Statesmanship Rears Its Fine Head

For all of the talk of statesmanship, how often do we get to see it? It can be an ethereal thing, barely noticeable, except in retrospect. Then, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, just the other day, shows us what it looks like in real-time. It is a breath of fresh air. 

Nancy announced that she will not seek the leadership position in the upcoming Democratic caucus. She will, however, serve out her elected term as representative for the people of San Francisco, and the nation at large. This is more than Nancy stepping aside for a new generation of Democrats in the House. This is Nancy showing the 80-year-old president, Joe Biden, that it is okay to graciously stand down. 

Too much of our politics is governed by tradition, often leaving us with stale leadership - entitled men and women whose crusty grip on power becomes fixed, and unassailable. Time to concede to reason.  

"Feeble", in itself, means "far past one's prime." That is Joe Biden. For Joe, there is no "eighty is the new sixty." He looks it; he carries himself like the quintessential 80-year-old. He becomes a caricature of "befuddled" by the day.  

It is not Nancy's place to tell Joe when to retire, but there is nowhere that says she can't show him. By removing herself from leadership contention, she, in essence, appears to gently coax Joe away from the disaster of a divisive primary challenge to a second Biden term. The consensus among voters is they hope he does not run again. They like Joe. They do not like him four-more-years worth. Joe confuses their kindly affection and touts the great job he is doing, and how fit he feels. Sounds delusional; you decide. 

Then, let us ask ourselves this: Given a multi-trillion dollar business, (which is what the U.S. is), who among us would hire an 82-year-old to run it? 

I Am Not a Body Part

I never got bent out of shape over abortions because I always felt it was out of my depth. Abortions were pure women's league. Men were spectators. We could cheer, or boo, but we were not allowed on the field, (unless in an official capacity). Then, it came to me: That embryo is not a part of that woman's body. It is an entity of its own. That notion became a game-changer. That put us all on the field.  

People have abortions to save themselves from unwanted pregnancies. The actual motives vary from "saving the life of the mother," to "having a baby right now would be an inconvenience." All reasons are capped by, "It is her right to choose what she does with her body." According to the polls, most Americans agree, even when the goal of each abortion is a prenatal death. How could a species have veered so far from its genesis? This is not a matter of evolution. This is a conscious decision to kill our offspring by the millions to create more space in our lives for ourselves. 

We understand the argument - "her right to do as she chooses with her body." But, that embryo is not part of her body. Her body surrounds the embryo. Her body is designed to protect that embryo. It is a benevolent design. 

We seem to have come to accept that the embryo is part of the mother's body, even though we know it is not.  I mean, what could it be, another organ? Hear this: The embryo has its own design - to father or mother future generations. That its own parts are so tiny, we think that gives us the right to kill it? 

Perhaps a random mutation has occurred in our DNA - a modification - that allows mothers to mentally disconnect from the umbilical cord while the physical cord remains intact. What else could have short-circuited this vital reproductive messaging that has bound the female gender of all living organisms to the utter survival of their offspring? What else could have precipitated this unnatural selection?

Mothers around this nation are declaring: "I do not want this embryo n my body. I do not feel that i am bound to protect it." If not her, then who takes up that charge according to creation? When the mother refuses this sacred trust because she is an advanced species of mammal - one with such intellect and self-awareness that she can assume rights (of choice) not included in the precepts of creation, then what ensures that her most sacred duty is done? By assisting in dislodging the embryo from the womb, we sully the lines of motherhood and render the protections that make it all possible obsolete by law. Is that what we want - to undo the hand of God; to render his work passe'? Have we taken God's place in the natural order? Is this carnage of innocents the price we pay for usurping his proven plan? Whatever we think we are doing, it will not work.

Abortion is a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition for the unborn. Regardless of the motive the adult declares, the unborn loses utterly. That is abortion's design. There are no second chances for these embryos. They cannot be the objects of pregnancies a year from now, five years, or a hundred years. They cannot be born again. What we have here is not evolution, it is devolution. At our present pace, unless there is a signpost ahead - a detour - we are headed straight for hell. 

The tendency here in America is to vilify. There is no time for that. This is the time for finding safe passage for the unborn, to make sure they make it to the promised land called "life." Nature has provided all of the infrastructures - gave the mother all of the room she needs to carry the child; designed a breathing and feeding apparatus; even given the growing tyke the reflexes, if not the self-awareness, to communicate his intentions. That is the point of those wonderful little kicks. He wants to let us know he is coming - chopping at the bit to join the race... the human race. We are the final place of the infrastructure. He/she has become everyone's responsibility. 

Where mothers declare they are neither willing nor bound to protect these fatal children, a fellowship must stand at the ready to ensure each and every life gets its chance. Without such a society, we become savages the likes of which this Earth had never imagined, and beings throughout the universe would despise. 

Season of '73 (Stuck in Your Craw)

Sixty home runs is "Hot News" in any baseball season; it no longer makes history. Yet, the powers that be - the media - want everyone to buy into what they call Aaron Judge's "historic pursuit" of Roger Maris' American League record 61 home runs. Maris broke Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs 61 years ago. Closets to half-century later, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa surpassed Maris' mark with 70 and 66 home runs, respectively. A couple of years later, Barry Bonds hit 73, establishing a new Major League record. 

Today, the sports media would have us speak in hushed tones of what is left of Maris' mark, so hallowed his 61 has once again become. they are even amazed and saddened that we do not all feel as they do about their nonsensical crusade to elevate a bygone standard to its former glory. Some go so far as to suggest that when Judge finally passes Maris's total, Judge's final homer mark should be declared the new Major League record. (Not even Judge believes that.)

What is wrong with these people? They never spoke of the National League home run record during the reign of Ruth and Maris. Suddenly, the American League record deserves distinction? 

The Baseball Writers of America have thus far succeeded n keeping Barry Bonds out of baseball's Hall of Fame. They cannot, however, change the facts of what he accomplished. Because the home run record is pre-eminent among baseball records - among all sports records - Bonds is, as they say, "stuck in their craw." His shadow pervades a "Hall" that they will not let him enter. Their public relations campaign to diminish his work fizzles by the day. Aaron Judge provides them with a foil, but he too is wary of their antics. By his reactions to their petty goadings, I wonder why he does not regard such propagandists as fools. 

Sarah Spain, pundit on ESPN's "Around the Horn" tried to explain to her colleagues that many people are unsure whether Bond's actually cheated, while others wonder whether Judge has not cheated, himself. (He has 60 home runs. The next closest hitters have around 40.)

Sarah is right. At the time of McGwire and Sosa, we cheered them on, unsuspecting that something could be amiss. (Something could always be amiss.) We cheered Bonds with the same innocence. We cheered them all, as we cheer them today. How could we know they may have been using banned substances? Incidentally, many of these men associated with baseball's "steroid's era" deny having ever used steroids. Many, including Bonds and Roger Clemens, never tested positive for a banned substance. They are held in suspicion based mainly upon hearsay testimony, and innuendo. 

No one can be absolutely sure about players in a league like baseball whose long history of cheating includes corked bats, spitballs, amphetamines (called "greenies"), sign-stealing, etc. For all we know, Babe Ruth, himself, may have cheated. Only in our faith can we find certainty. 

Ms. Spain, with her astute observations, has thrown a life jacket to her floundering colleagues. They refuse to see. In their zeal to project a pre-supposed purity that, in baseball has never existed, they inadvertently reveal the bias and hypocrisy in their own hearts.  

Barry Bonds, like it or not, is the all-time home run king - for a season (73); for a career (762). No one has hit like Barry. Recently, they booed Toronto pitchers for repeatedly walking Aaron Judge, rather than giving him something good to hit. For the season, Judge has accumulated about 100 walks. In one season, alone, Bonds was walked over 230 times - 120 of those were intentional passes - so feared was his bat. 

Bond captured our imaginations, similar to how Mike Tyson captured the imagination of this country, and the world. Such energy cannot be planned. It happens, like a "Big Bang." Neither Bonds' nor Tyson's moment lasted long, but they left indelible marks upon those who bore witness.  

I was there. I saw Bonds standing at the plate with the eye of an eagle, inscrutably watching pitches go by. Then, suddenly, with a mere flick of his wrists, he would launch a baseball into the ocean - beyond Candlestick Park, into that corner of the Pacific known as "McCovey Cove".  

Bonds was like the "Mighty Casey" of poetic legend, in the flesh. The sports talking heads cannot erase that; we saw it for ourselves. More to the point, other major leaguers saw - generations that included Aaron Judge in his pre-adolescence; staying up late school nights just to see Bonds work. Now, the 30-year-old Judge - the current apex predator of baseball (along with the phenom Shohei Ohtani) - defies the defiers by barely blinking at Maris' record, knowing in his heart that only Bonds' 73 is worthy of the note they desperately seek to bestow upon his eclipsing of what is essentially a Yankee team standard. 

Despite the muddle, about this, there is no doubt: Barry Bonds holds the golden chalice, thus says the official archives of Major League Baseball. Aaron Judge, as of this writing is 13 home runs behind with eight games remaining on the schedule. Swing away, fair prince. Here comes a high hard one. Swing away.  

Next, The Hamptons

The Democrats make fools of themselves by the day. They have the most feeble president in American history talking about running for a second term. They complain about MAGA Republicans being a danger to democracy, and then spend millions to help them win primaries over responsible Republicans. Now, they cry "foul" when Florida governor, Ron Desantis, flies a busload of migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard. They accuse him of abuse of migrants. Seriously? 

Martha's Vineyard is one of the richest communities in this country. Those migrants the Dems are wringing their hands over crossed the border into Texas with the clothes on their backs, and neither a p-- to p--- in. Suddenly, they are flying on a chartered jet to "posh" Martha's Vineyard where they are fed, sheltered, and provided other choice amenities. Are you kidding me? 

I can imagine many Americans, this very morning, wishing for a chance to fly for free to this isle of the rich - to strut their stuff, to breathe the air of the affluent. For the Dems to try to drum up sympathy for this bunch of foreigners is like taking up a collection for a lottery winner.

These people have hit the migrant jackpot. Of course, they will be eventually relocated. But, for the moment, sounds like a vacation many of us would cherish. 

If I were one of them, I'd send postcards. The folks back home would get a kick out of that. 

The Queen

Back in the day, there were men referred to as "shade-tree mechanics." They were community fixtures - good guys who'd fix your car for a six-pack. You could count on their resourcefulness to get you back on the road. I am reminded of these men whenever I see the soft-spoken little lady they call Queen Elizabeth II. 

Besides that, I have a bone to pick with the queen. Instead of retiring, and turning the throne over to her aging son, Prince Charles, she drove deep into her nineties, preferring to die on that throne rather than relinquish power.  

We see too much of that in the world today, especially here in America. Look at Pelosi, McConnell, Grassley, Feinstein... I could go on and on. But, none so cling to power as d the Supreme Court justices who, to a man and woman, hold on to their raiments as though they, themselves, were royalty. They seem to forget that each of them is a mere political appointee.  

Lately, none has been so fixed as had Ruth Bader Ginsburg who, thoough strickened with cancer in her eightis, refusd to relinquish her seat on the bench. She chose to die with gavl in hand as though it were her salvation. At some point, the mantra of "public service," which they all extol, sadly devolves into pure vanity.  

