Jingoism and the WBC

Woalter and new acquaintance in Miami

This year's World Baseball Classic is not proceeding to my liking. Mostly because what I still maintain is the best baseball team on planet Earth, Team Japan, was bounced out in the quarterfinals the other night.

It wasn't a great game—the other four Japan played were better, or at least more entertaining, not just because Japan won them but because they were more evocative of the kind of well-balanced, multifaceted baseball favored in Japan. The quarterfinal against Venezuela turned out to be more USA/Latin America style ball, i.e. home-run dependent. 13 runs scored in the game, ten of them on homers. And one of them on a mind-blowing error by Japan pitcher Atsuki Taneichi (of the Chiba Marines in his day job), which really did Japan in even though the score remained relatively close.

Anyway, Japan's exit from the tournament would, you might expect, also end my interest in it; usually, you'd be right, but there are two mitigating circumstances: One, my young friend Woalter, the softball player I took to my last regular season game of the year, is from Venezuela and is attending the Miami games of the WBC. So he was in the stands, cheering on his guys, when I texted him to say, "your guys beat my guys and I am holding you personally responsible." Woalter replied by sending me video of the final play, Shohei Ohtani popping out to shallow right-center field, he'd taken on his phone. Sigh. Well, if I have to be disappointed, at least he is getting his money's worth down there. He's clearly having a blast, as evidenced by the photos he sent.

A lone Venezuelan surrounded by a pack of Dominicans and having a blast

Meanwhile, there's mitigating circumstance number two: Team USA, who will play for the title tomorrow against either Venezuela or "Italy." The members of Team USA are acting like assholes. On purpose. You've got pitcher Paul Skenes entirely missing the point and declaring, "We’re America. We’ve got to assert our dominance over everybody else." You've got team manager Mark DeRosa enforcing a sort of Bob Gibson-esque "no fraternizing" rule among the players, leading to guys who are teammates during the season snubbing each other on the field in the WBC. Seattle Mariner Cal Raleigh has been the most visible doing this because he's a catcher and everyone who comes to bat has a chance to greet him, so we saw his Mariner teammates Randy Arozarena and Josh Naylor both offer him a warm greeting only to be given the cold shoulder out of what appeared to be misplaced macho bullshit (which is indeed what it turned out to be, just teamwide rather than Raleigh-specific). You've got right-wing military asshats being brought into the clubhouse to give motivational pep talks. You've got a team of guys behaving like jingoistic ugly Americans you'd hate to cross paths with on a foreign vacation, behavior that embarrasses themselves and offends their peers, in a sporting tournament that is designed to promote and share the game of baseball with the international community. DeRosa and Team USA appear to be taking cues from our current despotic regime in their manner and attitude, and I find myself rooting hard for Venezuela to kick their asses tomorrow evening.

Here's how our pal Craig Calcaterra explained this yesterday:

While the other countries in the World Baseball Classic are celebrating their culture, engaging happily with their opponents, and appear to be having a wonderful and even joyous time, Mark De Rosa's squad has leaned into jingoism, militarism, and redass chumpfuckery. I suppose that's inevitable given that American culture and identity has increasingly become little more than an economy backed by a military. But Jesus, guys, you could do a hell of a lot better.

As I type this, though, Venezuela is losing 2-1 to "Italy" in their semifinal game. They've got three innings to come back and win it. Otherwise, the championship game will be Team USA vs. a Team Italy that is 90% American. "Italy" even getting this far is a tremendous upset, but since there are only three Italians on the roster it would be far less satisfying for them to take on Team USA tomorrow.

Plus, it would make Woalter sad. And we don't want that.

Tagged Baseball, WBC, Umping, Politics, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on March 16, 2026 at 7:05PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Irredeemably Committing Evil

5-year-old Liam Ramos, who was abducted by ICE and renditioned to Texas after ICE arrested his father

ICE has to die.

I don't mean to suggest that the country shouldn't have a mechanism to enforce immigration law. I mean that the existing entity known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement is beyond hope of reform. It is completely off the rails, it is operating in a fashion that cannot be redeemed, and it must be dismantled.

That's true, of course, for the entire so-called Department of Homeland Security (the name alone should have been a a clue that it would abuse its power), but right now I'm focused on DHS's division of violent masked thugs that are told: "break the law at will, kidnap people, use children as bait, imprison said children many states away, and hey, if you murder a completely unthreatening lady out of anger 'cause you couldn't intimidate her, don't worry about facing any consequences."

It has to go.

Quoting our friend Craig Calcaterra:

Just yesterday afternoon [ICE agents] held a person down on the ground and, while they were completely helpless, sprayed a massive amount of pepper spray into their eyes:

Photo: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune

That stuff is designed to subdue a crowd of people from a distance. Doing what they're doing here stands a great chance of blinding this person. This is state-sanctioned torture, carried out in broad daylight against someone who is utterly powerless, for no reason whatsoever.

Later in the day it was reported that ICE agents are acting pursuant to a secret memo, released by a whistleblower, which purports to authorize agents to break into homes without a judicial warrant and drag people away. It's blatantly illegal—it's something straight of out a fascist's most intense fever dream—yet that is what is currently governing the rules of engagement and there is no one doing a thing to stop it despite its manifest unconstitutionality.

Finally, I saw a photo of a young child, a little boy no older than five, being taken away by ICE agents after his father was arrested. First, however, ICE agents apparently used him as bait to apprehend his own father. There was no effort made to find the child's mother. The child has reportedly been whisked, alone, to a prison in Texas. It's an open question as to whether he'll ever even see his parents again. A report about that all can be seen here.

There have been scenes and stories like this every day, but yesterday something broke in me and I was filled with a murderous rage. I feel so helpless. It all feels so hopeless. Twisted, hateful, and evil actors are using the power of the state to attack its own people for no cognizable reason and to no legitimate end. The attack is the end. It's immiseration, terror, torture, child trafficking, and even murder for its own sake, ordered by lawless and immoral people and carried out by an American Gestapo who have been told that the law does not and never will apply to them. They have been told to brutalize others because fuck them, that's why, and they are doing it with gusto while trying to foment riots so that they'll have the pretext to expand their violent campaign.

I had to close the laptop and sit in silence for a good long while after taking that all in. I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind.

 And that's not enough for President Ralph Wiggum Palpatine, who has ordered active-duty military to prepare for deployment to Minnesota. Which is illegal, a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. In order to make such a deployment "legal," Felon47 would have to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would also be illegal as it can only be invoked to enforce Federal law, not defy it.

Those military commanders, as well as the individual soldiers, had best remind themselves of their obligation to refuse illegal orders.

I ask again, WHERE IS CONGRESS? IMPEACH NOW.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Republicans, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on January 22, 2026 at 5:08PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Mélange of miscellany

Kudos to the great people of Minnesota, who go out in the cold to document the fascism

Rather than pick a topic and dive in I'm going with a potpourri of assorted notes on various things today...

