WTF?

Geithner tweaking the nipples of capitalism

I'd like to say I've seen it all now, but I'm sure it's going to get worse. Treasury Secretary/Tax Cheat Timothy Geithner stated at the G20 Summit today that world leaders have reached basic agreement on limiting the bonuses of bankers. Yep, you read that right. The United States of America is now basing it's economic policy according to what other countries want. Never mind that most of them hate us and want us to fail.

Is that the kind of change you can believe in? Really?

The Audacity of Hops

Well, it’s been quite a while since I last posted; pre-surgery for my hip replacement back in May. I’ve been wanting to start this blog back up so here’s an attempt to do just that.

Tonight is the kegger at the White House for President Obama to… well I don’t know what it’s for exactly, other than damage control. You know the story so there’s no need to regurgitate it. I guess the premise is that Obama is going to mediate a truce of some sort between Officer James Crowley and Professor Henry Gates, and the result will be a “teachable moment.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Now I will preface by saying that it’s impossible for any of us to know what really happened that day. You can take one side or the other fairly comfortably. Could Crowley have shown a little better judgment and not arrested Gates? Yep. Could Gates have avoided escalating the event by not playing the race/do you know who I am card? Sure. Had one or the other or both happened this incident wouldn't have become the pile of shit that the Prez decided to step into. Regardless, I have my feelings about what happened and everyone else has theirs, and chances are that none of us are going to change our minds about it. Only two guys know for sure what really happened, and they have differing versions so there’s no point in trying to figure it out.

This brings me to what I want to comment on, which is Obama’s initial reaction when asked about the matter at his health care speech, because it hit a little close to home for me. It does so because I come from a cop family. I’m not a cop, but most of my immediate family is in law enforcement. So when Obama was asked about the event, I can’t tell you how disappointed I was that he immediately went back into community activist mode and blamed the cops. Now to be sure, if you read what he actually said it’s a lot more even-handed than it seemed on first listen. However, if you listen to the intent and not the actual words it’s difficult to come away without the impression of: the cops acted stupidly and arrested a guy because of his race. Obama himself said he didn’t know the facts of the case, yet there he was passing judgment on the Cambridge police in front of the entire nation. THAT’S what I had a problem with.

You can argue that he didn’t mean how it came out or if you look at the words it says something else, but to me it was simple arithmetic on Obama's part:

I don’t know what role race played (meaning I think it did) +
I would have been angry (because I was right and the cops were wrong) +
Police acted stupidly (no need to translate this one) +
There’s a history of racial profiling (which means that’s what happened here) =

The stupid cops profiled Gates and arrested him because he is black.

My sister works for the Department of Justice and has devoted her career to training cops about the evils and insufficient cause of racial profiling. I emailed her the morning after and asked what she thought about Obama’s comments. In her words, everyone (meaning her cohorts and other cops) was “royally pissed.” And I was too. Because the President of the United States had just insulted all the good cops in this country by taking the stance that he did. He knew the question might be asked, yet rather than present an unbiased opinion he knee-jerked himself right back into race pimp activist mode. He let his guard down and it cost him. So now he’s in damage control mode and having a brew with the guys to patch things up. Maybe they’ll all get drunk and start singing Kumbaya or something. Will all be forgotten in 2012? As Gordon Solie would say, it remains to be seen.

The Doctor gets hip

Most of my friends are hip to this, but for those of you who may not be...



Summer before last I started having pain in my right hip/groin area. I figured I just aggravated a muscle or something. The problem never went away so I went to see an orthopedist, thinking I must have torn something tendon/ligament-wise. As it turns out I was diagnosed with avascular necrosis (AVN), which is a disease that inhibits blood circulation to the extremeties of bones. Bottom line- the ball of my right femur that fits into the hip socket was basically dying, and there was no cure. My doctor gave me but one option, which was a total hip replacement. I sought out 2 more opinions to be sure, and both of them confirmed the initial diagnosis.


Here are my x-rays of my left and right hips. You can clearly see the difference in the femur heads, with the right being mostly round and the left being all chopped off from necrosis of the bone.

Left (above)




Right (above)

So here I was, a fairly active 47 year old guy, and I had a crumbling hip that was causing me more pain than I had ever experienced or even imagined. I got some pain pills but they only took the edge off- nothing ever made the pain go away. At first I felt like my life had come to a screeching halt and I was pretty distraught over it.

Fortunately though, as the initial collapse of my femur subsided so did the pain, to an extent. But even though the pain was not extreme it was still always there, and it wasn't going away. My doctor recommended that I wait as long as possible for the THR (total hip replacement) as the parts are not yet durable enough to last more than 15-20 years, meaning that if I lived long enough Iwould require another replacement later. I was okay with that, until my doctor then became reluctant to provide me with the pain medication I needed to cope with the problem. So I changed doctors, to one of the guys who I went to for a second opinion. I really liked this guy from the start, and I heard from others that he was the best there was for this condition.


Eventually I got tired of being in pain and went back to see the new doctor again. His name is Kenneth Kress by the way. Dr. Kress advised me that nobody knows what will happen to them in the future, and there was no reason to continue on in pain, and that quality of life is what was important. This validated my feeling that there was no reason to wait until my 60's to get better when my 50's would be wasted, not doing the things I wanted to do in my life.

So now I am going in to get my right hip replaced with metal parts on Monday. I'm first in line, so I told the nurse I didn't want the doctor out partying all night. There's no warming up on somebody else, he has to bring his A game right away. I'm scared shitless, but I can't wait to get this done. I want my life back. Wish me luck.

Arlen Specter's Wall of Sound

Last week Senator Arlen Specter jumped the Republican ship to be a Democrat after the GOP let him know that they wouldn't be supporting him in the next election. While the Dems were probably happy about this initially, there was a collective WTF moment from the left side of the aisle when Specter showed support for Republican Norm Coleman in the still as yet decided Minnesota senate race in a recent NY Times interview, saying that the courts should "do justice" and select Coleman as the winner. Note to Specter: It's probably best not to piss off the people who you were counting on to maintain your Senate seniority. D'oh!

Later, Specter responded to his gaffe by saying he "misspoke", which is just another word for being taken to the woodshed by Harry Reid. Specter valiantly tried to clarify by adding "In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates." Okay then. So what he's saying is that he initially supported Coleman because he was a Republican, and then suddenly remembered "Oh crap, wait a minute, I'm a Democrat now! Let me change my answer!"

You've got to love a man of conviction.

You know, our government wouldn't be half bad if it weren't for all the damn politicians.

Oh my God, they killed Kenny!

You Bastards!

Well it was quite a finish for the Masters this year. Kenny Perry was THE story, vying to become the oldest guy to ever win the green jacket. Unfortunately for him, his bid for immortality fell just short, as Angel Cabrera bested Perry on the second playoff hole.

I don't watch much golf, but I always make a point to watch the weekend coverage of this tournament. Sunday's final round was a thing of beauty, with the Tiger-Mickelson pairing providing much of the drama. They both made a furious charge at the leaders, seemingly feeding off each other's energy. It was all for naught though, as both champions choked away their chances during the stretch run.

This was the most compelling part of the tournament for me- watching these incredibly talented golfers all take turns at wearing the green collar. One by one- Mickelson, Tiger, Furyk, Campbell, Perry, and even eventual champ Cabrera, all took turns blowing shots at the end, spraying drives into trees and missing gimmee putts. Perry's outcome was the hardest to swallow. I rooted for this guy all weekend. He was unflappable for 70 holes, and then inexplicably his legs turned to banana pudding, shooting bogeys on 17 and 18 to piss away a two hole lead and force a playoff. From there he really had no chance to get his legs back, and mercifully it was over.

Even though I was rooting for Perry, it was hard not to appreciate Cabrera. There was, however, one thing that continues to drive me crazy, which is these guys who always shout out "In the hole!" on pretty much every shot that Tiger (and others) take. Honestly, I think these guys need to be taken by force from the course and beaten with a cane, or rebar, or a porcupine, or whatever will inflict the most pain. I'm not saying we have to kill them, although that wouldn't bother me, but they need to understand that their behavior will not be tolerated.

You guys who do that, you know who you are. Your time will come, mark my words...

Creepshow

Okay, so everyone's seen how the Shamwow guy went all Chris Brown on his alleged $1K hooker for biting his tongue. I say alleged because if that's a grand a night nookie then I'm George Clooney. Anyways, the only thing I wanted to comment on was, when Vince Shlomi (rhymes with blow me?) was getting his mug shot taken, did he exclaim "Hey camera guy, are you getting this?"

Turn out the lights, the party's over...

In case you missed it, people around the world celebrated Earth Hour last week, turning out their lights for an hour in a symbolic gesture to save the planet from climate change. Also participating in this touchy-feely moment was the U.N. headquarters in New York. According to this story U.N. representatives originally claimed an energy savings of $81,ooo for turning out their lights for the hour, only to lower that amount down to $24,ooo after the original figure was reported, and then subsequently settling on an estimate of $102. No matter they said, the point was symbolic and the actual savings didn't matter.

The irony of the event is that I suspect most people turned to candlelight, in which case they may have actually contributed more CO2 to the environment than if they used a light bulb.

Feeling the need to make a gesture of my own, I enjoyed Earth Hour by turning on every light in my house, along with all the televisions and any other electrical appliance I could find. Hey, we all gotta do our part.

On a related note, Obama draws a clumsy correlation of the flooding in North Dakota to global warming. Um, yeah. He says,

If you look at the flooding that's going on right now in North Dakota and you
say to yourself, 'If you see an increase of two degrees, what does that do, in
terms of the situation there?'

Okay, so that's really a question and not a statement, but I think my response would be that I wouldn't ask myself such a stupid question.