A Week Off?

I don't think Vania King will make it into the Tennis Hall of Fame. Still, her name keeps popping up in this space, almost as much as what's-her-name and her sister, whozits.
Ms. King, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, is only 5 feet 5, and so the 6-foot Pam Shriver towered over her during an interview following a match at the Australian Open last week. Vania was articulate about her game, but a little surprised when Shriver said she had heard that King had a good voice and asked her to sing. Vania took a second to select a song, then gave a couple of lines from "Dream a Little Dream of Me", the song brought back by the late Mama Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. The selection wasn't hard to sing, but it was...nice. It was one more reason to like her - as a person, not just a doubles partner. I'm going to start looking for a local chapter of Geezers for Vania to join.

This week's nominee for Snappy Sports Name goes to the always cool Fab Melo, a hoopster with the Syracuse Orangemen. Let's hope he gets his little academic conundrum solved soon. The team needs him in the middle.

This week's title question is meant to ask if it's theoretically possible with everything going on for this blog to ignore the mano a mano of the Republican presidential campaign. My answer is "no", not with so much going on.
For instance, there's the term "Cayman Islands". I'm as good at geography as the next guy, but I doubt I could find C.I. on a map. I think it (they?) are somewhere South of the Virgin Islands. What clicks in your mind at the mention of this particular locale? Two words should suffice. The first one is "tax" and the other could be "cheat". "dodge" or "haven", depending on how tough you want to be.
The point is: legal or not, Mitt Romney has money parked there. That's about as smart for a presidential candidate as holding a press conference to introduce your good friend Tammi, a dancer from Las Vegas who's borrowing a little money because she's been laid off at the Boom Boom Room. But I was so busy, I forgot to tell my wife about it. Darn. Any questions? No, just good friends....

And just as soon as we start to miss Rick Perry's foot-in-mouth quotes, up pops Sarah Palin again, getting way more than her share of attention for a journalist for Fox News. Palin, while explaining her nonexistent South Carolina vote for Newt Gingrich, went on about "vetting", letting everyone know that there wasn't enough of it by the GOP four years ago.
Wait a sec. You mean four years ago, when the nominee was John McCain, the very guy who took Palin out of the deep hole of obscurity that is the Alaska statehouse? The same John McCain who opened the door for Palin to get millions of dollars from Fox and assorted speech listener/suckers for doing little except tease the voters that she could decide to run for president after all? That John McCain? The John McCain who could have conceivably been elected president if independent voters had not gone thumbs down on Palin herself?
Please, Ma'am. This isn't ancient history we're talking about here. It was less than four years ago. Even your followers aren't that thick. Are they?

Finally, a raspberry for the Republicans of Iowa. As an ex-Iowan, I have great regard for the people of the Hawkeye State, but what they (GOP leaders) did last week, stumbling back and forth over the final result of the caucus, was near criminally inept. By the time they had finally concluded that Rick Santorum had, in fact, won the vote, you couldn't blame the campaigns for screaming that they would never return and spend millions of dollars only to be treated shabbily when it was time for the Party to get it right. Maybe in 2016, the first presidential event will be in Puerto Rico. They couldn't mess it up worse.

A Tough Day in Salt Lake City

First, from the department of "I'm So Vain": For several years now I've been marking down each day's tennis results, with particular attention to wins and losses. It came time to tabulate the totals for 2011 on New Years Day. I wasn't sure what the results would be, but am happy now to announce the news. My 2011 winning percentage topped 2010 by almost 1%. For what it's worth, I get in about 20 sets a month, almost all in doubles.

Certain images and certain people on TV somehow make us laugh. There's those Coke-swilling polar bears, for instance, and the hamsters who drive the KIA Soul, both famous all over the planet. Another such image, I believe, is that of Charles Barkley, former basketball star and a very funny guy even when he's using other people's words. Anyway, Charles is the latest famous person to undertake weight loss by using a well-advertized system, in this case Weight Watchers. He even uses a line from his most famous commercial, done for Nike, in which he declared "I am not a role model." I can't explain just why, but he cracks me up every time.