If Ms. Ginsburg had been more considerate, she would have retired during President Obama's second term, while there was still plenty of time for him to pick a liberal successor. Rather, she stubbornly sallied forth into the Trump adminstration, dying at the age of 87, toward the end of his single term in office. There, a sliver of time remained - just enough for the wily Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, to offer up her empty seat to President Trump, who filled it with the conservative justice, Cavanaugh. From her deathbed, Ginsburg had asked that the seat be left vacant until the new adinistration took office. McConnell ignored her. More than any one person (perhaps, besides McConnell, himself, who took one justice from Obama, and another from Biden). Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a fit of vanity, delivered Roe v. Wade to the trash heep of history.  

Back to the queen: They made a movie of her life - "The Queen" starring Helen Mirren. In the movie, the queen's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and she goes about fixing it with the pluck of a shade-tree mechanic. What a lady! What a queen. 

Serena, In a Man's World

Serena has let it be known that rather than being referred to as "one of the greatest female athletes of all time", she would prefer the moniker, "one of the greatest athletes (period)." The only problem with that is she has only competed against other female athletes. If she had competed against male athletes, she would still be called the "greatest female tennis player ever" because she, doubtless, would have been the one female who came closest to defeating a male tennis player.  She would, however, have "zero" grand slam titles (instead of the 23 she accrued against women), and there is the real chance that, on the tour, competing against men, she would not have won a single match. 

I understand what people would prefer to hear. That would be politics, however; sentimentality, and a subjective desire to ignore reality for what feels better - a pleasant fiction.  

Of all human endeavors, none so starkly draws the line between men and women as does athletics. Women can compete with men on a multitude of levels - the classroom, the boardroom, on the political stage. But, they cannot out-hit, out-run, out-throw, out-jump, or out-fight their male counterparts. They lack the requisite muscle mass, plain and simple. That fact has not changed in a million years. 

Certainly, a trained female sprinter can outrun a pedestrian male, just as the tennis great Billie Jean King out-played the hustler Bobby Riggs, in a tennis match. But, Billie Jean could never have defeated Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, or any of the other professional male tennis players of her day. That would be as unlikely that it would have been nearly impossible. 

ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, in a fit of verbosity, declared he would place Serena on the Mt. Rushmore of Athletes. First, most sports aficionados never speak of the tennis greats - Nadal, Federer, Djokovic - with the same breathlessness with which they extol the titans of football, baseball, basketball, and boxing. Second, Serena on Mt. Rushmore" That would mean, after placing Muhammed Ali, Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Jim Brown upon those glorious heights, you would remove one of them and replace him with Serena. Really? 

I could devise ten Mt. Rushmores - fully 40 all-time greats - and no female athlete would make it to the foothills of any of those mountains. Try to remove Jim Thorpe, Willie Mays, Lebron James, or Tom Brady from Rushmore II. Or, have at Joe Louis, Tiger Woods, Josh Gibson, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Rushmore III, etc., etc., etc. When it comes to athletics, it truly is "A Man's World", and we do not need James Brown to remind us. 

Serena, respect the Mt. Rushmore of women athletics. Take your plae alongside Diana Taurasi, Simone Biles, and Babe Didriksen Zaharias. Be honored to stand among the first pantheon of female sports legends. 

(All Secrets Are Classified)

Trump continues to harp about the FBI "raiding" his home and taking his stuff. He is like a child, a hard-headed child. He takes things that do not belong to him, declares them his, then feigns injury when the rightful owner sends agents to take them back. Part of his problem is he does not take "classified" seriously. Trump's take is this: "It's serious when I say it's serious."

America's rivals love it. They want our top secrets and are giddy when we are cavalier about guarding those secrets. Twenty years ago, China took down an American jet that happened to stray into Chinese airspace. The Americans demanded the jet back. The Chinese responded, "We'll send it back to you when we finish with it." That jet was a form of classified material. The Chinese took it apart piece by piece. 

The Iranians, likewise, took down an American drone and took it apart. (Classified.) Now, the Iranians are building such sophisticated drones, the Russians want to buy their product. 

Our rivals will take our secrets any way they can get them. They will shoot them down, or they will seek them out in your wife's closet if you're foolish enough to keep America's secrets there.