Statues? Really? / Discerning readers... / Quick Hits

Statues? Really?–  America has a multitude of intractable crises to deal with right now -- China’s increasing aggression around the globe, a pandemic that’s affected every country, huge pending climate disasters, a spiraling economic disparity between affluent and indigent countries – but guess what issue so many Americans are stewing over these days? 

Statuary.

That’s correct, as ridiculous as it sounds: many of the ‘woke’ generation are worried that centuries-old statues, of which most of us pay no attention to when we pass them in a park, somehow send the wrong lessons, and must be removed, replaced with some other guy [or woman] with more worthy credentials.

In this era, advocates want the ‘racist,’ old-world statues summarily erased – they’re usually tributes to old white guys – and replaced with minority personages. This is the big deal these days. [Poor Christopher Columbus, an explorer who supposedly contributed to the white man’s conquest of South America, is threatened with extinction. It’s forgotten amidst the uproar that Mr. Columbus did indeed discover America, and that’s what he’s honored for in this country.] 

Even Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, arguably the most prominent of the Founding Fathers, should be obliterated from history, according to the revisionists, jettisoned forever. Why?  They owned slaves. As heinous as the institution of slavery was, in the late 18th century, many wealthy Americans owned slaves. History is history, I’m afraid: attempting to erase it is a fool’s errand, and not likely to succeed. 

Isn’t this insane? It’s not difficult to figure out why this movement is occurring now:  politicians are always trying to curry favor with potential voters; this issue is perfect for pandering and looking good to their urban constituencies. The actual historic validity of statue erasure is not a factor to be considered by a politician.

The hapless New York City mayor is a case in point: he [and his wife, I might add]  swung a baseball bat to a hornet’s nest when she announced that a Central Park statue of an Italian saint—white -- would be taken down and replaced by a statue of a black luminary. All hell broke loose at that directive, and in just a few days, the mayor rescinded the action. Italian New Yorkers were outraged, and the statue remains. 

The Mayor, indecisive as usual and not realizing beforehand that razing a statue of a revered Italian saint would set off a firestorm in the city, came off again as an ineffectual stooge; then he tries to mollify the situation by creating a task force to investigate the statue issue [Mr. Gripes hates task force initiatives: a task force is nothing but a cynical ruse to defuse a crisis with a delaying tactic,  counting on a fickle citizenry to forget  – but, thank God, we’ll actually never see this task force in action. It’s all BS.] 

Mr. Gripes’ opinion? Politicians, please don’t touch a damn thing. Leave the statues in place: they’re history, so leave them alone so observers, if they’d like to, can contemplate their notoriety. Besides, as I said before, very few people really give a damn. Save the money for the subways.

Discerning readers of ‘Mr. Gripes’ may have noticed over the past couple of months a retreat from full-blown screeds against our previous president, perhaps signaling a more temperate approach to the misdeeds of Mr. Trump. 

Why? I figure he’s doing very little, except for golf, at his residences in Florida and New Jersey, much removed from the public eye, so why bother with him. His lackeys are performing his shady work, and his golf rounds are focusing his attention away from his usual behavior of casting all-too-familiar aspersions toward friend or foe.

Please don’t misinterpret what I just posited though: Mr. Trump, whom Barack Obama in a recent interview called a ‘madman’, STILL believes he’s likely to be ‘reinstated’ as President as early as August, once a number of recounts negate some states’ certified 2020 results and the contested electoral votes move over to him. He’s counting on that. 

He’s either nuts, or is continuing futile, feeble actions so that his diehards keep that gushing-cash spigot of campaign contributions flowing into his political action committee. [$250 million so far raised! And he can spend that money for virtually anything he wants.] 

But his presence is certainly muted for the moment.

You know, after the post-election attempts to overturn results in a number of states, to swing the election over to Donald Trump, were unsuccessful in every instance, and after the fracas around the Capitol on January 6, and after all the hand-wringing about the fragile nature of our democracy died down a bit, Mr. Gripes for a moment felt confident enough that our republic had been rescued, albeit by the skin of our teeth.

And here’s where I give the Republicans a lot of credit. Instead of taking a breather, and simply rolling over and waiting until next year’s mid-term elections, which very likely may conclude with a Democratic defeat, the Republicans barreled ahead with the intent of leaving no doubt that they’ll win, by ‘rigging’ the 2022 elections so that they may return to power very soon.

They – the Republican strategists -- diagnosed the problems of the 2020 election absolutely correctly: their error in this past Presidential election was that Republicans, prior to the election, took the cue from Donald Trump that the election was going to be ‘fixed’, and then tried to overturn the election result too late.

That was their huge mistake: instead of going into court before the election, they made the grievous error of trying to deny the election results by suing to have vote counts thrown out after the election, when state and local certifications had already occurred – essentially a fait accompli, making the task of reversing the election vastly more difficult.

They’ve learned their lesson well: for 2022, Republican legislatures are changing election procedures and rules prior to the voting, by suppressing Democratic turnout, and maximizing the chances of Republican candidates. And they’ve followed exactly that road map in a few key states. 

I’ll reiterate: as much as I find their electoral schemes reprehensible, Mr. Gripes offers grudging praise for the Republican efforts. The Democrats? I think they know they’re in deep, deep trouble. And, unless the Supreme Court gets involved in negating vote suppression legislation, which they will not do, the Republicans are in a great position to take control of Congress once again.

Quick Hits….

Joe Biden, to these eyes, looks considerably older now than before his January inauguration. Only an impression, but he appears a bit shakier and more vulnerable as well. Mentally, he seems fine, but it just looks like Mr. Biden may not have foreseen how grueling and burdensome the job is. Being President is an impossible job if you take it seriously, which Joe Biden certainly does, and the never-ending stress would humble anyone. Mr. Biden at times seems like four years of this is going to beat him up badly.

