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 All hell broke loose at that directive, and in just a few days, the mayor rescinded the action.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

What the Hell Is Going On? / 2024 / Election Observations Other than Trump...

What the Hell Is Going On? To all the Trump true believers out there, waving your red-white-and-blues, proudly displaying your MAGA hats, screaming ‘Live Free or Die,’ what kind of uber-patriots are you fans really? America at this juncture is, as one columnist put it, ‘is going through its worst public health crisis since 1918[!]’ and needs desperately someone to lead us out of this mess. Instead, we have a President who basically is doing nothing at all right now, just sulking like a child as he occasionally moves from the White House residence upstairs to the Oval Office downstairs, brooding, incensed and vengeful, his legal gambits going nowhere. 

Despite the sound and fury, observing the President’s behavior in the last couple of weeks lays bare some absolute truths about Mr. Trump: for one thing, he has no interest in governance, and probably never did; he presently is not lifting a pencil to perform his Presidential duties [he’s done virtually no official business of any sort since Election Day.]

His whole agenda for years has been focused on re-election, the affairs of the country be damned; he’s a lazy SOB, too – his only activity since November 3rd has been golfing at his country club in Virginia; Mr. Trump is vindictive and cruel; he’s been unscrupulous, cut-throat and dishonest seemingly his whole adult life; and, finally, he’s an incurious ignoramus about American history, its traditions and precedents [example: he pushed for a quick resolution as to the selection of the latest Supreme Court opening: why the rush? He thought erroneously that a stacked Court ultimately would back him in all of the contested states’ election legal disputes – nope, Mr. Trump, the business of elections is solely the responsibility of individual states.]

Some well-intentioned, earnest columnists talk of the grievous injury Mr. Trump has inflicted on his own ‘legacy.’ This legacy talk is a bunch of nonsense. Mr. Trump couldn’t give a flying you-know-what about his legacy. He doesn’t work that way, and never did: as many have pointed out, he operates like a day trader: whatever is in front of him at the moment is what he is concerned about. Legacy implies pondering one’s reputation years down the road. Donald Trump takes it one hour at a time; he doesn’t operate long-term. ‘Legacy’, and in fact any historical context, in that squirrel brain of Mr. Trump, are, as Bill Parcells, noted football coach, once asserted, ‘bunk.’

So, after all the unsuccessful moves in the state courts, and vote certifications confirmed in the next few weeks, at which point the election of Joe Biden becomes certain, what does the future hold for Donald Trump, in the upcoming weeks and years? What’s on his mind?

As far as concrete next steps, I don’t know. And President Trump may not know either. We know he’s seething that the election was ‘stolen’, and he’ll go to any steps to hold on to the Presidency. But I suspect he’s stumped at this point. Oh, sure, he and his consigliore Bill Barr are burning up the midnight oil conjuring up all kinds of nefarious stratagems to retain his office, including possibly utilizing the military, but his options are dwindling. One thing is certain: Donald Trump is sure to surprise us again going forward, and the surprise may indeed be shocking, another body blow to our democracy.

2024? To the Trump fanatics out there, down the road, his obstructive, infantile behavior will not be forgotten by most Americans. We’ve looked upon this ugly spectacle post-election, and are chagrined to say the least. Most Americans are astute enough to comprehend exactly what Mr. Trump is doing: making the task for Mr. Biden much harder, in the midst of a national emergency, and that memory will not be going away. Indeed, 2020, I think, is the high watermark for Mr. Trump.

We’re been reading in newspaper articles and observing on TV ‘wise’ – I use that word advisedly – pundits who beat us over the head with the certitude that the Trump voters are incensed that the election of Joe Biden is not legitimate, and that rage will fuel Donald Trump’s election bid in 2024, and his eventual re-election. But, these grandees of opinion never mention how angry the Biden Democratic and independent voters are right now, too. Citizens who voted for Joe Biden look at the post-election attempts to steal the Presidency from its rightful heir, and are absolutely furious. It’s insulting, to all Democratic 2020 voters,  that American democracy is being basically hung out to dry by a bozo like our clueless President. 

Memories of the tragedy and farce going on currently as to the election will not be forgotten, that’s for sure. Yeah, President Trump received 73 million votes on November 3rd, and those millions may be there for Trump in 2024. But 79 million in the same election voted for Joe Biden, and virtually every one of those voters will be motivated to vote against Mr. Trump in 2024, if he were to run. There’s a strong distaste for Trump in America that will linger for a long time.

Besides, by 2024, the electorate may well have dismissed Mr. Trump for the buffoonery antics he’s displayed during his term. With distance and time, I think, Trump’s going to be seriously diminished in the eyes of most Americans: for those reasons, I think he’s got no shot by 2024. Plus, the world and America may be in totally different places in four years, and the Trump ‘magic’ marginalized.

Let’s be clear what the Trump behavior constitutes: he’s putting the very well-being of the country at risk. He’s assaulted our country’s precious democracy. That’s heavy baggage even for Mr. Trump to carry.

Election Observations, Other than Trump…

Giuliani Thrives– Mr. Gripes is of the opinion that Rudy Giuliani is having one hell of a good time right now, despite the piercing criticisms coming his way. He was basically washed up as a public figure a year ago, and today he’s everywhere on television and in the press. He may very well reason, ‘Yeah, I was finished, no one cared a whit about what I thought about anything. Now look: Donald brought me back from the dead, so I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. I travelled to Bosnia, then to Slovakia, looking under every rock for evidence that would slam Hunter Biden, and kill his father’s chances; that didn’t happen, but, hey, I’m now lead attorney for Donald, and everyone all over the world is listening. They make fun of me – so what? I’m back throwing punches, and I’m as happy as a clam.’

Mr. Gripes has a little story to relate about Mr. Giuliani: a month or so after 9/11, I was walking through the Saks Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan: maybe there were 25 shoppers there on the first floor. Suddenly I’m hearing a soft murmur arising from the patrons there; the sound begins to get louder. What’s going on?  It turns out Mr. Giuliani, alone, had just entered the store, looking for a gift. Slowly, every one of those shoppers stares at the mayor and starts to clap. This politely goes on for perhaps three minutes, at which point Mr. Giuliani slowly raises his right hand, the applause ceases, and he graciously thanks all of the patrons.  It was a riveting moment, to say the least.

Indeed, Mr. Giuliani’s reputation has taken one hell of a hit since those times, and Rudy himself is a squalid mess as well, but I don’t think he really cares. He’s in the game again.

TV Bandits – One facet of our quadrennial election process that never has any losers, only extraordinary winners, is political advertising on television networks. It’s an abomination the amount of money that is spent on advertising during campaigns like the one we just endured. And, in the end, mostly pointless, too. The networks? They smile like Cheshire cats, and tote the millions to the bank.

In the Biden-Trump race just concluded, as of October 31, $1.5 billion [!] had been spent on national political ads. [And that figure doesn’t include digital advertising, another extraordinarily lucrative component of advertising revenues.]

Just a look at this example: In the Jaime Harrison-Lindsay Graham Senatorial race in South Carolina just concluded, Mr. Harrison raised and spent $107 million on advertising, including a monthly record in August of $57 million; Mr. Graham was at $72 million raised and spent, for a total of nearly $180 million gone up in smoke for a Senate seat in – not in Florida or California, but, of all places --South Carolina. What did Mr. Harrison gain from all those donations? He lost by 10%, a landslide for sure.

It’s my sense that most of these television ads are a huge waste of money. I live in a non-competitive state – and am not deluged with any of this advertising during election years. But, I can’t help feeling sorry for the inundation and onslaught, day after day, which other Americans have to endure. Do viewers, after perhaps initial interest, pay any attention to the advertising? It doesn’t seem possible.

The whole process of raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars is sick, and undermines on some level the legitimacy of our electoral system. There’s just too much money sluicing around.

