Visiting Column #44 -- My COVID-19 Figures or Yours

I got a tweeted reply today to something I had written, in regard to the status of breweries in North and South Carolina relative to Wuhan virus handling:

"If masks work, why are some businesses forced to stay closed? On the flip side, if masks don’t work, why are we all being forced to wear them?"

I have an answer for him, but it was going to take too long for a tweet and, anyway, the answer is fairly deep.

The first part of the answer is that, as I think the science is fairly clear on, masks are a pretty ineffective way to avoid getting the virus, but a fairly decent way to avoid spreading the virus.  Follow?  According to the figures, face masks are really for the infected person to avoid spreading it through coughing, sneezing or other means of expelling virus-laden droplets.

The second part is the harder part, since almost anything said or written dealing with Wuhan virus spreading is subject to political spin, and I'm more interested in factual stuff.  That's why I used the word "stuff", since it's real technical and I'm an MIT guy.

I might have the virus.

I don't know, because I have no symptoms and have not been tested, and I don't think I have it, but I have no idea.  You see, I have not been tested because I have no symptoms.

And that's the thing.  Neither have a lot of people; they don't have symptoms.  We don't find out if they do or do not have the virus, because they're not tested.

Do you get the missing part of all this?  Of all the people exposed to the virus and who would test positive for it, some percentage are symptomatic and the rest not.  Of all the positive-test people symptomatic, some percentage die and the rest recover.  Two different things. Pause on that for a second.

We do know that in this country, that second percentage is about four or five percent now, and maybe above 5% in some countries with not-great medical facilities.  So in the USA, about 5% of people with the virus and who show symptoms die, very skewed toward the very elderly.  That's about what it is with the flu, although the flu doesn't skew as badly toward the elderly.  As one example, in Minnesota as of this week, more people in Minnesota over 100 years old have died of COVID-19 than Minnesotans under 50.

But I digress.

While we know the second figure, the mortality rate for those people with symptoms who test positive, we do not know the other figure at all yet -- that is, we don't know what percentage of people exposed to COVID-19 show any symptoms!

We don't know that because we have not taken a population -- a city, a state -- and tested everyone to see what the infection rate is.  There are not enough tests to do that, but it sure would be a good thing to know.  It is possible, friends, that 50% of the USA would test positive, and I'm not kidding.

While I realize that not having that figure makes this article a bit incomplete, the point of the piece is just that -- something we do not know, that would affect policy greatly if we did.  For example, let's say that only 50% of infected people show symptoms (I'm expecting it is even less, but let's be conservative).  That means that the 1.8 million symptomatic cases in the USA as of today is actually from almost four million infections, and the death rate is only 2.5%, not 5%.

But it could be much more extreme than that; we know that many names listed as COVID-19 deaths are not.  It is also certainly possible that only 20% of people exposed (and who would thus test positive) become symptomatic.  That means that the death rate for all positive tests would be 1%, and that is less than the flu, for which we don't shut the economy down.

So masks ...

The question from the fellow on Twitter was why, if masks don't work, we have to wear them and why, if they do, we need to shut down businesses.  Good question.  And after the missing data I point out above, you should see the answer.

We know that masks are for the spreader, not the "spreadee."  Am I a spreader?  Well, since I've not been tested, I don't know -- and that's why I should wear a mask, because I could already be infected, and need to protect others around me.  And it is why even people without symptoms should wear them for now, because you might be infected and don't know it.

And why are businesses shut down if they do work?  Now, I don't agree with doing this (I think business should open right now and practice safety, but still be open), but it's because masks aren't 100%; they're only about 70% effective.  They would reduce the transmission rate but not eliminate it. 

So in certain business situations, with big crowds, masks would help a lot, but not be as effective as one might want.  And given the missing data on asymptomatic infections, it's possible that masks are even less effective than that 70%.

I'll be candid -- I personally think the reason "businesses are shut down" still, even after the curve is flattened, because the more leftist governors have seized on an opportunity to control their citizens, and free economies are not conducive to tight government control.  It is a rare opportunity for the left not to miss a crisis opportunity to seize power, and they don't then relinquish it readily.

But just remember -- until we know the symptomatic rate among the infected, there is some serious policy-making going on in a vacuum.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #43 -- Where Goes the Judge?

Yes, this is about Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, and I sure as heck don't like having to write it and to be hearing about the case.

But this is also about gestalt, which is the German word for "looking at the whole freaking thing", which is what we need to do in the Flynn case.

So let's quickly review.  After Donald Trump was elected in November of 2016, and after he had started to create his Cabinet and senior staff, but before Barack Obama left office and still had power, there was a phone call.  Lt. Gen. Flynn had been named the incoming National Security Advisor, and was speaking to the Russian ambassador to the USA.

Obama had just imposed some mild sanctions against the Russians for their attempt to meddle in the 2016 elections, and Flynn was saying to the ambassador not to retaliate; that the new Trump Administration was going to look at the sanctions first to see if they were warranted.

Now, Obama hated Flynn.  He hated that Flynn wouldn't go along with Obama's public assertions that Al Qaeda was essentially done for, which he needed the general to support, so he could pose the "I stopped Al Qaeda" narrative for his, you know, legacy.  Flynn would have none of that.

The intelligence community leadership (the political appointees, not the agents) hated Flynn as well, because he planned to do some reorganization of national intelligence, and that would expose some of their leadership's missteps.  So a lot of people did not want Flynn to have a role in the new administration, and those people generally didn't have ethics.

The intelligence folks had been recording all the conversations the ambassador had with Americans, and that included the one with Flynn.  So James Comey, part of that cabal, sent FBI agents to meet with Flynn and entrap him -- one actually made a note in the meeting to that effect, which was not made known to Flynn or his legal team.  Never mind that they came back from the meeting noting that he had been truthful; no matter that he had not been told he was being investigated.

It's not legal to expose the name of an American citizen, in this case Flynn, on an intelligence-wiretapped phone call -- unless a request to "unmask" the American is filed.  Gee whiz, all of a sudden everyone in the Obama administration from Joe Biden down to the janitor filed an unmasking request, and one of them (or more) leaked the contents of the call to the Washington Post.

Flynn was then charged with lying to the FBI, and then threatened that if he didn't plead guilty, they'd go after his son.  As one of the Obamist cabal said, "If the FBI wants to get you, they can."  So Flynn pleaded guilty, lost his job, and incurred $6 million in legal fees, losing his house in the process.

Of course it ultimately came out that the FBI withheld evidence that would have cleared Flynn, and his new lawyers and the Justice Department, both realizing that the plea was inappropriate, went back before the judge, Emmet Sullivan, where the United States of America withdrew the charges.  Simple as that.

Not so fast.  Judge Sullivan huffed and puffed and decided that he would allow amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs, from parties with no connection to the case, as to why Flynn's withdrawing of his plea should constitute perjury (!).  He then appointed another former judge, John Gleeson, to -- get this -- challenge the Justice Department's withdrawal of its charges!

That's where the "gestalt" thing comes in.  Look at the whole thing, and ask why Sullivan isn't.

An incoming government official is framed in a perjury trap for talking to the Russian ambassador, which he is completely permitted to do as, you know, part of his job.  He is threatened by the FBI, which is trying to "get" him, with going after his son, so he pleads guilty and loses his job, still not having committed a crime.  We find evidence that the FBI phonied up their actions, so the DoJ pulled its charges three years later, which should never have been filed in the first place.

That is the whole picture.  That is "gestalt."

But the judge is not happy about that.  He's unhappy that the DoJ admitted it framed Flynn, I guess.  And so he appoints someone who, by the way, has already written anti-Flynn newspaper commentary, to try to fight the actions of DoJ in withdrawing charges it should never have filed.  All the while, Flynn is paying lawyers a boatload of money to defend himself against corruptly-filed charges.

Why is the judge not dismissing the charges, tossing them out of court, and demanding the testimony of the actual guilty parties, the Obama officials and FBI administrators who started this whole mess?  Why is he not looking at Flynn as the aggrieved party as opposed to the victim of a government-wide plot to ruin him?

Good questions all.  But the mainstream media are not asking them.

Maybe they can't spell "gestalt."

