Merry Christmas

     In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

    So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

    And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

    Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

    When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."

    So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Merry Christmas!

No Peace in the Holy Land

This is the second in our "Christmas Triduum."

As I write this Christians in many parts of the world are streaming to churches for Midnight Mass and other vigil observances of the birth  of the Prince of Peace. But in Biblical lands there is anything but peace.

The fact is that in predominantly Muslim countries Christians are under attack as never before. As Steve Huntley noted recently in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Post-Mubarak Egypt has seen a virtual pogrom against Christians. In one bloody episode Egyptian security forces joined a violent, club-wielding mob, murdering 60 Christians in Cairo and wounding another 300. Copts are one of the earliest Christian churches, predating the prophet Muhammad. But the unchecked violence towards them may cause the dispersion of hundreds of thousands of them. Copts as a group are also among most educated and prosperous Egyptians. This may explain the animosity towards them on the part of a poorer, more illiterate majority. But chasing them out of their home may create an economic and resource drain that can only worsen an already bad economy for everyone.

As bad as it is in Egypt it's worse in Palestine. The West Bank and Gaza, controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, respectively, have led the Mid East in the Diaspora of Christians. Thirty-five years ago Bethlehem , the birthplace of Jesus, was 100 percent Christian. Today Christians make up only a third of the population. Living in the Palestinian territories, Christians are governed by Islamic Sharia law.

And let's not even talk about Iraq. Iraq, where the ancient Tigris and Euphrates run. As recently as ten years ago was home to a Chaldean Christian church with nearly a million and a half members. Today, as the U.S. abdicates its responsibility to help build a stable, pluralistic society, the Chaldean church is down to 500,000 members and shrinking.

For t several summers past I can remember Arab Catholics from Bethlehem making the tour of the U.S. and visiting various churches. Their goal was to sell artifacts made of native olive wood to raise money for the support the of sacred Holy Land sites. This year they didn't come at all. Not a good sign.

Palestinians in Bethlehem assiduously ensure that the tiny town where Christ was born remains a tourist destination. But that is because the annual December pilgrimage there is the largest economic draw in town. The number of Christians left to keep and care for this site out of a sense of faith-based responsibility continues to dwindle. What happens when they all leave?

Just thought you might like to know. 

Keeping Christ in Christmas

What follows is the first of three postings on the Christmas season of 2012. Call it a Nativity Triduum of sorts.

Those who celebrate Christmas seem to be divided into to camps: the secular and the sacred. Those who seem to revel in its pagan, Bacchanalian roots and those that view Christmas as a deeply spiritual event. Most Christians are on the fault line of that battle--erecting creches along with colored lights, attending church services, if only once a year, and also getting in line at Target at 12:00 in the morning on Black Friday. Midnight madness vs, Midnight Mass.

 David Gibson of the Religion News Service writes today about how churches try to offer a bit of the secular in order to get the faithful to notice the sacred. Traditional Midnight Mass is going the way of the C7 incandescent Christmas bulb as pastors try to boost attendance by getting parishioners home by midnight in order to finish assembling and wrapping presents and getting a couple of hours of sleep before the kids are up at dawn. At the other end, clergy are making Christmas church services more kid friendly in order to help the little ones turn their attention from Santa to Jesus for at least a day. Gibson quotes a Catholic priest joking about "Jingle Bell Masses." 

St. Augustine was among
the first theologians to
write about balancing the secular
and the sacred at Christmas

A lot of people blame the secularization of Christmas on our modern consumer culture. But the battle between secular and sacred goes back a lot further than that. In his column today Gibson writes about Saint Augustine, the great fifth century Doctor of the Church. Augustine, a convert to Christianity, knew well the pagan rites and festivals, as well as the Feast of the Nativity. For this reason, he cautioned his flock not to downplay the celebratory aspects of Jesus' birth. Christians were to be faithful to the true meaning of Christmas and not to give into pagan celebrations. But they were to combine the celebratory with the sacred.

"So," he wrote, "brothers and sisters, let us keep this day as a festival - not, like the unbelievers, because of the sun up there in the sky, but because of the One who made that sun."

Fifteen centuries later it is a lesson we the faithful should keep in mind. Merry Christmas.

Just thought you might like to know

The 351st Bomb Group-A War Story

"The 351st Bomb Group" is the story of the death of my uncle, Edward H. Bucceri. It was originally posted on December 23, 2009, the anniversary of his death during World War II. It has been posted every year since on this date. It is presented again here.

This post is dedicated to my late uncle, Sgt. Edward H. Bucceri, a member of the 351st Bomb Group killed in action off the coast of England in World War II. Today is the anniversary of his death during a combat mission over the North Sea 66 years ago.


Uncle Ed died long before I was born. We know little about the incident that took his life other than it was his eighth combat mission. What information we have is preserved in The Chronicle of the 351st Bomb Group, by Peter Harris and Ken Harbour, and the official War Department report. Both are the basis of this post.

