Without eavesdropping too much (they were complaining out loud), I learned that at least one of these people had never undergone an MRI exam before, but had decided on her own (with the help of madical marketing people) that she "needed" the more expensive procedure.

Having just undergone critical surgery for a spinal cord injury, I wanted to smack every one of them. Do they want pain relief or not? If so, why not just man-up and have the exam. My recent MRI experience was my first, and I simply  went into it without any preconception that it would be one way or another. I know people who've undergone the examination, but I also know everyone's reaction is different.

A soft-voiced technician helped me on to the bed of the machine, and positioned a couple of pillows so that I was lying in a very comfortable position. I got a set of headphones, along with a squeeze bulb I could use to let the tech know if I was starting to panic.

The worst part of the procedure was the insipid "soft jazz" piped in through the headphones. The technician's reassuring voice informed me of everything that was about to happen, and how long it would take. When my bed was slid into the MRI tube, my arms were against my chest, but I didn't feel trapped. How could someone feel trapped, knowing there was a responsible person in control, who'd yank me out of the tube on request? Cool air blowing through the tube kept me comfortable; I barely broke a sweat. Before I knew it, I was done and being helped to my feet.

"Why the big fuss?" I wondered. Hell, I'd sat through five and a half hours of root canal treatment a few years ago, and only a week prior to this MRI had found myself trapped upside down in my overturned truck. This was a walk in the park, except that I had skipped breakfast and was hungry.

People seem to have become such babies about a little discomfort and inconvenience that I find myself tempted to ask whether they'd perhaps rather suffer with their original injury or illness, rather than work toward being cured.

However, I have checked on all the brands mentioned on the All American Pet Brands web site, and I don’t think they exist. Do a Google “shopping” search on any of these brands, and you will not find a single entry, with the exception of “Chompions.” That word leads you not to a pet snack, as AAPB’s site shows it, but a rubber dog toy shaped like a dumbbell.

I think a lot of people are being duped here, and for what reason, I do not know.

A proposed crackdown on single-slice pizza sales in Adams Morgan has many patrons of the nightlife hot spot perplexed, especially considering the area's other issues, including violent crime. 

But Ward 1 D.C. Councilman Jim Graham, who represents Adams Morgan, says the pizza parlors selling single slices along 18th Street, some of which are open until 4:30 a.m., are part of the problem when it comes a recent rash of street fights, stabbings, muggings and even a shootout involving two plainclothes police officers.

"Even though it's a legal business and everything, they have become a nuisance," Graham said. "Behaving the way they do in terms of music, in terms of letting people hang out and also in terms of tolerating a certain level of violence."

A hidden ABC 7 camera captured an example of what Graham is talking about a couple weeks ago. Two girls began arguing in front of one of the jumbo slice businesses, the altercation turned physical when punches were thrown and people wrestled to the ground. The melee went on for 10 minutes before police arrived.

But Graham's proposal has many opponents. For many, a slice after a night out has been a part of the tradition of visiting Adams Morgan for decades.

"It's big pizza, it's cheap and it's good after a night of bar hopping in Adams Morgan," said Nicole Harrison, a Silver Spring resident.

Adams Morgan resident John Sawyko agrees the late night congregating is at times overwhelming and down right scary, but he says blaming pizza is absurd.

"The crowd out here in general is the problem," Sawyko said. "The pizza places are a small part of the issue."

Abdul Souada is the manager of one of the three jumbo slice restaurants on 18th Street. He says he is unfairly being picked on just for being to "popular"

"We are taxpayers also," he said. "Our business is the same as bar business, as the club business, as the other restaurants next door..."

While most people who spoke with ABC 7 in Adams Morgan thought the proposal was a joke, Councilman Graham said he is very serious. He says he's already talked to the mayor about the issue and is drafting legislation.

This leaves me wondering whether Councilman Graham thinks the problems would disappear if all the pizza vendors switched to, say, burritos or falafel.

Perhaps now that he is an avowed, affiliated Democrat, Pennsylvania voters will stop talking about what they had for supper last night and defeat him in the last election. (This is a sore point with me, after having spent a lot of time in York, Lancaster and Adams Counties. In my experience, Pennsylvanians would rather talk about where to get the best wiener schnitzel than about how their Constitutional rights are being sold down the river.)

But the one unforgivable thing that Senator Sphincter Specter has done is to try making political capital out of the recent death of Jack Kemp.

Here's what The Washington Times reported:

Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, said part of the reason that he left the Republican Party last week was disillusionment with its health-care priorities, and suggested that had the Republicans taken a more moderate track, Jack Kemp may have won his battle with cancer.

