TRAINS AND PLANES – What I’m Thinking About Today

1. It’s Wednesday, May 13, 2015. It’s cooler, but still a pretty day in New York.

2. As everyone else, I’m saddened by last night’s Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia and the death of six travelers.

Hopefully, investigators will find the cause quickly. Train travel should a safe way of getting from place to place.

But this incident, along with two Metro-North commuter train crashes in recent years, remind us that safety can never be taken for granted. This country needs to take a long look at what’s needed to make rail travel safer.

3. A recent proposal in The New York Times suggested what to do about busy, dilapidated La Guardia Airport, the airport closest to New York City.

The suggestion: Close it.

Yeah, right.

The proponent suggested that the area’s two other airports, John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty, could take up the slack. But both of those airports aren’t much better than La Guardia, and there are few trips now as joyless as slogging to JFK on the bumper-to-bumper Van Wyck Expressway. 

La Guardia’s problems are daunting, but solvable. Direct rail access from Manhattan would help cut down on the vehicle traffic. Re-organizing the gates to keep short-haul flights in the same general vicinity is a good idea. So is putting up some readable signs to tell you where everything is.

There was a time when, in a radio ad, La Guardia was billed as “New York’s friendly neighborhood airport.” That can still be the case with a little vision. But scrapping it solves nothing.

4.   The song of the moment is “Animal” by Conor Maynard. Keep that in your head today.

1. It’s Tuesday, May 12, 2015. It’s another warm day here in the New York area. Lovin’ it.

2. I am proud to say that I’m signature No. 2,160 on a We The People petition urging President Obama to honor baseball great Yogi Berra with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I normally don’t get involved with these sorts of things. But there’s a lots of reasons to honor Yogi, who turns 90 years old today. 

First, he was a great baseball player. Yes, the Yankees were a colossus in the years when he played. But he was a major reason for their success. A great hitter, a great catcher. No one has been involved in more World Series victories.

Second, he seems to be an exemplary sportsman. Among those advocating for him are pioneers of the integration of baseball, including Henry Aaron and Rachel Robinson, the widow of Jackie. He is popular among Latin players as well. And the petition points out that he is involved in promoting LGBT athletes’ rights and in encouraging students to participate in sports.

Third, few people have contributed as many expressions to American English as Lawrence Peter Berra. Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded. It’s deja vu all over again. It gets late early out there. You can observe a lot by watching.

And finally, he might be one of the ten greatest Italian-Americans ever. That means a lot to those of us who constantly heard negatives about our ethnicity. Yogi exemplifies what is great in Italians and others whose forebears have come here — working hard so that the path for future generations is better (see yesterday’s post about my father-in-law).

My grandfather loved Yogi more than he loved Joe DiMaggio. He would have been thrilled to see the affection being given to Mr. Berra on this day. So would anyone with a heart and a sense of humor.

The White House says that it will consider petitions once there are 100,000 electronic signatures. This one is only at 5,447. But June 8 is the deadline, so there’s plenty of time. Here it is.

3.    My friends and acquaintances from Boston had the wind knocked out of them yesterday by the NFL’s penalties against the New England Patriots. The team lost two draft picks and star quarterback Tom Brady is suspended for the first four games of the season because the Pats were found to have used deflated footballs in the conference championship game against Indianapolis.

Among the squawks I’ve heard is that the penalty against Brady is comparable to those meted out to players involved in sexual and physical assault, which all would agree are far more serious offenses than taking a few ounces of air out of a football.

I’m not coming from this as a Patriots or Tom Brady hater or a fan of another team. I lost interest in the NFL when the Giants and Jets moved from playing in New York City to New Jersey. I was probably rooting for Seattle in the last Super Bowl, but that was because New England’s coach seems like a miserable sort. I was happy for my New England friends who celebrated their team’s triumph.