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #42 -- Nothing New, Apparently

It has been a while since the last column here, so I thought it might be a good idea to share that yours truly is still alive and well, holed up in quarantine but doing fine.  The bigger news is that there didn't seem to be a lot to write about, at least in the sense that I could share an opinion.

"What?", I hear you cry.  "But there's this pandemic, and ...".

Well, sure there is.  But alone among the masses, I don't know that there is a lot to have an actual opinion on, you know, where there is a point to be made.  The facts are what they are, which is that Red China somehow became aware of the virus and its transmission last November or so, and lied their red butts off about it while they were buying up every protective mask they could get their filthy red hands on, including ones they're now selling to the governor of California at inflated prices.

So I suppose you could have an opinion on what is the deserved punishment for Beijing, and maybe I do.  I'd like those artificial islands in the South China Sea or wherever they are to have a MOAB dropped on them, but I'd be equally OK with every penny of Chinese assets in the USA seized and held for potential civil settlements by victims of the Wuhan virus -- medical and economic.

I'd be equally OK if, instead of tying up the courts with individual cases, the USA simply confiscated the cash value of the assets to replenish the Treasury for the cost of the stimulus and Paycheck Protection bills that were necessitated by the Red Chinese lies, deceptions and actions.  That would be fine.  Or we could simply declare that the entirety of the national debt that is owed to Red China is no longer owed.  That's good, too.

But in fact, the reason I'm not full of opinions is that as a nation, we had to wing this thing.  Every step taken by every level of government, all through the process, has been based on "ground truth", i.e., what we know on that day.  For the most part, government has had to say "We know A; we project B over time C; so we think the best course of action is X."  There was no time for hindsight.

How do you criticize that?  President Trump's first major decision was very early on, and that was to stop all flights from Red China.  The left screamed "racism" because, well, that's what they do, but that really was the logical step to take, don't make the problem worse while we're figuring out what the problem is.  Even the left knew that was the right thing to do; they just couldn't admit it, because, well, Trump.

His next major decision was to delegate the rules of engagement and operation -- i.e., what to close down and when -- to the governors.  New York City was a mess, but Scott City, Kansas (where the United Nations should be, as I argue here), was not.  Thousands of such contrasts existed, the president reasoned, so the sensible tack was to let those decisions be made more locally and not have the Federal government mandate rules that were needed in some places but crippling to others.  Opinion?  Perfect sense, there, nothing to argue about.

All along the way, and that "way" has now been more than two months, Trump has been saying that we needed to focus on opening the nation for business as soon as it was possible.  That would mean stages, of course -- certain businesses first, then others; certain protections required first, then fewer -- and also that the movement to the next stage would be a local, not a Federal decision.  If the governor of Texas felt that the state could advance to stage two, he could (and would) do so, even if the governor of Massachusetts did not.

Isn't that common sense?  How does anyone not think that was the right idea?  So no, I have no real opinion to share, because there is no reason for contention.

Well, OK, so I do have an observation.  If anyone ever thought that liberalism and the left in general were not all about grabbing and holding power, I would think that they have firmly grasped the notion now that they are only about grabbing and holding power.

Note that the left and the media have taken the position that bills, intended to borrow money that we don't have to provide funds for working people to pay their mortgages and feed their families, should be gummed up with all manner of things about voting, along with giving more to the Kennedy Center, and shoveling unrestricted taxpayer money to incompetent cities.

What was it that Rahm Emanuel, Obama's sidekick and later mayor of Chicago, said?  "Never let a good crisis go to waste."  In a joint endorsement video this week, Hillary Clinton quoted him, as if it were a good thing and not a contemptible admission of the left's political tactics.

Everything the left is doing now; everything they are saying, is toward slowing the economy, keeping more government more in charge, putting a bigger stranglehold on the American citizen, suppressing freedom.  It is all in the name of adding power to the government, a government that they think they will eventually take over to the point of dictatorship with them as the dictators.  The voting laws they propose are meant to ensure that.

We are lucky that they were not able to do even worse in the first two years of the Obama presidency, when they had the House, a filibuster-proof Senate and the White House.  The voters rebelled at what they were able to shove through and kicked the Democrats out of the House majority. 

We are lucky that a no-nonsense guy like President Trump (and not a RINO type) won in 2016, not just to keep the Clintons and the rest of the power-mad left out of authority, but because he has the cogliones to tell the nation that what the left wants is power, and not governance.  He speaks truth to power, because the people are the power in the USA.

We are lucky that so far, the left has not corrupted our electoral system to where they could grab a choke-hold on our government and utterly corrupt it, too, much as the Obama types did when they loosed the FBI to try to frame Trump team members.

We are lucky.  OK, so yes, I have an opinion.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #41 -- Peddling that License Plate

It is certainly arguable that the greatest baseball game in recorded history took place October 21, 1975, in Fenway Park, that geriatric green grande dame in the Back Bay of the city, that has hosted Boston Red Sox games for 108 years.

That game was, of course, the sixth game of the 1975 World Series between the Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, the latter a team distinguished both by the high quality of its mid-'70s lineups and its status as the most misspelled city in major-league baseball, a status it still holds.  One "N", then two "N"s, then one "T."  Should be easy.  Isn't.

But back to the game.  I was there, and still have my ticket to prove it, if you would think it something I'd be inclined to lie about.  Turn your head four degrees to the right, it's right there.

I was 24 and working at the time as a waiter at Whimsey's, a short-lived restaurant in the John Hancock tower parking building downtown, picking up a few bucks to supplement my singing and acting income.  But the Series was not a common or expected event up there, so when the Sox were allowed, late in the season, to print playoff and World Series tickets, I dutifully and promptly sent my check in for the ticket lottery.

Surprisingly, given the massive demand, I got lucky and in September was sent two tickets for what would be the sixth game if (A) the Sox even got through the playoffs and got to the Series, and (B) neither team won four of the first five games.  I was OK with that.

By the way, check the tickets -- the price on them was what I paid -- $4.00 each.  I haven't been to a World Series game since 1975, but I'm led to believe the prices have increased since then.  Perhaps you can verify that.

I actually managed to get a ticket to Game One, scalped from a Whimsey's customer for $25, and saw Boston win the first game.  The Sox, as we all know, lost the next two but tied the series at two games each with a grueling effort by Luis Tiant in Game Four.  That made a Game Six certain.

There were, as I mentioned, two tickets, up in the center-field bleachers.  As I was single at the time, I called my brother Rich, the actual published author as opposed to myself (he wrote great historical works on the US space program), and suggested he fly up and see a Series game.  He readily agreed, and arrived for what was supposed to be game day, October 18th.

It was to be a Saturday night game, which was really great, since Rich would not miss any work and could easily fly up.  It was also monsoon season, apparently.  Some time during the day, the game was called to prevent any ballplayers drowning in the outfield, and we made plans to see the game on its postponement schedule, Sunday night, instead.  My brother could fly home Monday morning.

Yeah, yeah, I'll get to the license plate.

As we all know, the rains didn't stop, and Sunday night's game was also postponed.  I had hoped my brother could stay for the now-Monday game, but he had to leave, and headed out, leaving me with an extra ticket to an actual World Series game.  I showed up at work the next morning for the lunch rush, and thought "Who might want to go with me?"

I did what any red-blooded American guy would do, and asked the best-looking cocktail waitress, even though I'm not sure she was a baseball fan.  I'm not sure she could spell "baseball."  And she was easily three inches taller than I, not that the bar is that high, if you get the idea.  But she said she'd go, and we arranged to meet up later for the evening game.

Which, as we also know, didn't happen.  The rain had stopped, but the field was a mess and not able to host a safe baseball game.  Game Six was now on for Tuesday, except the waitress was busy and I was back left with an extra ticket.  I called up my good friend and fellow MIT alum Brian, who was my accompanist and also a baseball fan.  "Four bucks", I said.  He couldn't agree fast enough.

I probably don't have to describe the game, which is running on the MLB Network a few times this coming week, billed as the "Best Game Ever" or something like that.  I can tell you that when Fred Lynn crashed into the center-field wall trying to make a catch, he crumbled in a heap and the park went dead silent.  Imagine 35,000 people in a stadium, all silent, and all you heard were maybe 3,000 transistor radios carrying the broadcast so those of us behind the wall, with no sight line, knew what was going on.  Those of you under 30 can google what a "transistor radio" is.

I can also tell you that after the ninth inning, we all stayed standing, even between innings.  I've been tense for a ball game before, and certainly since, but this went to another level, and everyone in the park knew it.  Great game.

So -- the license plate.

Back in late 1974, when Fred Lynn was coming up for a cup of coffee at the tail end of the season, he just looked so promising as a player that I thought he'd be there as a star for years.  I had wanted to get a custom license plate, and there you have it.  Until I moved from Massachusetts in 1979, that was my plate.  SOX-19.

Naturally, I brought it with me to the game and waved it around -- a lot.  When Lynn homered in the first inning, I waved it all over the place.  When Bernie Carbo (uniform number 1) homered in the bottom of the eighth to tie the game, I covered the "9" and waved it still more.  You can see the celebration in the grainy picture below after that homer -- the bright light in the crowd below the "B" in "Boston" and a dozen people right of the white banner is the license plate as I'm waving it.  And when Fisk won the game in the 12th, well,  I didn't care what number was on it.

At that point, after the Fisk homer, it was after midnight, and Brian and I were in the midst of a screaming swarm of 35,000 fans, which slowly oozed out of the park in newly-formed sections like a mitotic amoeba. I had the plate held over my head (with a tight grip, mind you), and we left, not exactly sure where we were going to head.  I mean, you didn't want to go straight home; you were in the middle of history.

And let's face it, we were hungry.  So we decided to go to Crossroads, which was a pizza and Italian-food place back then, on Beacon St. just west of Mass. Ave., that we knew would be open at 1:00 AM.  Part of the amoeba was moving in that direction, so we just sort of rode the wave, plate held high, the three blocks over to the place.

Now, while I can't certify it, it was generally thought that the place was owned by the "friends of the friends", if you get my drift.  I didn't exactly travel in those circles, so I can't be sure, but it seems like the conventional wisdom was that you didn't cross the owner or complain about the food.  Which didn't matter, since the food was at least OK.

Brian and I walked in looking for a table, and I've still got that plate held high, and people are still screaming in joy.  About ten feet inside, a guy in a suit comes over, whom I think I then realized was the owner of the place.  Or his enforcer.  "I'll give you fifty bucks for the plate", he says.

The color drains from my face, I size up the situation quickly and realize that, perhaps, this was not the time for thinking about "hmm, how would I replace the plate."  This was an offer I couldn't refuse, like for real.  I was scared and there was one course of action.

Next thing you know, I've got a crisp $50 bill in my pocket and the plate went off to Heaven knows what glories.  The bill was crisp all right, like it had been baked in the back room.  We had a pizza, Brian went home, I went back to my flat in Brighton, and that was the story.

For the record, I called DMV the next morning and told them I had "lost" a plate and needed a replacement.  "No you didn't", I was told.  "It was stolen."  I swear, that's how the conversation went.  Apparently it was a whole lot more paperwork for DMV to replace a lost plate than a stolen one.  I didn't care; it was neither lost nor stolen, but God only knows how much paperwork would be involved in replacing a plate that was "sold."

However it worked, I got a replacement and, somehow, ultimately ended up with three of the SOX-19 plates, which I still have to this day.

And a story for you.  Go Sox ... whenever.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #40 -- Safe Spaces

I have not been on a college campus for quite some time now, not as a visitor and not as a student, but we sure hear a lot about college students.  Apparently they arrive fresh from high schools full of excitement and with brains made up of uncongealed drool glands.

Only that can explain how they have come to demand "safe spaces" on campus where they are protected from ... I'm not sure what.  I guess it is "speech" they're scared of and need protection from, because anyone who wanted to slap one of these pampered snowflakes silly would probably not be one to let a "Safe Space" sign deter them from their appointed rounds.

The speech they want protection from, as we all know, is conservatism.  They don't want to be told that socialism is innately self-destructive, that it takes from the productive to give to the unproductive, that sort of thing.  That it defeats the incentive to work, create or succeed.  The crest of the socialist party should have the Latin motto "cur te movere", which loosely translates to "Why should I bother?"

God forbid that anyone speak to these snowflakes and tell them that you actually have to work for a living to support yourselves and your family (although in a perfect world they would never be allowed to reproduce).  We can't be allowed to tell them that it's not all rainbows and unicorns, that there really are two genders, that people are not all given the same skills, talents and intellect any more than they're given the same height.

All that makes it quite evident that they don't actually want the safe spaces for themselves, to make them feel safe.  No, it actually means that their safe space is meant to prevent your speech.  Get the difference?  Safe spaces aren't a way to protect the snowflakes, they're an excuse to take away your freedom of speech.

This seems relevant as we observe, during the ongoing Chinese virus crisis, loads of hard-partying college students stuffing the beaches in Florida and elsewhere, jamming themselves together and defending their violation of "social distancing" by reminding us that they only get to do Spring Break once (yes, one student from a four-year college actually said that to a reporter), and we can't take that from them.

Therefore, they need to set the rules aside and do what they want to do, even if it means an explosion in virus exposure and these morons bringing the virus back to their respective campuses -- where, of course, it will get transmitted all over the place.  But at least the snowflakes will have their Spring Break.

The irony, of course, is that they don't need safe spaces for the things that they claim to want them for -- ideas that differ with theirs, lest they have to think for themselves and defend their positions.  They actually need to hear those so that they can learn to think.  That's exactly what they do not need safe spaces for.

You know what they do need safe spaces for?  The Chinese virus, that's what.  They need to be six feet from each other and to get the living Hades away from those mosh pits on the beaches.  Safe spaces would be rather healthy and productive there.

But nooooooooo, they can't have safe spaces where they're really needed.  That would take away their precious Spring Break and incessant partying 24/7.  Colleges give them safe spaces to protect them from actual thought, and the snowflakes demand safe spaces for what they don't need protection from.

Safe spaces for public health?  Don't make them respect those, or they'll squeal like stuck pigs.

And those are the people whose college loans Bernie Sanders and Pocahontas want us to forgive.  I think I'll give that one a hard "no."

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #39 -- Danke Sehr!

February, which ends this weekend, is a peculiar month.

It is, as you are well aware, the shortest month, even in leap years like this one.  It's cold, at least above the tropics in the northern hemisphere.  It isn't so cold here, where golf courses and swimming pools are generally open year-round, but it's still short.

And one of the places where it is indeed cold in February is Germany.

Yes, Germany.  I do speak enough German to have once bought a cuckoo clock in Kaiserslautern without a word of English spoken, enough to know that President Kennedy once said to a crowd in Berlin, in German, that "I am a jelly doughnut."  Presumably he fired his speechwriters thereafter, or at least instructed them to research the use of the indefinite article.

But the cold ... it is the only explanation for why February, 2020, has had a remarkable spike in readership of this column ... in Germany, of all places.  Not only has there been a spike, but for the month of February, and unless American-based readers can catch up in the last couple days, German readers will have taken the lead as the dominant source of readership of the column.

Now I should say "thank you", or "danke sehr", I guess, and I will.  I'm extremely grateful that the thousand-plus-a-few-dozen columns here are of sufficient interest for readers anywhere, let alone in Germany.  Please keep reading.

But I have to wonder as to whether the bulk of that readership consists of actual Germans named Schultz and Müller and Langerhans, or perhaps American expats -- or on military tours over there.  Certainly I haven't written about Germany but once or twice; the word "German" has only appeared in a dozen columns, many of which were about baseball, of all things.

Curiosity has not killed our cat, who is 16 as I write this, but it certainly is taking up shop in my geriatric brain.

If you have become a recent reader of the column, and are based in Germany, I encourage you to send me a tweet and let me know how you found this column.  I am extremely grateful for the readership of this site, and would like to know about you.

I appreciate your interest.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #38 -- The Most Effective Debate Prep

I know that President Trump has said recently that he "won" all of the debates in the 2016 campaign, said in the context of his assessment of the 2020 Democrat primary debates.  Now, I think one could argue that point, at least as far as the three with Hillary Clinton, not because she herself won them, but because as debates, they weren't very effective.

Of course, debates aren't really an effective medium for this purpose regardless, since as I wrote a few years back, the format does absolutely nothing to help the voter determine how the candidates differ.  I won't rehash all that, just read the linked piece.

But I'm going to say what most Trump supporters probably feel even to this day -- it was not a shining stage for candidate Trump.  He is a counterpuncher but, more importantly, the debate stage was still a fairly new medium for him in 2016.  Remember, he is a goal-oriented person and leader, and having not actually been in government to that point, he would have not been completely prepared to detail how he would get to the goals he had campaigned on.

But the debates are still what they were -- biased reporters asking biased questions, intended to help the Democrat and embarrass the Republican (oh, try to tell me that's not the case).  And until you have taken lots and lots of those questions, and until you have had a track record enabling you to answer them with an underpinning of actual policy, it's a different case. 

Now, I don't think it should be the media asking questions; I don't think there should be an audience, and I don't think the candidates need to be in the same room.  But I digress.

Fortunately, Mr. Trump's performance at the 2016 debates did not prevent his election and the subsequent turnaround of the USA back into a global power, both militarily and economically.  Maybe it helped, who really knows.  The polling was so poor prior to the actual voting that no one knows anything for sure.

But here's the thing.  The "Donald Trump, Candidate", who was the performer on the 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton, is a far earlier version of the president who will be in the 2020 debates, whether with Bernie, Bloomy, Booty, Biden or Pocahontas.  Why is that?

Well, I don't know how many of you have a news channel on in background, but those of us who do are aware that when the president travels, which is a lot, he rides the helicopter, Marine One, from the White House lawn to Joint Base Andrews, where the jet, Air Force One is based.  And invariably, walking from the White House to the helicopter, he stops to take questions from the press.  Lots of them.

Now this isn't a debate, of course.  But it is a mostly hostile press, lots of purveyors of fake news, and they can ask some tricky questions -- much like a presidential debate, if you're thinking the way I am.

I watch those mini-press conferences religiously.  They are must-see TV, because they're an indicator of how much President Trump has grown in the specific skill of taking hostile questions.  When he does one or two of those sessions each week for several years, while at the same time having mastered all the issues that he has to deal with as president, you can see how and why he is getting really good at it.

And of course, with the economy, our defense and immigration all markedly enhanced, directly because of his policies, he has a lot to say.  And he says it.

So here's the point.  The President Trump who will debate one of the Democrats' seven dwarfs in the fall, is not the same guy as the Candidate Trump who debated Hillary in 2016.  The Democrats forget that at their peril.  Providing he doesn't worry about getting zingers in, or calling his opponent names, and just focuses on how good everything is and ties it directly to this policy or that action of his, he will crush in the debates.

The Q-and-A medium is no longer new to him.  He is practicing every week, not in phony-bologna debate-prep sessions but by taking real, hostile questions from real, hostile reporters on the real White House lawn in front of the People's house -- where he really lives.  Those weekly sessions are the testing ground where the steel is sharpened.

It is an interesting point that the leftist media (forgive the superfluous adjective there) do not really ask particularly critical questions of the Democrat candidates, who are all equally leftist.  Sure, maybe a "How are you planning to pay for that?" once in a while, but there is never any critical follow-up. You have to assume that it dulls Democrat candidates' reflexes and skills when they're never asked good follow-up questions, right?

President Trump takes those questions with aplomb these days.  He's the boss, he knows his material and his innate showmanship kicks in when he has command of that material, which these days is "all the time."  The leftist press takes the bait gleefully, showing up for every one of those press availabilities (though never once crediting Trump for providing them, where their sainted Obama almost never did) and offering great, hostile questions to help Mr. Trump hone is debate skills.

The president is already a fine respondent to hostile questions, a skill he did not have polished to that extent in 2016.  Well, America, he is really, really good at it now, and those without a news channel in the background will find that out this fall.

I don't know if having those regular White House lawn pressers from the start was a conscious decision to help him practice responding to tough questions, but I'd imagine that at this point it has occurred to his staff that the more he does them, the better "debater" he will be this fall.

Of course, his best debate strength will be, simply, that his policies work.  Full stop.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #37 -- What Exactly Will Mike "Get Done"?

As this is being written, there have been two 2020 events, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, which have combined to accomplish pretty much nothing, except to enrich 7,559 campaign strategists.

Well, maybe not "nothing." They have shown that Joe Biden's "time has went", as he would probably say, and that Elizabeth Warren is capable of creating pretty much zero enthusiasm, including in a state next to the one in which she lives.

One interesting aspect of the past few weeks, though, is actually about a candidate who was not a participant in either the caucuses or the primary.

I refer, of course, to the former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who is running for president on sort of a delayed-video, or instant replay model.  That is, he is not putting his name on any of the earlier primary ballots, preferring to wait until around Super Tuesday, when there will be a bunch of primaries.

He is, however, engaged in a huge branding blitz.

About every thirteen seconds, anyone watching TV can expect to see a commercial for the Bloomberg candidacy, telling the viewer what a terrible guy President Trump is, and then using the tag line "Mike will get it done."

Now, exactly what Mike will "get done" is not really explicit in the ads, and I confess that I fast-forward past most of them any more.  I have already made up my own mind about President Trump and don't really need Bloomberg's flacks to tell me what to think about him.

And to be fair, the purpose of the tag line is to portray the generally unknown (outside New York) Bloomberg as a guy who "does things", as opposed to one who just talks about it.  A guy who actually does do things, you see, would stand in stark contrast to pretty much all the other candidates, none of whom has a great track record at doing anything but talking. 

About the only one who has "run anything" is Pete Buttigieg, who is the mayor of a little town in Indiana, and even the people in Fort Wayne don't think he has been effective.  Most of the rest are U.S. Senators, and let's face it they talk.  A lot.  Doing?  Not so much.

But I'm still struggling with the "what" part of Bloomberg's message, as in "what needs to get done."

I say that because, as a voter in a swing state, the things I care about are already getting done -- not by people in Bloomberg's party, the Democrats, but by the current president.  Take health care for veterans and reforming the VA hospital system, for example.  I care about that.  President Trump is getting it done already.  I don't need for "Mike" to do anything, nor would I (or most vets) risk letting someone new change the trajectory of reform.

How about the southern border?  Drugs, human traffickers and gangs were flooding over, along with border-jumpers who chose not to go through the legal pathway to residence here.  Well, hundreds of miles of effective walls are being put up as we speak, by a guy who knows how to build things.  He is also the president now, by the way. 

The Democrat candidates all raised their hands to say that not only are they fine with open borders, but they want all those people to get free health care at citizen-taxpayers' expense.  Bloomberg is a Democrat, too, and by not participating in the debates until now he was spared having to make that choice to put his hand up.  But we know how the current president feels, and what he is doing to protect us.  That's already "getting done", so I don't think I want to see what Mike would do differently.

Second Amendment rights?  Yeah, that's really scary, because I don't know what old Mike thinks he would want to "get done" on that one.  Based on his record as mayor, I think he's more likely to send around the Army to confiscate every weapon he can find in the hands of private citizens.  The current president is a staunch defender of the 2nd Amendment.  I think I'll stay that course.

Trade?  Let's see, President Trump's predecessors negotiated a series of deals that were embarrassingly deferential to Europe, to China, to Mexico and Canada, and which gave the USA no leverage to prevent jobs from fleeing overseas and to stop exacerbating our trade deficit.  Trump's approach?  The "big stick" policy -- mess with the USA, and we'll slap tariffs on your products and grind your economy into the ground.  It's the golden rule of economics -- he who has the gold makes the rules -- and we're the buyers.

Since Trump's anti-swamp, America First trade approach is based differently from his conciliatory predecessors and is actually working, it makes no sense to "get done" whatever Bloomberg thinks needs to get done on trade.  And we could go on.

Mike Bloomberg has yet to face the media, although he'll be on the next debate upcoming.  It is really hard to imagine he will perform well on it, though -- this is the guy who literally was asked by some guy seeking a picture in a "say cheese" moment to "say 'stop and frisk'," after which Bloomberg stopped, posed and said "stop and frisk."  Hard to think even the leftist moderators are going to go easy on him.

The main thing, of course, is that all the things that fall into the "get it done" category are already getting done by President Trump, and they're getting done the way the USA needs to have them "gotten done", that is, properly.  There is nothing out there that America needs to have Michael Bloomberg do that isn't already being done, and being done better than he would.

OK, stopping us from buying 24-ounce sodas.  Trump's leaving that one for Mike.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #36 -- Raspberries and Baseball

Deep as we are into the 2020 presidential campaign, it feels like a good time for a laugh-at-myself story.  Actually, it always feels like a good time for one of those, so let's go ahead and do a short one today.

Back in 1979, I was the product manager for a medical electronic instrumentation company.  My product, not that it is relevant to the story, was a computerized coronary-care unit monitoring system.  The company had a demonstration model that I could have shipped to a hospital, set up in a CCU and stay with it for a week or so to show how it worked.

Accordingly, I traveled a lot, and that was before the days of airline points, unfortunately.

So this one time, I was in Montreal for a week.  The hospital was the ancient Sacre-Coeur, and I was there to set up and speak to the nursing staff, despite my lack of facility in French of any kind.  By the time I left, I was able to make a credit-card or collect phone call in French, but otherwise all I could do was steal a few relevant phrases from Singing Nun songs where possible.  I'm serious.

Generally, these trips were in support of the local sales rep for the company.  In this case, the rep was a fellow named "Jed" Jedrychowski.  Jed was from Poland, but had lived in Quebec for a long time, and spoke excellent English along with the French that was spoken routinely in his home by his wife and kids.  I really liked Jed, and appreciated that he invited me to his home a time or two -- not all the sales reps realized that life on the road was pretty lonely for the product manager.

Back then, as today, I loved to read baseball books.  I wasn't as picky then, because with all the plane flights and meals alone, I had a lot more time and needed a lot more books, even the pap biographies.  But some books were excellent, and I especially loved "The Summer Game", which I mentioned in a piece a few years ago (https://uberthoughtsusa.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-greatest-writer-of-two-centuries.html).

The book was the work of the great writer Roger Angell, who will turn 100 in September.  It was a compilation of the first ten years (1962-1971) of his baseball articles for the New Yorker magazine, and a showcase of his brilliance as an observer, and his mastery of written English.  I happened to be re-reading The Summer Game during that trip, so it was fresh in my mind.

One of the articles I'd just read was about the first season of the Montreal Expos, which had started in 1969 as the first Canadian major-league team.  Angell had a mildly jocular take on the whole thing, visiting a doubleheader at Montreal's Jarry Park, and writing about a few events, with inserted French to try to take the reader through the "new" French-Canadian fan's view.  This, for example, about the start of the second game:

"The second partie started just as dishearteningly, with the visitors scoring three points on three coups surs in the first, but matters improved electrifyingly in the second, when the Expos pulled off a triple play (line drive to Bob Bailey, au premier but, who stepped on the bag to double up an occupant Cardinal and then flipped to l’arret-court, Bobby Wine, who beat the other base-runner to second)."

I didn't speak French, then or now, but I didn't need to; the context was more than sufficient to convey the meaning of the words.  But then came this passage from later in the game narrative, which stumped me:

"When the gerant, Gene Mauch, came out to relieve his willing but exhausted young starter, Mike Wegener, he got the framboise from the fans."

"Framboise"?  What does that mean?

This was 1979, mind you, long before the common use of the Internet.  So while I had wondered, on reading it (at 30,000 feet), what that word could possibly mean in that context, it was not the instant information-gratification era, and so I didn't think to look it up.  It wasn't after all, that important.  I could have called my Dad, who spoke French and 4-5 other languages, if I had thought about it.

But here I was in Montreal, with the book fresh in my mind, when Jed and I were walking down a hall at Sacre-Coeur Hospital.  He was probably chatting with me about something or other, when it struck me that he, a Polish-Canadian who spoke fluent French, could clarify Angell's phrasing for me.

Of course, I had to explain the context to him.  I could have just asked him what "framboise" meant, but as my wife always says, I go by way of Kansas City in explaining things, so I told Jed the whole story, that Angell was sticking French words into a baseball story, and then gave them the line and asked him, in that phrasing, what the word referred to.
 
We were still walking down the hall in the hospital when I asked.  Long hall. Jed looks at me strangely.  He was not a big pro sports guy then, but even with that this was clearly an odd usage for him.

"Framboise?", he said.  "That doesn't make sense.  It is like, ah, 'strawberry' ..."

"Raspberry!!", I shouted.  Immediately I realized I was in a quiet zone of a foreign hospital and had just shouted a word that had no medical purpose.  At that moment I was in the doubly embarrassing situation of having shouted in a quiet zone in a hospital, and had a guy looking at me oddly, with no clue as to why the word "raspberry" (A) had any meaning in baseball, and (B) was in any way funny enough for me to shout in the aforementioned quiet zone.

"It's really 'razzberry', Jed", I explained, "It just means booing or making an offensive sound like they do at a ball game.  They were booing the manager for pulling the pitcher out.  Comes from Brooklyn, where they make all kinds of sounds, if that helps."

It probably didn't help, and it certainly didn't adequately explain to Jed why I thought it was so funny.  But either way, it didn't affect our friendship any, and though it is over 40 years since that time, I still have a visceral reaction when I see a raspberry.

I'll get over it, I promise.  Some day.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #35 -- I Was the Vote that Kept Jeter from Being Unanimous

OK, I wasn't.  I write, but I don't get a vote for who gets into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I'm not a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America at all, let alone for ten years.

But had I been, the voter who actually did leave Derek Jeter off his Hall of Fame ballot would not have been alone.  I would have left his name off my ballot as well.  And here is why.

While I don't usually believe in blaming someone else for something I do, or would do, in this case it is extremely relevant.  Because there are two completely different issues at hand here -- whether a player belongs in the Hall of Fame, and whether he should be elected unanimously.

And where I will blame someone else for my decision not to vote for Jeter in 2020 is in pointing to about 85 years of precedent.

Back in the mid-1930s, when the Hall of Fame was created, there was voting by 226 members of the BBWAA to determine the first inductees.  The five all-time greats who received the necessary 75% of all the ballots were Ty Cobb at 222 votes, Honus Wagner and Babe Ruth at 215, Christy Mathewson at 205, and Walter Johnson at 189.

Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner.  Three players on anyone's top ten list of the greatest position players ever, and I'm talking now, more than 80 years later.  Not one of them was elected with all the votes, and from that time until last year, writers have taken that as a precedent and given not a single player a unanimous election until Mariano Rivera last year.

The writers have done this, and it is their legacy that we now have to deal with.

By that I mean that while there is, and has always been, a question as to whether this or that player actually belongs in the Hall of Fame, there is a second question as to whether a player deserves a unanimous election.

The writers have done this to themselves.  They did it by not unanimously electing Cobb in the first ballot; they did it by not unanimously electing Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial and others over the years; and they did it again by actually electing Rivera unanimously and thus setting a standard.

With that standard in place -- Mariano Rivera was legitimately the greatest reliever of all time and a fantastic human being -- his unanimous vote and the lack of unanimity for any other player ever before plants a flag that subsequent votes must honor.

Derek Jeter simply was not that guy.  He was a Hall of Famer for sure.  I'd have voted twice for him on his second year eligible if I could have.  But would you ever have traded Mays, Mantle, Williams or Musial for Jeter straight up?  Of course not!

So while I'd have voted for him every year after the first, in these days, where more than half the voters release their ballots to the public long before the results are made public, I would not have this year.  I would have known that 100% of the open ballots would have had Jeter's name on it, and that he was already "in", and my vote would not have cost him an extra year.

And he was not near that standard of unanimity.  He was certainly not the best at his position.  As I've written here before, it is a fallacy to call him a great-hitting shortstop, because his excellent hitting masked the fact that he should not have been playing shortstop at all for at least the last dozen years of his career.

He was a .310 hitter for his career, with well over 3,000 hits and a Hall of Fame resume at bat -- plus essentially a full season worth of post-season at-bats, in which he hit as well as he did during the season, only in pressure situations against better opponents.

What he didn't have was a position in the field.  Derek Jeter is the classic case of where the fan simply cannot recognize defensive quality, or lack thereof.

Adam Dunn, the powerful but stone-gloved first baseman who was not elected to the Hall this time, was the third-worst defensive player of all time (by Defensive Runs Saved).  And everyone knew it.  Dunn was a terrible fielder, born to be a DH but stuck for a while in the National League where he actually had to play in the field.  He missed plays, dropped throws and couldn't move.  Had he stayed in the NL longer, he'd have moved up to second-worst all time.

Derek Jeter was the mirror image.  He made the plays he got to, committed few errors and was seen as an athletic player.  So everyone thought he was a wonderful fielder, even winning five Gold Gloves, which then were voted on a combination of perception, reputation and hitting.

What the fans, writers and Gold Glove voters couldn't figure out was that while he made the plays he got to, he got to far, far fewer than any other shortstop.  His range compared unfavorably to league-average shortstops, let alone to the great gloves at the position.  And yet, the Yankees (who, in fairness, probably didn't realize how much of a liability he was until later in his career when the metrics got better) left him out there for two decades.

It was as if as a rookie, the Yankees were so vested in Jeter being their shortstop of the future that it became a Yankee gospel thing.  "Oh, we can't try him somewhere else; he is The Yankee Shortstop^TM." 

When Alex Rodriguez was traded to the Yankees in 2004, the team didn't even ask Jeter to move to third or second to accommodate the much better-fielding A-Rod, according to Joe Torre -- and Jeter didn't offer.

He stayed there at short until he retired in 2014, accumulating enough poor defense to retire with -243.3 Defensive Runs Saved, incredibly about 80 DRS worse than Dunn, and far and away the single worst defensive career in the history of the game, distinguished from the rest by playing a position for 20 years that he could not play well at a major-league level.

So -- Hall of Fame and unanimity.

All of the rest of Jeter's game and his career were Hall of Fame.  He defined "fame" as it applied to baseball players -- played in a big market for a team that made the postseason a lot.  Played a bunch of World Series and was on five teams that won.  Lots of PR.  No scandal.  Fine hitter with a long career that allowed him to compile big hitting numbers.

But we have a difference now between a unanimous choice and a Hall of Famer.  You had better be far and away the greatest ever at your position to be unanimous.  You'd better have no scandal and not tick off the leftist writers (do you think the voters last year didn't know that Rivera was a Trump supporter?).

Derek Jeter was a sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer.  But he would not have gotten my vote unless I knew already that another voter was leaving him off this year.  The writers over the years have set standards, and we now have them as guidance.  There is Hall of Famer, and now there is unanimously-elected Hall of Famer, and they aren't the same thing.

Honus Wagner was the greatest shortstop in the history of the game.  If he was not a unanimous pick, then Derek Jeter sure was not.  And I'd have been OK with being the only voter leaving him off in his first eligible year, had it come to that.

I wasn't that one voter.  But I'd have had the guts to explain why if I were.  I just did.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #34 -- The Best Thing President Trump Ever Did

Earlier today in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump did a fairly brief (for him) press conference.  Now, if you can tell me a president in our lifetime who has been more accessible to direct questions from the press, more frequently, I'm sure I don't know who it would be.  So in this case, a 10-15 question session seemed fairly brief, but I'm sure the president is a bit tired, too.

At any rate, one question piqued my interest, even though I can't recall what it was specifically.  Mr. Trump has a way of answering the question you asked and then a few more in the course of answering yours, so the question itself actually wasn't important.

But I recall it centered around the way he was handling the impeachment trial going on in the Senate, as he was representing the country and his spectacular economic performance at the World Economic Forum there.

President Trump talked about that for a bit, and while I can't quote him directly, he did point out that he thought his actions during the "witch hunt" were going to be among the most important things he did in his presidency.

I had to think about that a while, until the context gave me the clues to what he actually meant.  And then I agreed, so much so that it had to become a column here.

I think it is fair to say that Donald Trump has done a whole heck of a lot of things as president, both on the executive policy and legislative side, and on the conduct-of-office side.  And one of the most critical aspects of the latter has been in his conduct with the press.

Let me not beat around the bush.  President Trump has exposed the national media for what they are -- corrupt, thoroughly biased, almost invariably to the left, and far more interested in themselves and their own power than in actually reporting the facts.  We saw White House sessions where reporters preened for the cameras rather than asking substantive policy questions.

The USA now knows what "fake news" means.  While the average American might not appreciate the distinction between a news medium's editorial and reporting areas, or understand the meaning of the necessary "wall" between them, he or she now views any reporting -- actual news coverage -- from the major media through a lens that presupposes bias by the reporter.

Because of what the president has exposed, we know that the media do as much damage by what they do not report as what they do.  When the major networks spend almost (or actually) no time on the economic success of the Trump program, and hours by contrast on impeachment (which we all know to be a hoax), we now see it.  And we can thank Donald Trump for making sure we see it.

I would like to think that today, when he was referring to his handling of the impeachment process as being a significant part of his legacy, he was actually thinking along similar lines.

Donald Trump the candidate pledged to "drain the swamp", and we all understood that he was talking about an entrenched Washington bureaucracy that was effectively accountable to no one, and which included much of Congress, people elected over and over with little challenge, and who had grown rich and fat on working the system for their own gain.

I believe that what the president meant was that, unlike before, we now truly understood the swamp and how pernicious its entrenchment was.  The impeachment?  The president has actually used it to expose the corruption of the people serving as "leaders" of the swamp -- the Schumers, the Pelosis, the Schiffs, and the Nadlers of the DC swamp.

These people who cannot possibly believe that Donald Trump has committed an impeachable offense -- they couldn't even include an actual crime in the bill of particulars -- still blather on in public, making up things and lying about what we have in front of us.  Yet on they blather.

And now, because of Donald Trump, we see them in a different light.  We realize that it is not merely opposition to this president that drives them, but rather preservation of their entrenched positions.  We get it, now.  We get it, because this president has brought the swamp to light.  We understand that a Nancy Pelosi has made millions off her office, and is horribly afraid of losing those golden eggs and attendant goose.

We get it now.  Maybe we thought we knew it before, but we really know it now, because this president does not come from a world of entrenched power-by-election, and thus has pointed out to the USA -- consistently -- that there is indeed a swamp, and it needs to be drained.

The impeachment nonsense shows that.  We know, because the Democrats have been talking impeachment since before the inauguration.  We know, because Maxine Waters (another who has made a few bucks off her office) has been screaming "impeach 45!" since 2017.  We know, because even though there is no crime being found anywhere in the articles of impeachment, the Democrats pressed forward with trying to get rid of President Trump.

We know that there is no bigger threat to the swamp than President Trump.  He has exposed that, and his conduct during the long process, consistently pointing out the corruption of those leading it, is what he was talking about.

It will be a part of his legacy that we no longer trust the press and view Washington with great skepticism.  It will be a significant part of that legacy, and we need to thank him for it -- including this November.

Drain the swamp.  MAGA.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #33 -- Da Doo Tehran Ron, Da Doo Ron Ron

I have a feeling that my zero readers in Iran might have a quizzical look on their faces upon reading the title of this piece.  But since there are non-zero readers in places like Russia and Ukraine, let me mention up from that the title is a very poor allusion to a 1960s pop song written by Phil Spector and recorded by the Crystals.

I probably can't tell you anything about what has been happening in Iran the past week or two that you didn't already know.  Their leaders instigated a siege of our embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, which we resisted, and then President Trump authorized the drone bombing of Qasem Suleimani, the Iranian general responsible for the attack and for uncounted killings of American servicemen and Iranian civilians who protested their government.

The Iranian mullahs who seized power there then forced the people to come out to protest and do their "Ooh, ooh, death to America" chant, presumably in Persian, and certainly at the risk of their lives if they didn't.

At that point, it came out that a Ukrainian passenger jet that had crashed after taking off from Tehran had in fact been blown up by an Iranian missile -- a fact that the mullahs denied until, you know, Russian-made missile parts were found with the luggage, and videos showed a missile, and all that.

The American left, including both the press and the Democrats in Congress, couldn't be satisfied with the fact that Mr. Trump had gotten rid of one of the two or three leading terrorists in the world.  No; the key was that it was this president who had authorized the droning of Suleimani, and therefore it was by definition a bad thing. 

Nothing that Donald Trump does can be allowed to be seen in the press as successful, even if it entailed removing from the Earth a vicious, sadistic terrorist who had been targeting Americans for years and was, apparently, about to launch further attacks.  If, as I heard this week, President Trump were to cure cancer, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and CNN would be arguing for the rights of tumors.

So we were graced with Democrats actually blaming Mr. Trump for the missile attack that Iran had launched on its own territory, a claim that had to have Americans shaking their heads.

So then the White House did a briefing, for congressional leadership, on what happened as far as the drone strike was concerned.  It included mentioning that our intelligence services had good reason to believe that there was an attack on multiple embassies and other attacks coming very soon, led by Suleimani had he not been turned into dispersed body parts.

Now this is how low the Democrats have gone. 

Let us recall that a few years back, while Barack Obama was president, our intelligence determined that Osama bin Laden was hiding out in a house in Pakistan, and the military indicated that Navy SEALs could get in and take him out.  Over the objection of then-VP Joe Biden, according to Joe Biden (he denied it last week, but he is on tape from back then saying that he had objected), the raid went forward and bin Laden was killed.

The Democrats loudly celebrated that a leading Middle East terrorist had been removed and 9/11 avenged.  Barack Obama ran around saying that "bin Laden was dead and GM was alive."  Not a soul on the Democrats' side seemed to have an issue with that.  But of course, St. Barack could do no wrong.

The left seems to have forgotten that, however.  There is no conscionable difference between bin Laden and Suleimani.  Both were Middle East terrorists who targeted Americans and killed many.  Oh yeah, bin Laden was killed under Obama's watch, Suleimani under Trump's, though, and apparently that's a problem.

So after the briefing was done, the Democrats got handed their talking points, and my God, were they stupid.  In the White House briefing, they were told that the intelligence had indicated the attacks, on embassies and elsewhere, were "imminent."

You wouldn't believe this, except you know it happened.  Every Democrat went to the nearest podium, talking points in hand, and challenged what "imminent" meant.  No, I'm serious.  A top terrorist will never harm anyone again, and Democrats are upset about semantics.

I would have supposed that whether "imminent" meant within hours, or within a couple of weeks, would not have mattered in the sense of taking out Suleimani.  No one would think it would have mattered; in fact, the issue of what bin Laden happened to be plotting when his fate was SEALed never came up.

But this is your set of 2020 Democrats.  The logical inference is that if the attacks being plotted were two weeks off instead of two days off, then Suleimani should not have been blown up and should have been allowed to go his merry way.  Isn't that the inference?  Why else would it matter to anyone what "imminent" meant?

And you're right -- it didn't matter a bit.  If the Saudi Air Force type who shot up the Navy flight school in Pensacola had been identified two weeks before he planned to attack people there, then what -- should we have just let him go?  By Democrat "logic", that's what it sounds like.

Well, as you might have expected, things changed quickly in Iran after the confession of having been responsible for the Ukrainian airline disaster.  Remember all the people who crowded the streets at the life-or-death order of the mullahs to cry about Suleimani?  Remember how CNN called him a beloved figure in Iran, and compared him to Princess Diana and Elvis (I'm not kidding)?

Hmmm. Yesterday, the actual, unpaid people of Iran started crowding the streets screaming about their leaders lying to them, and defacing the posters and banners of Suleimani, the apparently-not-so-beloved figure. 

And the mullahs, without Suleimani, now have their own forces firing on the protesters, their own citizens.  That will not end well.  President Trump's tweeted Persian-language exhortation to Iran not to attack their own people became the most-read and most-liked tweet in Persian in the history of Twitter.

Of course, the Democrats are paying no attention to the people's uprising, because it -- say it with me -- doesn't fit their narrative.  President Trump took out a terrorist murderer, and the Iranian people are thrilled, but it was President Trump who approved it, and therefore it can't be good in the left's view.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a surprise in just about every corner of the USA.  Up to the last moment, it was not what polls were suggesting, and not what people thought in a nation that had elected Barack Obama twice.

The reelection of President Trump this fall may be the least surprising outcome, though, since Ronald Reagan's reelection in 1984.  The Democrats have made such utter fools of themselves, by being unwilling to acknowledge the outstanding progress in the economy, by seeing everything through the lens of identity politics, and by starting an impeachment effort before the man was even inaugurated.

And now that foolishness is exacerbated, if that is even possible.  The Democrats, along with the press, are in the bizarre position of defending the rights of a terrorist who is responsible for hundreds of Americans' deaths and far more deaths of his fellow Iranians.  In their anti-Trump fever, in their inability to concede even one thing he has done as being a positive, they have embraced an Iranian bin Laden, a man his own people hated.

They have no chance in November.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #32 -- Explain It to Uncle Joe, Please

Joe Biden, the former vice president and former senator, is running for president these days, as you surely know.  That's enough to keep him in the news, of course, along with the fact that he is leading in the polls.  That is, although, without a very high percentage of those polled, given that there are 5,446 people running.

But Uncle Joe is in the news for something else, and it's not good.  As we all know, while he was vice president, and while he was ostensibly the person in the Obama Administration responsible for USA policy in Ukraine, his son Hunter joined the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma.  Burisma is a corrupt energy firm that paid him somewhere between $50,000 and $85,000 per month to be on the board, despite his lack of knowledge of energy or, you know, Ukraine. 

Hunter himself has said that he doesn't get that job if his father were not the Veep.  Duh and double duh.

So now we have President Trump possibly impeached, depending on which Constitutional professor you listen to.  "Possibly" is because the House voted out two articles (neither of which is a crime) but refuses to send them to the Senate for trial.

But it is actually those articles that are relevant to our discussion of Uncle Joe.  You see, the whole premise of the impeachment is that President Trump supposedly withheld aid to Ukraine until the new president there launched an investigation of Burisma and the Bidens' involvement in the company.  By USA law, however, foreign aid is contingent on some kind of certification of lack of corruption, but let's set that fact aside.

Because now Joe Biden is saying he wouldn't obey a subpoena to a possible Senate impeachment trial, because (paraphrasing) such a subpoena would be only to "distract from Donald Trump's guilt."  Of course, then later he said he would testify, because ignoring a subpoena would be sort of committing the same thing that Trump is accused of, in the other article.

But even that misses the message.  Follow:

If Hunter Biden had extensive knowledge of energy, or of Ukrainian affairs, and his father were not the sitting vice president and in charge of policy toward Ukraine when he was hired, it would be one thing.  In that case, his hiring would have been defensible.

In truth, though, his father was vice president and in charge of Ukrainian USA policy; the son did not have any expertise to bring to the table; and worst of all, Uncle Joe had gone video threatening to hold up aid to Ukraine while he was VP until they fired the prosecutor investigating Burisma.  All of that might have been a total coincidence, but it is a huge crap-pile of circumstance.

And here's the thing.  If President Trump had a legitimate reason to ask the Ukrainian president in July to look into the Hunter Biden hiring and the hold-up of aid by the Obama Administration, then it doesn't matter that Joe Biden was running for president.  The fact that he made himself a political opponent does not insulate him from liability for possible corruption accusations.

Got it, Joe?  If there was a legitimate reason for President Trump to ask for the investigation, there is no impeachable action of any kind.

That's critical.  If the Senate trial includes witnesses, then anyone trying to gather the facts of the case would need to know what the heck was going on with Burisma.  Why?  Because if there was legitimate reason to ask the Ukrainians to investigate Burisma, and the Hunter Biden hiring during his father's tenure as VP, and the huge payments, and the Joe Biden hold-up of aid, then nothing President Trump did was in any way improper.

And that means that Joe and Hunter Biden would be the people that the Senate would want to have testify as to their involvement, under oath.  So of course Uncle Joe didn't want to testify, but it sure wasn't because it was "distracting from Trump's guilt", but because honest testimony from the two of them would show that Trump had all the good and legal reason in the world to ask the Ukrainian president to investigate them.

So for me, if the Senate decides to have witnesses, sure, fine with me, because there'd be some uncomfortable subpoenas handed out, and the public testimony by Uncle Joe, under oath, would be must-see TV.

I hope someone explains all that to Joe Biden, but I believe the candidate knows all of it quite well already.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #31 -- Accomplisher of the Year

If you're over 50, you remember when Time magazine was an interesting read in doctors' and dentists' office, a ubiquitous site on the end tables of the medical profession.  You didn't have to subscribe; your dentist did it for you, and you would read as much of it as you felt like.  Having not paid for it, you could pick and choose what articles you wanted to read.

It didn't "feel" like a politically biased publication, even if it probably was for all those years.  I don't particularly recall having that impression until fairly recently, when its extreme anti-Trump bias has taken over the magazine to the point of leading me to read, instead, things like The Medical Digest of the Carolinas, June 2008 issue rather than pick up Time.

In the good old pre-Donald days, at the end of the year, Time would do a "Man of the Year" issue.  Now, I can assure you that it has never been the position of the magazine that its MOTY was the person who had done the most good, but was, rather, the biggest "news-maker" of the year.  Adolf Hitler won it a time or two, if memory serves.  That went over well.

I recall that every year, there would be letters to the editor thereafter, telling Time what a stupid decision their choice was, mainly because the letter writer had not picked up on the notion that the winner was not necessarily winning it for what they regarded as doing good things.  Half of news, as we know, is bad.

So these days, with bias infesting the editorial rooms at Time, the Man of the Year award has been pretty much a pfffft exercise each year.  After all, who really cares what a bunch of hard lefties in New York think?  I certainly don't, and I sort of doubt you do either.

And so we have this year's "winner", who is that snarling little Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, the barely-a-teenager kid who has been running around the world on someone else's nickel, yelling at the USA because we're not doing enough to stop global warming.  Now, I have not heard that she has set foot in China, to be fair to the USA, which is weird given that China and India are the Earth's lead polluters, while the USA has drastically and successfully gone after our own emission levels.

I mean, I understand why she hasn't gone after China.  Let's face it, a country that masses its armies outside the city of Hong Kong, lest they try to exercise the independence granted to it, well, I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't take kindly to a pre-teen girl telling them how to run their country.

On top of that, since the brunt of her rhetoric is aimed at the USA, you have to know that the funding behind her cavorting about the globe is from the Soroses and Steyers of the world, and those types are big fans of totalitarian communist regimes like China, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea.  So don't expect to see little Greta leading a march through Beijing.  The tanks are bigger than she is.  And so is her bankroll.

And that's kind of the point.  While it is a blip on the radar in terms of impact when a little girl growls around the world, petulantly taking us to task for living our lives, Time apparently feels that she has actually accomplished something, enough to put her on the cover as MOTY.

But what, exactly, has she accomplished?  All the Paris Accord signees (which the USA thankfully no longer is) look at her and nod and cheer, except they already signed the agreements, such as it is, so they are saying proudly that they're "already on their way" and that she doesn't need to yell at them.  So nothing is happening there.

The USA is doing what it can, successfully, not because of her but in spite of her, since the laws we operate under now were already in place when she was barfing strained peas in Stockholm.

And that's kind of the point of the title of this piece.

Perhaps Time ought to take a look at its criterion for the MOTY award, which is the person who, good or bad, was the biggest news-maker for the year.  Well, shoot, if they really mean that, there are two categories -- Donald Trump and everyone else.  Whatever you think of him, he gives new meaning to the word "news-maker."  So the magazine could just retire the award and start a new one, at least as long as he is president and dominating the news.

I do think there is a better way, though, at least if Time survives another year of dental offices as a print medium.  Instead of trying to determine who made the most news other than President Trump, why don't they change the MOTY standard to biggest "accomplisher" of the year, and award it to the person who had the most impact, either by invading another country, or curing metaformic blastotechnic sofanoma in potatoes, or whatever.  But something at least tangible, at a minimum.

Liberals simply don't know when they are being laughed at, since they are pretty much isolated in their echo chambers in New York and California.  But Time's MOTY choice is being laughed at all over the rest of the country, because they gave an award, not that anyone really cares about it now, to someone who essentially accomplished nothing at all.  Kind of a Jerry Seinfeld MOTY.

Certainly they ought to consider strongly what their criteria are, and that perhaps a basic tenet ought to be concrete accomplishment of, well, something.  Perhaps they have been so Twitterversed into thinking that being an "influencer" is a big thing, so much that they can't see the forest for the trees.  Perhaps they actually think someone cares any longer what they think, because no one cares what Greta Thunberg thinks.

Or it doesn't matter, because Time can't survive forever with idiocy like that.

My dentist might miss it, but I think the rest of us won't.

Copyright 2019 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #30 -- Dual Motivation Compromising Impeachability

So as we watch the charade masking as House committee hearings into the impeachment of President Trump, today's jollies were provided by Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who unfailingly reminds me for some reason of Burgess Meredith playing The Penguin in the old Batman TV show.

But I digress.

The premise of the Democrats, if they needed one, is that President Trump committed an impeachable offense, which apparently is defined as "doing something the Democrats don't like."  In this case it all goes back to the July phone call from the president to the new Ukrainian leader, Volodmyr Zelensky, wherein he asked him to take a look into Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that hired the son of the then-sitting VP, Joe Biden, for at least $50,000 a month, despite the son knowing nothing about either energy or Ukraine.

We know about the call because Eric Ciamarella, a bureaucrat in the NSA whom we now know to be the "whistleblower", filed a whistleblower complaint after being told of the call (he was not on it) by someone inside the White House who disliked Trump.  We know that, because Ciamarella went, not immediately to an IG to file it, but first to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, who has since repeatedly lied that he doesn't know who the whistleblower even is, although never under oath.

Here is the point.

The Democrats' case is based on the idea that Trump asked Zelensky to look into Burisma because it would be an opportunity to cause problems for Joe Biden, a political rival.  That would constitute soliciting foreign help to influence the 2020 election, specifically the reelection contest in which Biden was a potential candidate, if he were to win the primary.

But that's far from "it."  You see, the request was based on some Ukrainian history of corruption that Federal law plays into -- our law requires that the president be assured of foreign aid recipients cleaning up their house.  Was this a problem in Ukraine?  Well, a survey of Ukrainians showed that over 60% had actually paid a bribe to a government official there.  That's a problem.

So the law mandates that the president perform due diligence to protect the American taxpayer by providing assurance that corruption of the recipient country is being addressed.  In the case of Ukraine, this also included common understanding that the they had interfered, or tried to interfere, with the 2016 election on behalf of candidate Hillary Clinton.  And President Trump certainly wanted to know about that -- legitimately so.

Joe Biden went public with his declaration -- proudly at the time -- that he had held up $1 billion in aid to Ukraine until they fired the prosecutor who was at the time investigating, you guessed it, Burisma, which at the time was paying an ungodly Board fee each month to -- you guessed it again, Joe Biden's son Hunter.

So let's take it as independently as possible.  Even if you thought that President Trump was far out of line in asking Zelensky to investigate Burisma and the son of a political rival, there is also the fact that there is a perfectly legitimate, in fact, a legally-mandated justification, for having done exactly the same thing.  We were going to give Ukraine millions in military aid (vice the meals and blankets that Biden and his folks were only willing to send).  The law says that Trump needed to be assured that Ukraine was addressing that corruption history under a new president.

That leaves an extreme complication that hasn't been addressed anywhere, so here goes.

You can say that asking Ukraine to investigate Burisma and the Bidens' influence is wrong and political.  But it begs this question.  Does thinking it is impeachable to do so, mean that a person who is also a political opponent is then free to do whatever corrupt thing he wants to do overseas, since it would be impeachable to ask the foreign country to investigate him?

Think of it this way.  Let us suppose that we were not providing foreign aid to Ukraine.  Would it still be thought impeachable to investigate the Bidens?

Suppose that Biden were not running for president at the time, or had dropped out of the race, or not declared yet.  Would it still be thought impeachable to investigate the Bidens?

Or is the fact that Biden was running at the time insulate him or his family from a US president calling for an investigation of any corruption of an American overseas?  Could a future VP who had committed hideous corrupt acts in a foreign country avoid investigation, let alone prosecution, simply by the act of running for president and calling himself a political rival?

There are two reasons for investigating what Hunter Biden was doing on the board of Burisma.  One is to follow Federal law and ask the Ukrainians to show that they are fighting corruption, and to have the former VP protect his son on a corrupt Ukrainian company's board is consistent with that.  The other is to wound a political rival.

How would any investigation determine whether the actual motivation was one or the other?  What if it were both -- how can you impeach a president for following the law, even if following the law means choosing to take steps that could wound a political rival?

But the Democrats will keep trying.  And I hope for their sake that they have their collective glutei adequately armored.

Because come November, this is going to bite them, right there.

Copyright 2019 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton