion a year -- plus billions more by driving down prices elsewhere. Says Fishman: If a family making $52,000 buys groceries at Wal-Mart, it can save enough to give them, in effect, an extra weekly paycheck every year.

The company cannot do that and also pay it's workers $20 an hour. The average fulltime Wal-Mart wage in Michigan is $11.44, says the company, which adds that it also supports 71,000 supplier jobs here in Michigan. And it does all that without taking any stimulus money.

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Category: Punditry

Vatican sends no message on Kennedy death

In all the mourning for Ted Kennedy, not a public word from the Pope or the Vatican, even though Kennedy was the most prominent U.S Catholic.

Time magazine makes the point. And it's different from back when the young Ted Kennedy received his first communion from Pope Pius XII.

Seems to me the pope could have at least issued a statement for sake of the family. Kennedy was pro choice. And that probably figured into Vatican thinking.

But it should be easy to separate the art of condolences from church politics/theology.

Since young Ted's first communion, the Kennedy family's influence on the Pope have waned. The Vatican even revoked the annulment of Joe Kennedy II's marriage -- after he had secretly gotten the annulment from the Archdiocese of Boston.

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Category: Punditry

Health care? Deficits will be the death of us.

Just out: Another report on the growing federal budget deficit, fueled by Bush-Obama spending policies. The public has a sense of this -- to the point of worrying about the effect of health care reform on the deficit.

Americans are worried about it, but a lot of members of Congress are not. Presidents Obama and Bush added to the debt at an alarming rate.

Here for current report and here for poll on deficit.