Dateline: Occupied Minnesota

• The campaign of state-sponsored terror continues in occupied Minneapolis, and thankfully the good people who live there are out documenting it. One video made it to the cablewaves of the Chicago-based allegedly-centrist-but-Republican-slanted station NewsNation, which showed it over an interview with Congresswoman Mary Miller (R–IL). Rep. Miller said the woman shown in the video being abducted out of her car while trying to drive to a medical appointment deserved to be manhandled and abused because "she's here illegally [and] probably getting free health care." She later admitted that she doesn't know who the woman is and thus has no earthly idea if she's here illegally or not, but she also says, "who cares? She's breaking the law and resisting arrest." For the record, the woman was later identified as a biracial U.S.-born software engineer and ICE had to release her.

  The video, which is all Rep. Miller had to go on, shows no lawbreaking whatsoever on the woman's part; it shows ICE acting illegally, though, breaking her car windows and abducting her rather than allowing her to move along her way. Was she being arrested for cause? Was she to be charged with something? Would the charge be, say, asking an ICE patrol why she was being hindered from traveling to her appointment? That's the "lawbreaking" Rep. Miller sees and says "who cares?" about? This interview is the first and thus far only time I've ever seen Rep. Mary Miller, I'd never heard of her before, but it's plenty sufficient to reveal her as a racist, authoritarian abettor of criminals with no respect for law or her oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. In a sane world, she would be censured, removed from committees, or even expelled from the House by her fellow Congresspeople for what she said in this interview.

  Miller represents a gerrymandered district created in the 2020 redistricting that moved Illinois 15 from the southeastern corner of the state to a rural expanse in the center that is nearly bisected by population centers. If you live in Decatur, Springfield, or Champaign, congratulations, you are not Miller's constituent, though you are completely surrounded by those who are. If you live in East St. Louis, Bloomington, or Peoria, you're less than 20 miles from IL–15. The 2020 census took a seat away from Illinois, necessitating a redistricting, and the state redrew its map to group cities together as much as possible in a "fight back" gerrymander. It gave the state three more Democratic seats in the House but eliminated toss-up districts and made the three remaining R districts deeply, deeply Republican. This new blood-red district had two incumbents, one holding the seat lost in the census, and its voters reelected Miller over the more moderate R and then overwhelmingly reelected her again. Congrats, IL–15, you people are batshit crazy. At best.

• In another incident on Monday, ICE agents kidnapped a black woman, a U.S. citizen, in occupied St. Paul. It wasn't clear if the damage to her car seen in the video was caused by ICE or not, but rather than assist someone after an automotive collision of some kind the agents abducted her, threw her into an unmarked vehicle, and drove off.
• Also Monday, ICE agents abducted two teenage employees of a Twin Cities area Target store, tackling one of them to the ground and beating him, only to dump them out of the unmarked vehicle, bloody and sobbing, eight miles away when they were satisfied that the teens were American citizens. (Video is on X, so I'm not linking it. Screw you, Elon.)
• Three Minnesota school districts (and counting?) are now accommodating remote classes as it is unsafe for students to attend school. ICE has abducted parents, tear-gassed playgrounds, and generally terrorized various Minnesota schools this month in their alleged quest to deport immigrants.
• A Minneapolis resident, abducted by ICE for following an ICE vehicle and alerting neighbors to ICE's presence—agents stopped her car, broke the driver and passenger side windows, and forced the two occupants from the car—said that while being forcibly taken in an unmarked vehicle to a nearby Federal building agents told her, "you guys have to stop obstructing us, that's why that lesbian bitch is dead." The threat, the misogyny, the bigotry, the callous disregard for law, the small-minded insecurity, all there in one quote from a government-sanctioned thug during an illegal arrest. Before being released, agents apparently offered at least one of the two abductees money if they would name or identify other protesters.
• Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D–IL 2, south Chicago suburbs) has spearheaded a move to impeach Kristi Noem over her use of ICE thugs in Minnesota and elsewhere. More power to you and your colleagues, Rep. Kelly. It won't succeed in this House, but I applaud the effort and want to see more of this. Just because Speaker Johnson won't allow such things to be voted on doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing them every damn day.
• An activist in the Netherlands was given a list of more than 4,000 names of people working as ICE agents or support personnel. He put it online. Since these people have no business trying to hide their identities in the first place, I'll link to it. The site is slow to load, I imagine it's getting a bit of strain put on its server.
• I look forward to the massive number of lawsuits that will eventually be filed against DHS, the least of which will be a plethora of demands for financial restitution for property damage to the various cars agents have rammed, broken windows of, sliced seatbelts in, and, you know, shot.

The hot stove league

• With the signing of free-agent third baseman Alex Bregman, the Chicago Cubs have bumped incumbent third-sacker Matt Shaw to the bench. Shaw is a MAGA ideologue who left the team to attend the funeral of Charlie Kirk and again during the pennant race to go to a MAGA rally in Arizona. Thus, when the Bregman signing became official we got this outstanding post on BlueSky:

  

  Our buddy Craig Calcaterra followed up on that with this sentiment:

  I suppose Shaw will now be a super utilityman. Which makes me REALLY want the Cubs to acquire a better utilityman such as Santiago Espinal or someone like him so Shaw can be replaced, in the same offseason, by both a Jew and a Latino guy. That'd probably break his fascist ass.

  Schadenfreude for the win.

• The Kansas City Royals are the latest team to do something stupid with their field dimensions. That's my bias, of course, that it's stupid. The Royals are moving the fences in at Kaufmann Stadium, shortening the alleys between the foul poles and dead-center field by ten feet. Not satisfied with that, they are also making the fence height 18 inches shorter. KC's general manager, J.J. Picollo, claimed he wasn't "trying to jump-start our offense," which is silly, of course he is. But the thing is, Kaufmann has always been a great hitters' park. It just hasn't been a great home run park. Especially in the days when it had AstroTurf, but even with grass, KC's was a terrific park to hit doubles and triples in. A big outfield means potentially fewer homers, but it also means more base hits—outfielders have more ground to cover, balls are going to fall short of their positioning or go over their heads more often than they would in smaller outfields. Also, a curved symmetrical outfield wall meant any roller that hit the wall had the opportunity to hug the wall as it rolled on rather than carom back to an outfielder. I haven't seen whether or not they're trying to keep the curvature of the wall, but no matter what it won't be as prevalent since the degree of curve will be lessened. This is a move intended to make home runs easier to hit and to thus encourage batters—Royals and opponents—to keep up the dumbness that has made for less interesting baseball since the post-strike 1990s. That is, the all or nothing, "three true outcome" style offense that has reduced balls in play, skyrocketed strikeouts, and massively devalued defensive skill, particularly for outfielders.

