Can Anyone Here Play This Game?
If you have to keep yelling "Incoming!" it loses its punch.
That quote is, of course, from the legendary baseball manager Casey Stengel and was the title of the equally legendary Jimmy Breslin's book chronicling the disastrous second season of the then-wretched New York Mets.
OK, as an Astros fan, they are still wretched. But enough about me.
I still do news on the radio, and as happens in all smaller news operations, there is a rotation of folks who are responsible for posting stories on the station website over the weekend. This weekend was my turn and as I looked at what was happening around the country and the world, I realized that what I wrote a few weeks ago about the administration and the Congress is happening right now, ahead of schedule.
Roger T. Gray
Roger T. Gray
In other words, while these guys can do a lot of damage to our government, our economy and our relationships with other nations, well except Russia, they inevitably will start to lose favor when the damage becomes obvious to all but the most devoted corps of lickspittles.
Yes, this government by random whim has caused American companies to pause virtually everything from spending, hiring, and production to the growing of crops as they wonder where the hell farmers can sell them now. And this mindless spew of pronouncements that emanate, unfiltered, from the pursed lips of the man-child in the Maison Blanche has made all these enterprises we value as confused as a monkey peering at a locked suitcase.
Part of the problem is, obviously, President Trump himself, who just can't manage to put a cork in it when involved in the delicate balancing act that is international diplomacy or trade relations. But the other is the fact that TV personalities have been appointed to positions of responsibility in the only government we have. As a former TV personality, who was racing his hairline to the end of his anchoring career, I can say with some assurance that we shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any office of authority in a homeowner's association, much less the Cabinet.
Part of that is the amount of sheer ignorance on display. For example, many avid acolytes of the current gang in the palace, believe we shouldn't be providing aid to Ukraine in her courageous war against Russia. Why? Because the Wizard of Washington and his sidekick Hillbilly Vanilli, say we shouldn't.
This of course, ignores a promise we made 31 years ago in Budapest, wherein Ukraine, a former Soviet state with lots of nukes, agreed to give them up in return for a promise of protection from the US, the UK and Russia.
Ukraine gave up the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal, which it inherited from the Soviet Union. The country also agreed to transfer its nuclear warheads to Russia for dismantlement. In return, Ukraine received:
- Security assurances from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia
- Financial assistance to compensate for the enriched uranium and to defray the costs of dismantling and transporting the nuclear weapons
- U.S. assistance in dismantling missiles, bombers, and nuclear infrastructure
But, hey, that was a long time ago so it doesn't really count, right? I mean, we promised, but now they really need it so that changes things. Now, the idea of security assurances requested by Ukraine's President is deemed outrageous and disrespectful by the folks in that round office on Pennsylvania Avenue who can't be bothered to google the word, Ukraine.
Can anyone here play this game?
Linda McMahon, the cuckolded co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, has been named to head the Department of Education. Among the pronouncements she has made upon entering the job Trump wants her to eliminate, is that she thinks the control of public education belongs to states and school districts not in Washington.
Well, what luck! It already does. You see, she, like lots of folks, think the DOE determines curriculum for public schools, but it doesn't. That is a state and local matter. The Department of Education duties...
Policy and funding
- Set policies for federal financial aid, such as grants and student loans
- Distribute and monitor federal funds to schools and colleges
- Manage the federal student loan portfolio
Data collection and research
- Collect data on schools in the United States
- Disseminate research on education
- Support and disseminate scientific research related to education
Education focuses national attention on key issues in education, make recommendations for education reform, ensure equal access to education, and prohibit discrimination. Other responsibilities, run the federal work-study program and administer Pell grants.
No mention of "Woke" or Critical Race Theory or DEI in all that. It primarily decides where loans, grants and financial support for poor districts will go. It makes sure disabled students get the education they deserve and poor kids get an even shot. They don't decide if "Heather Has Two Mommies" should be in the library. That's on all of us.
So, it seems, Linda has no idea what her new job actually entails.
Can anyone here play this game?
Now to the other dangerous consequence of bad appointments. I got a truly bad case of measles when I was 7 years old. I know the date, because my 2nd grade teacher, the beloved Miss Moore, came by our house with my lessons and the gift of a book about American Indian tribes, as she knew I loved reading and history.
Yeah, my original last name. My first News Director made me change it.
I had what we now call Rubeola or back then, the "red" measles. It was 1956 and there was no vaccine. Eye damage was possible, and it was incredibly contagious. So I lived for a time in my pajamas, at home, wearing sunglasses. In short, red measles was bad stuff.
An ancient disease, it was described as early as the 9th century by Persian physician and scholar Abū Bakr Muhammad Zakariyyā Rāzī (also known by the Europeanized name Rhazes). A vaccine was finally developed in 1963.
Now we have an outbreak, mainly in Texas and New Mexico and already two people have died, one of them a 6-year-old child. That's just under the age I was.
It began in Gaines County, on the New Mexico border, and primarily among the Mennonite community. They are, like the Amish, an austere group that began in the Netherlands. The name Mennonites comes from Menno Simons, a cleric from Friesland (now part of the Netherlands) who lived from 1496–1561.
They are peaceful people and not as strict as the Amish as some even own cars. They don't prohibit vaccination, but eschew a lot of modern medicine.
So it began, and thanks to the vaccine hesitancy fostered by people like the brain-worm-affected Robert F. Kennedy Jr, you don't have to be a Mennonite to join the club, only gullible. Kennedy initially downplayed the West Texas outbreak, calling it “not unusual.” Yes, we get occasional cases every year, but no had died for a decade. So, yeah, it was unusual.
After the excrement hit the oscillator, he issued a statement that fell short of telling parents to get the kids vaccinated. While explaining the dangers of measles, the official statement included this...
All parents should consult with their healthcare providers to understand their options to get the MMR vaccine. The decision to vaccinate is a personal one.
The decision to vaccinate is, yes, personal, but also imperative for the child and their friends. And now RFK, and as a 60's kid I hate typing those initials for this guy, is recommending vitamin A and cod liver oil on the HHS website. Really? Is this Doc Adams in an episode of Gunsmoke? Hell, Bobby, why not try Ivermectin again?
Can anyone here play this game?
Pete Hegseth, the new head of the Department of Defense, has taken the anti-DEI sentiment from the White House, tucked it under his arm and run for daylight. So, using some sort of word search app, he has set about scrubbing all DOD web material of anything smacking of minority favoritism. In the process, perfectly benign and admirable accomplishments were erased like the Tuskegee Airmen, a big Corps of Engineers project headed by a guy whose last name was "Gay" (a cousin perhaps?) and silliest of all, removing a photo of an apparently effeminate bomber...
Wait until Hegseth finds out the Pontiac Trans-Am could be had with a manual Trans-mission.
So, along with the President's usual malaprops and outright lies (Transgenic, not transgender mice, idiot), Musk's idiotic staffing cuts that remove muscle instead of fat, and Vice President McDreamy's affinity for Vlad the Invader, along with his boss, we have the incessant, simple, dumb-assery in our trade policy.
Like, what are these goofy mindless Canadian taunts? Be careful, they will fight back...
Where is Sgt. Preston when you need him?
Add Congress to this really lousy gumbo, whose flaccid response to the galloping intrusion into areas they are supposed to control is underwhelming, and you have a recipe for 4 years of monstrous F-ups on an international scale. So, the spirit of Casey Stengel now haunts Washington.
Can anyone here play this game?
Now, he is part of the Texas Outlaw Writers, and if this doesn't pan out, the outlaw part will still work as he will indeed resort to robbing banks.