Joe Paterno ... time to go

By Bob Gaydos

The lead on the Associated Press story Wednesday afternoon was straightforward and shocking at the same time:  “STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach who preached success with honor for half a century but whose legend was shattered by a child sex abuse scandal, said Wednesday he will retire at the end of this season.”

At the end of the season? Is he kidding? Are they kidding? Are the trustees of Penn State going to let Paterno, living legend or no, get away with that?

Those were my italicized thoughts immediately on reading the AP story, after following nearly 24 hours of non-stop coverage of the Penn State scandal, not only on radio and TV sports talk shows, but on network and cable TV news shows and on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

“Joe Pa,” the 84-year-old face of Penn State was, as usual, setting his own terms for when he would leave his beloved university. Or at least he was trying to. But this time, Standup Joe, as he is also lovingly known around State College, has no leg to stand on. That he was still football coach Wednesday afternoon was an upset in itself. For him to be allowed to coach on the weekend against Nebraska and then stay on to the end of the season would be the most profound insult to the alleged victims of the assaults and their families and would tarnish even more the image of Penn State.

The issue in this case is simple: What legal and moral responsibility did Paterno, as head coach and de facto king of Penn State, have in protecting young boys from sexual assaults from one of his coaches? Again, quoting from the AP story: “Paterno said he was “absolutely devastated” by the case, in which his one-time heir apparent, Jerry Sandusky, has been charged with molesting eight boys over 15 years, including at the Penn State football complex.”

Paterno reported an allegation of such an assault nine years ago to the university’s athletic director after Mike McQueen, a graduate assistant on the football team who said he saw Sandusky in the shower at the university with a 10-year-old boy, reported it to the coach. Legally, McQueen and Paterno apparently feel they did all they had to do.

Maybe so. That’s for the state attorney general to decide. Morally it’s a different matter. And the answer is clear: No, neither man did all that needed to be done. The assistant coach did not try to stop whatever was going on in the shower. Instead, he called his father who told him to leave. They talked about it and told Paterno the next day. Paterno told the AD. Nine years later — during which time Sandusky continued to operate a foundation to serve underprivileged young boys and continued to be seen around Penn State — Sandusky was arrested and athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz were charged with failing to report the incident to the authorities.

But there was Paterno, several times a target for those who thought he was too old to coach and should retire and now holding the record for most football wins among Division I schools, still on Wednesday afternoon attempting to dictate the terms of his retirement.

It is an arrogance and sense of entitlement that no serious board of trustees can allow to succeed. Paterno made much during his tenure of holding his football players to higher standards, morally, than coaches at other schools. It is part of what created his legend. Failing to notify police authorities for nine years, during which time school officials made it clear they weren’t going to pursue legal action against Curley, was more than a lapse in judgment, it was a profound moral lapse. Or maybe the image Paterno has projected all these years was false.

Whatever the case, Paterno and school officials suggest by their callous disregard for the boys and potential future victims that protecting the reputation of the school comes first and, at Penn State, the football reputation trumps all.

It is sad, it is troubling, it is infuriating. In this day and age, there are still adults who do not recognize that there is a moral obligation to do everything possible to protect the most vulnerable among us from predators — even when to do so may harm other people and institutions we hold close. Sometimes we are indeed our brothers’ keepers.

Retire at the end of the season? No way. Joe Pa should have retired with humility Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday night, the board of trustees fired him immediately. Finally, the trustees reclaimed control of Penn State.

bob@zestoforange.com

Kim Kardashian ... soon to be divorced

By Bob Gaydos

There is an art to ending things — careers, relationships, jokes, movies, books, TV shows and yes, even lives.

As a rule, most of us pay too little attention to figuring out how to end something, perhaps because we just don’t like to think about it when we‘re in the middle of whatever it is. The result is most often boring, routine. Hardly artistic.

“Thanks for the 35 years, Joe. Hope your 401k holds up.”

“I, uh, think maybe we should spend a little less time together.”

“He died in his sleep. He was 77.”

Unremarkable.

In truth, just as we give little thought to how to end our own things, we seldom notice other people’s endings, except when someone gets it unmistakably right (“Casablanca,” Johnny Carson or “The Usual Suspects”), or painfully wrong (“The Sopranos,” Joe Louis or Brett Favre).

Take Kim and Kris Kardashian. I mean, uh, Humphries. Or rather, Kim Kardashian and Kris “What the Heck Happened to My Life” Humphries. After a mere 72 days of marriage, the TV reality star announced her marriage to the pro basketball player was done.

