For a Gentle Warrior

Bill would have turned 48 years old today. Forty-eight really doesn’t sound all that old but, as fate would have it, he never lived to celebrate this day with his family and friends.

My early foray into studying the meaning of birth, death and what lies in between was pretty much occupied with chasing Rebecca Springer around the room at Sunday school class in the middle Sixties. So I can’t come up with a good answer as to why Bill was taken so young, and it’s not for a lack of time spent pondering, either. Maybe it’s just as the Bible and the Byrds pointed out in different mediums: “To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Something tells me the answer isn’t as simple as a Biblical passage or Pete Seeger lyrics.

I know Bill thought often about his mortality after our parents died at a younger than average age. As a result he was reconciled with most everything and everyone in his life and was able to pack nearly a full life in a little more than 47 years. I have also recently given in to quietly sneaking up on my own mortality and being careful not to wake it. It brings up fairly weird thoughts, most notably how long it would take for my own family to begin to lose touch with seemingly unimportant memories. This happened with my parents and grandparents and after awhile you look around to find someone who might remember a small event and you realize there is nobody left for the answer.

I don’t want time and distance to fade away some of my own memories of Bill so I will recount a few in this space and hope like hell that Blogger doesn’t go out of business in my lifetime.

I was almost two years old when Bill was born. Peter and I were just 11 months apart and, although I have no conscious memory of this, it has been noted that that the two of us felt we had a pretty good thing going and that three was a crowd. Frankly we didn’t much care for the competition for attention. There are some old photographs that indicate Peter and I were fascinated by our younger brother but I am sure we hatched a few elaborate pleas to convince our mother to leave him behind at the grocery store.

Being the third wheel in anything is tough to live with, especially when it’s with your brothers. Being the middle kid it was a constant pull to want to follow my older brother and be protective of my younger brother. Of course this was all before he grew to be several inches taller than both of us when he was 11 years old.

My earliest memory of Bill is when I was about four and the three brothers were horsing around at the top of the stairs at our house on Pinecrest. I think Peter remembers he was the one who gave Bill the nudge that evening but it seems it may have been me (there goes that “no one to ask” problem again). Nevertheless he rolled down the entire flight of stairs, tumbling out at the bottom and hitting his head at the corner of a wall. I remember two things: my dad appearing just in time to witness the final summersault into the wall, and all the blood that pours out from a head split open. I don’t remember Bill crying but I may have been more concerned about my own complicity in the crime and the coming punishment than the particulars. Well-thought-out alibis are particularly difficult for a two-year-old but I seem to remember Peter got the blame.

I’m not sure if he even mentioned this to you Sue, but Bill and I shared a bedroom together for about three or four years just after we moved to our house on Lake Drive in East Grand Rapids. I doubt there would have been any comparisons made to the world’s great minds, but I know we talked about a lot of things and, just like all men of thought, made a lot of fake bodily function noises. We weren’t short of friends but Bill and I made up imaginary friends in that room – although there was a distinct lack of imagination as my friend was a ceiling light (aptly named “Lightly”) while Bill’s friend was the beam of light from the hallway that the two of us insisted stay on lest we be gobbled up by evil monsters.

The hallway light became a bone of contention at various points between the three brothers as at least one of us wanted it off while the others fought hard for the protection it offered. I remember a few late night battles while one of us would turn off the light from a switch at one end of the hallway while one of the other of us would just as quickly turn it back on from a switch at the other end. On and on it would go. It’s quite amazing how long little kids can stand at a light switch gripped in a never-ending battle for hallway light supremacy. But when the stakes are very real monsters one has to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice – usually being yelled at by my dad who was wondering why there was a light show going on down the bedroom hallway.

When Bill was about four, I sort of poisoned him. It wasn’t intentional, I was just a curious six-year-old involved in a science experiment and Bill was part of my Control Group. I made a potion of various bathroom liquids, including perfume, for Bill to drink. It says a lot about his willingness to trust to even think of drinking the concoction. The fact is, he put a little on his lips and spilled a bit more on his neck and shirt.

Eventually our mother came around to see what we were up to and I proudly told her I had made a magic potion and Bill drank it. She smelled the perfume on Bill and immediately drove her three boys to the hospital to have Bill’s stomach pumped out. During the entire trip to the hospital, Bill insisted he never drank the magic potion, but my mom was not one to take chances or fail to make a point – forcing me to watch Bill have a rubber tube stuffed down his throat. It’s not something that is easy to forget and was probably even more difficult for Bill to forget, although I have no memory of him being angry at me for what happened.

In fact, I remember only one altercation that Bill and I got into in the 47-plus years we knew each other. He was 11 and I was 13 and I was probably feeling threatened that he was now bigger than me. We were eating hot dogs and beans for lunch and Bill told me I had a done a poor job of cooking and he wasn’t going to finish eating the lunch I had slaved over. Fueled by teen lunacy, I told Bill I had ways of making him finish his meal. Likely the rest of the exchange went something like “no you don’t,” “yes I do,” “no you don’t,” “yes I do,” (this is beginning to be reminiscent of the light-switch affair noted above). Usually a “yes you do, no you don’t” standoff ends with someone having to step up and actually do something so I grabbed a handful of cold beans and attempted to stuff them in Bill’s mouth. He resisted. While I don’t remember any punches thrown, I do remember a lot of wrestling around and a lot of beans on the floor. I think we were angry with each other for a few days but I’ll bet it looked pretty hilarious if you weren’t a party to the Big Bean Battle of 1969.

There are other stories best off going to his grave, like his first Steinberg and Sternbach sleepover on the cliffs overlooking Blacks Beach, his bachelor’s liar above the garage at the Shores, his shoplifting caper with Fred Hopper when he was 10, the knife stuck in the refrigerator that was aimed just a bit left of Peter, and how Peter and I had to barricade ourselves in my bedroom for about an hour after we had teased him into a rage (it took the two of us all of our strength to keep him out and from likely murdering us – deservedly so).

These are a lot of things I remember about Bill that would probably surprise a lot of people. Bill had an uncanny ability to meet people where they were. He befriended just about everyone he came in contact with and overlooked personality and dress issues that would turn off most. As a result, there is no simple way to describe him. To the uninitiated he was large and loud. True he was big in stature and his voice could boom, but the largest thing about him was his capacity to love his family and enjoy life.

As big and loud as he was, he was also one of the most gentle and sensitive people you would ever meet. There were countless times he would be loudly setting an employee or sub-contractor straight and a few minutes later he was joking around with them. He was always available to hear the challenges of his friends and colleagues and he helped literally dozens of people get through very tough times. This included me, his kids, the friends of his kids, co-workers, and even people he didn’t know that well. He was generous with his advice whether solicited or not and he was often right in what he had to say.

Among the many hobbies that interested him, he finally found one that must have seen like going home. Most of his life he talked about being a warrior of sorts and living the life that comes with it. When he was introduced to Japanese Sword he approached it with the enthusiasm of a young Samurai. He became very good at the art and was in Japan to compete when he died. I heard he told a friend that his life was complete after arriving at the scenic Japanese setting that was hosting the competition. I don’t know about the others, but I am warmed by the thought he was at such peace when he passed. Just the same, I never thought I would be writing about him missing this birthday and all the others I expected to share with him. There are so many other things that I have come to realize I miss about him, which begs the question: Does it take a death to learn what a life is worth?

Bill, in case you’re around and for some reason you have the inclination to read a Blog while you’re convening with angels, Happy Birthday!

I Don't Know What Happened

How did my links and other Blogging things end up on the bottom? I need Super Blogger to walk me through this.

A Song For You

Normally, the following words are included in a HallMike Card© and aren’t so, well, public. But today, April 29, I am 2,500 miles away from the recipient of this love note and sometimes you have to improvise. Besides, I don’t mind telling the world – or at least my weird little world – how much I love Mrs. Laz on this, her birthday.

I first met Mrs. Laz in a swimming pool at Mesa Community College Institute of Technology. Technically I first saw her in my Astrology class (or Astronomy, I never know the difference), but I didn’t get to know her until I made the connection between the class and the pool.

Now if I am being really honest, I likely first saw her in 1973 at a swim meet while she lived near L.A. and I lived in San Diego. After we were married, I came across an old program I had saved from a swim meet in Chula Vista that her team had traveled to when she was 16 and I was 17. When looking at the program a decade later, I discovered her name, and, as it turned out, she swam in the same lane as me the heat before. This means I would have watched her climb out of the water as I was likely doing something goofy (like putting a rubber ducky on my starting block). Who could have known back then that I was within inches of my future wife and that she would end up marrying someone who had a rubber ducky?

Back at the Big U in '75, Mesa Tech had a first-year swim team and had yet to form a women’s team. So the regents, janitors, or the whim of the times demanded that women have the opportunity to swim with the men’s team. This was good news for the men on the men’s team – although we had a good deal more boy in us than man.

I think it can be said without fear of contradiction that Mrs. Laz was the prettiest girl on the Mesa team (although that doesn’t sound quite as poetic as the Prettiest Girl at Penn as Candace Bergen was known). Nevertheless, when boys are being boys, we’re competing for the prettiest girl and despite already being promised to be promised to another girl, I joined in the competition with enthusiasm, hubris and the desire to make her mine irregardless of previous promises. I turned on the charm and whit and before long I was in the running. I was torn by my promises and the twinkle in the young eye of Mrs. Laz. She was my Anne Boleyn but I didn’t possess a King’s decree to axe (metaphorically speaking) the other woman. But the other girl did axe me shortly thereafter, allowing me to court Mrs. Laz.

Skipping past the fact that Mrs. Laz had a boyfriend named Gomez and decided to spend the summer of 1976 in LA with him, I pined for her return back to the Big U in the fall. My memory may be failing me about this but after about two years of being played off Gomez, she could no longer resist my stalking and agreed to become my girlfriend and, later, my wife.

From that point, Mrs. Laz deserves some kind of medal; most likely a Purple Heart. She’s endured my countless bad jokes told multiple times, endless teasing, too many dreams of greener grass, political diatribes, marrying into a family that defines the notion that only the good die young, having to hide the chocolates, several addictions to computer games, musical instruments, and other oddball hobbies, and now, going on my fourth Seven Year Itch. I’ve only had to endure being loved for all these faults.

Essentially we grew up together and learned how to become young lovers, young parents and young orphans. We realized early that money, or lack thereof, can be a cancer that can metastasize in all areas of your relationship if you’re not careful and committed to each other and that when all is said an done, once we were within the walls of our home, we were safe from all the negativity of bad jobs, bad bosses, bill collectors, and democrats.

We raised two wonderful kids who turned out so well that we must have done something right. We beam pride at nearly everything they do and the odd things is, I thing they’re proud of nearly everything we do. You can’t get much more fortunate than that.

It may seem as though this narrative has drifted from honoring Mrs. Laz on the anniversary of her birth. It’s really not, though. Her life has been defined by her relationships; from her deep symbiotic connection to her mother, her endless love for me all the while rescuing me from a life of lost hope, her devotion to her children, and even a soft heart for a number of tough-to-love pets.

She’s like the Magic Johnson of relationships; her presence makes the lives of those around her better. When things seem out of sync she’s able to fit life back in a neat package. She can be counted on to shed bittersweet tears from a heartfelt connection to schlocky TV shows that shamelessly pull at but a few heartstrings. She has more adventure in her than she would ever let on, but she’d rather be curled up in front of a fireplace. She’s a sucker for what she calls “trashy” novels but is an avid and quiet reader of fine literature.

I’m lucky enough to be one of the few who know these little things about her and even luckier to wake up next to her nearly every morning, just not this particular morning. Waking up in spirit is not the same and I think she’d agree.

Mrs. Laz, April 29 some number of years ago was the day an angel was born and all of us in your life are lucky you were sent to us – especially me.

If I could, I would write you one heck of a love song. But that’s a tricky bit of wordsmith and requires a certain amount of talent and an ear for poetry. With the excuse that it’s getting late on the East Coast, I’ll borrow these lines from Leon Russell to let you know how I feel:

I've been so many places in my life and time
I've sung a lot of songs I've made some bad rhyme
I've acted out my love in stages
With ten thousand people watching
But we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you

I know your image of me is what I hope to be
I've treated you unkindly but darlin' can't you see
There's no one more important to me
Darlin' can't you please see through me
Cause we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you

You taught me precious secrets of the truth witholding nothing
You came out in front and I was hiding
But now I'm so much better and if my words don't come together
Listen to the melody cause my love is in there hiding

I love you in a place where there's no space or time
I love you for in my life you are a friend of mine
And when my life is over
Remember when we were together
We were alone and I was singing this song for you

Not All News Is Fit To Print

Is the Pulitzer Prize becoming the journalistic version of the Nobel Peace Prize? To win either honor, you must do two things: embarrass a republican administration, and be the approximate cause of trouble in the world.

