Life problems on the micro and macro scales

I spent much of the past week feeling sick. I mean that in a literal, there-were-germs-and-a-rhinovirus-involved kind of sick, not in a I'm-nauseated-by-our-fascist-convicted-felon-president kind of sick, although that type is ever-present these days.

This may or may not have something to do with my umpiring 6½ hours in steady rain a week ago Sunday. Can't say, really. But it was the sort of thing that is mostly annoying, saps your energy and fills your head with copious amounts of mucus. Not that big a deal, though it did force me to bail on more than a couple hundred dollars' worth of ump shifts over the weekend. I was listed as day-to-day, as it were, on the ump's injured list, but I thought I was OK to go last night so I reported to the field for three games at Capitol Hill.

Probably not a good idea. I mean, I got through it and wasn't any worse for wear, but I was seriously off my game. A congested, foggy-headed, cold-medicine-addled, slow-witted umpire is not exactly the ideal circumstance. It was a playoff night, too, so everyone except me was extra-amped up, and all three games were close, I couldn't even just coast through a blowout.

One team, the oh-so-cleverly named Sons of Pitches, was quite pissed with me after their game, as three bang-bang calls went against them, including one that ended the game. Not only were some of them yelling at me directly, but I overheard their captain and others badmouthing me in the dugout, and you know, (a) I had zero patience for any of that last night, but (b) they might well have a real beef, because aside from the last one (which I have no doubts about) I have no idea if those close calls were correct or not. Honestly, I didn't even see one of them, I was out of position and looking into the setting sun. Usually, if I blow a call or am even unsure of it, I'll own it on the spot. I'll even ask players what their view was. Nine times out of ten there's no going back on it, but I feel like it's better for everyone if we just say, "yup, that was a brain fart, let's do better" and move on. But I wasn't having any of that yesterday, all I wanted to do was get through the damn shift. SoPs was the only one of the six teams I had last night that didn't know me very well; I'd done maybe two games with them before, whereas everyone else has been around for years and I'm on a first-name basis with half of each squad and they all cut me a little slack. Oh well, I can live with not being one team's favorite umpire.

The other two games were without any acrimony, but they dragged on and I was completely gassed by the time we finally wrapped up about 25 minutes behind schedule. Fortunately, when I got home my neighbor Sean offered me a late-night homemade mac-and-cheese dinner that I didn't have to prepare myself, which lifted my spirits a bit. Thanks, Sean!

I'd have been better off trying to negotiate a trade of last night for tonight or tomorrow's shift, but as we say on Earth, c'est la vie.

 

Meanwhile, in the greater world, POTUS47 and the White House staff are now lying through their teeth about Supreme Court rulings while defying judges and going full-on fascist and yet Republicans in Congress remain silent feckless toadies when they could end this nightmare right now.

Nazi Stephen Miller, who if you can believe it is the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy—he's the Josh Lyman of this group of totalitarian fuckers—was both caught on mic in the Oval Office and deliberately went on television to say the the Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling affirming a lower court's order that the administration must facilitate and effectuate the return of the mistakenly-deported Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, from the El Salvadoran gulag DHS and ICE abducted him to, was actually a 9-0 ruling that no judge can tell the administration to do anything about Mr. Abrego Garcia. Pure fiction, 180 degrees—well, thanks to John Roberts and his predilection for obfuscation, say 170 degrees—from the truth, and for good measure also claimed that when several officials admitted that Abrego Garcia was deported by mistake that those officials were the ones in error and Abrego Garcia was picked up intentionally! If anything, that would make this whole matter even worse, as Abrego Garcia had a prior court order in good standing specifying he could not be sent to El Salvador as that was the country he was seeking asylum from, meaning if we take Miller at his word (as if) then the administration is willfully defying a wholly different court order in addition to the one he is lying about the contents of.

It irks me greatly that this malevolent speck of a man, this evil creature, has the same name as one of my friends from high school, but what can you do. The guy's name is the least of his problems.

The regime has made it clear yesterday and today that it has no intention of complying with the court's order to retrieve Mr. Abrego Garcia and even intends to widen the net of DHS abductions, with President Convicted Felon telling the El Salvadoran dictator that he needs to build more gulags for all the "criminals" he intends to send there.

The entire White House communications apparatus—or, perhaps more appropriately, the propaganda division—has been twisting the words that Roberts added into the Court's ruling away from their obvious meaning and into a pretzel that claims they mean something completely different. "Facilitate" simply means, according to the White House, an update to immigration status. Roberts included other language—"The intended scope of the term 'effectuate' in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs"—that has been seized upon by Miller and the rest of the White House fascist regime to mean whatever they want it to mean, that "deference" is functionally the same as "absolute deference" and that "may exceed" is the same as "massive overreach," not to mention that the word "effectuate" is not at all in need of clarification. What John Roberts did there is find a way that he could throw the regime a bone while still not completely blowing up his credibility as an adherent to the Constitution.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor felt the need to append Roberts' order with her own statement that lays out the egregiousness of this case. Her statement reads, in part:

The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.... Because every factor governing requests for equitable relief manifestly weighs against the Government, I would have declined to intervene in this litigation and denied the application in full. Nevertheless, I agree with the Court’s order that the proper remedy is to provide Abrego Garcia with all the process to which he would have been entitled had he not been unlawfully removed to El Salvador. That means the Government must comply with its obligation to provide Abrego Garcia with “due process of law,” including notice and an opportunity to be heard, in any future proceedings. It must also comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture. ... In the proceedings on remand, the District Court should continue to ensure that the Government lives up to its obligations to follow the law.

It's that first line that should make every Congressperson call for immediate impeachment of POTUS47 right this second. "The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene." The White House's statements and inactions since this ruling make clear that it is no mere implication, that is precisely what this regime wants to do.

Tagged Softball, Umping, Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on April 15, 2025 at 6:04PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Free radicals

I've been having a pretty good week, which is unusual for post-January 20, 2025. I think the huge turnout at the protests last Saturday (I went to a small suburban one for a short while) and the apparent impact they're having in DC has helped a lot, and my general attitude has been more free and easy, as it were.

I'm also buoyed somewhat by the actual good-if-not-ideal news out of the Roberts Court today—the ruling that Secretary Noem, DHS, and ICE must "facilitate the release" of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the El Salvadoran torture prison he was rendered to by ICE without even the patina of due process of law. It remains to be seen if President Convicted Felon's regime will obey that court order, which has to go back to the originating court for "clarification" of the term "effectuate," as that court's order called on the government to "facilitate and effectuate" Garcia's release and return to the United States. That seems like a stupid delay tactic on Roberts' part, but fine, OK.

This should have been a foregone conclusion, but then it also should have been so obvious a call that the Supreme Court should have opted to not even hear the argument and say the prior order stands well and good. It's also on the heels of Roberts and company declaring that class actions against ICE for their illegal and extrajudicial kidnappings of people off the street are not allowed and that each of the kidnappees can have their due process only if they each get a lawyer (from detention/foreign prison?!) and file a habeus petition within the local jurisdiction that they were abducted in. So you can't predict how far the Roberts Court will go to protect the man they already granted immunity for "official acts" or criminality and his staff of thugs and goons.

