It's all about people

I tell you, I don't know why I get in these moods sometimes ...

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Unemployment and Bunning's TS card: More than the money

Talk that the federal government may not afford paying out more unemployment benefits may leave me in a financial pickle, but more importantly it leaves me with one of those thorny moral dilemmas.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R, KY) is staging a one-man blockade to shut down any expansion of unemployment benefits. Later, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) joined him on this, saying the federal government needs to figure out a way to pay for additional benefits first.

"Congress just passed the so-called pay-go legislation which is supposed to require that we find offsets or other savings if we are going to spend money," Kyl said. "So what's the first thing we do? We exempt this bill from it."

Bunning, the baseball Hall Of Famer, laid what older military veterans may call a "T.S. card" on a $10 billion Senate plan to extend unemployment benefits. (Those who didn't hear Bunning's actual comments will probably still get the drift without a lot of explanation.)

While the Senate bill stalls, there's the spectre that benefits may terminate this month for more than 1.1 million former workers. At least, that's what the Democrats are saying, and most of those cats in the halls of Congress are real good at dealing out the exaggerated numbers and scare tactics.

Meanwhile, I will find out fairly quickly what happens next. I get inside information on this kind of news in my mailbox every week. See, with the exception of whatever writing income I scratch out, I've been living on unemployment. And hating it.

While some folks can carve a whole lifestyle out of waiting for that gummint check, I'm not one of those. It goes against everything I believe, everything that's important to me. Plus, it doesn't mesh with my personal style. I'm an action type, and not having a regular job leaves me all jacked up and no place to go. In short, it turns me into Beelzebub.

To be honest, I'm not sure where this unemployment compensation comes from. Well, I kind of do. It's funny money, surgically removed from working people and business owners or, failing that, printed up as needed by the federal government.

OK, here's the moral dilemma. Those who know me through this space have probably figured by now that I'm not big on government assistance. Shoot, I'm not big on government anything. I'd rather have a battery acid enema than deal with all these civil service types. A friend suggested I might consider trying for food stamps. I politely told her no, and the politeness was only because she's such a dear friend. But I'm not hurting. I can do great things with beans, rice, and hamburger. Even with my most expensive grocery item (premium coffee) my food bill is practically zip.

But you see what's going on. I'm writing about these conservative/libertarian principles, and I try to live in a manner that's at least somewhat consistent with what I write. My views have not changed, and don't expect me to start pounding a share-the-wealth message any time soon. I don't roll that way.

See the dilemma here? While some may suggest I just get what I can, shut up, and hang my convictions, I'm just not that type of person.

Strategy time, from my personal notes: I'm still looking for work, but have widened my options. Part time would be wonderful; in fact that's the best scenario I can think of. It was less than two months ago that I started freelance writing in earnest, so I'm just scratching the surface there. Right now, as long as it's legal I don't really care what the part time job is; it's not like I'm going to be married to it or anything. I have three (or four, depending on how you count them) paid writing gigs going on right now, and already at this early stage they amount to half a paycheck. A part-time gig, paying about what I'm making now in unemployment, would be gravy.

Entrepreneurs and high-level economists are smart enough to know that you don't put all your eggs in one basket. But with this economy being what it is, that truth has filtered down to the average folks, those who punch a clock every day. The economy is so uncertain that if you're depending on just one income source for your daily bread, you're inviting trouble.

While some do quite nicely for themselves while waiting for that gummint cheese, I don't see how they do it.

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Is anyone taking Woody Harrelson seriously?

What a strange society we live in. We love our bread and circuses, and don't give a rip about real-life issues.

And when a celebrity says something, we're more likely to give it credence than if Joe Lunchmeat says it.

I have to admit, I have a few "star-power" types I pay attention to. I always thought ex-basketball star Charles Barkley was a hoot, like when he recently said he may run for Governor of Alabama and said even he couldn't screw that place up.

But actor Woody Harrelson recently spoke with a Salon.com writer Andrew O'Hehir, and said that while JFK was the last great president we've had, Jimmy Carter was "pretty great."

Huh? The Jimmy Carter? The guy who oversaw a rare economic triple-double (double figures in interest rates, inflation, and unemployment)? The one who sat on his hands while the Iranians held hostages, and eventually launched a helicopter attack that would have been laughable if the situation wasn't so serious?

Yeah. That Jimmy Carter.

One must consider the source. Ol' Woody has been huge on loosening our marijuana laws, and has admitted to smoking a number or three every so often. Maybe the stuff really does distort one's perceptions. Uhh, cool, man ...

But enough of that. Let's go to the horse's ... uhh, mouth:

"Obama has the chance of becoming JFK or LBJ. I think JFK was one of our last great presidents, although I thought Carter was pretty great too. LBJ could have been a great president if he hadn't gotten bogged down in war, but that was quite a war to get bogged down in."

And about Obama?

