The View from Right Field

Traveling Can Make Current Events More Current

One of the great joys of travel is going to places where history has happened.  The Pyramids, Machu Pichu, Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois, the Capitol building in Washington, etc.  Seeing places like these can help you better understand history, as well as giving you a personal connection to events in the past.

But if you are lucky, travel can also take you to places where things are happening now or may happen in the future.  Seeing such places can make current events more interesting and personal and maybe even more understandable.  We were lucky enough to be in West Berlin and East Germany in 1979 and 1982, so when the protests arose and the Wall came down in 1989, we had an appreciation of what was happening that we might not have otherwise had. 

Character Defines the Choice in November

The Wall Street Journal summed up the case for and against Donald Trump’s re-election in an editorial today.  Here are a few excerpts, with my comments added in italics:

“Four years [after President Trump’s election] our verdict is that he has been better on policy than we feared but worse on personal behavior than we hoped.  Whether Americans re-elect him depends on how they assess that political balance sheet. …

The President contracted out tax reform to Congress, especially Paul Ryan in the House and Pat Toomey in the Senate, and they delivered.  Mr. Trump also hired a cast of deregulators who liberated the economy from burdens on energy and more. …

Will Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx Lose in November? No, Democrats Won’t Allow It.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has been having a rough time.  A special prosecutor, Dan Webb, who is a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, found there were “substantial abuses of discretion” in how Ms. Foxx handled the Jussie Smollett matter.  Ms. Foxx pretty much let Mr. Smollett, a famous TV star (I guess), off the hook on charges filed against him because he had made a false report of a racist and homophobic attack on himself.  She has also come under criticism for how her office has dealt with all kinds of other matters.  Some people have even gone so far as to look at the Republican candidate for State’s Attorney, Patrick W. O’Brien, in the fall election.  Except they don’t need to waste their time doing that.  No matter how bad Kim Foxx is, the Democratic Party is not going to let the Republican candidate win.  If things get really bad, they might try to replace Ms. Foxx with another candidate.  But if she is on the ballot in November, the Democrats will make sure she wins.  They can’t afford to have her lose.

The last thing Democrats in Cook County, and Illinois, want is a Republican State’s Attorney in Cook County.  The Democrats are having enough trouble with John Lausch, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, investigating public corruption.  They can’t have a Republican State’s Attorney in Cook County working with him.

Baseball’s “Magic Numbers” In a Year of Pandemic

This is, as many have said, a baseball season like no other.¹  Sixty games (hopefully) in a little over two months, and half the teams (actually, more than half; 53⅓% to be exact), make the playoffs.  While people often say the playoffs are a new season, this will be even truer this year.  Especially since no one knows how helpful home field advantage (which you get from having a better record) will be with no fans in the stands and with some people saying the postseason, or at least part of it, ought to be played in a bubble.  That would mean that having the best record just gets you last bats more often. 

But more than last bats, what baseball in 2020 is all about is October.²  Having the best record in the regular season is nice, and winning is always fun, but it means even less than normal this year.  In other words, fans (and players), don’t stress out over the regular season.  Your “magic number” this year isn’t about winning the division or having the best record.  It’s just being one of the sixteen teams getting to the postseason.  Thirty wins (assuming you play all 60 games) is probably all you will need to do that.

A “Fair Tax” for a Poorly Run and Corrupt State

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has an idea to solve Illinois’s financial problems: a progressive income tax.¹  Illinois currently has a flat-rate income tax, but in November, voters will be able to vote on an amendment to the Illinois constitution allowing a graduated income tax.  In pushing for the change, Governor Pritzker assures us that only 3% of us would pay more under his plan. (I would say that, if you believe this, you probably also believe in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, but that would be unfair to the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.  They’re real compared to the chance that, within five to ten years, only 3% of us would be paying more under the Fair Tax.)

Illinois’s main problem is not its unpaid bills or huge unfunded pension liability.  It is, rather, that it is so poorly run and so corrupt.  So much of the money that Illinois government gets is wasted, and there is no reason to think this would change just because Illinois gets more money.  More money would just mean more money to waste.²

Beijing Says Taiwan Is an “Ant” – But an Ant Can Have “High Hopes”

China has ridiculed Taiwan’s increase in defense spending as a waste of money.  According to Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman:

“No matter how much it spends, as we all know, Taiwan is a small island.  If it wants to fight against mainland China, it is like an ant trying to move a tree.”¹

Still, as we know, if a Taiwanese ant has “high hopes”, Beijing may find that “oops, there goes another rubber tree plant”²:

The Greatest High School Football Player Who Never Was

This is the story of the greatest high school football player who never was.

One late summer morning, the high school football team was having try-outs.  Just as the tryouts were ending and everybody was leaving, the coach noticed a new kid walking up, sort of hesitantly.  The kid apologized for being late, but said he had just moved into town and didn’t know what time the tryouts were.  He asked if he could still try out.  The coach asked him if he had ever played before.  The kid said he had, a little. 

Even though the coach really wanted to leave, he decided to give the kid a chance.  With everybody else gone, the coach said he would give the kid a tryout himself.  When the coach timed the kid on the 40-yard dash, the kid was so fast, the coach thought his watch was broken.  The kid kicked field goals from 50 yards out and threw passes that hit the target 40 yards away.  He was the best player the coach had ever seen.  The coach knew, with this kid on the team, they could beat anybody.

Baseball Is Different This Year – In a Way That Surprised Me

I realize it is a bit silly – and obvious – at this point to say that baseball is different this year.  But I have found it different in a way I did not expect.  We have been lucky enough to Cubs season tickets since 2012 (though “lucky” is perhaps not the word I would have used the first three of those seasons, especially our first year as season ticket holders when the Cubs lost 101 games). 

I have been able to get to 35 to 40 games a year since we got the season tickets.  Much of my schedule from April through September (and into October a couple of times) has been based on going to baseball games and, therefore, whether the Cubs were at home or on the road.  But this year is different.  The Cubs are on TV and the radio and I can watch them there, which is nice.  But it doesn’t matter whether Cubs are at home or on the road because I can’t go to the games.  If all you are doing is watching on TV or the radio, it doesn’t matter whether the game is at home or the road.  Especially when the Cubs are playing so many of their home games, even on Fridays and Saturdays, at night.

The Cubs are starting a long homestand tomorrow night, which would have been really great in past seasons.  I would have looked forward to it because I would have been going to games.  But homestands this year?  It doesn't really matter.

Lawless in Washington – Donald Trump Edition

Back in the day, I wrote a lot about Barack Obama’s overreach in the use of presidential power.  After the election in 2016, I asked “Lawless in Washington – Will There Be a Donald Trump Edition?”  The answer was always going to be yes, and some of President Trump’s actions over the weekend were of a kind with things President Obama did; i.e., lawless.

I’m not exactly sure what President Trump was trying to do with his order about evictions and rental relief.  It sounds like it is mostly just telling federal agencies to see what they can do.  In other words, not much.  Student loan relief was already being done.  This is a little more, I guess, but overall it, too, is not much.

Brent Scowcroft, RIP.

A truly great American, Brent Scowcroft, died on Thursday at the age of 95.  Mr. Scowcroft was National Security Adviser to two Presidents, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.  Mr. Scowcroft initially did not want to be National Security Adviser to President Bush, saying he had already done that job.  But President Bush persisted and Mr. Scowcroft took the job, helping President Bush achieve one of greatest foreign policy records in the post-World War II era, including peaceful reunification of Germany while remaining in NATO, creation of a large coalition of nations to oust Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait – and stopping when the job was done, and working to ensure the dissolution of the Soviet Union was peaceful, the only time in history such an empire ended without war.

While some of the articles on Mr. Scowcroft like to focus on the op-ed he wrote in 2002 urging that the United States not invade Iraq, they fail to mention that he wrote another op-ed in August of 2003 saying that, once we were in Iraq, we now had to succeed and that he testified before Congress in early 2007 in favor of President George W. Bush’s “surge” of troops .