Anyway, I bring up the Garcia case mostly because I kind of hope my uncle is reading this. You may have noticed that he left a comment on my post about the Dodgers tarnishing their reputation by visiting the White House.

Bob, I know that your comment was at least partly tongue-in-cheek, and I do take it in that fashion (though it's often difficult to parse MAGA attempts at humor, there's always an element of cruelty in them) but really, man, I do hope you poke your head up from the right-wing propaganda bubble and see what's really going on every now and then.

Anyone who thinks opposing this POTUS47 regime is something "radical" needs a remedial vocabulary lesson:

Radical (rad•i•cal): A person advocating thorough or complete political or social reform; a member of a political party or bloc that pursues such aims.

We are living under a regime now that is literally criminal. The president himself is a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist and fraudster, has admitted to being a tax cheat, has gotten away with violations of the espionage act only because he has a corrupt Florida judge in his pocket, has a history—which may well include this week—of securities fraud, and uses extortion as a primary means of "negotiating." His cabinet of corrupt incompetents is also a mass of humanity steeped in moral, ethical, and intellectual deficiencies.

And that's just the criminal aspect. Then there's the un-American aspect. The despotic aspect. 

The Department of Justice is being reorganized to be, essentially, a base for the Joker's henchmen to operate from. Congress is a thing to be circumvented. Treaties are for suckers.

In a mere three months—not even, in fact—this criminal regime has not only done the typical Republican stuff of trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and make middle-class and poor folks pay more taxes so the filthy rich can hoard more money; demonizing immigrants and making policy based in racism and misogyny; and rhapsodizing about how government is by its nature bad. They've also gone out of their way to decimate public health infrastructure—on the heels of a global pandemic!!—and utterly destroy the United States' standing and reputation in the world, alienating (former?) allies and perhaps intentionally wrecking the global economy. 

All of it—ALL OF IT—illegally.

On this matter in isolation, my position is conservative while the regime's position—and that of the Republican party writ large, at least so far—is radical. A radical attempt to fundamentally alter the nature of the United States, to take it from a representative democracy revering freedom and the rule of law to an autocratic dictatorship ruled by a small cadre of oligarchs and the whims of one idiotic pathological liar.

I support retaining the societal adherence to equal justice under the law and the protections of the U.S. Constitution. The regime supports decimating the rule of law and trampling the Constitution.

There are other areas where you might call me radical, depending on your interpretation of normal. For instance, I support national health insurance (e.g. Medicare for All), strict gun control measures, a return to an 80+% marginal tax rate, and substantial reforms to our election laws that ban the unfettered influence corporate wealth. Personally, I think that's pretty mainstream and I think polling would back me up, but I can see were even a 20th-century version of a rightward Republican would consider those things somewhat radical. But none of those things defy the basic tenets of American society. President Convicted Felon's regime defies those tenets multiple times every day.

Regarding the Dodgers and their contributions to normalizing this in-progress fascist takeover, I can make some allowances for many of the guys that made the trip. Because (a) they are largely quite young men, (b) living the lives of professional athletes and thus paying scant if any attention to any news outside the sports press, and (c) the duration thus far of this administration has been while they were busy with Spring Training and concerned about making the team and traveling to Tokyo. Plus, (d) they travel in their own bubble of protection and do not have to worry about the harassment and other dangers the general public—especially brown-skinned and non-English speaking members of the public, like many of the Dodgers—does now when traveling in this country. So there is an ignorance that can be assumed. Non-players, though, should know better. Including manager Dave Roberts, who has studied history and is smarter than this. Owner Fred Wilpon is filthy rich and probably hasn't figured out yet that the leopards will eventually eat his face too, but there are plenty of people involved in the decision to go to the White House and shake the hand of the man who let Los Angeles burn not so long ago and who would happily rendition a bunch of them to a Salvadoran gulag who knew better.

Opposing this regime is not radical. It's at its core what this country was founded upon.

Tagged Politics, Baseball, President VonClownstick, Posted on April 10, 2025 at 11:58PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The Dodgers trash their image as the country descends into chaos

A disgusting image of Clayton Kershaw (left) and Dodger owner Fred Wilpon flanking the most dangerous person in the world and having a blast doing it

The Los Angeles nee Brooklyn Dodgers are a revered franchise in professional sports in no small part because of their association with civil rights. By adding Jackie Robinson to their team in 1947, the Dodgers gave a metaphorical middle finger to the racist mores of the day and began integrating Major League Baseball, and for that the organization deserves accolades. Yesterday, however, the Dodgers spat on that reputation and honorable history by visiting the White House and allowing themselves to be used as propaganda by a hateful fascist white supremacist who likely thinks Dodger manager Dave Roberts doesn't deserve his job and was merely a "DEI hire."

This shameful decision made by the Dodgers not only angers their fan base and brands the team with a staggering hypocrisy, it was also a big swing and a miss on an opportunity to solidify their previous reputation and reach out to new fans and tie "America's pastime" to American idealism.

Imagine if, instead of doing the customary thing of accepting the invitation traditionally given by the White House to the prior year's World Series winners, the Dodgers respectfully declined but then used the time to record a short video of the team visiting other significances in DC.

Picture the video: Members of the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers in front of the White House, with someone—Roberts or Mookie Betts or Tyler Glasnow or whomever—talking to the camera. "We're here at the White House in Washington, DC. We were invited to visit the president, but instead we're choosing to visit some of the things that actually make America great."

The camera then follows the team around, maybe on one of those open-air tour buses, to the Lincoln Memorial, where we see Betts or Teoscar Hernández reading aloud from the emancipation proclamation engraved there. Other players are seen paying their respects to relatives whose names are on the Vietnam and/or Korean war memorials. A stop at the Capitol building with a brief conversation between a Dodger or three and maybe Senator Adam Schiff or Congressman Jimmy Gomez or Ted Lieu who explain the separation of powers and how they represent the Los Angeles area. Maybe Roberts and some players stroll through the FDR memorial while Roberts talks of his mixed African-American/Japanese parentage and how his existence is a consequence of FDR (and then Truman) winning World War II and that base where his parents met existing in Okinawa. Some other Dodgers recount some personal/family history at the MLK memorial.

We see Chris Taylor and Enrique Hernández and Shohei in the Museum of American History checking out the baseball exhibit and maybe the presidential timeline. A scene with Betts at the African-American History museum. Arlington National Cemetery, maybe the JFK grave; the U.S. Mint, where the players can joke about their contracts; a humorous drive-by of the Watergate hotel; a stop at the steps of the Supreme Court, maybe the Dodger manager makes an offhand remark about how sometimes it sucks to have the same surname as someone else; and a stop at the National Archives—while at the White House, Roberts commented that he was thrilled to get a photo in front of the Declaration of Independence; how much better an image would it be for Max Muncy to show the founding documents to Yoshi Yamamoto and Miguel Rojas but apologize about not being able to see the Declaration of Independence because it's no longer available for public viewing since President Convicted Felon had it moved to the Oval Office because reasons.

Cap it off with the team arriving at Nationals Park for their series against the Nationals and someone else—Clayton Kershaw, Will Smith, maybe Shohei if his English can handle it—summing up the experience with a bit of patriotism and recounting what really makes America great: governance of, by, and for the people, where everyone is equal under the law and all have freedoms under the Constitution. "It's why we can all be here, enjoying baseball together in a free country."

You wouldn't have to even mention POTUS47 if you wanted to avoid "controversy," though I think a brief note that the White House invitation was declined because of who currently lives there and the note about the Declaration of Independence are warranted. Noting at the outset that the team chose to do the video rather than the White House visit might be enough to communicate by implication that it was in protest, but history would look kindly on calling POTUS47 out by name (or title). Especially if they included some LA-centric remarks about the recent fires and the stupid magic water spigot thing and climate change policy.

Anyway, that's what I would have done if I were the Dodgers head honcho.

Instead we have photos and video of Kershaw and Betts and Ohtani and Roberts and others just beaming as they shake the hand of someone who is perhaps the most hated person in the world.

Enrique Hernández said of Dodger fans who were upset with the team's choice to visit this president, "they have the right to an opinion," not quite understanding that the man whose hand he shook would prefer they did not have that right.

Betts said of those fans that it was another instance of being Black in America: "No matter what I choose, somebody is gonna be pissed." I realize that I am not Black in America (or anywhere else) and cannot comment on that greater context with any validity, but I think it's safe to say that in such cases it would be helpful to consider which somebodies would be pissed with which decision; I mean, how concerned are you with pissing off Nazis? Maybe in this climate it's a real concern, maybe you'd rather be on the side fighting the Nazis regardless.

Kershaw was unmoved by criticisms, saying, "At the end of the day, getting to go to the White House, getting to see the Oval Office, getting to meet the President of the United States, that’s stuff that you can’t lose sight of, no matter what you believe." I would argue to the pitching great that what you can't lose sight of is what those things—the White House, the Oval Office, the presidency—represent, and agreeing to visit this President, this autocrat, this fascist wannabe-dictator that stands opposed to those very things, shows that you have indeed lost sight of that.

 

Tagged Baseball, MLB, President VonClownstick, Posted on April 8, 2025 at 5:48PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Odds and ends

Cory Booker, giving his party a 25-hour kick in the ass

Just a post to catch up on a few disparate things over the past week or two. I'm a bit scatterbrained, have been for a few days, and am having some trouble keeping a train of thought going long enough for a coherent topic-focused post. Usually this sort of foggy-brain stuff is an indication of a Black Hole episode looming or in progress, but by 2025 standards—read: in the midst of existential dread from the fascist takeover of the government—it's been relatively OK of late. Still, being aware of this is sometimes half the battle, so I'm on my guard.

Anyway, onward with a hodgepodge of stuff:

• Hats off to Cory Booker. His marathon speech, disrupting the usual business of the Senate for over 25 hours, was something all prior filibuster-like holding-the-floor events were not: completely substantive. And while holding the floor for 25 hours plus—on his feet, no breaks, no food, talking continuously except for brief periods colleagues asked questions—was undeniably difficult, coming up with 25 hours' worth of substantive material to speak on was not, because this speech was about the abuses and corruption and illegality and treachery of the POTUS47 regime. There was no recitation of "Green Eggs and Ham" (Ted Cruz) or apple pie recipes (the fictional Howard Stackhouse) or aloud readings of Alexis de Tocqueville (Strom Thurmond). No need, the litany of POTUS47 crimes and destruction could fill twice that time or more.

  Naysayers have downplayed Booker's speech as meaningless, wholly performative, and a "stunt," but they're wrong. I mean, yes, it was a stunt, but stunts are cool, that's why we have action movies. In this case, the stunt was meaningful and the performance purposeful—it served to galvanize Booker's Democratic colleagues into actually doing shit.

  It's been just over ten weeks since President Convicted Felon took office again, which to be fair, is usually about how long DC pols take to move on anything, but in this case we all knew before those ten weeks even began that a clusterfuck was coming and staunch opposition was required. Thus, for ten weeks plus, we the greater public have been pleading for Congress to act and instead the Republican majority of both houses chose to abdicate their authority and suck up to the fascists while the Democratic leadership, while outraged, did very little.

  That's changing now. Is that all thanks to Booker's stunt? No, not entirely, but Booker has spurred his fellow Dems on by commanding attention. The reaction to Booker, added to the increasing action in the streets with the Tesla Takedown protests and the large turnout in special elections, has seemingly done more than all the letters constituents have sent to their representatives put together in prompting action. Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego have declared they'll be throwing as much sand in the gears as they can to block destructive nominees to the Justice department and Veterans Administration. Schiff and Jamie Raskin are convening "shadow hearings"—with Republicans in the majority, these aren't official Congressional hearings that come with subpoena power, but they'll still serve to get information and put it on the record and in front of the public—regarding the decimation of the Justice Department.

  It's not impeachment, but it's a start.

• I sure am glad I converted all my meager investments in the stock market to a simple money market account last month, because look what happened today. Again, this was predictable. In fact, it was predicted. Repeatedly. All through the 2024 election campaign. But the American voter is, in the aggregate, willfully ignorant and so here we are.

  It is truly astonishing that the Republican party is not only allowing this to happen but championing it. This is the party that supposedly supports free markets and free enterprise and yet here they are taking a blowtorch to the global economy. Why? Because their leader is an imbecile that does not know and cannot be bothered to learn that a tariff is not what he thinks it is, that "trade deficit" is a term of art and not actual debt, that recklessly pissing off every nation in the world except Russia and North Korea is not a sign of strength, that making it impossible to import raw materials does not in fact help American manufacturing, and that driving inflation through the roof is actually a political loser. And they support their leader no matter how stupid and destructive and treasonous he is.

  Here's how our old friend Craig Calcaterra put it using clearer phrasing than I did: "Trump did this because he's a big stupid fucking idiot who doesn't know anything and because he has surrounded himself with cowards and idiots who are afraid to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear and who refuse to exercise their considerable power to rein him in."

• Yet, the economic catastrophe isn't the worst thing in the news. It's not even close. Jockeying for the top spot in the ranks of Worst Thing Happening Right Now is the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE has always been a problematic agency, but now, under this regime, it is essentially the Gestapo. Not a joke, as our former president (the good and decent one of just three months ago) might say. ICE, sometimes identified as such and sometimes not, is kidnapping people off the street and sometimes interning them at for-profit domestic detention hellholes and sometimes rendering them to a Salvadoran hellhole, all with no due process whatsoever (or, as of today, interrupted due process). This is being done under the pretense of an "invasion" of the U.S. by a Venezuelan gang and the separate pretense of removing anti-Semitic troublemakers.

  Via Mary Trump, at least six people rendered to the El Salvador gulag have been definitively identified as having no ties to any gang, Venezuelan or otherwise, and that doesn't count the Maryland resident that ICE admits it sent to El Salvador due to "an administrative error" but has no intention of bringing back. It's not just brown people with tattoos or hijabs being swept up, either. This chaos even puts Canadians at risk of abuse and disappearance.

  This cannot stand. President Convicted Felon's American Gestapo must be stopped, and god bless the courts for doing their job in trying to right these wrongs, but without support from Congress I fear that isn't going to matter.

• Let's move on from the disasters sweeping the nation and by extension the world and talk baseball.

  Despite opening the season against the better-than-you-think-but-still-not-very-good formerly-Oakland A's, Your Seattle Mariners are just 3-4 after a week of play. Sadly, their performance thus far, even in the wins, resembles early 2024 far more than it does late 2024—good starting pitching, but anemic hitting and a whole lot of striking out. On the other hand, the sac fly rate is already double what it was under Scott Servais last year, so there's that. Anyway, early days, one week is hardly an adequate sample size to draw any conclusions from. I mean, the Padres are 7-0 and I figure they're going to end up around .500; Atlanta is 0-7 and they'll be in the thick of things.

  Some observations: The M's now have an ad on their sleeves, which sucks but isn't a surprise. Aesthetically it looks worse than the ads on some other teams' sleeves because it's bright orange. Come on, you couldn't get [video game company] to agree to use a navy or silver background, it has to be orange? On the other hand, the terrible uniforms from last year are history and the jerseys are much more professional looking again, with actual silver instead of dull gray and more standard lettering on the nameplates and heavy enough that you can't see what's being worn underneath.

• Softball has continued for me as an umpire and is approaching as a player, with my Smiling Potatoes of Death team readying to start a season next month. This is in two different leagues, obviously, and there are loads of differences between them. I much prefer the rules and setup of the league I ump for to the one I play in, I can't think of a single thing the latter does better than the former. I got drafted into a co-captain role with the Spuds this year, so I was on the conference call with the league and other team reps earlier this week talking about rules and such, and I was disappointed to learn that a lot of what I don't like is mandated by the organization the parks department contracts with so there's not much room for variation: it's mandatory to start with a 1-1 count, it's mandatory to have that stupid-ass no plays at the plate rule. Where there was argument over things we do have a say in was in roster and lineup construction, something again my umpiring league does much better than the other one, but at least there's small positive change there—we'll no longer have the alternating one-lineup-for-men, one-lineup-for-women thing in the city league, which wasn't exactly smooth.

  This week's ump shifts didn't provide much in the way of good stories to tell, I'd say six of the eight games I did were pretty standard. Though Sunday was a five-gamer, and those are brutal. By the time the fourth game is going I'm ready for it all to be over with and I've got no patience left for any tomfoolery. Fortunately, the fifth game was drama-free and ended early. Still, I had to do three more the next night and I wasn't in the mood for it. Plus, the first game on that schedule was between teams that have a history of, let's call it antagonism, so I was going in thinking more about how to deal with potential trouble than keeping my head in the game itself and it showed. There was some trouble to deal with, but it was minimal and came rather late; before that I was off my game a bit but really only made one mistake (prematurely calling a foul pop out of play that turned out not to be, and sadly when one of the few people on that team that annoys me sometimes was up so I got lip from him about it and a later call that properly went against him). Still, it wasn't fun and I was glad when that game ended and those teams—whom I usually quite enjoy when they aren't playing each other—got the hell off the field. Fortunately, the night ended with a palate cleanser game played by people with mostly excellent attitudes and good cheer.

  One thing about that Monday night, though—if I'd had a Capitol Hill Softball bingo card it would have been pretty full. Lots of, let's say, environmental color. I'm there again on Sunday, we'll see if I can get a bingo then.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Softball, Umping, Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on April 3, 2025 at 6:49PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Schumer II: The Wrath of Dems

Following up on my post from yesterday, I had some thoughts after listening to Chris Hayes interview Chuck Schumer this evening.

First off, Hayes was outstanding in pushing for better answers and bringing the things Schumer seemed to be missing to the fore. As a journalist, he did a great job here and I'm embedding the segment below, please to enjoy.

My takeaways from the conversation are that:

1. In isolation, considering only the situation of the moment last Friday, I've come to agree with Schumer that the vote to allow the so-called Continuing Resolution to pass was the better of the two unacceptable options, mostly because of the effect a shutdown would have had on courts. I don't fault him for that vote or for lobbying others to his position in isolation at that point.
2. I do very much fault him for his lack of foresight in the weeks leading up to last Friday. That Hobson's Choice of a vote came to be without Schumer having any plan, contingency, bigger-picture strategem, anything at all in mind surrounding the issue. It was entirely predictable that the CR would arrive in the Senate and have Republican support to pass, yet Schumer was caught flatfooted and unprepared. His plan seemed to be "Hakeem gets the House to vote it down and it won't get here."
3. My position that Schumer should step aside as leader was reinforced by the second half of this interview segment. Not only was he caught with his metaphorical pants down on the CR, he has articulated that we have not reached crisis point yet (boy howdy, is that wrong) and his strategy going forward relies on politics-as-usual that no longer applies.
4. The 47 regime is defying court orders now, is kidnapping legal U.S. residents and paying another country to abuse them as prison labor, but Schumer is waiting for the regime to defy a Supreme Court order before he will consider us in crisis. He is relying on public opinion and approval ratings to catch up to reality in advance of his taking any real action. He does not appear to realize that POTUS47 does not care about polling because he does not intend to allow fair elections. He further does not seem to recognize—and this is, sadly, a common problem with my party—that as a U.S. Senator (party leader, at that) he needs to lead public opinion, not follow it.

As Hayes points out in the interview, this stance might be fine if we were dealing with President Mitt Romney. But we're not. Schumer is emphatic (for him) when he indicates he knows this is a far different situation, yet there's a disconnect there. We can't wait until the midterms because we can't depend on there being midterms. We have to fight tooth and nail to make sure they happen and that they're legitimate.

Chuck is failing as leader. He'd better step aside or get a clue right fucking now.

 

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on March 19, 2025 at 12:24AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The Schumer problem

Senator Chuck Schumer counts down the seconds left in his political career

For those of you that have checked out of current events (like my veterinarian, whom I saw the other day with Zephyr and who told me she just can't handle awareness of the news since January), let me bring you up to speed on the latest round of Democrats Fighting Themselves When They Need to Have a United Front. Last Friday there was a key vote in the Senate, whether or not to invoke cloture—that is, end debate and proceed to a vote—on what has somewhat euphemistically been termed a Continuing Resolution to fund the government in lieu of an actual budget bill. Without approval of this resolution, the government would run out of money and go in to shutdown at midnight of that day.

Cloture is not a commonly used word outside of the DC beltway, but you might be familiar with a correlating term, "filibuster." The modern use of a filibuster in the Senate is not the Jimmy Stewart version, or even the Howard Stackhouse version from The West Wing, which requires a Senator to hold the floor indefinitely to prevent a vote from taking place. Nowadays it's much simpler and all that needs to happen is to oppose cloture—if fewer than 60 Senators vote for cloture, either debate continues or the bill is shelved or abandoned and thus "filibustered."

This bill is not really a Continuing Resolution—a real CR simply continues the existing budgetary framework for a predetermined time (six months in this case) as a stopgap. This bill has radical changes to the budget and is only "continuing" for some things—it cuts funding to myriad programs already approved by Congress; gives Elon Musk clear avenues for corruption with more government contracts; devastates DC's municipal budget; and, not to be overlooked, slashes funding for election security measures. And that's just for starters. It's really bad.

So, Senate Democrats were faced with a Hobson's Choice of allowing this so-called CR to go to a vote and thus pass, because Republicans had 52 declared votes in favor already, or filibustering it and thus creating a government shutdown, which is bad under normal circumstances and could be devastatingly chaotic under this current regime. Either option is unacceptable yet one will happen; so the real choice boiled down to accepting horribleness that is spelled out and predictably nasty, or not accepting it and venturing into unknown territory that may or may not be worse.

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, decided the known horrors would be better than the chaos of the unknown and got nine other Democrats to agree with him and cloture passed with 62 votes. Other Dems, both in the Senate and out—including very vocal members of the House—are understandably outraged at what is seen as capitulation to the regime at a time when no quarter should be given and are calling for Schumer to either step down as minority leader or resign from the Senate altogether.

I tend to side with the outraged Dems, because we are in the second American Civil War—it's a cold war for the moment, thankfully, but make no mistake, the insurrectionists are in the White House and the administration is staffed with traitors to the Constitution—and putting up a fight is thus required.

That said, I don't entirely fault Schumer's logic on this particular decision. There are legitimate concerns about what the regime would do under a shutdown, real dangers that can't be ignored. But I do fault his leadership and am among those calling for him to step aside. He was adamant about opposing this CR at all costs, then completely switched gears once it passed the House; there was clearly no forethought to what to do if the bill failed even though that was the stated goal earlier on, and his behavior throughout this sequence of events suggests he does not understand the gravity of the moment. There has always been a milquetoast quality to Schumer's speeches, he seems to think that if we just wait things out that Republicans will come back to respecting their oaths of office all by themselves somehow, and he appears to be operating as if this is still normal U.S. politics.

We can't have weak leadership right now. The caucus cannot be led by Neville Chamberlain. I don't know if we have someone in the Senate who could fill a Churchill or FDR role instead, but we damn well gotta try.

Amy Klobuchar, Chris Murphy, Sheldon Whitehouse, or Tammy Duckworth would each bring fight to the leadership position in their own ways and would be leaps and bounds better than Schumer. I don't like it when we're battling amongst ourselves, especially now, but we need a change and it better be soon so we can get to that united front and so we can have a leader that leads rather than one who waits for public opinion to catch up to reality.

For the moment, anyway, this is still a representative democracy, which means we vote for officials to be our agents in DC. They are there to do the work that we don't necessarily have the time or inclination to do ourselves, they need to be more informed and more discerning about governing than the public at large, and thus should be leading and shaping public opinion as much as they can rather than following it. Republicans figured that out a long time ago, but Democrats by and large have been squeamish about it. It's why the election wasn't a blowout in favor of Kamala Harris—old-school consultants preached playing things safe, toning down attacks, and courting Republicans instead of getting in people's faces about what the stakes were.

Chuck Schumer went with the path of least resistance this time and while I can't say for certain he was wrong in this specific instance, he cannot even appear to be capitulating to the regime and claim to be a leader. In the absence of a few Republicans growing a spine and supporting impeachment, the job of Democratic leaders, particularly in Congress, is to get us to next year's midterms in a way that we can actually hold those midterm elections fairly. That's going to require fights, it will require support for the courts, it will require pushback on many, many things that have not been adequately pushed back on thus far.

Get out of the way, Chuck.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on March 17, 2025 at 11:05PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Living through history

History is upon us.

Well, duh, obviously. History is the past, and every moment is history by the time the next moment arrives. But right now, this year, this time, this is history happening in the sense of "university courses will be taught about this time in history" the way courses are taught about The Great Depression or the Vietnam war or Japan's Taisho era.

I first took a university level American history course in 1987. It was a survey course, covering everything from colonial times through basically Watergate. The history I was living through in that present, the waning days of Reagan's term in office, was, unbeknownst to us all at the time as it almost always is unbeknownst in the moment, a pivotal era. The Reagan administration had begun a movement in U.S. politics and government that in many ways brought us to our current nightmare scenario. Reagan showed the conservative political machine that you can inflict gigantic levels of pain on the American public, but as long as you do it while telling them how wonderful life is, a large percentage of them will not only take the abuse but thank you for it and ask for more.

But the damage done in the 1980s was (comparatively) subtle. Slow-moving. Certain segments of the populace were hugely impacted in the short term, but in the aggregate things deteriorated over years. Even when that decline was temporarily arrested with Democratic governance, influence of the Reagan years persisted and prevented any real reversals (though Joe Biden did a valiant job in trying).

The damage occurring now is not subtle. It's careening along at breakneck speeds. This time, 2025, is such an obvious inflection point that we do know in the moment that we're witnessing, and participating in, critical history.

The current President of the United States has been in office just 43 days, and in that time he has:

• Abdicated the United States' status as leader of the free world;
• Effectively abandoned 80-year-old international alliances;
• Eliminated countless humanitarian and soft-power functions of the U.S. government;
• Engaged in an almost wholly lawless decimation of the federal workforce, crippling important agencies at all levels including the IRS, NOAA, Air Traffic Control, NIH, CDC, FDA, and is threatening to cripple USPS;
• Given an unelected, unvetted, corrupt billionaire access to every American's personal information;
• Assembled a Cabinet of fools, traitors, neo-Nazis, rapists, and idiotic cosplayers that appear to have been put in place to sabotage their departments and ensure no attempt to invoke the 25th Amendment would succeed;
• Begun tanking the domestic economy;
• Begun selling off/opening for destruction our national forests and public lands

And that's just off the top of my head.

Then last night he went on national television to tell the American public that he was some sort of messiah while spewing a breathtaking number of lies and droning on incoherently for 99 minutes.

 

 

After that debacle of a speech last night, Congress would have convened an emergency session this morning and removed this man from office today by overwhelming votes to impeach and convict if we lived in a sane and healthy America. Instead, we live in this time of utter corruption and stochastic terrorism and blackmail and stupidity, and when we come out on the other side—for those of us who do, because not everyone will—it's anyone's guess what the world will look like.

Some people, it seems, are beginning to see the light. Some of the dupes who voted Republican last November are regretting it. Pushback from constituents to Congresspeople has been largely on the side of righteous outrage. But the people who could stop this madness right now are not listening. Party leadership has told Republicans in Congress to stop holding town halls and meeting with constituents. That's their solution—just don't listen to them.

A not-insignificant portion of the Republican caucus is batshit crazy and/or cruel misanthropes and therefore unreachable—your MTGs and Boeberts and Jordans and Holy Mike Johnsons and that-other-John-Kennedys—but others are reachable. Some via appeals to their self-interest; the corrupt always look out for themselves. Others know they're on the wrong side but stay there out of fear. Fear of the mob, fear of the unofficial militia of pardoned insurrectionists, fear of the weaponized Justice department, fear of Presidentially sanctioned thuggery.