  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Home runs are boring. Compared to most other ways to score, unless it's a walkoff ending a game, a homer is dull. It's a flash-in-the-pan event, a potential rally-killer, while a string of base hits keeps pressure on the pitcher and the defense. Other than a bases-loaded walk/hit batter, a balk, or, god forbid, a pitch timer violation, the home run is the least interesting way to score. Teams ought to be doing what the Orioles did a few years back and making their outfields bigger. Encourage more contact, encourage smart baserunning, make outfield defense important, and above all, make the game less reliant on brute force. Rob Deer was an interesting player because there just weren't very many Rob Deers. Nowadays every team has at least two of him. The world champion Los Angeles Dodgers had five players top 120 strikeouts in 2025. Five! (Your Seattle Mariners only had one, which is a big reason they were so much better in ’25 than in prior seasons.)

  I realize I'm never likely to see a team like my beloved 1985 Cardinals ever again, but can we stop trying to make baseball dumber? Please?

• The Washington Nationals are the latest team to ditch their cable television contract, leaving the Mid Atlantic Sports Network and turning over their TV rights to Major League Baseball. The cable TV model is quickly dying and I am here for it. What remains to be seen is how MLB is going to be handling the various teams (now including Your Seattle Mariners) they need to televise. Presumably they will find a cable outlet in each of the markets they can pipe feeds to, but really the need is in streaming. Because Commissioner Dumbass shot himself in the foot trying to extort a better playoff TV deal from ESPN, he ended up losing revenue and to try and make up for the loss in the short term sold ESPN the streaming rights for what had been MLB.TV. Until very recently, MLB.TV was only meant for subscribers to watch out-of-market teams and that's what ESPN now has control over; whether MLB will retain these individual teams' in-market streaming rights or lump them in with the ESPN deal is unclear. We'll find out in a couple of months. Regardless, the death of the cable model means an end to the stupidity of making it difficult/impossible for local fans to watch their own team without paying through the nose for a cable/satellite package. That stupidity remains for playoff games, though, so there's still a ways to go. But it's more evidence that Commander Data was right in Star Trek: TNG when he mentioned that broadcast television didn't last in any significant form beyond the year 2040.

Site tweaks and email issues

• I have succeeded (I think) in eliminating the duplicate email problem with the new daily update email subscription thing. However, I have in the process discovered that the emails being sent have a moderately high spam score. This is mostly because the system is intended for a lot more stuff to be in the emails than I want to include, and thus they go out with a lot of blank lines in the formatting. Lots of blank lines are suspicious to spam filtering algorithms. So I would ask any who like receiving the updates-via-email to add *@starshiptim.com to the whitelist in your spam filter of choice to prevent the emails from going into your junk folders unseen. If you don't know how to do that, just ask me, I'll walk you through it.
• I have always disliked WordPress as a platform, and these days, while I don't exactly hate it with the fire of a thousand suns, I heavily discourage anyone from using it unless there are mitigating circumstances of some sort. This site, obviously, has nothing to do with that platform and never will, and my reasons for eschewing it are many. One of them is that the WordPress platform has become ubiquitous, it's everywhere, and thus bad actors—hackers, phishers, malicious billionaires, etc.—target WordPress sites specifically to do their fuckery. They target other sites too, of course, but there's a reason an entire subindustry of WordPress repair and protection services has popped up over the years. Anyway, with that in mind it should not have surprised me to find in the data from my recent experiments in bot-fighting that many of the malicious bots attacking this site are specifically trying to find WordPress login pages and file structures. Shouldn't have, but it did. In a way, it's comforting—it reinforces the belief that bots and their operators don't do subtlety. They're kind of like Rob Deer, really; brute force, swing hard and either get the homer or strike out. So, another thing to cite in my ever-present recommendation that if you use WordPress you should move to something else (I'll help you, my rates are good!), and if you're thinking about starting a WP site to think again.

Tagged Politics, ICE, President VonClownstick, Republicans, Baseball, Site issues, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on January 14, 2026 at 9:29PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Quotes of the day

A few choice quotations from my Sunday reading before I head out to do more umpiring this afternoon/evening...

I know how Congress works. I know that a party in the minority cannot impose their will and that they can't stop what's happening right now. But I do want them to at least acknowledge it and communicate with Americans in a way that demonstrates that they understand why so many of us are being driven to madness and tears at the country being destroyed. I want them to engage in argument and persuasion which meets the moment and which makes it clear that, when the political situation does change, they will act in decisive ways.

This can happen in any number of ways, such as making sure to find the cameras and the microphones to make it clear where they stand when shit goes down. The articulation of a moral stance. It can also happen such as in simply not going along with the Trump Regime in any way whatsoever. Don't vote for things he wants and don't try to find common ground, because finding common ground with a criminal enterprise in a Constitutional crisis only serves to normalize the regime's anti-democratic behavior and to make one an accomplice to criminality.

—Craig Calcaterra

If the American Experiment dies, it will be because we didn’t stop the immorality of a white supremacy that calls Somali refugees “garbage” and a patriarchy that mutters “fucking bitch” as it murders a woman in ice-cold blood. If it lives, it will be because we embraced the higher morality of empathy and compassion for our neighbors—and for people we don’t even know.

—Will Bunch

In my reading of that moment, through everything I know about abusive men and the way they move through the world, that quiet "I’m not mad at you" may have felt like a challenge to someone who needed to be in charge. Because some men don’t hear peace as peace. They hear it as a woman claiming ground that isn’t supposed to belong to her. They hear it as a refusal to be properly afraid. ... 

... I keep thinking about how often women are asked to be the calm in a storm they didn’t create, how often we’re taught to soften danger with our voices and our bodies and our fear, and how often it doesn’t save us anyway.

—Jo Carducci

Trump, until very recently a self-styled antiwar isolationist, now threatens to forcibly revert Greenland’s status to unreconstructed colonialism under a nation forged in high-minded opposition and bloody resistance to that very notion. Why? Probably, judging by his acknowledged fixation on Venezuelan oil and riches in general, for plunder, but also, by his own account, “for national protection.”

That’s funny, because the United States has enjoyed unfettered military access to the island since World War II, when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany and the United States took Greenland in defense. A 1951 agreement between Denmark and the United States allows the latter to expand its military presence there at will, and the postwar NATO alliance, of which both nations are founding members, obligates us to defend each other.

—Josh Gohlke

You have to love this line from the State Department’s warning [recommending U.S. citizens leave Venezuela immediately]:

“Venezuela has the highest Travel Advisory level—Level 4: Do Not Travel—due to severe risks to Americans, including wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure.”

Did your irony detector just start shrieking? mine did—because you can replace "Venezuela" with "Minneapolis" and not have to change one word in the rest of that paragraph.

