Mindful Digressions

Under pressure

I need a minute of your time. I’m going to tell you more about blood pressure than you probably ever wanted or needed to know. Assuming, that is, that you’re not a doctor, a nurse, a home-health aid, or a hypochondriac. But it’s a necessary introduction to put the rest of this post in context. So stay with me, okay?

Blood pressure is the measurement of the force against the walls of your arteries as your heart pumps blood through your body. The readings are usually given as two numbers, such as 120 over 80 (120/80). The top number, systolic blood pressure, measures the amount of pressure that blood exerts on vessels while the heart is beating. The bottom number, diastolic blood pressure, measures the pressure in your vessels between heartbeats.

If your blood pressure is too high, you suffer from hypertension, which is defined by readings of 140/90 or higher. Hypertension, if uncontrolled, increases your risk of serious health problems, including heart attack and stroke. If your blood pressure is too low, say 90/60, you've got hypotension, which can cause symptoms such as dizziness and fainting. 

Hey, are you still with me? Wake up!

During my annual physical exam last month, my doctor checked my blood pressure; it was 140/92. Now I’m not someone who gets all worked up about this sort of stuff. My total cholesterol is higher than it ought to be, while my “good” cholesterol is below, and my “bad” cholesterol is way above, the recommended levels. Even so, my attitude has always been that it is what it is. And, of course, I blame my parents.

But blood pressure has historically been the one medical diagnostic test that I have passed with flying colors. Just a few years ago, it was 110/72, an excellent reading. The results of this latest check, though, indicates that I am standing at the precipice of hypertension.

My doctor expressed concern about this unexpectedly high reading. “I don’t think we need to prescribe a high blood pressure medication just yet,” he said. “Diet and exercise are the preferred course of action.”

Oh man, I am totally screwed. The truth is that I live a relatively sedentary life. My typical exercise routine consists of scaling the 19 steps from the kitchen to my home office five or six times a day. And while my wife prepares healthy meals for the two of us, I am never one to turn away from between meal sweet or salty snacks or from that third or fourth cup of coffee.

And I loves me my burgers and fries.

When I got home and I told my wife about my blood pressure results and that the doctor wanted to see me again in four months to take another reading, she said, “That’s ridiculous. You don’t need to see the doctor again just to get your blood pressure taken.”

Then she muttered something under her breath about my “questionable” decision late last year to enroll us in a high deductible health plan.

Determined to mitigate the need for me to go back to the doctor just to get another blood pressure test, the full cost of which office visit and test would be applied to the incredibly high deductible of my high deductible health plan, and, therefore, borne by me, she sat herself down in front of her computer and proceeded to spend the next several hours scouring the internet to find the perfect home blood pressure monitor.

Ultimately, she ordered an Omron monitor from Heart Rate Monitors, and it arrived about a week and a half ago. It’s an incredibly easy to use device. You simply wrap the inflatable cuff, which is attached to the base via a 36-inch air hose-like thing, around your upper arm and press “START” on the device. The cuff quickly inflates and then slowly deflates, taking readings along the way.

I have started to take blood pressure readings each morning while sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper, and enjoying my first cup of coffee. Unfortunately, some of the articles I read, especially those of a political nature, cause my blood pressure to go up a few points. Damn those Republicans!

So far, though, my daily blood pressure readings have been significantly better than what they were at my doctor’s office last month. In fact, most of the time they come out at 120/80 or better! And on Mother’s Day, as shown on the actual reading on the left, it was 106/72!  Booyah!

It's a like a friggin’ miracle. My hypertension has been cured! I think I'll go out and celebrate my restored good health with a nice, thick, juicy, rare steak with a side of delicious french fries. Hold the green stuff.

Oh yeah...and some tiramisu for dessert!

Phenomenon

A phenomenon, according to dictionary.com, is “something that is impressive or extraordinary.” Well, something really “impressive or extraordinary” seems to be happening to my blog.

I’ve mentioned several times in past posts that my blog doesn’t have much of a following. In fact, according to the statistics provided by TypePad, my blog hosting service, this modest little blog of mine goes mostly unnoticed.

Since I started this blog in July 2009, it has averaged barely nine page views per day, and I personally account for at least half that number because I am, unabashedly, my blog’s biggest fan.

Just last month, though, my blog averaged 21.6 page views per day, peaking at 66 on April 22nd. But this bump in traffic has a perfectly rational explanation. My recently retired and moderately Republican brother-in-law, who moved to Florida last year, just “discovered” my blog and has been commenting on some of my politically provocative posts. Thanks for singlehandedly driving up my page views, Larry.

What's a page view?

The concept of page views is very important to bloggers. As the standard unit used to measure website traffic, it’s an indicator of a blog’s popularity. Each time a webpage is viewed, it counts as one page view. The more traffic a blog generates, the more page views it gets. The more page views it gets, the more commercially “successful” it has the potential to be.

That’s because blog sites that generate a lot of page views...and by “a lot” I mean hundreds, if not thousands, a day...may attract corporate sponsors that are willing to pay high traffic bloggers to put links to their corporate sites on their blogs. Then, for each person who goes to the blog and clicks through to the sponsor’s website, the blogger is compensated. Cha-ching!

I’ve been eagerly waiting to hear from a potential corporate sponsor so that I can retire without having to resort to applying for a job as a Walmart greeter. But, honestly, with an average of fewer than 10 page views per day, half of which are me viewing my own literary handiwork, that’s not likely to happen. Welcome to Walmart.

Up Up and Away!

Okay, now you know what page views are and why they are important, so it’s time to get back to the phenomenon that is the subject of this post. Over the past four days, the number of page views on my blog has inexplicably skyrocketed. On Friday, May 4th, my blog received 12 page views, which is just slightly above average.

But on Saturday my blog got 273 page views! That’s around 30 times the number of page views my blog usually gets. On Sunday, there were 358 page views. Holy shit! Yesterday there were 255 page views and, as of late this afternoon, there have been 87 more page views...and counting!

The mystery in this unexplainable spike in page views is that almost all came from a September 2010 posting. It’s about a bogus print ad for a fake Breyer’s ice cream flavor. What’s disconcerting to me is that I have no clue why, more than a year and a half after it was originally posted, that particular posting is suddenly drawing a crowd.

But the good news is that, with all these page views, all I have to do now is sit by my phone and wait for some deep-pocketed corporation to call me up and offer to sponsor my blog and pay me lots of money.

Waiting...

Waiting...

Waiting...

Social Insecurity

At some point every year, usually in the fall, I get a raise. More on that later. First, though, one week ago tonight, my wife and I attended a Lewis Black performance at the Hanover Theatre in Worcester.

In case you’ve never heard of Lewis Black is, he’s a stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic, and occasional guest commentator on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He is known for his acerbic comedy style, which typically involves angry rants ridiculing history, politics, religion, and contemporary cultural trends.

One of Black’s many tirades during his show last week was about Social Security. He talked about the how program is rapidly heading toward insolvency, something that should have concerned the baby boomer-heavy audience.

Black mentioned the Social Security wage cap and asked how many in the audience were aware that there was such a thing. After a feeble smattering of applause, Black, his arms flailing about wildly and spittle escaping from his mouth, screamed, “2,000 people in this theater and only nine of you are aware that there is a wage cap on Social Security tax withholding! Son of a bitch!”

That brings me back to that yearly raise I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Okay, technically it’s not so much a raise as it is an ever-so-slight bump in my take-home pay that I receive late each year thanks to this Social Security wage cap Black was referring to.

And by “ever-so-slight bump,” it’s perhaps just enough to fund an extra dinner out with my wife each week for the remainder of the year. Hell yes, I’m doing my part to stimulate the economic recovery.

My point is that I was one of those nine people in the audience who actually knew about the wage cap! Woo-hoo!

Here’s how it works. For 2012, the Social Security wage cap is set at $110,100, up from the $106,800 cap for the past three years. The tax rate, at 4.2% of taxable earnings, was reduced from last year’s 6.2% rate because...hold on to your hats, boys and girls...Congress actually passed some legislation. In this case, Congress enacted the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Woo-hoo!

My employer also benefits once I reach that amount of taxable earnings because it, too, can stop paying Social Security taxes on my behalf. And the employer tax rate, currently set at 6.2%, is even higher than mine.

It’s a “win-win” 

Once I reach this wage cap, I get more in my take-home pay and my employer gets to stop paying Social Security taxes on my behalf. Woo-hoo! Everyone wins, right?

Well, everyone except future retirees, that is. Social Security is now paying out more than it takes in. The huge demographic bubble of baby boomer retirees is taking its toll on Social Security, as is the continuing weak economy and the partisan political gridlock that is obstructing Congress from taking actions to fix the huge retirement and disability program.

The funds for Social Security currently have a surplus, but the money will begin to dry up as outlays continue to exceed revenues, ultimately leading to the program’s insolvency, which most estimates suggest will happen by 2036 or 2037.

What, me worry? I will probably be ashes by then. But now, According to the Associated Press, at the current rate, the trust funds that support Social Security will run dry in 2033, three to four years earlier than previously projected.

What the hell, I’ll be dead by then, too.

To me, the answer is simple. Eliminate, or at least increase, the Social Security wage cap. After all, Census Bureau data from the most recently available American Community Survey found that less than 6 percent of workers would be affected if the Social Security cap were eliminated entirely.

And, according to some estimates, scrapping the Social Security wage-base cap so that all earnings are subject to the payroll tax would eliminate the program’s entire projected 75-year funding gap, or come very close to doing so.

This is a no-brainer, right? Only those who earn more than $110,100 a year will be affected and, for them, it will mean, perhaps, one less dinner out per week for a few months during the year. No big deal.

Friggin’ socialism

Unfortunately, eliminating or increasing the Social Security wage cap would be viewed by Republicans as something each and every one has literally pledged to figuratively fight to the death: a tax increase levied against the rich; the, you know, the job creators. And any kind of tax increase that burdens those whose annual earnings exceed $110,100 (mostly Republicans, that is) is abhorrent.

What? You liberals want hard-working American job creators earning over $110k a year to pay a few extra bucks each week to keep Social Security going so that the lazy, ignorant masses who haven’t saved enough for their retirement don’t have to eat dog food to survive their golden years? That’s friggin’ socialism!

Conservatives would rather dismantle Medicare and privatize Social Security than dare to eliminate or even raise the Social Security wage-base in order to ensure the solvency of the program beyond 20 years from now.

Sheesh, haven’t the rich suffered enough?

It's a game of inches

In my last post, I reported that, in preparation for the Republican National Convention this coming August, the city of Tampa, Florida would be banning, among other dangerous items, “string longer than six inches” in what it refers to as the “Clean Zone” in the downtown area.

It turns out that I passed along incorrect information and, in the interest of journalistic integrity, I am duty bound to publish a correction. However, in my own defense, I merely reported the facts that were published in the press. And as everyone knows, if you read it in the newspaper, it has to be true. So once again, we return to the press to get to the truth.

The Tampa Bay Times reported that city officials actually intended to ban string longer than six feet, not six inches. The confusion stemmed from a human error. Apparently some city worker “mixed up the symbols for inches and feet, and it took several conversations to straighten things out.”

Look at the graphic on the left. It shows the universal symbols for feet and inches. It’s no wonder that some Tampa city worker was confused by the meaning of these somewhat esoteric symbols. Does it make sense that a single quotation mark (or the symbol for apostrophe) should mean the longer measure of length and a double quotation mark should mean a shorter measure of length? Of course not. That’s totally backwards.

Double quotation marks are two times longer than single ones. Feet are twelve times longer than inches. Therefore, common sense would dictate that a single quotation mark should reflect the shorter measure (inches), while a double quotation mark should reflect the longer measure (feet). Clearly, something has to be done to right this wrong.

Floridians, it’s time to mobilize. You need to take the initiative in a drive to reverse these symbols so that they more appropriately represent the measure of distance or length commensurate with their own length. Create petitions demanding that the two symbols be reversed. Solicit your friends and neighbors to sign your petitions.

And if you happen to be collecting signatures in a gated community, make sure you’re not wearing a hoodie.

Write to your state legislators, your senators, and your congressman. Appeal to the governor. Let all of them know that Floridians are confounded and angered by these ill-conceived, arcane symbols that would lead many city workers to confuse their meaning.

No doubt, in his quest to win the important Florida vote this November, presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney would embrace this symbolic flip-flop.

Alternative, Floridians, you may wish to invest more in education for your children and review your hiring practices for city workers.

You don't know who's packing

Here’s a question for you. Where can you carry a concealed firearm but are forbidden from having a squirt gun? The answer is the city of Tampa, Florida during the Republican National Convention that will be held there this coming August.

I’ve always thought that Florida, its flaccid phallic shape notwithstanding, is a strange state. But having read about how the state is getting ready to host this summer’s GOP nominating convention in Tampa, I am more convinced now than ever that Floridians are suffering from serious overexposure to the tropical sun.

According to an article in the Tampa Bay Times, Tampa has proposed temporary guidelines for items to be banned from the streets of the city during the convention. The ban includes such seemingly innocuous items as squirt guns, light bulbs, string, ice chests, and thermoses.

Yes, Tampa is banning ice chests and thermoses in August, which happens to be the hottest month of the year in that city. No ice chests or thermoses in August? Seriously?

The broad, citywide ban includes virtually anything that could potentially be used as a club, as well as water guns, super soakers, air pistols, and paint ball guns.

Explosives, switchblades, hatchets, slingshots, brass knuckles, Mace, chains, crowbars, hammers, and shovels are also banned. You know, typical items that most Floridians routinely carry around with them.

Anything containing urine, fecal matter, or other bodily fluid is prohibited in Tampa during the GOP National Convention, so for those Floridians with colostomy bags, you’d better get out of town in late August if you want to avoid being arrested and strip searched.

I wonder if babies with soiled diapers will also be banned from the city.

Tampa has also established what it calls a “Clean Zone” that covers the downtown area. In the Clean Zone, the ban would be expanded to prohibit ropes, straps, tape or string longer than 6 inches, glass containers, ceramic vessels, light bulbs, things that could be used as portable shields, and gas masks.

And finally, there will be a “Protest Zone” established, inside of which the ban would be expanded still further to prohibit aerosol cans, camping gear, coolers and ice chests, fireworks, lasers, bottles, cans, thermoses, sticks, poles, and ladders.

Even umbrellas with metal tips will not be permitted in the Protest Zone. By the way, for those who plan to go to Tampa to protest the GOP convention, August happens to be the wettest month of the year in Tampa. No umbrellas in August? Seriously?

Your NRA at work for you

What is missing from this lengthy list of banned items? Um, how about firearms?  Anyone who has a license to carry a concealed firearm in Florida can do so anywhere in the city, including in the Clean Zone and the Protest Zone. No squirt guns allowed, but real guns are just fine.

So while Tampa plans to ban a wide assortment of “weapons” or items that could possibly be used as weapons, such as ever-threatening ice chests and potentially lethal thermos bottles, it cannot prohibit guns carried by anyone with a concealed weapons permit.

This is because of a 2011 state law that precludes Florida cities and counties from enacting any laws regulating firearms or ammunition, yet another fine example of your National Rifle Association at work for you.

Undaunted, the mayor of Tampa is planning to reach out to the governor of Florida to seek help in keeping concealed firearms away from the protests. Good luck with that, Mayor Buckhorn. The governor has been very supportive of the pro-gun lobby and recently appointed his lieutenant governor, Jennifer Carroll, to head up a task force that is reviewing Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.

The lieutenant governor is reportedly a lifetime member of the NRA, which (surprise-surprise) helped pass the controversial law at the heart of the Trayvon Martin case. Can you spell conflict of interest? Not good odds, Mr. Mayor.

In a comment on my previous blog posting, my brother-in-law, who retired and moved to Florida last year, wrote, “All I know is that you don’t mess with Floridians or look at them the wrong way – you don’t know who’s packing down here.”

You betcha!

I'd like to give the world a gun...

Remember the 70s Coca-Cola commercial with the catchy jingle, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”?

 

Newt Gingrich has a slightly revised version that he proposed to a cheering audience at this year’s National Rifle Association convention a few weeks ago. Only Newt’s jingle would have gone, “I’d like to give the world a gun.”

Go ahead and sing along with Newt...and don’t forget to change the word from “Coke” to “gun.” Hey, it’s the real thing.

According to Gingrich, “the right to bear arms comes from our creator, not from our government.” You know, it is one of those God-given rights I referred to in my blog posting from March.

Of course, since he was speaking at an NRA convention, perhaps there was a bit of pandering to God and guns going on. Who knew that the old, bearded man somewhere up there in the clouds was a member of the NRA?

Newt referenced the Declaration of Independence in his assertion that the right to bear arms comes from God. The second paragraph of the Declaration reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I assume Newt must consider the right to own a gun to be one of those unalienable rights endowed upon us by our creator.

Perhaps Gingrich was inspired by the John Lennon song, “Happiness is a warm gun.” Can’t you imagine Newt in bed with his three wives, gently stroking his gun and singing:

Happiness is a warm gun / Happiness is a warm gun mama / When I hold you in my arms / And I feel my finger on your trigger / I know nobody can do me no harm

I invite you once again to sing along with Newt.

 

Newt also claims that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is “a right for all mankind,” not just for Americans. The Bill of Rights was not written only for Americans, he said. “It is a universal document.” No doubt our Founding Fathers were shocked and disappointed when King George didn’t embrace this “universal document” and apply it immediately to his British subjects. 

Of course it’s universal, Newt. After all, these rights are God-given, and should, therefore, be available to everyone...all God’s chillun...everywhere on the planet. You know, like all other rights in the U.S. Constitution are granted to all people, and not just to Americans.

Not only did Gingrich assert that the right to bear arms comes from God, he also chastised the NRA for being “too timid.” Should he be elected president of the United States, Gingrich would introduce a motion to the United Nations making the right to carry a gun “a human right for every person on the planet.”

“With your help,” Newt told the enraptured audience of 5,000 gun-toters, “I would like to...lead an effort across the planet to ensure that the right to bear arms becomes permanent and is a human right everywhere....”

What I find most interesting is not the idea that Newt wants to put guns in the hands of every human being around the world. After all, this is the same guy who, during one of the many debates among the GOP presidential wannabes, said, “By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American.” He added, “When 13,000 Americans are living on the moon, they can petition to become a state.”

No, what really amazes me is that Newt still considers himself to be a viable candidate for president, even if in his own mind. Give it up, Newt. You’re toast. Save yourself and everyone else a lot of embarrassment and crawl back into those primordial waters from whence you came.

Monkey business in Tennessee

We Americans are a funny lot. According to a Gallup poll conducted in late 2010, forty percent of Americans believe in strict creationism, including the belief that God created humans in their present form only about 10,000 years ago.

In another poll conducted by USA Today and Gallup, two thirds of Americans responded that they believe creationism is “definitely or probably” the best explanation for the origins of human life. But at the same time, 86% of Americans also believe that evolution is “definitely or probably” the best explanation. What this reveals is that most Americans don’t understand how to respond to poll questions. Either that or we are a nation of schizophrenics.

A Harris Interactive poll found that just as many Americans believe in ghosts as believe in evolution. Ghosts, for crissake! And more than one-third of Americans believe in UFOs. Seriously, ghosts and UFOs. I am not making this up!

A Pew Organization survey broke down the belief in evolution by religious affiliation. Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews are the most likely to believe in evolution, whereas Evangelicals, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and all Republican candidates for public office are least likely to accept Darwin’s theory as the explanation for the origin of human life.

Tennessee in 1925

Speaking about Darwin’s theory, the teaching of evolution was put on trial 87 years ago in Tennessee in the now infamous Scopes “Monkey Trial,” which opened the door for the teaching of the scientific theory of evolution over the religious theory of creationism.

Some say that the Monkey Trial contributed to the growing chasm between science and faith. Science won that round and for close to a century, evolution has prevailed over creationism as the accepted theory for the origin of the species.

Yet those who shun Darwin’s theories of natural selection and consider evolution to be an affront to the bible, to faith, and to religiosity have not been silently sitting around taking it on the chin for all these years. They have continued to practively advocate for their belief that evolution is nothing more than a flawed theory and has no more basis in fact than does creationism, which, by the way, has no basis in fact whatsoever.

This argument against decades of exhaustive scholarly research and overwhelming scientific evidence used to be made only by those on the far right religious fringe. More recently there has been an all-out assault on the science of evolution by Christian evangelicals and even some religious main-streamers. They believe that creationism needs to be taught right alongside of evolution in science classes, and have been very aggressive in promoting that position. They also believe in ghosts and UFOs.

Tennessee in 2012

In the latest round in the battle between science and religion, Tennessee has become the second state, joining Louisiana, to allow teachers to teach creationism as a viable alternative to evolution in science classes. The new Tennessee law, sometimes referred to as the “monkey law,” requires that teachers permit discussions of “alternative theories” to evolution and climate change in their classrooms.

The governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, commented that the legislation does not change the state’s scientific standards or school curriculum. He noted that on such “controversial subjects” as biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, the new law merely stipulates that “teachers cannot be barred from helping students understand the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories.”

Apparently the governor of Tennessee considers creationism to be a “scientific theory.” When, exactly, did the bible become a science textbook?

In the guise of “academic freedom,” those promoting the teaching of creationism want “all sides” of the origin of man to be taught in science classes. That means they want to teach their religious views of human life’s origins even though such views are not accepted science. They believe that students will benefit from what they call “critical analysis.”

But what exactly is “critical analysis”? I always thought it was based upon leveraging the scientific method of inquiry, which starts with observed facts, continues with gathering empirical and measurable evidence, and concludes with testable laws and explanatory theories supported by the facts and evidence. The scientific method uses inductive reasoning and it is intended to be as objective as possible in order to reduce biased interpretations of results.

Real critical analysis or inquiry does not start with a desired conclusion and then build a case to support that conclusion. Yet that is exactly what proponents of creationism are doing. They conclude that evolution alone cannot explain the origins of humanity, so they develop an argument to challenge it.

Since evolution can’t explain everything, their answer is to fill in the gaps with God, who must, therefore, have created human life from scratch, not from monkeys, around 10,000 years ago

Where is the empirical evidence to support this conclusion? Oh, right. It’s in the bible. Can I get a hallelujuah?

The Tennessee law basically paves the way for high school science classes in the state to engage in religious indoctrination, despite the 1987 Supreme Court decision, in Edwards v. Aguillard, making it illegal to do so.

Listen, I’m all for teaching creationism to your children if that’s what you and your religion believe. Teach it in your home, at church, at Sunday school, or even as part of your private, parochial school curriculum.  But creationism as the origin of the human species is religion, not science, so please keep it out of the science curriculum in our public schools.

The REAL reason to vote for Obama

Way back in my ninth grade civics class, I recall reading about the three branches of our country’s government, one of which was the judicial branch. At the time, I thought that the other two branches, the executive and the legislative, were where all the action was, and that the judicial branch was the least important or exciting. Silly me.

I remember learning all about Supreme Court of the United States, or SCROTUM, as it is often referred to. Oh wait! It’s SCOTUS, not SCROTUM. Silly me.

The primary role of a Supreme Court justice, I learned, is to interpret the U.S. Constitution, a document that was written 225 years ago. Its intent, believe it or not, is not always crystal clear. It’s up to the nine members of the Court to decide what the Constitution means and how it applies, or should apply, in contemporary America.

When the Supreme Court, the ultimate authority on what the law means in a nation defined by the rule of law, makes an interpretation, that becomes the law of the land, and all lower courts and citizens are required to abide by it.

My civics teacher taught us that the nine justices who sit on the Supreme Court are political appointees. Since they are appointed for life, the tenures of Supreme Court justices typically last far longer than those of the presidents who appointed them or the members of Congress who ratified their appointments.

Some argue that when the Founding Fathers framed the Constitution, they thought that these lifetime appointments, free from the pressures of periodic elections, would place the Supreme Court justices above the political fray. Thus, even though they are political appointees, their deliberations and decision-making would transcend the petty politics of the day.

Back in the day

There was a time when decisions by the Supreme Court seemed to serve the best interests of the nation, rather than the political ideologies of the presidents who appointed the justices. In Brown v. Board of Education, Chief Justice Earl Warren, fearing that a closely contested, divided decision would leave the country without a conclusive resolution that racial equality was the law of the land in America, worked diligently to structure a 9-0 decision.

Other landmark cases reflect situations in which justice seemed to prevail over pure politics. Take 1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut, in which, by a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court invalidated a law banning the use of contraceptives, even by married couples in their own bedrooms, on the grounds that it violated the “right to marital privacy.”