“After careful consideration,” she said in a prepared statement, “I have decided to end my marriage. I hope everyone understands this was not an easy decision. I had hoped this marriage was forever but sometimes things don’t work out as planned. We remain friends and wish each other the best.”

Careful consideration? Sometimes things don’t work out? 72 days? That’s quick even for Liz and Zsa Zsa, although well off Britney’s record.

Humphries says he was “blindsided” and found out about it from a TV show. Either this was the worst example of how to end a marriage or the cleverest ploy to juice the ratings for a TV show. Or, as I suspect, both.

Humphries, an oak tree of a rebounder for the New Jersey, soon-to-be-Brooklyn, Nets, comes off looking like a grade A schlemiel in this. He bought her a ring for $2 million, is a free agent in a sport whose owners have locked out the players and he may not see a paycheck for a year, and, well, he apparently never really got the whole Kardashian created-for-TV family empire.

When nothing is too personal, too sensitive or too intimate to share with millions of strangers, then someone is bound to get hurt. Kardashian has had a sex tape posted on the web and had her famous behind X-rayed to prove it was not enhanced. (“Mom, Dad, you know Kim …”) Her stepfather, former Olympic star Bruce Jenner, has had his face remodeled beyond recognition to blend in. The wedding, every bit of it shown on TV, cost $10 million, but some reports say the family made a profit on it from all the media deals.

And, of course, they had a pre-nup.

Kardashian filed for divorce Oct. 31, citing “irreconcilable differences.” Considering that Humphries is two feet taller than her, that should have been obvious from the start. Even so, it would have been nice — dare I say, decent — if, before telling the Twitter world about the divorce, Kim had given Kris the news face-to-face (sitting down), without any cameras. But then, that would not have been the Kardashian way.

On the other hand, there is the Tony La Russa way of saying goodbye. Aces all around for the St. Louis Cardinals’ longtime manager, who guided his team through a remarkable end of season comeback that put them in the World Series and saw them winning it thanks to more remarkable comebacks. No sooner had the cheering and champagne ceased in America’s heartland, than La Russa announced he was retiring. Bam! On top. Winner of his third World Series as a manager. Sayonara, baseball.

He wasn‘t sticking around to hear any more criticisms of his sometimes odd moves in the series. No more reading about his control freak nature in dealing with pitchers. No more having to put up with reporters who want to ask annoying questions after every game. Pack my bags, I’m bound for Cooperstown.

And so he is and, control freak that he really is, he did it on his own terms. You gotta give him credit for that.

But for sheer genius, the award for the classiest ending in recent weeks has to go to the certified genius who left us far too soon, Steve Jobs. The man behind the Apple empire and all it has spawned, died of cancer last month at 56. In a eulogy delivered during a memorial service, his sister revealed Jobs’ final words: “Wow. Oh wow. Oh wow!”

Move over “Rosebud.” We have a new winner.

bob@zestoforange.com

John Huntsman

By Bob Gaydos

While seven of the usual suspects were in Las Vegas engaged in an all-out food fight centering around Mitt Romney, the only Republican presidential candidate who doesn’t come off as a cartoon of him or her self was in New Hampshire appealing to the reasonableness of the voters of the Granite State.

Poor Jon Huntsman. His campaign is just about out of money. He is polling about 7 percent among potential Republican voters. And yet he insists on trying to run a campaign grounded in what most people would regard as reality. He doesn’t stand a chance, not in the Mad Hatter tea party that is today’s GOP.

Huntsman was really in trouble from day one of his campaign and the fact that he is a Mormon was the least of his intra-party challenges. A staunch right-to-life, pro-gun, fiscally conservative former governor of Utah, Huntsman has also been an outspoken opponent of the war in Afghanistan, favors civil unions for same-sex couples, almost enacted a mandated health care plan in Utah and believes scientists who say the earth is heating up and that it is a problem.

Recognizing that some of those positions differ from some of the louder elements of his party, Huntsman nevertheless threw his hat in the ring, saying, “It’s OK — you’ve got to be who you are and march forward. Some people will like it. And I believe that in the end people will look at the totality of what it is you stand for, the totality of what you’ve done, and then make an informed decision.”

Yeah, well, sorry about that, Jon. That reasonable-sounding approach to campaigning is probably Huntsman’s most serious disconnect from the reality of Republican politics today. If you do not adopt the orthodoxy of the outspoken, pro-religion, anti-government extreme right wing GOP minority these days, you do not get their primary support — be it votes or dollars. It has led front-runner Mitt Romney, another Mormon former governor, to come across as a hypocrite. Romney has reversed his position on every possible issue since becoming a candidate — and a wooden one at that.

It’s what happened to John McCain in 2008 when he captured the GOP nomination. Huntsman was one of McCain’s national campaign chairmen, so he saw how swallowing one’s principles is the key to success in the modern GOP. Yet there was Huntsman in New Hampshire Tuesday telling a Washington Post writer, “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

We’ll leave that for Rick Santorum, Jon.

Huntsman’s boycott of the Las Vegas debate — a statement about Nevada’s jumping in line ahead of the traditional first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary — was accompanied by another moderate-sounding broadside in the Wall Street Journal.

In an opinion page article, Huntsman said President Barack Obama’s Wall Street reforms did not solve the problem of “too-big-to-fail” banks. Noting that, three years after the financial crisis, “the six largest American financial institutions are significantly bigger than they were before the crisis,” he said imposing a tax on these large institutions would be one way to lower the risk of a future bailout by taxpayers.

Well of course it would, Jon. That’s why the rest of your Republican would-be presidents oppose it. But I bet you’d get a warmer reception for the idea with the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

That’s Huntsman’s problem. He can see when the emperor is naked and can’t stop himself from saying so. That, and the fact that he actually worked for Obama as ambassador to China.

This, too, is regarded as a negative in some Republican circles — the fact that he was deemed qualified to handle one of the key U.S. diplomatic postings of the 21st century, by a president of the opposing party. Yet a pizza huckster with no government or foreign policy experience ranks among the leaders in the GOP primary polls based largely on a campaign that sounds like a TV ad: 999. One large pie with two toppings. Pickup only.

Huntsman says he hopes to convince the traditionally independent voters of New Hampshire to accept his reasonable brand of conservatism — the way they did for McCain in 2000 — then carry that victory to triumph in South Carolina.

Here again, I think Huntsman has lost touch with reality. If I’m one of the other seven candidates — say Rick Perry — I’m digging out Huntsman’s answer to a question at a GOP debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California on Sept. 7:

“Q: You have said the party is in danger of becoming anti-science. Who on this stage is anti-science?

“A: Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I’m saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can’t run from science. We can’t run from mainstream conservative philosophy. We’ve got to win voters; to reach out and bring in independents.”

Yeah, that’ll play well with the Bob Jones University crowd.

bob@zestoforange.com

Mitt Romney, GOP's default favorite flavor

By Bob Gaydos

Don’t look now, but the flavor of the week for all those frustrated, angry, eager-for-change Republicans is … vanilla.

Not cherry vanilla or even vanilla bean. And no, sorry Mr. Cain, despite all the high-profile attention you’ve been getting from the media of late, not “black walnut with substance.” Plain old vanilla, aka Mitt Romney, is looking more and more like what he has acted like from the beginning of the tortuous Republican presidential primary process — the eventual GOP nominee.

That won’t be because he has captured the imagination of the party faithful (whoever they may be), but because none of the other colorful, imaginative GOP candidates has offered anything close to a resume that screams. “Pick me! I know how to do the job.”

The anyone-but-Romney crown within the GOP had a rough couple of weeks as two of their more prominent, colorful potential candidates both opted not to run. Chris Christie, the larger-than-life governor of New Jersey, who likes to beat up on teachers, has regularly insisted he was not a presidential candidate, but apparently felt obligated to consider the pleas to run one more time when all the vanilla-haters in the GOP begged him. Mr. Rocky Road said thanks, but no, once again.

And Sarah Palin, the hot fudge sundae who has been running away from political office ever since she was John McCain’s partner on the 2008 losing ticket, proved she is smarter than a lot of folks (me included) give her credit for, by saying she’s not running for president either. Clearly, it’s much easier to travel around the country on a spiffy bus, picking up hefty speaking fees than having to campaign for office, never mind actually governing that country.

On her way out, Palin tagged Cain (erroneously calling him “Herb,” not Herman) as the next flavor of the week because Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann, a make-up-your own-sundae candidate, had fallen out of favor when Texas Gov. Rick Perry jumped into the race. But Perry quickly went from being the favorite anti-Romney candidate to melted butter pecan after terrible debate performances. Apparently even Republicans have lost a taste for affable Texans who don’t know what they’re talking about.

That leaves Rick Santorum hanging around, even though almost nobody’s buying what he’s selling, along with Newt Gingrich, and no one’s going to buy any ice cream called Newt. And of course, Ron Paul, the Libertarian in Republican clothing, is still in the race. He’ll never drop out and could even get flavor of the week some time, but when he goes all soft-serve on the wars in Afghanistan and against drugs the GOP hardliners will go soft-serve on him. But mostly, it will be because they’re not sure what flavor he really is.