Sgt. Bucceri's plane, serial number 42-39778 , and known as "Lucky Ball," was part of the 511th Squadron on a 34-plane bombing run that took off on December 22, 1943 from its base in Polebrook, England on a night-time mission to bomb a steel mill in Osnabruck, Germany. In command of Lucky Ball was the pilot, Lt. Lewis Maginn of Rochester, New York. It was to be the plane's fifth and final mission.

According to Lt. Maginn's recollection of the event, Lucky Ball was anything but lucky that night. It had just been overhauled prior to the mission, with two engines ripped out and replaced by rebuilt ones. Lt. Maginn recalls being uneasy with the fact that the plane was pressed into service without the rebuilt engines having logged some more running time following the overhaul.

In addition to having to make the run with untested engines, two of the regular crew could not go on the mission and were replaced in the ball turret and tail gun positions.

Early into the mission, the pilot realized something was wrong. Bomb Groups assigned to the position behind them were rapidly gaining on Lucky Ball. Lt. Maginn put the hammer down to "near full power" and still found himself falling behind his formation.

And then the oil pressure in the number four engine began to drop.

The pilot killed the four engine and, being close to the target, tried to make the run with three motors. Then the oil pressure on number three began dropping.

With two engines out on one side, and an impossible task to keep up, Lt. Maginn made the decision to break formation and turn back to base. The crew jettisoned its bomb load, ammo and equipment in hopes of lightening the load on the two remaining engines.

The crew then mistook an American plane for an enemy fighter and dived into a cloud bank. But the maneuver cost the crew "precious altitude," according to Lt. Maginn. Then the oil pressure in number two began to drop. The crew began to take flak from German fighters, worsening their altitude situation. The pilot was forced to shut down number two, leaving Lucky Ball one engine.

The crew dumped all remaining equipment, guns and ammunition and began a desperate run to the English coast. Sgt. Palmer, the radio man, sent out the SOS. But there was no luck for Lucky Ball that night as it struggled westward into a gale headwind.

With the English coastline in plain view, the crew came to the realization they would never reach it. They prepared to ditch their craft into the chop of the North Sea. Cruising low above the waves, the pilot cut the last engine to try and glide to a straight landing. The bomber hit the water at 85 miles per hour, breaking in half.

Lt. Maginn describes the intense cold of the North Sea in late December as "instantly numbing." The crash landing had jammed the cables on the life rafts, forcing the crew to "take to the water, their flotation devices their only hope for survival. Huddled together in the freezing water they watched Lucky Ball sink below the waves. The first big wave to break over them scattered them about the sea, each man to his own.

Sgt. Palmer assured Maginn that the rescue squadrons had a fix on their position, but it would be 45 more agonizing minutes before the first boat appeared. During that 45 minutes as the men drifted apart, Lt. Maginn later said, "the wind and bitter cold water took its toll rapidly." Five of the ten-man crew were rescued. Perishing that night were the navigator, Lt. James McMorrow of Akron, Ohio, Sgts. Albert Meyer of Roswell, New Mexico, Docile Nadeau of Fort Keat Mills, Maine, and Clarence Rowlinson of Des Moines, Iowa. Sgt. Meyer was the only one whose body was recovered.

Sgts. Nadeau and Rowlinson were the replacement ball turret and tail gunners fatefully assigned to the flight that night.

The fifth crew member killed was my uncle, Edward H. Bucceri of Jersey City, New Jersey.

No memorial marks the spot where these men went to their final rest. There was no military funeral at a national cemetery, no 21-gun salute, no honor guard. No one made a movie about the Lucky Ball's last run, and no Grammy-winning folk singer penned a mournful song . The crew that perished that night were just five of the more than 400,000 Americans killed in action in that war. Today I remember one of them.

Rest in Peace, Uncle Ed. Merry Christmas. And thank you.

Just thought you might like to know.

Pearl Harbor Remembered

Today, December 7, 2011, marks the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor that ushered America's entry into World War II.

Seventy years is a long time. I can remember when "Pearl Harbor Day," as it was called (officially it is referred to as National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day) was as much a part of American history that it was marked on every calendar, like Lincoln's Birthday or Armistice Day. Today--not so much.

I asked my teenage son today if he knew what today, December 7, was. He had to think about it for a second but came back with Pearl Harbor Day. I proposed to him that if he asked 20 people the same question 18 wouldn't know. His take was that I could ask 100 and most of them would be clueless. I'm sure most of those 100 could cite me chapter and verse about global warming but little about one of the key events that shaped America into a world power and defined its character. I'm not surprised. It seems as if most American teachers, judging by what they teach, think American history started in the 1960s.

But 70 years is a long time. The saddest news of the day is that the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association gathered today at the memorial in Honolulu for the last time. As of December 31, 2011 the Association will disband, a victim of the passage of time. With the Survivors Association gone, who will be left to testify about Pearl Harbor?

Pearl Harbor remains important in American history for many reasons. The Japanese surprise attack occurred despite the fact that the Americans had broken the Japanese code, were eavesdropping on Japanese communications and knew both the day and the approximate time when an attack would take place.

