Whitey Herzog
If I ever had anything like a "mentor" in my baseball fandom, it was a guy I never met. He was a former mediocre ballplayer not good enough to be an everyday presence in any big league lineup, but then went on to be a Hall of Fame manager. His name was Whitey Herzog, and he died a few weeks ago at age 92.
Whitey's time as a manager coincided with my formative years as a baseball nerd. He took over the Kansas City Royals of the American League in 1975 and it was around 1976 or ’77 that I became interested enough in the game to start reading box scores and developing favorite players and noticing how different ballparks played and so forth. But I knew nothing of Whitey or managers or strategies then. It wasn't until Whitey got fired by the Royals (after three straight division titles, the fools!) and took over my favorite team, the National League's St. Louis Cardinals, that I started to take notice.
I'd been a fan of the Cardinals for one reason: one of the first games I remember seeing on TV was a Cardinal game in which Lou Brock stole bases. That was cool. Thus, they became my team. They were bad back then, but I don't think I was aware of it in real time. What I remember about my Cardinal fandom from those days was being excited if they were playing the Dodgers (we got Dodger games on our local radio) and feeling good when I'd open up a new pack of baseball cards and find Cardinal players in it. (I have a distinct memory of getting a Lynn McGlothen card with him wearing the pillbox-type white-striped cap I only ever saw on cards, never on TV. Also one of Bake McBride in a regular uniform.)
When the 1980s rolled around, I was more curious about the off-field workings of a team and that's when Whitey—who had become both the field manager and the general manager of the Cardinals, the first person to hold both jobs simultaneously in decades and the last one to do so to date—started dismantling the Cardinal roster. Garry Templeton, the popular All-Star shortstop? Gone, traded. Ted Simmons, the popular star catcher? Gone, traded. Ken Reitz, Leon Durham, Pete Vukovich? Get out of town, boys. It wouldn't be until later that I really knew what was going on, I just thought it was curious that so many guys would be traded away deliberately.
1981 was a strike year. The season just stopped right in the middle, so my attention wasn't what it would be going forward, but it did bum me out that the Cardinals finished second in both halves of what became the "split season" of ’81. But 1982. Now I'm a teen and I'm learning things. I'm reading the "transactions" section of the sports page every day, looking for new moves Whitey was making as the season started, wondering what it meant. This is still the primitive before-times, of course, so following an out-of-market team was a challenge that mostly relied on the daily box scores and the occasional yahtzee of the Cards being featured on Monday Night Baseball or the NBC Game of the Week, as well as Vin Scully's radio play-by-play on those 12 meetings a year between the Cardinals and Dodgers ("A very pleasant good evening to you wherever you may be, I'm Vin Scully, along with Jerry Doggett and Ross Porter, and it's time for Dodger baseball!"). Still, I had my faves. First baseman Keith Hernandez topped the list. Also the guy they'd traded Templeton for, Ozzie Smith. And there was this new guy I'd never heard of named McGee that looked really funny when he batted. And they were good—won 90 games, swept Atlanta in the National League playoffs, and beat Milwaukee in the World Series. And when your team wins the World Series in the first year you're really die-hard paying attention to the ins and outs of the sport, well, that's it for you, you've crossed the Rubicon. Your foundation as a fan has been set, and in my case it was set with Whiteyball.
Whitey looked at his environs, first in Kansas City, then in St. Louis, and noted the artificial turf and big outfields. I can use this, he thought, and favored speedy guys and defensive stars in KC with Willie Wilson and Frank White and company. In St. Louis, he had total control and didn't just favor such players, he went out and got them from other teams and had no trouble dealing away players who didn't fit his vision. And the Cardinals became a revelation to the league, winning games left and right by stealing bases, manufacturing runs, making defensive plays, and treating the home run like a deterrent more than an actual weapon—so long as you had one guy in the lineup who would pop one every now and then, the pitcher had to worry about it, and that was enough.
The ’82 Cardinals won it all with their top home run threat, George Hendrick, hitting just 19 longballs, good for 17th in the 12-team National League. As a team they hit all of 67, dead last in the NL. But they were first in on-base percentage, first in most defensive metrics, and stole 200 bags, far and away more than any other club. To me, that's a far more exciting way to play and to watch baseball.
I was a devotee. To this day, my favorite team of all time is the 1985 Cardinals, the team that most successfully embodied the Whiteyball philosophy. Though Whitey was no longer the GM—he stepped down from that post prior to the ’83 season—he still held a lot of clout with the front office and made that ’85 club league champs (101 wins). They had the Rookie of the Year in a scrawny outfielder named Vince Coleman who stole 110 bases. They had the NL MVP in Willie McGee, who hit .353 and stole 56. They had Gold Gloves at center field and shortstop, plus future Gold Glove winners at third base and right field; the Cy Young runner-up in a great year for pitchers plus a second starter with 20 wins; and stole not 200 bases like the ’82 team did, but 314 (league average of the other 11 NL clubs: 120). Second baseman Tommy Herr drove in 110 runs while hitting just eight homers. That team was awesome, and that team was Whitey Herzog baseball. (Except for Jack Clark. He was the first baseman, acquired in a preseason trade to fill the gaping void that had been made when Keith Hernandez was traded in ’83 because of off-the-field behavior, and though Clark was critical to the team, it was in the function of the deterrent. He didn't fit the Whiteyball mold at all—not a good defender, not fast, not a "fundamentals first" kind of guy—but he could hit and he could hit them out on occasion, giving the team their one power threat and often an extra baserunner. Pitchers would often pitch around Clark and he drew a lot of walks, both intentional and the sort of "intentionally unintentional" type. Which was just fine with Andy Van Slyke, who usually batted behind him.)
When I moved out on my own and came up to Seattle and started going to Mariner games at the Kingdome, my season-ticket mates Erik and Mike, in a clever melding of my Herzog allegiance and my status as cat-guardian, dubbed my preferred brand of baseball "Harr-ball." It was often frustrating to watch the M's in those days, even when they were winning, because they won with boppers. Very little Harr-ball to be found.
