It's Official: trump is a Jinx

Here at You Might Notice A Trend, one of the themes this blog goes by is "oh yeah, notice how these things trend towards an obvious conclusion."

So when the same bad thing happens over and over involving the WORST HUMAN BEING CURRENTLY ALIVE donald trump, I have to sit up and take notice. Especially when it's something we can't avoid like sports.

I mean, I've made it clear since the beginning how I hate trump for ruining the up-and-coming USFL sports league back in the 1980s, and how he took away a good franchise in the Tampa Bay Bandits (rage rage rage). There are reasons why the established team sports leagues never allowed a "billionaire" like trump to buy any of the franchises up for sale (or for expansion), and one of them is trump is a goddamn walking disaster area capable of wrecking leagues for his own twisted needs.

It's been documented that for all of trump's desire to be associated with A-List celebrities among the actors and athletes, trump himself is a bane to most sports fans and they will boo him at every opportunity he shows up to try and get the glory rubbing onto him.

This problem came to a head this year when the New York Knicks - playing for a city trump repeatedly insulted as a hellhole and fled for Florida years ago - broke through a decades-long drought to play for the NBA Finals, raising the hopes of the Big Apple's sports fans for a title win at home.

And then the Knicks' owner - someone almost as reviled as trump, who just happens to be on good terms with trump as well - invited trump to Game Three of the best-of-four series where the Knicks were already up 2-0 (and angling for the coveted sweep) over the San Antonio Spurs.

It wasn't so much how everyone knew the fans - hardcore New Yawkers who learned long ago how racist and evil trump is - were going to boo him. It quickly became a concern that trump was going to jinx the home team for Game Three.

And yes, it turned out he did (via Will Weissert at AP News):

If President Donald Trump is coming to the game, bet on the visiting team.

You’ll usually be in the money — at least if recent history holds.

The New York Knicks, after two straight wins in the finals against the San Antonio Spurs, lost at home 115-111 on Monday night with Trump, a longtime fan of the Big Apple’s NBA team (personal note: I doubt it. Real fans show up when the team loses during the season, and trump noticeably rarely did), in a luxury suite at Madison Square Garden.

He similarly may have had a jinxing role for MLB’s Washington Nationals during his first term, when the home team lost Game 5 of the World Series to the Houston Astros 7-1.

In November, the president was on hand when the NFL’s Washington Commanders hosted the Detroit Lions, and the visitors romped 44-22. And he was front and center at Bethpage Black when Europe topped the U.S. golf team in last fall’s Ryder Cup.

It’s a glaring irony for a president fanatical about sports but also especially obsessed with winning...

Again, trump wants to bask in other people's success and claim it for his own. Thing is, in person he turns into the worst kind of motivation or spiritual support for the teams - or stars - he claims to love.

It could be that he doesn't really love them: trump only loves himself.

So here we are in the final rounds of the international team sport event bigger than anything else, the 2026 World Cup getting hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States (because this year FIFA enlarged the competing teams from 32 to 48, and in many ways that move proved a huge success). As an automatic invite, the US men's team were actually considered a serious challenger to reach the final four with a deep roster and solid talent against the likes of France, Spain, and/or Argentina (the ones the experts predicted to play for the title). The team did pretty well against Bosnia & Herzegovina, winning 2-0... but top player Folarin Balogun got hit with a Red Card penalty for causing injury to one of the Bosnian players.

To most observers, Balogun's action may have been worth a Yellow Card (a lesser penalty) but not the Red. The Red Card meant he had to sit out the next game, which was a quarterfinal match against a pretty solid Belgium team. It could have meant disaster for the US squad.

And then trump intervened.

he bragged later how he was able to get on the phone to the FIFA president Infantino to "appeal" the decision and let Balogun play (via Becky Sullivan and Kristin Wright at NPR):

President Trump spoke to Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, about a red card and one-game suspension given to the star striker of the U.S. men's national soccer team. 

Then, on Sunday, in an extremely unusual move, FIFA's Disciplinary Committee announced that it would delay Folarin Balogun's one-game red card ban for a probationary period of one year. 

The change allows him to play in any remaining games in the World Cup — including Monday's crucial Round of 16 match against Belgium. 

In a brief statement, the FIFA committee did not give a reason for hitting pause on the suspension. Balogun's probationary period will be revoked and the one-game suspension enforced if he commits "another infringement of a similar nature and gravity," FIFA said.

Thing is, there wasn't any appeal system in place to override the ruling in the first place. FIFA seemed to be making things up as they went along the more other people openly confronted them about this. 

It didn't end the controversy: It made things worse. And it highlighted the overall corruption of FIFA - especially Infantino - when it comes to pandering to world leaders over questionable (if not criminal) actions. The outrage spread everywhere (via Kyle Bonn with Sporting News, but accessed via Yahoo!):

The U.S. striker was, by most accounts, wrongly sent off for serious foul play on the hour mark of their 2-0 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32. It's not the first time a referee has made a poor decision, and it certainly won't be the last.

It would have left Balogun suspended for the following game: their upcoming Round of 16 match against Belgium, one in which the two teams are believed to be evenly matched. Balogun's absence would surely be felt.

FIFA could have left it there. An injustice, sure, but one that is somewhat commonplace in sport. It would have been a subplot to the game, but not the overarching narrative. A potential excuse after a possible defeat, maybe, but the U.S. has the players to make up for it.

Then, the snowball began rolling down the hill.

Without an appeal process — as most competitions feature — written into the World Cup regulations, FIFA had to get creative. Well... it didn't have to, but it decided to, after a phone call from U.S. president and Gianni Infantino's buddy Donald Trump that has muddied the whole situation even further.

FIFA's supposedly independent disciplinary committee decided to suspend Balogun's one-game ban, essentially giving him probation. Instead of publishing the justification for this decision, no matter how farcical, FIFA simply cited Article 27 of its disciplinary regulations. In simple terms, this rule states that FIFA's judicial body can fully or partially suspended a disciplinary punishment, without necessarily needing to say why...

Beyond just the sporting consequences of this mockery is emotional harm. What has been a magical run from the 2026 World Cup host nation has been sapped almost entirely of its charm, replaced by questions of unprecedented favoritism and icky vibes of backroom deals. A potential Round of 16 victory that had promised to lift the sport of soccer to unparalleled heights in this country now threatens to be dismissed as a joke regardless of the result.

The whole thing has become one massive distraction from a game that should have been the scene of immeasurable fanfare. At this point, no plausible outcome will benefit anyone involved...

This is, sadly, one of trump's things, baby: Turn every happy event into something about him, and watch it turn into hate and sorrow.

This World Cup had a lot of bad vibes going in, considering how trump's thuggish Homeland Security was threatening to go after tourists and players alike. Instead, for weeks that early rounds had been going, this Cup has been an almost magical affair with fans enjoying the experience, the gameplay enticing, and certain teams - Cabo Verde in particular - rising to the moment to become legends of the sport.

And trump - aided by his buddy Infantino - ruined all of that.

Of course the second that news reported trump intervened with overturning Balogun's penalty, nearly every observer on social media noted trump had now 'jinxed' the men's team going into Monday's match. 

It turned out getting Balogun back on the field didn't help them at all, as the US team collapsed 4-1 against a very motivated, very angry Belgian squad. trump's big "win" to get FIFA to bend the knee was for naught, the rest of the world gets to mock him (and us) for his folly, and the entire American side of the sport now has to sit there in the misery of losing out.

trump is not really a winner. he cheats where he can, lies about when he loses, bullies everyone into complying, and makes everyone else around him miserable to make himself happy.

It's no wonder he's a jinx to everyone else out there.

Blood in the Streets of Kansas City

So there was a Super Bowl recently, and the Kansas City Chiefs won a back-to-back title in overtime over the San Francisco 49ers, and as usual there was a parade in the team's honor through the streets of Kansas City, Missouri (it's not in Kansas itself just on the state border, weird I know) and even with all the police and private security forces in place to manage the parade route and celebration sites, two three gun nuts were able to open fire and give our nation yet another mass shooting (via Jaclyn Diaz at NPR):

One person was killed and up to 21 others were injured after shots were fired Wednesday afternoon outside Union Station in Kansas City, Mo., at the conclusion of a celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl win, officials said.