Twenty years before, it was the Americans who demonstrated just how vulnerable naval vessels could be to the growing threat of air power. In a 1921 demonstration the legendary Billy Mitchell sank three surplus ships. Present at the demonstration was a Japanese naval officer attached to Japan's diplomatic mission in the U.S.

The lesson of Pearl Harbor shaped America's military thinking for the next 60 years. However, over the last decade, we've grown weary of two wars, fighting a shadowy enemy, and being economically crushed by a global recession. As a nation we've disengaged from some of our global responsibilities. But today we face threats at least as formidable as we faced in 1941, as Warren Kozak points out in today's Wall Street Journal. A nuclear-armed Iran. A belligerent Russia. An increasingly belligerent China that holds the power of the purse over our economy. An ever-present threat of Islamic terrorism.

Perhaps we need to study the lessons of Pearl Harbor a little more. We need to gather the intelligence on places like Iran, sift through it, analyze it, and above all, not ignore the facts that stare back at us.

If we can do that, then the Pearl Harbor Survivors and those 2,400 brave souls who went to their death 70 years ago this day can rest easier knowing that we've carried their lesson forward to the present.

Can we do that? The guy who heads up the the Southeast chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association is quoted today about how we've failed our kids by not teaching them about Pearl Harbor.

Harry Kerr was invited to talk to a school about December 7, 1941. "I was being introduced by a male teacher," said Mr. Kerr.  "[the teacher] told the class, 'Mr. Kerr will be talking about Pearl Harbor.’ And one of these little girls said, ‘Pearl Harbor? Who is she?’"

Just thought you might like to know.

Old Fashioned Christmas

I live in a small community that's getting bigger by the day. But at least we have one event that lets us remember our small town roots. It's the annual West Chester Old Fashioned Christmas parade, held for the last 32 years on the first Friday in December. I remember going to the parade for the first time 20 or so years ago. Then it consisted of a marching band, some antique cars, tractors and fire engines, a few Girl Scout and Brownie troops marching, some local pols on parade and, of course, Santa Claus. It took all of 30 minutes for the parade to wind its way around town.

Last night's parade lasted over an hour and a half. It featured 19 marching bands, a Salute to the Troops, a Bolivian dance troupe up from Virginia, and back from last year, the Lone Ranger atop Silver. The parade has benefited greatly from the addition of professional management and from corporate sponsorship. The name sponsor for last night's event was MARS Drinks.

As the parade has grown, so has the attendance with thousands of people clogging the narrow streets to catch a glimpse of the various floats.

The historic Courthouse in West
Chester, Pa. decorated for Christmas

I'm happy to live in a place where events like an Old Fashioned Christmas parade can take place. In addition to the parade there is Christmas caroling in the streets, a tree-lighting ceremony on the lawn of the old Courthouse, next to the creche and the menorah placed there to commemorate the holiday. We've had our First Amendment battles over all this, but for now at least common sense and good will have prevailed.

The growth of the parade has been stunning over the last few years. But there is something about the smaller, locally managed events of 20 years ago I miss. Maybe it's something about the unpolished, unrehearsed marching of little kids, or the many local merchants who kept their doors open after the parade to serve cookies and hot drinks to spectators looking for a little warmth. Either way there is something about a parade and something about Christmas that reminds us of the way things used to be, and they way we'd like them to be now if we could only turn back the clock.

Just thought you might like to know.

The National Debt

20th Anniversary of Operation Desert Storm

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, the blitzkrieg that ejected Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army from Kuwait and restored the Kuwaiti government.

This past Sunday Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began a good will tour of the Mideast, largely to assure U.S. allies in the region of the American desire to see peaceful resolution of the street protests that have now spread from North Africa through the Persian Gulf. Adm. Mullen's trip coincides with the anniversary of Desert Storm.

Across this country, various groups are commemorating how the U.S. Armed Forces and their coalition allies turned the "mother of all battles" into 72-hour rout. Saddam's most enduring legacy may be turning a hyperbolic boast into a popular culture punch line.

The coalition forces had been preparing for the operation since August when Saddam brazenly stormed across the Kuwait border and annexed Kuwait as the 19th province of Iraq. While Kuwait pleaded its case before the United Nations U.S. President George H. W. Bush patiently worked the phones.

Pres. Bush had a long and distinguished record of government service and international relations. Twenty years before the invasion he had been the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. So he knew first hand the frustrations of dealing with that body on issues of international crisis. He went on to become the chief liaison of the U.S. to China in the '70s as well as C.I.A. director. He spend the 1980s as vice president under Ronald Reagan as the U.S. won the cold war against the Soviet Union. Perhaps no president was ever as prepared for an international crisis of this magnitude as George H.W. Bush.

While debate droned on at the UN, Pres. Bush "worked the phones." During his tenure in China, the UN and the C.I.A. in the 1970s he had met many young diplomats, international careerists, and politicians all over the world. He had built relationships with many of them. By the time Saddam's troops were in Kuwait City, many of these acquaintances had been promoted through the ranks to positions of power and authority in their countries. While Saddam boasted, Bush quietly worked his Rolodex, putting together an international coalition with these leaders, and ultimately an expeditionary force not seen since the beaches of Normandy.