But playing by the rules is the tenet that holds a professional sport together. If the integrity of the sport can be questioned, there’s no reason to accept the outcome of a sporting event as valid. Pete Rose didn’t go to jail for gambling on the Cincinnati Reds (he went to jail for tax evasion), but has spent 25 years on baseball’s ineligible list because of it. There are now major penalties for the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Deflating the footballs may seem to be a silly thing to get pumped up about, especially since the Colts played with same footballs. But it was an attempt by the Patriots to gain a probably unnecessary advantage.

It’s the attempt, the idea of breaking the rules that’s offensive. It’s arrogant and unsportsmanlike. And it brings into question the integrity of every game the Patriots have hosted. That’s not good for the NFL as a business or as a civic institution. The Brady suspension and lost draft picks are suitable sanctions. 

1. It’s Friday, May 8, 2015. It is a glorious day in the New York metropolitan area. It is a reward for enduring the crap we endured this winter.

2. It is the 70th anniversary of Germany’s surrender to the Allies in World War II. It is a day celebrated throughout Europe (although I don’t imagine there’s a lot of festivity in Germany). Americans get a little more excited about V-J Day, the day the Japanese surrendered, which is in August.

3. I hadn’t followed it closely, but I found myself fascinated by yesterday’s British parliamentary election. Having spent a week in the U.K. last spring and watching the BBC for hours last night doesn’t make me an expert, but I did find myself thinking about the vote a lot.

4. First of all, the comparison of Camerons I made in the headline might sound a little far-fetched. But stay with me.

In baseball, a really good center fielder covers the biggest swatch of the outfield. The left and right fielders stay closer to the lines. The center fielder therefore gets most of the fly balls — even some he has to range to his left or right to get.

That seems to be what happened last night in Britain.

Labour (I’ll use the U.K. spelling because that’s what the party uses) stayed over to the left — I heard some fairly liberal folks complain that a Labour win would wipe out their income with taxes approaching 90%.

The U.K. Independence Party, a party that complains a lot about immigration, camped on the right.

And because the Liberal Democrats had formed a coalition with the Conservatives to form the last government, there was no reason they had to be on the field at all.

So David Cameron and the Conservatives had a lot of center to run free. I don’t know if Cameron did quite as well as Juan Lagares of the Mets does every night. But he did well enough to capture a majority of Parliament, shocking pollsters who thought he’d have to form a coalition with some fringe party.

5.    The Scotland situation is also fascinating. The Scottish National Party, which favors independence, won 56 of the country’s 59 Parliament seats. That’s just months after the Scots rejected the idea of independence in a referendum.

Clearly, the Scots want something other than the status quo. They might not have been ready for independence last fall, but could be getting closer to that now. Or they believe there is something they can negotiate by forming a solid bloc, although the fact that Cameron can form a government without any outside help doesn’t give the SNP much leverage.

What happens with Scotland over the next months and years bears watching, and not just in Britain.

6.    So what can Americans take away from yesterday’s vote in Britain?

I think there’s a precautionary tale for both parties. The Democrats, at this point, seem inclined to heed it. Despite the appeal of such outspoken liberals as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, they see Hillary Clinton as a winner who can hold the center ground. And you can’t govern if you don’t win.

The Republicans, on the other hand, seem determine to bring Americans to their form of Jesus. The leaders of the party see people like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie (before his latest New Jersey problems) as electable. But the rank-and-file love those Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee types who are determined to hew to a perfect social conservative line.

Cameron had the center to himself. If Hillary Clinton has that kind of a race, she’s the 45th President.

1. It’s Tuesday, May 5, 2015. The weather in New York is gorgeous. It should be like this all the time.

2. It’s Cinco de Mayo.

It is not Mexican Independence Day. That’s in September.

Cinco de Mayo is the commemoration of the Mexican victory over French invaders at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. The victory stalled, but didn’t completely stop, the French takeover of Mexico by Napoleon III.

The people who might be more inclined to celebrate are Americans, and particularly those who live north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Historians believe that had the French won at Puebla, they would have taken Mexico sooner and then turned their support to the Confederates in the U.S. Civil War.