This, we are told, leaves Republicans with Cain and Romney. Republicans love colorful, tough-talking, no-nonsense businessmen who are convinced they know how to do what the “professional politicians” don’t. Ross Perot. Donald Trump. Steve Forbes. They made their fortunes in business (the latter two with the help of Daddy) and, by golly, they could do it in the White House, too. Or so they said.

But they couldn’t get the nomination because they couldn’t do what politicians have to do in order to succeed — understand the concerns of all the people and work with those who hold different views for the greater good. It is not just a matter of telling employees what to do in order to improve the bottom line. It is more a matter of improving all citizens’ bottom lines and, by the way, getting along with the rest of the world.

Perot ran as an independent, and a paranoid one at that. Trump was always just a TV act looking for ratings. Forbes proposed a flat tax on all Americans and said that would straighten out all our problems, not just the budget. He never got why that was unfair to those who were not born rich.

Cain has a version of this with his 9-9-9- plan. He also doesn’t understand why a 9 percent national sales tax on everyone disproportionately hurts those without a lot of money. Plus, it’s a tax, isn’t it? How is that Republican? He’s a black man who likes the up-by-your-own-bootstraps argument, which endears him to a lot of Republicans. Of course, he had parents who worked very hard to get him and his brother into college, where they could get the education to help them succeed. And for those who joke that President Obama (who never saw his father after age 10) never even delivered a pizza, Cain didn’t start at the bottom at Godfather’s Pizza; he came in as the boss and made it a success before selling it.

But Romney is also an incredibly successful businessman, who was also governor of Massachusetts and the guiding force behind the 2002 Winter Olympics in St. Lake City. He has had to deal with differing opinions and learn about compromising and raising revenues to keep things running. He even got a health plan passed for the good of all Massachusetts citizens. Unfortunately for him, these are seen as negatives by people who belong to one of the many vocal factions driving Republican politics these days, including the tea party folks. They dominate public debate and straw polls.

So Romney, who might really be more Neopolitan ice cream (vanilla, chocolate and strawberry), has stuck to plain vanilla until now so as not to seriously offend any of those factions and lose the nomination. (See: John McCain in 2008.) In return, they have accused him of being a member of a cult, because he is a Mormon, and two-faced, because he won’t absolutely, positively toe the line on not taxing the rich. At the Republican candidates debate Tuesday, Romney said, “I’m not worried about rich people. They are doing just fine.”

Geez, Mitt, that sounds almost vanilla bean. Or Democratic.

bob@zestoforange.com

Look! Up in the sky! Our ancestors.

By Bob Gaydos

So, you know about Nibiru, right? Planet X?

Why are you giving me a blank stare? Nibiru. Or maybe you prefer Elenin. C’mon, it’s this freaky big planet hiding behind the sun that’s supposed to crash into Earth in December of 2011 killing us all. It’s all over the Internet, man. Don’t you ever watch YouTube?

This thing is so big and so scary that NASA and Google have formed a conspiracy to hide the information from us. They don’t want us to know when the end of the world is coming because, well, that’s part of the conspiracy, too.

I can understand your confusion. I am embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t heard of Nibiru either until about a week ago when my son, Zack, and I were watching TV. Something, perhaps some power of suggestion implanted in him hundreds of years ago by aliens, compelled him to ask me: “You know about that, right? That planet that’s supposed to hit the Earth?”

“Uh, no. How do you know this?”

“It’s on YouTube.“

‘‘Oh. And how do you know it’s true?” (Force of habit.)

“There’s a black rectangle on GoogleSky where it’s supposed to be.”

“So it’s a conspiracy?”

“Uh huh.”

(Disclaimer for Zack: He is a very bright 17-year-old with a particularly sadistic sense of humor on occasion. He will go right for your weak spot. Ergo: “How do you know it’s true?” “It’s all over the Internet.”

Of course, it is. David Morrison, a planetary astronomer at NASA and senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute, estimates that there are 2 million websites discussing Nibiru. It has been the source of countless wasted hours as people either expanded the hoax or wasted precious time trying to convince believers it was nonsense.

For the life of me, after four-plus decades in journalism, I still don’t get people’s attraction for conspiracy theories, the wilder the better. One of my operating principles has always been that the more complex, outrageous the theory being proposed, the simpler the probable answer: It’s about money; it’s about sex; it’s about fear/ignorance. It’s B.S.

So, personally, I am inclined to accept NASA’s statement that there is no mysterious planet hurtling to Earth because they — or one of the millions of other humans who scan the night skies with really good telescopes would have seen it by now. And I accept Google’s explanation that the blank spot on its sky photo was the result of technical problems involving one of their many source for the data. I add credence to this explanation by also accepting the argument that, since GoogleSky is a picture of the actual sky, anyone could simply go outside, look through their telescope at the area in question and see what was there and take their own picture. Apparently no one has thought of doing this.

Simple, common sense explanations.

I also subscribe to the late Carl Sagan’s principle that “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary levels of evidence if they are to be believed.”

And the claims about Nibiru are nothing if not extraordinary. Still, I ventured relatively objectively into the Internet universe to research the subject until I stumbled on the origin of the Nibiru story.

In a nutshell: The doomsday scenario of collision with another planet was first described in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, a self-described “contactee.” She claims to be able to receive messages through an implant in her brain from aliens in the Zeta Reticuli star system. She says she was chosen to warn mankind of an impending planetary collision which would wipe out humanity in May 2003. Oh yeah, this catastrophe was supposed to happen eight years ago, but when it didn’t, the doomsday fans looked around and found the Mayan calendar prediction of a 2012 cataclysmic end. Convenient, no?

Lieder gave the planet the name “Planet X,” which astronomers traditionally reserve for planets yet undiscovered. She further attached it to a popular book, “The Twelfth Planet,” which pinned the Nibiru story on ancient Sumerians, who supposedly believed humans evolved on Nibiru and stopped briefly on Earth to colonize it.

At this point, I was becoming somewhat less objective. I found more support for the Nibiru theory on websites that also wrote about extraterrestrials, the Illuminati, mind control, Freemasons, the matrix, and other prophecies. The constant theme was that, despite its size, no one could see Nibiru — and thus prove its existence — because of a grand conspiracy by government and science (and apparently Google) to hide it from us, to what end I still cannot fathom.

I leave it to psychologists to explain why some people feel the need to create grand hoaxes and conspiracy theories and why so many more people feel the need to believe them. I suppose it makes life more interesting, but I’m a “keep it simple stupid” kind of guy. Plus — and this is just between you and me — I know the U.S. government has a massive, secret, anti-alien unit that will make toast of Nibiru. It’s under the Denver Airport. Zack saw it on YouTube.

bob@zestoforange.com

Rep. John Fleming

By Bob Gaydos

Poor John Fleming. He lives in Louisiana, generally regarded as one of the worst — if not the worst — state in which to live, yet he has been specifically targeted by President Obama as someone who should pay more taxes to the federal government. What’s a poor millionaire member of Congress to do?

Apparently what all conservative Republican politicians do today: Go on TV to rip Obama with absurd claims that only further serve to illustrate how far removed the Tea Party and its GOP sycophants are from reality.

Fleming appeared on MSNBC to criticize Obama’s jobs plan, which includes a provision for a higher tax rate for millionaires. That’s a concept that sits well as fair and just with a solid majority of Americans every time it is proposed. But the anti-tax party, which is what the Tea Party really is, will have none of it. When Fleming was asked why he shouldn’t pay more taxes on the $6.3 million he makes each year as a family physician, congressman and owner of several Subway and UPS franchises, he said: “My net income is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million… By the time I feed my family I have maybe $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations, buy more equipment.”

OK, you’re trying to figure out how he manages to feed his family on only $200,000 a year, right? And getting by on a mere $400,000 a year after everything is paid for? Every year? Seeing as this was not FOX News, the interviewer challenged him: “You do understand, congressman, that the average person out there who’s making maybe 40, 50, $60,000 out there, when they hear you only have $400,000 left over, it’s not exactly a sympathetic position. You understand that?”

“Class warfare has never created a job.” Fleming replied. “This is all about creating jobs, not about attacking people who make certain incomes. You know in this country, most people feel that being successful in their business is a virtue, not a vice, and once we begin to identify it as a vice, this country is going down.”

Poor successful John Fleming. Even if he believes what he says, you would think he would be smart enough to display some compassion for the majority of Americans who would be happy to have a mere $400,000 left over to play with at the end of their working careers, never mind each year. But maybe he’s not concerned with the average American, or those struggling to survive on the poverty level income of $22,000 a year for a family of four. He brags on his website: “I have never believed in the fallacy that the federal government can buy its way out of economic troubles through needless spending. For that reason, I am proud to oppose ‘stimulus‘ packages and endless corporate bailouts, which will do little but weaken the long term integrity of the American economy.”

Fleming, of course, argues that taxing wealthy business owners more makes it harder for them to create more jobs. It’s a rewrite of “trickle down.” Let us keep our money and we’ll create jobs. Except that they don’t. And Fleming ignores the fact that Obama wants to provide tax cuts for businesses that actually create jobs.

John Fleming is a family physician who owns businesses that employ about 500 people. He is in his second term in Congress. He has been a church deacon and Sunday school teacher. He and his wife have been married 33 years. They have four adult children and two grandchildren. I get this from his website. What I don’t get is how he can live such an apparently successful life and seem to be so unsympathetic to the lives of so many of his fellow Louisianans.

I mentioned Louisiana was at the bottom of the list of best states to live.* It is also 48th out of 50 in median household income, second in percent of people living below the poverty level, and next to last in an interesting category — next egg index. That means how much people have put away in savings, investments and other assets to live their lives. Like the $400,000 a year in “leftovers” Fleming complains about.

Since he’s a doctor, it should be noted that his state had the highest gonorrhea rate in the country and the second highest chlamydia rate and was dead last in the prevalence of poor mental health. Its health index, which measures a variety of factors, was the worst in the country. It also was second among states in firearms death rate and alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., Louisiana is next to last in percentage of residents with a high school diploma or higher and, not surprisingly, next to last in percentage of children under age 6 who are read to every day.

These are Fleming’s people. His constituents. I certainly don’t blame him for all of Louisiana’s ills. But I do fault him for seemingly being unsympathetic to the real life problems his neighbors face. Simply being automatically opposed to all tax increases, even when common sense and consensus say some are necessary, is not a viable management principle. It’s dumb and Republicans at some point are going to have to acknowledge it. But pleading poverty on top of that when you’re netting 400 grand a year (and feeding your family for 200 grand) is worse. It suggests you have no clue as to what real life is like for millions of Americans, or that you don’t care.

If you want to find class warfare, Mr. Congressman, go home to Louisiana and look around.

bob@zestoforange.com

* Data from statehealthfacts.org

The coyote came out of nowhere and disappeared into a corn field.

By Bob Gaydos

I saw a coyote the other day. Not on television, but about 150 feet in front of me. I was sitting in my car, having my morning coffee-and-newspaper fix (old habits) when I caught a glimpse of something moving on the road in front of me. The road is a quiet one that parallels a state highway on one side and a corn field on the other. No houses, businesses or other distractions. A rare hideaway in a suburbanized world.

That’s probably why the coyote sighting surprised me. The animal came out of nowhere — actually, it would have to have been from across the busy highway to my left — and moved purposefully across the road and into the corn field on my right. It took maybe 10 seconds, not long enough for me to realize what I was seeing and grab my camera from the backseat. So you’ll have to take my word for it.

The scraggly looking critter — and they are particularly ugly animals — disappeared into the corn and out of my life. I have since returned to the road for coffee and contemplation. But thus far no coyote. Not that I really expect a revisit. Then again, I never expected the first one.

At the same time, I have been thinking how remarkably unremarkable the brief event was — Hey, everybody’s seen a coyote around here — and yet how unremarkably remarkable it was — Really? Everybody’s seen a coyote around here?

I think it was just plain remarkable, though I haven’t figured out precisely why.

For starters, I guess, it gives me something a little offbeat to throw into conversations when I don’t feel like talking politics.

“Hey, Bob, what did you think of that Republican debate the other night?”

“Yeah, you know what? I saw a coyote the other day — middle of the morning, big as life, right in front of me, ugly as could be. Ran from the highway into the cornfield. Where the heck did he come from? How dangerous do you think he might be? How far do they travel? What are they doing down here anyway? Are they instinctual survivors? Do they eat cows? Can people shoot them legally?”

Good political questions all, turned masterfully into environmental musings.

The coyote sighting, plus my firsthand experience with the earthquake — sitting in my car again, in front of my home, listening to two idiots on a talk radio sports show discuss the Mets for some reason, when the car starts shaking back and forth like it’s in a Category 3 hurricane, then repeating the scenario a few seconds later — are godsends for future social chitchat. No harm, no foul, plenty of aww shucks.

But is that remarkable? Or just luck?

In any event, it got me thinking about the unpredictable encounters we have in our lives every day and how they affect us, or not. For example, I stopped in at QuickChek for my morning coffee recently and was struck by the sound of a loud, female voice engaged in earnest (although clearly not a business) conversation. This was over the sound of the piped in music and usual hum of store business. Scanning quickly, I spotted the culprit, in a far corner, cell phone to ear, oblivious to her decibel level and intrusion into other people’s lives. I later spotted her on line, still talking into her cell phone and cradling two half-gallon-size fountain drinks in her arms. I may have said a prayer of gratitude that I didn’t know her.

On the other hand, a few days before Madame Megaphone and the coyote, I was starting my coffee routine at QuickChek when I noticed a gentleman of a certain age — you know, mature — swaying and bobbing in perfect step to the piped-in music as he added sugar to his coffee. He was smiling too, broadly, and I swear he was humming.

“You’re having a better morning than I am,” I volunteered.

“He woke me up this morning,” came the happy reply.

Say what you want about the value of living life with a positive attitude, people do not often invoke Him in public — certainly not in a convenience store to strangers — in order to explain their joyous attitude. And this gentleman was indeed joyous. I’d said I felt cranky. My bones. He said I could talk to my bones and change that.

Remarkable.

He even let me go before him in line.

Total honesty: I had a much better day after that encounter and, like the coyote, I’ll probably never forget the joyous gentleman, although I do look for him in QuickChek every time I give them some of my money.

And if Madame Megaphone returns, as I fear she will, I will do my best to tune her out and tune in to the piped-in music. Let’s hope it’s upbeat. If you happen to see me there with a cup of coffee, humming with a dumb ass grin on my face, I’m probably having a good, if not joyous, day. I’ll be heading out to my road to catch up on the news and wait for the next coyote.

bob@zestoforange.com

Michele Bachmann and ... God

By Bob Gaydos

Good lord, does Michele Bachmann really believe that God is taking sides in the American presidential campaign? More to the point, does the Republican congresswoman from Minnesota expect us to believe that she knows which side God is on because she can interpret the messages He sends us in the form of catastrophic natural events?

It would appear so. The tea party darling, who has repeatedly demonstrated an appalling lack of knowledge of history or an understanding of science, has now offered American voters a glimpse of her evangelical Christian faith in which, apparently, God controls all natural events and directs them at certain people to deliver a message. Let the bodies fall where they may.

Speaking in Florida a few days ago, Bachmann said: “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”

So God punished the East Coast, home to those dreaded Democrats and liberals, with a rare earthquake and then a hurricane that killed 45 people and caused billions of dollars in damage because Democrats in Congress and the Democratic president would not go along with her views on how to fix the country’s financial problems?

Really? That’s all God has to worry about these days? Poverty and sickness and hunger and bigotry and religious fanaticism have all been dealt with, so let’s balance America’s budget? This is frightening on so many levels, even for Bachmann and, I might add, an insult to God.

Of course, Bachmann, as is her wont (and her habit) reacted to criticism of her comment by having an aide say it was only a joke. Oh, OK. Hear that Vermont? She was only kidding. You farmers who lost all your crops and you people whose homes were made unlivable, stop griping. Can’t you take a joke?

The thing with Bachmann is that she always has to backtrack on some dumb statement and always excuses it in an offhand manner as a meaningless misstatement or a joke. Which means she’s either dangerously clueless or — the really dangerous option — absolutely convinced that anything she believes is right and true and those who disagree with her are wrong and false. And, one may then assume, deserving of a vengeful God’s wrath until they are converted.

But she’s even got this God thing wrong. Disclaimer: I do not believe, as did the Greeks and Romans, that God, or the gods, are sitting around controlling natural events to reward or punish humans. But if one did believe this, then it would appear that conservative Republicans in the Deep South and Midwest, home of many fundamentalist religious zealots who support Bachmann and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have not been heeding God’s messages.

The worst natural disaster by far in America this year has been the record-setting drought that has engulfed 13 states, all but one in the South and Midwest. The states of Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina — homes to so many Republicans and true tea party believers — have suffered for months with no relief in sight. Worst of all is Texas, where Gov. Perry has tried to out-God Bachmann in his presidential campaign. The outlying drought state? Alaska. How ya doin’, Sarah?

There’s more. Sixty-two tornadoes devastated Alabama on April 27. From May 22 to May 22, central and Southern states were hit by 180 tornadoes, with 177 killed, 160 in Joplin, Mo. alone. Cost: $4.9 billion. In all this year, Midwest and Southeastern states have been hit by about 750 tornadoes, causing more than 500 deaths and $16 billion in damage. There was also a hail storm that a did a billion dollars in damage in Oklahoma. God must have been really ticked at those Okies over something, no?

So, wasn’t anybody in these states listening to God when he told them to compromise on the debt crisis? Or was He telling them to take global warming seriously? I have to admit that, apparently along with Bachmann, I didn’t catch His meaning in these instances, but I did notice that all those states readily accepted help from the federal government to deal with the destruction of the natural disasters.

Actually, let’s keep this simple. If Michele Bachmann truly believes that God is punishing Democrats with lethal natural disasters for not agreeing with her on the budget, she hasn’t got the brains to be president. If she thinks this is a joking matter, she hasn’t got the heart.

bob@zestoforange.com

George Pataki

By Bob Gaydos

So George Pataki is thinking about running for president. So what’s new?

The former New York governor has flirted with making a presidential run a couple of times in the past, only to bow to the inevitable arguments against him: much of the country doesn’t know who he is, other candidates have raised a lot more money than he could hope to raise and, oh yeah, he is a traditional Republican from the Northeast, with traditional Republican values, in a party that not only doesn’t share those values anymore, it has become downright hostile to anyone who holds them and claims to be a Republican.

They even came up with an acronym for such Republicans: RINOs. That stands for Republicans in Name Only. Pataki ranked 6th among RINOs in a recent listing, not encouraging in an era when RINOs are a threatened species outside of the North. Today, the Republican Party is dominated by dinosaurs, which as any schoolchild knows, were put on this planet by God to provide food for Adam and Eve. Just ask Rick Perry.

Perry is the current governor of Texas, which gives him more current name recognition than Pataki. Texas’ ranking dead last among states in adults with a high school diploma gives Perry further cache with the people calling the shots today in the GOP — the ladies who come to tea.

That would be Michele Bachmann, congresswoman from Minnesota and Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, former Republican vice presidential candidate, current barnstorming media star and, still, potential presidential candidate. The two women have captured the heart and mind of the Republican Party, such as they are. In the process they have made regard for the facts and respect for science and history irrelevant within party ranks by playing shamelessly to the fears and resentments of many of their constituents.

They have frightened grownups out of the party — or at least out of decision-making roles — and, bolstered by shameless media exploitation by Fox News and other outlets, made the Republican Party home to nay-sayers, whiners, quasi-patriots, demagogues and hundreds of elected officials who have sacrificed their principles — their souls — to appease the loud rabble so they won’t come after them. This is today’s version of the late Lee Atwater’s GOP Big Tent: It’s a lot smaller and you need to pass a loyalty test to get in.

In sum, it is not Pataki’s party’s finest hour. Which prompts me to offer a modest proposal: If he really wants to run for president, why not run as a Democrat?

Yes, he spouts the traditional Republican line about no taxes and less government, but he was governor for 12 years and he knows the truth. Executives find ways to raise revenue, whatever they may call it, and they recognize that compromise at some point becomes necessary to, well, govern.

Neither principle is accepted philosophy in today’s GOP. It’s not because the longtime office holders in Congress and elsewhere don’t recognize their validity, but rather because they have been scared off by the tea partiers, some of whom seem to think they are living in Egypt or Libya and need to overthrow a government that has brutalized them.

Pataki, who has been touring the country under the auspices of a non-profit group he formed — No American Debt — says he hasn’t heard any of the many Republican candidates “offer specific solutions” to getting rid of the national debt and the deficit. Quite true. Nay-sayers can only say nay. They do not offer solutions. (A lot of Americans have apparently caught on to this tendency of the tea partiers and blame them and Republicans they hang out with in Congress more for the recent debt fiasco than they do Democrats.)

But Pataki’s problems with Republicans is social, not financial. He is a pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-union, pro-government involvement, pro gay rights, pro-environment kind of guy. In other words, a Democrat, insofar as conservative Republicans — which is redundant, if you ask me — are concerned.

If he’s really serious and not just lonely for attention like Rudy Giuliani seemed to be in the last GOP presidential primary chase, Pataki should consider challenging President Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination and hope to gain the support of more conservative Democratic Party members and the thousands of independents looking for someone with moderate political views and a healthy does of leadership capability.

That may or may not be Pataki, who certainly can‘t match Obama in the charisma or oratorical competitions. But Perry and Bachmann rely a great deal on personal charm for their success as well. Yes, they are vulnerable on the “That’s Just Flat Out Not True” scale, but the only Republican who tried to go there against Bachmann — former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty — dropped out of the race after doing poorly in a hoked-up straw poll in Iowa. He and Pataki are about equal on the charisma scale.

In short, there is no evidence as yet that Republicans are ready and willing to listen to — and support — candidates who do not live in an alternative universe, one where government never taxes anyone but the middle class and RINOs are fair game for anyone with a gun, which, by law, of course, is everyone.

bob@zestoforange.com