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Tidbits® of Branson Area
I suppose this is a topic that lends itself very well to analogy. She was the best ... er ... cook you ever dated. I mean, you really, really loved her cooking. You couldn’t wait for her to bring over a crockpot of stew, a tray of lasagna, a six-pack of really good beer. But then, in a tearful mess, she broke up with you. You were stunned. You had been together so long ... but you had to accept it. She had been hinting about it for some time. But then she called late one night and said she wanted you back! You ran through the woods, you ran through her yard, you ran up the back porch, you ran until you thought your chest would explode -- but she wasn’t there. She’d changed her mind. So you started dating someone else. Again she came back. And even though your new girlfriend doesn’t cook as good as she did, you don’t care anymore. It’s time to move on. And such is the story of Brett Favre. Whatever you want to say about the future Hall of Fame quarterback, as soon as he started crying at press conferences and acting like a desperate housewife, it was over for him as far as I’m concerned. Some people need to move on. As predicted in this space, Jason Taylor did just that. When Washington came calling for the 33year-old sack leader, Miami was more than happy to oblige. It’s not that Taylor was a bad guy to have around the Dolphins clubhouse. He was the 2006 player of the year, he’s started 130 consecutive games, but he got sideways with Bill Parcells in the midst of a rebuild, and the draft picks were more than enough compensation to send the reality star off dancing to the suburbs of Maryland. Miami moved on. In New York, Eli Manning got rid of his last annoyance in tight end Jeremy Shockey. The year before, he shed running back Tiki Barber. What did both have in common? Neither of them played on a championship Giant team, and both showed a lack of respect for their coach and feld general. Shockey was an easy target both on the feld and off. He had heart, he was physical, and he could move the ball up feld. Now he’s off to the Big Easy, where the Super Bowl Giants surely wish him well. And it’s nice to see that the world has apparently decided to get over the 9/16ths of a second’s glimpse of breast that Janet Jackson bared to the world four years ago. Last month, a federal appeals court threw out a $550,000 indecency fne against CBS for airing the “wardrobe malfunction.” The verdict: move on. Mark Vasto is a veteran sportswriter and publisher of The Parkville (Mo.) Luminary. (c) 2008 King Features Synd., Inc.
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Better Health Care for Women Veterans Back in 2005, the Journal of General Internal Medicine published a study that concluded that ambulatory health care for both male and female veterans at VA medical centers was equal in quality. The study looked at things like eye exams and fu and pneumonia shots. The Department of Veterans Affairs, of course, patted itself on the back, ignoring the not-so-small fact that all of those things are gender-neutral. Everybody gets a fu shot. Everybody gets an eye exam. Overall, however, the VA’s reputation for women veterans health care hasn’t been good. In April 2008, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, fled Women Veterans Health Care Improvement Act. The legislation asked for studies on barriers to health care, the health consequences of serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effects on the mental, physical and reproductive health
of female veterans, as well as developing a program to treat female veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder, and more. Just recently, Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake said at the VA National Summit on Women Veterans’ Issues that, “We are reinventing ourselves by expanding our womencentric focus to initiate new programs that meet the needs of women veterans.” What he didn’t say was that just weeks earlier, a healthcare quality review surfaced that plainly said that women veterans aren’t getting care up to the same standards as men. On June 26, the Women Veterans Health Care Improvement Act legislation fnally came out of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee after being blended into an overall omnibus bill that includes other veterans issues. It has a lot of supporters. Peake also didn’t say that the summit on women veterans is only held every four years. That alone speaks volumes. Write to Freddy Groves in care of King Features Weekly Service, P.O. Box 536475, Orlando, FL 32853-6475, or send e-mail to columnreply@gmail.com.
(c) 2008 King Features Synd., Inc.