And the money chase among elected officials never ceases: just yesterday, I received an e-mail from Nancy Pelosi, pleading for donations to the campaigns of the two Democratic Senate candidates running in the upcoming Georgia run-offs.

The e-mail from the Speaker began this way [I paraphrase a bit]: ‘My heart just sank. An hour ago, I received news that Mitch McConnell has recently raised $55 million that will be going to assist the Republicans in the Georgia contests. This news comes just after we [Democrats] raised $22 million for Georgia. We urgently need your donation.’

No wonder our system is broken.

Mr. Gripes                                                                                    
November 25, 2020
By Jim Israel

November 3rd: A Day of Infamy? / A Repeat Corona Crisis in NY?.

November 3rd: A Day of Infamy?... Just a few years ago, American Presidents behaved publicly, for the most part, in a dignified manner: in a word, ‘Presidential.’  In their well-tailored Brooks Brothers suits, Presidents spoke in intelligent [to a degree] and complete sentences, and dealt with their peers around the world in a respectful, civil and judicious manner, as their positions warranted. Oh sure, we’ve had Presidents who were not particularly suitable for the job, i.e., Ford, Carter, but they did fulfill their Presidential duties as guardians of the nation as best they could.

Our fragile democracy was not threatened by demagogic and deranged individuals. 

Not anymore.  The current President is dismissive of the principles of our democracy, including a cruel disrespect for our basic humanity, no belief in oppositional fair play, and absolutely no regard for our constitutional-mandated freedoms. He’s only interested in amassing as much money as he can, regardless of legality, along with promises to obliteraate his enemies: he comports himself like one of those  marauding Russian soldiers entering Berlin at the end of World War II: he’s essentially out of control.

Mr. Gripes’ long-held belief that this the stable political culture of this country, at the very least, would keep us safe from all the turmoil  and kleptocracy of the rest of the world no longer is viable.

The reason? Trump may take us all down.

It’s obvious, I think, to anyone paying attention for the past year that there’s a Republican plan to keep Mr. Trump in office, whatever the result of the November election may be.  Let’s start about a year ago when President Trump ‘kidded’ that if he loses the 2020 election, he’s not leaving office. At first, I think, Americans thought the idea was just another of Trump’s ‘throw-away’ lines, meant to be chatted among the media for a few days, but nothing for us to be worried about.

Donald Trump repeatedly has asserted it’s going to be a ‘rigged’ election, if he loses. ‘Rigged’ is Trumpian code for what exactly? That no matter if Mr. Trump gets trounced and beaten badly in the election, popular-vote-wise or electorally, he’s going to mount a no-holds-barred, exhausting campaign through the courts and God-knows-where-else to overthrow the verdict. ‘Rigged’, to Trump, means the election results coming up will change nothing – Mr. Trump is staying. And, even if he ‘loses’ in the courts, he’ll still resist: He’ll have to be carried out of the White House.

There’s a recent precedent for a disruptive election process. Mr. Gripes, who sadly possesses an elephantine memory when it comes to political chicanery, recalls an incident during the 2000 Florida ‘hanging chad’ recount imbroglio: in a county-government office in Broward County, a few days after the voting, ballot-counting inspectors, maybe a dozen seated around a large table, were beginning to take on the task of assessing the validity of some of those questionable ‘chad’ ballots. 

Suddenly, there was a pounding on the glass doors and windows surrounding the room. Screaming Republican operatives, just outside the room, and certainly under a directive of the Bush campaign, made such a racket and created such consternation and fear that the task at hand was suspended, never to be resumed. That insurrectional action was the initial phase of Republican state officials’ push to award Florida’s electoral votes to George Bush weeks later. Intimidation worked to perfection. Dare I say it? ‘Anarchy’ won the day.

Is it possible the election coming up will be ‘fair ‘, according to the President? No way. Donald Trump has a foolproof strategy that’s worked so many times for him in the past: undermine the legitimate processes, throw a million charges at his opponents, denigrate them, confuse the public, and, above all, create a lot of chaos. And if that doesn’t work, create even more chaos. 