I have no doubt that among the boxes of documents POTUS45 stole when he left office and that as POTUS47 he has again taken to his home in Florida are records and FBI files and such on Senators and members of Congress. I have no doubt that he is using mob tactics to pressure Senators to confirm his nominees, to threaten Congressmen, to do whatever he can to put the metaphorical boot on the neck of anyone he thinks he has leverage over. It's these people that are going to have to wake up to the big-picture reality that their cowardice is enabling the Fall of America. That their willingness to be terrorized means they are traitors to the nation.

Because they are. Right now the President of the United States is a Russian operative, whether he is fully cognizant of it or not (that's a 50/50 bet, I think). He is also so staggeringly corrupt that he has no problem bankrupting the country for his personal gain and the gain of his donors and "friends." He is also, without question, the dumbest person to ever run for that office (and I include Jill Stein and Joe Exotic in the list) and contemptuous of the Constitution itself. Yet instead of doing their duty as elected officials and just representatives of humanity, those Republicans in Congress are instead huddled in a corner begging "please don't hurt me." Putting whatever personal scandals or threats to their bodily safety above the lives of countless people all over the world who are already dying due to this president's actions and will continue to as war in Europe rolls on and poverty rises at home and thuggery of all sorts gets a free pass.

This is a pivotal year.

If we can, while political forces still matter, convince the cowards and malleable part of the Republican caucus to do their jobs; if we can, while law-enforcement remains at least tacitly an instrument of public protection, bring the atrocities being committed by this administration to the notice of the apolitical checked-out masses; if we can, while courts remain faithful to the Constitution and the rule of law, arrest the runaway train of treason out of the Oval Office ... then we mark 2025 as a turning point that begins reforms to strengthen democracy and civil rights and free society and protect against the future elevation of tyrants. If we don't ... then we have years of steady descent into catastrophe and possibly that war Captain Pike told us about.

We're living through history.

The Trump Voter's Lament, from the band Talking Heads

And you may ask yourself / What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself / Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself / Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself / My God!...What have I done?!

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on March 5, 2025 at 9:04PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Speak your mind

Yesterday I sent yet another letter to my Senators and my representative in the House. It's super simple to do, you just follow this link and put in your address and that links you to your three Congresspeople. Paste in your letter and send. Easy-peasy.

You, too, can speak your mind to power. I recommend it. Especially now, especially if you live in a red district or state.

Not sure what to say? Feel free to adapt mine. Here it is.

Dear Senator Murray / Senator Cantwell / Representative Jayapal,

 

Friday's Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian president Zelenskyy and Donald Trump & JD Vance displayed horrific, outrageous, and thoroughly unacceptable behavior from the United States government.

It was, of course, just one of many examples of horrific policy and behavior from the Trump administration. The sheer volume of lawlessness and cruelty and overt corruption present every single day from this administration is enough to warrant removal from office.

But today the president and vice-president of the United States insulted an ally fighting for his nation's very survival, lied repeatedly both to him and to the American public, bullied President Zelenskyy, and behaved like petulant children—all in the service of an attempt to extort Ukraine.

Trump is an embarrassment and profoundly dangerous. It's barely been one month since his inauguration and he's shown his contempt for the United States Constitution, his profound ignorance of international relations, and a corrupt agenda intended to cripple the government and enrich himself and his billionaire cronies. Today he destroyed the United States' standing as leader of the free world and made clear his intent to abandon Western alliances.

If this is what he's done in a month, what will he do in a year, two years, four years?

Trump is a criminal, an idiot, and a tyrant.

I realize the current state of Congress doesn't offer much hope for a successful impeachment. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying. What are you waiting for? How bad do things have to get before impeachment becomes a consideration?

I don't ask that rhetorically, I am genuinely curious as to whether or not a strategy has been discussed. Does it depend on congressional Republicans? They are not going to move on their own, they've shown themselves to be feckless toadies and/or MAGA zealots; they will only come around if they feel pressure from outside. Pressure them. Find out what's making them betray their oaths by supporting this anti-American administration. If they are bowing to terrorists, call them out.

Republican, Democrat, or other, everyone in congress is supposed to be an American. Americans, those who support our constitution and history and ideals surrounding a more perfect union, would remove this president as soon as possible, before the level of destruction at home and damage abroad becomes catastrophic.

If not the immediate introduction of articles of impeachment, then work to lobby and whip support for such must be happening right now. The longer Trump is allowed to hold office the greater the chance that this country ceases to exist as we know it.

 

Sincerely,

Tim Harrison,

Seattle, WA

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Congress, Posted on March 1, 2025 at 8:43PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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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   |     |  

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The Borowitz Report

Things continue to spiral down into catastrophe with POTUS47 and his bosses Elon and Vlad, and sure, I've got opinions and thoughts about that, but I'm not going to share them just now because (a) I'm at least a day behind the news and whatever I post here now would likely be obsolete already, superseded by even more catastrophic horribleness; and (b) this is one of those "things other people said" posts.

Leading off, Andy Borowitz. The satirist has been on a roll of late, and, sure, he's been given a mountain of material so you can only imagine what didn't make his cut for publication. Here are a few of Andy's recent gems:

RFK Jr.’s Confirmation Hailed By National Alliance of Funeral Directors

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary on Thursday received a rousing thumbs-up from some of his most prominent supporters, the National Alliance of Funeral Directors.

“For years, the funeral industry has suffered as a result of the Democratic Party’s unabashed anti-death agenda,” the group said in an official statement. “We are confident that Secretary Kennedy will make death great again.”

But the confirmation drew a less enthusiastic reaction from one of Kennedy’s detractors, the worm who spent several years feasting on his brain.

“As a worm, you’d expect me to be pro-death,” the worm said. “But this is insane.”

In a more muted comment, Dr. Mehmet Oz said, “Well, at least I won’t be the biggest quack in the government.”

Putin Agrees to Negotiate with Musk over Ownership of Trump

MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Vladimir Putin has entered into negotiations with Elon Musk over the ownership of Donald J. Trump, the Kremlin confirmed on Tuesday.

Those negotiations, however, are proving contentious, as the Russian president is arguing that, having fully owned Trump between 2017 and 2021, he is entitled to a majority stake now.

For his part, Musk claims that he purchased Trump outright by spending nearly $300 million on his 2024 campaign.

In one heated exchange, Musk reportedly told the Russian leader, “You’re being greedy, Vlad—you already own Tulsi.”

Europe United in Belief That JD Vance is a Prick

MUNICH (The Borowitz Report)—Crediting the vice president with ushering in a new era of European solidarity, attendees at the Munich Security Conference left Friday’s session united in the belief that JD Vance is a prick.

“I came to Munich full of skepticism that we as a group of nations could find common ground on anything,” Danish delegate Hartvig Dorkelson said. “That all changed the moment that asshat Vance opened his mouth.”

Though he was grateful that all the nations of Europe could agree that Vance is a ginormous dick, Dorkelson warned against taking this historic consensus for granted.

“I worry that our unity could be short-lived,” he said. “So we must invite that fucker to speak again next year.”

