The View from Right Field

Accepting Mistakes. Focusing on the Future. The Way to Solve Covid-19.

As we try to get through this crisis, we need to keep two things in mind:

1. Mistakes will be made.  We have to accept that, and we have to not blame the people who make them. 
2. We need to focus on the future.  We need to help each other to do the best we can today and tomorrow.  The past can wait until it’s over.

An example of the first: Bill Gates’ foundation is spending billions of dollars to help construct factories to produce seven of the most promising coronavirus vaccines.  Mr. Gates knows that billions will be wasted on factories for vaccines that don’t work, but he also knows that when we figure out which of the vaccines does work, factories will be ready to produce them right away, instead of having to waiting to build the factories once we know which vaccines work.

Bernie and Fidel

Like a lot of people on the left, though possibly more than most, Bernie Sanders has a Fidel Castro problem.  The problem is that Senator Sanders likes him – or, at least, he wants to like him.  Fidel said all the right things.  And he supposedly did all the right things: educating the kids, providing health care to everyone, transforming society.  (There was the lack of freedom, political prisoners, etc., but some people on the left sort of skip over that.) 

The difficulty for this view is that, regardless of what may have happened before 1990, things have gone downhill since the Soviet Union collapsed and money from Moscow stopped coming in.¹  But that apparently hasn’t stopped Senator Sanders from believing, as he said on “60 Minutes” last month:

Joe Biden’s Big Problem: “Why Is Joe Biden’s Son Working For a Ukrainian Energy Company?”

Actually, former Vice President Biden has a number of problems in his campaign, but then so does Donald Trump.  I have made my thoughts about President Trump pretty clear over the last several years, so I won’t go over them again.  Other than to say: Would you trust President Trump if he said he had your back in a fight?

But back to former Vice President Biden.  One of the big brouhahas regarding the former Vice President’s campaign is the job and money that his son, Hunter, got from a Ukrainian gas company while Vice President Biden was in office.  Some people may think this is a manufactured controversy, dug up only now to embarrass former Vice President Biden and hurt his campaign.

Well, it’s not.  It was a problem when it happened.  See this post, “Why Is Joe Biden’s Son Working For a Ukrainian Energy Company?”, from May 14, 2014.  It should have been dealt then, but neither former Vice President Biden nor the Obama administration did anything about it.  And now, former Vice President Biden has to deal with it today – or lose to President Trump in November.
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UPDATE (3/10/20 9:20 am): Cleaned up the wording in the last sentence. 

Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump. And I Thought 2016 Was the Presidential Election from He**

It would appear that Bernie Sanders is going to be the Democratic nominee for president this year.  The only thing as amazing as that is that Donald Trump was the Republicans nominee in 2016.  And, in response to anybody who says somebody with Senator Sanders’s views can’t be elected, consider that somebody with President Trump’s views (whatever they are) was elected.

While I think Senator Sanders’s views on, among other things, Cuba are just “drinking the Kool-Aid,” it is difficult to effectively complain about them when President Trump says so many great things about Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, not the mention “loving” Kim Jong-Un.  Senator Sanders is wrong, but then so is President Trump.

With Impeachment All Over the News, Why Am I Blogging About Baseball?

You may have noticed that, while the impeachment trial is blanketing the news in Washington (and probably TV/cable news¹), I have had two posts directly on baseball and another that mentions baseball tangentially in the past week.  The reason, I suppose, in addition to the fact I always post on the Cubs Convention, is that the impeachment trial is so predictable – and dispiriting.  I understand the impeachment question is critical and important to many people, on both sides of the issue.  It’s just I’m not one of them. 

As I have said before, I don’t like Donald Trump.²  I do not think he is a good president, especially on foreign policy (and many domestic policies).  But it’s hard to take the Democrats seriously, either.  I understand they think President Trump is a terrible president.  But too many of them have wanted to kick him out since he took office.  If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.  You wonder if the charges they have come up with in the articles of impeachment are so bad that they would want to get rid of a Democratic president for doing them or if it is just the best they have been able to come up with to get rid of President Trump.

Might It Have Been Possible to Oppose Donald Trump Without the Fury?

As we enter the last year of either Donald Trump’s presidency or President Trump’s first term, it seems like an appropriate time to look back on the last three years.  First, in looking at my posts about President Trump, I see I started out complaining a lot about what he did and his style of doing it.  Just look at some of the titles of my posts in his first nine months:

• “Donald Trump at Seven Weeks. This Is Not Working.”
• “Donald Trump Meets Angela Merkel. Things Keep Getting Worse.”
• “Donald Trump: Will the Embarrassment Ever End?”
• “@realDonaldTrump: Such a Small, Small Man”¹

But eventually, I got tired.  It wasn’t making a difference (obviously), and I was saying the same thing over and over again.  I got bored writing it.  I can only imagine how bored people got reading it.

If “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, Then What’s the Matter with Me?

In 2004, Thomas Frank wrote a book entitled What’s the Matter with Kansas?¹  The main idea of the book was that Republicans had used issues like abortion, school prayer, etc., to get working class and other Kansans to vote Republican, against their economic interests.

I thought about this book over the weekend when I did the monthly review of our 401(k)s.  I am lousy at investing, so we just own index mutual funds (some in stocks and some in bonds).  The thing I noted was how high the stock market is.  It is amazing to me, but the stock market has seemed to take off since Donald Trump was elected.  I don’t understand it, and I don’t know why it keeps going up,² but it has.³

Michael Bloomberg’s Race for President: As If People Needed Another Reason to Doubt the Mainstream Media

With Michael Bloomberg announcing he is going to run for president, the editorial and research wing of his mega-media company has a bit of a problem.  (I think it is fair to call it a “mega-media company” since its annual revenues are over $10 billion.  While most of that money comes from people who subscribe to Bloomberg LP’s business terminals, the editorial and research group has 2700 journalists and analysts.¹  That’s a mega-media company.)

Mr. Bloomberg’s announcement is a problem for Bloomberg LP because Mr. Bloomberg has a policy that journalists who work for his company can’t say anything bad about him.  Mr. Bloomberg explained it last year: “[Q]uite honestly, I don’t want the reporters I’m paying to write a bad story about me.”²  To show you how far Mr. Bloomberg’s definition of a “bad story” goes, the Bloomberg Billionaire List doesn’t include Mr. Bloomberg, even though Forbes says he the eighth richest man in the world.

Crossing the “Great Trump Divide”

I have been somewhat negative on Donald Trump/President Trump over the last four years (how’s that for understatement).  However, the fact I don’t like President Trump doesn’t mean I don’t like people who like President Trump.  Which is an important distinction.

When I see signs around town that say, “Hate Has No Home Here,” I wonder if that extends to people who support President Trump.  I see churches that are “welcoming,” but I wonder if they are welcoming to people who voted for President Trump.  It sort of reminds me of the song Tom Lehrer sang back in the 1960s, “National Brotherhood Week,” which he introduced as follows:

A Few Thoughts on Impeachment – And Process

It’s hard to come up with things to write about with impeachment sucking all of the oxygen out of the news.  So, let me make a few comments on impeachment and the impeachment process.  Before I start, though, let me note, as readers of this blog know, I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 (I actually decided that in 2015), and I will not vote for him in 2020.  To my comments:

1. So far, President Trump has not done anything that has surprised me all that much.  Appalled me, yes.  Surprised me, no.