What the Frack?

This week is shaping up to be one of the more bizarre in news history.

There's the Rielle Hunter-Andrew Young sex tape saga. Ms. Hunter sued Mr. Young and his wife Cheri because they had a videotape of her while she was pregnant, engaging in private activities with John Edwards. A judge ordered Mr. Young and his wife to hand over all copies of the tape by Friday or bunk up at the jail.

Not to be outdone, Elizabeth Edwards is threatening to sue Mr. Young for undermining her marriage. Texas doesn't recognize alienation of affections; I guess North Carolina law is different. But does it go so far as to impose a duty on an employee to spill the beans to the wife about his gallivanting boss?

Charlie Crist came up with a super-weird whopper during an interview with Greta Vansusteren. He feels you're not a "true fiscal conservative" unless your haircuts cost $11.00. If you spend more, as Marco Rubio apparently did, well then, Crist says you're not a fiscal conservative and . . . maybe you get back waxes, too. Here's the clip.



Back waxes? This desperado needs to come to his senses.

Desperate housewives may soon be under surveillance. "Jihad Jane" a/k/a Colleen LaRose, a middle-aged Pennsylvania woman who took care of her boyfriend's ailing father, was arrested by the Feds. She's accused of plotting to kill the Swedish cartoonist who angered Muslims by caricaturing Mohammed. Okay, maybe "angered" doesn't capture it.

Saving the ickiest for last, there's (former) Congressman Eric Massa, who first gained national fame when he claimed a peculiar exchange occurred between him and Rahm Emanuel while they were naked . . . in the Capitol gym. But it gets weirder, train-wreck worse.

Days later, Massa admitted that he not only "groped" his male aides, he tickled them and . . . lived with them. Massa said his horseplay was normal and tried to show Glenn Beck some kind of book depicting military weirdness to prove the point. The illustrations were apparently too ribald to air.

In an earlier radio interview, Massa explained the self-described "salty language" he used with aides -- as in, "What I really ought to be doing is fracking you" -- thusly:



Breaking today, some of Massa's subordinates from his old Navy days have come forward and apparently corroborate the accusations his congressional aides have recently made. Ugh.

And while it's still about Massa, I'm going to stray from the topic here, just a bit, to point out this clip from a documentary posted yesterday on YouTube. It follows Mr. Massa in his race for a seat in the House and shows what happens when Rahm Emanuel comes to town to look Massa over.

What Rahm Emanuel tells him to do on the trail, how Massa responds and what he says to his family . . . well, it's sad. And revealing. But mostly just really sad. It's never a good day for a family when the father falls, and falls so hard.



Alrighty then.

On a brighter note, next week is Spring Break so it will be "Gone Fishing" around here. But I'll be back when I've caught a big one.

Stephen Colbert and Expired Coupons

Today I followed my usual morning ritual and sat down with a cup of tea to read Time magazine. Every Sunday I tuck in for a leisurely read. Though not on the front porch, of course; that I even read Time is a dark secret.


It's a lot like when I'm at the grocery store trying to buy the National Enquirer incognito. I just can't help myself. It's so illicit, too delicious. Unlike the Enquirer, though, my Time purchase can be rationalized. Here, let me explain. You'll like it -- there's some humiliation involved.

About ten thousand years ago, during Mr. M's frenetic preschool wrapping-paper sale, I bought several generic magazine vouchers to add to my "present" drawer. Because one never knows. And then I forgot all about them.

Fast-forward to this past Christmas. On the last day of school before break, the cupboard was bare. We had no present for Mr. M's teacher -- not even a bag of Starbucks coffee beans to re-gift. As I foraged around in the massive box of wrapping-paper, hoping to find a candle or a purse-sized tool kit, I found salvation: two magazine vouchers, buried under the rolls.

Oh, sweet relief. I pulled them out and gave one to Mr. M and dispatched him to school where he proudly presented the officious voucher to his wonderful teacher (and she really is wonderful). The other one I put aside and turned to a few days later, well into the Christmas break.

As I put on my reading glasses and focused on the fine print, I hot-flashed all over. The voucher had long expired. Three years-ago expired. Mortifying . . . ! It was like,

"Dear Teacher, you are so great. Here's a worthless magazine voucher we bought three years ago for our nameless, faceless, just-in-case drawer. Merry Christmas. Love, Mr. M."

As an experiment (God give me the grace to find a way to save face) I filled out the other expired voucher and selected Time Magazine. Things like, "Betty Crocker 365" and "Body Building for Already Perfect People" were among my other choices, as I recall.

Six weeks later, Time arrived in my mailbox. Phew. Victory. Needless to say, I wasted no time in emailing Mr. M's teacher with the $12.00 good news. "See, we weren't so cheap after all!"

True, she, uh, never emailed me back or anything. But I'm thinking it's because it was all just too awkward. I mean what could she say? "No hard feelings. It's the thoughtlesness that counts!"?


But the voucher scandal is not why I started to write this post. "Vengeance ADD is mine," sayeth the Lord. No, it was an article I read in this week's Time Magazine, about former NY governor Eliot Spitzer: "Return of Client 9."

To recap, Mr. Spitzer resigned in disgrace after falling from his 99-foot high law-and-order platform. Prostitution, it is said, was his downfall. No surprise there. "Piousness cometh before a fall," my mother always said.

Anyway, the article described Mr. Spitzer as he was on his way to do an interview with Stephen Colbert. This naturally piqued my interest because I'm in total rapport with the Colbert Report.

Mr. Spitzer was in an absolute dither in the back seat of his taxi as he made his way to Colbert's studio.

Why? Because, according to Time, Colbert completely eviscerated Senate hopeful Harold Ford on his show the week before. In the words of Time, Colbert "swallowed Ford whole, like a boa constrictor eating a hamster." Yikes!

Ford, you may recall, is a former congressman from Tennessee who was considering a run for the Senate. But, err, not in Tennessee. No, he was considering a bid to fill Hillary Clinton's old New York Senate seat. And it's no secret that Obama was giving him a mashing thumbs-down.

As it turned out, White House pressure to withdraw wasn't necessary. Following Colbert's decapitation, Ford quietly (okay, faintly) went by the wayside and withdrew his bid.

A "Colbert coincidence"? You be the judge. Here's the Perry Mason clip; watch it and let Colbert file your nails:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Harold Ford Jr.
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Skate Expectations

And how did Mr. Spitzer fare with Mr. Colbert, a week later? All things considered, I'd say pretty damned well.

The Hand Gun That Wasn't

Mr. M used to make guns with foil at lunch time in the cafeteria, to the great consternation of school officials. In fact, I was told to stop sending anything in foil in his lunch.

Schools don't like guns. I get that. I don't like them either. There's one kind of gun, though, that doesn't bother me: the kind little boys make with their hands.

But one dour public school in Michigan sees no distinction.

This past Wednesday, six-year old Mason Jammer was suspended from his kindergarten class at Jefferson Elementary School for pretending his hand was a gun and "aiming" it at another student.

Whether he accompanied this terroristic threat with "pow pow pow!" remains unclear. The story is still breaking. You can see a video clip about it here.

This school probably banned "The Dangerous Book for Boys" from its library, too.

Sure, times have changed. I realize that. But come on. This is a bit much.

Others look at the issue differently, of course. Indeed, some mothers are downright panicked over their sons' "violent tendencies." Here's an imploring entreaty posted by a mother on Berkley's "Parent Network" site:

I was wondering if people could offer some experience with boys and guns. I have 3 year old twin boys and everything is a gun. I mean the forks, the napkins, the blocks, etc. What is it from? What should I do? They watch some KQED and a few movies and videos. I thought I was choosing pretty non-violent stuff. I don't watch adult TV around them. We have tried talking to them about it. They don't have playdates with other kids. They get some at pre-school. But I want to raise non-violent boys. Any thoughts...thanks. (mother of future NRA member)

Still verklempt? Ivillage to the rescue:

Provide kids with alternatives to gun play that help them feel powerful. Four- and five-year-olds love to be competent. Providing them with real work experiences such as carpentry, cooking, gardening can channel some of the energy being directed into gun play in a new, more creative direction.

Carpentry, cooking and gardening? People. People!

Boys love guns, whether real or imagined. And their imaginations enable them to turn virtually anything into a weapon. It's innate.

Here's a clever snippet from a father's perspective, published in the Wall Street Journal:

Not only do I believe that trying to take the wildness out of boys is a doomed social experiment, but I'm certain that genetic scientists will eventually discover that males carry the Cowboy Gene. That's my name for whatever is responsible for all the wrestling in my house, and the dunking during bath time, and my 5-year-old's insistence on wearing his silver six-shooters to Wal-Mart in order to protect our grocery cart. I only pray that when the Cowboy Gene is discovered, some well-meaning utopian doesn't try to transform it into a Tea Party Gene.

There are plenty of things for us to worry about. We've got some pretty big fish to fry. And little boys playing with make-believe guns is not one of them.

Pin the Tail

While I've been whiling away the hours, conferring with the flowers (e.g., the February jobless numbers soon to be announced) I found a few interesting reads and a new and exciting game we can all play.

First, the reads:

* George Will wrote an excellent article on how parents vicariously derive self esteem from their children via fatuous praising; here's an excerpt:

Memo to that Massachusetts school where children in physical education classes jump rope without using ropes: Get some ropes. And you — you are about 85 percent of all parents — who are constantly telling your children how intelligent they are: Do your children a favor and pipe down.

These are nuggets from "NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It is another book to torment modern parents who are determined to bring to bear on their offspring the accumulated science of child-rearing.

Those Massachusetts children are jumping rope without ropes because of a self-esteem obsession.

