Trump is a crook – we all know that (at least normal people do); he played his supporters from chumps and they fell for it.  A television game show host who wears heavy makeup, a weird hair weave, and has 5 kids from 3 wives, is accused of 2 dozen incidents of sexual assault, has 4,000 lawsuits against him and who’s being investigated by the NY AG, NYC DA, and the feds for everything from financial fraud, to tax fraud, to cooperating with foreign powers, and even inciting insurrection is not the ideal guy to lead the free world.  His followers, though, were actual chumps and we all paid for it with economic disaster, half a million pandemic deaths, and being labeled a pariah on the world stage.

As bad as all that is, it actually hit Trump’s supporters directly in the wallet, and I’m not talking about just the economy. During the 2020 campaign, Trump’s fundraising actually grifted his most loyal followers.  Trailing far behind the Dems in fundraising, Trump’s campaigned CHANGED the giving option on its website to default to recurring rather than one time.  What that meant was that if a donor wasn’t paying attention, whatever donation they made to Trump, the same amount was charged each week until the election, draining thousands of people’s bank accounts and running up credit card bills.  The only way to opt out was to wade through all the fine print and then check the box for one time donation.  That’s right, folks, Trump actually drained the bank accounts of supporters, using the money to pay for his campaign.

AND, if it’s even possible, it got worse.  Late in the campaign, the opt out box was made more opaque, and even buried another pre-checked box that DOUBLED the contribution. This scheme snagged scores of people including retirees, military veterans, and people couldn’t afford to donate thousands of dollars to anything, much less Trump.  One veteran donated $900, only to have his account drained by $8,000.

The effort was clearly intentional.  Trump grifted money from loyalists in the waning days of the campaign to prop up his spending.  Even worse, after his election loss, Trump’s disinformation campaign where he falsely claimed massive election fraud raised tens of millions of dollars that he then used to refund the money to donors he had defrauded before the election.  The total he had to refund?  Over $122 million.

As if anyone needed more evidence of Trump’s criminality and utter disregard for anyone but himself, this is it.  By deception, Trump shook down his unwitting loyalists for over $122 million to fund his own charade to cling to the presidency.  I’m just thankful the effort ultimately failed.

It’s all so clear, now, ain’t it?

Matt Gaetz has been the loyalist of the Trump loyalists. No matter how low Trump went, Gaetz stood there with a grin on his face and a shovel in his hand to help dig a deeper hole. It all makes sense now that we know the latest accusations about Gaetz and his inability to keep it in his pants.

Here is what they have in common:

Daddy’s money

Don Gaetz made his fortune by convincing the government to allow Medicare and Medicaid to cover hospice services – that his non-profit provided. Once the government started covering these hospice services, he switched the company to for-profit and built the largest hospice company in the country. He made millions using government health care. He then used those millions to buy his son a seat in Congress, which the son is now using to rail against government-run health care. Now he’s using those millions on getting his son a lawyer.

We all know, of course, how Donald Trump’s daddy made his money. Real estate, including government-subsidized housing, like this building in Brooklyn that still nets the Trumps $5 million a year.

Being a Giant Windbag on Twitter

The night before Michael Cohen testified before Congress, Gaetz sent this tweet, meant to intimidate a federal witness:

“Hey @MichaelCohen212 – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…,”

There are about a million other examples of Gaetz being a horses ass on Twitter for you to read if you’re a masochist, and I certainly don’t need to prove that Trump is a giant windbag.

Multiple Accusations of Sexual Impropriety

This Wikipedia page lists 26 credible accusations against Trump, most of which you’re already aware, no doubt.

The best proof on this Earth of a devil is that Donald Trump gets away with literally everything he does with no repercussions ever, and the only way that this is possible is that he sold his soul to El Diablo.

Of course, it is this week that the Gaetzgate scandal began to unfold. In my estimation, he just finally pissed off the wrong person. Mr. or Mrs. pissed off leaked the investigation that had been secret from the media for half a year. For six months, the Justice Department has been investigating whether Gaetz flew a 17-year-old child across state lines and paid her for statutory rape. Within hours of the story breaking, GOP Congressmen and women lined up to give the media anonymous accounts of Gaetz sharing naked photos of women on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives.

He is accused of having a sex contest when he was in the Florida state legislature involving . . . Harry Potter. Lawmakers got points for sleeping with married women, sorority girls, and virgins. The ultimate prize of this contest was one specific woman who they nicknamed “The Snitch” – as in Quiddich, whoever got her to sleep with them won the game outright.
Alright, alright, the Daily Mail reported the last bit there but it’s too damn juicy not to talk about at the beauty salon.

They each have a Creepy Predator Wingmen

Trump’s long documented and often photographed friendship with Jeffrey Epstein allowed him free and full access to many of these women who later accused him of sexual assault. Epstein died in prison after being indicted for running a sex-trafficking ring wherein he abused dozens of underage girls, flying them on his private plane to his private island where they could be abused without the fear of authorities coming to the aid of the children.

Gaetz’s Epstein is named Joel Greenberg. Joel Greenberg is under indictment for a whole host of unbelievably nasty crimes, from posing as a student and writing a letter that he hoped would disgrace his political rival, to using Florida state government offices to print Fake IDs for the underage girls he was sleeping with so he could fly them across state lines. That sounds familiar.

There sure is an awful lot of smoke around these folks.

Alright, jury, I’ve presented my case. Gaetz is Trump’s biggest defender because they’re the same guy. Given every advantage in life, able to purchase anything they’d ever want from women to political office, they openly flaunt their crimes and laugh at the dummies around them that play by the rules and don’t have nearly as many followers on social media as they do. They’re both full of horse shit. We can only hope that the Feds take down Gaetz before he becomes the next President Trump.

Yesterday, MLB made a terse announcement that the league is moving the All Star game AND the MLB draft out of Atlanta as a response to Georgia Republicans passing its voter suppression bill which included voter suppression tactics like stricter ID requirements and shortened absentee voting periods.  The worst provisions, though, included giving the legislature authority to reject county voting results, removing the Georgia secretary of state from the state elections board voting members, and the cruel criminalizing of giving water and food to voters standing in line.

In a statement, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said,

“Over the last week, we have engaged in thoughtful conversations with Clubs, former and current players, the Players Association, and The Players Alliance, among others, to listen to their views.  I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft.

“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box. In 2020, MLB became the first professional sports league to join the non-partisan Civic Alliance to help build a future in which everyone participates in shaping the United States. We proudly used our platform to encourage baseball fans and communities throughout our country to perform their civic duty and actively participate in the voting process. Fair access to voting continues to have our game’s unwavering support.”

Joining Atlanta based Delta Airlines and Coca Cola, along with other companies, MLB is ratcheting up the pressure on the GOP to stop its massive voter suppression efforts in a desperate effort to cling to power as its demographic shrinks.   It worked in Indiana years ago when then governor Mike Pence signed the anti-gay bill that explicitly allowed private businesses to refuse service to people they didn’t like under the guise of “religious choice”.  After massive backlash against businesses and sports in Indiana, the state legislature “clarified” the bill by adding that, notwithstanding why the bill was written in the first place, it couldn’t be used to deny service to anyone.

That’s not good enough for Georgia, though.  The GOP must be stopped in its tracks in Georgia because it’s doing the same thing in 42 other states.  If companies, sports leagues, activists, and Americans stand against this anti-democratic and anti-American effort to consolidate power, this effort can be stopped.

Written by Nick Carraway on April 1 – 

“Put me in coach. I’m ready to play today. Put me in coach, I’m ready to play today. Look at me. I can be centerfield.” — John Fogerty

Today marks a special day in American lore. It’s Opening Day. Opening day represents so many things for so many people. For some it is a signal of the beginning of spring. For others it is the renewal of hope that this year will be the year that everything goes right. Still others consider the routine of seeing box scores in the newspaper (or online) and a game on the tube (or radio) every single night. For many of us it is all of those things.

I’ve written four books about baseball and half of those have been related to the Hall of Fame. Independent of my love for the Astros or any other specific player there is the love for the game. Opening day should be a national holiday. When done right, nearly every team is opening their season on the same day. Fans can go into a collective coma with copious amounts of beer, peanuts, and other tasty treats seated in front of the television watching a triple header on ESPN.

I’ve spent all of those books talking about the history of the game and settling arguments within it, but I’ve rarely talked about why I love the game so much. For me, it brings order to disorder. There is a symbiotic relationship between cold, hard facts and the thrill of not quite knowing what will happen on any given day.

My cousin (an avid gambler) once asked me how you handicap baseball. I told him you don’t. You can look at pitching matchups, hitting lineups, career averages, and all kinds of numbers and lose every time. Yet, over a long enough timeline the numbers begin to level out and everything begins to make sense. That’s the paradox that brings you back every time.

Numbers fluctuate in every sport and yet the numbers in baseball have a magic all their own. The .300 batting average always means something. 100 runs and RBI always mean something. 20 wins, a 3.00 ERA, and 200 strikeouts always means something. Of course, those meanings become magnified when they turn into career sums. Then it becomes 3000 hits, 300 wins, 500 home runs, and so forth.

In no other sport are the numbers that magical. Running backs and receivers may gain 1000 yards and quarterbacks may throw for 4000 yards, but those numbers have waned in their importance over time. Offenses change and evolve. A yard just isn’t a yard anymore.

Similarly, in basketball scoring has changed dramatically as offenses have changed. The irony is that all three sports have embraced advanced analytics and the analytics have driven the strategy. Where did analytics get its start? You guessed it. Baseball.

I suppose it would be natural for a history buff to love baseball. The game goes back to the American Civil War. Football and basketball can’t possibly compete with that. Few really care about soccer in the United States and few south of the Mason-Dixon line care about hockey. So, baseball was the best opportunity to marry a love of statistics, history, and symmetry.

Today is a day to take a break from Matt Gaetz, Joe Biden, voter suppression, gun violence and anything else we might care about just about every day around here. It is a day to feverishly check the scores to see how my fantasy teams did. It is a day to marvel at individual performances that might or might not be a predictor of things to come. It is a day to hope that my team will be perfect for at least one day. It is a day to allow all of that other stuff to go far far away. It will all be here when we get back.

John Boehner has a book coming out, and he’s not holding back.  Here’s an excerpt he’s released, and it’s a must listen, especially to the end.  Trust me…

When @SpeakerBoehner was recording his audiobook I was told by sources that during these wine-soaked sessions he would deviate from the book’s text and insert random violent attacks on @tedcruz. Well, here’s some tape (listen to the end): pic.twitter.com/NFCQ2QFdTT

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) April 2, 2021

Georgia Republicans passed a terrible law under the guise of “election integrity”, all based on Trump’s Big Lie that he and his enablers continue to repeat today.  Said Republicans in Georgia, and in other states, ignored overwhelming testimony and public opinion that these law are ill conceived, hurt voters, are anti-democracy, and anti-American.  They did it for one reason and one reason only, and that is to cling to power because they know they can’t win in a fair fight.  Rather than celebrating our two century old tradition of voting for those individuals we want to represent us in our state and national capitols, I’ve heard Republican supporters paint a dark picture of voting locations being war zones where, “by God if you’re going to vote, pack in your own supplies and be prepared for long waits; don’t you dare help anyone else, and people who do should go to jail.”  AND, “don’t you dare speak out against Republican policies or we will come after you.”

That very scenario is playing out in Georgia.  Atlanta based Delta Airlines, trying to go along to get along, at first had a milquetoast response to the law in Georgia, displeasing many, including voting rights activists, who then called out the company.  In a response, Delta strengthened its response condemning the law, even saying that the law was “based on a lie” that there was widespread voter fraud which was simply not true.  Republicans didn’t like that dose of truth, and retaliated last night in the Georgia House voting to revoke Delta’s fuel tax credit that helps the airline be more competitive.   The measure died in the Georgia Senate, but the message was clear…it is, “Don’t disagree with us or we will come after you and damage your business.”  The GOP has now become the Mafia.  It is transactional, based on quid pro quo and most certainly a protection racket.  They’ll hand out gimmes to companies to attract them, but if those companies don’t toe the line, they’ll mete out punishment and quickly.

This is the twenty-first century, but many states are controlled by a party that are playing by 19th century rules.  Repubs scream about “woke” leftists and “cancel culture” even while they are muscling everyone who may disagree with them.  They’re the real cancel culture.