Since August the allies had been building an air bridge to new bases in the Persian Gulf.  Muslim leaders swallowed hard and agreed to let Western powers establish bases in their countries. They knew if Saddam's invasion were to stand, they could probably be next. The bombing started in mid-January. It was unrelenting and devastating.

By February 26 it was all over. Twelve years later it was all over for Saddam, deposed by Bush's son.

Totalitarian regimes celebrate military victories in their own inimitable way. In the U.S. we generally have a more respectful and quiet way of remembering these events. For example, in January a group of coalition leaders, including Pres. Bush, presented a "lessons learned"  symposium on the war at Texas A&M University.

This month a Framingham, Massachusetts veterans group has a display of memorabilia set up at their local library.

Meanwhile, down in Columbia, South Carolina the state's military museum has its own exhibit, called Shield and Storm, on display.

And Berea, Ohio will commemorate Desert Storm with its recent designation as "Patriotic City of the Year." Berea's accomplishments in that area? Its annual Veterans Day memorial, its Memorial Day services, and its rememberance of those who have died at the hands of terrorists.

Not a rolling tank or goose-stepping division among them.

As we look at one international crisis after another today, it's hard to imagine that a war-weary world could come together with one purpose. But it did just that 20 years ago today.

Just thought you might like to know.

The Great Communicator

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States. Earlier today a stirring memorial of the President was held on the grounds of the Reagan Presidential Library in California. Throughout the next 12 months there will be various commemorations of the Reagan Presidency.

It may be difficult for anyone under the age of 35 to understand what President Reagan meant to the United States and to the world. Much of what we know about the President, and what we find in history books has been filtered through the prism of a media industry and education establishment that were largely unfriendly, if not downright dismissive, of Ronald Reagan during his lifetime.

If you would like a short course on what type of president and what type of person Ronald Reagan was, I recommend the Feb. 5 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan, who worked for the President in the mid-1980s.

If you would like to know what he meant to those who knew him up close, you could do no better than to click over to a recent syndicated column by Linda Chavez, who worked for the President at the Civil Rights Commission in the 1980s.

But I have my own reminiscence of what President Reagan meant to this country.

Ronald Reagan took office at what was arguably one of the worst periods in American history. The economy was in shambles, a mixture of high unemployment, inflation and double digit interest rates. Abroad, the U.S. had been humiliated by revolutionaries in Iran, who had held a large group of Americans hostage in Tehran for over a year. The Soviet Union was in an expansionist mode, fomenting with impunity international communism by proxy in several African countries and invading neighboring Afghanistan with the Red Army. Bleak, perhaps, understates the American outlook in 1981.

During the transition from the feckless Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan I was unemployed--not once, but twice. With little hope of finding a job. It was a scary, depressing, time. And bleak. Finally, in 1986 I was able to land a job. Not just a job, but a career -  the same career I enjoy today, 26 years later.

It took me some time to connect the dots between President Reagan, his economic program, and my landing a good job. It didn't hit me till the following year when I was driving to work one morning and I passed a Burger King. Outside the fast food store was a sign that read "Help Wanted." It was then that I realized that was the first "Help Wanted" sign I had seen since I was in my early years in high school. The Reagan economy was creating more jobs than there were people to fill them. And my job was part of that creation. Twenty-six years later that's what Ronald Reagan means to me.

President Reagan was a believer in freedom--economic freedom and political freedom. He believed that a government that over-reaches does so at the expense of its citizens' liberty. He also believed that America's unique ability to champion liberty and show by example made it exceptional. The source of this exceptionalism? Our Constitution. As he put it so well in his 1989 farewell address:

Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which We the People tell the government what it is allowed to do.

If you have 20 minutes I ask that you watch President Reagan's Farewell Address, provided below. The President knew that he couldn't count on the media to represent his words to the American people. So he often spoke directly - and candidly - to them. This was the last of those speeches. Somewhat derisively, the media nicknamed him "The Great Communicator" - a name this common-sense, modest man didn't necessarily agree with. For Ronald Reagan gave credit for his ideas to others and for their execution to the American people:

...I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference. It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator. But I communicated great things. And they didn't spring full boom from my brow. They came from the heart of a great Nation.

Just thought you might like to know.

Super Bowl Thoughts

The drinks are chilling in the beer fridge. The wing sauce is ready to go. And the snacks are piled high for Sunday's Super Bowl. That can mean only one thing: baseball is just around the corner.

Baseball, once the nation's pastime, has taken a back seat to NFL football as the sports fan's object of desire in the U.S. While over 100,000 people will be in Texas to watch the game in person on Sunday, hundreds of millions of others will watch it on television. In fact, with outsized ticket prices the NFL has become essentially television programming. Like Bones or Mad Men.

Really, when you come down to it, the only difference between Ben Roethlisberger or Aaron Rodgers on one hand and Jon Hamm or January Jones on the other is that the latter two have better tans.