The assumption is that thinking highly of oneself is a prerequisite for high achievement. That is why some children's soccer teams stopped counting goals (think of the damaged psyches of children who rarely scored) and shower trophies on everyone. No child at that Massachusetts school suffers damaged self-esteem by tripping on the jump rope.

But the theory that praise, self-esteem and accomplishment increase in tandem is false. Children incessantly praised for their intelligence (often by parents who are really praising themselves) often underrate the importance of effort.

Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties.

* Obama just nominated Senator Jim Matheson's brother Scott to a federal bench. A federal judge, as you probably know, gets lifetime tenure. It's one hell of a plum job. Scott Matheson, who has no judicial experience whatsoever but impressive credentials nonetheless, signaled President Obama in June of last year that he was interested in the bench which would be vacated in August of 2009.

But Obama kept a few arrows in his quiver it appears, and waited, oh, some six months or more before deciding, just this week, to nominate the undecided senator's brother to the federal bench. Could it be, could it be . . . because of health care and the senator's teetering vote?

Sorry, sports fans, I know nobody likes a cynic. But this Obamaneuver just doesn't pass the smell test.

Next up, a current events game suitable for the entire family. Let's call it "Name that Speaker." In this first iteration, I'll give you some quotes and a few hints, via my scrambled photo line-up (including some red herrings). Be the first one to pin the quote on the donkey and whammo! You'll be the mom, man.

Oh, right. What's the prize? Umm, well, a link to your blog, of course, so I can drive my five loyal readers (and once my mom's a fan, you'll never lose her) to your site. And, err, surely something else, something else "to be determined." I'm thinking a ten-day cruise on the ship that was just quarantined outside of Brazil -- I could book your tickets and charge no commission -- would be a mighty fine prize.

But before we set off for the races, and I know you're champing (chomping?) at the bit, let me gently remind my competitive readers that we're on the honor system here. No clicking on the links until you've made your guesses, Mom.

C, D & G are my favorite quotes, especially knowing who said them. And God bless our hearts, I know these are some pretty wonky snippets. But health care is an important topic about which all of us need to be educated; our children will be paying for it for years to come.

Alrighty then. Let's start with the first prevarication quote:

(A) "No one has talked about reconciliation!"

(B) "Barack Obama has been working hard to push his healthcare proposal. Obama still wants the bill to be bipartisan, but he's a realist, and given the near unanimous Republican opposition he's facing, now says he'd be satisfied if the bill was just bicurious."

(C) "Under the rules, the reconciliation process does not permit that debate. Reconciliation is therefore the wrong place for policy changes. In short, the reconciliation process appears to have lost its proper meaning: A vehicle designed for deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility has been hijacked."

(D) "The Senate Budget Committee chairman [Kent Conrad] said that this is a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

Now, when you take a look at the Medicare cuts, what this bill essentially does [is treat] Medicare like a piggy bank. It raids a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare, not to shore up Medicare solvency, but to spend on this new government program.

. . . [A]ccording to the chief actuary of Medicare . . . as much as 20 percent of Medicare's providers will either go out of business or will have to stop seeing Medicare beneficiaries. Millions of seniors . . . who have chosen Medicare Advantage will lose the coverage that they now enjoy.

You can't say that you're using this money to either extend Medicare solvency and also offset the cost of this new program. That's double counting."

(E) "Republican Congressman Joe Wilson apologized for calling President Obama a liar during his speech on health care. Obama accepted Wilson's apology, and then invited him to appear before a death panel."

(F) "At best it was a waste of history's time, a struggle that will not in the end yield something big and helpful but will in fact make future progress more difficult. At worst it may prove to have fatally undermined a new presidency at a time when America desperately needs a successful one."

(G) "And the Postal Service announced last week the Post Office lost $3.8 billion last year. I've got a good idea. Let's put the government in charge of healthcare! Fantastic idea!"

(H) "This has been a long and wrenching debate. It has stoked great passions among the American people and their representatives. And that's because health care is a difficult issue. It is a complicated issue. If it was easy, it would have been solved long ago. As all of you know from experience, health care can literally be an issue of life or death. And as a result, it easily lends itself to demagoguery and political gamesmanship, and misrepresentation and misunderstanding."

(I) "But that’s not an excuse for those of us who were sent here to lead. That's not an excuse for us to walk away. We can’t just give up because the politics are hard."

Onward health care soldiers . . . marching as to war. With the deaths of constituents, going on before . . . .

(J) "Everything there is to say about health care has been said--and just about everybody has said it."

Alrighty then. Enough said. We'll be quiet.

(K) "It looks like Democrats have their 60 votes for healthcare. Harry Reid said the bill will save us hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, it would have, except for the hundreds of millions of dollars we had to pay to buy the 60 votes."

(L) "In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screw-up who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right."

So now then. Who said what?

Go on. Give it a gander.