"I think there's a lot of persuasive and powerful people around Obama. For a president to make his own decisions, I think that's a rarity. Even someone who we think of as our guy -- this is a guy with integrity, a guy who cares, for the first time in a long time -- in the Oval Office, even with him we don't really know who's pulling the strings. I think of every president as being a marionette. Whether he's any different, I don't know. Certainly his military advisors all want him to prosecute this war to the end, just as they did in Vietnam with LBJ."

I wonder if anyone's taking Woody seriously? And I wonder what Charles Barkley thinks of it all?

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BBC: Humpty Dumpty doesn't make a splattering mess

Y'all remember how it goes? ...

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall ...

And what happened next?

Whatever it was, the BBC decided it was just too disturbing for young minds:

... in a revised version of the nursery rhyme that aired recently on the British Broadcasting Corporation's children's channel CBeebies, the tale - which first appeared in print in 1810 - no longer ends with "all the king's horses and all the king's men/Couldn't put Humpty together again". Now, a crack squadron of His Majesty's finest hard-boiled military personnel has found the recipe to "make Humpty happy again" ...

No wonder we're raising a generation of wussies. The BBC has decided the mess that resulted from Humpty's fall -- brains? egg yolks? -- was just too disturbing for young minds to comprehend, so they felt the need to rewrite the poem to protect these children from something nightmarish.

In the nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty was a really benign character. A jolly, gaily-dressed egg-shaped character perched on his wall. At least that's what I remembered. Then, I read about Humpty in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, and realized he had a dark side. A mean-spirited troll who verbally crossed swords with Alice. I can't forget those immortal words of his:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

See, The Humpster (Dumpster?) wrote the book on modern politics, and on modern news reporting. Not to mention our modern thinking: Hang the facts, the truth is whatever I want it to be. And that thinking is an elemental reason why we're so screwed up, but that's another rant for another day.

It was that other side of Humpty Dumpty that disturbed me as a child, not his horrible accident. But then I came to realize his falling off the wall was really no great loss.

The truth is out: Humpty Dumpty was pushed.

At 99, John Wooden is still as relevant as ever

John Wooden, who coached basketball players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Gail Goodrich, and Bill Walton on NCAA championship teams, turns 99 today.

It took 15 years of coaching the UCLA Bruins for Wooden to win his first NCAA title; after that he never really stopped. An unprecedented 10 NCAA titles, seven of them in a row (from 1967 to 1973). Five undefeated teams. And he closed out his college coaching career in 1975 with his10th title.

To find a coach who even comes close to Wooden's record, you'd have to go to women's basketball, where University of Tennessee's Pat Summitt, coach of the Lady Vols, has eight and counting. In men's basketball, Adolph Rupp of the University of Kentucky, has four -- and I think they still needed to have some guy fish the ball out of the peach basket after each score then.

Wooden coached some real characters during a changeable era of our history -- the late 60s and early 70s. Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor, was a 7-foot stringbean with some incredible game and a lot of anger in him. And Walton, during his early career with the Portland Trail Blazers, became something of a counterculture hero because of his ponytail, mountain-goat beard, vegetarian diet, and radical politics.

Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson earned his props for being able to coach Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, the uncoachable Dennis Rodman and a handful of role players into an NBA championship team. Wooden did the same thing with his Bruins decades earlier.

He still has gas in his tank, as Times reporter T.J. Simers wrote a few months ago:

This morning's breakfast will go on for three hours, Wooden unable to shake his visitor, the line a long one day after day for others also wanting some of his time ... New York Giants Coach Tom Coughlin was here a few weeks ago, a USC assistant football coach is the latest to call seeking a meeting ... as for Wooden, he would still like "to have dinner with both Joe Torre and Mike Scioscia," even making a concession, and saying they wouldn't have to eat turkey. He loves his baseball, all right, and his channel turner, stopping for Perry Mason, and every Saturday parking on the westerns, which got him an invite to meet Clint Eastwood on the set of " Changeling," Eastwood directing Angelina Jolie. "A very lovely woman," Wooden says with a smile. "Those lips are something." Like he said, he's not dead.

He's always been a class act. Equal parts motivational speaker, and basketball coach, one of the foundations of his teaching is the Pyramid of Success. He's also noted for his philosophical quotes about life and sportsmanship, such as: "Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be."

Some more Woodenisms:

"Young people need models, not critics."

"The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team."

"Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow."

"Talent is God given; be humble. Fame is man given; be thankful. Conceit is self given; be careful."

"Ability is a poor man's wealth."

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."

"Don't give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you."

Paul Harvey wrote the book on big government?

Who originally said:

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have," or "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have"?

Likely suspects include Thomas Jefferson, Barry Goldwater, and Gerald Ford (Gerald Ford??).

The truth? ... Paul Harvey?

According to the Freakonomics website:

This is usually attributed to Gerald Ford, but researcher Barry Popik has found it earlier, in Paul Harvey’s 1952 book Remember These Things.

Paul Harvey? Rest-of-the-story Paul Harvey? I've always respected him, thought him a wordsmith par excellence, but this quote is even greater than that.

This Freakonomics page also suggests origins for:

"Funny ha-ha, or funny peculiar?"

"Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach."