So when you get to the point of wanting to choke, smack, kick or tar and feather, you typically resort to one of the following:

• Getting angry, either very loud at home or in that slightly quiter voice that you hope nobody else in the store hears
• Shaming them, such as “Do you want everyone to think that you are a baby instead of a six-year old”
• Threats, such as “You won’t get to go to that party or you won’t get to play on the computer”
• Bribes, such as “If you behave yourself, you can have a piece of candy when you get home”
• Timeouts

Of course,  all of these tactics have serious downsides. Getting angry rarely works and just the kids more upset or more likely to take it up a notch. Shame might work a little better, but kids tend to not to care how complete strangers view them. Threats might work for a short period of time, but the kids know that they are often hollow. If you threaten to withhold TV, then you as the parent get no break and the kids know who that works. Bribes, while often highly effective, also set a bad precedent and you can’t go the well every time.  Timeouts are not always practical away from the house.

Today was a particularly tough day and the kids were acting up, despite be brandishing the threat of not going to a party tonight at my disposal, I bumped into a friend at King Soopers. She was at her wit’s end trying to get her kids to behave. It made me think that I should blog about this topic.

Do I know the answer to how to best deal with kids when they act up? Of course not. Even the most optimal rotation of threats and bribery won’t make a damn bit of difference. So I offer this up. Just deal with whatever nonsense arises. Then have a stiff drink and go to Facebook, Twitter, your blog or someone who likes you enough to listen (or pretend to listen) and just vent about it. It might make you feel slightly better and when other people will share their stories, you’ll realize that your kids don’t misbehave more than anyone else. Unless they are juvenile delinquents. Then they really do.

But Rachel Maddow (who is probably a slight step to the left of my normal philosophy) did a piece that made me understand how the hell this happened. Three people, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich all took positions that were entirely contradictory to publicly stated positions to ones they took within the last year. I assumed Palin, who is probably the one most responsible for this, would have been more careful, if for no other reason that she might be eyeing a presidential run in 2012. But according to Maddow (and I don’t have the clip handy), she declared that a particular day in 2008 was dedicated to reminding people to create wills (living and otherwise).  Which she clearly forgot when she wrote her Facebook entry. So even though she quickly decided (after her own party called her crazy) that we need to have civility in the debate, the horse had left the barn.

Enter Limbaugh. First he praises Palin’s “intellectual heft” on this issue.  Then he starts egging his dittoheads on. But of course Rush has always felt this way about end-of-life issues. Not so much. According to the clip played by Maddow, he did a voiceover ad (typical in radio for sponsors of shows) for LegalZoom, promoting the idea of creating a living will. But being the unprincipled, hypocritical windbag that he is, he seems to have conveniently forgot that fact.

Now enter Gingrich. Here’s a guy that for all the damage that he did in the mid-late 90s,  never really seemed like an true ideologue. In fact, he seemed downright pragmatic on issues like Global Warming and Healthcare Reform. But shortly after Palin’s Facebook missive (and before she got slammed on the Sunday talk shows), Newt comes out and defends her.  Which would be fine for Newt, except that he wrote an blog post in the Washington Post about five weeks ago praising end-of-life best practices. Here’s an excerpt:

More than 20 percent of all Medicare spending occurs in the last two months of life. Gundersen Lutheran Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin has developed a successful end-of-life, best practice that combines: 1) community-wide advance care planning, where 90 percent of patients have advance directives; 2) hospice and palliative care; and 3) coordination of services through an electronic medical record. The Gundersen approach empowers patients and families to control and direct their care. The Dartmouth Health Atlas has documented that Gundersen delivers care at a 30 percent lower rate than the national average ($18,359 versus $25,860). If Gundersen’s approach was used to care for the approximately 4.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who die every year, Medicare could save more than $33 billion a year.

So it really boils down to this. If a former state governor (and VP candidate), a popular (if annoying and dangerous) talk-show host and one of the leading voices in the Republican party (which is sad in many respects) all embrace an issue and then let the real provocateurs (like Glenn Beck) call for a revolution, this kind of mob mentality sets in, the wackjobs come out of the woodwork and all hell breaks loose.

So maybe I shouldn’t be arguing that we should muzzle the protesters. Maybe we just need to muzzle Newt, Rush and Sarah, three people that obviously knew better, but did the equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.

Now to the point. I have been watching the last few months of congressional debate on health care reform from the sidelines. I do work for a company that sells software to health plans, so any commentary I make has to keep in mind that those companies help to put food on my table and a roof over my kids’ heads. But it is time to at least weigh in on a broader level, without endorsing or rejecting any kind of approach. And I will direct my comments to members of Congress.

There is enough polling out there to show that individuals are paying attention to the debate. This poll from Pew Research found that 95% of respondents felt the issue of healthcare reform was important, while another Pew Poll found that Americans by and large didn’t think our system of healthcare was all that great. And even when the questions are worded poorly, like the stupid Facebook quiz that asks if you are in favor of a government-run health plan (which does not have the same connotation as a public option or a co-op), a majority are still in favor of it, as evidenced by a Quinnipiac poll.

So here’s my problem. Members of Congress should be well aware of the following:

1. Americans (their constituents) view healthcare as a problem that needs to be urgently solved
2. A majority of constituents believe that we need to more than just tinker with the system (and CBO numbers explain why)
3. You have to solve both the coverage and the cost of healthcare issues simultaneously

Yet both the bills and the rhetoric coming from Congress would seem to indicate that they don’t fully grasp the public’s attitude here. The bills (like the House or Senate HELP commitee ones) that go a long way towards ensuring greater coverage, don’t focus enough on making the hard choices and driving down long-term costs, while relying on funding mechanisms that would not ever pass both houses of Congress.  Other bills (like the reported Senate Finance) bill might address the long-term cost issue, but then remove the things that will increase coverage and drive costs down in the shorter-term, like employer mandates or public options. And many of the Republicans (but not all) are just being useless and throwing stones without any real plans.

Which brings me back to my title. Are members of Congress retarded or just tone-deaf. Yes, there is a third option in that they are in the pocket of special interests, but I don’t think that can be the entire excuse. What is fascinating is that some of the biggest oppositon is coming from Blue-Dog Democrats in the house, who typically represent more rural or conservative-leaning  districts. I know why they are opposing certain things, but as Nate Silver points out, their districts tend to have higher (and not lower) uninsured rates, and would benefit the most from comprehensive health care reform.

I hate to be cynical here and I have confidence that a good bill will eventually pass. I also think that many of the members of Congress aren’t retarded (although some may well be senile), so I am guessing it’s the tone-deaf thing. Maybe they will get an earful when they go home from summer recess and will come back and do what their constituents want them to do.

Of all of the sports, baseball has been the most obsessed with statistics.  An entire science exists due to the need to keep statistics in baseball and the concept of a box score started in baseball. Although position players are rated on how many of the five “tools” they have (hit for power, hit for average, throwing accuracy/strength, speed and defense), the last two areas are really measured by statistics,fielding percentage (or number of putouts/number of chances) and stolen bases that don’t capture the true essence of the game.  So capturing all of the speed and location information is really crucial. Let me explain.

Since I am not a major league baseball player, nor good enough to actually play on an adult baseball team, I play slow-pitch softball team. Although I have pretty good speed, I have lower back, hip and IT band problems, so I don’t have the quickest first step, but after I get going, I’m pretty fast. And although I have pretty good range in the infield, I have a weak arm, so I can’t just nail a runner at first from ten feet behind the third base bag unless they are really slow. But I am smarter than the average bear and know how to play angles, anticipate hops and even where to position myself given my inherent abilities (or inabilities).

So take my game on Wednesday night as an example of where stats would be misleading. In my second at bat, I hit a ground ball to the shortstop who made a nice play getting to ball, but didn’t have a great arm and I beat out the throw to first, but just barely. Had this been a high school baseball game, a scout watching would have felt like I wasn’t very fast because a faster player would have beaten it out by several steps. And certainly if this was baseball, I wouldn’t be putting up great steals numbers because I don’t have the explosive first step. But the next play, I easily made it from first to third on  sharply hit single to center, where most players would have stopped at second or gotten gunned down at third.  The difference is that once I get going, my back doesn’t bother me and my speed, plus knowing the angle to take around second base gets me there. This new system would account for that and demonstrate that I was actually pretty darn fast.