When you compare football and baseball you get the impression, largely driven by Midwestern sports writers, that football is the more egalitarian, American sport, where each season every team has a chance to make the playoffs. Where on "any given Sunday," as the saying goes, a last place team can beat a first place team. This is because the NFL is the master of corporate socialism, where all teams essentially share in the same pot of money.

Baseball, on the other hand, is more like capitalism run amok, the land of the haves and have nots. A sport populated by the hated Yankees, the terminally trendy Red Sox, the uber-hip Dodgers and the lovable Cubs, who have made more money losing over the years than the Washington Generals.

Unlike in football, when the 2011 baseball season opens in six weeks teams like the Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Kansas City Royals and probably six others will take the field knowing the season is already lost. Those same Midwestern sportswriters will intone gravely on SportsCenter that Major League Baseball is hopelessly flawed because of this dichotomy. Oh, why can't they be more like the socialist NFL and redistribute their wealth better so everyone gets a medal at the end of the season, they'll say.

But will that be true?

MLB writer Anthony Castrovince has a nice piece posted on MLB.com showing it's not true. That when it comes to "parity" baseball and football are, well, on par. And in some cases, baseball exceeds the forced equality of the more socialist NFL.

When it comes to Super Bowls and World Series over the last decade, for example, baseball and football have the exact same number of teams - 14 - compete for their sport's championship.

Since 1967, when Super Bowl I was contested, the NFL has crowned 18 different champions. But during the same period, baseball has had 20 separate teams make the ticker-tape parade.

[And forget about basketball. Over the last 30 years the NBA, which practices NFL-style wage controls, has seen an oligarchy of eight teams rotate the championship among themselves. Compare that to baseball. Eight teams have won the championship in the last nine years!]

"Yea," Royals and Pirates fans say. "But it's not all about championships. We'd be happy if our teams could just make the playoffs. But they can't because of those damn Yankees, trendy Red Sox and too-cool-for-school Dodgers."

Time to correct another misconception. Actually, the two sports are about equal when it comes to playoff opportunities. Over the last five years 75% of NFL teams have qualified for the playoffs. During that same period about 73% of baseball's teams have played in October - about the same percentage.

And, it's worth noting, that baseball has a better record when it comes to fresh faces being asked to the big dance. Since 2006 only 37.5% of playoff teams were able to make the baseball playoffs two years in a row. During the same period nearly half of football playoff teams were able to make it back to the tournament - a virtual hegemony.

And when you look at repeat playoff appearances over the last two years the two sports are virtually identical.

"But we're small market teams," whine the Royals and Pirates fans. "Why can't we have revenue sharing and wage controls like the NFL and NBA? We can possibly compete for players like the moneyed swells in New York or Boston or Los Angeles." Well, that's not exactly correct, either. Consider that:

• Eleven of the last 12 World Series slots have gone to different clubs
• Only two of the top nine spenders (in terms of Opening Day payroll) in 2010 reached the playoffs last fall
• And, more importantly, three of the bottom 12 teams in terms of payroll made it to October last season while their rich cousins watched them on TV

Baseball will never be football for one simple reason: 162 games vs. 16. In the NFL weaker teams from the previous year have their failure rewarded with weaker schedules. In a 16-game schedule it's conceivable that some of them sneak into the playoffs. Baseball, on the other hand, plays a 162 game schedule over a full half year. A death march that only the strong survive. Few teams can get by on luck for this long. By August the weak have been killed and eaten.

Thanks to Mr. Castrovince for these numbers. If you live in Pittsburgh or Kansas City, have hope.   If your teams manage smartly and trade wisely, they, too, will be in the playoffs. Look at Tampa Bay. All the money in the world can't make up for poor player personnel decisions, bonehead trades and unstable management.

Meanwhile, leave the difference between baseball and football to George Carlin.

Just thought you might like to know.

The President's New Clothes

I don't have a lot of patience for the "birthers," those con men of conspiracy spreading the unsubstantiated rumor that President Obama was born outside of the U.S. and therefore fails one of the Constitutional requirements to hold the presidency. On January 20, 2009 that ship sailed. End of story. I don't much care where he was born; he's our president now and let's move on.

On the other hand, I am intrigued about the lack of information about the President's scholastic achievements. During his meteoric rise to power we heard a lot about how brilliant he is. Stands to reason if he is so brilliant, he'd want to show off everything from his 5th grade runner up green ribbon in the spelling bee to a magna cum laude diploma, if he has one. But the door to his academic accomplishments is shut tighter than the door to the Oval Office when the Petroleum Institute comes calling.

So it was interesting to read today in the Wall Street Journal the observations of Richard Epstein. Mr. Epstein is a law professor at the University of Chicago. In the interest of full disclosure I hold a graduate degree from that university, although not granted by the law school. I knew neither Prof. Epstein nor Pres. Obama when he was an adjunct professor there.

Professor Epstein made his comments to Reason TV. Reason TV is a video service of a website called reason.com. Reason.com is a somewhat libertarian-leaning website. Prof. Epstein's observations are remarkable only because it's taken six years for someone to make them. He was speaking about the economy and comparing the differing approaches of Presidents George Bush and Obama. He noted that neither president could be called a "strong believer in laissez-faire principles."