Next up, via our friend Craig, is US District Court Judge Ana Reyes, who presided over a hearing regarding POTUS47’s executive order banning transgender Americans from the military. She had the following exchange with Department of Justice lawyer Jason Lynch, after failing to get a clear response from Lynch about whether the language of the EO is prejudicial. “The government is not willing to take a position [that] to categorically call a group of people selfish is demeaning?” she said. “The answer is ‘yes it is,’ ‘no it isn’t,’ or ‘I can’t say.’” Lynch continued to evade, which begat this:

REYES: This is a policy from the President of the United States affecting thousands of people ... [that calls] an entire group of people lying dishonest people who are undisciplined, immodest, and have no integrity. How is that anything other than showing animus?

LYNCH: I don't have an answer for you.

REYES: You do have an answer, you just don't want to give it.

The EO also attacks "radical gender ideology," a term no lawyer has been able to define in court.

REYES: If you can't articulate what radical gender ideology means, how is the defense secretary going to know what it means?

LYNCH: I'm loathe to speculate [what the president meant].

REYES: It's not like I randomly picked you off the street. You're the government's representative here.

May we have more like this from the courts, please.

Batting third, Joanne Carducci (AKA @JoJoFromJerz), who on a podcast dubbed Elon Musk "Phony Stark," which made me laugh heartily.

And the cleanup hitter, a poor sap named Staci White in Nebraska, who voted for POTUS47 and has entered the "find out" portion of FAFO:

Dang, why didn't I just pick Kamala?

Good question.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Andy Borowitz, Posted on February 20, 2025 at 12:29AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The world sucks, and other observations

Quality TV as an escape from the world crumbling around us

It's been a rough week. Following a rough few weeks. I mean, in the world. I've already mentioned how it's been influencing my state of mind, and it continues to. But there is life beyond the chaos and destruction raging all around us. For now, anyway.

Some stray items and thoughts on the past week or so:

• I had some folks over the other night for food and conversation and general socializing, which was good. It was good in that some of these folks I hadn't seen in a long time and it's always good to catch up a bit; it was good that some people got to meet some other people that had only existed as faceless anecdotes before; it was good in the very base sense that human interaction is necessary. I've not had as much of that as I'd like of late.
• Some of the human interactions of late weren't good, though, including a near-fistfight at one of my umpiring shifts the other day. It made no sense to me, was based entirely, it seems, on some machismo bullshit carried over from prior seasons—the sort of Phil Nevin/Anthony Rendon/Jesse Winker-type posturing I have no patience for even on the best of days—and it ruined an otherwise decent afternoon/evening. I had to stop being Fun Umpire Guy on a dime and immediately shift into Guy In Charge With Authority, warn players, and was a hair's breadth from ejecting multiple men and women (!! it's almost never the women, but this time...) before one of the team captains settled his crew down a literal instant under the wire. There are on occasion days when I half-expect some sort of nonsense to occur during a shift, but never in the winter time. The teams that sign up for winter league are the die-hards that play all the time, that are so familiar to each other and to we the umpires that it's generally easy-going. (The real assholery tends to happen in the summer, when guys that are bitter about not making their JV teams in college sign up for a slot and ruin things with uber-competitiveness.) Fortunately, my relationship with the involved teams is good enough that when I saw a bunch of the players the next night everyone was cool and ready to play a conflict-free game, but hoo-boy was I not receptive to being told by rec-league softball players in a stakes-less environment that I needed to abide by some macho code of utter crapola because they were pissed off about a guy on the other team lining one back through the box. Half a dozen f-ing Phil Nevins in my face at the end of that game. Get a grip.
• Apple TV has some really good programming. If you've got budget for only one streaming service, that's probably the one you want—not just the best-of-the-best Ted Lassos and For All Mankinds, but there's great stuff in Severance, Silo, Shrinking, The Big Door Prize, The Morning Show, Sunny, Dark Matter, and the two shows I binged through in the past week: Constellation and Shining Girls. Both are just single-season, eight-episode series; the former deserves a renewal and more but won't get it, the latter wrapped up at an end point. Constellation—I had to watch it with that name, right?—is a mind-bending story following an astronaut who survives a massive accident on the ISS and returns to Earth to find things not as she left them; we learn over the course of things that two other former astronauts experienced much the same thing in years past and it's a WTF sort of mystery and psycho-thriller sci-fi exploration with quantum physics. Shining Girls is a more gritty, Earthbound murder-mystery sort of thing that also hinges on mind-bending quantum physics weirdness that stars Elisabeth Moss and only disappoints a little bit when it gets to the end and the source of the mind-bendiness is located but remains unexplained. Ambitious and well-done, both of them.
• Ty France has a job again. The former Seattle Mariner first baseman signed for the upcoming season with the Minnesota Twins and explained to reporters why he's coming off of some bad seasons. Spoiler warning: I was right. France had some smallish injury issues last year, but as he said to the press, it wasn't really the injury. He doesn't name-drop former Mariners manager Scott Servais or former Mariner "batting coach" Jarret DeHart, but he said that after he hit a rough patch early in 2023, he focused on analytics—Stacast-type nonsense like launch angles and barrel rates—which are the only things DeHart seemed to know anything about or care at all about. “There was a lot of it—the analytical side—where I tried to tap into, that I shouldn't tap into,” he said. “I should just worry about being a baseball player and hitting the ball.” After leaving the Mariners and the Servais/DeHart school of not-hitting, France started coming back into his own with Cincinnati. “When I’m at my best, I’m not focused on analytics. I’m just simplifying hitting ... the last year or two hasn’t been fun baseball for me. I think my time in Cincinnati last year, having that reset, I found that joy again." Do I still think Ty France is going to win a batting title or two? Well, I'm not as sure as I was when he first came to the M's, but if he can stay away from Jarret DeHart and keep from getting hurt too much, then...yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
• And, back to the collapse of the nation, I thought last night's "A" block form Rachel Maddow was worth passing around. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and though it's not like Hanford is in my back yard, it is in my state. And similar issues are rampant across the country now that POTUS47 and his boss Elon are taking a blowtorch to the government. It just astounds me that this is allowed to happen—every single elected Republican, it seems, is on board with destroying the United States. The Senators just confirm these dangerously unqualified and destructive cabinet officers without objection, the Representatives in the House have the power to impeach all of these agents of chaos and disaster but don't see any need. They've all got to go. All of them.

Tagged Politics, TV, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Rachel Maddow, Umping, Posted on February 19, 2025 at 2:21AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Crisis Overload

Our new DNI is a threat to national security

Hi, Internet. I know, it's been a few days. And it's not like there wasn't a ton of stuff happening in the world to opine about.

New outrages from the POTUS47 regime are flying in on what feels like an hourly basis, but I kind of hit a wall. I mean, I can write here about how this country is looking into the abyss because of Republican support for a fascist president, or conversely about how at least the judiciary is still operating under the Constitution (for now) and how Democratic leaders have found their spines. But let's be real, my readership is tiny and this basically serves as a means for me to vent rather than a way to communicate with people who need to be told/shown what's going on.

I can, and have (repeatedly), written to my Congressional representatives, imploring them to not only do anything they can to stand in the way of the criminal behavior of POTUS47 and company but to in turn implore their colleagues from across the aisle to wake the hell up and smell the autocracy—a majority of both Houses of Congress appears content to simply allow their power as a co-equal branch of government to be usurped, something that very majority would rail against if it were being usurped by anyone else. (I've also written specifically to Senator Cantwell to chastise her for voting to confirm some of the unqualified and dangerous cabinet nominees. In what universe is fossil-fuel fetishist Doug Burgum an appropriate nominee for Secretary of the Interior?!)

It does make me feel like I'm doing something, as does my monthly contribution to the ACLU, but the fear and powerlessness is getting weightier.

Which is, I know, exactly what the autocrats want. So I can't let it overwhelm for very long.

Tall order, given that:

• Today 52 United States Senators confirmed a Russian operative to be Director of National Intelligence. International relations and alliances are now damaged in even more incalculable ways than they were by the confirmations of Pete Hegselth (who was booed soundly yesterday at a military base in Germany), Kristi Noem (who cosplays whenever she appears on TV and declared that migrants who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in recent days are given full due process despite having been given none whatsoever when apprehended), and Pam Bondi (who has issued threats promising reprisals to anyone—including the judicial branch of government—that "interferes with Federal law enforcement").
• Over the weekend the Vice President of the United States said that judges should be ignored and that the Executive Branch should defy court orders.
• On Monday POTUS47 fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics, the agency responsible for overseeing ethics rules and financial disclosures for the executive branch. I'm actually kind of surprised it took him three weeks do do that; I guess he didn't know the office existed before.
• Unofficial Secretary of Corruption Elon Musk held a press conference in the Oval Office yesterday—making unspoken power moves to show that he's the boss, not the guy sitting at the Resolute Desk—during which he lied his ass off about "waste" and "fraud" he's "discovered" while taking a meat-axe to government agencies and about being "transparent" about everything his alleged department does. He did admit to a couple of things, though—replying to a question asking how "we can trust what you say," Elon said, "Some of the things that I say will be incorrect"; on the subject of conflicts of interest, he admitted in between lies that "You can see: am I doing something that benefits one of my companies, or not. It’s totally obvious," and yes, Elon, it is totally obvious that you are self-dealing and favoring your own businesses.

I want to post about fun things. About the fact that today pitchers and catchers reported to Spring Training and that Ty France got himself a gig. About the twists and turns in the second season of the amazing show "Severance." About some of the interesting nuggets in the book I'm reading, "What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing" (did you know Toby Ziegler was almost portrayed by Eugene Levy? Can you imagine??!). About comics, about staff parties for side gigs, about how quiet and serene it is on Super Bowl Sunday when one doesn't give a damn about football.

But instead I'm fretting about this. Because it's that fucking serious.

In the wake of the sanctioned-by-the-president theft of all Americans' taxpayer data, I have frozen my credit just in case. Elon can sell, possibly already has sold, this data to malevolent actors in and out of world governments. I suspect ID scamming and frauds of that nature will soon see a significant spike, though I wonder if we'll know about it given how many avenues of investigation have been decapitated and that the Senate is primed to confirm yet another criminal when they vote on FBI Director in the coming days.

Once again, everyone who decided not to vote because they couldn't be bothered to make a choice between the smart black lady and the stupid con man can go to hell.

Here are some bits that other folks said/wrote over the past few days that deserve sharing...

 

Craig Calcaterra on POTUS47’s cadre defying court orders:

At some point one of the judges whose orders are being ignored will have to either jail the DOJ attorney of record or issue a bench warrant for the jailing of an executive branch official in order to force compliance. If they do not do that and, instead, allow their orders to be ignored unchecked, it will by definition subvert the Constitution, thereby rendering it a dead letter;

If a judge whose orders are being ignored jails the DOJ attorney or issues a bench warrant for the jailing of an executive branch official and the agencies in question nonetheless continue to violate the orders via subordinates or by presidential order it will by definition subvert the Constitution, thereby rendering it a dead letter;

If a judge whose orders are being ignored either jails the DOJ attorney or issues a bench warrant for the jailing of an executive branch official and the president attempts to "pardon" them – nonsensical in this case but I wouldn't put it past him – that would be the same thing as the president declaring that the executive branch is not subject to the courts, which will by definition subvert the Constitution, thereby rendering it a dead letter;

Of course the president may simply say, without the pretextual use of the pardon power, that he doesn't have to listen to the courts, which accomplishes the same thing;

If the U.S. Marshals in charge of enforcing court orders and apprehending those who violate them refuse to comply with a court's order to jail the DOJ attorney or the executive branch official in question, the courts will thereby have been stripped of their enforcement power, which will by definition subvert the Constitution, thereby rendering it a dead letter.

If I have missed an option here – other than, you know, actual compliance with court orders – please let me know. But from what I can tell we are about to witness nothing short of the final conceivable stress test of the foundations of American democracy. We have never been anywhere close to this place before. There has certainly never been an executive branch that seems as willing to assert compete dictatorial control of the government as the Trump administration is at this moment. And, to be sure, there has never been a branch of the government that has been willing to cede its own power like the Republican-controlled Congress apparently is.

Mary Trump on Elon's presser in the Oval:

One of the reasons Musk's fits in so well with the Trump regime is because he has absolutely no sense of self-awareness, and he clearly missed the irony when he went off about unelected bureaucrats, considering he's kind of the poster child for those.

“If there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, and then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the President and the Senate and the house, then we don't live in a democracy if we live in a bureaucracy. So it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop. We fix that feedback loop and that the public's elected representatives, the president, the House, and the Senate decide what happens as opposed to a large unelected bureaucracy.”

Bureaucracy is not a form of government. Democracy and bureaucracy are not in tension. Fascist states have bureaucracies, too, as we are finding out. Unfortunately, therefore, we have to continue to listen to this malicious Nazi because he has all of the power and let us not kid ourselves otherwise.

 Jeremy Novak:

Trump’s victory and MAGA’s ascendance is not the revolution. What we are witnessing in the executive branch of government right now is not the revolution.

It is a desperate power grab by elites.

This is the elites gone haywire, grasping for further power to ensure they are not held to account. It is what causes the regular people to rise up.

And it is the least self-aware power grab in history. The people currently running the government think they are the ones conducting the revolution. In reality, they are the establishment angering the common people of this country and sparking an uprising.

If anyone thinks that Elon Musk is the leader of the revolution, they are delusional. He has survived off of family wealth and government largesse to amass his fortune. He is the definition of elite. He has no idea what regular people go through.

The same is true for Donald Trump. Sure, he might talk like a regular person and endear himself to them as a result. But he talks like that because he can afford to. A normal person starting from nothing and trying to get ahead in life could never talk like the does; they’d never be taken seriously. Like Musk, he’s part of the elite.

Despite the revolutionary rhetoric of MAGA, they are really just cosplaying revolutionaries to keep their base fired up and voting.

 I better stop now. I've got other things to do.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on February 12, 2025 at 9:01PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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