—Jeff Tiedrich

And finally, the cartoon that nails the essence of where we are as a nation in the 21st Century: under the yoke of misogynist thugs so insecure in their identities that they're driven to make other people suffer in order to feel better about themselves.

—David Whamond

Have a pleasant Sunday, everyone.

Tagged Politics, Craig Calcaterra, Will Bunch, Jeff Tiedrich, David Whamond, Jo Carducci, Posted on January 11, 2026 at 2:57PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

1 Comment

Rage processing

I said at the turn of the new year that I had optimism regarding how 2026 would play out big-picture-wise, but it was a specific kind of optimism—the kind that says we have to go through worse before the better comes, and this is the year when the worse forces us to make the choice to be better. For whatever reason, I was and am still surprised at just how quickly we're careening into the worse.

I still think we'll have turned the corner by the time we get to New Year's 2027, and I'm trying to take a rose-colored-glasses view that the rapidity of the descent into even greater evil by Felon47, his cronies, and his puppet masters will herald a faster and more powerful move to oust them. I see reasons to think that might be the case, but I'm also more aware than ever of what John Fugelsang calls "WTF fatigue."

Every damn day there's a new WTF incident stemming from the fascist regime in DC. Processing all the outrage is a challenge. And it would go along way in aiding the public's mental health if elected officials were more visibly putting up a fight.

In this way, the speed of the regime's further descent into evil is helping because more officials seem to be finally getting it that these are not your grandparents' Republicans, these are rather the enemies your grandparents fought in World War II. But it's not enough, it's not nearly enough. I'm glad to see the statements by some Democratic Congresspeople voicing outrage over Felon47’s Venezuelan smash-and-grab and ICE’s murderous thuggery and the overt obstructions of justice being perpetrated by the FBI of all agencies. I'm gratified to hear state and local officials making it clear that the regime's actions are criminal. But what we need to see and hear are Senators, Representatives, and potential candidates for Federal office demanding impeachments. Promising reforms. Vowing to prosecute.

Instead we still get Tim Kaine and Amy Klobuchar and others voting to confirm insurrectionists to the Federal bench.

We cannot be giving an inch here. The cult is beginning to crack. A significant number of Republicans in Congress seem to be realizing that they're politically better off opposing Felon47 on at least some things—nine of them helped Democrats succeed in a discharge petition to force a vote on restoring ACA subsidies and then 15 voted for the measure, even though the Speaker refused to put it up for a vote under normal business; five Republican Senators voted in favor of curtailing Felon47’s military adventurism—and that they have to think about their careers post-regime.

Because one way or another, this regime will end. That's where that choosing-to-be-better thing comes into play, and that should be what Democrats nationwide at all levels of power need to be shouting into every microphone they can find.

In the words of our friend Craig Calcaterra:

America is lost. It's completely lost and it is marching deeper and deeper into darkness every day. We're past the point of mere elections fixing it. It's going to take the prosecution of scores if not hundreds of members of the current regime and the eradication of their evil and lawless works to even begin to put us on something resembling a path back into the light. Like, that's where we have to start to even have hope of a positive future.

We cannot go back. We must forge a new path forward and through. Anyone who promises, with clarity and conviction, to do that has my support. Anyone without the courage to do so does not.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Democrats, Republicans, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on January 9, 2026 at 3:25PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Order in the time of chaos

The new basis for law and order

As is my wont, I spent some time today reading the latest missive from fellow baseball and politics nerd Craig Calcaterra. On many things, as you know if you've been here before, Craig and I, we reach. (Not on everything. I could not care less about European football and I have never been into indie bands like so many of my generational peers are/have been.)

Anyway, Craig devoted some of his newsletter today to his emotional state of mind regarding, well, the world, and in the wake of my Saturday rant I've been feeling much the same way. As Craig put it, "I do not believe it is hyperbole to say that America's 249-year old legal, political, and philosophical order has been effectively destroyed in a little over five months and whatever is left of it is severely wounded." I do quibble about the "five months" part, as the five months in question are in actuality a resumption of the destruction that started at a much slower pace in 2017 and was suspended in 2021, but the point is spot-on.

I don't think Craig is unique in this, I think a great many of us are freaking out to one degree or another as the POTUS47 regime and its compliant agents on the Supreme Court take a blowtorch to the Constitution without a peep of resistance from the majority party in Congress. I mean, there were big marches and stuff just a couple weeks ago. But the fact that despite the protests in the streets, despite the outrage and the lawsuits, despite the blatant betrayal of oaths, nothing seems to matter—at least, on a short- or medium-term scale.

In my latest spiral, my mind went where it most likes to go, to the universe of Star Trek; in this case, though, it wasn't uplifting at all. The Trek canon has been prescient in a lot of ways despite missing the mark on the eugenics wars of the 1990s (which has been suitably retconned to a few decades later). But ever since 1967 the shows were telling their audience that to get where we needed to go, we were going to hit the skids in a big way in the 21st century. Now that we're actually in the 21st century, the accuracy of some of the future history details is less impressive and more frightful. 

Craig is less of a nerd than I am in that regard, but he got to a similar place without the Trek references, living with anger and depression over the utter chaos being wrought. Order and the predictability of cause-and-effect, of action-and-consequence, are out the window because, again quoting Craig (who is a better writer than I), "we're living in an era of legal Calvinball." It used to mean something profound to be American, but now "even the most basic and explicit Constitutional rights mean nothing to this Court or this regime and that there is little if anything that can be done about it, at least any time soon."

Baseball is where Craig's and my nerddom intersect most completely, so when he discussed how attending a couple of games over the weekend provided a kind of therapy I completely understood. "Those games helped me feel like I was living in an orderly world," he wrote, continuing:

[I]t was worthy effort, because baseball is rooted in order. There are rules. They are enforced. There is a mathematical logic to how the proceedings in a baseball game unfold and following those proceedings required that I assume a logical and ordered mindset. There's nothing I know better or that I have known longer than how baseball works and retreating into a headspace where nothing was happening other than the baseball game in front of me had the same effect as reciting a mantra. It quieted my mind. It banished the chaos, at least for a while. It made me feel connected to something in ways I've not felt connected to anything for what feels like ages.

...  I felt more calm and centered than I've felt in several months. I know that feeling won't last because we live in an age of fresh daily horrors. I know that my disorientation at the lack of order and predictability of these times and my attendant depression will return the moment I begin reading the news once again. But any reprieve is a welcome one and the two ballgames I took in while in Detroit were just what the doctor ordered. They served as a reminder that, if I try hard enough, I can probably find my way through this shit.

 We can't take our eye off the ball, if you'll excuse the metaphor, but these reprieves are essential. We need to keep sane so we can eventually recover from the wreckage of the regime. If for you it's not baseball but something else, have at it. But take the break, clear your mind of existential dread, and come back fighting.

Because in the words of Captain Pike, "the future is what we make it."

