It started innocently enough. Someone on Astros twitter innocently enough claimed that it cost them 75 dollars to fill up their tank with gas. They apparently drive a larger vehicle with a larger tank. In the end, they thanked Joe Biden.

Some people continue to blame Biden for expensive gas. Others defend Biden’s moves and assert that things will get better. The third group simply point out that presidents don’t have as much control over market forces as people would like to think they could.

Then, the author of the opening tweet chimes in with the money line. I’m not going to torpedo the person here, so I’ll paraphrase. Essentially they said that 75 dollars seemed to be the price some are willing to pay not to have mean tweets.

Naturally, the hounds of war descended on that person. I’m somewhat ashamed that I was one of them. I’m ashamed because I know the person likely wasn’t completely serious and was just fishing for a reaction.

Still, a larger point needs to be made. To put things very simply, there is a minimum bottom level of humanity necessary for leadership. It isn’t about mean tweets. It isn’t about insulting of women, minorities, disadvantaged, handicapped, or struggling nations. It isn’t about a craven disregard for the suffering of others. It isn’t about personal discretions so depraved that all sense of shame has escaped.

One could almost look past those things. Except those things become markers for all of the other stuff. How could someone gleefully lock kids in cages? How could someone skimp on hurricane relief and insult those that need it? How could someone demagogue entire groups of people and compare them with racists and xenophobes as if they are the same? Finally, how could someone gaslight an entire pandemic and spread misinformation until a million Americans wind up dead?

Well, it takes someone with such a deficiency in character on those first things that they become capable of doing those other things. One of the things we used to collectively understand is that whether we are miserly or generous, conservative or liberal, religious or not religious, there was a foundation of humanity necessary to lead. No one that fails to meet that bar need apply. Except this last time someone did apply and they won.

No political victory big or small is worth human depravity. No economic or social plank is worth it. Gas may cost an extra 20 or 30 bucks a tank. There could be a hike in income tax or maybe supply chains are slower. Those things may be under the president’s control, but usually they aren’t. The president is usually just a piece of the machinery that makes the world turn and life to run smoothly. He or she can’t do it alone.

Even if we were to disregard all of that, there is a minimum measure of humanity needed for the job. We have certainly elected men with character flaws before. We’ve had huge battles over which flaws were worse and which ones were acceptable. Those are usually worthwhile discussions until we happened on a man without character flaws. He didn’t have any character flaws because he has no character. No one has ever successfully put a price tag on character, but I’m positive it is worth more than 20 bucks in gas.

By now I’m sure that you’ve heard about the Catholic priest who has resigned in shame after the Church declared all of his baptisms invalid because he used the word “we” insted of the liturgical “I” as in, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  It blew up last week, after the Diocese of Phoenix announced on its website that everyone  baptized during the career of Phoenix priest Father Andres Arango has had their baptisms invalidated by the Church.  What that means is that their subsequent first communions, marriages, and all other liturgical events in their lives are also invalid.  The announcement even included a form to fill out to get a corrective baptism done.

To a post-christian infidel like me, the entire issue seems absurd, but this judgment by the Church has thrown thousands of people’s lives into serious uncertainly, and only God knows how many of those people who had died since Arango’s invalid baptisms are now burning in hell because of one wrong word.  I’m sorry, but this “scandal” is complete bullshit.

So what’s really going on here?  Well, as explained by another priest, actually former priest, Father Nathan Monk, it’s a diversion from an actual scandal in the Church.  In a Facebook post a few days ago, Monk explained the absurdity of the Phoenix Diocese’s claim that the baptisms are invalid, noting that the only requirement is that the baptism should be in the name of the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”, the traditional Trinity in Christianity.  He explained further that even laypersons (not ordained) can baptize a person in an emergency, and those baptisms are considered valid.

In that same post, though, Monk drops the bombshell, which actually should have been obvious….The Diocese of Phoenix invalidated these thousands of baptisms on the orders of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, which is the enforcer of rules in the Catholic Church.  So why would this agency inside the Vatican do such a thing to a local priest way out in Phoenix?  Monk explains it this way –

“Because the decision came down from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and this absurd story broke right after Joey Ratz aka Pope Emeritus Benedict the 16th was called to the carpet for how he handled another scandal within the Church. And guess where he was in leadership before being appointed pope? The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith! And guess which story we are talking about instead of that? The one about a priest saying ‘we’ instead of ‘I.'”

Now we get it.  Monk contends, and it makes more sense than any of us would like, that the Roman Catholic Church willfully and knowingly destroyed the life long career of a devoted bilingual priest and turned the lives of thousands of people on their heads to distract church attention away from the actual villain, who is Ratzinger, in an effort to protect his corruption.

This sordid tale explains perfectly how, and more why, the Church as we know it is dying. And that death can’t come soon enough.

People often want to trace the origin of things. It may just be the full extent of my personal timeline, but I vividly remember the 1980s. Lifestyles of the rich and famous was always lingering in the background. Lotteries started popping up around the country. The Ronald Reagan revolution was in full force. It’s difficult to fully appreciate all the impact that it had on society. So, I’ll try one little corner of the world.

Baseball players have one of the more vibrant unions in professional sports. The first work stoppages actually began in the early 1970s with some minor skirmishes here and there before then. Everyone knows the Curt Flood story and the story of his sacrifice is told and retold to the point of folklore.

Somehow, in the intervening decade, athletes and the union went from being the little guy fighting for their rights to being greedy cry babies that weren’t satisfied with all they have. People started siding with ownership. People would exclaim that they’d be willing to do anything for a million dollars. Those players are just too greedy.

No one bothered to question how or why our outlook on these things changed so dramatically. Players are well compensated and there is no getting around that, but they are employees. One of the things we used to believe as a country is that when businesses make money then everyone should grow with that business. Yes, the business owner (or stock holders) should benefit, but so should the people that did the work to help the business grow.

Between World War II and 1980 we saw a virtual renaissance for the middle class. The GI Bill helped millions go to college. You heard all kinds of tales about people being the first in the family to graduate from high school and go to college. A progressive income tax helped build perhaps the most vibrant middle class in the entire world.

That was then. The Reagan years and in the intervening decades have taken that all back. Just remember, 2020 is the same distance from 1980 as 1940. A look at baseball salaries is an interesting place to start. In 2015, the average big leaguer was making 4.25 million per season. In 2021, the average big leaguer was making 4.17 million per season.

More than 60 percent of players at the big league level were making under a million dollars last season. Fans somehow see Mike Trout, Alex Rodriguez, and Albert Pujols and assume they represent the union. They represent the union about as much as the typical owner represents society at large. No one begrudges them their right to earn huge dollars. I’m sure the union members just wish a few dollars would trickle down to them at some point.

Obviously, MLB is big business and their big business operates about like all big businesses operate. The biggest problem in every single labor negotiation is in how to share revenues. The devil is in how they couch it. They want large market teams to curtail their spending so smaller market teams can compete.

Owners have never opened their books to the public. Yet, in a sport where revenues are exploding (with the obvious exception of 2020) and have been exploding fairly regularly for the past 30 years, baseball owners want you to believe they are somehow hurting financially. This is supposed to be true while average salaries have actually declined since 2015. They are losing money and the players want to bleed them dry.

It’s a bunch of bullshit. Yet, while they are shoveling this nonsense, fans are usually siding with the owners. Remember, more than 60 percent of players are earning a million dollars and that’s just in the big leagues. The tale of what happens to minor leaguers is much more stark. Yet, most owners today are worth north of a billion dollars. Franchises grow in value by more than 500 percent annually. If you stop and think about it, none of this adds up.

I know it gets hard to force yourself to care about millionaires fighting with billionaires over huge profits. That’s especially true if you aren’t a fan. Yet, this battle is essentially the same battle as the battle over minimum wage and wages in other industries. The rhetoric is the same. If they raised wages then the costs would swallow them whole or make the cost of a burger outrageous. Neither is true. That’s just what they want you to believe.

The TFG and his spawn lost big time today when a New York Supreme Court judge ruled against their effort to quash subpoenas by NY AG Letitia James to give testimony in her civil fraud investigation where they are suspected of overstating values of their assets for banking purposes and understating them for tax purposes.  The case came to a head earlier this week when long-time TFG accountants Mazars resigned and said their financial statement audits for the last 10 years were not reliable and couldn’t be depended on.  TFG will appeal, of course.  If he ever gets in front of James, expect him to take the 5th, because otherwise he’ll lie because he can’t help himself.

The slow plod towards justice continues, as slow as it is.

 

It’s time for Wedge Issue Bingo!  In a desperate effort to stay in power, Republicans invent new wedge issues lies every two years designed to piss off the base and drive them to the polls.  AND, they invent these divisive issues while howling about how Democrats are being divisive.  The really amazing thing is that it works like a charm election after election.

So, let’s list all the wedge issues that republicans have conjured up in the last 20 years or so.  Feel free to add to my list.  I’ll start with the Golden Oldies, then add newer issues:

God
Guns
Gays
Christian Nation
Death Tax
Wedding Cakes
School Vouchers
Welfare Queens
Deficit Spending (only when Dems are in office)
Gun Grabbers
Tort Reform
ACORN
Planned Parenthood
Abortion on Demand
Partial Birth Abortion
Gang Wars
Government is the Problem
Government Takeover of Healthcare
Death Panels
Voter ID
Vote Harvesting
Voter Fraud
Hillary’s Emails
Transgender
Public Bathrooms (related to Transgender)
Boys Playing Girls’ Sports
Concealed Carry of Guns
Open Carry of Guns
Unlicensed Open Carry of Guns
Rioters (Only Non-White)
Immigration
Open Borders
Taco Truck on Every Corner
Illegals Vote and get Welfare
Vote by Mail Fraud
Massive Voter Fraud
Anthony Fauci
Vaccines will Kill You
Science Isn’t Real
Mandates are Equal to the Holocaust
Critical Race Theory
Critical Thinking is Bad
White Replacement Theory
Books are Actually Porn
Parental Control of Education
January 6th was “legitimate political discourse”

That’s my list, but I’m sure I’ve missed some.  Ready, Set, Go!

February is Black History Month with some wondering why we spend so little time on diversity. Others wonder why we are spending any time at all. Racism exists or doesn’t exist in the eye of the beholder.

Situations always come up that make us wonder and we had another one crop up in New Jersey. Obviously, news organizations cover these events in their own way and it can vary some depending on the source. As you might imagine, social media responses run the gamut. At the very least, it demonstrates the need for a continuance of the national conversation.

For those that don’t care to go down the rabbit hole, two teenage boys got into a fight at a shopping mall in New Jersey. Police appeared to respond very differently to the two boys. The white participant is allowed to sit on a sofa until the confrontation was over. The black participant didn’t get nearly the same treatment.

Obviously, such videos create just as many questions as they do answers. What happened before the video began? Is one boy more responsible than the other for the fight starting? Did witnesses provide the police with their own perceptions that might have impacted how both boys were dealt with? Were they harder on the black boy because he appeared to be winning the fight? The coup de grace is the question of what happened immediately after the video abruptly ended?

These are all pertinent questions and I’m sure they will come up in an investigation. In many ways that will be unfortunate. I seriously doubt we will hear the results of said investigation. That’s especially true if they find other mitigating factors that can explain why the two boys were treated so differently.

The social media reaction is very telling. Those outside the country don’t necessarily understand the baggage that comes with another event like this. For what it’s worth, the white participant told authorities he didn’t understand why they were treated differently. Maybe that was a moment of honesty. Maybe just maybe there is a little hope for the future.

As for the here and now, it is another very visible example that we aren’t where we need to be. Whether those two officers were wrong or right, the video is proof that we are not equal. If Critical Race Theory can be defined as “systems laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race” then we could credibly argue that this video is proof that these systems are real and need to be studied and debated.

Of course, many states (including Texas) don’t want that to happen. At least, they don’t want it to happen in school. We aren’t racist anymore. We can all gather around the camp fire and sing “Kumbaya” and hold hands. Whether something makes our kids feel bad is not the standard we should be using. We know it exists. The video above is proof enough for most people.

The funny thing is that those two particular officers can credibly claim that they are not racist. They may even be able to prove that they reacted appropriately in that situation. That’s not really the point. The point is outcomes. If the outcome in situations like that seem to consistently create unequal treatment then that would be evidence of the very thing that CRT opponents want to sweep under the rug. Welcome to Black History Month. May these conversations not cease once the calendar strikes March 1st.