These days, even in the less-homer-friendly outdoor venue the M's now call home, not only is there still a dearth of Harr-ball, there's a lack of basic managerial smarts and strategy that makes me miss Whitey Herzog on a near-everyday basis.
Whitey Herzog didn't make me a baseball fan. But he did make me the kind of fan I am. And I'm grateful. RIP, Whitey.
Tagged
Baseball |
Posted on April 29, 2024 at 5:14pm | Permalink | 
| 
One of these things is not like the other
A while back I made reference here to what I call the "battered spouse contingent" of the Republican party. I was subsequently asked what I meant by that, and it's pretty simple—people who continue to vote Republican despite the fact that Republican policies have hurt them repeatedly. That wasn't readily accepted as valid by my questioner, and in the interests of civility I didn't press the point overly much.
This individual reminded me a lot of people I've known over the years that have espoused sentiments like, "it doesn't matter who wins [a presidential election] because they're all the same." Or, "I voted for [third-party candidate] because s/he's the only one that I agree with," or for reasons of protest over the two-party system.
The "they're all the same" garbage seemed to peak (in my lifetime, anyway) in the 2000 campaign between George W. Bush and Al Gore. We can thank Ralph Nader for a lot of that. But regardless of the why, the result of people thinking like that was a GWB administration that began with corruption of the energy industry (Enron, anyone?), then 9/11 shocked the president despite his having been warned well in advance that something like it was being planned, then the response to 9/11 changed the world for the worse for decades.
They were not remotely the same.
While it's not as prevalent as it was in 2000, the idea that there's little to no difference between the parties is still espoused by a not insignificant percentage of Americans. Most of this is out of ignorance, some willful some not, but today the idea is being pushed indirectly by the Republican party—because if everyone is corrupt, then who cares that so many Republicans are? The Trumpification of the GOP has us more polarized than ever, but the parties have been starkly different for a long time. People who are not political junkies like me just don't know it.
So I had this idea to put together a little snapshot of how the country did under the last several presidents, something that would be easy to digest. Kind of like the back of a baseball card, with the important stats and facts laid out in black and white. (While my formal education in American history is limited to some University survey courses, I am a bit of a history nerd and know a thing or two from study and from having lived through time with my eyes and ears open.) And then I heard Buzz Burbank on The Bob Cesca Show joke about how we need a "pamphlet drop" to remind people about everything from 2016-2021, and I started expanding the thought.
In putting that idea into form, I found it isn't practical to just list economic stats and global crises if you want to convey the performance of an administration. You need more information. But I've endeavored to find a middle ground between back-of-the-baseball-card and pages-in-an-encyclopedia to show at a relative glance how the country fared under different administrations.
So, parameters:
Firstly, to my knowledge and judgment, the last Republican president who was worthy of holding the office—that is, who took his oath the the Constitution seriously, who actively worked for the benefit of the people as a whole, who didn't commit or abet crime or corrupt practices, and who wasn't otherwise overtly doing harm for his own purposes—was Dwight Eisenhower, POTUS No. 34, whose term ended in 1961. (One could make an argument for Ford, but he wasn't elected as either POTUS or VP and that pardon... No. The pardon is a disqualifier.) In Ike's time, the Republicans were a centrist party that balanced a belief in free-market capitalism with the needs of the populace, were staunchly anti-Communist and saw the US as a global force for freedom and democracy, and were happy to maintain the social status quo. Since then we can see a steady decline from that to today's autocratic, anti-democracy, isolationist, corruptly fascist Republicans, with mileposts along the way in Richard Nixon, Henry Kissenger, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell, all the way to Trump and his Trump Sycophants.
So we begin with Ike's successor, John F. Kennedy, in 1961, and examine several items for each administration: economic indicators, military conflicts, scandals, global or national crises, notable staff, important achievements or policies, and Supreme Court appointments. I wrap each one up with a brief(ish) few paragraphs of context, keeping things to a single page (though I did have to adjust my typesetting format a few times to make that work). It's a remarkably even split between the two parties in power—in those 64 years, there have been six Democratic presidents and six Republican presidents, each covering a total of 32 years (including 2024).
But before getting into the individuals, here's a composite back-of-the-card snapshot.
DEMOCRATS (8 TERMS)Total budget deficit increase: (–$2.716 trillion) Major wars: 2, 1 inherited |
REPUBLICANS (8 TERMS)Total budget deficit increase: $3.338 trillion Major wars: 4, 1 inherited |
Republicans added three and a third trillion dollars to the deficit, Democrats recovered over two and two-thirds trillion of it despite the handicap of having to pay all that interest on Republican debt. Republicans gave us almost seven years of recession to the Democrats' one and a quarter (more than half of which was recovering from The Great Recession of G.W. Bush). Tell me again how the Republicans are the fiscally responsible ones.
Anyway, here's the completed project. I plan on distributing it to some podcasters I like in hopes they will make it available to their audiences in hopes that members of those audiences will share it with folks they know and in an ideal world it "goes viral." Not really expecting that, based on my history in trying to promote things on the Internet, but we'll see.
Feel free to spread this around, everybody.
Tagged
Politics,
Republicans,
Democrats |
Posted on April 23, 2024 at 4:23pm | Permalink | |
The Manfred Legacy
Worst. Commissioner. Ever.
Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred is widely and rightly reviled. He has managed to change the game of baseball fundamentally in a few short years, instituting new rules like the extra-inning "zombie baserunner," the ever-changing pitch clock, participation-trophy-level playoffs, and the metastasization of the cancer known as the designated hitter. A lot of people like some of these rules, which I simply don't understand in a few cases. I think most of them were solutions to problems that didn't exist; the only ones I don't have at least some objection to are the limit on mound visits and the three-batter minimum for pitchers.
Suffice to say, the dude has left his mark. Things are way different than they were before he surfaced from whatever sea of goo his species lives in. But I have to hand it to Craig Calcaterra: he went beyond the rules and pinpointed the real legacy of Commissioner Manfred.