Tagged Politics, Baseball, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on June 30, 2025 at 4:16PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

2 Comments

This must not stand

Well, the news cycle sure took a turn.

On Sunday, when President Convicted Felon illegally seized control of the California National Guard to put down a rather mild protest against ICE, DHS, and POTUS47 deportation policy, the reaction in the "legacy media" was, "meh." Another day, another impeachable offense, whatever. But by Monday evening it apparently became clear to news directors that focusing on LA was critical—just not for the right reasons.

The White House would like us all to believe that (a) Los Angeles is on fire and out of control and severe military measures are needed to right this wrong; and (b) when Los Angeles was actually on fire earlier this year that the Federal government had no role to play in getting things under control. Sadly, legacy media news is abetting this propagandistic redirection away from the actual problem. The reality of the situation is that to the extent there is chaos in LA, it's due to the actions of the LAPD and the National Guard. POTUS47 is instigating trouble, not mitigating it. (And he's doing it with stunning incompetence.)

Seizing the National Guard and, now, deploying U.S. Marines to the two-block area of downtown Los Angeles that has been experiencing the sort of chaos that football fans celebrating a Super Bowl win would mock as tepid, is fundamentally illegal as well as counterproductive. The administration is attempting to rationalize the actions by claiming the forces are needed to quell an invasion of criminal gangs from Latin America, but of course there is no such invasion. The only legal way to do what POTUS 47 is doing would be under the Insurrection Act, which would have to be invoked to override Posse Comitatus, which bars the government from using military force, including Federalized National Guard, against the population within the U.S. (Normal, state-controlled, National Guard has different regulations.)

Unfortunately, the language of the Insurrection Act is fairly arcane and open to misapplication; the intent of the act is to allow for military involvement if and when state and local law enforcement are overwhelmed and Federal help is needed to "suppress rebellion." But while the language may have been considered definitive in the 1870s, today one can easily imagine unscrupulous actors twisting it to suit their own authoritarian aims.

To the extent the media should be focused on the LA situation, it should be on the illegality of POTUS47’s actions, the threat it presents, the waste generated, the escalation of chaos it generates, and the underlying criminality it is being used to support.

I'll close this post with another excerpt from our pal Craig Calcaterra:

Trump either wants [military troops] on the streets of L.A. to kill Americans who Trump has decided are his enemies or he simply wants make himself look like a military strongman. Neither of those things are compatible with American democracy or basic morality. Indeed, like so many other things Trump has done over the past four and a half months, this act is something that would get any single one of his predecessors impeached and removed from office.

... Last night involved scattered protests, a couple of trash fires, and a small handful of arrests. While the mood is certainly pitched, and for good reason, the situation is, kinetically speaking, barely lukewarm. Around 150 people have been arrested in Los Angeles since Friday. There are Big Ten football games which require more police activity....

Donald Trump is seeking bloody confrontation. He wants to foment a violent response and he wants to kill people. It could not be more plain....

The people of this country are unsafe until Donald Trump is, somehow, removed from power. Making that happen is the only thing that will end this Constitutional interregnum. And anything short of that is going to lead to unnecessary and unjustified death.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on June 10, 2025 at 4:37PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

1 Comment

Grifter in Chief

I've not done much posting lately on the plethora of horrors coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's not that I haven't been aware of (at least some of) them, nor that they've been so numerous and unrelenting as to have overwhelmed my ability to comprehend—yet—it's just that I know I'm largely if not completely preaching to the choir here. At least when my uncle isn't lurking around.

Once more, I turn to our pal Craig Calcaterra to sum up what I'm trying to say but with better verbiage (emphasis mine to relate it to my own stuff as well):

Every single day something happens which reminds us that America is being torched by cruel, nihilistic bigots and ignoramuses for no reason beyond their destructive and psychotic whims. No country I can think of has ever so willingly and so deeply harmed itself like America is harming itself right now. Even countries who flung themselves into destructive wars believed, at last at the outset, that they were doing something to help themselves or advance their cause, whatever it happened to be. America, in contrast, is voluntarily maiming itself knowing full well that what it's doing will work toward its own ruin. All because we stupidly elected a Mad King who doesn't understand a goddamn thing and doesn't care that he doesn't understand a goddamn thing. And now that he's descending into acute dementia, a few dozen truly evil and hateful people who have attached themselves to him are doing whatever they want without a shred of oversight or consequence.

I try to roll with all of this awfulness most days. Some days I try to actively ignore it if I can manage to. Other days I try to find the bits of hope among the destruction or I try to focus on history and the longer view as a means of reminding myself that all things, even bad things, do eventually pass. For the past couple of days, however, I haven't been able to do any of that. For the past couple of days all I've been able to see is the bleakness and pointless pain and misery being inflicted upon millions by vile people who care about nothing and no one but themselves, their grievances, and their greed.

I really don't know what to do anymore. All I can muster right now is a bit of thankfulness that it's Friday and that I can fucking turn my brain, my computer, and my TV off for 48 hours or so and try to forget about it all for a little while.

In some ways, I think we are all Craig right now.

But yesterday was so egregiously corrupt, with essentially crickets from much of the press—the exception being Chris Hayes, who was rightly outraged/gobsmacked/incredulous on his show (see below)—so I need to vent a little bit.

President Corrupt, Cruel, Incompetent, Moron Fuckface raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes and grift by hosting a contest: the 200+ largest purchasers of $TRUMP—which is an essentially valueless cryptocurrency (trading now at around $12 per "coin" after having declined from $75 around inauguration day to $8 last month) that POTUS47 makes money on via transaction fees, so any purchase or sale of any of it rings his cash register—win a dinner at Bribe-a-Lago with the grifter-in-chief, anonymously and with no reportage of the event, so trade favors and scheme safe from prying eyes, and a next-day tour of the White House with the man they bribed. The buyers of this corrupt access are largely unknown as they made their purchases under pseudonyms and/or usernames, though one admitted "winner" was Chinese crypto-bro Justin Sun, who was being prosecuted for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission until POTUS47 took office and put the kibosh on that. Because who doesn't like securities fraud? It's not a big jump to conclude that at least part of Sun's $18.5 million gratuity was thanks/payment for services rendered in dropping the legal case against him, and since most of the rest of the "donors" are anonymous, who knows what other quids were being quo'd last night.

I'll admit readily that I do not fully understand cryptocurrencies, but the nature of any currency is that it only has value to people/entities willing to accept it. National currencies (and international ones—the Euro is real) are governmentally recognized as legal tender "for all debts public and private" within a country's jurisdiction, but crypto has no such backing. If you try to spend bitcoin at the supermarket you'll find it's not worth anything to the merchant. If you try to spend $TRUMP coin, your only willing recipients will be fellow cultists. It's not currency, it's a digital trading card. No shade to card collectors, but they're a niche thing. I have a many-thousand-strong comic-book collection that is worth a fair chunk of money, but only to other collectors/enthusiasts/merchants. (Along with some junk and commons, I've got a Silver Age Superman comic for sale on eBay right now that's getting no bids among my fellow niche members; even within a niche people are fickle.) The president is grifting people with trading cards, and not good ones like Willie Mays or Honus Wagner cards, no, these are all Jeff Schaefers and Cliff Mapes.