How else can you explain the two Pulitzer Prize winning journalists potentially facing an investigation by the Justice Department for printing leaked classified information? One reporter for the Washington Post wrote about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and another for the New York Times reported on the government listening in on suspected terrorists’ conversations without warrants. Both stories were leaked to the reporters by government officials who had their own personal reasons for doing so. The reasons may have been valid, but each leak is still damaging to the U.S. and each is illegal.

The reporters and editors may have their own reasons or personal bias for printing the leaks, but they have a slightly different legal -- and ethical -- standard than the leakers. Before deciding to go to print, they had to weigh national interest, the potential to be criminally liable for printing the leaks, and their own self-interest to report a juicy story. The juicy story won out in both cases.

But the fan occasionally hits something that doesn’t smell all that good and consequences have to be paid. One suspected leaker has just been fired from the CIA after failing a polygraph test about contact with a Washington Post reporter named Dana Priest. Mary McCarthy, the now fired CIA employee, once worked for Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (he of leaking things out his Jockey shorts fame) and is an admitted Kerry supporter. It's only worth mentioning her affiliations because it's important to know that not everyone working at the CIA is friendly with the Administration. McCarthy allegedly told Priest about the existence and general location of secret CIA interrogation prisons in Eastern Europe. In doing so, she violated an oath she signed the day she began working for the CIA that forbids her to pass along classified information. Her alleged loose lips carry a stiff penalty for failing to uphold that oath.

Priest and her editors decided to run the story, presumably without regard to potential costs (even if they didn’t care about their own country, they could have spiked the story out of concern for the countries terrorists might have targeted for housing the prisons), won a Pulitzer Prize and now McCarthy is looking at a likely jail sentence.

The facts of the story are true, I have been assured by my former drunk Irish partner who is heading up the European Union investigation, but was the printing of the story necessary? Are we really better off knowing the President made an attempt to shelter prisons where interrogations may lead to saving American lives but at the cost for the report are damaged relationships with our allies?

Compare the statements of CIA Director Porter Goss and that of the Washington Post story reporting on the firing of the employee. Goss said, "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission.” The Post, after acknowledging that “the story caused an international uproar, and government officials have said it did significant damage to relationships between the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies,” still felt compelled to quote its editor Leonard Downie, "The reporting that Dana did was very important accountability reporting about how the CIA and the rest of the U.S. government have been conducting the war on terror," Downie said. "Whether or not the actions of the CIA or other agencies have interfered with anyone's civil liberties is important information for Americans to know and is an important part of our jobs."

Really. It must be comforting for some to know the Post has made itself the arbiter of what’s really, really important to print and that they care so much about the civil rights of others, including terrorists who are plotting to kill their subscriber base. I suppose if the truth is the all-important factor in the job of a journalist, why didn’t the Post force Priest to subject herself to an interview to the general press or even her own newspaper? Has the cat got her tongue all of a sudden?

Leaking to the press is as old as leaky faucets and an integral part of ensuring that government officials are behaving as they should. But the recent leaks of classified information are a new paradigm in reporting and journalists need to apply some form of restraint. Can you imagine the consequences of a reporter running a story on the plans for the Normandy invasion in 1944 or plastered the drawings for the first Atomic Bomb on the front pages of the New York Times? It’s not that far of a slippery slope to get there from where we are now.

Journalists like to hide behind the false curtain of the right to protect their sources. However, the right doesn’t exist and the protection is fantasy. Oh, journalists will howl as they did in the Valerie Plame case, but it’s a safe bet they will have to reveal their sources or face a jail sentence. Since I believe there is an applicable movie quote for every story, I will include this line spoken by Wilford Brimley in the movie Absence of Malice: “We can't have people go around leaking stuff for their own reasons. It ain't legal. And worse than that, by God it ain't right.” Sooner or later the reporters and editors will learn that it just ain’t right.

New Lazlo Service

Off to the right, under "LINKS," you will note I have provided clickable links to go to other Blogs that you may find interesting. I read these Blogs from time to time to get a different viewpoint than reading news columnists or listening to talk radio. I even put a lefty in there to amuse my right-wing friends and to have a place for my leftist friends to feel more at home.

Naturally I got hooked on KiwiBlog while I was in New Zealand so, while it may be interesting to me, it may not be for you. The other international Blogs I read just to keep up with what other people around the world are thinking (although the authors are decidedly right of center -- or is it centre?).

The Sport's Guy link is obviously there for people who enjoy sports and the way Sport's Guy interlaces current culture into sports stories.

If there are other areas that interest people, I am happy to provide the links to Blogs on different subjects so it's easier for people to read things that suit their fancy. I have an ulterior motive for this, which is to make my site something of a portal and increase my readership. But having to read my rants is the price you'll have to pay for the convenience provided.

El Fin del Sueño Americano

I read the other day there was a movement to counter the Latino’s Day Without a Mexican, scheduled with unintentional irony on May Day. The plan is to have a similar day to demonstrate the power wielded by another special interest group, in this case a forgotten special interest group, and have A Day Without an American. I have an inkling the consequences of the latter would reverberate a bit more. That is if we could get the average American to believe taking a day off work to demonstrate had a real value.

And what is an American? Aren’t most of the Latinos demonstrating either American or people seeking to become American? With the exception of Native Americans and the occasional Viking, we’re all from someplace else, but we’ve melted into a weird and homogenized nation better than any other country on the planet so it’s difficult to notice national origins now. Why is it too much for anyone who wants to find a better life in America to be asked to share in this miracle of assimilation?

The Europeans are struggling with a huge surge in immigration, principally from Muslims, and are facing chaos as a result. The reason isn’t so much the surge as the fact that there is no desire of the immigrants to mix so much as a thimble full of European culture into the culture they have brought with them. For the most part, the immigrants live in segregated enclaves in the poorest sections of Europe’s major cities with no opportunity to find work and no desire to learn anything about their host country. The U.S. will face a similar reality if it doesn’t continue an organized route to citizenship.

The immigrants knocking on our door may be seeking an orderly process or maybe just a free-for-all at Ellis Island. It’s far from clear what the demonstrators want. Is it blanket amnesty and then have the door closed behind them? This was done in 1986 when we gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants with the proviso that there would be no more free passes to enter the country illegally. On the surface, it appears the demand is for the 10 million or more people in the country illegally to bypass the due process faced by all other immigrants, including criminal background checks, and be given citizenship. This is akin to someone breaking into your house and taking up residence in your basement and then telling you there is a good chance that 10 other members of his family will be joining him.

We also hear a lot of noise about this being the next civil rights crusade. This should be an insult of the highest degree to blacks who fought for simple acceptance on the basic principle of the founding of the nation that all men were created equal. They sought the right to vote, the right to enter our schools, basic equal treatment and to no longer be forced into segregation. But there stood Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, forever shameless racial ambulance chasers, equating the two struggles.

Latinos would do better by learning how to articulate and frame their goals. Americans instinctively know the difference between these two civil rights crusades. Blacks were owed. For centuries they had been the victims of a historic national crime. The principal crime involved in the immigrant crusade is the violation of immigration laws by the illegals themselves.

Just to make this mess even messier, politicians have decided to wade into this to shore up votes from all the proposed incoming voters. Nothing snaps a politician into action faster than an opportunity to appeal to millions of newly registered voters. This occurs to Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal. She is the granddaughter of immigrants, and writes movingly and with touching sentiment about the bravery and courage of desperate men and women who leave their homeland in search of a good life. Nevertheless, she says, "I think open-borders proponents are, simply, wrong. I think those who call good people like members of the voluntary border patrols 'yahoos' are snobs. I think those whose primary concern is preserving the Hispanic vote for the Democratic Party, or not losing the Hispanic vote for the Republican Party, are being cynical, selfish, and stupid, too. It's not at all about who gets what vote, it's about continuing a system of laws that has allowed America to become, among many other things, a place immigrants want to come to. And it's about admitting immigrants in a coherent, orderly, legal manner, with an eye first to what America needs. That's how you continue a good thing, which is what we've had." I couldn’t have said this better myself.

If things continue down this negative path, I might just have to apply for immigrant status in New Zealand. In 10 years, after proving my value to the country, I just may get there. And, if you need a humorous take on this, read the Sladed Blog for a laugh at http://sladed.blogspot.com/.

Iran, The No Win Scenario

There is an eerie familiarity coming from current Western rhetoric on a certain Middle Eastern country intent on developing weapons of mass destruction. The Europeans, Japan, China, Russia, most of the U.N. membership and the vast majority of the U.S. leadership are united in the belief that this particular country is building a nuclear weapons arsenal and possesses the will and means to use it.

But we’re not talking about Iraq, we’ve switched gears to Iran and the clutter of noise seems to be the same: we must stop them; the Iranians must end their quest to go nuclear or face serious consequences, etc. Of course, agreeing on the meaning of “serious consequences” in this matter is the rub.

Just a short while ago, all sophisticated intelligence agencies had what they thought was hard evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and were just months away from development of a nuclear weapon with which they intended to menace the region, particularly Israel.

There was a general outcry that Iraq, in violation of 14 U.N. resolutions, could not be reasoned with diplomatically and a vote within the U.N. and the U.S. Congress authorized all means necessary to force the errant Baathist leadership to comply or face those very same serious consequences. This included the use of military action.

A military solution was a long way off. For months following the two votes, there were several attempts to resolve the crisis diplomatically by Middle Eastern leaders, Russia, and several European countries; countries we now know were involved in making huge profits in the oil for food scam. There were even several attempts to decide the matter by brokering a deal that would allow Saddam to keep his billions and live the rest of his life in quiet seclusion. He rejected them all, including one arranged by the United Arab Emirates the day before the U.S. launched its first strike.

Having left the “serious consequences” for Iraq to the U.S., a number of thoughtful countries have turned their hollow saber rattling toward Iran. Threats have been made to send Iran to the U.N. Security Council woodshed and even French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy recently said the following undiplomatic words, "No civilian nuclear program can explain the Iranian nuclear program. It is a clandestine military nuclear program. Now it's up to the Security Council to say what it will do, what means it will use to stop, to manage, to halt this terrible crisis of nuclear proliferation caused by Iran."

There are three reasons it’s unlikely anyone in Iran is quivering over this useless taunt. First, who could be frightened by anyone named Philippe Douste-Blazy. Second, Iranians have televisions and could watch the entire French government shut down and then cave to mob rule on a change in the country’s labor laws. And, third, it is now obvious to everyone paying attention that the French are all talk and no action when it comes to backing up anything they say – it’s just too easy to compare their tough talk prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and what was said in the days following.

Even Congress, now running from their own vote to authorize military action in Iraq, just voted 404-4 to approve a non-binding resolution expressing support for efforts to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, an act that Iran says will cause what is now the great fungible expression of our times, “serious consequences.”

There is a problem in Iran, to be sure, but is it any of our business? Is anyone asking us to police the world? Do we get any credit when we attempt to do so?

We have a terrible relationship with Iran and an even worse history there than we had in Iraq. In 1952, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was forced from elected office by a CIA-led coup (directed by Archie Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s son) and replaced by the Shah who was supported by the U.S. until he was overthrown in 1979. Most, if not all of this was about oil. We don’t remember those actions, but the Iranians do.

It’s a slippery slope for the U.S. to think in military terms regarding Iran and its stated desire to go nuclear. With the exception of Israel, the U.S. will get no support from any other country and we will be even more reviled by the rest of the world if that’s possible. Iran will someday be capable of launching a nuclear strike regionally, but it may be a generation away from being able to build or buy a missile that will be able to reach the U.S. Sure, a nuclear capable Iran will be able to back up a blockade of the Straits of Hormuz and cause oil prices to surge over $100 per barrel, but that will affect the genetically timid in Europe more than it will in the U.S. Besides, hasn’t the rallying cry of America’s brainless left been “no blood for oil?”

What is happening in Iran is seemingly the result of two colossal failures - the feeble international supervision, and the illusion that is being torn to shreds that the theoretical creature known as the international community can dictate a global anti-nuclear policy. We should step aside and let the tough talk come from those who talked tough but carried no stick prior to the military action in Iraq. It’s their turn to stand up to despotic leaders, not our turn.

