Item: Politics and futbol….  I use the Spanish spelling here because the U.S. is the only country in the world where football doesn’t mean soccer.  We have American and Canadian football, NCAA and pro football, tackle and touch football, and arena football, all variations of a game unrelated to soccer (it’s more related to rugby).  Futbol’s World Cup, like the Olympics, is an international festival of sport where patriotism can be displayed, flags waved, and bragging rights gained without much violence, except for the wee bit of physical violence that occurs on the field (fewer concussions than in the NFL, I’m sure, but no slush fund to cover them) and among the fans.  All in all, it’s a healthy emotional outlet.  Even if your team is eliminated, one can still watch the games and admire the skill and strategy of players and coaches.  I mean, c’mon, that German goal against the U.S. was a beautiful set piece once you’re past the dismay of having it scored against our team.

All that said, what’s with Ann Coulter’s soccer rant?  An ultra-conservative whatever-she-is blessed with a big mouth because she so often puts her foot in it (“it” can stand for many things here, of course),  she calls soccer “a sign of the nation’s moral decay.”  Huh?  My two granddaughters play soccer, love it, and don’t seem to be suffering from moral decay, and probably never will from soccer.  It’s a wonderful game to teach team spirit, cooperation, and good sportsmanship.  Like other team sports, individual prowess shines best when the star makes his or her team members look good.  Maybe that’s why she says “individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer”?  But soccer stars are big names in the sports world—they might be revered more outside the U.S., but many names are recognized here in the States too, and that’s becoming more common with this tournament.

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Whoever you are and wherever you go this weekend, please pause and remember our service men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice.  They are the true heroes of this great nation….

Item: Dalai Lama, persona non grata.  The Scandinavian countries have a reputation for being progressive and wonderful places to live, albeit too cold.  But the Daliai Lama was dissed by the Norwegian government.  Turns out they bowed to Chinese pressure.  Now, China invaded and took over Tibet.  Sound familiar?  Reminds me of recent decisions made by ye olde ex-KGB homophobic dictator of Russia.  No wonder Norway says nothing about the Ukraine.  They’re afraid of the giant shadows China and Russia cast, even though they have plenty of oil.

Of course, Mr. Lama was just there in Norway for the silver anniversary of his Peace Prize.  I guess even the Norwegians are hypocritical.  Maybe it’s the effect of all those Northern Lights putting them into a hide-our-heads-in-the-fjord-sands stupor.  The Dalai Lama was one of the more justifiable Nobel Peace Prizes (why does Norway hand out that one and Sweden the rest?); Obama’s and others didn’t make sense.  Yet, twenty-five years later, they throw it back into the old man’s face.  I’d be pissed even if I were the Dalai Lama.

Item: Sotheby’s bomb.  No, Sotheby isn’t some wacko English terrorist.  Sotheby’s Spring Auction was a bomb in the sense of kaput, failure, crashed, etc.  One-third of their art items didn’t sell.  The official explanation—from the NY Times, as official as I can get because I’m not a Snowden working at Sotheby’s—is that the art work was overpriced.  I bet!  My explanation is that no one wanted those artworks because they were crap.  Or, we can just write it off to a bad economy—the one-percenters don’t think artworks are a good investment anymore.

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Two recent events portray two different sides of domestic violence.  The first is the case last week of the family renting the luxury home of a tennis star down in Florida.  A man apparently killed his wife and two teenage kids and then set fire to the entire place.  The second is one that happened last Saturday in nearby Lodi, New Jersey (near to my new hometown of Montclair), where a man stabbed his estranged wife and took off with the kids.  The common denominator is a desperate man doing terrible damage to his family.

We don’t know the details of either case at the time I write this, but I can guess.  In the first, I suspect the fortunes of the SOB went south for whatever reason, he didn’t want to live, and he didn’t want to put his family through hardship.  Relative to living in a mansion, anything is a hardship, I suppose, but it still sounds crazy.  Of course it’s crazy!  Murder-suicide is the work of a crazy man.  The guy flipped and his family suffered.  His unilateral determination brought way more suffering to his family than poverty would have.  Of course, the guy could also have had a bad trip with some bad drugs, but buying all those fireworks and gasoline ahead of time sure looks like premeditation.

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Last Friday, a NY Times article titled “Donors Weigh Jilting Christie for Jeb Bush” (5/2/14) reported that more moderate Republicans might be looking toward another Bush in lieu of some radical Tea Party candidate.  Admittedly, the GOP has a thorny problem.  The Tea Party and its sympathizers even go after GOP rank and file—anything to the left of fascist is anathema to these fruitcakes.  But, after our NJ guv Christie’s fledgling campaign couldn’t even leave the nest due to Bridgegate, who else does the GOP have that might appeal to America’s vast political middle?  Certainly not Ted Cruz.  Mario Rubio might be a good veep candidate, although any Hispanic would be stupid to vote for him, and that GOP budget genius Ryan has shown his black heart all too often.

Of course, “more moderate” is relative: Dubya’s brother is still a Bush, and a member of an ancient dynasty in American political terms.  He’s still far to the right, a card-carrying conservative whose progressive ideas are half-baked, half-hearted, and designed only to court Hispanics, Blacks, and women.  He, in fact, still would have to court Tea Partiers, right-wingers, born-agains, and long-time bigots in order to be nominated.  As Mitt Romney so ineptly demonstrated, to win the GOP nomination you have to move so far to the right that you fall off the eastern edge of the political world.

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The case of the botched execution in Oklahoma should never have happened.  Couldn’t find the vein?  C’mon!  Some people are wringing their hands, saying, “They made that poor man suffer.”  Well, that’s the idea, isn’t it?  Isn’t the application of any death penalty just the Old Testament form of justice, eye for an eye, etc, etc?  What kind of insanity is it to talk about humane ways to put someone to death?  What right does our government, or any government, for that matter, have to murder anyone?  What does the victim’s or victims’ families gain?  Some kind of Old Testament revenge?

That’s the first point of this post: two murders, one where the killer offs his victim, and the other where the government offs the murderer, don’t add up to justice.  Two wrongs don’t make a right.  Even if the murderer wants to die, no government should be in the business of killing its citizens.  It’s simply barbaric and grotesque.  Absolutely nothing is gained.  That famous closure victims’ families receive is a smokescreen for institutionalized murder.  No matter how it’s done, that’s what it is.

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Les deseo a todos un feliz Cinco de Mayo, especialmente a todos los lectores mexicanos.  Nachos con chile con queso, algunas  cervezas Coronas, o margaritas virtuales para todos!  Tengan una fiesta toda esta noche….

Translation for gringos: I desire for all a happy Cinco de Mayo, especially for all my Mexican readers!  Virtual nachos with chili with cheese, Corona beers, or margaritas  for everyone!  Have a party the whole night….

The tape of LA Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling allegedly ranting to his girlfriend about not wanting her to embarrass him by socializing with Blacks…the comments uttered by Fox News and Tea Party “hero” Cliven Bundy questioning why Blacks ever wanted to end slavery…these are ignorant old men who are bigots and racists, but the news about them reminded me of a comment Michael Moore made in a discussion last year at the Montclair Film Festival (that’s Montclair, NJ, where I live).  To paraphrase, Moore (no relation, as far as I know) said that we just have to wait for the bigots to die.  NBA owner, Sterling, as rich as he must be, can’t dissuade the Grim Reaper from his appointed rounds—he’s old, and we’ll soon have one less bigot.  (I’ll admit that at the time I write this, proof still has to be supplied that the recorded voice is his, but he has a track record.)  Bundy’s made his money by stealing from U.S. taxpayers, which somehow is more folksy-heroic than stealing from basketball fans and players, but he too is old and will die, erasing another bigot.

Unfortunately, Michael is wrong.  Bigots and fanatics aren’t born; they’re made.  They’re products of their culture.  Technically, these are subcultures, I suppose, but “sub” implies that we have just one or few cultures in the U.S.  We don’t.  We have many.  Every immigrant—and we’re all descended from immigrants, except for Native Americans—imports some of the culture from his Fatherland, and that percolates through the decades.  The average person usually passes through many subcultures during his or her life, but not always.  While one might be a bigot or fanatic as a reflection of their parents’ culture (they’re not mutually exclusive, of course), that can be overcome.  As the nation becomes more diverse and subcultures more plentiful, a person often adapts, realizing that the prejudices and fears inculcated in him by his parents are invalid.  Or not.  Prejudice, even hate, can be so ingrained that the personality collapses without it.

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Every once and a while I make a mental list of what has recently irked me.  Today I thought I’d share the most recent list with you.  Who knows?  Maybe these things irk you too.  And maybe I’ll make this a regular feature.

Item 1: Gum-smacking waitress in a restaurant.  I suppose I should be PC and say waitperson?  Somehow this smacks me as unhygienic.  What’s the problem?  Does she need to keep the saliva going so she can spit in my food?  I hadn’t even tipped her yet!

Item 2: Young gen-Xer passing me on the right to turn left in front of me.  Twenty feet into that next intersection, he’s waiting for a red light as I come up behind him, hoping he sees in the rearview mirror that I think he’s number one.

Item 3: Popcorn and soda at the movies adding up to more than the tickets.  That’s tickets in plural.  We go to matinees.  And we don’t buy any of their crap anymore.  90% of the movies are crap; we don’t need to be fed more crap while we’re watching.

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Item: Putin’s ventriloquist dummy.  Foreign Minister Lavrov uttered these words in Paris: “We don’t have a common vision of the situation.”  You think!  He was analyzing the difference between Putin’s, and ergo the official, viewpoint of the Ukrainian situation and the point-of-view of the rest of the world.  Some idiots are saying that a vote in Crimea for independence is just the expression of democratic choice.  What BS!  It’s the typical strong-arm approach to neocolonialism in the world, the desire for some countries (in this case, Russia) to steal territory (or even justify a complete invasion?) at the cost of a weaker one.  It’s how Hitler took Poland and Austria (the former sits right next to the Ukraine, by the way).  It’s how we justified taking Texas, Panama, and the Phillippines.  It’s how the Chinese justified taking Tibet.  The fact that all the bully countries in the world have done it or are doing it doesn’t make it right.

Moreover, Putin is giving the West his middle finger and mooning everything about international treaties…and the stupid Russians love it!  Crimea voted to secede.  Welcome back, Soviet Union!  Never mind that the Ukraine gave all those nukes back to Russia on the condition that Russia would always respect Ukrainian independence.  Clearly you can’t trust Putin and you can’t trust Russians, who yearn for the old days of Stalin when the Soviet Union was feared round the world.  Are we heading for WWIII?  Possibly.  I sure wish now that the Ukraine had kept some of those nukes.  It would have leveled the playing field a lot and possibly kept any conflagration local.  Apparently that’s the only thing the Soviet Union—oops! I mean Russia—respects, good old-fashioned détente.  Now gay-bashing ex-KGB dictator Volodya holds all the cards and the Ukraine is out of chips.

Item: Go Everywhere!  While the stereotypical Ugly American still exists and is often enforced by U.S. tourists brandishing their ignorance overseas, Americans who spend time living in foreign countries often develop different perspectives that provincial stay-at-homes are lacking.  Nicholas Kristoff in the op-ed “Go West, Young People! And East!” in last Sunday’s NY Times Review suggests that every college in America should require students to study abroad as part of their education.  (This is something I should have mentioned in my post “Education Overhaul” that will appear tomorrow.)  In fact, I’d go further than what Kristoff said.  I’d also reinstate the draft but have the option of soldiering AND community service, either in the U.S. or overseas.  College study abroad tends to be prohibitively expensive.  Unless colleges and universities become all public here and overseas semesters are competitive and government-funded, that’s not a viable option for already cash-strapped parents.

Item: Speaking of living abroad….  The Irish have been doing it for years.  First, there was the forced splitting up and resettling of Irish families engineered by Cromwell—the Irish haven’t been treated nice by the Brits long before the Troubles.  Then there was the English indifference to the potato famine that made Irish flee elsewhere…or starve.  Then there were the Troubles.  These are three major reasons for Irish leaving their homeland, but it’s been going on forever, at least since Irish monks saved Western civilization by copying and protecting all those ancient manuscripts from the great Western cultures.  Of course, you’ll find Irish in the U.S., from gangsters (remember Goodfellas, based on a true story) to football players (e.g. the fighting Irish of Notre Dame) to cardinals and other heavyweights in the Catholic Church (often literally), but also in the Caribbean and Latin America, not to mention in the Far East and the rest of the world.  One of my favorites is Bernardo O’Higgins who, along with Jose de San Martin, is the father of Chilean independence accused of becoming a benevolent dictator (often by the Church) and kicked out of Chile by a coup d’etat.

Item: Knowledgeable about his roots?  One person who is confused about his Irish heritage is GOP budget wonk and mean-kid wannabe-leader of the Tea Party, the most dishonorable Paul Ryan.  Timothy Egan in the op-ed “Paul Ryan’s Irish Amnesia,” in last Sunday’s NY Times Review, analyzes Ryan’s historical hypocrisy:  “…can’t help noticing the deep historic irony that finds a Tea Party favorite and descendant of famine Irish using the same language that English Tories used to justify an indifference to an epic tragedy.”  Egan and Sons is one of my favorite Irish pubs in Montclair NJ, but this Egan (presumably no relation, except that he’s Irish) is talking about GOP stinginess, led by Ryan, in refusing to continue federal unemployment, cutting food stamps, attacking any raise in the minimum wage, and voting against Obamacare (how many times?  Was it 40?)  Maybe he’s really ashamed of his humble origins.  If so, why not shut up about it?  Happy St. Paddy’s Day, Mr. Ryan!

Item: Tooting My Own Horn.  Here’s a press release about my new book Aristocrats and Assassins.  Klesc’s New Book Journal is useful for this—Raymond posts to other sites besides his own.  And it’s all free, bless his soul!

And so it goes…Happy St. Patrick’s Day!