One of the fools who copped to spending more than $100 million on presidential meme coin grift was a 27-year-old New Yorker named Vincent who has parted with far more than that amount in the service of making POTUS47 richer, as he boasted about having previously bought numerous Trump watches, Trump sneakers, Trump NFTs... Vince is the best mark there is for this regime of corruption, a cult devotee with money to burn. Sadly, he's not representative of the cult at large, members of which are just as easily suckered and might spend proportionately more when grifted, but reach a limit to their means/ability to go into debt a lot sooner. (The same people who, along with the rest of us non-multi-millionaires, would be utterly screwed if the budget House Republicans passed in the dead of night were to become law.) Vince is also a likely anomaly among the contest "winners," as most of them are thought to be foreign oligarch types and crypto-scammers looking for fewer obstacles to their own grift schemes.

This is, of course, on top of the acceptance by the US government of the "gift" of a glitzed-up Qatari 747 that the Qatari monarch no longer wanted and couldn't sell to anyone, a "gift" that us undoubtedly an attempt at a Trojan horse, a "free" gift that will cost American taxpayers on the order of a billion dollars to outfit as another Air Force One jet, a process that any sane Congress would kill dead in its tracks but might actually get rolling with these yahoos in charge.

Of course, even absent the rest of the voluminous impeachable offenses committed in just these four months, corruption on this enormous scale would get the president impeached and thrown out of office posthaste if the majority in Congress had any fidelity to their oaths of office. Sadly, Speaker Mike Johnson and the entire Republican caucus in the House, as well as most of the Republicans in the Senate, are traitors and/or cowards in the face of intimidation by the White House.

Midterms cannot come soon enough. Assuming we get them fairly; the level of election fuckery this regime will attempt is terrifying to contemplate. But we have to fight. And when those elections do come, we've got to turn out in numbers so vast that they overwhelm the cheating you know the regime will apply.

 

 

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Craig Calcaterra, Chris Hayes, Posted on May 23, 2025 at 4:52PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Dispatches from the American hellscape

A few quotes and links for your Interwebs perusal...

 

•  From our buddy Craig Calcaterra:

Stephen Miller, the Trump Regime official who I feel is most likely to be torn limb-from-limb by angry mobs once the public learns who did what during this time, said this when talking about education:

"Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding ... we're gonna make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology."

I don't agree with Stephen Miller about a lot, but I agree with him to some extent here. I never wanted my kids' school to teach them about communism. They'd surely have gotten it wrong! That's why I made a point to teach my kids about communism at home, where they could get the straight dope. It's the responsible thing to do.

Anyway, I'm now gonna return to daydreaming about those mobs getting their hands on this Temu Roy Cohn over here and doing what mobs do.

 

•  From Will Bunch at the Philly Inquirer:

Most voters forgot, or never heard, the 2003 argument by some advocates that the creation of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the new Department of Homeland Security] to more aggressively hunt down undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil would create a 'monster' agency that would warp the entire national conversation around refugees. While it’s certainly and sadly true that waves of anti-immigration fervor are as American as cherry pie, from the anti-Irish 'Know Nothings' of the 1850s through the KKK resurgence of the 1920s and beyond, the 'national security' lens of ICE has taken us to a new low. ... Twenty-two years later, those 'monster' predictions feel understated. There’s no quick fix for the human rights nightmare of ICE and its sister agencies, because this warped experiment has gone off the rails in so many different ways.

 

•  From Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker:

This country was founded on the idea of habeas corpus. It’s a fancy legal term that, in plain words, means no government has a right to arbitrarily take your freedom away from you. Preserving habeas corpus is not some fever dream of the left wing echo chamber, it’s a fundamental concept of justice that people have fought and died for dating back to the Middle Ages. It was in the Magna Carta. It was considered by our nation’s founders to be so vital to our liberty that they wrote it right into the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson called it the essential principle of government. Benjamin Franklin opined that those who would give up habeas corpus for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security. And Alexander Hamilton wrote that the practice of arbitrary imprisonments has been in all the ages the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton. Standing for the idea that the government doesn’t have the right to kidnap you without due process is arguably the most effective campaign slogan in history. It’s the OG of political messaging. So I mean, what do we think that Colonel Stark was talking about, if not this, when he said, 'Live Free or Die'?

Today it’s an immigrant with a tattoo. Tomorrow, it’s a citizen whose Facebook post annoys Donald Trump.

There are plenty of people in this country who hold opinions that I find abhorrent, but my faith and our constitution dictate that I fight for their freedoms as loudly as I defend my own. And as a Ukrainian-American Jew who built a Holocaust Museum, whose family immigrated here as refugees from the Russian pogroms, let me say this to Donald Trump: Stop tearing down the Constitution in the name of my ancestors.

Do not claim that your authoritarian power grabs are about combating antisemitism. When you destroy social justice, you are disparaging the very foundation of Judaism. When the pendulum swings back, and it always does, you will have contributed to the climate of retribution that will inevitably follow.

...

We have a Secretary of Education who hates teachers and schools.

We have a Secretary of Transportation who hates public transit.

We have an attorney general who hates the constitution.

We have a secretary of state—the son of naturalized citizens, a family of refugees—on a crusade to expel our country of both,

We have a head of the 'department of government efficiency'—an immigrant granted the privilege of living and working here, a man who has made hundreds of billions of dollars after the government rescued his business for him—who is looking to destroy the American middle class to fund tax cuts for himself.

And we have a president who claims to love America but who hates our military so much that he calls them losers and suckers and who can’t be bothered to delay his golf game to greet the bodies of four fallen US soldiers.

...

If it sounds like I’m becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people that he has elevated. It’s because I am. You should be too. They’re an affront to every value this country was founded upon.

...

These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box.

They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact—because we have no alternative but to do just that—that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.

 

•  From the great satirist Andy Borowitz:

ROME—A man who fell asleep during Pope Francis’s funeral was “already going to Hell,” God clarified on Sunday.

Although snoozing during the pontiff’s funeral was “beyond rude,” the Almighty said that the man clinched his place in the netherworld “decades ago.”

“If I hadn’t already made up My mind, the last hundred days would have made him a slam dunk for eternal damnation,” He said. “I mean, deporting a two-year-old? Come on.”

The Heavenly Father said the man’s decision to wear a blue suit at the funeral “wasn’t a factor” in his going to Hell, but was nevertheless “incredibly assholic.”