Now imagine a scene in the largest room of the largest home in Salt Lake City, home of the Huntsman family. John Huntsman, out of the GOP presidential race as of yesterday, sits on an enormous multicolored couch. Mrs. H. sits, well-dressed, on an adjoining couch as big as any in Buckingham Palace. She speaks:
Mrs: Oh, John. I'm so sorry things didn't work out in the campaign. Can I get you anything?
Mr: Thanks. You know I don't feel sick, but I just feel so dry...
Mrs. : That's because we're home, Dear. It's a desert, remember? How about some lemonade?
Mr.: Thanks. You know I didn't think until this minute that we will have to make other plans. We're not moving to the White House after all.
Mrs.: I guess you're right, Hon, but is it really that bad?
Mr.: You're right, Darling, but once you're as rich as kings, which we are, and the political track is shut off, what does that leave? Every other offer involves money, which we honestly have no more use for, and none of them give you the chance to drop bombs on anyone. I mean, what am I going to do? Go around on my Harley hoping no one recognizes me and says something stupid?
Mrs.: Oh, but it can't be that bad, John. You've already endorsed Mitt. Couldn't you get a spot in his Cabinet or something?
Mr. (laughing): Believe me, Babe. How many guys who are Mormons, have good hair and a pretty blonde wife do you think there would be room for in the Romney administration, if there ever is one? I'll tell you how many - one, and his initials are Mitt Romney. You remember how many times I ripped him in those debates? It was enough that we'll be lucky to be on the Romney Christmas card list. I guarantee Mitt's five times more interested in Colbert's 5% in South Carolina than he is in my 1%. And just think - until I saw those numbers myself I was thinking I coulda been a contender. Now I'm just another ex-governor rich guy. Could it be worse? Yeah, I could be Pawlenty and have to live in Minnesota, but that's about it.
Mrs.: Well, couldn't we go back to China?
Mr.: Once again you're a little short of vertical, my dear. You only leave the Obama administration once. He wouldn't even send us to one of those sinking island countries unless he was sure there wouldn't be a boat waiting. Don't get me wrong. He's a nice fellow and all, but Republicans aren't at the top of his list right now. Know what I mean? There's a bigger chance of a weeping apology from Cheney than there is of us being ambassadors again.
Mrs.: I see. Well, is it too late to run for that old guy's Senate seat? What's his name? Hatch?
Mr.: Gee, I don't know. I just feel like I've shaken way too many sweaty palms and kissed too many homely babies to want to start up again. Maybe I'll call up Rick Perry after awhile. That guy always makes me feel so...ah... smart.
Mrs.: Well, come over here first, big guy. I think I know just what you need to feel a little happier.
Mr.: I second the motion!!

I've Seen the Future

When asked the name of the Lion King, three year-old granddaughter Ireland replied without taking her eyes from the screen, "Dad".

Coming to a parking lot near you - Pizza tycoon and presidential wannabe Herman Cain must have realized that any call to take over the Department of Defense won't arrive for at least a year following the next inauguration, and so he has a different plan for the short term - riding a giant bus around the country reminding people of his "9-9-9" tax plan. Let's hope there's room on the vehicle for, ah, Mrs. C.

There was a big meeting this weekend of Christian bigshots this weekend. They are ready to do almost anything to avoid supporting Mitt Romney for president. The vote went to a Catholic, former PA Senator Rick Santorum. I don't know if this will pay off, but it can't be good news for Texas governor Rick Perry. I, for one, will miss statements from Perry such as "Every barrel of oil that comes from Canada is one we won't have to buy from a foreign country."

We got around to seeing the Planet of the Apes movie. I guess you know you're having a bad day when a 600 lb. gorilla is heaving manhole covers directly at you.

Now to this week's subject. You may recall a SCOTUS decision of a year or two ago referred to as the "Citizens United" decision. It's been described in this space before, but the practical applications of this decision are proving to be breathtaking in this election campaign.
What just happened in Iowa is a good example. Big money donors are still restricted to $2000 or so toward the actual campaign, BUT the same donors can make unlimited donations to "Super Fund" operations that just happen to favor a certain candidate. The Romney campaign spent a little over $1 million getting Iowans to line up for Mitt on caucus night, but the Romney-associated super fund spent upwards of $3 million on negative ads - all aimed at Newt Gingrich.
This normally might have finished off Newt for good, but then Newt's own fund picked up $5 million of so from another sugar daddy, and so he's still around, spreading the gift of Newtism to South Carolina.
Donors to these funds may not have to identify themselves at all, and corporations are using their newfound "personhood". I strongly doubt that they'll ever be called on by shareholders to come clean in some future annual meeting, either. The thing that is supposed to make all this possible is the assumed independence of the funds from the campaigns themselves.
But the "independence" may be more legal than real. John Huntsman's fund, for instance, depends on big donations from Utah's richest man, a guy named John Huntsman Sr., the candidate's father! His company looked over the GOP field, and settled on Jr. And the two never consult on how dad's riches are to be spent.
Yes, the future has arrived in the form of a pinstriped suit bearing money AND the subtle understanding that it does not come without strings. Those without this backing are doomed to continue as history's also-rans. I find myself siding with the bumper sticker that states "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one."

Round One to Mitt

The football bowls aren't over with just yet. We're bound to see some more strange things before they are. I am willing, however, to nominate Whitney Mersilus of Illinois as having the coolest football name. Stanford's quarterback Andrew Luck, by comparison, played a great game but ran out of, ah, luck when the Cardinal field goal kicker flubbed on two attempts, one of which would have won the game immediately. So it goes.

The Iowa caucuses were held last night, and the phrase which still applies is "you couldn't make this stuff up". Mitt Romney was publicly low-keying his chances in the Hawkeye state until some unknown allies in unknown places exercised their corporate right to speak with millions of dollars, not so much for Mitt as against his opponent of the week, Newt Gingrich. The effort by the big money boys earned Mitt a virtual tie with Rick Santorum, ex-senator from Pennsylvania, who was considered a likely first round washout just a few weeks ago.
Newt, seeing his chance at the White House evaporate before his eyes, didn't take his own fourth place finish well. His concession speech wasn't just ungracious, but declared a totally new role for himself in the campaign, that of the anti-Mitt, tied, like it or not, to Santorum's quest. So much for holding off on the negative campaigning.
Ron Paul doesn't look a day over ninety, but he IS 76 years old, and he finished a close third last night. Fox News can't stand him, so he's unlikely to be the nominee, especially since he's left a long paper trail identifying him as a closet Libertarian, a mindset current Republicans only pretend to respect.
The rest of the list is, shall we say, unpretty. Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann took 6% of the caucus vote, good only for 6th ahead of Jon Huntsman who abandoned Iowa for New Hampshire some time ago. She's out of the race as of this morning.
Texas governor Rick Perry's numerous public gaffs were funny, unless you were him. He finished fifth with 10%, and still has plenty of money, but no momentum heading into New England. You might next see him working on his line dance moves or signing all those backlogged death warrants back home in Austin.
As for the Mittster, the news isn't all good. Short of the actual deaths of his rivals, nothing seems to move his numbers over the 25% mark. No keys to the Oval Office unless you get 100% of the GOP vote, and some others, as well. He got the same numbers this time as he did in '08, when Mike Huckabee was the Iowa winner. Mitt gets plenty of endorsements, but they have yet to pay off, especially with that self-described leaderless bunch of Tea party folks and the usual Mormon haters clustered in the Deep South. And the prospect of Newt constantly in his rear view mirror can't be pleasant, either.
Still, Santorum has his own paper trail of wildly off the wall statements that may now take center stage, and he has neither the money nor the organization to go toe to toe with Romney. But the longer he lasts, the less time Mitt has to concentrate on bashing Obama full time.
We've already been at this for a year, but we'll have a nominee in about eight months and a winner in just over eleven. Only a large earthquake could keep Mitt from winning in New Hampshire, so the next bloodletting might be in the Palmetto State, a polite name for, uh, South Carolina.

Person of the Year

A week from now we still won't be able to say who's going to lead the GOP ticket in 2012, but the folks in Iowa might be yesterday's news just as fast as they were four years back, when they decided Mike Huckabee was their guy. A year from now I'll be able to write some kind of sage comments, God willing, about forty years of marriage to the same woman. And at some point I'll be able to talk about my tennis career-ending injury, mostly so that all my readers worldwide can know for sure that I've become old, not that many will care.
But for now, let's consider the title in this week's title, then come out for someone, though it need not be someone who's likable. Time Magazine, who first got in the business of fluffy-type honors decades back, gave their nod for 2011 to "the protester".
And that isn't a bad answer, but it begs for clarification. Those fire-breathing Tea party congressmen who took their seats in Congress with all kinds of plans for shaking things up, for instance, now don't seem to be leaders so much as the kind of person who gladly throw sand in the gearbox of government, then point left and scream "HE did it!" Person of the year? They wouldn't even get the nod from Boehner. The price of corrupting them also seems likely to go down as their first incumbency defense in November looms closer. No award for them.
The Republican candidates for president would also like to be thought of as "protesters" in the way that the Pope might be regarded as a protester against evil. Their debates have been revealing during little exchanges, but on the whole they resemble a dog pile on Obama - pretty riskless as long as he's not there to make replies, while the audience that is there would just as soon see the president dismembered on stage. Most of this group of me too-ers, all brave Christmas Christians will be one with Gephardt and Pawlenty by spring, forgotten by all but self-appointed experts like me. "Protesters"? Impossible - when your hand is out for millions.
Of course, the Left has the Occupy folks. They deserve credit for talking loudly about the inequities of society that often get ignored though they're in plain sight. I honestly believe we haven't seen the last of these tough folks either, though they are facing their toughest enemy right now - winter. I also like that their message is simple enough for everyone to get - "They are rich, and we (all of us) aren't, and it's not because they're so smart, either."
But I'm giving the prize to some real heroes, far away though they may be. If you launch a protest in the wrong country at the wrong time, or in front of the wrong audience, you can find yourself as part of the local landfill. And darned few will care because you were supposed to know the risks before you opened your mouth. But that didn't stop some brave folks in unfree places like Egypt and Libya, most armed with nothing more lethal than cell phones. With blinding speed, they showed the rest of the world what the Iraqis didn't - that people can change things by themselves, guns or no guns, if they want to badly enough. Even if the cause is a little dodgy, you have to pay attention to people willing to risk their lives when success is far from guaranteed. The least I can do for these folks is name them "Person of the Year", with the wish that 2012 works well for them.

Peace Time?

Wrapping up 2011, the family can notch a few milestones. Naturally, this also depends on how broadly the term "family" is used, inclusively or excluding certain members. I already mentioned Zach's success in the esoteric art of Ferrari upkeep. Two daughters, Marla and Leah, got immediate employment following their training: Marla in nursing and Leah in dental technology. No babies or marriages this year, but an engagement for an early 2012 wedding for daughter Anna popped up, and our oldest grandchild, Sally, reached the milestone of adolescence. Woo Hoo!

And we couldn't top this year for nature sightings. Besides the whale that did us the favor of moving on fresh water up the Klamath River before dying, this last week we spotted two decent-sized black bear cubs about a half block from home. We were in our sturdy old Buick at the time, so we didn't panic, but we did make sure the garage doors were closed before opening the car doors.

And, not to change subjects too radically, but it was also a big year for Herman Cain. True, he ended the year gone from the list of GOP presidential candidates, but he told Barbara Walters on TV last week that he has a new challenge in his sights. You could see her head almost explode when he said he now wants to be ....the Secretary of Defense! I can just hear him explaining how assembling an aircraft carrier is really no different from putting together a (rather complex) pizza. And his self-proclaimed ignorance of other countries and their leaders? No problem. He'll just sit down with one of those generals he's always talking about in order to get caught up. It could take, oh, an hour or two.

Don't wait for a parade to come through your neighborhood, but we scratched one war front off the list last week. We're finally through in Iraq except for a few mercenaries willing to provide hired gun services for Iraqi bigshots. The locals say they'll handle the rest of the job from here, and what can we do but wish them the best?
Iraq isn't going to become an Islamic Sweden anytime soon, but its people are sophisticated, there's plenty of oil left, and maybe the bad guys will be too worn out from the last war to start the next one for awhile. Explosions, both deliberate and accidental, won't stop, but it's probably now illegal to even say "nuclear weapon". But peace, as we know, carries no guarantees.
In fact, one surprising thing about the new peace is that it's so poorly regarded by those who started the war in the first place, neocon Republicans. None of them are very sold on peace at all, and so naturally have nothing nice to say about president Obama, even though the troop withdrawl coincides exactly with Bush's plan for wrapping things up. To hear the GOP presidential candidates, taking troops out is almost proof that Obama is taking his orders from a klatch of mullahs. Forget the polls, they say. Eight plus years just isn't long enough! The names "Bush" and "Cheney" have disappeared from all public utterances, but they've become used to at least two war fronts going at all times. More importantly, so have those big "job creators", the defense contractors.

Numbers Games

Do you recall mention of son Zach, chosen by the Ferrari folks to compete with nine other master mechanics for the title of (and I'm sure this isn't too accurate) World's Best Ferrari Tinkerer Guy? The contest is over for this year. No, he didn't win, but did finish in the top half (5th) and so he has earned the right to feel pleased. I haven't talked to him, but I think the trip was enjoyable for him and his wife even though it included at least one nine-hour flight non-stop to Paris. Anyway - what a guy!

I won't always have Governor Rick Perry to kick around as a presidential candidate, but the guy is comedy gold when it comes to things he says (or forgets to say) on the campaign trail. Forget for a moment his plan to eliminate three cabinet level departments from government altogether, but only remembering two. Here's what he's done lately:
Referred to Election Day as "November 12th, 2012". It's actually the 6th.
Called on people in that same sentence "age 21 and over" to support him. The legal voting age, by amendment to the Constitution, has been 18 for over forty years.
Referred to the Supreme Court as having eight "unelected" justices. The court actually has nine justices, though Perry was right that none got the job via the ballot.
He couldn't remember Justice Sonya Sotomayor's name, which would be understandable if he hadn't been trying to single her out as a flaming liberal at the time.
I guess it's easy to see how Perry was in line for the governor's job when Bush went off to Washington as the newly (sort-of) elected president in 2001. Perry made Bush look smart.

Albert Pujols is going to be remembered for a long time. Even if he suffers a career-ending injury during next spring's preseason workouts, his new employers, the Los Angeles Angels (or whatever their current name is) will be on the hook for $250 million, payable over the next ten years. That's quite a bit of money - about what Mitt Romney has in financial assets today. Is the hard-hitting Pujols worth that much? Ah,...is there an economist in the house?

Speaking of Mitt, there was another GOP presidential debate last night in which the most interesting moment may have been when Mitt tried to call out Perry about a minor accusation regarding a line in Mitt's book regarding health care. Romney offered to put up $10,000 backing his side of the argument. Perry backed off the bet part, though he persisted with the allegation. It wasn't so much Mitt's conviction, but his treatment of 10G's as pocket money that may have started some folks thinking that Mitt's life is far removed from that of most people. Does that preclude someone from being an effective president? No, but it's not a bad thing to see a little empathy in the nation's CEO, and that's a quality seldom seen of late by current CEO's. To many of them, all of life is little more than a numbers game.