Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

…and other (hopefully) thought-provoking questions

By Bob Gaydos

• We’ll start with the summer’s top puzzler: Soft ice cream or soft frozen yogurt? They say one is healthier for you, but this is obviously a matter of taste and mine leans to the ice cream most of the time. Maybe a strawberry shortcake sundae with soft vanilla, whipped cream, sponge cake, strawberry syrup, etc. But a friend of mine swears by the black raspberry frozen yogurt at Scoops in Pine Bush. Of course, they put chocolate chips in it. Maybe that‘s what makes it better for you.
• Coke or Pepsi? Most people, from my observation, still prefer and say, “Coke” when asked. So how come waitresses at every diner in the area then ask you, “Is Pepsi OK?” Sure it’s OK. But it’s not Coke. What the heck happened to the Coke salesman?
• Google or Yahoo? Not to be harsh, but why bother with Yahoo? Really. And what the heck is Bing?
• Mac or PC? I’ve got a PC; both my sons have Macs. They love theirs; I may get one some day. I fully expect us all to be doing everything on a tablet in the not-so-distant future. Even cooking.
• Egg and cheese sandwiches made on a grill in a deli or the pre-fab Styrofoam “eggs” served up in fast-food places? OK, we all agree on this one.
• Obamacare or No Care? After campaigning relentlessly against the constitutionally acceptable Affordable Care Act with a slogan of “Repeal and Replace,” Republicans have conceded that they have no actual plan with which to replace it, in the unlikely case they actually did repeal it. They should just ask Mitt Romney to retool the plan he introduced in Massachusetts.
• Jeter or Reyes? … What’s that? That’s not a question anymore? Sorry.
• Designated hitter or unathletic pitchers trying to not hurt themselves at bat? You can deduce my vote. With fulltime inter-league play next year, the DH in both leagues is the only thing that makes sense. So they won’t do it.
• If you read a book on a Nook, is it a book or a Nook? And does that apply to Dr. Seuss?
• Really, what the heck is a Bing?
• I text. All the time. Only way my kids will talk to me. But has anybody under 25 noticed that it’s still a lot quicker and more efficient to actually talk to the other person? Honestly …
• Does anybody “get” Twitter? Am I a twit if I don’t tweet? Speaking of twits, should I care what Ocho Cinco had for lunch?
• Whether pot is legal or not, do the SUNY trustees actually think they can make every SUNY campus smoke-free in two years without putting half the students on probation?
• Which is the more dangerous job: Catching alligators (crocodiles?) bare-handed; driving tractor trailers on narrow, ice-covered roads or repossessing Subarus? I’m betting on the repossessing.
• When did the above become entertainment?
• And who did put the ram in the ramalamadingdong?
• Isn’t it true that every item on the Taco Bell menu consists of the same items, mixed in different combinations and given different names?
• Can we find that answer on Bing?
• Wouldn’t it be more popular if they named it Bong?
• Does anybody remember Frick and Frack? No? No sweat, I looked it up on Yahoo: “Frick and Frack is for any two people who are closely linked in some way, especially through a work partnership.

“The origin is from a famous partnership of Swiss comedy ice skaters, Werner Groebliand Hans Mauch, whose stage names these were. They came to public fame in the later years of a series of skating spectaculars called Ice Follies, promoted by Eddie Shipstad and his brother Roy, which began in 1936 and ran for almost 50 years. Their association lasted so long, and they were at one time so well known, that their names have gone into the language.

“Michael Mauch, the son of Hans, told me in a personal message about the origin of their names: ‘Frick took his name from a small village in Switzerland; Frack is a Swiss-German word for a frock coat, which my father used to wear in the early days of their skating act. They put the words together as a typical Swiss joke.’ ” Now don’t say you never learn anything when you read my column.

• What is the current fascination with tattoos, or body art, if you prefer? Maybe the NBA commissioner can answer this one.
• And by the way, why can’t Democrats defend their man (Obama) with the same fervor with which Republicans attack him? Don’t they care if he loses?
• How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck if a Woodchuck Would Chuck Wood? Oops, sorry, that’s not a question, it’s a new show on the History Channel.
• If I tweet that, will some twit think it’s funny?
• … and what about Naomi?

Now don’t be bashful, please. I would really appreciate comments, answers, jibes and japes (look it up on Bing) on any of the above. This is supposed to be an interactive medium, so interact, please. At the very least it will me make me feel good and at the most I may be able to get another column out of the replies. Isn’t that worth interacting?

PS: If you don’t know the Joe DiMaggio answer, look up Paul Simon. And shame on you.

bobgaydos.blogspot.com

Gambling: The 'Hidden Addiction'

By Bob Gaydos

They call it “the hidden addiction.” There’s no physical sign of it. Nothing is ingested. You can’t overdose on it. People with the problem can often go a long time before anyone close to them becomes aware of it. By then, it is often too late to prevent the devastating consequences.

Problem gambling leads to stealing, loan sharking, suicide, domestic abuse, homicide. It destroys families, leaving loved ones feeling shocked and bewildered, not to mention angry and betrayed. Homes, businesses, jobs, savings, relationships all disappear as the compulsive gambler drags those most important to him or her down the desperate path to getting even.

We don’t hear much about that aspect of gambling these days, what with virtually every state trying to figure out a way to balance its budget by allowing more ways for people to gamble legally. Indeed, as opportunities to gamble have increased in New York, with racinos and seemingly a new lottery game every week, and as politicians talk about allowing more full-fledged casinos, the funding for education, prevention and treatment of problem gambling in the state has been slashed to a lip-service level.

According to the New York Council on Problem Gambling, a not-for-profit independent corporation dedicated to increasing public awareness about the problem and advocating for support services, New York allots about $1 million for the effort. The state agency responsible for dealing with compulsive gambling, the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, states on its web site, “Roughly one million New Yorkers are dealing with problem gambling.” So that’s about a dollar per problem gambler, the price of a scratch-off ticket. Your odds of success are better buying the ticket.

Still, there is help available. Sullivan County, in the Catskill Mounains, is one of only 15 in New York that have a facility offering an outpatient treatment program for problem gambling. The Recovery Center in Monticello primarily treats alcohol and substance abuse issues (as do the other 14), but it also has five certified alcoholism and substance abuse counselors trained to help problem gamblers and their families.

Izetta Briggs-Bollings, CEO of the Recovery Center, also supervises its gambling treatment program. She notes that while gambling games have become ever more seductive, “to keep you coming back,” a similar effort has not been made to make casinos more accountable for protecting their customers from their worst instincts, the way bars are expected to recognize and stop customers who have had too much to drink. She’d also like to see the state devote a penny out of every dollar raised through legal gambling to the education and treatment of problem gambling.

E., who lives in Sullivan County, is among those who have sought help for her gambling compulsion at the Recovery Center. Her problem started at the racino in Monticello, she says, but “it didn’t stop.”

“There were stresses in my life,” she says, “but when I’m there, they disappear. There’s excitement going in, pain going out.” At some point, though, she decided, “I wanted to live, to look my mother in the eye again.”

Shame is one of the primary stumbling blocks to compulsive gamblers seeking help. E. says she knew she could get help at the Recovery Center. “There’s a stigma attached to it,” she says. “A lot of gamblers say they won’t go into the Recovery Center for treatment ‘with those addicts’.” Today, she’s glad she’s not one of those gamblers.

The center offers an outpatient program -- “The “Bettor” Choice Program -- with individual counseling, group counseling and family counseling. Carol Gillespie, the counselor who runs the group, says it has 10 members, about half of whom have another addiction, which is not uncommon. She says most people who come for help, prefer individual treatment over group, again, because of shame.

The center has tried, with little success, to keep a Gamblers Anonymous meeting going. Shame, again. Problem gamblers don’t want to be seen going into a center that treats addicts (who, ironically, do not have similar reservations), even though the meeting has been held in an adjoining building. Gillespie says she is willing to help anyone trying to start a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, anywhere in the area, so gamblers can receive the support others receive in 12-step programs.

“In the big picture,” says Robert DeYoung, clinical coordinator and addiction specialist, “education, treatment and prevention saves millions.” Such efforts are often targeted at young people, for obvious reasons. But DeYoung says, “I don’t think people realize how many senior citizens gamble.”

“Gambling is like an affair,” he says, “and the lover steals all the money.” And the gambler’s family often finds out too late because the gambler hides the problem by controlling the money -- taking care of bank accounts and investments, credit cards, paying the bills, taking care of the mail. Like the alcoholic hides the booze, the problem gambler hides the money, desperately seeking to “manage” a life wholly out of control.

* * *

Gambling facts and figures

• 5 percent of adults, 18 and older, have a gambling problem
• Adult males are three times as likely as adult females to have a problem
• Adolescent males are four times as likely as females to have a problem
• Most frequent problem areas for adults: lotteries, sports betting, cards
• 20 percent of adolescents are at risk for or have a gambling problem
• 22 of the state’s 62 counties have a problem gambling treatment program
• New York is the only state without dedicated funds from the gambling industry for problem gambling services

New York Council on Problem Gambling

Where to find help

• For treatment, information, or to set up a Gamblers Anonymous group: The Recovery Center: 845-794-8080, Ext. 191; the center is located at 396 Broadway, Monticello.
• For information from OASAS: 1-877-8-HOPENY, 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• For Gamblers Anonymous meetings: gamblersanonymous.org.

bobgaydos.blogspot.com or rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bosons and bankers: What's up, God?

By Bob Gaydos

Sometimes, having to have an opinion on any topic that comes down the pike actually requires a bit of work. Usually, it’s when you don’t have the foggiest idea what people are talking about, but they all appear to be smart and they all say that what they are talking about is very important, or significant, or shocking, or historic.

And so this week, I give you two of potentially the most important stories of the year, which I feel safe in saying most of you -- being American, like me -- also don’t know much about and have heard very little about from what passes as our news media these days:

• Higgs boson, or, as it has been dubbed, the “God” particle.
• LIBOR, or as I see it, the God complex.

In fairness, some of the media did try to explain Higgs boson (illustration) and its potential significance -- explaining the origin of the universe and the nature of the matter, stuff like that -- but most, in my experience, bogged down in an energy field of scientific mumbo jumbo whose mass could only be contained by the Internet, but certainly not my brain.

Still, the fact that scientists in Geneva, using a $10 billion atom-smashing super-collider, say they have found a subatomic particle that would not only validate “The Big Bang Theory” on television, but in real life, is literally mind-boggling. As I understand it, the boson particle (named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs) is kind of like a universal sticky particle to which other sub-atomic particles, such as quarks, “stick” as they whiz around wherever. The more such particles that stick, the more bosons involved, the more mass the particles eventually have and, with gravity added, the more weight. They become something.

No boson, no sticking, no universe. Nothing. With bosons, we have planets and primordial ooze and dinosaurs and humans and science and evolution and rock and roll and super-colliders and big banks, all neatly aligned as if some higher power had cleverly laid out the whole plan to explain the Big Bang.

If you guessed the big banks reference was a hint on LIBOR, good for you. You are promoted to honors economics. LIBOR stands for London Interbank Offered Rate. It is the average cost of borrowing at which Britain's banks lend each other money. It is calculated daily, based on information supplied by those banks and is used worldwide to set prices on trillions of euros and billions of dollars worth of derivatives and other financial products.

And yes, there’s that word derivatives again. What’s happened is that a bunch of too-big-to-fail big banks, playing God with other people’s money, got together between 2005 and 2009 and rigged the rate to keep it low. They lied about their financial health and conspired to make each other look better than was true, thereby luring unsuspecting customers to invest even more in worthless mortgages, loans and, ugh, derivatives. The big difference in this story is that, while the big banks in America pretty much got away with their deceit and theft, the Brits are getting tough on them.

The chairman of Barclay’s has resigned and the bank, apparently claiming it thought it had received the OK to lie from the Bank of England, Britain’s central bank, has agreed to pay a $450 million settlement. It also agreed to cooperate with police authorities and Parliament, which are looking to hold major banks and their executives legally responsible for this massive scandal.

That’s a lot different from the cloying welcome Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, got in the U.S. Senate recently in explaining his institution’s loss of $2 billion in customers’ money through synthetic derivatives and other risky bets. Chase, along with Citigroup, HSBC, RBS, and a half dozen other banks are involved in the LIBOR conspiracy.

The U.S Justice department has all the evidence uncovered in the LIBOR investigation (which is reportedly extensive) and appears to be letting Britain take the lead in prosecution for now, which is just as well, given how many American bankers have been prosecuted to date for throwing the world economy into crisis.

