Showing posts with label
Attorney General William Barr.
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Showing posts with label
Attorney General William Barr.
Show all posts
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
Observing very closely over the past couple of years the turbulent persona of Donald Trump, Mr. Gripes has come to one overriding conclusion – along with a word of caution to his enemies: Never underestimate him, or you do at your own peril. Yeah, he’s a jerk most of the time; he acts in ways that absolutely depress and scare the hell out of Mr. Gripes, and his ignorance is breathtaking. However, in the end, incredibly, he accomplishes a lot.
Just look at the storm he initiated when he urged the four first-term Congresswomen to ‘go back to where you came from’: The Democrats, all of them, fell over themselves condemning Trump for his outlandish statements, then groveled to get glorious TV airtime, bashing the President 24 hours a day. Their ‘crocodile tears’ of outrage were, of course, echoed by their enablers on television– Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski immediately come to mind. Haven’t we been to this rodeo a thousand times before?
[One digression before I go on: the Democrats may have expressed disgust at the President’s exhortations, but they secretly, I think, loved the hullabaloo: it’s sure to give a huge boost to fund-raising for the 2020 campaign, which is what all these politicians salivate over in reality.]
But, Mr. Trump accomplished exactly what he hoped for: the Democrats have painted themselves into a corner. Mr. Trump gleefully will label the four women as anti-American, as Socialists and Communists [of course, just like Mr. Trump, 80% of Americans don’t know the difference] even going as far as calling them Al Queda backers and, hey, why not, Hezbollah zealots. He’ll throw the kitchen sink at them. And, predictably, the entire Democratic Party will be labeled as fierce enemies of America. Like lemmings going over the cliff, they could all go down with the ship, come next November.
Red-baiting is as old as Senator Joe McCarthy holding up fake lists of Communists in the State Department during the early 1950’s, but it remains a very powerful stain and formidable force in American politics. The tactic is the entirety of the Donald Trump play book: throw everything at his opponents, create chaos, dissension and confusion, flummox everybody, and walk away with the prize.
I told you so…. In the previous ‘Mr. Gripes’, I offered the opinion that the minute Attorney General William Barr announced that the Mueller investigation did not warrant bringing any collusion charges up against President Trump, Mueller as news was over. The country had had enough, and was suffering from Mueller-fatigue. Turn the page, Americans said in unison, let’s move on. And that is exactly what happened. For two years, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all of us were caught up in the investigation. Cable news loved it – ratings were way up, profits were way up, so there was no motivation to move off Mueller and give us some respite. And, in those two years, television news lost its ‘impartial’ standard, a terrible precedent for a free press. Ratings since Mueller ended the probe have plummeted, i.e., Rachel Maddow on MSNBC lost 500,000 viewers within a week of Barr’s action! Let’s face it, Democrats: Mueller is now a corpse. Mouth to mouth resuscitation won’t work. Move on, for God’s sake.
The Farmers – Trump lies. He says his tariffs on American agricultural product are bringing ‘billons’ of dollars into that sector, and he’s saving the farmers from foreign predations. ‘We’re making billions of dollars.’ Then why has he spent $30 billion out of the national budget on essentially bribes to wheat farmers to shield them from the huge damage tariffs are doing to these same farmers? Cotton farmers, because of lost business with China, have not planted 30% of their fields for next year – they’re losing billions. I can go on and on about many other industries. You can’t say money’s pouring in the front door, and the same money’s pouring out the back window, and then brag we’re ‘making billions.’ It makes no sense.
Mr. Gripes takes a look each morning at the proposed daily Presidential schedule. And, every day, the President has nothing planned until 11:30; and then it’s usually an insignificant meeting with a business or lobbying group. After that, nothing is on his schedule until late afternoon; again it’s some insignificant photo opt or meeting, if there’s anything at all. And that’s the end of another day. Let’s assume he’s not exactly perusing some position paper on New Zealand 2020 sheep-wool earnings projections during his ‘free’ hours, right? This President’s rapt attention is probably focused on watching FOX News most of the day. And what about the country’s business, you ask? Not his job, Jose.
America’s Women World Cup: Juxtapose the jingoistic, nationalistic, vacuous, and hyperbolic coverage by American media of the country’s women’s World Cup team with the real story: an embarrassing display of American bad sportsmanship, insufferable manners, and the bullying of vastly inferior opponents. In the world’s eyes, we showed once again we’re nothing but self-centered, spoiled, entitled brats.
In the first game against an overmatched Thailand opponent, the Americans won 13-1! In the press here, the slaughter was seen as simply a dominant and impressive victory. I saw it differently: it was ‘Ugly American’ all over again. Why, in the last minute of play, did the Americans have to score that thirteenth goal? And then celebrate as if they won the World Series? The dignified course of action would have been to simply pass the ball back and forth to each other for a few minutes, without any attempt to score again, until game’s end. The players would have been lauded for their sportsmanship. But, no way was that going to happen: Their motivation was to humiliate the Thai team.
Besides the bad conduct on the field, for the full two weeks of competition, we had to listen to nothing but complaints from the American women. It never ceased. Mostly it was about money they thought they were owed since the men’s team was paid more. Did they have a point? It may be an apples versus oranges comparison, but I do know this: there’s no way a women’s World Cup makes as much or more money than the men’s tournament: the men’s games, which traditionally are an enormous sporting extravaganza all over the globe for a month, bring in billions in revenues and TV rights, far outstripping the women’s games. [Besides, the American women didn’t do so badly anyway: each team member on the women’s team in the end will receive about $350,000, certainly a handsome sum, whatever their grievance is.]
Then, on the last day, American team members actually had the temerity to protest what time the final was going to be televised in the United States; they assumed there’d be lower viewership with a late-morning showing. And, predictably, they shouted ‘conspiracy.’ Ridiculous. The women’s final started Sunday morning at 11 am on television. Is that such a crime? A point of comparison: two weeks later, the telecast of each of the first two days of golf’s British Open began at 1:30 am [!] on the East Coast. I didn’t hear or read one complaint about that.
One last point: As certain as the sun rises in the East, dreary politicians had to jump in to piggyback on the team’s success. Mayor De Blasio in New York City – who apparently doesn’t have the money to fix the dreadful subways or get the homeless off the streets -- hosts a victory parade down in the financial district, replete with the obligatory ticker tape, at a considerable cost. How craven this mayor is: the team’s success, he figures, will polish his me-too credentials with women across the country, as he pursues his absolutely moronic and arrogant Presidential run. New York didn’t need the parade. Let Minneapolis or Wichita hold the event. It cost $1.5 million to host. Bill De Blasio might as well have tossed that $1.5 million into the East River.
Mr. Gripes
August 8, 2019
Jim Israel