Mr. Specter, responding to a question from CBS' Bob Schieffer over whether he had let down Pennsylvanians who wanted a Republican to represent them, said he thought his priorities were more in line with those of the Democrats. "

Well, I was sorry to disappoint many people. Frankly, I was disappointed that the Republican Party didn't want me as their candidate," Mr. Specter said on "Face the Nation."

Specter continued: "If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine."

Notwithstanding the contradiction in Spectre Specter's last sentence, could he at least exercise the common decency to wait until Kemp's body is in the ground before uttering such gibberish?

Cash-Strapped Bronx Zoo Lays Off Animals

by JOSH LANDIS, CBS 2 News
NEW YORK (CBS) ―

 For the two million people who visit the Bronx Zoo each year, the view is about to change.

A bunch of animals are getting fired!

If these animals could talk, they would have something to say, because their days at the zoo are numbered.

"We had decisions that needed to be made about old exhibits, and at the same time we needed to deal with the fiscal reality which is upon us," John Cavalli, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, says.

...etcetera. This nitwit story excludes the question that ought to be on the tip of everyone's tongue: What's going to happen to the animals?

Consider the choices: euthanasia; sending them to some other zoo; sending them back to the wild (where their chances of survival would be slim); turning them over to some private "rescue" farm.

These are not trivial choices, and why the hell would a major-league TV station run this story without answering such an obvious question?

By the way, I emailed WCBS to ask, and as you might expect, have been ignored.

As much as I love the Bard's writings, I must respectfully disagree.

Lately we've been hearing a bit about the heroism of Ed Freeman, a Vietnam veteran who finally received the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2001, for heroic deeds he performed in 1965. Predictably, we're reading this because CPT (ret.) Freeman has just died. It seems that we never have time to praise people when they are alive and thriving; only after someone has died, or had his business fail does even a genuine hero's story become interesting enough to be published.

Bob Weir wrote the following, in The News Connection. Ordinarily, Mr. Weir is a bit too self-absorbed for my taste, but I find myself in agreement with the following, which is his commentary on the death of Ed Freeman:

Something terrible has happened to our country. A malignancy has crept into our thinking and turned us into self-absorbed misfits, many of whom have a blasé attitude toward those who have bled and died so that we could live in freedom and prosperity. I suppose an aberrant type of complacency implants itself into one's subconscious when one's safety and security have always been arranged from afar. If you, or a family member, never had to fight in a war zone and never learned the meaning of near-death experiences, you might tend to ignore those who suffered and died to spare you that nightmare. It doesn't take much courage to speak loftily about the evils of war from the comfortable sanctuary of your living room, surrounded by family and friends. It's easy to be against war; only a maniac would feel otherwise. However, recognizing that sometimes war is the only option available to keep the peace, takes a greater level of maturity and life experience. Without the Revolutionary War there would not have been a United States of America. If we had not entered World War 2 to fight the Axis Powers, we'd probably be speaking German and waiting our turn while the Fuhrer (probably his successor) was deciding if we had enough Aryan blood to allow us to live.

Even the Civil War, which had Americans killing Americans, was necessary to preserve the Union and break the chains that held an entire race in bondage. Although we can wax philosophically about there being no winners in war, there would certainly have been losers if brave men and women didn't stand up against evil tyrants. ...I think people like Mr. Freeman represent honor, integrity and courage. We live in a free country today because of the sacrifices made by him and countless numbers of other patriots.

Since the first of the year I have witnessed, in an official capacity, the burials of more than one hundred honorably discharged US veterans. After one funeral yesterday, I made this note in my diary: "You bring the body; we [the military honor guard] will supply the dignity." This was in reaction to one more funeral at which attendees--you really can't call them mourners with accuracy--acted as though they haven't a clue how to show respect. Four of the six pallbearers were in shirtsleeves, one actually wearing an orange polo shirt. At least one person came dressed in jeans and an untucked white tee shirt. One guy apparently drove his "significant other" to the funeral, but did not bother to get out of the car; when she rushe out of the chapel in tears, he called out, "Are you OK?" Mighty comforting of him...

So Bob Weir is even more accurate than he thinks. We have not only lost the capacity to honor people as heroes, many of us have forgotten (or more likely, never been trained in) how to show respect to our own blood. Rather, we hire funeral directors and others to do that while we carry on in whatever fashion suits our taste. As I've heard someone observe (meaning to be humorous) it's too often not about the deceased or his life, but where we are going to eat afterward.