Just imagine what the Republicans have in store for us the day after the election: a demand for recounts in every state that’s close; a demand to validate every ballot one-by-one; a rush to the courts for rulings, whether justified or not; a million accusations of a rigged election, further gumming up and delaying the process, even replacing state electors of the Electoral College with new ones who will then back Trump;  and at the end of this insanity, as Trump gets legal backing from his sycophantic, boot-licking Attorney General Bill Barr, calling in the military to deny a Biden victory, citing ‘a national emergency.’

The overall strategy is real simple:  Legally, illegally, justified or unjustified, just keep the plates spinning until the other side gives in, and gives up.

Batten down the hatches, Americans: we’re in for one hell of a ride.

A Repeat Corona Crisis in NY?.....New York, regrettably, appears to be descending into another perilous corona-virus crisis akin to the grim days of March and April in which, you remember, shortages of hospital beds, personal protection equipment, and ventilators were the most urgent issues, and the threat of hospitals being overwhelmed very real.

Somehow, through a confluence of missteps by politicians’ timidity and religious leadership, blind ignorance, pig-headed stupidity, or authoritarian willfulness, we’re heading down that road again. And, this time, the winter and flu seasons will be here soon.

Dissecting this developing calamity, the largest fault, despite their vehement denials, lies with a particular segment of the population: the ultra-Orthodox who are concentrated in some areas of New York, and comprise a very significant percentage of citizens who live there. In those zones, during the last month or so, the positivity rates for contracting the virus have jumped [from a little over 1% to as high as 16% in some areas]. 

The conclusion as to the direct cause of the startling rise has to be the ultra-Orthodox citizenry and the disregard for basic virus safeguards and rules.  As they say, ‘Just look at the data.’ It’s impossible, looking at that data, that it could be anything else.

But the inhabitants of the areas with rising infection rates are not solely to blame. In fact, I think it’s the political and religious leadership, who know better, that are especially at fault.  But in the affected communities that’s not the prevalent sentiment. In fact, the rabbinate in areas like Williamsburg, Borough Park and in mid-Hudson Valley asserts that the ultra-Orthodox groups, among all the putative culprits, are being ‘singled-out’. Come on, man.  Don’t BS me. You know what that statement represents? Denial. 

The most vexing problem in these communities is the leadership: it has been pitiful. Instead of acknowledging that face-covering mandates are being ignored, despite warnings from doctors and medical authorities, and that large congregants of adults attending religious services or weddings are probably ‘superspreaders’ of the virus, these elderly religious leaders, whose numbers incidentally have been decimated in this corona period, encouraged the dissemination of the misinformation, which accelerated the virus spread.

But blame for this impending disaster is not only limited to religious leadership.  Timid politicians here in New York State and the city are at fault, too.

After all, it’s a fact that the rabbinical hierarchy can deliver virtually a 100% bloc of votes for a candidate they favor in an election; their congregations look to them to make that decision for them. 

Breaking that down, that means if we posit a rabbi supports a particular candidate, and there are, let’s suppose, 2,000 members in his synagogue, that’s 2,000-to-zero votes in the bag for that candidate. You can imagine what a mother lode that represents for avaricious politicians like Cuomo and de Blasio [any politician, probably.] That’s got to be the reason why during the past few weeks, there’s been no police enforcement of a mask policy or a crowd-limitations mandate. We can’t offend anyone, is the calculus of de Blasio and Cuomo; those unanimous voting blocs are too precious. 

Oh, yes, the cops tell people to put on masks, maybe, but no arrests or fines. Warnings and slaps on the wrist, that’s it. There’s only one policy that would work: fat fines of $500 per individual, $25,000 for institutions. Only a few days ago, Mr. Big Shot, Andrew Cuomo, very late in the game, made the point that enforcement with fines and even imprisonment will now occur. That’s like shutting the barn door after the horses have run out. The move is much too late. Corona virus now runs amok in neighborhoods. It’s the same story once again, isn’t it? The politicians always disappoint, don’t they?