The number of victims from this shooting is still evolving as law enforcement continues their investigation.

Officers took three individuals into custody, Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves said during the day's second news conference, updating the previous tally of two suspects brought in.

One suspect was captured after a foot chase with officers, she said...

In preparation for the expected crowd size, 800 law enforcement officers were on scene for the parade, Graves said. The heavy police presence helped in getting fans to safety once the shooting began and in administering life-saving aid to gunshot victims, she said...

Even with all those good guys with guns, gun violence still happened.

But KCUR reported that Children's Mercy Hospital received 12 patients from the rally, 11 of them children and nine of those with gunshot wounds. Fire Chief Ross Grundyson couldn't immediately confirm the ages of the victims.

Children.

The gunmen FIRED AT CHILDREN.

It is too early to speculate what the motive of the gunmen were, but the fact they opened fire with children present spells out that these sons of bitches didn't give a damn who they were hurting.

And there's one more event in public that we can't dare attend without risk of getting shot at.

We can't go to open-air music concerts.

We can't go to movie theaters.

We can't go to food festivals.

We can't go to our city halls.

We can't go to grocery stores. Or Wal-Marts.

We can't go to malls (TOO MANY TO LINK HERE).

We sure as hell can't send our kids to schools - we haven't been able to for decades since Columbine in 1999 - without the risk of them never coming back.

We as a nation cannot peaceably assemble - we cannot celebrate, we cannot convocate, we cannot be a community - because the ongoing threat by the National Rifle Body Count Association's public demands that their rights to carry murder weapons everywhere at all times shall not be infringed.

It's just that the gun nuts' right to carry assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns stocked with high-capacity magazines requires the rest of us to pay in our blood.

We in the majority are dying so that the paranoid, armed-to-the-teeth minority can fantasize to their Turner Diaries cosplay bullshit.

Goddamn the NRA. Goddamn the politicians who let them rack up these body counts.

We need gun reform NOW, before every street in America drowns in the blood of our children.

Mississippi Stealing

Political corruption, sad to say, is as old as politics itself. If you go back to the time of Hammurabi, you'll likely find court officials taking bribes from stone masons to avoid getting punished for racing their chariots through school zones. It doesn't matter which political party, doesn't matter which nation, doesn't matter which gender, doesn't matter the religion of the corrupt official or the race they identify. Greed is universally understood: It gets into anything where money and privilege is involved, and may God have mercy on the victims who suffer when the powerful get greedy.

One of the things in American politics is how the corruption plays out between the federal level and the states. As the dynamics of the Constitution shifted from states having more of the political might and wealth to the federal - it started under the Reconstruction era post-Civil War but by the time of the New Deal (and the Second World War) all the money (and the power) flowed from Washington DC - you saw the shift in corruption as well. If not the federal agencies and elected officials getting caught stealing from the till, it was the state-level officials who were funneling federal aid away from the citizens (who needed that aid) into the officials' own pockets.

A particularly ugly example of that just got revealed to the public this week, when federal and state investigators revealed that almost 77 million dollars meant for welfare programs to the state of Mississippi were diverted to other projects or organizations that directly profited either those state officials or their wealthy benefactors/allies. The story gained national attention from the revelation that famed sports star Brett Favre - football Hall of Famer from Southern Miss - was in on part of the theft. This is one of the few times on this blog I've ever linked to a story from ESPN:

An investigative report by Mississippi Today revealed Tuesday that former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant helped former NFL quarterback Brett Favre obtain welfare funds in order to help build a new volleyball center at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The news organization reviewed text messages from 2017 and 2019 that were filed Monday in the state of Mississippi's civil lawsuit over misspent welfare funds. The texts were filed by an attorney representing Nancy New, who has already pleaded guilty to 13 felony counts of bribery, fraud and racketeering for her role in the welfare scheme. New was the founder of the Mississippi Community Education Center, which was tasked with spending tens of millions in federal welfare funds to help the state.

State auditors determined nonprofit leaders misspent at least $77 million in welfare funds in the largest case of public fraud in Mississippi history.

The texts show Favre, New and Bryant discussing how to divert at least $5 million in welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium at Southern Miss. Favre played football at Southern Miss, and his daughter was a volleyball player there at the time some of the texts were sent.

"If you were to pay me is there anyway the media can find out where it came from and how much?" Favre asked New in 2017.

After telling Favre that "we never have that information publicized," she circled back to him the next day.

"Wow, just got off the phone with Phil Bryant! He is on board with us! We will get this done!" New told Favre...

Favre not only understood how bad this story would look if it got out, Favre expressed relief in a follow-up text - "Awesome! I needed to hear that for sure" - that he was going to get political cover from Mississippi's governor.

If you need context to understand why this is so disgusting and horrifying an act by Nancy New, Phil Bryant, Brett Favre, and several others: You need to understand that the not-so-great state of Mississippi is one of the poorest states in America. For a little more analysis, let's take a look at this (via Stephan Bisaha at NPR):

This is a tale of two Jackson, Mississippis.

There's Jackson, the state capital, run historically by white conservatives. Then there's Jackson, the 82 percent Black city, run by a mayor wanting to make it "the most radical city on the planet."

February's winter storm and water crisis provided just the latest high profile example of the two Jackson's clashing. State and local governments have made a pastime out of pointing fingers at each other for the city's woes, from crime to potholes to urban blight.

Mississippi leaders say Jackson is just one city and can't hog resources to fix problems found elsewhere in the state too. Jackson leaders say they need more state support and that Mississippi can't thrive while its largest city suffers.

For Jacksonians, it can feel like Jackson the city versus Jackson the capital.

"I don't see this legislative body as representing me," said Jackson State University Professor D'Arby Orey, referring to the Mississippi Legislature. "I don't really expect it to provide support for Jackson..."

That's usually how the relationship goes. Jackson requests state dollars, Mississippi says it will help, but other parts of the state need those resources too.

"We had 78 different systems throughout the entire state that were having and experiencing challenges," Reeves said at a press conference in March. "This is not an issue that is unique to our capital city."

State politicians also often say city leaders need to take more responsibility.

"The prime mover needs to be the city itself. It's the city of Jackson, Mississippi," Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told the Mississippi Free Press. "How much money is it going to take, and how do you even pay for it? I haven't seen any of that."

Mississippi often places last on state lists for everything from health to income. Jackson also struggles with the same problems, with 23 percent of the city falling below the poverty line.

Jackson's mayor says the fate of the city and state can't be separated – more support from Mississippi for its largest city would mean growth for the rest of the state.

"Without question it can't change without a significant alteration in the relationship with the city of Jackson" Lumumba says. "Ultimately it is not just a Jackson problem. It is a state of Mississippi problem..."

That article was published in 2021. Just this past month August 2022 Jackson Mississippi went into full crisis as their water became too toxic for anything. And the state - which has all the money and power at that level - still doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing to fix it.

What is happening here is racism: Yes, I am going there.

Jackson is Mississippi's largest population center. You would think, rationally, that as the major center the state legislature and governor's office - which work there! - would care more to fund that metro and keep its infrastructure working well, make its schools better, make sure the workplaces are safe, the homes are well-built, the roads working, the pipes flowing. You want your major city to attract good business, keep families living there, grow and expand into a major metro the way southern cities like Atlanta and Orlando and Charlotte grew.

But the state legislature - through decades of political gerrymandering, open hostility to civil (and voting) rights, and constant corruption of social conservatives (who flipped from Democrats to Republicans during the post-60s realignment) - as noted in Bisaha's article is mostly White at 68 percent, while the city of Jackson is 82 percent Black. This is in a state of Mississippi with 58 percent Whites and 38 percent Blacks. Mississippi has the largest percentage of Black residents among all the states (The District of Columbia is higher but doesn't count as a state (yet, which may also explain why DC statehood remains undone)).

The mostly White Mississippi state legislature doesn't care about taking care of their own state, because God forbid any attempts to improve their education, health care, business startups, and/or overall economy may go to "those people". Jamelle Bouie noted this years ago at Slate:

Driven by its high poverty rate, Mississippi ranks low on health and wellness. It has one the highest rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes in the country, as well as the highest mortality rate for infants and adults. These ills are worst among its black residents: 43.2 percent of Mississippi blacks are afflicted by obesity and its associated problems and 44 percent live at or below the poverty line, compared with a—still high—30.2 percent obesity rate and 16 percent poverty rate for whites...

We know why Mississippi Republicans refuse to work with the ACA: A hyper-ideological, small government conservatism that disdains social programs and public investment. But it’s worth a look at the history behind that conservatism, which lives strongest in Mississippi but exists throughout the Deep South.

Mississippi has poor social outcomes and a threadbare safety net. It also has—and has long had—the largest black population in the country. And it’s where slavery was very lucrative, and Jim Crow most vicious. This is not a coincidence...

Where they existed, public services were sparse and utterly segregated. Anything public had to be kept separate from blacks, or degraded, if that wasn’t possible. To get a sense of the scale of white resistance in Mississippi, consider this: During the civil rights movement, white supremacists built a network of state and private agencies to wreak havoc on black activists with surveillance, economic reprisals, and extreme violence. One of them was the Mississippi Citizens Council, and it, writes historian Joseph Crespino, “[P]oliced a white racial authoritarianism that ran roughshod over the civil and political rights of white and black Mississippians both. Because of the Council’s influence, no place in the United States … came closer to resembling the repressiveness of apartheid South Africa than did Mississippi.”

More than a half-century later, and all of this is dead. But the ideas and culture it built are not. And why would they be? For nearly 100 years, Mississippi was a white supremacist police state. Of course this made a mark on its culture. Of course these ideas of exclusion—and specifically, of racial hostility to outside interference and public goods—are still embedded in the structure of its politics.

Today, Mississippi is politically polarized along racial lines. Whites are Republicans, blacks are Democrats, and the former controls state politics. Public investment isn’t just disdained, it’s attacked as racially suspect. “The Republican Party has never been the food stamp party, or the party of pork until desperation set in with Thad Cochran’s re-election bid,” said state Sen. Angela Hill during the Mississippi Senate Republican primary, in reference to Sen. Cochran’s outreach to black voters. The state is harshly carceral—jailing more people per capita than almost anywhere in the country, the majority of them black—and has a huge number of all-white private schools while the public school system is largely segregated...

Even after the Civil Rights era brought an end to Jim Crow, Mississippi's power structure merely realigned itself to the task of "Well, if we're supposed to make Them equal, let's make it so shitty there's nothing good about it for Them to enjoy." And so the corruption ignores the needs of the state's biggest city, ignores the need to improve the schools to let children - White and Black (and Latino and Creole and Cajun if you got 'em) - get educations that could make them smart enough for good jobs at decent wages, and ignores the reality that poverty hurts a majority of state residents regardless of race while the rich play around at the Biloxi casinos and whatever upper-class country clubs they have upriver. 

Mississippi has been one of the poorest states for generations, and the actions of these grifters - who I'm willing to bet will tell you that "poverty is a character flaw" instead of it being pressed down upon the poor to keep them poor - are keeping Mississippi broken and impoverished for their own greedy ends.

Every elected official past and present who had a hand in this $77 million dollar ripoff should be in handcuffs facing juries, every millionaire who got money they didn't need off these schemes should be in handcuffs facing juries, even Brett Favre - who was $100 million in net wealth already and could have easily used his celebrity to raise more - needs to hang his head in shame in front of a judge reading back to him the charges of stealing from the poor to make the rich richer.

Racism is at the root of a lot of our nation's sins. Don't be at all surprised Greed and Racism go happily hand-in-hand as we beat down the impoverished for our sins (and not theirs).

Crazy Busy Week Ahead

Monday is going to be the start of one crazy week:

The House Committee investigating trump's Insurrection is going to present Day Two of their indictment, following up on a surprisingly strong opening night that pretty much accused trump of setting and staging the riot. Day Two is reportedly going to delve into how trump knew he lost the 2020 election but decided to undermine the electoral process and stage a coup. The television ratings by the way - 19 million viewers - put the audience around Sunday Night NFL numbers, which are pretty strong (Tucker Carlson's prime time show on Fox Not-News by comparison draws around 3 million)

Twitter is aflutter that this is the week the Supreme Court officially issues its rulings on abortion - specifically the case involving Mississippi's ban - that can effectively mean the end of Roe and abortion rights. Madness will surely follow.

Congress reportedly reached a "bipartisan" deal on gun regulations / safety laws that is supposedly Cloture-proof so it can pass the Senate and then arguably the House for ratification. It won't address the more serious needs - an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, et al - but it will address age requirements for purchases, more funding for mental health (no guarantee THAT will go where needed), and restrictions on domestic abusers having firearms in an attempt to reduce domestic gun deaths. It will be the first major gun safety legislation passed in 30 years (!) and while it won't be enough it will be interesting to see if the more positive elements - especially that domestic abuser restriction - can show success in saving lives.

Ukraine remains a war zone but there's signs that Russian attempts to secure the Donbas aren't working and that Ukrainians are mounting decent counterattacks. Granted, the experts were thinking Russian forces wouldn't last past May, but all of the momentum and global support remains with Ukraine. Russia is reportedly falling back on weapon supplies and equipment from the 1960s (!) which doesn't bode well for their long-term ability to wage war.

Oh, and the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team - yes, there's been ice hockey in Florida since 1992, people! - are going to their third straight (after winning back-to-back) Stanley Cup Finals (facing Colorado) looking to be the first NHL team since the 1980s New York Islanders to have three straight championships. It's a dynastic possibility, which would put this Bolts team atop the list of Greatest Hockey Teams of ALL TIME. And to Michael Wilbon who derisively mocks Tampa as "not real hockey town" and "SEC" - while ignoring A) the attendance records the Lightning set in the 1990s playing in a half-filled baseball dome, proving there's a fanbase for a Hockey Town and B) the SEC (Southeastern Conference) is a college conference that revels in national championships every year - all I gotta say is SUCK IT WILBON.

I may not even find time to blog about all of it. We're busy at the library with our Summer Reading programs. /sigh

Work is work.

These Things Go Through Your Head When There's a Man On Your Back

(Blog title stolen from Tori Amos, who suffered this hell)

As I followed the stories coming out of the Congressional testimony by our women's Olympic gymnasts about the years of sexual abuse they endured, the thing that horrified me most wasn't their ordeal at the hands of their rapist (and what they suffered WAS/STILL IS HORRIFYING).

What horrified more than THAT was the ordeal those women suffered at the hands of the legal authorities who failed to protect them, and worse failed to believe them (via Ailsa Chang, Vincent Acovino, and Justine Kenin at NPR): 

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ALY RAISMAN: It disgusts me that we are still fighting for the most basic answers and accountability over six years later.

CHANG: That is Aly Raisman, who, along with three other Olympic Team U.S.A. gymnasts - Simone Biles, Maggie Nichols and McKayla Maroney - told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI mishandled its investigation of Larry Nassar. Here is Simone Biles.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SIMONE BILES: To be clear - sorry.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Take your time.

BILES: To be clear, I blame Larry Nassar. And I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse.

CHANG: McKayla Maroney said the FBI did not report her abuse for 14 months and falsified her testimony when they did.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MCKAYLA MARONEY: Let's be honest. By not taking immediate action from my report, they allowed a child molester to go free for more than a year. And this inaction directly allowed Nassar's abuse to continue. What is the point of reporting abuse if our own FBI agents are going to take it upon themselves to bury that report in a drawer...?

Let's repeat that part: Maroney accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of falsifying her testimony. They not only ignored what she said, they altered it so that everyone else wouldn't believe it.