Thinking this through, it’s easy to be reminded of the ending of the movie War Games. While trying to disarm the computer-controlled nuclear launch codes, the screen in the War Room was lit up with numerous first-strike launch scenarios. The computer was treating the simulation as a game and eventually reported, “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” With Iran, I think the U.S. leadership should take the same view and let others play the game, if they want. Otherwise, it’s difficult to see any value for the U.S. in playing a game of brinkmanship with Iran.

Sorry, Rick

There was a moment late in the game against the Clippers last week that really crystallized this thought: Kings’ coach Rick Adelman, much-maligned this year in the press, on talk shows, and even in this blog, deserves some recognition as Coach of the Year.

The Kings were up by four and came out of a timeout in a rare zone defense. It threw the Clippers off, they turned the ball over, and the Kings scored quickly on the other end. Now all teams have a zone defense they use, some more than others, so it’s no sensation the Kings have one too. The fact is, all the other teams had pre-season to work on their zone defense while Adelman has had to piece his together on the fly. Because of injuries and mid-season trades, this current team has had no practice time, no ability to drill over and over the defensive shifts of a zone.

If you look back in the history of sports, mid-season blockbuster trades rarely help either team right away. There may be a burst of quick wins as there were in Indiana this year, but ultimately the team’s chemistry is so thrown off with unfamiliar faces, that they eventually look like strangers on the court and the losses pile up. This hasn’t been the case in Sacramento this year. Who would have thought taking a gamble on the mercurial Ron Artest could be managed so well, especially at mid-season?

Artest has been given a lot of the credit for the resurgence of the Kings, and deservedly so. Each player has stepped up their defensive play to such a level that even Mike Bibby is bragging about his defense. The Kings have always been a leaderless team and either Artest is leading by words and example or the players are afraid of what Artest might do to them should they miss a defensive assignment.

Giving Artest his share of the due is appropriate, but you don’t hear much credit going to Adelman. Despite the fact his team has had the mid-season makeover, battled through countless injuries, and said good-bye to very popular teammates, the Kings are 23-10 since they were at a season-low eight games under .500. Over the same 33-game span, only the San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks have a better record in the West.

We can certainly say Artest was the catalyst for the turnaround, but it is also true that Adelman has been able to gradually get his players to coalesce into a system that fits this particular team. The Kings are no longer the pretty team with behind-the-back passing and quick-shooting three-point specialists. They defend tough, they rebound with enthusiasm despite undersized starters at center and power forward, and they’re economical with their shots. Or as Bibby best describes the new Kings, “we’re four power forwards and a point guard.”

Somebody had to stage manage this progression and someone had to work hard to develop ways to exploit the match-ups that most coaches would view as a headache. And this person had to do it without the luxury of practice time and without a contract for next season. He sits on the end of the Kings bench and never demands the respect he has earned over the past 16 years in which he has won 753 games – or an average of 47 wins each year. To Rick Adelman, my apologies for suggesting your firing and I hope the League, your team, and especially your owners realize what an impossible coaching job you have done this year.

Now, if you somehow slip up and don’t make the playoff, or the Kings are an early exit in the playoffs, please be ready to hear more talk show callers asking for you to be fired and replaced by …. That’s always been the rub, hasn’t it Rick, whose better than you not named Pop, Sloan, Larry, or Zenmaster?

Cows!

DEMOCRAT:
You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous. Barbara Streisand sings for you.

SOCIALIST:
You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

REPUBLICAN:
You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?

COMMUNIST:
You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an
IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up. Ken Lay is happy.

FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch. Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce 20 times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately, they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows but you don't know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. You produce your 10th 5-year plan in the last 3 months. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

POLISH CORPORATION:
You have two bulls. Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

Time Oddity

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.That won't ever happen again in our lifetime. You may now return to your (normal?) life.

April 3

Two life-changing events happened on this day; one very, very good, and the other, not so good. Twenty-four years ago today, Laz Junior was born in a small hospital in Lewisville, Texas. The bad part was, I ruined his 20th birthday by ending up in the emergency room with what was called a TIA (transient ischemic attack -- or a mild stroke). More on this later. By no means am I trying to compare the importance of both events or even try to steal a little of the Boy's thunder on his Day. I'm just being an economical blogger.