Let’s use that same game from a defensive perspective. The team we played was pretty weak and short-handed. They also tended to hit almost everything on the ground to third base, which is where I was playing.  There were runners on first and second, one out and a hitter with poor speed and not much pop at the plate. So I played about even with the bag, but not crowding the line, yet  not wanting to be too far away to make the force play.  The play ends up being a weak grounder to third base right on the line, which I quickly get to, scoop up, turn, tag the bag and then proceed to airmail over first base trying to get the double play, (I was off balance, my momentum took me past the bag and I had to hurry). So on paper, you would see a putout and two-base throwing error and a scout my say that I have a weak and inaccurate arm and my error would show up in the box score.  But the only reason I even had a play at first (aside from a painfully slow runner) is because I got to the ball really quickly (combo of speed and angle).  So someone without the speed or knowledge would never have even tried to make the play at first because the runner would be nearly at first base by the time they tagged third.

So yes, they will never put these cameras in for beer-league softball games. And no, I doubt the little league teams, even the elite leagues will have this. But what it will likely do is affect the way players are evaluated and valued (figuratively and literally) at all levels. But it makes me feel better and when I preach to my son Roberto the importance of doing the little things that don’t show up in the box score, there is actually merit behind this and it’s not just to make up for a lack of athleticism. Same actually goes for defense in basketball, per a great Michael Lewis article on Shane Battier a few months ago.

The first system is being used in San Francisco this year and expect to see it rolled out across MLB in the near future. I can’t wait to see the results.

What’s even more hilarious is that they don’t give out ribbons at field day. Remember how hard it was to get a blue or red ribbon? I was so happy to get 2nd second in the 50-yard dash in 6th grade. Now they just want everyone to have fun. Maybe that’s why we aren’t as competitive as other countries anymore.

Is anyone else outraged?

But I actually have never mowed a lawn. Ever. Why would this be the case? Did I grow up in the lap of luxury with servants to do everything? No. Actually, my Dad, who was a lawyer when I was growing up, sued a lawnmower company on behalf of a client who was badly injured due to a defective product. This probably happened when I was about eight. So for the same reason we never had a trampoline, we didn’t have a lawn mower either.

That takes me to Saturday. Since I was not going to be of any value mowing or edging the lawn, I cleaned the kitchen. Did a helluva job actually as I washed the windows, cleaned under the stove burners, busted out the stainless steel cleaner, everything.

Fortunately, her trees did need some pulling and I re-established my manhood by pulling and cutting down branches. Of course, my back started to hurt after a while. But in the end, it was a pretty good afternoon.

Maybe this makes me a lemming or a sheep. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m now cool. Who knows?

So these layouts don’t stop me from going there. And of course, despite knowing where things are, I still forget every single time I go there, so I end up getting angry. Can anyone explain the rationale behind this? Please!

It all started Monday night. She wouldn’t eat her dinner (Chicken Nuggets and watermelon), complaining that she was full. So I told her she wouldn’t get dessert. But then later, she was acting really sweet, so I was going to let her have dessert after all (I am a softie). But I found out the babysitter let her have cookies for a snack, so no dessert for her. I accidentally put a paper towel on her side of the table after I put one down for my son, who ate all his dinner and was having dessert.

That’s when the Billy Martin incident started. She grabbed the paper towel, threw it forcefully to the floor and then starting yelling loudly and crying. She proceeded to kick the paper towel from the kitchen to the entry hall to the living room. Getting madder and madder at each step. Then when she I got on her case, she picked up the paper towel and threw it back in the kitchen and yelled some more. Brings to mind a manager arguing a call and getting tossed by the ump.

I can’t decide if she reminds me more of Billy Martin (check out this hilarious Captain Black tobacco commmercial),  Lou Pinella, Braves minor-league manager Phil Wellman, or  former Rockies minor-league manager Joe Mikulik (this was pretty close to here behavior). Fortunately, there was no Earl Weaver action here (make sure no kids are around).

The behavior got slightly better yesterday, but I sure hope it doesn’t continue this weekend!

I have no good excuses. Yes, the Nuggets were playing really good basketball and I watched a lot of games. And, yes work had been insane and when you are in this kind of economy, you have to work harder to persuade companies to sign contracts that have involve 8 figures. Hell, I even slacked on Facebook, which is kind of inexcusable. Oh, and I let my fantasy baseball team wither, forgetting to check on Sundays how many of my players got hurt in the last week (seems like five). Oh, and softball started on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and kids soccer and swimming took up Saturdays. And the weather kind of sucked and I traveled for work. And I spent a lot of evenings talking on the phone to my girlfriend after the kids went to bed. So I guess some are good excuses.

But nonetheless, the time has come to start blogging again. Two coming later tonight.