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Elmer Vasko

Mention “Elmer Vasko” in 1961 in Chicago, and nobody would have a clue as to whom you were referring, but mention “Moose Vasko”, and everyone would know. Like most men nicknamed “Moose”, Elmer was big, but different from most men called “Moose”, as he could skate, and in fact he could skate quite well. Moose Vasko played defense on the 1961 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks.  He wasn’t a high scorer like Bobby Hull or Stan Mikita or an exceptionally smooth skater like Pierre Pilote or Todd Sloan. However, he was a very important piece of this championship team for he (along with Reggie Fleming) was the “enforcer”.

For those unfamiliar with hockey, the job of the enforcer in hockey is to respond to dirty or violent play by the opposition (Wikipedia). Moose would protect his teammates, maintain order, and retaliate, especially if the bullies on the other team took cheap shots against his smaller teammates. While Bobby Hull (5’10, 195lbs) could take care of himself, undersized Stan Mikita (5’9″, 169lbs) and slender Todd Sloan (5’10”, 152 lbs) knew that Moose (6’2″, 200lbs) had their back. Hockey is a very rough sport, and, the smaller guys on any team
would take quite an unrelenting beating unless their own feared and respected enforcer had their back. The presence of an enforcer on a hockey team in essence was telling the other team, “Be careful because your actions will have consequences”. Everyone on the other teams knew that if they crossed the line against the smaller Blackhawk players that Moose would kick their ass. In fact he did his job quite well – well enough that the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in 1961.
Well now one might say, “Interesting, but actually who cares about Elmer Vasko, aka Moose, and the 1961 Blackhawks other than some near-senile old Chicago hockey fans”? Actually an interesting analogy can be drawn between the 1961 Chicago Blackhawks and today’s world situation. Just as hockey is a very rough game, our world is a very rough place. If an opportunity arises, the bullies on the hockey rink will go out of their way to pick on and then beat up on the little guys, just as the world’s “bullies” abuse those who cannot fight back. Just as the bad guys can become more and more emboldened on the ice, the bad guys on the world stage become more emboldened when they realize that they can act without fear of retaliation.
Russia, Assad, North Korea, and ISIS are the “bullies” of the world. For the past 8 years they have been able to act with impunity as they learned that no one could, or would, stand up to them. Russia took Crimea without any consequence. Assad gassed his own people in 2012, and there was no enforcement of a “red line”. For years, North Korea marched on with its nuclear program, as it knew that no one would attempt to stop them. ISIS was a “JV team”, yet it took land and slaughtered innocents as the good guys in the world just stood by.
There was no enforcer, and you don’t win the Stanley Cup without an enforcer!

Finally after years of kowtowing to all the world’s bullies, we finally have an enforcer, who in essence is saying, “Be very careful because your actions will have consequences. If you gas innocent women and children, we might fire off cruise missiles into your airfield. If you kill an American Special Forces soldier in Afghanistan, we might drop a MOAB to destroy your underground caves.”

Maybe now that our team has an enforcer, we can win the Stanley Cup.

Headlines that you won’ see anyplace else:

Ex Professional Poker Player Suspects a Bluff

When United Airlines needed 4 volunteers, three people agreed to give up their seat at the table. One person, David, thought that the airline might have been bluffing and, as he had already put his chips on the table, he decided to play the hand that he was dealt. However the odds were against him as there was a full house! He then saw 3 of a kind, and they were coming straight at him. He decided to stand pat. He played his flush, however the house was not bluffing and they were the bullies at that table. In the end, although the airline won that hand, he will probably win the big money tournament!

 

Do All Lives Matter ?

After the recent:
“Security guards drag olderVietnamese-American off of United plane”,

I wonder how many signs we will see saying:
“Vietnamese lives matter.”
or
“Grandpas’ lives matter.”

Let me know if you see any such signs, as so far I have seen . . . Zero!

The Friendly Skies?

It appears that so far United Airlines has the faux pas of the 21st century thanks to a  Sunday night (4/9/17)  video showing security dragging a man off one of its airplanes. The CEO of United Airlines then compounded the problem by saying that the passenger was “disruptive and belligerent”, and praised his staff as going “above and beyond”!

Let’s get this straight – the passenger was a 69 year old grandpa!