In another observation from the funeral, God noted, “Interestingly, Sleepy Joe Biden managed to stay awake.”

 

•  From, of all people, former POTUS45 National Security Adviser and longtime pre-Trump-Republican extremist John Bolton:

To be a fascist, you have to think at some conceptual level, which Trump never does. It's too far above Trump’s capabilities. He has no philosophy. He has, in the national security space, no grand strategy, and doesn’t do policy as we conventionally understand that term. It was difficult for me to accept. … There are plenty of people around him with problematic philosophies, people who do have the ability to think at a more conceptual level. What they say may ultimately be reflected in certain Trump decisions, but it’s not because he shares their worldview or anything like that.

 

•  And, finally, from POTUS47 himself, to ABC News reporter Terry Moran in an interview in the Oval Office, who had the temerity to ask him about the Supreme Court's order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador and about his discussions with Vladimir Putin:

You're doing the interview. I picked you because frankly I never heard of you. But that's okay. But I picked you, Terry, but you're not being very nice. ... I don’t trust you. I don’t trust a lot of people. I don’t trust you. Look at you. You’re so happy to do the interview, and then you start hitting me with these fake questions.

I'd like to know how a question can be a "fake question"; the implication of a question could be dishonest, which POTUS47 knows all too well from his own practices, or the subject of a question could be whether or not something is fake (e.g., "Mr. President, do you think Neil Armstrong actually went to the moon or was that merely a propaganda op?"), but a question is a question, it's neutral.

Actually, I don't care about that bit of semantics here, it's just telling to see that whenever our president (barf) is presented with reality instead of obsequious bootlicking he will immediately resort to condescending attacks and some sort of Pee Wee Herman impression with a version of "I know you are, but what am I?"

 

Good times, right?

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on May 2, 2025 at 4:37PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Catching Up With the Chaos and Catastrophe

I've been trying to stay current on the news, despite the arguably ill effect that has on my psyche, but it's been so much so fast that I'd fallen behind. I'm nearly up to date now, though there's probably something horrendous that happened late today that has escaped my notice thus far. (UPDATE: There is.)

Here are the trying-not-to-panic-about-it-yet topics from recent days that we should all be shouting to our Congresspeople about:

• The Senate confirmed yet another disastrous cabinet officer, one that in a sane world would have gotten zero votes. No, let me clarify: The Republican senators confirmed yet another disastrous cabinet officer that should have gotten zero votes. The final tally for Kash Patel to be director of the FBI was 51 Republicans in favor, 47 Democrats and two Republicans against (those two being Lisa Murkowski, who occasionally starts looking like she'd be better off switching parties before she says or does something horrible, and Susan Collins, who almost never acts on her supposed "deep concerns" but did on this occasion). Patel is a MAGA zealot who perjured himself multiple times in his conformation hearings and has made it crystal clear that he intends to use his new position as a mob boss might, not to investigate crimes and espionage but to weaponize the FBI to punish opponents of POTUS47’s agenda. The FBI director has a ten-year term, so, you know, cool-cool-cool.

  "My Senate Republican colleagues are willfully ignoring myriad red flags about Mr. Patel," said Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, "especially his recurring instinct to threaten retribution against his perceived enemies." Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was more overtly outraged, telling his Republican colleagues that they "will own the consequences of Kash Patel's misbehavior. ... Unlike any FBI director before, this guy is a vitriolic partisan.... He is a completely sycophantic suck-up when it comes to Donald Trump. He wrote children's books in which 'King Donald' rules and his loyal little functionary 'Kash' brings 'justice' to him, pursuing the slugs of the FBI. Do you think that when the FBI is asked to investigate corruption in Trumpworld, do you think Kash Patel will rise to the occasion or do you think he'll participate in a coverup? This is not Democrats saying this, what we're doing is relating what he has said and what he has done." Even a few old-style Republicans joined in the warnings. "If Kash Patel becomes director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as President Trump has suggested he should, he will be the poster child of vindictiveness." That was Paul Rozenweig, a Homeland Security official under George W. Bush.

  Patel joins recent additions to the Bizarro Cabinet Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., making a triumvirate of Worst People that will vie for most dangerous cabinet officer in an ever-alternating pennant race of calamity.

  Mr. Patel’s confirmation is even more appalling given disturbing reports about his foreign ties, conflicts of interest, and alleged involvement in recent FBI firings. The Senate’s failure to collectively demand a real investigation prior to his confirmation represents a gross abdication of their constitutional advice and consent responsibility. As the Senate continues to consider the president’s nominees, we demand that senators take this responsibility seriously and do better for their constituents and our country. As it stands, today’s disgraceful confirmation jeopardizes the integrity and independence of our nation’s top law enforcement agency. Our communities, our rights, and our democracy deserve better.

  —Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

  
  
  

• POTUS47 wants to destroy the Post Office. His plan, apparently, is to somehow reorganize the Postal Service as an arm of the Commerce Department under yet another dangerous chaos agent cabinet secretary, Howard Lutnik. Naturally, like all POTUS47 priorities, this would be manifestly illegal. I didn't know this before, but the Post Office has only been an independent agency since 1970; before that Postmasters General were appointed as cabinet officers. Now the U.S. Postal Service, the 1970 law removed the Post Office from the cabinet and reorganized it as an independent agency specifically in order to shield it from political fuckery. The law was prompted by a postal workers' strike over poor treatment that Nixon called out the National Guard to break; pre-reorg, postal workers were barred from unionizing and the new structure guaranteed them collective-bargaining rights. The introductory section of the law on the books reads:

  The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. The costs of establishing and maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people.

  The law further specifies the new agency's independence and non-partisanship, mandating that the Postal board of governors be Senate-confirmed and that no more than five of the eleven members may affiliate with any one political party, that the Postmaster General be selected by and answerable to the board, and specifically reserves to Congress the power to amend or change the law in any way.

  I don't think it far-fetched in the slightest to assume that this is a priority for the administration for two reasons: 1) As a means of voter suppression—in their ongoing march to destroy democracy, a Republican tenet has always been to make voting as difficult as possible, and mail-in voting, as we have statewide here in Washington and as is an optional feature in most other states, makes it just too convenient for citizens to exercise their franchise and oppose the wannabe dictator currently occupying the White House (or, as I heard it referred to on a podcast recently, "Casa de Idiota"); 2) As a means of shifting more public money into the hands of oligarchs—mail delivery would be contracted out to private operators, contracts for which would be overseen not only by POTUS47, but people like Phony Stark and the Cabinet of Billionaires.
  
  

• POTUS47 is whining about his airplane. The specially modified Boeing 747s that function as Air Force One have been in service for a few decades now, and our whiny spoiled brat diaper-baby president thinks he deserves the newest and best planes, not 30-year-old vehicles with the cootie-stank of Clinton and Obama and Biden in them. Boeing has been building new ones—as a matter of course when these things age they get replaced—but not fast enough for 47’s liking. So he has, according to the New York Times, "empowered Elon Musk to explore drastic options to prod Boeing to move faster, including relaxing security clearance standards for some who work on the presidential planes." Which, sure, that sounds super smart—especially since Phony Stark's vehicles tend to catch fire and blow up—but the Times piece goes on to say this, which gets at the heart of 47’s grievance: “[The] administration has even discussed whether a luxury jet could be acquired and refitted during the wait, according to five people with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe closely held deliberations.” Our president wants a luxury jet, instead of Air Force One, and even took a look at a plane owned until recently by the Qatari royal family as a replacement. The Times didn't specify whether the Qatari plane had enough gold-plated toilets in it to meet 47’s standard.

  I saw this piece and, with the recent troubles Boeing has had with its planes losing doors and missing bolts and such in mind, had some less-than-generous whimsical thoughts about it that I intended to post. But once again our pal Craig Calcaterra was thinking along the same lines and used better words:

  Even I have to acknowledge when President Trump is right about something. And folks, he's right about this. Boeing must deliver these jets with great haste! I thus offer my full-throated endorsement of the relaxation of whatever safety and security concerns typically apply to the delivery of aircraft and heartily agree with the idea of putting the man behind the safety and performance record of Tesla vehicles and SpaceX rockets in charge of President Trump's planes. God bless America.

  It's a comforting image, isn't it?

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on February 21, 2025 at 10:05PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

In which I parrot Craig C again

An neo-Nazi has staged a coup and it must not stand

I was going to write a bit of a screed today about how Elon has completely upended critical parts of the Federal government in defiance of law and without any authority to do so. I hadn't quite landed on how to articulate it, though, by the time I read today's edition of Craig Calcaterra's "Cup of Coffee." And, once more, Craig said what I would have said, only better. So I'll simply share his words with a "yes, 100% that" concurrence.

Since Friday, people working for Elon Musk, who do not appear to be government employees of any kind, have taken over the United States Treasury's and the Office of Personnel Management's payment mechanisms, have downloaded the most sensitive personal information of millions of Americans imaginable to private servers, and have locked actual government employees out.

Musk and his people have also taken over the General Services Administration, which is the agency responsible for government contracting. Which means he has taken possession of all the financial and personal information of everyone who does business with the federal government, including the details of government contracts, bids, company filings, and other information.

Musk and his people also have taken over the U.S. Agency for International Development, specifically taking control of its security systems, personnel files, and intelligence reports much of which is classified information and which pertains to thousands upon thousands of U.S. government workers operating overseas, many in classified roles. When Musk's people arrived at USAID headquarters its security officials, quite properly, attempted to bar access. Musk's people threatened to call in U.S. Marshalls and take the information at gunpoint, after which they forced their way in, took possession of the information they sought, and placed USAID officials on leave.

Which is to say, Elon Musk has, unilaterally and without any legal authority whatsoever:

• Unlawfully taken control of the United States Treasury and intends to unilaterally cut off payments to disfavored populations both here and abroad in defiance of Congress, the courts, and the American people;
• Unlawfully taken possession of personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans and thousands of U.S. government workers and has unlawfully downloaded that data to his private servers; and
• Unlawfully obtained the financial and personal information of everyone who does business with the federal government, including classified information.

It is impossible to overstate the levels of illegality we're witnessing. Off the top of my head this would appear constitute theft of U.S. government property, theft of public funds, the violation of taxpayer confidentiality, the unlawful releasing of names, sources, and methods of U.S. overseas activity, and I'm sure multiple other offenses. Just as it is impossible to overstate the illegality, it is likewise impossible to overstate the seriousness of this situation. If any other person or actor had done even a fraction of what Elon Musk and those at his command have done over the past three days they would find themselves in federal prison for decades if not for life.

That being said, I honestly don't know what can possibly be done here given Trump's dictatorial control over government right now, the certainty that he would prevent the DOJ, FBI, or any other authority from investigating any of this, and the certainty that he would issue preemptive pardons for Musk and his team should anyone even think about snooping around. But a coup has occurred. A coup perpetrated by a drug-addled Nazi sympathizer and a small team of extremely young men who likely have no idea how many laws they have broken, even if that's no defense to their crimes. The nightmare will not end unless and until Elon Musk and those he has ordered to infiltrate the United States government are in shackles.

Every Democratic Member of Congress, starting with ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden, and the ranking members of committees dealing with national security and government contracting should be holding emergency news conferences, raising the alarm, and demanding access to federal facilities, with TV cameras in tow, so it can be documented what they find or, more likely, how they are unlawfully turned away. As for the rest of us: this is the sort of thing for which a general strike is the only possible response, not that I expect such a thing could be effectively pulled off in this country.

Honestly, though, I have no idea what happens next. We are in completely uncharted waters. Nothing like this has ever happened in this history of the United States. But something has to happen in response.

Tagged Politics, Craig Calcaterra, President VonClownstick, Posted on February 3, 2025 at 5:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

1 Comment

2025 as film

I only have a few minutes before I need to head out to an umpiring shift (ah, winter league...so far it's been pretty mild weather, but tonight will be in the 30s), so just a quick post today and one I largely lift from someone else.

Once again, that someone else is Craig Calcaterra, who in his Cup of Coffee newsletter today recounts a social media prompt that read "The movie that was number one at the box office on your tenth birthday is how your 2025 will turn out for you." Craig turned 10 in the spring of 1983, when the third (or sixth, depending on your particular thinking) Star Wars movie premiered. Here is his response:

In a time of rising fascism and authoritarianism I'd like my 2025 to turn out the way "Return of the Jedi" did. If we're being literal about it that means that (a) my adorable little friends will defeat my enemies after which they will roast and eat them while I will, personally, with the help of some barely-controlled rage, beat the crap out of either J.D. Vance or Elon Musk at which point they will switch to my side of things, throw Trump down a bottomless shaft, and then themselves die. That's a scenario that is pretty unlikely to actually transpire but, as they say, rebellions are built on hope. 

...

[But if we] go with the number one film immediately after my tenth birthday, it'd be the "Saturday Night Fever" sequel, "Staying Alive." That movie is horrible in conception and execution and is basically unwatchable, but the title sets what is at least a moderately realistic goal for me in 2025, and I feel far more comfortable with that. 

As usual, Craig, we reach.

For the record, the number-one film on my tenth birthday was Superman—The Movie, which while not as on-target as Return of the Jedi is for Craig, still works in that, like Superman, I would also like to fly fast enough to go back in time and save Lois Lane (or someone) before delivering the egomaniacal greed-obsessed real estate con artist to prison.

Tagged Star Wars, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on January 6, 2025 at 5:41PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet