The Dumbliness of the Wrongheaded Runner

In its infinite, cranium-up-rectal-duct wisdom, Major League Baseball will implement a new rule in an effort to speed up the game so as to attract younger fans – a diminishing cohort among its viewership. Beginning this year, all extra innings will begin with a runner on second base. This represents the best of both worlds: stupid AND awful. In answer to it, I heard a pundit the other day say something with which I agree wholeheartedly. I paraphrase it here:

MLB is concerned that their game isn't exciting enough for young fans (a valid enough argument, I admit,) so what do they do? They move to abbreviate one of the most exciting aspects of it -- extra innings. To which I'll add: if fans don't want to watch a game when it reaches extra innings, they're probably not watching it in the first place.

As George Will said, young people's problem with baseball isn't that games are too long -- it's that they're too boring. The game that became our unquestioned national pastime til the 1970s was filled with excitement: doubles, triples, stolen bases, hit and run plays, bunting runners over, etc. Today there are three dominant outcomes to an at bat: strikeout, walk or home run. Action on the basepaths – the real source of offensive excitement in the sport – is going extinct.

Now, after a hard-fought tie ballgame through nine innings, MLB will inject a mandated, inorganic deus ex machina rule into the mix. The artifice of an unearned runner on second to start the tenth and innings beyond is more likely to piss off traditionalists than attract new fans.

And I'll also add, what's so wrong with ties in baseball? Football and hockey haven't been destroyed by them. And in the old days (like, pre-1900, anyway) baseball DID have ties. If MLB is worried about games going too long, let them put a 12-inning limit on them. In this era of pitch counts, that would also provide an ancillary benefit by giving coaches predictability in helping them manage their pitching staffs.

If your team wins its division by half a game because of a tie during the regular season, I expect you'll be very happy; if you lose by half a game because of it, at least you'll have come by your sorrow in a more honest fashion. If your team comes up short because they lost a game by means of a bloop single driving in a runner who didn't deserve to be in scoring position in the first place, I'll bet you'll really be pissed.

What's 102 Games Among Friends?

Like most baseball fans, I expect, I'm looking forward to the season starting up again. While I'm disappointed that it'll only be 60 games, I'll regard the eventual champs (if even a short season can be successfully pulled off) as legitimate. This is a weird f'ing year all the way around. Whoever comes out on top will have had endured an aborted spring training, the COVID pandemic, the scandalous so-called “negotiations” to set the season's parameters, spring training 2.0 (I actually prefer the moniker “summer camp” – s'mores for everyone!) a truncated, weird-ass season plus the playoffs.

Along with all that, the players will undergo COVID-related testing, social distancing and (hopefully, one would think) isolation from fans, bars and even – to some degree – family. They're also going to have to endure such indignities as batters having to supply their own pine tar, pitchers being unable to lick their fingers between pitches and, horror of horrors! no spitting!

All things considered, I think that mentally surviving this clusterbomb of a season will be uniquely noteworthy among all of MLB's champions. Hell, at the end of this, I'd even be willing to see everyone else get one of those stupid “participation awards.”

Play ball! And in the words of King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “We shall watch – and pray.”

A Marbled Beef (or the Radical Left Misplays the Whole Statue Thing)

All too typically, the constructive work lately done in this country by the left has been co-opted in a self-defeating way by their radicals. I applaud the mostly peaceful “Black Lives Matter” protests of recent weeks. After decades of inexcusable mistreatment of black people at the hands of police, white America (including me) has finally begun to wake up to the injustice of the situation

I understand and can relate to people wanting to remove Confederate monuments or wanting to rename military bases named after Confederate generals. The Confederates were enemies of this country and killed American soldiers. We may as well name an army base after Hitler or one of his henchmen.

To the extent that people believe it represents their heritage – for starters, the Confederacy isn't a heritage. As the meme goes, it wasn't like hundreds of years of Irish heritage in which generations of your family occupied a land and built a culture. It was five years of rebellion against America. That's what the Confederate flag represents. The lifestyle that rebellion defended was built upon the ownership of other human beings – a lifestyle that was objectively wrong and was rightly stamped out. To those who want to propagate the canard that the Civil War was about “state's rights” – sorry, those rights were first and foremost about owning other human beings and were therefore illegitimate.

That having been said, if the radical left wants to destroy statues of Washington or Jefferson (as they have), their strategy is misguided. Yes, those men owned slaves. But one has to look at the long continuum of human freedom and accomplishment to gain proper perspective. Of course they had flaws. But on that continuum, they marked nodes of advancement that brought us to such enlightenment as we have today. One can't pretend that they can be held to a standard of perfection that they only began to understand in their own time. What we should try to realize – without convicting our forebears with modern values they can't have fully understood – is that without their contributions, we wouldn't have the values we so cavalierly assume would be ours without them.

Alexander the Great and Dumb Donald

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw0T9RK0GrA

After prefacing a question at Donald Trump's press conference Friday (March 20, 2020) by recounting current statistics of the sick and deceased due to COVID-19, NBC's Peter Alexander asked the president a straightforward question: “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?” Instead of offering comforting words or giving practical advice, (i.e., being presidential) Trump shot back, “I'd say that you're a terrible reporter . . .” and called it a “nasty question,” accusing Alexander of “sensationalism.” He topped off his rant with the schoolyard taunt of calling the reporter's employer (NBC owner, Comcast) “Con-cast.” Brilliant stuff from the mind of an eight-year-old who's been given the keys to our nuclear arsenal.

It was a perfectly valid question, the kind of question to which understandably frightened Americans deserve an honest, measured, useful answer. Unfortunately “useful” is not an adjective that can be remotely applied to this narcissistic, ignorant conman. Instead of giving Alexander's question the answer it deserved, Trump immediately sensed that he was somehow being attacked (because of course, everything is always about him) and responded like the pouting child he is.

Newsflash, Donald: So you wanted to be president. Well, guess what? Presidents get hard questions. It's part of the job. Just because a question in inconvenient to you and your titanic ego, doesn't make it a bad question. Quite to the contrary, your answer was a bad answer. An answer (like the eternal font of asinine things you say) that demonstrates how categorically unprepared and unfit you are for office.

As I previously noted in this space, COVID-19 is not Trump's fault. But everything about his response IS his fault. First, he denied it was a problem. Then he minimized the problem. And when he could no longer deny it, he finally addressed the problem – at least a month too late. (Of course he now pretends that he was on top of it from the start.) That delay has cost many, many lives. Not to mention that, compounding his incompetence and making matters worse, in 2018 he actually dismantled the NSC pandemic response team that President Obama had created.

Trump has amply demonstrated that he's a corrupt, incompetent liar. He avoided impeachment only because his Republican enablers have refused to acknowledge the truth about his wrongdoing: Ukraine, nepotism, the emoluments clause – take your pick. But now he's clearly demonstrated that he's fundamentally unqualified for his job. A job that's far beyond his capabilities to fulfill or even remotely understand.

November can't come soon enough.

Combating the Trump Virus

COVID-19 is not Trump's fault, but his initial denials, consistent lies and the resulting slow response are very much his fault.

In 2018, he disbanded the National Security Council unit focused on pandemic preparedness. This hampered the speed and resources with which we could combat the disease. This also was Trump's fault, a blunder he aggravated by blaming it on his administration and claiming not to have known anything about. Someone please tell me, in what universe does a U.S. president NOT accept Truman's maxim, “The Buck Stops Here?” But then again, in Trump's universe, he consistently throws people under the bus.

In 2014, President Obama led a swift and effective response to the worst outbreak of Ebola virus ever seen (in West Africa.) Under his direction, the U.S. Sent 3,000 DOD, CDC, USAID and other officials to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to assist with response efforts as part of a 10,000-person U.S.-backed civilian response. The disease was quickly brought under control. This experience informed his executive decision in 2016 to create the NSC pandemic response team to combat new health crises that would inevitably occur.

The team was dismantled, ostensibly, to cut costs (and how's that working out for us now?) But Trump has consistently attempted to dismantle much of Obama's legacy throughout his presidency. In doing so, it often seems as if he's being petulant and vindictive, cutting programs primarily because they were Obama's programs. If that's his motivation (and nothing about Trump's character would convincingly suggest otherwise,) it would be just one more example of why Donald Trump's presence in the White House is an obscenity and why he must be removed in November.

A Viral Failure of Leadership

https://www.pbs.org/video/shields-and-brooks-on-leadership-in-a-time-of-crisis-1584140287/

Shields: “'America First' fails.”

Brooks: “This is what happens when you elect a sociopath as president.”

If you're a supporter of Donald Trump, don't think these commentators are biased against him. The facts are biased against him. Maybe that's why he doesn't like facts.

For You Were Foreigners in Egypt

“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

                                                                              Leviticus 19:34

                                                                                                  

Accordingto Pew Research, 69% of white Evangelicals support Donald Trump while 44% of white Catholics (my own demographic) and 36% of Catholics overall support him. (Pew shows no category for “black evangelicals,” but they list “black protestants” as giving Trump 12% support.)

To be clear, I myself detest Donald Trump and want nothing more for our country than his sound defeat at the polls in November. While I find some comfort in the fact that he finds considerably less support among my own denomination, it's disheartening to me that any serious Christian abides his racist, hateful and quite non-Christian worldview. (And that doesn't even begin to address the danger of his upsetting the Western order with his policies and behavior abroad.) While certainly those polled likely can be found across the spectrum in what may be called “seriousness” about their faith, it's surely true that many of the people polled are quite devout.

I live in a relatively wealthy parish whose church attendance I gather to be nearly 90% white. Every week at Mass I hear constant injunctions to treat refugees and foreigners with love, kindness and hospitality. And every week I do a slow burn in my pew as I reasonably suppose that roughly half my fellow parishioners support a president who is the poster boy for everything that flies in the face of that injunction.

So it especially pleased me to read this article in our diocesan newspaper (The Observer – Rockford, IL diocese.) It's heartening to know that at least some of my fellow Catholics take Jesus seriously.

Whose Life Do You Pro?

In 2016 millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump because he was pro-life (the same reason that for years, they've voted for Republicans generally.) The trope was that Trump was a conservative who'd name conservative justices to the Supreme Court. This might someday create a Court that would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that declared abortion a constitutional right. For most of these people – in my experience, at least – “pro-life” usually means little more than “anti-abortion.” But there's more to a pro-life outlook than that. (And never mind that Trump is hardly a conservative; he just plays one on TV. But that's another discussion.)

As a Catholic, I'm well-acquainted with the pro-life message. Catholic priests frequently rail against abortion from the pulpit – as well they should because abortion is a horrible thing. (Though I do believe in the constitutionality of Roe.)  But the Roman Catholic Church also states that it's against capital punishment as part of its official pro-life agenda. In my entire life, I've never once heard a priest give a homily decrying the evils of capital punishment. And if one did, you can bet that lots of parishioners would be up in arms about the priest “bringing politics into it.” I suppose it depends on your politics.

There's another life issue that gets precious little play in the noise of the pro-life/pro-choice wars. According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, since 2013 over 200 El Salvadorans have been killed, raped, tortured or otherwise harmed after being deported from the United States. While part of this period is covered by the Obama administration, Donald Trump has made a special point of restricting asylum access to immigrants (especially brown and black immigrants) as part of his xenophobic policy agenda. And one can reasonably assume he doesn't limit to Africa the nations he regards as “shithole countries.”

Many of these people specifically sought asylum in the U.S. because they were fleeing imminent threats in their homeland. And upon their forced return, many of those killed or harmed fell prey to the very people they were trying to escape. U.S. officials know (or should know – and often because the deportees have told them, begged and pleaded with them) that they're being subjected to imminent danger as a direct result of deportation.  Yet American immigration officials callously deport them anyway.

I'd like to ask my pro-life friends, just where does this fall in your calculations when it comes to voting for a president or supporting this one? If it doesn't register, I'd suggest you rethink your calculations. Just as I'd also suggest you recall the notions of love, peace, mercy, welcoming the stranger and the foreigner and that whole load of nonsense that Jesus kept going on about.

Blagojevich -- What a Rod!

Rod Blagojevich has torn a page straight out of the Donald Trump playbook. After the president commuted the former Illinois governor's 14-year prison sentence for corruption, he characterized himself as a “political prisoner,” blaming his troubles on “those uncontrolled, unaccountable lawless prosecutors who did this to me. I broke no laws. I crossed no lines.”

Like Trump, he refuses to acknowledge facts and apparently subscribes to the notion that if he repeats his lies often enough and loudly enough, they'll eventually find currency as facts. At least, one would suppose, with enough morons to buy his eventual book or watch his eventual reality TV show.

More disturbingly, he says the above-mentioned “lawless prosecutors” are the same people who are trying to undermine his savior-in-chief, calling himself a “Trumpocrat.” Given Trump's bald transactional worldview, it seems probable that, whether Blagojevich believes it or not, taking this particular angle with his claim of innocence was likely a condition of Trump's pardon.

“If the . . . flimsy, unlawful standard that was applied to me were to be applied to everybody else in politics, every senator, every congressman, every mayor, every governor would have been sent to prison as I've been,” he claimed. He went on to say, “The very same people who did it to me, many of them have been trying to do to President Trump. They turned things, they're routine and legal, and they suddenly say they're illegal.”

For his part, the president tweeted, “Rod Blagojevich did not sell the Senate seat. He served 8 years in prison, with many remaining. He paid a big price. Another Comey and gang deal!” U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was the lead prosecutor in Blagojevich's case – and former FBI Director Jim Comey hired Fitzgerald as his personal attorney after the president fired him.

Good god! A day out of jail and Blago has already hit “11” on the insufferable meter.

Three Years On, It Ain't So, Joe

I stumbled across these videos -- part 1 and part 2 -- from February 2017.  They  comprise an interview of Joe Scarborough by Stephen Colbert.  I consider myself a moderate lefty but Scarborough represents the kind of conservative I can admire and respect.  While I probably disagree with him on most political and economic issues, he has a respect for our laws and institutions that I believe is essential for the American experiment to thrive -- and even continue.

Scarborough makes the point that Republicans need to understand that there will be life after Donald Trump (the inference being that there will surely be a Democrat in the oval office someday.)  At that, Colbert tells Joe he doesn't necessarily share his guest's optimism that there will be a period of time after Donald Trump. It may have been a joke three years ago, but I've become increasingly worried that Colbert may have been right.  (And honestly, he seemed half-serious at the time.)

Since Trump's election, people have been talking about his dictatorial tendencies.  To wit: he's reduced presidential statements and news conferences to Twitter rants and press gaggles in front of the White House (no press room, no podium, no presidential seal or American flag -- just Trump and a microphone); he constantly refers to the press members in attendance as "enemies of the people" -- a classic exercise from the dictator's playbook; he diminishes in word and deed our alliances and the institutions of the post-WWII order; and he shows a very real affinity for dictators of other countries (Kim Jong Un, Rodrigo Duterte and above all, Vladimir Putin -- who, incidentally, must love the aforementioned weakening of the U.S.-led world order.  The Russia investigation matters, people.)

Just this week Trump fired members of his administration who testified against him in his impeachment trial.  And he's apparently tweeted to their desired effect his unhappiness with the length of Roger Stone's sentence for his seven-count conviction in the Mueller investigation.

Trump obstructs justice, interferes with court proceedings (remember, he live-tweeted insults of the ambassador to Ukraine as she testified) and he flaunts norms of every kind, including those that prohibit by law, public servants from profiting from their positions. Not to mention that he continuously lies about everything.


I believe the time has come when reasonable minds have to transition from decrying Trump's dictatorial tendencies to concluding that they're coming true.  The Democrats sure as hell better beat him in November, because if they don't, Colbert's half-serious prediction just might come true.