Coincidentally the day after this incident, I received a card in the mail offering me 50,000 bonus miles on United Airlines if I got a United Visa Card. I read the small print, but did not find the part about involuntarily giving up my seat on a United flight for no apparent reason. I also could not find the part stating that it was okay to drag me down the airplane aisle at the apparent whim of some United employee, who was going “above and beyond”.

So far I am going to pass on this credit card.

The other thing is that the victim was a Vietnamese-American physician, Dr. David Dao, who was trying to insure that he could get back to Louisville to see his scheduled Monday morning patients. Obviously United felt that it was much more important that its employees get to Louisville for a scheduled Monday flight than Dr. Dao for his scheduled patients.

So much for “The Friendly Skies”!

I live in a blue state – a very, very blue state, California, and I am not blue. In fact I am far from blue. I am not even close to purple. I am red, and thus a Contrarian in my blue state.

It is fitting that my first blog is coming so close to that dreaded April 15 tax deadline, as the Democrats in California have just passed a big tax increase in order to try to cover-up for their incompetence in handling the state’s budget in reference to infrastructure. Here in California there is a $59 billion backlog on deferred state highway maintenance as well as a $78 billion backlog on local streets and roads, as the funds that should have been used for these issues seem to have disappeared!

Well of course, the only solution for Democrats is to raise taxes and that is what they have just done.

When I say “Democrats”, I mean just that, as there was only one Republican vote for this tax hike bill. This lone Republican senator (R, Canella, Ceres) voted for this bill only after he had cajoled Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, into adding $500 million of pork for his district in the form of a commuter line from San Jose to his Central Valley district and a parkway linking U.C. Merced to highway 99. (As one of my friends sarcastically told me in the past, ” We are all basically prostitutes, and all we haggle about is our price!”) Mr. Canella’s vote theoretically gives this tax hike “bipartisan support”, and while those in the Central Valley will be enjoying the pork, the rest of us in California will be paying for it!

In the sense of fairness, I should mention that one Democratic assemblyman (D,Sales, Bakersfield) and one Democratic senator (D, Glazer, Orinda) voted against this bill. I do not know either of these gentlemen, but I assume that they are men of principle, as they refused to lie down as did their Democratic counterparts. Madame Lorena Gonzales-Fletcher (D, San Diego) apparently castigated Mr. Sales saying, “You sold them out” (referring to her Democratic lemmings) when in reality he had refused to sell out his constituents.

To all the people in California one of the important things to remember is that this tax hike barely passed in the assembly – getting the minimum two-thirds ‘yes’ votes. What this means is that if your local Democratic assemblyman had voted “No”, this bill would not have passed, and so basically your local Democratic assemblyman is directly responsible for your personal increased taxes – for the next 10 years!! I would hope that everyone remembers this when they show up again asking you for their vote in the next election.

Vote them out!

One more thing that is often missed when the Democrats vote on just about everything is how they actually hurt the poor the most. As Republican Senator Ted Gaines said, “We’re not taxing champagne and caviar here. Transportation is a basic need to live and work and raise a family.” Who is going to be hurt the most with these new taxes?

Those with electric cars will not be taxed until 2020 and then only at a rate of $100 per year. Those who can afford electric cars will not blink at the $100 per year, and don’t they use the roads and highways the same as the rest of us? Worse still, in the next two years they will be using the roads and highways that the rest of us will be paying for – and using them for free! How many of the poor in California will be driving electric cars? ZERO!

As the poor are forced to drive only what they can afford to buy, they are by necessity driving mostly older used cars that get the poorest gas mileage, and thus will be paying this additional 12 cents a gallon much more frequently than those who can afford new cars or hybrids.

But potentially even worse the tax increase on diesel fuel will go up over 100% from 16 cents to 36 cents a gallon. I would doubt that many Democrats in the state legislature drive cars that require diesel fuel, and perhaps they thought, “no big deal, as hardly anyone drives a car that uses diesel fuel”. However, most of our food is transported by diesel fueled trucks . . . so get ready for an increase in food prices. Again those who are driving Teslas will most likely not blink at this increase in food prices. However, those who are barely scraping by will now be eating more beans and rice, and less protein because that will be all they can afford.

Actually hurting the poor is a recurrent, often unforeseen theme in a lot legislation proposed by the Democrats, and for sure this will come up again.

 

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