However, speaking about Pres. Obama's tendency to try and muscle up for a home run, when a single might do, he had this to say: "The difference between [Presidents Bush and Obama], which is why Obama is the more dangerous man ultimately, is he has very little by way of a skill set to understand the complex problems he wants to address, but he has this unbounded confidence in himself." [emphasis added]

This is a former colleague of the President saying that 1) Barack Obama is more dangerous than George Bush; and 2) he (the President) isn't smart enough to understand the problems he's trying to solve. Remarkable. To my liberal friends, for whom no one was more dangerous than George W. Bush, nor stupider, it must come as a shock that a fellow law professor would essentially say that the current President doesn't have the chops to deal with the issues at hand. And furthermore, the fact that the Pres. thinks he does is an exercise in political hubris that poses a danger to the country.

Speaking personally, I never met more smart people in one place than at the University of Chicago. You'd think some of that intellectual karma would have rubbed off on the President (It didn't on me, but that's a post for another day). According to Prof. Epstein, apparently not.

He goes on to say in the interview that Prof. Obama was aloof from the other faculty members, and didn't much care for the intellectual give and take that goes on among faculty colleagues. Barack Obama apparently was so busy with what Prof. Epstein calls "collateral adventures" that he pretty much "kept to himself."

So maybe the future President was a shy, retiring academic, who kept kept his head down and minded his own business. Like the village librarian. What's wrong with that? Well, as Reason quotes Prof. Epstein: "The problem when you keep to yourself is you don't get to hear strong ideas articulated by people who disagree with you." [emphasis added] So if you're a professor who becomes President, maybe that's why you go two years without a business person of consequence in your cabinet, while at the same time racking up a reputation as the most business unfriendly president since FDR.

I don't know if the President was an A student or a D student. I suppose someday we'll find out. But I think it's interesting that his alleged brilliance seems to be called into question by a former colleague who in effect says the President isn't up to dealing with the complex tasks he faces, that his booming self-confidence in the absence of the required leadership skills poses a danger to the country, and that his personality apparently is to avoid listening to strong people who disagree with him.

Most conservatives, I think, have always felt this way about the President. But to hear a former colleague say the Emperor has no clothes, when his courtiers and he himself would have us believe otherwise is truly breathtaking.

Just thought you might like to know.

The Right Side of History

As of this posting, the situation in Egypt remains unsettled. We had fairly good intel via social networks like Twitter until the Egyptian security troops turned of Internet access, phone service and essentially tried to plunge the country in to an information black hole.

It certainly seems unlikely that Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak can survive an  uprising that includes Islamists, students and now middle class Egyptians. It's one thing for college kids to burn a tire now and again, or for professional grievers and nihilists like al Qaeda to seize an opportunity. But when you get sideways with the people who actually do the work, pay the taxes and contribute to a country's production, you're pretty much of a short-timer.

Here's the ironic thing. Almost 30 years ago I did a radio interview with a guy named Dan Meyer. Meyer was an Israeli. He happened to be the former press secretary to Menachem Begin, a Nobel laureate who became prime minister of Israel in 1977. As PM Begin was responsible for negotiating the Camp Dave Peace Accords in 1978. His opposite number who shared the Nobel prize with him for bringing peace to the Middle East was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

What made the interview important was the date: early October 1981. It followed by a few days, the assassination of Sadat on October 6 of that year. So, ever the master of the obvious, I asked Meyer if the treaty could endure without Sadat. His answer was pretty predictable (yes), but his reasoning was actually newsworthy.

Meyer explained that he was present for most of the negotiations with the exception of those long, Kumbaya walks between the two leaders. And then he said that Sadat played a relatively minor role in the negotiations. Sadat was the strategist,  he explained. A big picture guy, but certainly not a detailed one. The nuts and bolts of the treaty fell to Sadat's chief tactician-a beefy air force officer named Hosni Mubarak, according to Meyer. Sadat may have made the peace, but Mubarak made the treaty.

Greased by $28 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt over the last three decades, the treaty has proven to be surprisingly enduring. So has Hosni Mubarak.

As we learned in school power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. President Mubarak was a bright guy and a brilliant tactician. It was he who rebuilt the Egyptian Air Force after its humiliation at the hands of the Israelis in the 1967 Six Day War. It was Mubarak who engineered the air war against Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and damned near helped defeat the Israelis for the first time.

But President Mubarak joined a long line of Middle East caudillos, that has included the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, the House of Saud and an endless parade despots and tyrants in that region.  Thirty years of oppression and kleptocracy is a long time.

The question tonight for the U.S. is whether it throws a long-time ally, Mubarak, under the tanks and provides at least verbal support for the uprising, or whether it stands by Mubarak. Whether the U.S. will be on the right side of history or not.