If you’re going to have an opinion, look for the links. The links between the Higgs boson and LIBOR stories, beyond their complexities and lack of attention in the United States, are obvious. Both have gravitas, in these cases, a combination of mass, gravity and universal significance. Both involve amounts of money most of us cannot comprehend. Both involve an incredible amount of teamwork among people within the same profession. One group effort, as noble an investment of money, time and brain power as is imaginable, seeks to explain why we are all here, at least in a physical sense. The other, money, time and brain power notwithstanding, only makes me wonder if we’ll ever figure it out morally.

bobgaydos.blogspot.com

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John Roberts, unlikely hero of the left wing

By Bob Gaydos

So, John Roberts, hero of the left wing and savior of Obamacare. Who wuddda thunk it?

Actually, the chief justice’s law school professor, for one. Laurence Tribe, who taught Roberts (photo) as well as President Barack Obama at Harvard Law School, opined on Tuesday, two days before the historic Supreme Court ruling was revealed, that he felt Roberts would vote to uphold the law, as much to reinforce the image of the court as an apolitical neutral umpire as to rule on the law’s constitutionality.

In an interview on MSNBC, Tribe said, “I think that the chief justice is likely to be concerned about the place of the court in history and is not likely to want the court to continue to be as deeply and politically divided. Doesn't mean he will depart from his philosophy. You can be deeply conservative and believe the affordable care act is completely consistent with the United States Constitution.”

Which is pretty much what Roberts did, siding with the four so-called liberal justices to preserve the major legislative victory of Obama‘s presidency. Of course, the airwaves and the blogosphere exploded Thursday as anyone with a law degree and an opinion on the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act and a means of transmitting that opinion to a large audience explained why Roberts did what he did. Or, as many Republican politicians did, to call Roberts a traitor to their cause. Safe to say, many of the latter group aren’t too concerned with the nuances of judicial restraint and co-equal sharing of power among three branches of government.

I don’t have a law degree and I don’t belong to any political party, but, hey, I‘ve got a blog, too. And without pretending to read Roberts’ mind, some things seem obvious in the wake of this ruling:

• Obama got a huge boost in his re-election campaign, since repealing the health care act as unconstitutional was all Republicans have talked about for months. Case closed. It’s constitutional. Spin it any way you want, the president wins this one.
• Republicans are now going to have to find an actual plan to replace Obama’s if they want to continue their argument. House Speaker John Boehner seems not to care about that. All he keeps talking about is repealing the act, which the Senate will never do. Plus, with so many provisions in it that Americans like (no refusal for pre-existing conditions, kids on parents‘ plan until age 26), that will not be easy for any Congress.
• Mitt Romney, who actually has talked about replacing the health care act after he repeals it as president, seems to be stuck with offering up his own plan, which he introduced as governor of Massachusetts. That plan, of course, is what Obama’s plan and an initial conservative plan, was modeled on. So Romney continues to talk in circles of fog and disingenuousness.
• Roberts obviously possesses a chief justice’s concern for the way his court is viewed. He does not, for example, think justices should be offering strong political views on issues that are not contained in the case on which they are ruling. (Justice Antonin Scalia, who acts as if his life term gives him the right to pontificate and criticize -- as he recently did on Obama’s order sparing tens of thousands of young immigrants from deportation -- obviously doesn’t get the neutral umpire view.) Roberts both criticized the Obama health plan (an overreaching regulation of commerce by requiring insurance) and ruled on its constitutionality -- it’s a legitimate tax, even though Democrats didn’t have the guts to call it that.
• By stressing that the court’s role is not to judge the law, but to decide if it can be upheld and, if so, to do so, Roberts demonstrated control of his court and reassured some Americans who have had an increasingly dim view of it since Bush v. Gore. It falls to Congress the power to pass laws, he reminds us, whether they seem wise or not. This is a definition of judicial restraint.
• Spinning the 5-4 ruling as a conservative victory for the future because Congress is warned off trying to expand use of the commerce clause to regulate behavior and Republicans will be energized to actually replace the Obama health plan with one of their own doesn’t come close to the overwhelming victory it gives an incumbent president seeking reelection right now. If I’m a politician, I take that trade anytime.

So, Chief Justice John Roberts, intentionally or not, hero of the left wing.

bobgaydos.blogspot.com

Sometimes good policy is good politics, too

By Bob Gaydos

Maybe Barack Obama is finally figuring it out. You can only negotiate, compromise and reason with people who are willing to negotiate, compromise and reason. In other words, apparently no one with the authority to speak for the Republican Party.