Mr. Gripes
October 14, 2020 
By Jim Israel

For Democrats, and all the People who detest Trump / The Babe

For Democrats, and all the People who detest Trump, one word of advice: ease up on your giddiness that President Trump is heading for a colossal beat-down in November. Don’t bet the house on it. In fact, Mr. Gripes still thinks Mr. Trump has at least a 50-50 chance to be re-elected.

I understand that possibility will engender a huge depression among those Americans who look at the polls everyday – as I do religiously – and find Mr. Trump consistently four, five, six, occasionally even double-digit points behind Joe Biden in the states that will decide the election – Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, et al – and that has been the consistent theme for a couple of months. 

Yes, the pundits [‘pundit’ is an ugly-sounding word, isn’t it?] assert almost to a man that Donald Trump doesn’t have much time to overcome his numerous electoral-state deficits, and November is fast approaching. Haven’t these ‘experts’ [I use that word cautiously] learned anything at all about Donald Trump? He rises from the scrap heap over and over again, and wins in the end.
 
Mika Brzezinski every morning cites a couple of polls in which the President continues to lose, and insinuates to the TV audience that these polls really are significant; they aren’t actually, they’re simply a ‘snapshot’ at a particular moment, without a shred of any sustaining wisdom. They’re put on the screen simply to pump up viewers’ fervent wishes that President Trump will be finished on November 3. Five minutes after being posted on MSNBC, they’re forgotten by all.

I think the Trump haters have to understand that as President of the United States, Mr. Trump has inexhaustible resources to overcome Mr. Biden. He can manufacture news showing him in a glorious light, he can absolutely lie with impunity, with no consequences, he can even create an international crisis, allowing him to paint his opponents as anti-American, pro-violence adherents.

[An aside: It’s the pathological lying every day, about everything, that is so dispiriting. No one ever dissuades him from this behavior – no one. It just goes on and on. And, for Mr. Gripes, it’s the little lies that drive me nuts: for example, Trump’s out on a golf course a couple of weekends ago, right after Nancy Pelosi accuses him of too much golf amidst the virus, and not enough work. So, what does Mr. Trump proclaim the following Monday?: one, that he plays less golf than Barack Obama did [a blatant lie]; two, he ‘plays fast’, which allows for work time on the course; no, he doesn’t play quickly; it took him 4 hours and 10 minutes to play 18 holes on that Sunday, a very long time considering he’s the only golfer on the course; or, three, ‘I  worked, too, during the round’: pure horse manure: I’ll bet the only ‘work’ he did was order a couple of diet Cokes to be brought to him mid-round; keep in mind he’s a lazy SOB, too. It’s always, always outrageous lies, piled high to the sky .]

Donald Trump, and his much more adept political advisors, may indeed figure out a way to outfox Joe Biden and his Democratic Party. That’s my fear. Trump, with his irrational outbursts, and inability to concentrate on urgent matters at hand, may not be capable of pulling the rabbit out of the hat by himself. But guys like Attorney General Bill Barr are not only smart, shrewd and incredibly ambitious, but also have no moral compass; they, among various stratagems, will certainly try to foment riots all over the country, engendering a lot of white fear among voters. That’s the game plan, and it may work. Law and order and Spiro Agnew, here we go again.



The Babe….During this interminable, exasperating endemic, Mr. Gripes, as has been a habit of his since his teens, read books. A lot of them. Some history, some fiction, and, mostly, biographies. And, strangely, his focus was on old-time baseball – 1920’s, ‘30’s, ‘40’s, ‘50’s  – especially on the stars of those eras, i.e., Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, et al.

And, of course, the absolutely peerless Babe Ruth. Mr. Ruth was GIGANTIC, in every way.

I was drawn to Babe Ruth’s story – a grand American rags-to-riches tale – like a moth to a night light. In terms of star power, Ruth was an exploding nova star, compared to everyone else’s dim headlight, then or now.