So I suppose it’s a surprise that there are Texans who celebrate Cinco de Mayo. But beer companies promote this holiday and, to lots of people in the South, a beer is a beer.

Me, I choose to celebrate the Mexicans’ courage, the wonderful people of Mexican ancestry I’ve met and their great taste in food. Happy Cinco de Mayo!

3. Speaking of Texas, it seems as though this weekend incident in Garland was a perfect storm of stupidity and intolerance.

A bunch of idiots decide to hold a show specifically designed to mock Islam. A couple of other idiots decide to shoot up the idiots at the show.

Yes, you have the right to say what you want. But so do I — the organizers of this event are pretty goddamn worthless. So are the gunmen, who must have been so insecure in their embrace of their religion that they felt the need to prove themselves.

Everyone in this case wanted to be a martyr. Martyrdom is overrated.

The only people garnering respect in this situation are the peace officers, including the one who shot both gunmen before they could start their massacre. These officers probably would have preferred a quiet Sunday afternoon with their families or, if they had to work, patrolling some springtime festival. Mercifully, except for one treated injury, they emerged unscathed — except for the additional aggravation and unnecessary anxiety.

4. I haven’t done a lot of writing of late, being tied up with personal issues and the conclusion of my news editing class. I plan to be back on a daily basis, and to expand this blog. Let’s go for a ride with this.

1. It’s Monday, April 27, 2015.

2. I’m going out on a limb and putting the snow shovels away.

3. The Nepal tragedy is an important story that would have gone little noticed in the Western world 50 years ago. The prevalence of communications satellites makes coverage of these things far easier.

4. A Boston Globe poll shows that less than 20% of Massachusetts residents support executing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

“It seems that voters have concluded that Tsarnaev does not deserve a quick death, but rather should spend the remainder of his days in a windowless cell contemplating the heinous acts that put him there,” Frank Perullo, president of Sage Systems LLC, which conducted the poll, told the Globe. “To voters, it would seem death is too easy an escape.”

There’s a reason you think of smart when you think of Massachusetts.

1. It’s Tuesday, April 21, 2015. If this were January, it would be the third. April flies by. January drags.

2. As a Met fan, I needed yesterday off. The Mets have won eight straight, but two of their players were injured in their last win. There’s just a little too much drama for an old man to take.

3. More Americans are optimistic about the economy than aren’t. That might not sound like a big deal — in fact, it sounds the way it should be. But it’s the first time a CNN/ORC poll has found more economic half-fulls than half-empties since 2007.

And, as a result, it’s the first time in the presidency of Barack Obama that the economy is seen so brightly. It took more than six years, and got stalled too many times along the way by Republicans who refused to take ownership for the financial crisis they helped create.

I wouldn’t expect, or want, the president to do a victory lap. There are too many people who are still hurting from the slide precipitated by Wall Street greed and an unnecessary, unpaid-for war in Iraq.

But history will be a lot kinder to Mr. Obama than we have been, and this economic recovery that appears set to continue through the end of his White House tenure will be one reason why.

4. One of the nice things about the Pulitzer Prizes is that, for the most part, they are a reminder of the really good work journalists around this country do. The two awards I’m most interested in are those for Public Service and Local Reporting.

This year, the Public Service award went to the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C. It did a powerful series on how South Carolina is the worst state for domestic violence inflicted on women by men. 

The Local Reporting award went to the Torrance Daily Breeze in California for a series on corruption in the Centinela Valley School District.  

The awards are a reminder that people who go into this profession are not in it for the money (trust me on that!). They’re in it because it’s a way to change the world.

5. One other Pulitzer I noted went to Carol D. Leonnig of The Washington Post for National Reporting. Her award was for coverage of the Secret Service’s recent problems. I knew the name looked familiar. Nearly eight years ago, she had the co-byline on a story that featured my brother, who was being thwarted in his bid for a non-political job at the Justice Department by a Bush administration official with a political agenda. I, of course, thought the story was right-on. So I’m happy for Ms. Leonnig (although my spellcheck doesn’t seem so pleased, because it keeps changing the name to Leaning).

6. Finally on the Pulitzers – awards are also given for the arts. I like to see who wins the Music award, and have purchased the music for iTunes on occasion. Music that wins the Pulitzer is usually experimental and edgy rather than toe-tapping — I guarantee that “Uptown Funk” wasn’t nominated. This year’s winner is Julia Wolfe for a piece called “Anthracite Fields.” I can’t find a recording on iTunes and Amazon, but the Pulitzer committee put up this YouTube video. I’m not questioning whether Ms. Wolfe deserves her award. But shouldn’t there be a recording that allows people to judge without having to stream a video. Also, I assume she’s writing music to make a living, but maybe I’m wrong.

1. It’s Friday, April 17, 2015. The weekend is nearly upon us.

2. Few things I read choke me up. Here’s what did today: the Boston Globe piece by the parents of the 8-year-old boy killed in the Boston Marathon bombing.

In the piece, Bill and Denise Richard say they do not want Dzhokhar Tsarnaev put to death following his conviction last week for his role in the bombing. They say they have suffered enough — that the appeals and the continued attention to Tsarnaev will just delay what they have to do: Rebuild their lives.

“We hope our two remaining children do not have to grow up with the lingering, painful reminder of what the defendant took from them, which years of appeals would undoubtedly bring,” the Richards write.

As brutal a price as all of Boston has paid for those moments of terror two years ago, the Richard family has suffered even more. Besides losing their son, their 7-year-old daughter was maimed in the blasts. They’ve had to listen to — and give — testimony in court about what happened that sad April day. They’ve had to see the focus on one of the two losers who committed the crime.

They want it to end. Who can blame them? I can’t fathom the pain those people feel every single day.

And yet they had the strength to write this piece. We all have our reasons for wanting either death or life in a cell for the pillbug who did what he did. The Richards make an eloquent case for life in a cell. It’s worth reading – and any tears that might come with it.

3. April 17 is the 54th anniversary of one of the biggest blunders of American history: the invasion by Cuban exiles attempting to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs.

There’s likely to be some anti-American sentiment expressed, as usual. But this anniversary is quite a bit different than the other 53 now that President Obama has acted to normalize relations with Cuba.

As The Guardian reports, some in Cuba — where they still drive American cars from the ‘50s and miss Coca-Cola — are optimistic. Unfortunately, the ideologues in Congress are unlikely to lift the worthless embargo that has been in effect since the ‘60s.

There’s no denying the Castros’ contribution to regional instability and oppression since they took over in 1959. But despite the embargo — or maybe even because of it — they’re still around. It’s actually pretty amazing when you think about it.

Anyway, if something doesn’t work for half a century, you don’t keep doing it. We’ve moved on from Vietnam. It’s time to move on from Cuba.

4. I will be in good spirits Monday if the Mets are still in first place. If not, prepare for crankiness.

1. It’s Thursday, April 16, 2015.

2. This part of April seems to have a disproportionate number of anniversaries of historic events. Lee’s surrender to Grant on April 9. The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the 12th. The sinking of the Titanic and the shooting of Abraham Lincoln on the 14th. The death of Lincoln and the Major League Baseball debut of Jackie Robinson on the 15th. So I was curious about the 16th, and used Wikipedia (sorry, research purists).

And the event that caught my eye was April 16, 2007.

On that day, I was sitting at my desk in the CNNMoney newsroom when the big screens starting showing chaos on the campus of Virginia Tech University. There was an active shooter, and amid the snowflakes of an unseasonably cold April day in the Appalachians, that shooter took the lives of 32 students and faculty members before deciding to kill himself.

The young man was mentally ill. But somehow, he had been able to procure semi-automatic weapons.

At the time, my daughter was within two years of going off to college. And I thought about the horror that the victims’ families endured — I’m sure they still do. It’s a parent’s nightmare – you send the ultimate manifestation of your love out into the world and hope or pray that they’re safe. And then somebody whose mind is unstable inflicts pain – or worse.