Having committed itself on Day One of his presidency to a priority goal of denying Obama a second term as president, the GOP, led by the no’s of Tea Party conservatives, has opposed every idea, proposal, act of the Obama administration, including those with Republican origins. Even when the act is obviously a good thing -- a moral thing -- to do.

For example, Obama’s executive order immediately removing the fear of deportation from some 800,000 young people who were brought into this country as children by their immigrant parents. Make no mistake, these young people are Americans in every way but documentation. They have grown up in the United States, gone to our schools, our colleges, served in the military. They work in our businesses. And yet, with the fervor of the GOP anti-immigration campaign growing every day, these young people who call America home lived in fear of being sent back to a “home” they never knew.

Not any longer, thanks to Obama. In a quintessentially American act, the president gave these young people legal status. If they were brought here before age 16, have been here at least five years, are under 30 years old, are in school, have a high school or GED diploma or served in the armed forces, and have no criminal record, they can stay and even apply for work permits.

What was the Republican response to this humanitarian act?

They accused Obama of playing politics.

Really? That’s all of you’ve got? Politics? From a politician? Gosh, guys, you make it sound like a bad word. Just because you’ve been bashing Latinos for two years now during your presidential balloon fight of a primary race, anything positive a Democrat does on immigration is “politics”?

Face it, the GOP has surrendered any right it might have had to a Latino vote with its harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric. So Obama, or any Democrat, would be a fool not to appeal to Latinos. If that be politics, so be it -- but this also happens to be good policy and good politicians can marry policy and politics for success.

The pitiful GOP response included a failure by presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to answer a simple question -- although asked three times on “Face the Nation.” If he disagrees with Obama’s order welcoming these immigrants, would Romney, if elected president, issue an order nullifying it? Yes or no? He never replied. Best he offered is that “events” might supersede the president’s well-motivated move as the Romney administration sought a comprehensive answer to the immigration situation.

Yeah, like Republicans have sought for the past ten years. They have blown up the Dream Act, which was a bipartisan immigration effort, in favor of urging deportation and pretty much nothing else. The thing is, Obama has been deporting illegal immigrants at a record pace. But he has just made nearly a million young people -- who did nothing illegal -- immune from that threat.

Look, Republicans for the most part are simply ticked off that they have been trumped, politically. They have shown no real interest in a humane immigration policy for this nation of immigrants. They may rail about drug trafficking from Mexico, but for years they had no plan for the thousands of immigrants who streamed in from Mexico just to seek work -- often work most Americans didn’t want to do.

Worse, Republicans have become unable or unwilling to simply respond to acts or events for what they are. For example, to say in this case: The president did a good thing here. We applaud him.

Even Marco Rubio, the Florida senator with vice presidential aspirations and an obvious stake in the Latino vote, could not simply praise Obama for his humane gesture without suggesting it would have been better to get Congress involved.

Really, Mario? You know full well that Republicans in Congress scared George W. Bush away from humane immigration reform, which his instincts told him was the right thing to do and which could have been a major accomplishment in his otherwise disastrous presidency. Some Republican wing nuts in Congress are threatening to sue over Obama’s order, behaving as if the president does not have considerable powers of his own, including the power to grant amnesty and immunity from laws, including those on deportation.

Nothing drives a rigid, intolerant, uncompassionate, fearful, selfish person crazier than someone exhibiting a flexible, tolerant, compassionate, hopeful, generous attitude toward the object of their fear. Call it politics if you wish. Others call it basic human decency.

* * *

PS: I like that ending, but I have to add something for any Republicans who might have read this and feel upset or insulted or angry or whatever because they don’t necessarily agree with their party’s response to the president’s decision in this matter. It’s not my problem. If you are a Republican today, for better or worse, you are identified with these views. As I see it, you have three choices: (1) Accept the statements and views of your avowed leaders as they are, in silence; (2) work to bring your party back to a more traditional conservatism, one that still has a heart; or (3) get the heck out. The choice is yours, and that, too, is politics.

bobgaydos.blogspot.com

The dingo and the madam ...

… with a touch of zombie fever

(A Bob and Bob encounter)

By Bob Gaydos

“So, did you hear that the dingo really did eat her baby?”