And it allowed sexual predator Larry Nassar - now serving essentially life in prison for numerous counts of sexual criminal conduct - to keep assaulting young girls while that "investigation" did nothing.

It's as though law enforcement still hasn't figured out the one common thing about rapists and sex predators: THEY DO NOT STOP AT ONE VICTIM. Rapists and assaulters and stalkers and pedophiles will not stop until stopped. The second the FBI had reports from multiple women that Nassar was a threat, THEY SHOULD HAVE STEPPED IN. Someone in charge should have made efforts to separate Nassar from his source of victims.

Yet no one did.

When the FBI did investigate, it turned out they repeatedly mishandled information and failed to follow their own agency's policies. To quote the internal DOJ investigation:

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to allegations of sexual abuse of athletes by former USA Gymnastics physician Lawrence Gerard Nassar with the urgency that the allegations required. We also found that the FBI Indianapolis Field Office made fundamental errors when it did respond to the allegations, failed to notify the appropriate FBI field office (the Lansing Resident Agency) or state or local authorities of the allegations, and failed to take other steps to mitigate the ongoing threat posed by Nassar.

After eight months of inaction by the FBI Indianapolis Field Office, the FBI Los Angeles Field Office received the same allegations. The OIG found that while the Los Angeles Field Office took numerous investigative steps, it too failed to notify the FBI Lansing Resident Agency or state or local authorities of the allegations, and failed to take other steps to mitigate the ongoing threat posed by Nassar. The FBI Lansing Resident Agency did not become aware of the Nassar allegations until after the Michigan State University Police Department (MSUPD) executed a search warrant on Nassar’s residence in September 2016, following the MSUPD’s receipt of separate complaints of sexual abuse by Nassar, and discovered child pornography at Nassar’s residence. During this period from July 2015, when the allegations were first reported to the FBI, to September 2016, Nassar continued to treat gymnasts at Michigan State University, a high school in Michigan, and a gymnastics club in Michigan. Ultimately the investigations determined that Nassar had engaged in sexual assaults of over 100 victims and possessed thousands of images of child pornography, led to his convictions in federal and state court, and resulted in Nassar being sentenced to incarceration for over 100 years...

The specific findings of the report include:

Officials in the Indianapolis Field Office violated numerous FBI policies in handling the Nassar allegations. Specifically, officials in the Indianapolis Field Office:

* failed to formally document a July 28, 2015 meeting with USA Gymnastics during which the FBI first received the allegations against Nassar;

* failed to properly handle and document receipt and review of relevant evidence, i.e., a thumb drive provided by USA Gymnastics President Stephen D. Penny, Jr.;

* failed to document until February 2017 an interview of a gymnast that was conducted on September 2, 2015, during which the gymnast alleged sexual assault by Nassar; and failed to transfer the Nassar allegations to the FBI Lansing Resident Agency, where venue most likely would have existed for potential federal crimes.

Indianapolis Field Office Special Agent in Charge (SAC) W. Jay Abbott and an Indianapolis Field Office Supervisory Special Agent (Indianapolis SSA) made false statements. Specifically, we concluded that the gymnast interview summary that the Indianapolis SSA drafted in February 2017, 17 months after the interview took place, contained materially false statements and omitted material information. We further concluded that the Indianapolis SSA made materially false statements when twice questioned by the OIG about the victim interview. In addition, we concluded that Abbott made materially false statements during his OIG interviews to minimize errors made by the Indianapolis Field Office in connection with the handling of the Nassar allegations.

Abbott violated FBI policy and exercised extremely poor judgment under federal ethics rules when he, without prior authorization, communicated with Penny about a potential job opportunity with the U.S. Olympic Committee, an entity with which Penny had professional connections. Abbott communicated with Penny about the potential job opportunity while the two continued to discuss the allegations against Nassar and while Abbott took an active role in conversations about the FBI’s public statements regarding USA Gymnastics’ handling of those allegations. Abbott should have known—and we found that he in fact did know—that this conduct would raise questions regarding his impartiality. Further, Abbott applied for the position with the U.S. Olympic Committee, and then falsely denied that he had done so when questioned by the OIG on two separate occasions...

Jesus Christ.

That the Department of Justice let these men retire or simply fired from their jobs is part of the overall mishandling of this situation. These men should be charged for their active crimes of falsifying statements and their own lies.

All because of what? Why the hell did the FBI - and nearly every other agency involved in this nightmare - screw up, at some points intentionally?

Because too many men in law enforcement, too many men in power, simply don't treat rape as a serious matter.

Just look at everything else out there where our legal system is failing rape victims and women in general:

• Preferential treatment to male suspects, especially when those suspects are celebrities, men of wealth, and men of power. Hi, Bill Cosby, Jeffrey Epstein, Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein, and too many politicians and millionaires to count. Those men only answered after decades of people in authority looking the other way couldn't afford to look away anymore... and even then the likes of Cosby got out early because a DA screwed up an earlier plea arrangement.
• Rape kits left untested for years if not decades, reducing the likelihood of catching rapists who keep raping while the evidence to stop them degrades into uselessness.
• Investigators who harass, confront, and mishandle rape victims and assault accusers in ways that convince rape victims they'll never be believed in court and never see any justice served.

Even with rape as an act of violence, not only physical abuse but emotional abuse and spiritual abuse, and everybody who can do something to stop it - the cops in charge, the attorneys in charge, the judges in charge, the juries empaneled - keep acting like they want to handle anything else. That it's not worth their time, that the rape was "miscommunication" or that the woman "asked for it" with her clothes, her hairstyle, her drunken state, her demeanor, her bitchy attitude, or the shape of the moon that night.

Again, the word here. Horrifying.

One of the other shocking things is how little research into rape accusations there's been. Nothing to clarify or confirm the reality of how many rape victims there are, and if the allegations are valid (given how so many cops and DAs worry that rape victims are "ginning up" their stories for revenge or blackmail). If there's been any research, it keeps getting overlooked: There was one case study in 2010 done... which found only 8 percent or so of rape allegations were false. That meant 92 PERCENT OF RAPE ALLEGATIONS WERE REAL... and yet our legal system still treats rape like it's hearsay and we barely see any rape charges filed at all. Until it's too late and there's more victims piled up to make the "hearsay" into "Oh God they were telling the truth all along." 

Yes, there is due process. Yes, there should be steps to ensure the accused have their defense and day in court.

But for the love of God, the victims deserve due process too, the victims deserve their day in court to see justice served. If you're a cop or a lawyer or a doctor or a school administrator or a teacher or a social worker and someone's telling you they're a victim of assault or rape, you have the moral obligation to trust them and take the time to find out and make the effort to ensure rape doesn't happen again.

And yet here we are, finding more evidence our cops and investigators and administrators don't give a rat's ass.

Some of them deserve to be in jail as long as the rapist will be, for letting him flourish and rape again while they fiddled.

And what point will women trust this legal system that DOES NOT TRUST THEM?

How Fared the 2021 Olympics?

Well, all things considered the United States fared rather well at the Tokyo shindig (via Deepa Shivaram and Mandalit del Barco at NPR):

After 17 days of competition at the Tokyo Olympics, the United States finished with the most medals won overall and the most gold medals, with its 39 golds just barely beating out China, which won 38.

On the last day of the Games, the U.S. women's volleyball team secured the 39th gold medal, beating out Brazil to win the country's first gold in the sport.

Team USA is taking home 113 medals. In addition to their gold medals, U.S. athletes won 41 silver and 33 bronze medals. China, which was also second in total medals won, is bringing home 88 medals, including 32 silver and 18 bronze.

U.S. women won 66 medals — more than half of the U.S. team's tally. According to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, if the American women were a separate country, they would have ranked fourth in the world in terms of how many Olympic medals they won...

And to hell with trump anti-patriotic dismissal of our women athletes. USA! USA! USA!

There was, to be honest, a lot of concern going into these events that we were going to witness a massive COVID-19 super-spreader event. I had spelled out an argument for cancelling these games in fear of the pandemic:

While a majority of the athletes may be vaccinated, and most of the on-site workers as well, that's no guarantee of complete immunity. The vaccines help in reducing the harmful effects, and reduces the likelihood of spreading the virus further, but there's still odds that COVID could spread and affect far too many athletes to effectively hold the sporting events...