I am amused, though, how all his sharp-tongued opponents pounce on his presumed mental deficiencies —‘doddering’, ‘mumbling’, and ‘slobbering’ are favorite adjectives – months after, as readers recall, his detached-from-reality predecessor advocated – to a national audience of millions – that the kitchen cleaner Lysol, taken internally, could cure anyone of COVID! A diagnosis of that Trump blunder is not a task I’d like to take on, but let’s just say Mr. Biden is eons away from the innumerable mental gaffs and lapses that his predecessor voiced all the time.

But, back to Joe Biden, and his plans for 2024: My bet is that the President does not run again. The burdens of the office will take a huge toll physically, I think, over the next few years. Mr. Biden seems to be a reasonable, rational, realistic being; at some point he’ll examine what he may face with four more years, and simply declare, ‘Enough.’

Kamala Harris: A lightweight? Her six months as vice president, to this observer, have been very disappointing, to say the least. I expected a lot more, honestly.  I certainly understand a President does not cede easily the spotlight to his vice president, but what has Ms. Harris accomplished that has made any positive difference at all? Her tenure so far has been a big nothing. In fact the one time she had a significant issue that caught the interest of Americans, she goes down to Central America to discuss the border imbroglio, and intones, ‘Don’t come’, to potential refugees.  Uttering those two words was a terrible look – how about, instead, some kind words for these desperate souls? Yes, it’s true that immigrants are not welcome here right now [we have our own problems, after all] but, come on, Ms. Harris, instead of behaving and talking like a low-rent hack politician, couldn’t you have demonstrated at least a modicum of empathy and maturity?

Dumb Jocks, eh?...Today’s July 4th, so enough verbiage about the dreary events of the day, and  let me end this column with a purely American tale. And a rags-to-riches one, to boot…..

Professional major league baseball was founded 150 years ago, with the creation of the National League, and the American League soon after. For almost 100 years after, the actual professional ballplayers were treated as if they were indentured servants, legally tethered to one team in perpetuity, with no flexibility whatsoever of moving to another team, and operating under miserable working conditions as well. The owners of the ball clubs, knowing that their players were basically without rights, took full advantage of them, demeaning them for a century.

Over that time, most of the baseball players acted as if they were Uncle Tom automatons, making no effort to band together and organize in solidarity.  They accepted what their masters chose to dole out to them. What union they did form was completely ineffectual, probably doing more harm than good.[ Robin Roberts, head of the players union, used to joke, ‘The four or five union reps who showed up for meetings talked among themselves for about a half-hour and then we played cards for the rest of the night.’]

Eventually, and this is the inspirational bit, things began to change. The players hired a professional labor organizer who had worked for the steelworkers union, a tough bunch for sure.

Three or four years into his tenure, he called for a meeting of team union player representatives in Pittsburgh. The session took place in a hotel ballroom, with the reps seated and the organizer, with his aides, up on a stage, elaborating on the possibility of going out on strike. He droned on and on, as the bored players, heads down in the audience, half-listened to his explanations and exhortations.

The organizer, Marvin Miller, comes to the end of his talk, and announces, ‘We’re just not in position to go out at the moment, in terms of financial risk to the union and weak public support. We have to wait.’

At that instance, according to the account I read, every ballplayer’s head in the room jerked up,  thinking,  individually and collectively, the same, ‘F__k that, we’re going out. No more kissing their asses.’ That was the moment everything changed.

[Ballplayers, let’s emphasize, were and are quintessential alpha males – their DNA template means they have an extraordinary compulsion to win, or more to the point, not lose, at any cost: they’d compete against each other over everything – gin rummy, checkers, games of HORSE, women, golf, beer-chugging, ping-pong, you name it. And backing down from a fight for their rights against fat-ass owners was NOT going to happen this time.]

Three weeks later, the professional major league players union went out on strike, and games were cancelled for months. The players eventually won the battle against the owners, securing some rights and security, and never have looked back. Today, astonishing as it sounds, as the players continue to accrue even now bigger and better contracts and benefits, the baseball players union is presently considered the most successful labor-organizing movement in history. Amazing.

‘Mr. Gripes’                                                           
July 4 2021
By Jim Israel

Crybabies / Mickey Mantle: Rags-to-Riches-to-?? / Vaccination Resisters

 Crybabies…We Americans have become a country of whining crybabies.

‘Aw, Mommy, why do I have to wear a mask? I don’t feel sick. 

‘But a mask prevents bad germs that may be in your body, Tommy, from spreading to all your friends, and making them sick.’

‘But I can’t even see my friends and play with them. It’s not fair.’

Tommy’s assessment of the situation is precisely what the preposterous House representative, Jim Jordan, R, Ohio, would like to advocate to all those equivocating Americans out there in the hinterlands.

‘They [Fauci and Biden] are taking our freedoms away,’ Mr. Jordan exclaims. ‘We can’t even enjoy the basic right of freedom of assembly because of the limitations on our movements due to ridiculous COVID restrictions.’

To Mr. Gripes, Mr. Jordan is nothing but a sycophantic, gutless coward, taking orders from his cranky headmaster down in Florida. He yells and screams that Dr. Fauci doesn’t know what he is talking about; Fauci’s making things up, presumably because the doctor is some kind of socialist. But let’s be real, and stop the grandstanding: Mr.  Jordan and his family, I’ll bet dollars to donuts, had their full doses of vaccinations a few months ago, and are now protected from the virus. He’s playing games with his constituents, to their potential peril.

That’s the standard bellow now from crybaby Republicans – our ‘freedoms’ have been whittled away by all the COVID restrictions. What a crock of crap. ‘Freedoms going away? No one’s breaking into your house at night, are they? No one’s arresting anyone for not getting the vaccination, right? You’re not being hauled off to prison for promoting the big lie and weakening our democracy, are you? Of  course not. You’re allowed to say whatever crazy sh_t you want to, and no one putting cuffs on you.

Besides, what is the big deal about wearing a mask? We put it on when we’re in a restaurant, or among a gathering of strangers, and then basically forget about it. An infringement of our basic rights? Horse manure. Act like an adult, Jim Jordan, and sacrifice just a little for the general health of your neighbors and countrymen.

It is government representatives such as Mr. Jordan that’s made Mr. Gripes despair of our democracy. Can’t we get past all this acrimony and just start straightening out the country? We have so much to do, and very little time to accomplish what we must to survive as a functioning democracy. As we all can attest to lately, democracy is as fragile as an orchid, and we must be vigilant in preserving it. It can all disappear very, very quickly [Look at Venezuela – its once flourishing democracy now is akin to a animal carcass kicked to the side of the road.] Jim Jordan, Donald Trump and their ignorant clones have proliferated over the past couple of decades, and what they’re doing now is assaulting the beautiful American experiment of a people’s democracy.

During World War II, sixteen million [!] men and women enlisted or were drafted into the armed forces. Of that number, how many do you think, readers, carried on about their ‘freedoms’ being taken away because of the army experience? Sure, the young men must have complained loudly to anyone who would listen – after all, they were vociferous Americans. But guess what? After all the complaining, the men simply buckled up their belts, loaded up their weapons, and beat the hell out of the Germans across Europe and the Japanese across the Pacific – and won the war.

What a difference 75 years make: Mr. Jordan and the other pathetic Trump sissies yell and bitch about their ‘freedoms’ being taken from them– free of any consequences for  spewing the lies, it may appear that their supporters will never desert them. But, one day…the chickens will come home to roost – maybe their grandchildren will rise up and ask how could Jordan, et alia have risked the lives of Americans who could have been vaccinated, if told to do so. Jim Jordan, afraid of his own shadow, is a fraud.

Mickey Mantle: Rags-to-Riches-to-??....A former New York Times sportswriter, George Vecsey, wrote, ‘The upward mobility of youth – especially an athlete in the purest, unthreatening form – has always been part of American mythology.’

The tale is always epic: an innocent and young athlete, born under dire, penurious circumstances, is destined to endure a life of hardship and crushed dreams, yet manages to crawl out from under a shanty-town slag pile of rubble, and, realizing a real-time miracle, achieves the American dream of unimaginable fame and fortune.

Mickey Mantle, a childhood hero of Mr. Gripes, personifies the rags-to-riches myth of America.

Raised in eastern Oklahoma amid zinc-and-coal mines, Mickey Mantle learned early on about the burdened generations of Mantle men who could not escape the dreary, dark, cruel, and dangerous mines. Either the mines will kill you in a collapsing disaster, or you will die at a young age from debilitating lung disease. Dying before their time was the miner’s fate.

One of the Mantle legends – truthful, perhaps – is that at nine or ten years ago, his father took him down a mile into the mines for his first time. His reaction? The experience traumatized him.  Terrified, he told his mother he would never again go down there again for the rest of his life – and he didn’t.

Mickey Mantle escaped. Not all by just benevolent fate, of course.  Extraordinary talent and luck and a father’s sacrifices helped. For one thing, his body was ideal for playing baseball –– huge shoulders, a massive torso and powerful legs [he was only 5’10”, but that shortened stature combined with extraordinary musculature resulted in an explosive swing. [Here’s a description of one of his bombs: Against Paul Foytack of the Detroit Tigers, at Briggs Stadium in September 1960, Mickey Mantle hit a ball over the right field upper deck, over the roof façade, over the street just outside the ballpark, and landed in a lumber yard across the street – a ridiculous 643 feet from home plate!]

His father, Mutt, likely exhausted from a day in the mines, nevertheless worked with Mickey every afternoon after he got home; he pitched to Mantle who batted left handed against his right-handed father, and, then, stepping across home plate, hit from the right side against his left-handed uncle. Those lessons taught Mickey to hit from both sides of home plate – with that instruction, he became the greatest switch hitter in the history of baseball.

Later on, at 16 or 17, Mickey Mantle’s lifelong history of momentous highs and crushing lows took on operatic proportions. Here’s a little of that epic tale:

Playing one Saturday in a sandlot game [the equivalent of Little League in those days], Mantle was observed by a baseball scout only there to assess a ballplayer on the other team; Mickey managed to hit three home runs, exhibit great speed in stealing bases, and make several impressive plays defensively. The scout happened to be in the employ of the New York Yankees. Mantle was signed soon after. He was on his way to the great city, a very lucky break.

He made it to the Big Leagues and Yankee Stadium by a callow age of 19. He played in his first World Series the next year. He had escaped from a midnight-black, bleak life toiling in the mines, and in a blink of an eye, under a brilliant sun, he was patrolling the centerfield expanse in Yankee Stadium every afternoon.  A journey literally from Hell to Heaven. Rags-to-riches, indeed.

Often, though, Mickey Mantle seemed cursed, too.  In that World Series, chasing a fly ball in the outfield in Yankee Stadium, Mantle tripped over a sprinkler cover, and tore up his knee permanently. In those days, reconstructive knee surgery didn’t exist. As great as he became, that injury hobbled him for the rest of his career, and he never reached his full potential.

This chapter of his fabled life doesn’t end there, unfortunately. Driven to the hospital for x-rays on his damaged knee, Mickey leaned on his father’s shoulder for support as he emerged from the automobile. His father crumbled to the ground. Both son and father became patients, lying in adjoining beds – Mantle’s dad was soon diagnosed with a type of fatal bone cancer, and never really returned home for any extended stay, dying a year later, at 40. [Mickey’s father, an uncle, and two of his sons all died of cancer at young ages.] Mickey Mantle, for all his glories, his money, his women, lived a tragic, cursed life in many ways; in fact, at the end of his life, an alcoholic dying of liver cancer, Mickey Mantle assessed his life as a huge disappointment.

But, my God, he meant everything to me – and to millions of other boys of the ‘50’s -- for years.

The longer vaccinations are available for the public, the more incensed Mr. Gripes becomes at the sheer stupidity at the resisters. Yes, I understand the depth of a distrust of government officials for many years, and yes, many individuals don’t understand science, and therefore reject scientific discovery out of hand.

But, come on, folks. Can’t you take a look at the basic facts, and put your skepticism aside? Getting a vaccine might save your life. Mr. Gripes does not have any patience with ignorance.

I listened yesterday to an argument put forth by a college student – at Rutgers – who chooses not to be vaccinated – this despite a mandate issued by the college that students ‘must’ be inoculated before they can matriculate in the fall.

One of her justifications for her stance is that the vaccine is still in an ‘experimental’ stage. ‘Experimental!?’ Give me a break. How many shots have been administered in this country in the last two or three months? A total of 284 million doses have been given to Americans, and 130 million citizens are now fully vaccinated! Have we heard of many life-or-death problems stemming from the giant effort? Nope. Some experiment.

Whatever the reason for this student’s resistance to the vaccine, it’s got nothing to do with an ‘experimental’ stage. And this student was so adamant and confident in her fallacious reasoning, and so sure of herself.  She was in fact exhibiting that worldwide phenomenon: the arrogance of youth.

[A slight digression: Mr. Gripes, if it were within his power, would mandate that ALL students at every university who’s returning to campus get the vaccine. No ‘ifs, ands or buts.’]

And guess what? I’ll bet every university president, if he could make a decision on a ‘vaccine for all’ without interference from external pressures, would opt for blanket compulsory coverage. It would make their job so much easier.

College life, after all, is about congregation, the mingling of young people. That’s the very marrow of the college experience. If the unvaccinated are allowed to ‘mingle’ within the college setting, that’s a ‘set-up’ for continued COVID illness among the students, and potentially a real medical calamity.

As sensible as a mandate would be, it’s not possible in this age: politics always intrudes, and it has already: public state universities with Republican governments are starting to legislate against ‘compulsory’ mandates. You know a huge battle is brewing.

One last opinion regarding the protesting Rutgers student:  she says, ‘If they won’t let me enroll, I’ll just go somewhere else. ’ You think so? Not a wise career move: for one thing, she’d be leaving Rutgers, a fine university, and end up God knows where. Maybe Egg Harbor Community College? 

There’ll be one individual, though, in the college environs who will surely be glad she’s leaving: the Dean. Under his breath, he’ll quietly mutter, ‘So long…and good riddance. One problem eliminated.’

By Jim Israel

Mr. Gripes                                    

May 24, 2021

The Vengeful Hack, Andrew Cuomo / How a Republican Imagines the Takeover of America / NCAA Caught

We’ll start off with a few paragraphs on the latest politician whose nasty, cynical-to-the-core nature couldn’t be concealed any longer: America’s villain of the moment, Andrew Cuomo.

Mr. Gripes has been long been fascinated how politicians, who outside of public view are often nothing but self-aggrandizing, egomaniacal personalities, manage to escape harsh scrutiny for a long time. Andrew Cuomo is just such a case in point. He’s governed New York State for 11 years, with hardly any disapproval from New Yorkers. Recently, we’ve learned, he’s been revealed as a toxic force for years – he doesn’t simply want to win against an opponent, he becomes hell-bent in attempting to destroy him or her. Not only do his antagonists feel the full wrath of Mr. Cuomo, but his own staff for years has been terrified of him– a reporter who covers Albany calls his personality ‘brutalist.’ 

Now, after a decade, his huge faults have emerged in a torrent. Any news that damages Mr. Cuomo is immediately out there in the public domain these days. How does concealment of a man’s obvious malevolence last for so long? Only through intimidation and fear. Cuomo’s situation now is essentially a modern version of the fairy tale ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’: a blind, apathetic, uninformed, preoccupied population simply didn’t pay enough attention to a powerful man’s abhorrent behavior, including sexual harassment of young women and inappropriate touching, who as associates of the governor, were additionally asked to wear high heels [his preference? Stilettos] and skirts in his presence.

Can you imagine a demand like that in this day and age? How do you think those women feel about suggestions from higher-ups to dress in a particular manner? Very uncomfortable, I would say. In a more equitable world, suggesting that his staff --only the youthful, pretty women of course -- wear high heels could be labeled  as ‘harassment’ and is grounds for removal from office. It’s sleazy and antediluvian behavior.

Mr. Cuomo knows he’s in deep trouble, so he does what he does best: he lashes out, and uses any means to retain power. His first accuser three weeks ago right after she came forward with her claims of sexual improprieties heard from friends and acquaintances that telephone calls were being made to those friends inquiring about the accuser’s own history. 

The Cuomo operatives were looking for dirt obviously. Not only that, but a letter was prepared by the Cuomo people to be circulated that contained specific actions of the accuser that could only have been gleaned from her employee personnel file. Only a vengeful, powerful boss like Cuomo could have or would have directed someone to open those files – a citizen’s privacy is a sacrosanct right, we thought. Divulging contents from an employee’s files is surely a felony, and Mr. Cuomo, if in fact he did open those files, should go to jail. 

This fact jumped out at Mr. Gripes when he came across a week or two ago: fifty percent of ‘white men’ oppose the COVID Stimulus Act that just passed Congress, and then signed by President Biden. I don’t think it’s coincidental that a very similar percentage – 49% -- of all Trump voters is choosing not to be vaccinated. 

This poll number is in contrast to the 70% percentage of all Americans who assert they will be vaccinated. That’s some proof that most Americans are intelligent enough to protect themselves, while a core of knee-jerk Trump supporters throw aside the strongest of all instincts, self-preservation, to slavishly abide by their Pied Piper and refuse the inoculation. They say ‘no’ to a vaccination that will protect their family, close friends and themselves. Dumb.

[A digression for a moment: the talking heads on television kept repeating the trope that 70% overall approval for the COVID legislation represented ‘strong’ support for Joe Biden.  Actually, commentators on newscasts got it wrong, as usual: 70%, to Mr. Gripes, was a surprisingly low number. After all, virtually every American received an early Christmas gift: $1,400 for one person or $2,800 for couples to gleefully place in their wallets, or spend as they wish, no questions asked. Using that criterion, 95% approval would have seemed to be a more appropriate result.]

But back to the stat that 50% of white men were opposed to the COVID stimulus: the 50% male Caucasian population is against it purely for oppositional reasons – a Democratic ‘victory’ like the COVID bill very likely infuriated that fat, old white guy down there in Florida; and if he’s furious about the loss, so too are his knee-jerk supporters. Doctors to a man or woman say ‘Get the shot.’ Nope, the Trump fanatics assert, we don’t believe them; those doctors and scientists are probably all Communists –or Democrats -- anyway. One fact is unassailable: not one of those Trump puppy dogs is going to refuse that check – despite all their strident nonsense about the vaccine’s potential peril or their phony concern about the growing national debt.

I’m going to now go through an exercise outlining the fears that Republicans of all stripes, I think, worry about when paranoia possesses them: it’s a time line imagining the takeover of America:

Here goes: Biden and the Democrats begin to build momentum in the wake of the stimulus bill win….Biden gets credit from most Americans for solving the COVID national catastrophe; out of the public view, Donald Trump’s popularity diminishes, as Biden’s favorability ratings increase… The Biden approval numbers rise, slowly at first, more significantly later….Congress senses a Biden groundswell, and passes a raft of liberal legislation, like limitations on the right to bear arms, stricter environment regulations, expansion of voters’ rights, an infrastructure initiative [taxes, though, go up]…..Democrats [the ‘lefties’] start winning a lion’s share of Congressional elections… country swings more liberal and left….Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s acolytes win a batch of Representative and Senate races… Her influence in Congress becomes formidable… Congress itself turns more and more left-wing…. Biden runs again and is re-elected…Republicans are vilified and lose one election after another… AOC wields more and more power….Communists stage a coup, and  take over the reins of the government… and, finally, with AOC’s blessing, Nancy Pelosi is anointed Grand Empress of the United States, with Ms Ocasio-Cortez installed as Vice Grand Empress Suprema [She reputedly is the power behind the throne.]

The National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA] is the governing body of college sports for men and women. Its obvious favoritism for men’s activities over women’s is not a secret to anyone who follows college athletics. And, to be perfectly honest, it makes sense from a financial perspective: without the large revenues generated by men’s football and basketball games, the athletic departments in most of these institutions would not be unable to fund all the other lesser varsity teams, intramural competitions and club sports functions.

That is just a fact. Men’s football, of course, is a huge money maker. College football games during the fall offer geysers of television cash that goes to the NCAA coffers to apportion out. The other cash cow is men’s basketball; the annual tournament going on right now will bring in $1 billion just for television rights to this event. The women’s NCAA basketball tournament that’s going on simultaneously? It will lose money.

[An opinion: to this observer, at the risk of sounding like a troglodyte, women’s basketball is fundamentally unwatchable  -- compared with the men, the players seem distressingly slow, turnovers are too frequent, the actual game action can be very sloppy, and, let’s not forget, one of the most exciting plays in basketball – soaring above the basket rim and ‘dunking’ the ball down into the basket -- rarely occurs in women’s basketball; the ascending vertical leap, an important factor in popularizing the men’s game, is simply lacking in women’s games.

The competition among teams is meager as well, as there are not enough top-notch teams that could win the tournament; in fact, on the first day of the women’s tournament, there were two games in which the loser was beaten by almost 50 points! It’s been my belief for a long time that unless women’s sports competitions can create male fans in abundance, they will never be successful and make money. Women, to their credit, eschew spectator sports mostly, so it is the men who are needed to fill the arenas, and generate ticket sales.]

But those problems are a topic for another time. Here I’d like to address a huge problem for the NCAA: the inability to tell the truth about the chasm between the men and the women sports. Perhaps buffeted by the swirling political winds, virtually everything written about women’s sport these days is influenced by gender dynamics.

But that impossible issue is not my focus here: it’s the blatant hypocrisy of the NCAA that infuriates Mr. Gripes. Instead of dealing directly with the dilemma of revenue sharing when one side can’t contribute a dime to the general pot, the NCAA disingenuously  talks about the ‘empowerment’ of the collegiate female ‘student-athlete’, and chatters ad infinitum of the ‘equality’ and ‘parity‘ between the sexes as to the disbursement of funding.  That’s a bold-face lie.

This year, San Antonio and Indianapolis are the hosts for the men’s and women’s tournaments,  and team players for both the women’s and men’s tournaments are sequestered  in just one hotel in each city due to Covid precautions. Workout and training facilities had to be constructed in each hotel so players would not have to venture outdoors and possibly contract the virus. Those ballroom ‘gyms’ inadvertently exposed the vast chasm between the treatments of men versus women by the NCAA. It’s no longer a secret as to the decidedly inferior treatment women are accorded by the association.

The men’s facility in their Indianapolis hotel resembles an airplane hangar in terms of square footage – a huge space outfitted in the newest exercise and weight machines including Nautilus apparatus, stationary and elliptical bikes, and free-weight stations spread out all over the floor. A gorgeous array for the male players, rivaling the best of private gyms.

One enterprising woman player, though, released videos of the men’s facility versus the women’s: the contrast was astounding: compared with the men’s workout area, the women were accorded one tiny piece of real estate: they were given a dozen or so hand weights, up to thirty pounds, stacked in a pile. That miniscule stack could have fit on a small card table, and that was to be the women’s ‘gym.’ All of it.

The NCCA was caught with their pants down. Fumbling for a response to legitimate outcries from the women’s side, they asserted ‘there was not any available space’ for a comparable workout area for the women. Well, that turned out to be another lie, as the same woman player who furnished the original film videotaped later a huge empty room in the women’s hotel, equivalent in floor space to the men’s spacious area.

The ongoing contretemps between the men and women showcases the blatant falsehoods that the NCAA promotes: all the chatter about equal rights and ‘perks’ for women is pure BS. The NCAA’s interests, despite their professed desire to treat the sexes equally, are totally aligned with men’s athletics; ‘we’ll keep the billion-dollar gravy train going, and just humor the women along.’

The association should just drop their malarkey about equivalence. There is none, and there won’t be until women ‘earn’ as much money as the men. That’s the stark reality, and the NCAA overlords should stop pretending otherwise. They sure as hell are not fooling the women players, who almost certainly have dealt with lies out of the mouths of men all their lives.

‘Mr. Gripes’
March 27, 2021
By Jim Israel

The free-market proponents never rest / A silver lining in the January 6th riot / ‘Cancel culture:' fear-mongering by hypocrites

The free-market proponents never rest – even after Texas. Their eternal credo: Eliminate the constrictive regulations strangling business, which will lead to cutting costs, which will result in more money in the pocket for citizens, politicians and CEO’s. A Goldilocks holiday. There’s really no downside, they always assert. The formula can’t miss, can it?

How many times have we gone through a disaster that we’ve just experienced with the Texas electric grid collapse? In reality, it was absolutely nuts to not have back-up electrical capacity in a state essentially built on plentiful and cheap power. Here we are in a heightened extreme weather environment all over the country that we’ll be dealing with for decades, at a minimum. Ah, the siren calls of cheap electricity: the politicians on the take from power companies tout the creation of a stand-alone grid, Texas version, and not spend one dime more to be part of a national one.

To Mr. Gripes, everyone’s complicit in this fiasco: the big-shot power companies who thrived on a de-regulatory environment, the politicians who set up the all-by-its-lonesome electric system and received shovelfuls of cash for doing so, and the average greedy consumer who only sees the prospect of a few more bucks every month in their pockets [yes, let’s admit it: the uninformed citizen always approves of any savings, and doesn’t think of future problems;  he is not the hapless victim that the media portrays]. No redundancy of a viable grid necessary to protect the public meant much lower construction and protection costs, resulting in more money for everyone. Fantastic scheme, wasn’t it? 

No it wasn’t. Whatever profits were created by the Texas model – as I said, dollars going into the pockets of consumers, politicians and CEOs – have been totally eliminated by the stunning cold and snow event earlier last month. And billions, billions more now will have to be spent to repair the system; with the late-to-the-party citizens now demanding back-up, as the new task becomes astronomically expensive. And guess who’s going to have to pay for all this? You got it: the dumb consumer, who’s going to have to pay through the nose. Next time, before another extreme climate event occurs, for once, you politicians should take possession of some foresight, and pay upfront for protection. The consumer-citizen, who a couple of months ago was gleeful over the ten or 11 bucks he saved each month, will be fleeced for years. 

Mr. Gripes has been around for a long time. And he’s learned a thing or two on his bumpy journey. In my eyes, one lesson he’s been taught is immutable: free market economics never works in a complicated system like ours. Erasing regulations that oversee big business always means cutting corners on vigilance and protection, weakening basic performance over time. And, little by little, as once-rigorous standards weaken,  just one calamity brings the whole flimsy structure down. [It happened in New Orleans with Katrina, and in New York, with Super storm Sandy, and let’s not forget the forlorn Enron Corporation.]

One last comment: the audacity of the engineers and politicians is breath-taking. To presume there’d be no weather catastrophe EVER that could leave 14 million residents without electricity and water for weeks is, on its face, criminal. Weather is no friend these days. Something horrific could occur at some point anywhere. Yet, no one – no one – raised sufficient alarm to assert that the elimination of back-up grids had a 100% chance to end in disaster. Not a soul. Human beings are so stupid sometimes.

Mr. Gripes sees a silver lining in the riot of January 6th, in which hundreds of Trump supporters overpowered the police’s security perimeter, poured into the Capitol, captured the Senate chamber, and ransacked the building, ultimately causing injury, death and the destruction of Congressional property. Utter mayhem and chaos.

The media had a field day afterwards, running video-tape loops of the invasion and the pitched battles between cop and invaders, incessantly insisting that American democracy was now ‘in shambles’,  with the founding fathers metaphorically weeping amidst the end of the American democratic ‘experiment.’ The ‘shocking’ images of that day will cause our allies to abandon us, it was proclaimed, and the country’s reputation abroad will be soiled permanently. 

Cable and network news operations have carried on in this hysterical fashion ever since January 6th.  And, now in the past week, we’ve been warned that the Trump protesters are gearing up for another full-blown invasion of the Capitol in March when Biden speaks to Congress..

The hysteria never relents, it seems. If Mr. Gripes may usurp a current term bandied about by the Trump crazies, what’s operating here, I think, is nothing but the ‘deep state’ of television news. No, they’re not pushing right-wing ideology, but something much more mundane: the networks are promoting this line of hysterical coverage for one reason and one reason only: it can maintain high ratings for news shows, ever since Donald Trump, the ultimate lollipop gift to TV news, left for Florida. I think on some level we’re being fed ‘fake news.’

Come on, let’s calm down a bit. First piece of business: the Capitol will not ‘fall’ on the day in March Joe Biden delivers his ‘State of the Union’ speech to Congress. Washington DC will be an extraordinarily locked-down fortress that day, probably better fortified than any American air base in Iraq. 

Second point:  Our democracy and the primacy of the Constitution held steadfast during the post-election onslaught and during weeks afterwards: courts again and again refuted the Trump campaign’s legal challenges to individual states’ voting results, finding no improprieties, in essence certifying Biden’s victory. [Boy, were we fortunate: just imagine another four years of Trump!]

Another aspect of the January 6th invasion of the Capitol that hasn’t really been emphasized is the humiliating conduct of all the law-enforcement entities involved in securing Washington DC, the Capitol and the chambers of Congress. The forces on the premises were woefully undermanned, and there apparently was no sense of urgency once matters turned ugly -- everyone involved was mainly focused on protecting their own rear ends. Heads should have rolled. Not only that, but apparently there was no back-up planning, like reinforcement measures, if things started going south, as they did.

Every one of those law enforcement agencies – the FBI, the DC Metropolitan Police, the Capitol Police, even the National Guard – was asleep at the wheel [9-11, déjà vu, right?]. Sloppy, careless, unforgivable.

But that’s for another day: my point is that all these agencies were terribly embarrassed, and consequently now are going after the attackers with a vengeance, arresting them all over the country [280 at last count]. And that’s my point: if there were no riot on that day, the ultra-right affiliates – the Proud Boys, QAnon, Oath Keepers, etc. – would have remained concealed from public view. Now, I can only imagine the enormous pressure being exerted on these groups – their activities are no longer shielded from exposure, and the full force of American legal power is being utilized to round them up. From now on, these individuals and groups will never operate away from prying ‘eyes’, i.e., cameras, wire taps, infiltration, informants. The FBI and Justice Department are on to them finally, thank God.

Ironically, because of the January 6th mayhem, Americans and their country are likely safer today, and the ultra-right wing nut jobs much weaker.

Here we go again: the latest war cry of the Republican jackals is the new fear-mongering concept called ‘cancel culture.’ It’s become another cudgel to beat over the heads of the opposing party. And what is all this cancel culture nonsense about?  If memory serves me correctly, a couple of years ago at Yale University, some students created a delineated ‘sanctuary’ area on the campus in which only political views that agree with their beliefs would be tolerated – all opposing opinions were not permitted in the prescribed area. If anyone disagreed, he or she would be rendered persona non grata, and ousted.

On its face, cancel culture is nothing but a thinly veiled version of totalitarianism: the ruling state rules, opposition is prohibited, and anyone who disagrees is not only ousted from the group, but ostracized as well. Strip the veil away, and you’re left with the murderous reigns of the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and Iraq’s Khomeini.

For sure, the cancel culture idea, in a free country, is ridiculous, and down the road, dangerous. But what makes Mr. Gripes most angry about the issue is the manner in which the Republican Party accuses Democrats of pushing the issue of blanket cancellation. How dare they promulgate the false premise that Democrats are in league with backers of those Yale students, especially when one looks at the Republican version.

After all, 74% of Republicans across the country still do not accept the result of the recent Presidential election, and insist that it was illegitimate, even if not a scintilla of evidence to that effect has been produced. Talk about cancel culture. Republican office holders, who know damn well that Mr. Biden was elected fairly, assert the results of the past election should be cancelled, and Donald Trump be reinstalled as President.

Put another way, the crown jewel of our democracy, free and legitimate elections, should be jettisoned, only because Mr. Biden won. This comes from the mouths of politicians who then go out and excoriate Democrats for their pushing [another lie] the cancel culture movement.

The sheer size of that hypocrisy is staggering.

Mr. Gripes
By Jim Israel
March 1, 2021

Not exactly the Storming of the Bastille / To every one of the Trump detractors

Not exactly the Storming of the Bastille, was it? The ‘insurrection’, as the media, in their overly dramatic fashion, likes to refer to the riotous behavior of Trump supporters outside and inside Capitol Hill on January 6th, was much less than all the clamorous cacophony would have us believe: engendered by a mob that resembled more a Comic-Con convention than an insurgency, the ‘invaders’, with primitive weapons, no apparent guns, directionless, leaderless, and completely unsure as to where on earth they were going,  or what the hell they were doing. As one reporter observed, ‘for a coup attempt, there was certainly a lot of milling-around.’

The variety of haberdashery parading around in the Capitol in its own perverse way was a testament to the full-throated, free exuberance of American democracy: all kinds of camouflage military regalia; a man clad in a full Revolutionary War uniform; the American flag design made into all types of garments: shirts, pants, even shoes; Tom Brady jerseys; a woman walking around the rotunda grasping a piece of a rostrum from Pelosi’s office; an ornamental police vest slung over someone’s shoulder; guys taking photos of official papers on legislators’ desks, figuring they’ve got their hands on evidence of the rigged election in, say, Wisconsin.

All these morons in the Senate chambers looked a bit abashed – awed actually -- by the surroundings, as it must have finally dawned on each of them that they were very small, inconsequential minnows in a huge ocean, and that a yawning insignificance was to be their fate always.  With the insurrection going nowhere, and having nothing else to do, they even started to pray.

The one individual who, hypothetically, could have galvanized these hooligans into a purposeful force was, of course, President Trump. But he was nowhere to be found. Oh, sure, he encouraged his supporters to action, after his speech 1-1/2 miles away, by asserting he’d march down to the Hill with them and carry on the ‘stop the steal’ fight. 

That’s not quite what happened. After he spoke, he immediately turned his fat ass around, and retreated [yeah, Mr. Gripes uses the term ‘retreat’, an action verb Mr. Trump’s ‘patriots’ would never countenance from their hero, of course. ] to his residential quarters in the White House, to watch the ensuing mayhem, comfortably ensconced on his couch, sipping Diet Cokes and undoubtedly wolfing down pigs-in-the-blanket, a dozen at a time. Not exactly Teddy Roosevelt hustling his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, was it? The truth is that the germaphobe Mr. Trump can’t stand to be near his disheveled, vermin-carrying true believers at any time, and wouldn’t choose to mingle with an unruly horde like that under any circumstances. 

He might have expressed it this way, ‘Are you kidding? No f__kin’ way… I’ll watch on Fox, thank you, a million miles from those crazies.’

To every one of the Trump detractors, the days after the election right through the inauguration on January 20th can only be described as exhilarating….especially since a lot of us went to bed the night of January 3rd convinced that Mr. Trump had been re-elected, and woke up to the news that he very likely had been beaten.

Biden voters on Election Day were the victims, for the most part, of the television networks operating under ‘recency bias’, meaning that the most current news is considered as most important, and longer-view and older perspectives ranked much lower. The ongoing narrative, at least through the earlier part of the night, was that Donald Trump possessed a huge, increasing lead, and it was very likely too much of an advantage for Mr. Biden to overcome later.

Mr. Gripes was for one, misled by the networks, and sensed, as he went to bed, that Trump was in an indomitable position, and couldn’t lose. I was duped, regrettably, by the media coverage; again, where were the longer-view analysts insisting that a vast number of Mr. Biden’s votes would come in later in the evening? Watching the somnolent Wolf Blitzer solemnly announce very early on that ‘Trump has 760 votes and counting in Florida, and Biden trails with 476’, absolutely useless information, demonstrates how short-term some of the coverage was.

But I digress from my main focus: the days and weeks before January 20 to Trump opponents were some of the most delicious moments since before Mr. Trump took the oath in 2017. Donald Trump, never deviating from a frontal attack on our democratic ideals, attempted in multiple ploys during those weeks to overturn the election of Joe Biden. Republican lawsuits, argued often In front of judges appointed by the Trump administration, were thrown out repeatedly – in fact, I think there was only one legal victory for Trump among 55[!] court cases, and that was to permit a stay of a few days before the same court threw out the suit.

President Trump, who has savaged badly American respect and reverence for our Constitution-based democracy in his four years, probably thought those Republican appointees owed him big time, and that made him particularly angry. Reading about his tearing around the White House at all hours of the night, the enfant terrible, apoplectic at his lawyers, the courts, Republican ‘traitors’, even his most loyal believers, was, to Mr. Gripes, akin to slurping down, as a kid, one of those monster Howard Johnson banana splits with its three huge scoops of different flavored ice cream – ah, the memories. It was pure, unadulterated joy.

And the words and actions of the clown car of enablers and abettors working for Mr. Trump to overthrow the election elicited not fear but a Keystone-Kops comedic overtone to the events going forward. 

Let’s glance at one of the most egregious operatives: Rudy Giuliani. My goodness, he’s fallen off a cliff, hasn’t he? For a year after September 11th, he was adored by the vast majority of Americans as a hero, associated with that resolute image of him walking through the destruction and dust of the Twin Towers that day. The late Jimmy Breslin said it perfectly, ‘Rudy won the jackpot.’ He sure did. ‘America’s Mayor’ managed to amass a huge fortune as a result.

Now? He’s viewed as essentially a thug, and a Trump attack dog, spewing lies and unproven conspiracy theories day after day. 

Here’s one of his most outlandish that may cost him his fortune as well as his law license:

He has accused a voting machine company, Dominion Voting Systems, of manipulating vote counts in many states on Election Day to throw the election to Joe Biden, essentially charging that Trump ballots were altered to Biden ballots, using their machines. The charges don’t stop there, and get even crazier: according to Guiliani and his cohorts, Dominion was created in Venezuela [??] by Hugo Chavez, the Communist baboon who managed to destroy not only the Venezuelan economy, but its flourishing democracy as well. The story goes that Chavez created Dominion to make sure he remained in office through fraudulent ballot counting. Really? Chavez did this? That idiot couldn’t tie his shoelaces.

Mr. Giuliani makes no mention that Dominion’s machines have been utilized in many states without incident in numerous elections over the years, and, yes, even in 2016, when Trump won. 

To continue, Dominion told Giuliani on several occasions to ‘cease and desist’ with his lies, and he did not.

Guess what, and this is to Mr. Gripes the sweetest moment of all during the post-election days: he’s now being sued for $1.3 BILLION, with Dominion asserting he’s caused anguish among employees, even threats, costing the company a million dollars in added protection, and Rudy’s slanderous language – done with ‘malice’, by the way, which makes the libel case much stronger -- has damaged badly Dominion’s reputation and cost it a lot of real business now and in the future as well.

The Dominion CEO said he ‘welcomes’ a full court trial to expose the ‘lies’ of Rudy Guiliani.

Guiliani seems to have a blood lust for amassing money in any fashion he can [he’s even now hawking gold coins on his podcast]. Well, $1.3 billion, Rudy…you better have proof of your allegations; otherwise, after your bank accounts and stock holdings are frozen and then garnished, and after your legal fees go through the roof, you can kiss every penny you own goodbye.

Mr. Gripes                                                  

February 1, 2021

Jim Israel