June 19, 2006
Early Sunday Musings on Father’s Day 2006
Well, obviously I don’t have any idea what the start of the day looks like where you are, but, Oh Boy! Oh Boy!, we’ve got a five-star perfect Lowcountry beauty shining up today.
Thus, all my well-intentioned plans for personal dignity, self-reflection and professional effort and improvement are being jettisoned as I type. Case Reports, file reviews, office work, yard work, and church (Ouch!) seem to be just over the horizon, harder and harder to get to, in direct proportion to the angle of the morning sun’s rays glinting in the trees outside my den window.
As a matter of fact, that ship just sailed and sank.
On the other hand, bike riding, neighborhood strolling, Heels versus Tigers in College World Series, U.S. Open Golf, Mavericks versus Heat hoops watching, grilling burgers, book, magazine, newspaper reading, couch laying, (Yes, Mother, I know: “Chickens Lay, People Lie...” Blah, Blah, Blah ;) and general yawning and scratching are now prominent features in my quest for a balanced, fulfilling, relaxing day.
Hell, boys and girls, it’s Fathers’ Day. I may get a bar of soap, a belt, a tie, a book, a 55 gallon drum of “smellum”. The possibilities for mild hedonism are endless.
So a few musings as the coffee kicks in.
First, Three Questions:
1) Did you know that the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations and Institute for Health Care Improvement announced last week that their national campaign to reduce lethal health care/medical ERRORS has, over the last 18 months, saved about 122,300!!!! lives here in the good old USA?
2) Does that mean BEFORE the implementation of the campaign’s six primary measures by 3/4s of the nations hospitals ( Has your hopsital signed up and on? Better be asking, don’t you think?), our beloved medical crowd was screwing up and killing tens of thousands people each year? Think about it.
3) Do you think those creepy, Filthy McNasty plaintiff’s lawyers out there had anything to do with these efforts and changes being put into place? (Count me in.) Hmmmmm....In typical American style, and to quote Huey “The Kingfish” Long, “the squeaky wheel do get the grease!”
And while I’m on the Proud-and-Pompous, Aw Shucks Crowd, let me spend some time on this conundrum.
If Mark (“mark down”) Sanford, the Gub’nah of us all here in SoCar isn’t angling for a national run at VP or something higher (Mental picture: ‘John Edwards Right’ with tighter hair), I’ll kiss your fanny at high noon in the middle of Charleston’s King Street with Dick Cheney holding the shotgun on you.
(Come to think of it, anyone heard from Dick the Veep lately? Are we where at the same point as when President Warren Harding passed away? Someone told Alice Roosevelt Longworth that Harding had died. She responded, “How could you know?”)
Instead of using the Line Item Veto powers Sanford so aggressively sought and properly received a few years ago to cut and prune, he dumped the entire budget approved by our heavily Republican legislature. That august body, growing sicker by the day of his grandstanding, in less than an hour overrode his veto by a margin similar to Ali pummeling Patterson.
The “Gub” is trying mightily to set himself apart from that newly-crawled-out-of-the-entitlement swamp of spend and spend Repubs so when the call comes for the telegenic, easy on the eyes, new Southern ticket gluer, he’ll be in the first pew of candidates. Bet he showers singing, “McCain Sanford McCain Sanford, sounds so good to me...”
MarkyMark’s options are so very limited. After his stunt in Columbia lugging squealing, pooping piglets hither and yon, literally and figuratively (the boy’s into the ‘different’ kind of gesture, aint he?), there is no next time out room for a newbie in South Carolina’s US Senate seats: Graham and DeMint are popular, entrenched and young.
Sanford aint going back the US House and sleep on that damned air mattress in his office again (Can you say, “Showboater”? Of course you can. Do we see a trend here?)
So what’s left? Private sector? A 9 to 5 job, pulling a check? Harvard Think Tank, Visiting prof gig somewhere? Doubtful. Mark gets restless. Easy and Quick. So does Mrs. Mark.
He needs and wants a Gub’ment sinecure, the bigger the better.
Truth be told, he’s a public trough junkie wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and a Ben Silver tie.
One problem. One BIG Problem. He isn’t very popular anymore and his faithful minions are no more in love with him than Bill is with Hilary. Tommy Moore just may knock him off come November.
Right now, I’m calling it a dead heat coming down the stretch in October.
Ooooh, this one’s going to be fun! Watch this space for further developments.
So, I’m off to call my wonderful Daddy and thank him for putting up with me for all these years, off to hug my wonderful girls and write my wonderful son, off to talk a walk with my wonderful wife, off to pull for my beloved Heels, off to think about the next set of gasbags to stick a pin in.
What a wonderful life! Y’all get out there and have a day too.
EVFG