1973’s Roe v. Wade was another case involving the right to privacy. The case, which effectively legalized abortion in this country, is still one of the Court’s most controversial rulings. That, too, was a 7-2 decision, and the Court deemed that most laws against abortion violated a constitutional right to privacy.

That was then, this is now

Today’s Supreme Court has five justices appointed by Republican presidents (two by Reagan, two by the elder Bush, and two by the dumber...I mean younger...Bush). Four of the justices were appointed by Democratic presidents (two by Clinton and two by Obama).

Is it any wonder, given these politically radicalized times, that the Court seems to be coming up with a whole lot of 5-4 rulings exclusively along party lines?  Many of the Court’s most important decisions over the past decade have hinged on a single vote.

In December 2000, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stop the Florida recount of presidential votes, thus handing the presidency to George W. Bush. Ten years later, in another 5-4 decision along party lines, a bitterly divided Supreme Court held, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that government may not prohibit unions and corporations from making independent expenditure for political purposes.

In that case, the majority opined that the First Amendment protects both corporations and individuals equally. This essentially defined corporate “speech” to be the same as that of human beings, and paved the way for virtually unlimited political spending by corporations, unions, and special interests though the formation of what is now referred to as Super PACs.

Earlier this month, in yet another 5-4 vote strictly along ideological lines, the Supreme Court said that officials may strip search people arrested for “any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.”

For example, if you were to be pulled over for not stopping for pedestrians at a crosswalk, an offense I have occasionally committed, the five conservative Supreme Court justices are okay with allowing the police to strip search you and poke around in your bodily orifices. Really? I thought it was the conservatives who were opposed to the government inserting itself into the private lives (or private parts) of American citizens!

And in one of the most closely followed cases since the 2000 election decision, the Supreme Court heard arguments late last month concerning provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka, “Obamacare”). Is it even conceivable that the Supreme Court is not going to decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act by a vote of 5-4 when it announces its ruling this summer?

What we have now is a highly political, ideologically divided Court. If one side can muster five votes, it doesn’t really matter what the other side, or even the majority of citizens, believes. Sadly, politics and ideology appear to be the drivers behind many of the Court’s more far-reaching and controversial decisions. As a result, the not-so-Supreme Court has become just another part of our broken political system.

This is why the single most important reason to vote in the presidential election every four years is not to pick the person who will serve as the leader of the free world and who gets to live in the White House for the next four (or eight) years.

The single most important reason to vote is to affect the composition of the Supreme Court...potentially for decades to come.

Gridlock and dysfunction

Will Rogers once said, “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” I wonder, given that the job approval rating for Congress is down to ten percent, an all time low, if the humorist would be quite that glib were he around today.

Is the political system in the United States more fractured and full of vitriol and nastiness than ever before? Sometimes it might appear that way, although, when I reflect back on the Vietnam era, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Clinton impeachment debacle, I’m not so sure. How about in the years leading up to the Civil War? That had to be pretty damn divisive.

And yet it seems to me that our nation’s government is choked by political gridlock and dysfunction to a greater extent than I can personally recall. Of course, I wasn’t around in the pre-civil war years.

Our country is almost hopelessly divided along ideological, cultural, and regional lines, and Congress appears to have lost the ability to conduct even the most basic business of government. How can our intractably partisan Congress be expected to address the issues that divide us, much less solve the challenging and divisive problems facing our country?

No one political party or ideology has a monopoly on good ideas. Throughout our history, critical thinkers from both the left and the right have come up with great ideas. The willingness to achieve a politically acceptable compromise on those great ideas has been the hallmark of our democracy. The ability to reach consensus has enabled progress and allowed many of the best laws and policies to be enacted.

Yet the clash of extreme ideologies these days...whether with respect to health care reform, tax reform, fiscal reform, social policies, or energy policies...has resulted in leaders who think that they alone have all the answers and who denigrate those who think differently.

Our elected officials are acting like a bunch of spoiled kids having temper tantrums. It’s as if they’re putting their hands over their ears and making sound blocking noises so that they can’t hear and don’t have to take into account other points of view.

It is with this as a backdrop that I was fascinated by a recent column from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He wrote a about a trip he took to Australia and New Zealand. Friedman said he was somewhat surprised by the political climate “Down Under” as compared to that in the U.S.

For example, while the liberals and conservatives on the other side of the globe may have different philosophies about the best way to deal with climate change, there is “no serious debate” about the science behind it or that it actually exists. Even the conservatives over there don’t embrace the “climate-change-science-is-bunk” position, as do most Republicans in this country.

Friedman pointed out that “conservatives in Australia and New Zealand have also long accepted single-payer national health care systems.” Even when the conservative party in New Zealand came to power recently, Friedman noted, it did not try to repeal social legislation that was passed by the liberal government that preceded it.

Over here, though, our conservative politicians are falling all over themselves to see who can shout the loudest about how they plan to repeal “Obamacare” after the November election. Of course, this assumes the Supreme Court won’t already have declared the Health Care Reform law to be unconstitutional by then.

Friedman lamented that politics in the U.S. has become so polarized that we have “lost our ability to do big, hard things together. Yet everything we have to do,” he added, “is big and can only be done together.”

Is it any wonder, with the partisan gridlock and political bickering that is making a mockery of the Congress of the United States, that it has only a ten percent approval rating? Maybe the next time Thomas Friedman takes a trip to the Down Under, he should ask some of our elected representatives to join him.

The rite of spring

My birthday is coming up in a few weeks and, for my present, my thoughtful wife scored tickets for us to go to Fenway Park to see a Red Sox game. I sure hope it doesn’t snow that night!

Yes, the 2012 Major League Baseball season, the rite of spring, is about to get underway. I recall last year at this time when the excitement in the air throughout Red Sox Nation was palpable. My beloved Boston Red Sox were declared, by virtually all baseball pundits, to be the team most likely to go all the way and to play in, if not win, the 2011 World Series.

Then the cold, hard reality hit. Being a Red Sox fan last season was not exactly a rewarding experience. The Sox got off to an awful start, losing ten of their first twelve games. By late April they seemed to have turned things around and began to live up to the pre-season hype. Everything was looking good until the final month of the season, when the Sox experienced their historic September collapse. Surely this new season can’t be any more disappointing than last year’s.

Or can it?

As this new season commences, I’m a bit more circumspect about the Red Sox’s prospects than I was a year ago. This is the “new” Boston Red Sox. Former Red Sox GM, Theo Epstein, who was at the helm when the Sox won the World Series in 2004 and 2007, is now the President of Baseball Operations for the Chicago Cubs, where he hopes to do for the Cubs what he accomplished for the Red Sox. Former manager Terry Francona, who skippered the team during their two World Series wins, lost his job almost immediately after the infamous September debacle. Francona is now a member of the broadcast crew for ESPN’s baseball coverage.

The 2012 Sox have a new management regime. Ben Cherington, a former assistant GM to Theo Epstein, is the new Boston GM. Bobby Valentine, who was a member of last year’s broadcast crew for ESPN’s baseball coverage, is the new Sox skipper. It seems Valentine and Francona essentially switched jobs.

Gone are closer Jonathan Papelbon, shortstop Marco Scuturo, and right fielder J.D. Drew. Catcher and team captain Jason Veritek retired, as did knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. The Sox have a new shortstop, a new right fielder, some new pitchers, and a few other less familiar names on the roster.

Can players who had outstanding 2011 seasons, like center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury and first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, have back-to-back great seasons? Will third-baseman Kevin Youkilis remain healthy for the entire season, something he’s been unable to do over the past two years? Will the starting rotation stay healthy this year? Can the bullpen keep it together in the late innings and preserve leads?

This year marks the centennial celebration of Fenway Park, Major League Baseball’s oldest ballpark. Dedicated and loyal Red Sox fans are excited at the prospect of another trip to the World Series in the same year that the storied ballpark is celebrating its hundredth anniversary.

Isn’t that exactly what baseball dreams are made of?

Or baseball nightmares?

Last year I was sure the Red Sox were going to go all the way and was crushed by their September crash and burn. This year my expectations are far less grandiose. If I’m pleasantly surprised by a great season and another trip to the World Series, that would be fantastic. But if they don’t quite make it to the playoffs, I won’t be as devastated as I was last year, when they were, on paper, anyway, expected to win it all.

Okay, that’s a bunch of crap. I’ll be just as devastated.