But we're risking the reality that too many athletes intermingle - it's one of the few joys of this international event for them - and they're bound to become vectors of the pandemic towards each other. Even with Tokyo refusing to provide solid beds and condoms to discourage the sex that happens each Olympics, there's other ways of socializing and moments during competition when COVID can spread in an instant. And then you'll have hundreds sick all at once, unable to participate and likely infecting those still unvaccinated.

The Olympics organizers might be praying to every deity in the phone book, and it WILL take divine intervention to make sure most of the Olympians survive this summer...

Still a little too early to know which Gods deigned to provide good health to our global athletes, and an honest reckoning of what COVID did pop up at the games should matter (PDF via the Olympics.com website): It's looking so far that they had 33 athletes/coaches and about 105 workers test positive up to August 6.

We should also note it takes at least five days to two weeks for a Positive test to show, so not until next week should we consider these Olympics as any level of success against the pandemic.

Here's to another week or so to praying to the Sports Gods on this.

Also, another two months of praying to the Baseball Gods that the Tampa Bay Rays win the AL East again and make a serious return to the World Series. What? I gotta root for my home team, be true to your school, peeps. 

Winners and Losers on trump's Bad Day

Ahh, this has been one of those days where the Schadenfreude ("malicious joy") was tasty and warm.

First Part: I don't know if I ever told you my sports fandom, but as a long-time Tampa Bay resident I am true to my school when it comes to rooting for the Bucs (NFL), Lightning (NHL), and the Rays (MLB). Ah, if only Arena Football was still playing... 

You might have noticed it whenever I rant against donald trump: Thanks to his moronic ass, he manipulated the USFL - a spring pro football league that was struggling but popular - back in the early 1980s into a legal fight against the rival NFL that backfired on him, killed the USFL, and ended the Tampa Bay Bandits franchise. So yeah, that still hurts.

Anywho, right now is a great time to be a Tampa Bay sports fan. Our Lightning hockey team just accomplished back-to-back championship seasons (2019/2020 and 2020/2021), a difficult run in any professional sport. The Bolts have been one of the more successful southern ice hockey teams, proving the haters - the traditionalists who argue hockey should be played in cities that actually get snow - wrong with Stanley Cup wins in 2004 and a valiant effort in 2015.

Over in baseball, the Tampa Bay Rays are in the hunt for another AL East division title, having won that last season en route to their second overall World Series matchup (sadly losing to the L.A. Dodgers in 6). The Rays are at the top of the baseball world the past 13 years (since 2008) as one of the small-market teams that figured out a winning formula that's garnered a number of wild card berths, division titles, and so on. Even in the dire situation of playing in one of the worst ballparks, under constant threat of relocating, the Rays are winners while large market teams struggle to stay above .500 in the wins column.

On top of that, the Tampa Bay Bucs are coming off the high of a Super Bowl victory this past season. The first pro sports franchise in the area (1976), infamously one of the worst teams in the NFL having the first ever winless season in 1976 and losing their first 26 games, the Bucs were a laughingstock franchise due to bad ownership and dumb decisions (their rookie drafting faux pas remain some of the worst in league history). Things turned around with new ownership in the 1990s, a good coach finally leading the team (Dungy!) although he got traded out for another good coach (Chucky!) who did get the Bucs to their first Super Bowl in the 2002 season... only to have it all crash and burn by 2008 when Gruden's unbalanced team-building (over-reliance on expensive free agents) bankrupted the cap space and the team sunk back into malaise.

The Bucs went through another series of questionable coaching hires - ahem #FireSchiano - and desperation to find a franchise QB, leading up to the 2020 season when the team made the fateful decision to let could-have-been Jameis Winston go and bring in a veteran team leader... Tom Freaking Brady.

A little bit more later on about how big a move that was, because combined with an already great receiver corps (and adding Tom's BFF Gronk to the Tight End roster) and a developing defensive unit, that lineup had the Bucs' first winning season since 2010, the first playoff spot since 2007, and one of the biggest mind-blowing playoff runs in NFL history leading up to a 31-9 smackdown of the previous SB winner Kansas City Chiefs (told you back-to-back championships are hard to make).

There are few sports cities that have seen ALL of their franchise teams make the championships the same year, fewer still to have all of them WIN those championships (dammit, Rays...). Like I said, what a time to be a Tampa Bay sports fan. CHAMPA BAY, people!

We've made boat parades a thing, everybody!

Brady throwing the Lombardi Trophy at 1:05 on the YouTube clip became an instant meme.

That all said, what happened today was a recent sports tradition of the winning team visiting the White House to get congratulated by the President of the United States. So today the Buccaneers went, led by Tom Brady, who made some rather pointed jokes about his 2020 performance and the ongoing performance of a particular person by the name of trump (via Jonathan Chait at the New York Intelligencer): 

Brady made two jokes at Trump’s expense. First, he made fun of Trump for refusing to accept defeat:

Tom Brady: "Not a lot of people think that we could've won. In fact, I think about 40% of the people still don't think we won."

Biden: "I understand that."

Then, twisting the knife, he made a second joke:

Brady: “We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was. I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing and they started calling me Sleepy Tom. Why would they do that to me?”

While this sounds more gentle than this first joke, it is in fact much more deeply vicious. In Trump’s mind, Biden is a pathetic loser, and he is the winner. Like Tom Brady.

Yet here was Brady, inverting the whole hierarchy. Biden is the winner, like Brady, and Winners now are guys who get called sleepy by the Losers for making a small mistake on the way to their triumph...

I've mentioned before that trump's ego is driven by the need to be seen as a Winner at all times, as much as driven by the fear that he must never be seen as a Loser (or Sucker as he calls it). As Chait also notes:

In Trump’s mind, the two men were parallels to each other: both Winners, and natural companions on the basis of their mastery of their respective fields. “He’s a friend of mine, he’s a great guy, and he’s a great athlete obviously, but he’s a winner,” Trump told TMZ in 2016. “I think Tom is totally innocent. I think Tom is — first of all, I know him, he’s such an honorable guy, and I’m with him all the way.” Trump has repeatedly expressed his regret that he “could have had Tom Brady” as his son-in-law, rather than the nerdy Jared Kushner.

The relationship always had an asymmetric quality. Brady repeatedly expressed discomfort at Trump’s public adulation, and has declined to talk about who he voted for. In 2017, he skipped a White House invitation to celebrate a previous Super Bowl win, citing his need to attend to his ailing mother. The snub, according to the Washington Post, sent Trump into a rage...

Getting dissed like this in public will undoubtedly drive trump even further into madness. But what can trump really do? Any insult he lobs at Tom Brady will be weak and laughable. Brady has proven himself a Winner on the global stage multiple times, the only Quarterback in NFL history to win SEVEN Super Bowls and named MVP five times, holding nearly every passing record in the book, pulling this all off well into his mid-40s when most QBs retire by their 30s, and poised in 2021 to make a serious run for yet another Super Bowl with a veteran Bucs team that lost no talent from last year and may have an easier run this season.

Brady's a goddamned Winner. All trump can do is pose and pretend and brag lie about wins he never really achieved.

And now, the Second Part of the Schadenfreude Day: 

One of donald trump's closest business buddies Tom Barrack got himself hit with a ton of federal charges involving foreign shenanigans during the 2016 elections (shades of Manafort's and Flynn's shenanigans all over again). From Carrie Johnson at NPR:

Thomas Barrack, a longtime friend of Donald Trump's who chaired the former president's inauguration committee, was arrested Tuesday on federal charges that he acted as an agent of a foreign government.

Note: when the report first got out, the Justice Department had to clarify that Barrack wasn't getting arrested over the investigation into questionable fund-raising for that inauguration committee. Yeah, that's still ongoing...

Prosecutors said Barrack, 74, parlayed his close ties to the Trump White House to advance the interests of the United Arab Emirates.

Along with Barrack, Matthew Grimes, 27, of Aspen, Colo., and Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi, 43, a UAE national, are accused of acting and conspiring to act as agents of the Middle Eastern nation between April 2016 and April 2018. Grimes worked for Barrack at an investment management firm.

Prosecutors said the three defendants did not provide the required notification to the U.S. attorney general that they were acting as agents of a foreign government.

Barrack is also charged with obstructing justice and lying to federal agents...

Court papers said Barrack exploited his close ties to Trump as far back as the 2016 campaign when he inserted language favorable to the UAE into a speech about energy policy. Prosecutors said Barrack also asked for a wish list of policy goals at various points throughout the Trump administration, and they said he advanced the UAE's interests in television appearances and an opinion article...

Barrack is the latest person in or near Trump's inner circle to be charged with federal crimes...

It's like you need a scorecard to keep up with all the people in trump's personal circle getting hit with federal felony charges. Seriously, I've been doing a mental check of all the people I've ever known from high school to now, how many of them have been charged with felonies, and out of hundreds of people I can't recall a single one. Okay, my family's history of speeding tickets don't count.

I mean, just think about it. Just with the campaign handlers from 2016 - Paul Manafort dealing with Ukraine (when it was a Russian puppet state), Mike Flynn dealing with Turkey, Steve Bannon dealing with China, Roger Stone dealing with Russia - trump had too many connections to too many corrupting influences, especially linked to Russia.

All of it based on trump's desperation for wealth backed by foreign powers, so trump can pretend being a billionaire Winner when he was really a clown living on credit.

What a Sucker trump's turned out to be.

What a day to be a trump hater! MMmmmmmmm, tasty tasty Schadenfreude indeed. Now bring us more tax evasion arrests from the New York grand jury PLEASE AND THANK YOU...

The Insanity of Olympics in a Pandemic Year (w/ Update)

Update 7/25/21: So, obviously, the IOC and Japan didn't cancel the Olympics... and there's already a slew of positive cases turning up that are bound to spread. Also, many thanks to Infidel753 for including this article in the Sunday Link Round-Up!

We don't like it, but the COVID pandemic is still going strong because not enough vaccines are out there across the globe, and yet here our governments go forcing an Olympics event - delayed due to 2020 pretty much shut down by the pandemic's beginning - onto an athletic population exposing each other to Gods knows what (via Wynne Davis at NPR):

With less than a week before the opening ceremonies begin at this year's Tokyo games, at least two players on the South African soccer team have tested positive for COVID-19 inside the Olympic Village.

The two players, Thabiso Monyane and Kamohelo Mahlatsi, are the first athletes to test positive for the coronavirus at the site of the Olympic Village in the Japanese capital. A video analyst for the team, Mario Masha, also tested positive.

All three have been isolated, along with those who were in close contact with them...

The announcement of the new cases comes at a moment of deep trepidation inside Japan about the wisdom of holding the games, with Tokyo already under its fourth state of emergency since the pandemic began. With vaccination rates in the country lagging behind those in the United States and much of Europe, there are fears that an influx of thousands from around the world could spark new outbreaks. The state of emergency will mean no spectators during the games inside the capital, but even without international fans, more than 18,000 people are expected to come in for the games.

Though the results announced Sunday are the first cases to appear in athletes, there are growing concerns that others will test positive before competition begins later this week...

COVID can hide in a person between five to fourteen days, meaning the negative tests yesterday won't cover for the positive tests likely to trigger next week at the start of the Olympics itself.

While a majority of the athletes may be vaccinated, and most of the on-site workers as well, that's no guarantee of complete immunity. The vaccines help in reducing the harmful effects, and reduces the likelihood of spreading the virus further, but there's still odds that COVID could spread and affect far too many athletes to effectively hold the sporting events.

Seriously. We are in no current shape to have an Olympics right now. The IOC and the many nations participating in this need to step back, cancel the damn thing.

We've cancelled Olympics before, when world wars condemned us. We've had boycotts between the two sides of the Cold War. Did it break the hopes of athletes of those eras who missed out? Yes, there were many who missed their chances to shine on the global stage. But at least we didn't risk their lives in the process.

There's only one reason the IOC is pushing to get these Olympics done: Money. Television broadcasting rights are in the billions, a lot of advertising revenue at stake, and dammit someone at NBC (and any other overseas networks) will want to get paid for this.

But we're risking the reality that too many athletes intermingle -it's one of the few joys of this international event for them - and they're bound to become vectors of the pandemic towards each other. Even with Tokyo refusing to provide solid beds and condoms to discourage the sex that happens each Olympics, there's other ways of socializing and moments during competition when COVID can spread in an instant. And then you'll have hundreds sick all at once, unable to participate and likely infecting those still unvaccinated.

The Olympics organizers might be praying to every deity in the phone book, and it WILL take divine intervention to make sure most of the Olympians survive this summer.

It is utter madness we are relying on that instead of common goddamn sense. Cancel the Olympics.

If They Boo trump a Third Time, We Call That a MAGA Hat Trick

Oh dear Gods. trump really wants to keep trying this (via Sports Illustrated which apparently can't stick to sports like SOME compromised websites mutter grumble):

BamaCentral has learned that the University of Alabama is making preparations for President Donald Trump to attend the LSU game at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday.
Numerous sources have confirmed his expected visit.

The potential No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, depending on the initial rankings by the College Football Playoff committee Tuesday night, will be shown on CBS at 2:30p.m. CT. 

trump has already gotten boo'ed at a game he thought he'd be cheered at with baseball, then got boo'ed at a fight night with a crowd he - and a lot of other people - assumed would cheer him.

Now he's going for what he and his peeps HAVE to think is the safest spot for him to show up: Fritters Alabama, uh Tuscaloosa Alabama. The key point is, it's in a safely Redneck Conservative State playing a safely Redneck sporting event for a safely Redneck college conference.

He's shown up for this type of sporting event before, attending the College National Championship game back in 2017 between Alabama and Georgia. So by some level of logic this might be a safe game for him to show up for the cheers he's been desperate to hear. Given it's a game between the TOP TWO programs in the nation with guaranteed viewership, and trump is hoping to get big cheers and adulation to please that toxic ego of his.

Except, well... it might not be that safe.

The crowd for that championship game he attended was a little different than this game's. The big games tend to be stuffed with boosters and alums who are older and richer: This is a regular college game albeit - one with national viewership - but the crowds will have more college-age attendees. And trump is not polling well with college-level voters and especially that age bracket.

And times have changed. In 2017 trump was barely into his office, reactions to his actions still underway. It's been two-three years now and people know what trump represents. There's also the impeachment factor, where the public exposure of trump's scandals are hurting his approval numbers (which have NEVER gotten above 50 percent). Even a "safe" state like Alabama outside of his fanbase rallies may not approve of the man.

Throw in the mood most game attendees will be in. This WAS going to be a major college game to determine who owns the SEC West (and top dibs on the championship game in January). But now it's a political event, where everybody knows that trump attending ONLY so trump can get his damn cheers in front of national television. trump is hijacking a Big Game for his own damn self. And some fans may not take kindly to that and boo him out of spite.

My two cents on the matter is: To the Bama fans and to the LSU fans planning to attend, just don't go in. Keep tailgating in the parking lots. Listen to the game on your radios and watch on portable TVs. Don't let trump hijack YOUR game for HIS ego. Give him an empty stadium and root for your teams in other ways.

You don't have to boo him and you don't have to cheer him. Just let him sit in silence. Right now, that's the punishment trump deserves.

What If You Held a World Series and trump Got Booed At It? (w/ Update)

It'd probably sound and look a lot like this:

And it didn't end there, as reported via NBC News (by Richie Duchon):

Some fans broke out into chants of "Lock him up!" after Trump was shown on the stadium's big screen during a moment to honor a group of Marines...

The chants against the president harked back to campaign rallies in 2016 during which fans of Trump would often break into chants of "Lock her up!" in reference to Hillary Clinton.

So here's trump and his White House handlers, probably thinking that in the wake of this weekend's raid against the ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that he'd be received in public as a hero, cheered on by fans or at least respectfully applauded while the stadium cameras flanked his appearance with views of military servicemen/servicewomen.

You'll notice from Jesse Yomtov's Twitter video that the crowds cheered the Marines, booed trump, and went back to cheering more Marines. trump and his people didn't fool a damn soul.

Whereas Obama's reception following the death of Bin Laden was positive, it's pretty clear that outside of trump's comfort zone - his MAGA rallies - trump is not going to be received well at all.

This is where Machiavelli's warnings ring true: In the matter of being Loved or Feared as a leader, always avoid the worst possible outcome of being Hated, which trump is to more than 60 percent of the population (and to 90 percent of a solidly Democratic place like the entire Northern Virginia-Boston corridor).

For all the talk about sports being a pure American pastime and how rabidly conservative those fans could get, that's more myth than fact. Liberals and Moderates (Go Rays) are just as obsessed with sports as Conservatives. I've been racking my brain for the past hour trying to think of a "safe place" trump could appear in public where the sports crowd would openly cheer him. For all the Red state places - maybe Texas, maybe Arizona, most likely Tennessee and/or Alabama - you have to remember the cities are heavily liberal enclaves (or at least with enough moderates to make you wonder).

For all the hype about NFL fans getting enraged about athletes kneeling for Black Lives Matter, that is just a vocal faction: There's an equally large anti-trump faction who'd boo trump (especially anybody who rooted for a USFL team back in the 80s).

This has to be a shock obviously for trump. he has lived with the fantasy that wherever he goes people will cheer him (and maybe even be grateful to him). To have an entire stadium boo him and even chant "Lock Him Up" - a clear and direct insult aimed at trump - is not going to improve his constantly dour mood. I'm willing to bet as soon as he can, his next set of tweets will insult every Nats fan from here to back again.

And the next week is going to be him forcing himself onto crowds to make them cheer for him, by hook or by crook. trump won't be happy until he forces reality to fit his bubble.

Gods help us.

Added: People are reminding each other on Twitter how the Nationals had the ceremonial First Pitch thrown by Chef Jose Andres, a vocal critic of trump's and essentially the best guy to symbolically punch trump in the face every chance that arises. There's no link to video yet but I've heard - I'm not watching, I swore if trump showed up I wouldn't - that Andres got a standing ovation. That is sweet stuff.

Update 11/3/19: And then trump tried attending a fight night in New York City, for an Ultimate Fighting Championship (he and the UFC league owner are good buddies, because trump hosted the UFCs back when no one else would). THAT did not go so well either (via Balloon-Juice).

The polling may say one thing - that trump has 40 percent approval - but the real world is clearly showing something else. We have to remember most Republicans getting polled are vocally giving him support simply because of their partisan affiliation: Because they HAVE to approve their own guy even when he's screwing up. But when given an opportunity, in a public place that's NOT a rally, surrounded by communities that aren't all MAGA hat wearing a-sholes, there are a lot of Americans who will express this level of vitriol when they can.

This never happened to Obama in public places to the sporting events he attended. Dubya had some boo birds for the baseball games he went to - especially after 2005 - but he never got this level of vocal hatred from the fans.

trump is arguably the most reviled President Loser of the Popular Vote of modern memory.

What's This About MY BOYS the Tampa Bay Rays Playing In Cuba

So yeah, I'm a bit of a sports nut.

So yeah, I'm from the Tampa Bay area and I root for my homeboys. GO BUCS! GO BOLTS! GO... uh, we don't have a basketball team. Oh, and GO RAYS!

So yeah, I'm a little stoked that my baseball team THE TAMPA BAY RAYS are going to travel to Cuba this week and play an exhibition game against the Cuban National team. It's the first trip since 1999 by a major league franchise to the country that produces a ton of pro-caliber baseball talent and yet due to our political divisions we have no official contact with them.

But this trip is a little different. This time the Rays are playing to a Cuban crowd at a time our American-set sanctions are lifting one by one to free up travel and communication between the U.S. and Cuba. The relationship between our two nations have been at their best ever since 1960.

And this is a huge game because President Barack Obama - the President whose foreign policy efforts toward diplomacy allowed this thaw to occur, the President who has bucked forty-plus years of hardline policy that never resolved matters - will be in attendance. Obama is traveling to Cuba this week as part of an attempt to further open relations, make more arrangements and deals to bring to an end more than five decades of Cold-War hostility between two nations separated by 90 miles of Caribbean waters.

What will it be like for the Rays to be there during a potentially historic week? A week where Obama could finalize deals with Cuba to establish open elections, end the arrests of political dissidents, normalize business ties and resolve reparations of lost properties from the 1950s? Where Obama could bring back to DC a major peace treaty that even the most hardline obstructionist Republican Senators know they can't shut down without killing themselves?

Okay, maybe that doesn't all happen. But isn't it pretty to think so?

The game is going to be on Tuesday March 22 during the afternoon, I gotta work that day but I'm going to do what I can to listen in or view via the Intertubes.

This is an historic event.

I hope the Rays win.

While I Was Away

So, to the seven readers who keep track of this blog, you may have noted I was off on vacation with limited access to updating the site.  For what I've kept up with during my trip to the DC/Baltimore area (hello, Gettysburg National Park!  Remember me?  Yeah, the fat guy in the UF sports cap), this is what I'm noting on my return here:

• Donald Trump doubled down on being a douche.
• Jim Webb announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination and pretty much nobody noticed.
• Chris Christie announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination and pretty much everyone mocked him.
• Greece voted in a referendum to turn down the EU's offer to fix their debt crisis, mostly because the EU's offer was an austerity program that would have made the 2001 Argentinian deal look like the Marshall Plan (if you know your history, you will understand how bad a deal the EU offer was).  This link to Interfluidity's article goes into a long and complex explanation of what led to the vote and why Greece was fighting the bad deal, but it's worth the read:

• It is difficult to overstate how deeply Europe’s leaders betrayed the ideals of European integration in their handing of the Greek crisis... Regulatory mistakes and agency issues within banks encouraged poor credit decisions. Spanish banks lent into overpriced real estate, and German banks lent to a state they knew to be weak. Current account imbalances within the Eurozone — persistent and unlikely to reverse without policy attention — implied as a matter of arithmetic that there would be loan flows on a scale that might encourage a certain indifference to credit quality. These were European problems, not national problems. But they were European problems that festered while the continent’s leaders gloated and took credit for a phantom prosperity. When the levee broke, instead of acknowledging errors and working to address them as a community, Europe’s elites — its politicians and civil servants, its bankers and financiers — deflected the blame in the worst possible way. They turned a systemic problem of financial architecture into a dispute between European nations. They brought back the very ghosts their predecessors spent half a century trying to dispel. Shame...

• Ta-Nehisi Coates is releasing a new book Between the World and Me.  He's already got a rave review from Toni Morrison.  Toni NOBEL LAUREATE Morrison.  Try to imagine the amount of squee-ing Coates must have went through.  Lemme just say if I ever got a review from Neil Gaiman saying "eh, his Hero Cleanup Protocol estory doesn't have that many grammar errors in it, so..." I'd be stuck in a fanboy coma for weeks.
• Oh, and the Women's Soccer Team won the World Cup in Canada. USA USA USA USA USA!

Tales Of Corruption: May 2015 Edition

Two separate corruption cases in the news, one common theme.

First, the ongoing scandal that is FIFA:

FIFA, the notoriously corrupt and yet seemingly invincible governing body of world soccer, has finally landed itself an indictment that some would say is worthy of its reputation. The charges against a handful of senior FIFA officials include money laundering, racketeering, bribery and fraud. In short, the federal lawsuit alleges what millions of soccer fans have suspected all along: that FIFA officials have been using the organization's massive influence to line their pocketbooks.

It's not enough to note how long this has been a problem: for decades, FIFA has been raking in millions and then billions of questionable money using the bidding wars between nations to host World Cup games, making decisions less on quality and availability and more on how much the host nation is willing to sell out.  The recent turmoil in Brazil - where FIFA profited at the expense of the impoverished nation - is the latest set of newsworthy reports to follow.  The fate of all those quickly, poorly built stadiums highlights the waste FIFA insisted on (and still does) when creating locations for their games.

FIFA had gotten to where they could dictate to host nations laws to make their organization more powerful and profitable.  They refused any transparency in their internal affairs.  Any dissent inside and outside stifled as the men in power remained in power (until their individual bad habits got to be too much even for FIFA to hide under the rug).

And for decades no-one fought it, no-one questioned it.  Because of national pride: soccer (international football) crazy nations could not say No, could not question the demands, out of fear of retribution or embarrassment.  Nations still pandered for the opportunity to be host country every four years.  Teams pined for the opportunity to win on the field.  Fans still traveled to rickety stadiums in poor urban (and in Brazil's case rural) zones and spent money to FIFA's delight.

Is it any surprise an organization would turn corrupt so fast, so deep?

The news punditry seems to be caught between awe and surprise that any charges at the level of FIFA's top offices were ever brought.  But we shouldn't be: sooner or later this much corruption collapses on itself.  The sin of pride by other nations got swamped by the pride and arrogance of the men who stayed in power too long.  Sepp Blatter has been in charge of FIFA since 1998, pretty much a turning point in how corrupt that organization became, and remains the most obvious problem in that organization that hadn't been arrested (yet).  Let this Slate article document the atrocities (of which I'll list a few):

...listing the seemingly unending litany of corruption allegations against the organization Blatter has run since 1998 and has been an official at since 1975.  ...with this just-ended World Cup and the police allegations of an illegal ticket sales scheme by FIFA’s ticketing and hospitality partner, a company in which Blatter’s nephew has a minority stake. Blatter presided over the decision to hand the £342 million contract to his nephew’s company back in 2007, and it wasn’t the first time he was alleged to have funneled cash to that particular family member...

...In 2002, Blatter was accused by FIFA’s then secretary general and erstwhile ally Michel Zen-Ruffinen of losing the organization $500 million through financial mismanagement, corruption, and cronyism. Zen-Ruffinen also testified that Blatter had paid a FIFA referee named Lucien Bouchardeau $25,000 and promised him $25,000 more for information on a Somali soccer official, Farah Addo, who had accused Blatter of bribery in his first election bid...

...FIFA’s corruption has direct consequences in the real world. In South Africa, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on white elephant stadiums that have rarely been used following the 2010 World Cup in a country where more than half of its children were living in poverty as of 2012. Multiple local officials in that country were reported to have been murdered, allegedly for whistle-blowing or other involvement in stadium fraud.
In Brazil, a $300 million, 40,000-plus seat stadium was built in the middle of the Amazon rainforest where potential post-Cup audiences of that size just don’t exist. That’s probably one reason why a majority of Brazilians opposed hosting this World Cup, saying the more than $11 billion price tag could be better spent on public services...

And we haven't even gotten to the part where everything tipped against FIFA, when the stench of greed became too noxious to bear: the awarding of the World Cups for 2018 and 2022 to Russia and Qatar.  While Russia is a prominent nation with enough major cities to effectively host games, it's also one of the better-documented kleptocracies on the planet with a list of human rights abuses and current border issues with Ukraine.

And Qatar has been a disaster since Day One.  There were open questions about having a nation right on the equator hosting summer games in high heat environments, with each new question poorly answered than the last.  The games have to be moved to winter months, conflicting with other nations' scheduled football seasons.  Qatar simply does not have the infrastructure - the major cities of hotels, restaurants, transit service, communication hubs - needed to host so many games at once, and some places designated as locales don't even exist on the maps.

And in order to build these non-existent places to house insanely expensive stadiums, Qatar has resorted to a criminally bloody system of exported workers working overtime and in hostile conditions to the point of exhaustion and DEATH.  From Vox's report:

Working conditions are, in many cases, horrendous. Multiple reports from Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the International Trade Union Confederation, and even a contractor employed by the Qatari government have come to basically the same conclusion: migrant workers frequently don't get paid for months at a time, are prevented from leaving the company or the country, and are forced to work in impossibly hot weather and conditions that virtually guarantee some will die.

In one migrant worker labor camp Amnesty researchers visited, "sewage was leaking from the ground — apparently from the camp's septic tank — and flowing down into the street, where it had collected in a large stagnant pool. Piles of rubbish were mounting up at the camp, apparently because the company had not paid for them to be collected, and the piles of rubbish attracted swarms of insects."

There was no electricity or running water. When Amnesty informed the Qatari authorities of this, they provided a small generator — and then took it away three days later.

And the death toll is already beyond the measure of other comparable mass projects:

From the Washington Post

Construction work should not be a death sentence.  And yet FIFA - which is supposed to oversee these projects and ensure the host nations are obeying laws and worker safety - has done nothing about it.  If the organization is feeling like it has few friends at the moment, it's because this corruption has a body count other nations can no longer ignore.  It's gotten to where even FIFA's headquarters home Switzerland is investigating charges of bribery involving the Russia and Qatar bids.

That's the current status of one scandal.  The second scandal just erupted today, although it has its roots back more than a decade by now.  Former Speaker of the U.S. House Dennis Hastert - the Least Powerful Republican With an Actual Title of the last twenty years - has been charged with lying to investigators and hiding evidence regarding a complex extortion/blackmail scheme.  To David Graham's Atlantic article:

But reading between the lines of the indictment against Hastert suggests a darker story than political corruption. In or about 2010, according to the indictment, Hastert—a former high-school teacher and coach—met with an unnamed individual from Yorkville, Hastert’s hometown. They “discussed past misconduct by defendant against Individual A that had occurred years earlier.” In effect, Hastert fell victim to blackmail, the indictment alleges: He “agreed to provide Individual A $3.5 million in order to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A.” (Since leaving the House, Hastert has become a highly paid lobbyist.)

Guessing games about who Individual A is should dot the blogosphere / twitterverse for the next two days.  And who's got $3.5 million to throw around like that to pay off a blackmail demand?!  Oh, right.  Insider Lobbyists.

Hastert then allegedly began withdrawing cash from his bank accounts to pay to the individual. But federal laws require financial institutions to report transactions greater than $10,000, and Hastert made a series of them. In April 2012, the indictment alleges, employees of Hastert’s bank questioned him about the withdrawals, and he promptly reduced his withdrawals to smaller amounts, to escape the requirement. Authorities were already watching, however, and they began investigating Hastert for structuring currency transactions to evade federal requirements—itself a crime.

"Can't get away with nothing" is probably what Hastert was thinking when he tried to hide transactions that were illegal to hide in the first place.  So why was Hastert acting like that in the first place?  Committing acts of desperation that were bound to draw attention and investigation?

Because he thought he could get away with it.  He was an ex-Speaker with political and financial connections up the wazoo.  He thought he could lie to investigators and have his own identity protect him from further inquiry.  Because power got to his head long ago, and with that power came pride and arrogance and recklessness.  It may not be on the scale of evil and corruption that FIFA leader Sepp Blatter is still committing at this moment, but it still reeks of damage and hypocrisy.

Let justice be done.  It would be nice to think Sepp Blatter will lose Friday's election for the Presidency - his incumbency has gone longer than FDR's - in the wake of the arrests and public outcry over Qatar, but that organization's system is so rigged in his favor I doubt it.  If he wins, he still faces the possibility the EUFA - the European leagues and the most prestigious part of the world football organization - will threaten to leave, destroying FIFA's very existence (A World Cup without Germany or Italy is no World Cup).  More likely is that the recently arrested are in position to turn testimony in exchange for saving their skins, any one of them close enough to Blatter to hopefully reveal a key link to justify slapping handcuffs on the corrupt SOB.

As for Hastert, it's got to come out just what the hell he was paying Individual A to keep secret.  Whoever it is has got to be on the run or planning his own deal to avoid charges of blackmail.  Either way, Hastert is toast: it's merely a question if the sin he's hiding is his own... or someone else's.