Make it stop
Each and every one of the Leader's nominees for office is openly contemptuous of democracy and ready to destroy the agency they head as soon as their hands come off the "God Bless the USA" Bible. This is not news, nor is it the result of incompetence. Burning it down is the point. And the fire has already spread to baseball.
It sounds trivial, set beside the imminent destruction of just about everything, but it isn't. Baseball is America's game in the same way soccer/football is the rest of the world's. If it wasn't invented by a Civil War general (and it wasn't), it should have been. It's our beautiful game. Or it was.
The current commissioner, Rob Manfred, could give the Patels and Noems pointers on how to ruin the institution entrusted to your care. There is already a Little League-style rule about extra innings meant to speed up the game for the easily bored that makes no sense. ("OK, Bobby, you go stand at second base and we'll see if Jimmy can get you home. Then -- pizza!") Apparently that isn't attracting enough of the demographic the owners crave, and it's driving hard-core fans away. Get ready for...
Once a game, the manager can send his best hitter out to bat, presumably for one at the bottom of the order -- do pitchers still bat in the National League? -- just to spice up the game. A brief home run derby, if you will. So much for the sanctity of the batting order, one of baseball's bedrocks. What's next, unlimited substitutions like basketball? The owners, billionaires all, are said to be energized by the thought of making still more money. The players' union is not quite sure about opposing this madness (sounds like the Democrats). I'm ashamed to write that the practice originated with the Savannah Bananas. These guys:
Described as a barnstorming exhibition team, really a vaudeville act. Savannah once had an actual minor league team called the Sand Gnats, but they moved to Columbia, South Carolina, in 2016. They became the Fireflies, which is easier to spell and I like to think was chosen in honor of the Groucho character in Duck Soup. Baseball left with them. Now the cancer may spread to the major leagues. The show. Are you ready for a Dodgers kick line during the seventh inning stretch?
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I'll be dead sooner rather than later. Just let me have one nice thing until then.
There's some good Hegseth news anyway. The punters now give only 12-83 odds on confirmation, despite his mom's visit to Fox News for the ritual blaming of the media. Hegseth readily agreed with Megyn Kelly that he's being "Kavanaughed" with "made-up allegations" intended to make him cry like the beer-loving justice. "Take whatever kernels of truth -- and there are tiny, tiny ones in there -- and blow them up into a masquerade of a narrative about somebody that I am definitely not." The kernels were too tiny for Kelly to dig up, but they possibly included Hegseth drunk in a bar leading a chant of "Kill all Muslims!" Rick Scott tried to help by telling Jake Tapper that Hegseth should hold his 2017 rape victim to the non-disclosure agreement he made her sign when he paid her off, but I'm not sure it worked. Anyway, Ron DeSantis is said to be warming up in the bullpen, and I promise that's the last reference to baseball.
Former Pence aide Olivia Troye called Kash Patel "a delusional liar," and he's threatening to sue her. What's one more sorehead lawsuit from this crowd? Chris Murphy put his finger on it: "He's basically telling us with this suit that if he's in charge of the FBI, he's using whatever tools he has to come after people who criticize MAGA. We better listen to him." Senator Murphy is right -- the FBI can fuck your shit up if you haven't done anything criminal. We learned that in the dark Hoover days. Organized crime was ignored while anyone to the left of Nelson Rockefeller had a file opened. Does anyone doubt that Patel would again make it the political police? (By the way, he hates Ron DeSantis and everyone else who tried to primary The Leader. This could be fun.)
What's going on?
The entire Georgia Maternity Mortality Committee was fired in November, allegedly for publicizing the names of two women who died because they did not receive timely abortion care. Now Texas has gone one better: its Maternal Mortality Committee will not review any deaths in the two years since the Dobbs decision. I get the feeling that both states and many others would happily count women as three-fifths of a person if they could do so without losing Congressional seats.
Joe Biden's response to the firestorm of criticism for pardoning his son has been to piss on the flames as contemptuously as Gulliver in Lilliput. It's as if he has no more malarkeys to give. Now he's said to be considering preemptive pardons for Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley and a host of ex-Trumpers, including Bill Barr, General John Kelly, John Bolton, Mark Esper and Stephanie Grisham. "If it's clear by January 19 that [revenge] is his intention, then I would recommend to President Biden that he provide these preemptive pardons," said Senator Ed Markey. What part of "I AM YOUR RETRIBUTION" did you not understand, Senator? January 19 is too late, unless he uses an atomic-powered version of Jefferson's polygraph.
(I'm reminded of The West Wing and Jed Bartlet's wish to sign all the White House Christmas cards. "How many do we send out?" "One point six million." "Never mind.")
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