Unfortunately, Virginia Tech wasn’t an isolated incident. It followed the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. It preceded the shootings at the Century Theater in Aurora, Colo., and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. and lots of others that are about as heinous. And while there were some federal gun laws tightened after Virginia Tech, the jackasses who believe everyone should be armed have managed to stop other reasonable measures to make firearms safer and keep them out of the hands of insane people.

As sad and as angry as it makes me, I’m glad I looked this up. I’m glad that the people associated with Virginia Tech are taking time to remember, both on the Blacksburg campus and around the nation.

With all that happens, you sometimes forget events that, at the time, were all consuming. If only to honor the 32 innocent people who died that day, I’m going to try to keep remembering why April 16th is as significant as the days before it. 

3. Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, says nominating her for President will allow the Republicans to nullify Hillary Clinton’s ability to galvanize the women’s vote.

In case you were unaware, Carly Fiorina is a woman. I’m sure she’d want that known for certain.

Here’s the point that I believe Ms. Florina is missing. Hillary Clinton isn’t going to get a large amount of support from women just because she’s a woman. If Ms. Clinton does get that support, it will be because she has successfully captured the sentiments of American women about such issues as equal pay, income inequality, health care, control over their own bodies, same-sex marriage and war. (Which, by the way, happen to be issues a lot of men are interested in as well.)

I think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that Carly Fiorina will get very far in a White House bid. But if she tries to do it by saying “Hey, I’m a woman, too,” she’s got even less chance than that snowball. 

1. It’s Wednesday, April 15, 2015. It’s the 68th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

2. Oh yeah, it’s also the day you are required to file your 2014 tax return.

3. I paid a lot to the IRS this year. That’s not what bothers me. Paying my taxes, no matter how much they are, doesn’t bother me. I live in this country, I take advantage of what it provides me, I’m cooling with paying my share — and even some of the share of people who can’t afford to pay their share. I believe in government, and I’ll put my money where my mouth is.

4. That said, I hate the process of doing taxes. Hate it. And I have someone do my taxes for me. If I had to do my taxes myself, I’d go crazy. The forms. The gathering of data. The figuring out who gets what.

5. If you haven’t done your taxes, or you have but you haven’t paid what you owe the IRS, the person who can help you the most at 10 a.m. on April 15 is my former colleague Jeanne Sahadi at CNNMoney. I’m convinced Jeanne knows more about the tax process than most of the people at IRS headquarters. Her Twitter handle is @jjsahadi and her most recent stories are: http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/13/pf/taxes/irs-payment-plans/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/09/pf/taxes/filing-your-taxes/index.html

6. The Mets are either going to make this a season to remember, or drive me nuts before the end of April. Or both. Last night’s game — the return of pitcher Matt Harvey to Flushing — was expected to be a tour de force for the wunderkind. But he struggled a bit and, in the process, there were hit batsmen, a stupid catcher’s interference call and an injury to Mets captain David Wright. The Mets won, though, and there’s always something good about that. 

1. It’s Tuesday, April 14, 2015.

2. It’s the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. If you get to Washington, the tour of Ford’s Theater and the room across the street where Lincoln died the next morning is worth your time. 

3. Is there really any chance at all that there actually will be a final nuclear accord with Iran? The Obama administration is trying to sell the deal to senators and congressman. The president is trying to sell it to Jewish leaders worried about the deal’s impact on Israel. Everybody has ideas on how the deal could be better — all of which are negative to the other party in the deal, Iran. And let’s face facts here — while the American people are generally OK with the idea of an agreement with Iran, and definitely think it’s better than going to war, there’s no great movement out there pushing for approval. I would not bet a tin of caviar that President Obama and President Hassan Rouhani of Iran show up in Lausanne for a signing ceremony. 

4. Today is the first anniversary of the seizure of more than 200 Nigerian girls by the terrorist group Boko Haram. These assholes have gotten away with this heinous crime so far. But there are people in the world with long memories. And we can’t wait to see how Boko Haram and ISIS, groups who try to shock with their horrendous treatment of women, get their comeuppance.