“What?”

“The woman in Australia, 30 years ago or so. Her baby went missing and she said a dingo (photo) stole it and ate it. Right out of the crib.”

“A dingo?”

“Yeah, you know, those wild dogs running around Australia with the koalas and kangaroos and jackrabbits and stuff. Geez, what a continent. They made a movie about it. Meryl Streep played the woman. The famous line in the movie was, ‘The dingo ate my baby.’ Elaine made it more famous on Seinfeld. ‘The dingo ate my baby. The dingo ate my baby.’ … Don’t you keep up with culture?”

“So what about the dingo?”

“Well, somehow no one believed the woman that a dingo snatched her baby from their camp in the Outback -- and don’t you think the restaurant guys might have picked a name not linked with wild dogs? Actually, at first, they did believe her. An inquest cleared her and blamed a dingo. Then they held another inquest and convicted her of murder. Got her husband as an accomplice. Then they held a third inquest and decided they couldn’t decide what happened. And now, finally, a coroner’s court or something has decided the dingo did it.”

“Why now?”

“Good question. Apparently, the dingos have been busy in recent years killing kids in Australia. I think it’s because the jackrabbits have gotten too big.”

… “Well, good for her. But you want to talk about injustice -- I see the ‘Monroe Madam’ finally got her bail reduced.”

“Slashed. Talk about abuse of power. Two million bucks bail on one prostitution charge because she wouldn’t give them names?

“For something done between consenting adults.”

“That’s legal in Nevada. … and, I guess, Colombia -- which I didn’t know until the Secret Service guys tried to cheat one of the working women. I think this is just the Manhattan DA trying to repair his reputation after messing up some big cases. Cy Vance's kid. He replaced Morgenthau who had the job forever and must have been like 93 or something,”

”Well, you know 90 is the new 85.”

“Yeah, right. Anyway, they had no business setting a punitive bail on her for what they charged her with. She’s sitting in jail in Manhattan for weeks and all the time telling them she’s got wild pigs to rescue in Monroe. It’s not right.’’

“Right. … There aren’t any dingos in Monroe, are there?”

“No. And another thing -- why does Bloomberg think people won’t just buy two, 16-ounce sodas? I get it that smoking is harmful to people whether they smoke or not and the state has a stake in regulating it. But I don’t get fat if you have a Big Gulp every day. If you’re 18, you’re on your own.”

“Yeah, but I’ll tell you what’s worse! (The speaker is not a Bob, but another patron of the establishment who has obviously been eavesdropping and has some strongly held opinions of his own.) Governor Cuomo,” he continues, “wants to legalize marijuana. How’d you like somebody driving while they’re smoking a doogie, never mind drinking a large soda?”

As this has taken the conversation in a direction neither Bob was eager to follow, they both just smiled and nodded., “Uh huh” in unison.

“You know something really weird though if you’re talking about government controlling our lives (which they really weren’t talking about, but were now in smiling and nodding mode)? You heard about that case in Florida in May? The guy eating another guy’s face?”

(Oh, thought one Bob, here comes the zombie conspiracy theory.)

“They blamed it on bath salts. But there was another guy in Maryland who ate his roommate’s intestines (thankfully the Bobs‘ bagels had been finished). One guy came from South America, the other guy came from Africa. They both came into this country through the airport in Miami. Coincidence? (Wild guess: Yes?) If the government is trying to find out how we react to certain substances (so they can, what, control us?) they could put it in the water someplace and see what happens.”

(So no zombie conspiracy? So what then? Banning big sodas, “legalizing“ pot and field-testing bath salts. What‘s the hook? Where’s he going with this?)

“It’s the beginning of communism.”

(Of course it is. Should have known.)

“Hey, (one Bob to the other) where you going?”

“Gottta go, man. I’m late. See you next week.”

“Yeah, right. Thanks, pal. Watch out for the dingos out there.”

“You watch out for the dingos in here.”

(This is virtually all true.)

bobgaydos.blogspot.com

Bagels 'n birds: Hello from Woods Hole

By Bob Gaydos

I wasn’t sure about filing a column this week. After all, there I was, sitting outside the Pie in the Sky in Woods Hole, Mass., drinking fresh roasted coffee and fighting off sparrows and blackbirds for my toasted buttered bagel, but I was alone. Bob Who Likes His Salad Sans Dressing wasn’t there to bounce ideas off. And Woods Hole itself is not a place to stir the stomach bile of a columnist. It’s too nice.

Woods Hole, at the tip of Falmouth on the near end of Cape Cod is probably best known for two things: It is home for the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and it is also home for every kind of maritime, nautical research facility conceivable to man. If the word oceanographic or maritime is in the title, odds are the organization is poking around the waters somewhere in Woods Hole. Which means there are an awful lot of smart, healthy-looking people walking around town and gobbling up all the parking spaces. Some of them speak languages other than English. (I think it was French.)

Woods Hole is also one of those quaint coastal towns that has no problem expecting motorists and pedestrians to wait while a bridge is opened and raised on the main drag to let a couple of barely visible boats pass from the Great Harbor to Eel Pond (photo). They’re right. No one minded. Not even me.

So how was I going to get worked up enough to offer my two bits on the rest of the absurd world in which we live? Well, God bless the NATION & WORLD page of the Cape Cod Times. It didn’t take more than a few minutes on page 6 of the daily to wonder, for example, what ever happened to the Wisconsin of Russ Feingold, or for that matter Barack Obama in 2008. Gov. Scott Walker, a mean SOB if there ever was one, survived a recall vote by spending nearly $50 million convincing voters that public unions are evil. Then again, a former Wisconsin senator named McCarthy once had a lot of folks convinced every actor, writer and director in Hollywood was a communist.

Moving from Walker up the page, I noted with satisfaction that Abu Yahya al-Libi, the day-to-day director of Al-Qaida in Pakistan and the coordinator of operations with Al-Qaida affiliates, was killed in a drone strike by the United States in Pakistan. Seven of his friends went to meet Allah along with him. The Pakistani government protested the drone strike as an illegal violation of Pakistani territory.

I am told by some of my more liberal friends, maybe including some reading this, that I, too, should be offended by the drone strikes against suspected terrorist sites in Pakistan and elsewhere. I am not. I think we are still fighting a major war against terrorists and, while tying to avoid civilian casualties is essential, the drone strikes are a necessary and effective weapon. Besides, Pakistan showed its duplicitous nature by shielding Osama bin Laden for years and, in fact, has never fully committed to the fight against terrorism.

I am also told by, of all people, conservative Republicans, that President Obama, who has taken the mantle of commander-in-chief literally in regard to the drone strikes, by selecting and approving them personally, is somehow to be criticized for killing off Al Qaeda’s leadership. They think W. didn’t get credit for similar efforts. What that has to do with Obama escapes me. And only one of them actually got bin Laden.

Also on the page was a story about police in Indiana, who are scared to death that a private citizen might shoot and kill one of them while performing his or her duty — and get away with it. It seems Indiana has a law that allows citizens to use deadly force in responding to “unlawful intrusions” by a “public servant” to protect themselves and their property.

The public servant element was added to the law at the urging of, surprise, the National Rifle Association, which doesn’t see what the police are complaining about. They apparently can’t put themselves in the place of an officer, issuing a presumably legal warrant and maybe having to kick down a door to do it, having to fear that the person on the other side will open fire and later claim he felt threatened by the “unlawful intrusion.”

The only sensible approach, of course, is to presume police have the right to enter the premises and sort it out later — not to shoot them first and claim unlawful entry later. Indiana, with a Republican legislature and governor (Mitch Daniels), is alone in offering this “recipe for disaster” as the head of the Indiana State Fraternal Order of Police described it. But then, you can say that about most of the NRA-backed gun laws.

And there was one last absurdity — a typically American one — on the page. In Brooksville, Fla., a 275-pound “tamed” mountain lion escaped from its cage and had the neighbor’s pet beagle, Fester, for lunch. A pet mountain lion, you ask? Well, this is Florida and the mountain lion’s owner has a license for him. The cat’s owner, of course, blamed the dog, which has to be a new standard in blaming the victim.

He said, “You’ve got a big cat and you’ve got a dog that was after his food and he was going to stop that dog any way he could.” Of course he was; he’s a mountain lion.

The dog’s owner had a different take — he worried whether the pet mountain lion might break out again and eat his granddaughter. Maybe the NRA, which has a lot of fans in Florida, can write a law for the situation.

OK, that’s about it. Gotta go and find some fried clams for lunch.