On this day in 1982, Mrs. Laz was driving me to work to the Lewisville Daily Leader where I was a big time sports writer covering high school football and important bowling leagues. Mrs. Laz and I owned a very unreliable Pontiac J2000 that was in the shop for the 30th time so we were in the more reliable, ancient Oldsmobuick that was held together by San Diego Charger bumper stickers. It was about the time Mrs. Laz was due to give birth and we had spent the previous weekend taking our doctor's advice by walking and coaxing the baby out. So when she dropped me off at work that day, I had the uneasy feeling that I would have no way to go home and get her if she went into labor (it hadn't yet occurred to us that Mrs. Laz having the only car made it difficult to get her to the hospital if she went into labor and that driving in labor is about as simple as driving and doing your taxes).

I also had an uneasy feeling about the weather. We'd had a number of tornados in the area and the weather looked a bit foreboding that morning. When I arrived at work, we had the police scanner on and it was whirling and full of activity. We could here various law enforcement personnel out on their beat following funnel clouds and tornados. Of course the scanner picked up traffic all over the region so we were careful to listen to when a tornado was spotted near us and not 50 miles away.

Unbeknownst to me, Mrs. Laz was monitoring a radio station on her way home and they were literally screaming for people to take immediate shelter as there was a tornado headed down main street after picking up the usual mobile homes and tossing them about. What Mrs. Laz didn't know is that I had set the Oldsmobuick to my eclectic taste in music and that she was listening to a station in Paris, Texas, about 50 miles north of Lewisville and 6,000 miles from France. She thought it was a local station. Well, the news was quite frightening and so she wasn't sure if she should return to home or come back to the newspaper. The thought of a tornado taking her off to Oz scared her enough that she also began to go into labor. So she did return to the newspaper only to find us completely calm in the face of the onslaught of horrific weather (we newsmen are like that in the face of danger, you know). It didn't take long for us to calm her down and tell her the tornados were well north -- although it destroyed 25 percent of Paris and killed I think about 25 people, so it was a nasty storm.

All the calming down didn't stop the labor so I dropped her off at the hospital, drove to our apartment to pick up our pre-prepared, check-listed "what happens when the baby comes" items. We went through the entire night in the hospital and, after 14 hours of labor, about nine a.m., Laz Junior came into the world. He scored well on his Apgar test (he'd been studying) and mom and baby were healthy. I was a bit injured, however, as Mrs. Laz ripped my thumb out of its joint every time she felt a labor pain. Lamaze classes say to grab hold of your partner’s hand to ease the labor pain but say nothing about breaking the thumb. It’s strange how little sympathy I got and I did a lot of complaining, too. It seems people only care about the mommy and the baby, and how are they, and are they doing well, and look how cute the baby is, blah, blah, blah. What about me? What about my needs?

Twenty years later, we all weren't healthy as I was slumping in my chair at the office. My sister-in-law noticed I looked more detached from society than normal and tried to get me to go to the hospital. I instead suggested she call Mrs. Laz and have her come get me and take me to the doctor. The doctor did a few tests and suggested I go to the hospital. I really didn't want to go because I knew that I would wait for three hours, they would tell me nothing was wrong, and I would ruin Laz Junior’s birthday.

But they didn't have me wait at all. After asking a few questions and taking my blood pressure, they put me in a wheel chair and hauled me off to the emergency room, ahead of a roomful of illegal immigrants, no less. That's when I got worried. I figured if they were breaking the sacred code of citizenship over triage need, I must be in real trouble. Suddenly I didn't feel so well.

The point of this, other than showing up Laz Junior on his birthday again, is to mention a few warning signs of stroke victims. If you see someone behaving a bit more stoically than normal, do the following three things: 1. Ask the individual to smile. 2. Ask him or her to raise both arms. 3. Ask the person to speak a simple sentence (Coherently), i.e... “It is sunny out today.” If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher. If it's your son's birthday, try to do it quickly so it doesn't interfere with the cake and presents.

(Editor’s note: I am sure I will hear from the Girl how I wrote about the Boy on his birthday but made no mention of her on her birthday. She will note the historical context of November 9, 1983, and I’m not talking about the fact that her sixth birthday landed on the same day the Berlin Wall came down. Her historical context will be one to measure the date as it relates to the birth of HER and how schoolchildren in the future will have to memorize it as they do the date of the Magna Carta and the day Columbus stumbled into the Americas. I think you’ll all feel better getting advance warning on this.)