I’ve spent several years mocking all of the “Official ___ of Major League Baseball” sponsorships we’ve seen since Rob Manfred took office. Selling everything that isn’t nailed down, selling lots of things that are nailed down, and inventing new things to sell from whole cloth has really been his singular achievement as commissioner.
Craig was working up to the weirdness within the new rotating sponsor ads on the login page of the MLB phone app, but his broader point is seen everywhere. It's really quite gross. Especially when the jersey ads appear on uniforms now made so cheaply that they look like baggy knockoffs made with iron-on technology in a child-labor sweatshop. Which, if we're being real, they probably are.
Manfred can't leave his job quickly enough. But we're stuck with him for another five years. By which time we might all be watching Blernsball.
Posted on March 31, 2024 at 6:04pm | Permalink | |
Opening Day
Lots going on of late. Most of my free time has been occupied with a project I'll post about later, plus I've been doing the umpire thing, and all kinds of news has been noteworthy, and I've been mildly under the weather since Sunday and binging a rewatch of Enterprise.
But for now, TODAY IS OPENING DAY and I'll be heading down to the ballpark in an hour or so.
In years past I'd have been doing a lot of writing and editing of season preview stuff relating to Your Seattle Mariners, but as we all know, the website that stuff was for and its antecedent publication are both gone the way of the dodo. Thus, I haven't been paying nearly as much attention to the doings of the baseball world in the preseason; I didn't watch a single spring training game or renew my subscription to The Athletic or even pony up to get the everyday newsletters from Joe Pos or Craig Cal. (Craig, I may well take you up on your Opening Day discount offer, but I'm still wavering.)
But the season is here now. Time to buckle down.
The hometown Mariners are not a group that inspires a great deal of confidence, but you know what, they could be really good. They just need to overcome their manager, their lack of depth on the bench, the inconsistency of their ace starting pitcher, the rawness of the rest of the young rotation, a questionable third-base platoon, and an untried relief corps. Otherwise, they look great.
New to the club this year are second baseman Jorge Polanco, who we hope will resemble the Jorge Polanco of 2019 more than the Jorge Polanco of 2020-2023; third baseman Luis Urias, whom I expect nothing from; corner OF/1B Luke Raley, who so far has looked like a Quadruple-A type player, but maybe?; DH Mitch Garver, who actually could be really good; and the welcome return of Mitch Haniger, who we all hope can stay off the injured list.
With that crop of newbies, how can we contain all the excitement?!
Game 1. 7:10pm PDT. I'll be up in section 339 (not my regular seats) keeping score.
Tagged
Baseball,
Seattle Mariners |
Posted on March 28, 2024 at 4:31pm | Permalink | |
Why do we still do this?!
Yep, it's time once again for the nearly-national indulgence in social engineering we call Daylight Saving Time. And once again, I'm posting about how it's something I wish would just go away.
I am, of course, biased by my upbringing in a state that wisely chooses to ignore this tomfoolery. (Seems I'm also in the minority in opposing the practice.) We never changed our clocks in my childhood, though I do recall once when we were visiting my grandparents in California on the weekend the switch occurred and I was excited to be the one to move the hour hands. It was novelty, I guess. But since we never bothered with it, I didn't understand the point of the thing until much later.
Now that I've been living with the practice for a quarter century, and at a latitude where it actually makes a difference...well, I still think it's dumb. (And misnamed—we're not "saving" anything, just moving our schedules.) And a pretty stark commentary on how stubborn and how easily manipulated humans are.
Let's look at why DST exists at all. Because I'm a bit of a history nerd and this is a good way to procrastinate doing my taxes.
First instituted in Europe 1916, followed by Australia and parts of Canada in 1917 and the United States in 1918, the idea was to reduce civilian energy consumption during World War I. (The US law also established consistent time zones in the country for the first time, to aid in the railway and emerging radio broadcast industries.) President Woodrow Wilson liked the concept of Daylight Time—then defined as beginning on the last Sunday in March and ending on the last Sunday in October—and wanted to keep it after the war was over, but Congress said (paraphrasing) f*ck that sh*t, and repealed it in 1920, pointing out that saving fuel for the war effort was no longer a factor. Wilson vetoed the repeal, but Congress overrode. Hooray for separation of powers!
With no Federal law in effect, states and localities either observed DST or not as they chose. For a couple of decades there was temporal chaos! New York City was on Daylight Time, upstate New York was not! Rhode Island followed it, but not Connecticut! Pandemonium! Except not really, because this was the 1920s and ’30s and it wasn't all that important when people didn't travel much or very quickly.
It wasn't until the next big war that DST made a nationwide comeback, with FDR mandating it year-round from February 1942 through September 1945, again to save on fuel consumption. Once the war was over, so was "war time" and localities again prevailed on the subject.
Now we're into the 1950s and ’60s, though—there's more travel, by air as well as rail; there's more broadcasting, TV as well as radio. The hodgepodge is becoming a real issue. (Apparently there was a 35-mile stretch of highway in Ohio and West Virginia wherein the local time changed seven times from one end to the other.) So, we get the 1966 "Uniform Time Act," a title that is simultaneously spot-on descriptive and contradictory of itself. Neat trick. That legislation says states and localities can't go their own way anymore, everyone within a time zone will be consistent with their local time, and that DST will be in effect from the first Sunday in April until the last Sunday in October. States that don't want to participate are exempt only if they pass a state law declaring the entire state (amended in 1972 so the entire area of a state within one time zone could exempt) stays consistently on Standard time year-round. The rationale is once again a theoretical savings in energy consumption during the spring and summer months. (This law interestingly also placed areas of certain states in new time zones, aligning more with longitude than state boundaries in places like Florida and Texas.)
That's where we are today, save for two more legislative tweaks to extend DST's duration—first in 1986 to add three weeks in April, then in 2007 to add three weeks at the front end and one week at the back end. Now we're on DST from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, nearly two-thirds of the year.
So that's the how and when of it, but the thing that I really find curious is the why.
The rationale for each and every one of the DST laws is to save on energy consumption by shifting activity to earlier in the day so as to take greater advantage of sunlight. But in our human society, asking large numbers of people to move up their daily activity by an hour for part of the year is an impossible request. We're too set in our ways.
We could just say, OK, starting in April schools are in session from 8:00am until 2:00pm instead of 9:00am until 3:00pm. Broadcasters move their scheduling up one hour. Businesses aren't mandated to have any particular hours anyway, but are encouraged to follow suit and open from 8:00-4:00 instead of 9:00-5:00 or whathaveyou. But what kind of compliance would we get?
Some, sure. But a lot of businesses and private schools and such would say, "nah, things are fine the way it is, I don't want to start an hour earlier." Still others would do it, but later in the year or for a different span of months. We're stubborn creatures. We don't like being told when to do things.
But we're also manipulable. We'll go along with it if we're tricked into doing it. Force us to move our clocks and we'll likewise not change our ways—our stubbornness could still come into play by simply acknowledging that the time shift is fake and we'll simply operate our business hours from 10:00 to 6:00 for the duration, maintaining the same schedule as before, but no; we're used to the number on the clock being the proper measure of time, so we just do it because this way we "don't change our habits." Except we totally do.
There's been a lot of noise in recent years about doing away with the change, but mostly on the side of adopting DST year-round (essentially returning to FDR's "war time"). A number of states have passed legislation stating that they'd go on year-round DST if and when Congress amends the Uniform Time Act to allow it. But we've done that before and it didn't go well.
In 1973, in response to the OPEC oil embargo that caused a national gasoline shortage and contributed to economic recession, Congress passed Senate Bill 2702, which President Nixon signed into law in early 1974. SB2702 extended DST year-round for two years during which studies would be done to determine if it should be extended in perpetuity. But within weeks, popularity of the measure went from 79% to 42%, mostly because of early-morning "night" causing more traffic accidents: school children were being killed on their way to school in the darkness, even in southern latitude states like Florida, and some schools did the sensible thing and reverted to astronomical-time scheduling. One study concluded there was a small savings in energy use, not quite 1%; another found gasoline usage actually went up, defeating the primary purpose. But Congress repealed the measure after not even one year, with a House statement noting that any meager energy gains "must be balanced against a majority of the public’s distaste for the observance of Daylight Saving Time."
Of course, things are a lot different now than even in the ’70s. Power usage happens round the clock now. Energy sources are more varied. Does consumption actually change anymore during DST months? Even in decades past studies were inconclusive, with some saying, yes, electric lighting use dropped a small fraction, but energy used for home heating and cooling went up. Others said the overall benefit was about 0.5% difference in overall usage. But nowadays? With computers running 24/7, LED bulbs replacing inefficient incandescents, more renewable sources entering the electric grids, 24-hour societal activity in most cities? I'm quite dubious.
I'm a night owl. I don't care when the sun comes up in the morning, my natural tendencies are to be up late and sleep late. If we went to permanent DST, fine, at least we won't be switching clocks twice a year anymore. But my preference is permanent Standard Time. When high noon actually happens at, you know, noon, not at 1:00pm. Society can change its schedules if it wants to without the trickery of moving the clock hands.
Hell, baseball teams are already starting most of their games at 6:30 instead of 7:00 (and went from 7:30 to 7:00 20 years ago or so), which annoys me no end. For me, later is better! F you, morning people! Creatures of the night rise up!
Anyway, the immediate bottom line is that I have to start my umpire shift tomorrow at noon, which is really 11:00am, and I'll very likely be working five games on only a few hours of sleep. Hopefully I won't blow too many calls.
Tagged
Daylight Saving Time |
Posted on March 9, 2024 at 10:34pm | Permalink | |
Thoughts on the State of the Union
I did not watch/listen to President Biden give his State of the Union speech in real time last night. I had an umpiring shift and was otherwise occupied going out to Cal Anderson Park and moving soccer players off of our field (they were, for once, entirely cooperative; thanks, guys) before officiating a few games. I got home around 12:30am, put a pizza in the oven, and settled in to watch the speech in the wee hours.
It did not disappoint. This was a home-run of a SOTU address, not only touting the various accomplishments of the Biden term thus far, not only setting an agenda for future accomplishments in term two, not only calling out the dire threat and horror show returning the previous guy to office would be, but taking the fight right to people in the room with him—Republican Congressmen and SCOTUS Justices—and once again deftly handling the hecklers and outbursts from Congressional nutjobs.
Referencing FDR's "no ordinary time" remark regarding World War II, the president got things rolling with, “My purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment, either.” We have a new fight against fascism today, and this time it's not just overseas but domestic. In a skillful poke at Republican hypocrisy he invoked Ronald Reagan and the Berlin Wall, comparing Regan's demand that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this wall" to Donald Trump encouraging Vladimir Putin to "do whatever the hell you want." Driving it home, Biden said, “A former president actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. I think it’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. And it’s unacceptable.”
Biden successfully (I think) reached potential voters with lines like "Does anybody really think the tax code is fair?" and "Clearly those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America." Direct, forceful statements that simultaneously attacked Republicans, offered positive hope for progress, and appealed to not just the Democratic base but ideological moderates and, frankly, a lot of people that wear MAGA hats. (I mean, that latter group is too far gone to hear it, but the appeal was made nonetheless.)
Oh, and he absolutely torpedoed the "dottering senile old man" caricature of him that right-wing media has been constantly perpetuating. In the moment, Republicans were complaining not that "Sleepy Joe" is addlebrained and weak but that Biden was too loud, too fervent, too mean. Make up your minds, asshats.
I read a lot of takes from around the Interwebs today. Most were effusive, none were really negative except Sean Hannity's, and all he could say was that the president "seemed off," like he was grasping at straws to find any way he could spin the event to fit his old-man-Joe narrative. Some, like Pod Save America's Dan Pfeiffer, focused on the nuts and bolts of the speech's content, but most honed in on Biden's energy, Biden's ability to be quick on his feet and ad-lib, and the astonishing behavior of the Republicans.
In the course of his master class, Biden got considerable help from the other side—whose tantrums and outbursts and lies he handled with the deftness of a practiced Kindergarten teacher. They fumed, they pouted, they squirmed, and, like [House Speaker] Mike Johnson, they sat silently even when Biden was talking about removing lead from water in order to protect our children, lowering prescription drug costs, saving democracy from Russian aggression, and the record growth of small businesses—basically anything good about America or the positive progress this country has made since Biden had been in charge.
Biden said, unlike all the people who don’t, that he would always tell the truth about January 6: “You can’t love your country only when you win.” He asked Congress to uphold their oaths and defend the country against all threats, foreign, and, Biden emphasized, “domestic.” Speaker Johnson pressed his lips together and looked mighty uncomfortable. I don’t think he enjoyed himself tonight.
And Steven Beschloss brought it back to the bottom line:
It was a bracing, optimistic, vigorous expression of what the next eight months (and beyond) can look like. Biden made clear last night, as millions of Americans were listening, that now is the time to choose—not just who we want as president, but what country and what future we want. Few times in our history has that choice been more critical.
Well done, Joe. Keep it up.
Tagged
Politics,
Republicans,
President Biden |
Posted on March 8, 2024 at 8:37pm | Permalink | |
Darrin Bell FTW
The genius behind Candorville cuts right to the heart of the matter.
I'm not sure what the green bottles signify. Any ideas? (UPDATE: Oh, are they spray paint cans, they've just retitled the banner? OK. Sorry, Darrin, it should have been obvious.)
Tagged
Politics,
Republicans,
SCOTUS,
Darrin Bell |
Posted on March 2, 2024 at 6:10pm | Permalink | |
Supremely problematic
Bribes taken at the back entrance
As if we needed more evidence to support the idea, today's decision by the Supreme Court of the United States granting former president VonClownstick's request to an appeal regarding his claim of "presidential immunity" gives even more reason to believe the Court is corrupt and working in tandem with the Republican party and not in the service of the Constitution or the rule of law.
It's not a "win" for the former president in that all they've decided is to hear his appeal, not to necessarily agree with it, but it is a huge win for him in that it grants him at least two more months of delay in resolving this matter. The likelihood of his standing trial on this case—in case you've lot track, this is the Jack Smith/January 6th insurrection case, not the stolen documents case or the hush money case or the Georgia electioneering case or the civil fraud case or the suits against him from DC police or any of the other myriad court cases the guy's been up to his eyeballs in for his whole life—and a verdict being reached before the November election is now pretty remote.
The trial had been scheduled to begin next week, on March 4th. That won't happen now, as SCOTUS has suspended that until the outcome of its hearing the appeal, which won't happen until April 22nd. When they issue a ruling will come who knows how long after that. Quoting former US District Attorney Joyce Vance:
The case could have been handled much more quickly, especially because the issue before the Court isn’t difficult: either presidents can commit crimes to stay in office or they can’t. The timeline here was a choice, made by the Justices. They chose to give Donald Trump at least two more months of delay. We don’t know how a specific Justice votes on a cert grant. But we do know that at least five Justices voted to hear this case because while it only takes four votes to grant cert, it take five to grant a stay, and the Court’s order, continues the stay in the trial court while the appeal is underway.
It could be June or July before SCOTUS makes a call on this. A trial will take months. Election Day is immovable and doesn't care if a trial is over yet or not.
Clarence Thomas is corrupt. He's taken de facto bribes for decades and refuses to recuse when he's clearly got a conflict of interest in a case. Sam Alito has taken similar de facto bribes from people associated with the right-wing Federalist Society. Neil Gorsuch sold property to a lawyer with 22 subsequent cases before the Court (and no, he didn't recuse himself). Brett Kavanaugh somehow got confirmed by the Senate despite committing perjury in his hearings, having suspicious financial activity and very credible sexual assault allegations against him, and had eighty-three complaints of ethics violations levied against him for conduct in those hearings. Amy Coney Barrett, like Gorsuch, sold property to persons with business before the court and did not recuse; she also refused to recuse in a case involving the David Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group that spent "seven figures" lobbying for Barrett's confirmation by the Senate (AFP also lobbied for the confirmations of Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, who likewise refused to recuse). John Roberts' wife had a heavy financial interest in a case before the Court and Roberts was fine with presiding over it; he utterly failed to do his job in presiding over the Trump impeachments; and as the Chief Justice he has repeatedly claimed that everyone on his Court has behaved in an exemplary ethical fashion, declining to enforce any sort of ethical guidelines for the Court.
More important than any of that, though—but it is related—is that two-thirds of this Supreme Court has shown itself to be loyal to ideology, not law; Republican policy, not the Constitution.
They support states' rights until it conflicts with their ideology. They support legal precedent until it conflicts with their ideology. They support Constitutional principles—until they conflict with their ideology.
My favorite(?) example of a Justice's hypocrisy and obtuseness came when, in hearing the case regarding Colorado removing Trump from their primary ballot, Alito opined that a single state shouldn't have so much influence on who wins a presidential election. This was from a guy that worked on the Bush v. Gore case in Florida in 2000, a case where the Court completely improperly stepped in to halt a recount and declare that Bush won the presidency because of an incomplete ballot tally in one state.
If not for the presence of too many Republicans in the House of Representatives, Clarence Thomas, at least, would be looking at impeachment. (Personally, I think Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett should all be impeached, with the latter three being deemed to have been appointed by a treasonous president, but that's a pipe dream.) Gorsuch's seat was blatantly stolen by the Republicans when they refused to confirm anyone appointed by then-President Obama, giving his a uniquely tainted Justiceship.
There is so very much damage to repair from the Trump years, with correcting the Supreme Court near the top of the list. But to do it, we're going to need voters to step up and not only re-elect President Biden, but elect enough Democrats to the Senate and House to neuter the fascist plans of the now-authoritarian Republican Party.
Tagged
Politics,
Republicans,
SCOTUS |
Posted on February 28, 2024 at 11:14pm | Permalink | |
First-world problems
My car is in the shop. Nothing horrible, really, at least I don't think so. I'll know more when the mechanic gives me an update tomorrow. Exhaust system issues. It's an old car, things happen.
Being without it for a few days isn't a big deal, but I did have an umpiring shift to cover this evening at Capitol Hill. Fortunately, Cap Hill is the only one of our parks to which I don't have to haul equipment to and from, it all stays on site, which makes getting there without the car less cumbersome. Ye olde metro buses can get me there and back in about an hour's time each way.
Theoretically.
I know from plenty of experience that relying on the bus can be a tenuous thing, so I made sure to leave early enough to accommodate delays. Particularly since no matter what, on a Sunday I have no practical alternative to what we refer to around here as "the crazy bus," i.e. the KC Metro E Line. Up in my neck of the woods it's generally not a big deal, but from the city limits on into downtown the route is often populated by a demographic cohort that is underprivileged and in various manners unhealthy. Thus, riding the E Line is unpredictable.
Still, things went smoothly on the way down and I got to the park with 20 minutes to spare. I used the time to chat up some of my favorite players that were in the game currently being played under the early-game umpire's watch and remark on the start of Major League spring training and generally shoot the breeze while defending my fellow umpire from some criticism. (I mean, yes, he did miss that call at first, but given the bases-loaded situation you got to cut him a little slack; he's only got one pair of eyes and they can't watch all three bases at the same time.) It's playoffs, people get testy.
That game ended and I relieved my fellow ump and took over, grateful that the lights at Cal Anderson park were working again and there were no obnoxious soccer players getting in our way on this cold evening. New teams took the field and I let my ego soak up the comments from both departing and arriving players—"dude, what the hell, why didn't we get you for our game?"; "hey good, Tim's here"; "you're so much better than the other umps"—and I was enjoying things. I made two bad calls, one on a ball/strike decision that was irrelevant as the next pitch was put in play, one more important on a hard grounder over the bag at third base that I called fair and that led to several runs. In the moment I didn't know if it was fair or foul, the angle from home plate on that kind of thing is pretty bad and there was no time to shift position, but it has to be called immediately anyway, so I pointed fair. No complaints, but I still wasn't sure, so after the inning I went to the third baseman, a guy I've seen a lot of doing these games, and asked him. He said it was foul. I believe him, he's not a troublemaker. Oh well. There were a few other bang-bang plays I know I did get right despite some pushback (playoffs, people get testy), so there.
The winner of that game was to play again immediately following in a semifinal match, but as we were nearing the start time for that one I wasn't seeing anyone new show up. Usually by the 5th or 6th inning the teams for the next game are at least partly there, warming up on the sidelines. We were running a bit late, but with no next team waiting I didn't rush things and let the game go the full 7 regulation frames as the Chop Zone Outlaws emerged victorious with a nice double-play turned in the home 7th to secure the win.
Still no opposing team and we were well past the permissible grace period to avoid a forfeit, so I called off the second game and packed up the gear, thinking I'd get home early and get to warm up. The Metro Transit app on my phone told me I could catch a bus in a short few minutes and be home in under an hour. Good, I needed dinner.
But this again involved a transfer to the crazy bus. So it was not to be.
In addition to the typical E Line happenings—a guy sat next to me and started rapping a tune about Jesus; two stops for wheelchair riders that required some delay; the expected onslaught of fragrance from unwashed bodies that gives me empathy for fictional Vulcans on fictional human starships—something happened just as we entered the on-ramp to the portion of Aurora Avenue that becomes limited-access. What happened I still don't know, I haven't been able to suss it out, but we stopped in the middle of the long ramp, stuck behind a disabled bus immediately ahead. Why we couldn't go around I'm not sure, but we were stuck and given where the bus was, the driver didn't want to just let us all out; there was a small shoulder, but next to that a big concrete divider with another lane of traffic and an elevation drop on the other side and opposite another divider beyond which was traffic going the other way. Pedestrians were not accommodated there.
So we waited for help. Some Metro mechanic or tow vehicle or something to clear the way.
But nothing happened. I got through the latest episode of the Fast Politics podcast in its entirety before the first passenger rebelled and broke the cover over the emergency release on the back door and let himself out. The driver resealed the door best he could, then went to talk to the driver of a third bus which was now stuck behind us. Before long other passengers pulled the same maneuver and reopened the door and just walked out into the street. Fortunately, this is on a Sunday night when traffic was relatively light.
Eventually Metro officials had blocked off a makeshift pedestrian route for us to exit the bus and walk back along the on ramp to what my California relatives would call the surface street, and we got to wait for the next E bus to arrive with two other complements of passengers. That took a while (during which time it started to snow), then we all crowded into the next bus, which made a bit of a detour to rejoin the highway later on, and I managed to get to my stop and exit the bus before the headache that had started building as soon as I got on the overcrowded coach had gotten truly unbearable. The few-blocks walk back to my place in the snowy sleet wasn't quite enough to clear my head but it helped.
The thing is, had I stayed to work that second game, because of Sunday schedules and such, I would have had an alternative to the crazy bus. There is a night-owl route out of Northgate that gets relatively close to my place, I could have taken the train to Northgate and caught that instead; barring other complications, I actually would have been home well before I actually made it here.
Alas.
I've got another game to ump tomorrow night. This one I have to haul gear to, so my car better be ready by then. Otherwise I have to brave the crazy bus again, but with a 10-pound bag of softball gear. [Cue sad trombone noise.]
Tagged
Umping,
Cars,
Seattle |
Posted on February 25, 2024 at 11:57pm | Permalink | |
Journalistic malpractice
There has been a disturbing trend in the world of American political punditry of late. Journalists and commentators and substackers and the like, including people I generally respect, have been jumping on the "President Biden is too old and shouldn't run again" bandwagon. This bugs me on a number of levels, most of which redound to (a) Joe Biden has a remarkable string of positive accomplishments in just three-plus years in office and has shown zero evidence of losing his capability to keep doing so; and (b) it's another success story for Republican propaganda movers who spout bullshit on Fox "News" and the like and see it travel all the way into the words of people like Robert Reich and Ezra Klein and Jon Stewart.
Klein's piece in the New York Times is particularly galling because he all but admits he's furthering an argument based on propaganda.
Titled "Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden," Klein's essay spends a great many words on explaining just how awesome a job Joe Biden has done as President before concluding he has to go. It's insane. After trumpeting many of Biden's accomplishments—uniting the party leadership, wrangling a contentious Democratic caucus in the Senate to pass several pieces of landmark legislation, shepherding a post-peak-COVID economic recovery that is the envy of the world—he looks at the polling (which isn't currently great), mentions that Trump-appointed special counsel Robert Hur peppered a report utterly clearing Biden of any wrongdoing in a classified-documents matter following his vice-presidency with insults and innuendo deliberately fabricated to further this very bit of propaganda, and then basically throws up his hands like Bud Selig at a tied All-Star Game.
Acknowledging that there is no indication, zero, from anyone who works with the president, from White House staff to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, that Biden is in any way incapable or inattentive, Klein says that doesn't matter because campaigning for re-election is hard and tiring.
He cites as evidence that Biden isn't up for a campaign that the President didn't do a TV interview for the Super Bowl pregame show, as has become customary over the past several years. "The Super Bowl," Klein writes, "is one of the biggest audiences you will ever have. And you just skip it? You just say no?" Well, let's think about this for more than two and a half seconds, Ezra. Who would have conducted that interview? CBS claimed not to have a correspondent in mind for the job, but Margaret Brennan of "Face the Nation" was surely in the mix and she's...well, to be fair, she's not Chuck Todd or Sean Hannity, but nor is she Cronkite or Koppel. Whether Brennan or someone else, the hot topic of the day in newsrooms was that stupid Robert Hur report, which was basically being regurgitated without pushback in mainstream news media. I don't blame the President for not wanting to provide another opportunity for a reporter to give more oxygen to GOP smears. Was it risky? Sure. It's a pass at a big audience, but not the audience Klein was making it out to be. The Super Bowl itself is a ratings bonanza. The pregame interview with the president is a few minutes when a large chunk of that audience goes out for a snack run or yaks with their guests at the Super Bowl party, they're not really watching.
Also, the media landscape isn't what it was even a few years ago. TV interviews have their place, to be sure, but in terms of campaigning, which is what Klein is talking about here, a sit-down on CBS with a correspondent more interested in drama than journalism probably doesn't serve much purpose. TV news is a different beast today than in decades past. Digital media is far more important for the under-50 demographic. Navigating that has its own set of challenges, but skipping the Super Bowl just isn't the big deal Klein and others make it out to be.
Yes, to campaign successfully, Biden needs to be in view doing his job and showing the world he's sharp. And yes, slipping up and saying the name of the former Chancellor of Germany instead of the current one isn't helpful, but it's the sort of thing Joe Biden has done for decades and isn't necessarily a sign of age-related decline. Journalists have to stop feeding the GOP meme that "Grandpa Joe is feeble and senile" and instead remind the public that age is but one factor when assessing one's overall health and in and of itself the number isn't indicative of anything. As stated by a professor at Australia's University of Sydney, "It’s important to realize that as people age they become more diverse in their abilities and characteristics, probably more so than at younger ages."
Joe Biden is 81. He bicycles (both on a traditional bike and a Peloton), lifts weights, and has a personal trainer. He doesn't have a special diet, but never overeats, according to his medical-doctor wife. He has a few ailments—acid reflux, arthritis, persistent sinus irritations, things most of us can relate to to one degree or another—and plays through the pain, as it were, of his osteoarthritic spine. He had COVID, but thanks to vaccinations and boosters did not have a serious case. He is, in short, a healthy dude.
Franklin Roosevelt died at just 63, he was literally dying during his last run for reelection. He actually did fall asleep during meetings and need a great deal of assistance due to frailty, but no one believes FDR wasn't up to the job. Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer's, by some accounts as early as 1984 when he was 73, certainly by the time he was into his second term at 75, yet people still lionize the guy (which is crazy, but not because of his dementia). JFK's physical health was terrible, he had Addison's disease and treated back pain with heavy use of amphetamines. (Kennedy's health was so consistently troubled that within the Kennedy clan, there was apparently a running joke that if Jack Kennedy were to be bitten by a mosquito the mosquito would die from food poisoning.) Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated in his early 60s by a stroke in mid-term and continued on with others largely running the show for him. Chester Arthur had a fatal kidney infection, a symptom of which was extreme fatigue, but ran for reelection anyway (he lost) before dying at age 57. Then there's now-77-year-old Trump, who has lied continuously about his own health and made sure that official reports were edited to show he had no ailments, suggesting he has many (plus he's, you know, sociopathic and staggeringly stupid). Every one of those guys was/is younger than Joe Biden and in far, far worse health.
Klein also disputes that the Joe-is-too-old issue is propagated by news media. He writes, "In poll after poll, 70 percent to 80 percent of voters are worried about his age. This is not a thing people need the media to see." Really? Why do you think those people were "worried about his age" if not because of what they saw on/read in the news? Because he said Mitterand when he meant Macron one time? Because he talks a bit more quietly than others? OK, then what are reporters like Klein doing about that? He almost does something about it with this piece, making many good points about how successful and capable Joe Biden has been and continues to be, but instead he chose to perpetuate the meme. Even if I were to accept the statement that "this is not a thing people need the media to see," here you are, Ezra, in the media, reinforcing the idea and making it worse!
"The presidency is a performance," Klein writes, using the word not in the sense of your annual performance review at work, but in the sense of an actor performing a role on stage. And people answering pollsters don't like what they see on the stage. So get someone else, practical concerns be damned, choosing the right person to do the job after the campaign be damned, the only priorities should be charisma and poll numbers.
Klein's conclusion seems to be, "Americans are stupid. Thus, if we want the Democrats to win, we must replace the man who has had arguably the most effective and successful first term as President since LBJ with a hypothetical younger person who may or may not be an empty suit."
My conclusion is, "American journalists are failing. They are allowing disinformation and propaganda to fuel their reportage without adequate analysis. They are prioritizing drama and conflict over truth and facts. And they convey that running for president is what's important, not the actual job of being president."
Look, Klein is scared. I get it, I'm scared too. This is a literal must-win election. Biden cannot lose or else Trump regains power and destroys this country as we know it, contrary to what Jon Stewart said the other night (he said, addressing supporters of both candidates: "If your guy loses bad stuff might happen, but the country is not over. And if your guy wins, the country is in no way saved." I never thought Jon Stewart would be one of the guys not paying attention). The fact that Biden is behind in the polls is unfathomable to anyone paying attention, and the fact of the matter is that a not inconsequential fraction of Americans are stupid. Rubes, conned into following a cultist who thinks they're disgusting and exist solely for him to exploit. Another percentage is not in the cult, but is ignorant enough to support candidates that hurt them, what I think of as the "battered spouse contingent" of the Republican party that has existed for decades. Between the two groups, there might well be enough of them to plunge us into a new dark age. It's fucking terrifying.
But: (a) Biden is who we've got, there is no practical way of replacing him on the ticket unless he voluntarily cedes the top spot to Kamala Harris, and then Klein and company will freak out because Americans are racist and sexist as well as ageist; (b) Biden is actually a damn good president; (c) Republicans and Russians (is there a difference any more?) will tar and feather whomever the Democrats nominate with fabricated propaganda and the sheep currently comprising the bulk of the American news media will regurgitate it all anyway. "But her e-mails." "Swift Boat Veterans for 'Truth'." Birtherism. The Willie Horton ads. Who the candidate is is merely a detail, the smear campaign will just be retailored.
We've got some time before November. Let's do better than the "journalists" in informing the public and getting out the vote.
UPDATE: One newscaster/pundit that is trying to educate the public about true things is Lawrence O'Donnell, who took this on in his show a few nights ago. He covered some of the same ground I did above (written before I saw the clip), and I recommend this video, share it around. It's longish, but clarifying.
Tagged
Politics,
Republicans,
President Biden |
Posted on February 23, 2024 at 10:16pm | Permalink | |
Dazed and relatively alert
There's a scene in the TV show Ted Lasso (season 2, episode 1) in which star footballer Dani Rojas accidentally kills Earl, the team's greyhound mascot, when Earl is struck by Rojas' kicked soccer ball. It's a little bit counter-intuitive, as a soccer ball is relatively soft and full of air, but physics. You know, potential energy, velocity, mass × acceleration, that sort of thing.
Last night as I was preparing for an umpiring shift, I found myself empathizing a lot more fully with Earl. Some guys playing soccer on our field, dilly-dallying about getting out of our way so we could start our softball game, kicked a soccer ball—hard—and clocked me right in the temple. I went down, sort of blacked out (in the sense that my vision went dark but I was still conscious) for about, I don't know, 15 seconds, maybe, and then got up and made my displeasure known to the soccer jerks. One of my softball players was out to assist me straight away and he moved to go after the soccer guys, but I just shouted at them and they left without further incident.
I didn't see it coming, of course, so I can't say if it was an accident or a deliberate attempt to hit me without understanding how hard the impact would be, but I am fairly sure there wasn't an intention to injure me. I've had enough conflict with soccer players who won't leave our fields that it makes things murky and I can't be sure of their hostility or lack thereof; could go either way.
Either way, it rattled my cage pretty good and it took a while for things to normalize. Don't ask me what happened in the first couple innings of our game, I couldn't tell you. I do know I didn't think to do some of the normal pregame stuff like clearing foul ground of obstructions (soccer goal) and checking the bases (one had a broken post the other day) until midway though our game. Things seemed fine by mid-game, but I woke up today with a splitting headache and basically lost my whole Wednesday to trying to sleep off the pain.
It's OK now. I still feel the sting of the impact on the side of my face, but the headache is gone and I don't feel at all dazed or impaired. But I'm glad I don't have another game to ump until next Tuesday.
Fucking soccer.
Tagged
Umping |
Posted on February 7, 2024 at 10:07pm | Permalink | |
Keeping busy
I've not posted anything here since the holidays, and, well, that's partly because the holidays suck and I didn't want to belabor that. And partly because, since they do suck, and since I'm also saddled with my ever-present Black Hole of clinical depression, there's been a bit of a lag time in surfacing from the latest dip into the Black Hole's gravity well. It's almost a given that said gravity will take hold around the end of the year, and the trick is how long will it take to climb back to a stable orbit.
It's been slow going. Fits and starts. Altitude gain followed by backslides. But two weeks into the year I can sense a sort of normalcy returning.
One way to fight the pull and get closer to apogee is a project. Focus on building something. So, in addition to a client gig that I just finished today, I've had a few things in progress: More eBay stuff, improving the lighting in my living room, and solving the problem of Preventing Damage From Cat on Printer/Scanner.
Zephyr is now a grownup kitty. Took him a couple of years to fill out to his adult weight, but he's there now. Even though he's still a runt, he behaves like a more massive feline since he has all the grace and agility of Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford. And whenever I'm at my desk he likes to climb up on my scanner, which is part of the reason I had to replace said scanner after the sheet feed apparatus broke and the internal mechanism relying on a belt that moves the imager back and forth became became, well, wonky and inconsistent. I'd rather not replace the new one because of more cat damage, but convincing him to stay off of it is a losing battle.
Hence, my solution. Some wood scraps screwed together into brackets, a cheap piece of OSB plywood, a hinge, a piece of leftover carpet, and some paint. This evening I have the finished product doing it's thing.
Next up will be extending the overhead track lights, for which I am awaiting parts.
And one of these days I need to fix the Cloud Five site, which has been broken for a while. In case I ever want to revive that.
Tagged
Projects,
Cats |
Posted on January 17, 2024 at 7:57pm | Permalink | |