Three nights ago President Obama stood before a joint session of Congress and challenged Americans to create a new economy, calling it our "Sputnik moment." Well, for President Obama this is his Jimmy Carter moment. Does he support a long-time, strategic, but despotic ally as President Carter did with the Shah of Iran? Or will he support the spread of democracy-something he castigated his predecessor for doing?

Guess correctly and he gets the first real foreign policy victory of his presidency. Guess wrong and he's Jimmy Carter II.

The president's problem is that he has to outguess a master tactician in Hosni Mubarak.

Just thought you might like to know.

A Unique American Hero

He was one of a rare breed—a native, lifelong Californian. He was a prodigious author and celebrity known around the world. As a kid he was a junk food addict and prone to violent outbursts targeted at himself as well as others. "A miserable, goddam kid" was how he described himself.

When he was a teenager he happened to hear a talk on healthy lifestyles. It would become a seminal moment in his life. He picked up a copy of Gray's Anatomy and started reading. His goal was to live better and live longer. He swore off the junk food and started exercising. He felt better about himself. He finished high school and studied to be a chiropractor.

In the 1930s, after receiving his chiropractic license he opened a gym in Oakland, Ca. and began preaching what was up till that time the unheard gospel of weight training. It was he who designed the device that would become known as the "Smith machine." The Smith was device that held a barbell in a fixed position, allowing only vertical movement and isolating the muscles used to raise and lower the bar. Today it is a staple of any gym worthy of the name.

Some 50 years after he opened that first gym and 200 gyms later, he sold his operation to Bally's, which renamed them Bally Total Fitness.

His accomplishments were stuff of Superman. At age 40 he swam the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. Underwater. Three years later he swam it above the surface, but towing a cabin cruiser. Twenty years later he did it again, this time underwater, handcuffed and towing another boat. At the age of 70 he towed 70 boats, one for each year, while swimming across Long Beach Harbor—a distance of one mile. He was shackled and handcuffed at the time.

Maybe his most enduring accomplishment was teaching a generation of women that lifting weights was OK for them. That it was more that OK—it would help them look and feel better about themselves. In doing so he explodedthe popular myth that weight-lifting women would end up looking like mustached wrestlers. He did this on the down low—meeting with them every morning over the television airwaves. He had the rare gift that most broadcasters can only hope for: He engaged each member of his audience and made them believe they were having a one-on-one conversation. For nearly 35 years his fitness television show provided an outlet for stay-at-home moms (most of the moms at the time) to exercise daily in the privacy of their own homes. Most of the husbands never knew.

Today their daughters and granddaughters can be found by the millions in health clubs, gyms, bike and road races and dance and yoga classes across the U.S. He taught them it was OK to sweat and that looking and feeling good about themselves was a good thing.

The California kid who gave up junk food and decided he wanted to live a good and long life died yesterday. He was 96. His name was Jack LaLanne and he's left an indelible mark on America.

Just thought you might like to know.

Blood Libel

So the comity that followed last Saturday’s tragic shooting in Tucson lasted about…15 minutes. After Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik’s rash comments following the shooting, and after Princeton professor and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman’s blog in the New York Times (that proved conclusively that 1) an Ivy League education isn’t work a damn; 2) the Nobel Prize has been reduced to the same value as the runner-up green ribbon in a 5th grade spelling bee; and 3) The Times has lost all authority as a news source), conservative pundits fired back. Then came Sarah Palin.

Mrs. Palin posted a video statement about the shootings on her website. This was entirely appropriate because she had been singled out by some on the left as creating a “climate” of hate that allegedly motivated the shooter. Mrs. Palin’s mistake, which has supplied a full 24-hour news cycle for MSNBC (maybe in their case, an “opinion” cycle) was saying that the rantings on the left amounted to “blood libel” because they falsely implied that she and other conservative pundits were responsible for the bloodshed.

Mrs. Palin’s point was that by screaming that talk radio and Fox News had in some way inspired alleged shooter Jared Loughner liberals had libeled her and other conservative yakkers and commentators. Furthermore, she implied that liberals were taking advantage of the loss of life in order to demonize conservatives. In general, Mrs. Palin’s statement struck a kumbaya note.

But the term “blood libel” is a specific term in history that referred to Christian false claims in medieval times that Jews had engaged in the ritual use of Christians’ blood—often as an excuse to begin a pogrom. So the backlash from the left has been nothing but furious. Had it been someone else, the reaction from the left might have been less. But Mrs. Palin has long been an anathema for the left—a bright, articulate, attractive, pro-life, gun-toting feminist. And to use a popular political metaphor, their prime target on the right.

So rather than join Mrs. Palin in a brief truce, many on the left have chosen to continue the back and forth war of words. This is unfortunate.

Should Mrs. Palin have used a term different than blood libel? Yes. Should whoever wrote her speech have researched the historical context of “blood libel” before using it? Yes. But is this about an insensitive use of a culturally charged term? No. It’s about using Tucson as a way to further discredit Mrs. Palin.

Personally, I like Mrs. Palin. I don’t know if she’s presidential timber, nor do I know if I’d vote for her for president. But I can think of at least five recent presidents that I could say that about. And it won’t be a bunch of bloggers like me, or pundits like Mr. Krugman who will decide whether she’s got the chops to sit in the Oval Office. The American electorate will.

I’m not about to get into a he said/she said debate over who behaved more badly first. If you want to read a compendium of recent Democrat inflammatory bile about Republicans I refer you to James Taranto’s recent Wall Street Journal column.

But it’s time somebody plays the role of the adult in this political war. Time somebody refuses to cross the line. The fact that the country is so polarized isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because ultimately we respect our institutions. You need only to have seen Nancy Pelosi symbolically hand over the reins of power in the House of Representatives to a humble John Boehner last week to know that neither side has a monopoly on good citizenship or fair play. But when we tolerate one or the other side crossing the line by pimping a tragedy then we’ve all started the slow descent into hell.

Just thought you might like to know.

Huckleberry Finn

Last year we blogged several times about how political correctness had overtaken common sense in the classroom. How book publishers were changing references in historic novels to accommodate the perceived sensibilities of readers who were purportedly offended.

Now comes word that Auburn University Professor Alan Gribben has produced  versions of Mark Twain's literary masterpieces Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer--without the words nigger or injun.

Professor Gribben says he was uncomfortable saying those words when he was teaching the book. Aw. I'm sorry the good professor was uncomfortable. But guess what? When you're teaching there are things that will make you uncomfortable. It goes with the job. If you teach The Diary of Anne Frank are you going to pretend that the Nazis were Harley owners and only wanted to take Anne and her family to the annual Sturgis Rally in South Dakota? If you teach your kids about sex are you going to say that daddy gives mommy a candy bar and a baby grows in her stomach?

Who would dare re-write this guy?

Teaching is tough work. Trust me, I used to do it. It takes a tough person to overcome that discomfort and give a student, a child, a player or anyone else a lesson that will last a lifetime. Huckleberry Finn was the first real book I had ever read. I was 16. It changed my life and made me a lifetime reader and writer. Because for the first time I learned that words had meanings and consequences. If a teacher hides a word from a student, it has no meaning for that student. And if it has no meaning, there are no consequences to using it.

Perhaps Prof. Gribben doesn't have what it takes to stand up in a classroom. Maybe he and his mates ought to find another line of work.

Just thought you might like to know.

Senator Mike O'Pake

Pennsylvania State Senator Mike O'Pake died this week from complications due to a recent bypass surgery. He was 70. Sen. O'Pake is remembered as having been the longest serving member in the 328-year history of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.


But among his many accomplishments Sen. O'Pake may best be remembered for his championing of the use electronic benefits transfer, or EBT, technology to replace food stamp coupons back in the 1980s. Fraud and abuse in the Food Stamp Program had been rampant, with food stamps being bought and sold in many neighborhoods like a new coin of the realm. In 1984 the Agriculture Department, which oversees the program, launched an experimental two-year pilot to test whether it could replace food stamps with a debit card, similar to a bank card. The pilot site happened to be Sen. O’Pake’s 11th Senatorial District of Berks County.

Federal Food Stamp Coupons

By 2004 all states had switched to EBT

When the two-year pilot was completed in 1985, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania prepared to return the district to the issuance of food stamps. But the electronic EBT cards proved so popular, that program participants beseeched Sen. O’Pake to find a way to continue the electronic program. They appreciated the fact that they no longer had to shop with a currency that immediately identified them as poor. They also liked the convenience that EBT provided.

Retailers liked the fact that EBT was like any other form of electronic payment, and they no longer had to bear the cost for the care and keeping of food stamps.

Government liked the fact that they no longer had to pay $40 million a year to print food stamps, which were used one time and destroyed. Everyone except the bad guys who bought and sold food stamps as if they were stocks and bonds liked the idea that money that had been appropriated by Congress for a food supplement program was ending up on the tables of families and children.

Mike O’Pake was nothing if not resourceful. Although the pilot had been funded by the federal government, he found funds so that the Commonwealth could continue paying the administrative cost of the EBT program. In fact, with state funding, the Reading EBT pilot ran for more than ten more years, until Pennsylvania replaced it with a statewide EBT system in 1997.

Mike O'Pake, godfather of EBT

To call Mike O’Pake the “godfather” of EBT would not be too much of a stretch. The presence of the Reading EBT pilot provided a model for other states to adopt the technology for their food stamp programs. By 1996 Congress had mandated that all states must adopt EBT technology. By 2004 all 50 states, the territories and the District of Columbia had adopted EBT technology in place of food stamps. The Agriculture Department even re-branded the Food Stamp Program as the SNAP Program.

More importantly, states began to experiment with ways to bring the cost-efficiency, convenience and security of EBT to other government entitlement programs. Today states use EBT technologies to issue food benefits, to provide prescriptive supplemental nutrition to pregnant and nursing mothers, to authorize medical care, to issue child support payments, and to provide child care subsidies. None of this would have happened at the speed it did or in the way it did without the decade-long Reading EBT pilot to provide assurances that it could work.

And Reading would not have happened if it weren’t for Mike O’Pake.

Just thought you might like to know.