Ruth was a ‘natural’ in the truest sense of the word.  One of his biographers, Tom Meany, a 1940’s-50’s sportswriter for the New York Daily News, explained his innate gifts this way:

‘Ruth was an instinctive ball player. He required no more tutoring in the game than a seal pup would in swimming. Babe didn’t need any powers of concentration and study to work on improvements. Babe came full-blown. When he was pitching [and he was one of the best pitchers in the majors when he first came up] he neither knew nor cared whether the batter who faced him stood at the right or left side of home plate, and when he was hitting he never took the time to distinguish between southpaws [lefties] and right handers. They all looked the same to the Babe….Tom Meany, from ‘Babe Ruth’, published in 1947.

It’s been almost completely forgotten these days that Babe Ruth arrived in the major leagues as a 19-year-old left-handed pitcher, and immediately became one of the best. Statistically that era produced the finest pitching in baseball history, and Babe Ruth dominated: in 1916, at 21, he won 23 games, struck out 170, had a 2.28 ERA, and threw 9 complete-game shutouts to boot. But Babe loved hitting, so he soon became an every-day outfielder, and never pitched seriously again. No one now remembers that Babe Ruth pitched, and was an All-Star. Amazing, isn’t it?

Because he was fully formed as a superb and powerful hitter early on, he never developed bad habits foisted on him by incompetent batting coaches. No ‘tweaking’ with that swing. Hitting from the left side, he’d hold the bat – a very heavy 38-ounce model – with the right pinkie finger off the end of the bat, and swing for the fences every time. No ‘Punch-and-Judy’ dribbler down the third base for the Babe. His swing was ferocious, uncoiling from his heels. [No wonder the kids and fans absolutely adored him. I once asked my father about Babe Ruth, and he simply said, ‘Every home run I saw him hit was a thing of beauty.’]

Before I get into some of his career statistics, one historical note should be mentioned: Mr. Babe Ruth, among his achievements, was the savior of baseball as the national game. In 1918, the ‘Black Sox’ scandal occurred, with a half-dozen or so of players on the Chicago White Sox taking money from professional gamblers to ‘throw’ games in that year’s World Series. The plot was discovered afterwards, and several players were banned for life from playing again in the major leagues. Those crimes obviously put professional baseball in a horrible position, and the end of professional baseball became a very definitive possibility.

Baseball got lucky, though: on the heels of the 1918 scandal, 1919 turned out to be Babe Ruth’s ‘coming-out’ year for his incredible talents as a hitter, and specifically, a home run slugger. He hit 37 in 1919, by far the most in the majors, and he was off and running: 54 HRs, 135 runs batted in, and a .376 batting average in 1920: his 54 HR total exceeded every other team’s total in the big leagues that year; then, in 1921, even better: 59 home runs, 168 RBIs, and a .378 batting average. Fans came out to games in the millions to see the Babe smash those majestic home runs, and the game was saved.

The grand exploits of Ruth were not limited to his feats on the baseball field. Supercharged alongside those feats was an incredible ‘extracurricular’ lifestyle off the diamond.  Seemingly a man of inexhaustible energy and drive, the Babe never slowed down for an instance.

Here’s a typical ‘slice of life’ episode from the life of the great Babe Ruth gleaned from an account I read recently:

All of the games when Ruth played were, of course, day games.  Before road games, as he left the hotel to go the ballpark, he’d fill up his room’s bathtub with bottles of beer and ice. After the game, a party would naturally commence in his suite into the early AM hours.

On one such occasion, we find Babe Ruth, buck-naked, sitting in a big chair, swigging from a beer bottle, showgirls all over him, a huge cigar extruding from his mouth. He looks up at Lou Gehrig, his roommate at the time, [as abstemious in behavior as Babe was hedonistic] and, wearing a huge grin, Babe declares, ‘Baseball’s not such a bad life, is it, Lou?’

Babe Ruth roared through life, at full tilt, relishing every moment of an extraordinary life.

‘Mr. Gripes’
By Jim Israel
July 31, 2020