Independence Day
Congratulations to the people of Palestine—today their little spot on the globe was given formal recognition as a non-member observer state of the United Nations by that organization’s General Assembly in New York City. The key word here is "state."
A simple majority vote was all that was needed for the U.N. to bypass a certain U.S. veto on the Security Council, but one hundred and thirty eight states voted in favor of the upgrade. Only nine states voted against, with 41 abstentions, mostly thanks to vigorous lobbying efforts against the cause by U.S. President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham says he fears the Palestinians will now use the International Criminal Court as "a club" against Israel, which is a pretty rich philosophical concept, when you think about it.
In the context of this vote, so soon after Israel's latest widescale assault on Gaza, the people of the world have now certainly spoken. Palestine is recognized—issue that birth certificate!
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Next comes my second ballot publicly-posted in less than a month-- this one, my 2013 ballot for induction(s) into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. A modifier though is that, unlike the United States general election (ballot published 11/5), I am not actually qualified to vote in this election. It’s for show only. To be eligible to vote for baseball’s Hall of Fame, one has to be a 10-year member in good standing of the Baseball Writers Association of America. I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of that organization, because, as Groucho Marx once suggested with different phraseology, they might accept me. I have, however, been blogging about baseball for eight full years, as of next week—ahem, thank you, thank you—and before that, I sent several indignant letters to the national print publication, USA Today Baseball Weekly.
The official 2013 ballot was mailed to writers yesterday, and its contents made public. I have already completed my hypothetical selections because it was very easy to do. There is now such a backlog of highly-qualified candidates for the Hall because of the BBWAA’s ridiculously moralistic stance against the use, or alleged use, of “performance enhancing” drugs in recent years. It's time we face the fact that players seeking an edge have been around since the '80s. The
1880s, that is. According to
Grantland, 1965 Hall of Fame inductee Jim "Pud" Galvin downed a testosterone-juiced beverage, derived from monkey testicles in 1889. The Washington Post ran an article the next day hailing the concoction's health benefits.
Voters can only vote for a maximum of 10 players, and I filled up eight slots on my ballot just with players that have compiled 300 wins, 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, a career OPS of .948, or are the all-time home run leader for catchers. That catcher is Mike Piazza, and the career OPS of .948 belongs to long-time Houston Astro Jeff Bagwell, whom sabermetrician Bill James publicly touts as the fourth greatest first baseman of all time, has already been turned down by Hall voters in two previous elections, even though he has never been linked to steroids in any way. (He just looked too big apparently.) Houstonites would be in riot mode already over this inexplicable snub if they still gave a monkey's balls about baseball.
With the eligible voters’ general drug hysteria, their arrogant posturing, their inconsistent application of competitive morality, and their utter inability to put any of the distinctive eras of baseball into any proper context, the list of players being shut out of the Hall of Fame is starting to compete, in talent, with the entire list of players’ enshrined. This is an overstatement perhaps, but if you gave me a team that had Shoeless Joe Jackson, Pete Rose, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Bagwell, Piazza, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa on the roster, I would give you everybody else, and we’ll see how a 7-game series plays out.
Those 8 “slam dunk” choices on my ballot are, alphabetically…
Jeff Bagwell
Craig Biggio
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Mark McGwire
Rafael Palmeiro
Mike Piazza
Sammy Sosa
Let’s add first-year eligible-slugger Larry Walker, along with one of the all-time great relief pitchers, Lee Smith, to round it out, and you’ve got yourself a handsome ballot, bucko. Good luck to these and a couple other worthy individuals.
Marvin Miller 1917-2012
Marvin Miller, a man far too intelligent, too honest, too tough, and too revolutionary to warrant induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, died this morning in New York City at the age of 95.
The founding director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Miller made everybody associated with professional baseball much wealthier than they otherwise would have been. Miller worked to create the sport’s pension system and an arbitration process for salary disputes. He chipped away at the federal anti-trust exemption enjoyed by baseball owners that kept a ballplayer contractually-bound to his club for the rest of his natural life. The average annual player salary in MLB jumped from $19,000 to $240,000 between Miller’s first year on the job in 1966 and his last in 1983, and thanks to the evolution of free agency, guided forward by Miller during the 1970’s, it has increased over three subsequent decades to more than $3 million. Umpires have also unionized successfully since the establishment of the Players Association, minor league players and umpires have seen significant improvements to their salaries and benefits, and baseball club owners, who had to be almost literally dragged, kicking and screaming, by Miller into the Progressive Era, witnessed exponential increases in the financial value of their franchises thanks to the large employee investments forced upon them.
Many Miller obituaries today are misstating the union leader’s legacy. The LA Times claims that the new financial structure in baseball, propelled by Miller, resulted in the higher ticket prices we see today, but to believe this nonsense, you have to also believe that club owners had been keeping ticket prices artificially lower than public demand prior to Miller’s ascendancy. This is a ludicrous proposition on its face. The Times also erroneously suggests that Miller’s tenure sparked a “growing commercialism in sport,” but it’s as ignorant to say that this particular trend began in 1966 as it would be to say that the use of “performance enhancing drugs” first sprouted in professional baseball in the late ‘80s.
Miller, who had previously spent 16 years working with the United Steelworkers, was not universally loved, or even respected, within the game of baseball. A union leader that was wouldn’t be worth a bag of shit. At his first meeting with players in spring training, 1965, he told the assembled athletes they should fire him if they ever heard management personnel praising him. As difficult as it is to believe now, Miller’s predecessor as “union leader” in Major League Baseball had been handpicked for the position by the owners.
Before Miller’s arrival on the scene, it didn’t even occur to most Americans that baseball players were also workers, and as capable of organizing for their own employment benefits as those in any other trade. Miller is controversial among fans even today because so many of them have bought into that stubborn lie-- promoted by the people charging them for entry into the ballparks-- that professional baseball is a game and not a business.
I would make the case that Marvin Miller is nothing less than the most socially-significant individual in the history of American sports, on par with Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Jack Johnson. His impact on and off the field of play is felt daily in the culture of sports, in the sports media, within the local business dynamics of America’s largest cities, and in labor circles generally.
Marvin Miller was not a moderate politically, even for a trade unionist. He was a proud man of the Left. In the American public conscience, he married the principals of individualism and personal freedom to the collectivist workers’ movement in a way that perhaps no other American has since Gene Debs. His economic principles were so prescient, and his cause of employee emancipation so just, that under him, socialist philosophers could find common ground with neoliberal economists like George Will, and with Republican baseball players like former U.S. Senator Jim Bunning and Nolan Ryan. The latter singled out Miller for thanks during his Hall of Fame induction speech in 1999.
Miller was interviewed by the great humanist Studs Terkel for Terkel’s book,“Coming of Age," in 1995. Miller told him, "Even though baseball is called a team sport, the team players are great individualists. When you step into the batter's box, you are all alone. When you're on the pitcher's mound, you are all alone. More than in most games, it is a sport of individualists. What I am most proud of in my whole career with baseball is that I was able to educate players in the importance of acting together. That's what it's all about."
Miller is survived by his two children.
Step 2
Let's check in on the progress of the Medicare and Social Security sell-out, foretold by Glenn Greenwald, and
a topic I blogged about three weeks ago.
We've moved to Step 2, where political negotiations are now underway between Congressional leaders and the President, the latter of which got re-elected November 6th largely because of his promise to protect the social safety net. As predicted, news releases are starting to float out from the offices of the Democratic leadership suggesting that some entitlement cuts would not be that bad, and that cuts would actually be necessary to preserve the "long-term viability" of the programs.
Former budget chief Jacob Lew was removed as the top White House negotiator by President Obama just before Thanksgiving. In his place is U.S. Treasury Secretary and best friend to Wall Street, Timothy Geithner, author of the largest bailout to corporate banks in global history. During the budget face-off in 2010, Republicans reportedly thought that Lew was not flexible enough on agreeing to entitlement cuts, and Geithner, this week, has been called more "pragmatic" by the Wall Street Journal.
Next to come, step three of six in the Grand Obama Betrayal, where influential "progressives" come to the public aid of the president, insisting that the Republican leaders are too evil and powerful to bend, that a pronounced standoff and failure to give in threatens the entire Obama second term, and that liberals who claim otherwise are the villains of reform. Stay tuned.
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Quote of the day: Velvet-voiced disc jockey I heard on the way home, as he faded out R. Kelly's hit single "Radio Message",
"When you can sing like that, I'll play your radio message too."
Nice. And you thought disc jockey was a dead profession.
Quote of the day that was only in my head: Me, after I answered an escalation/complaint call at work from a pinhead. I must have said something to the guy that sounded fancy because he goes, "You sound like a politician." What I didn't-- and couldn't-- say in response:
"You sound like a voter."
A Thanksgiving message from the CM Blog
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Do you know what I'm thankful for this year?
I'm thankful that my best friend's mom makes $76/hour and last month made $19,060 and she did it working from home on her computer for just a few hours. Contact me for more information and have a wonderful weekend!
When Iowa had a .500 football team
A colorful letter written by Kurt Vonnegut has surfaced that pertains to his time at the University of Iowa. The famed author was offering advice to a colleague making his way to the Iowa Writers' Workshop just as Vonnegut was departing the program in 1967.
This document, part of a series of Vonnegut's private letters being published for the first time, is a must-read. He offers useful advice on dealing with university faculty, living in Iowa City, visiting Cedar Rapids, dating co-eds, and attending local sporting events.
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Here's
a thought-provoking article explaining why the addition of Rutgers and Maryland to the Big 10 Conference is not a guaranteed triumph for all schools involved. The author's gist: nonprofit educational institutions can only spend so much money, bundled cable television pricing is dying, and New York City doesn't give a hoot about college football.
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So Republicans are pissed at Chris Christie because he refused to politicize a hurricane?
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Debbie Downer: Am I the only one that thinks the presidential and gubernatorial “turkey pardons” are in bad taste? Chief executives get to decide which humans get to live and die in this country, I get it, but I don’t think public murder is funny so I don’t find
these photo ops particularly “cute”. They're just an annual reminder of how cheap life is in this republic.
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On a related note, did you know about this
disgusting government crime?
MTF XI- The Schedule
Moeller TV Fest is back and Moeller's got it. Saturday, December first, at the house in Des Moines, your favorites episodes and ours will be screened. Food and drink will be provided. Please join us. If you're not already on the list, RSVP me at christophermmoeller@gmail.com or Aaron at atmoeller@hotmail.com.
The screening schedule...
"Wedding" New Girl #3 10/4/11
"Good Cop Bad Dog" Modern Family #46 5/11/11
"Saturday Night Live- The Best of Eddie Murphy" 1980-1984
"Hangin' with Mr. Super" The PJs #3 1/10/99
Open Remote-- "Steve Guttenberg's Birthday" Party Down #15 5/21/10
Open Remote-- "Mr. McGibblets" The League #4 11/19/09
"Gracie's Checking Account" The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show #5 12/7/50
"Baseball" Portlandia #6 2/25/11
"A Little Romance" The Golden Girls #13 12/14/85
"Remedial Chaos Theory" Community #52 10/13/11
"Mr. Personalities" Taxi #69 10/22/81
"Subway/Pamela" Louie #19 7/28/11
"Brian's Got a Brand New Bag" Family Guy #130 11/8/09
Love Affair
Least surprising story of the year: Washington political “journalist” winds up falling in love with the subject of his/her book.
I think this sort of thing happens more than we know. Members of our esteemed media who keep professional score based on “access” to power wind up worshiping at the altar of leadership, and the deference shown particularly towards Pentagon officials is unmatched. Have you read the excerpts from this Petraeus book? The gist seems to be-- David Petraeus: great military leader, or
the greatest military leader?!
The bigger the politico, the more he or she is treated like a rock star. Last election cycle, when John Boehner advanced to the position of House Majority Leader, "60 Minutes" sent Lesley Stahl to Ohio to give him a tongue bath, and I got stuck one night watching it on television. Here's a tip: When you see an upcoming interview being promoted on television as “exclusive,” run fast in the opposite direction. There’s a reason that program or that journalist was chosen by political consultants as the vessel of information to the public, and that reason is not because they are afraid of the journalist. It’s sad that “gotcha” journalism is all we have left that's effective, but our feckless corporate media is no match for the modern filters of public relations.
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The Petraeus scandal is serious business. The head of the world's most dangerous and terrifying law enforcement organization isn't allowed to just wind his clock indiscriminately. The supreme irony is that the head of the CIA is outed for his imprudence thanks to the FBI's discovery that his mistress was trying to hack his email. He's been eavesdropping on us, and the weight of the Orwellian security state winds up falling on him. This is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
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What's confusing is why these women go for Petraeus? In Huggy Lowdown's words this morning, he looks like Don Knotts in the Incredible Mr. Limpet. They say it's the uniform that can transform women into puddles of melted butter, but most women I know don't care a lick for all of those colorful "decorations" on a general's jacket. What's with all that crap anyway? As Mort Sahl once said, "Very impressive. If you're twelve."
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And by the way, he was
a shitty general.
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I guess we'll never know how those numbers would have worked themselves out in the Romney/Ryan budget.
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John Bachman delivered his final newscast for WHO Channel 13 last week. I'll never forget my first meeting with Bachman in the WHO TV building on Grand Avenue. Some of you have heard me tell of it. It was about 15 years ago now and I'm a cub reporter at WHO
Radio across the hallway from the WHO television studio. I'm at the urinal emptying out the rain gauge one afternoon and Bachman saddles up at the next basin. We stand in determined silence for a few seconds. He has no idea who I am. Then he says, "I hear Stricky's going on vacation." Stricky, I presume then and now to be then-ace reporter Jim Strickland, lead investigator in WHO-TV's popular "Dirty Dining" series, among other entertaining features. "Oh, is that right?" I reply. End of story.
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I live in a part of the country that primarily uses the word "pop" to describe a carbonated sugar beverage, but I choose to say "soda" because "soda" has only one meaning. I don't care for needless confusion.
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My car has over 140,000 miles on it and last week I changed the clock in it for the first time without the aid of the owner's manual.
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How great is John Goodman?
St. Louis Cardinals fan
New Orleans resident and champion
Roseanne
A Moonlighting episode
Raising Arizona
Sea of Love
Barton Fink
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Big Lebowski
Bringing Out the Dead
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Monsters Inc.
Treme
Community
The Artist
Argo
Just an unbelievable resume.
The Class of '93
Believe it or not, all of these people would have been in my grade in school (born late August 1974 through mid-August '75). The names above the line are older than me (born before April 2), the names below are younger. I have no other point to make about this.
Amy Adams
Ryan Phillippe
Rasheed Wallace
Jimmy Fallon
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Natalie Maines
John Rocker
Joaquin Phoenix
R.A. Dickey
Nelly
Leonardo DiCaprio
Chloe Sevigny
Stephen Merchant
Pavol Demitra
Meg White
Ryan Seacrest
Mekhi Pfifer
Danica McKellar
Dax Shepard
Bradley Cooper
Sara Gilbert
Big Boi
Drew Barrymore
Chelsea Handler
Eva Longoria
Will.i.am
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Scott Rolen
Zach Braff
Tiki Barber
Ronde Barber
Chris Carpenter
Johnny Galecki
David Beckham
Christina Hendricks
Enrique Iglesias
Helio Castroneves
Ray Lewis
Jack Johnson
Lauryn Hill
Andre 3000
Cee Lo Green
Jamie Oliver
Russell Brand
Angelina Jolie
Allen Iverson
Tobey Maguire
50 Cent
Jack White
Lil' Kim
Ray Allen
Judy Greer
Alex Rodriguez
Edgar Renteria
Charlize Theron
Kaitlin Olson
Prosperity for all participants
Charles Darrow of Philadelphia didn't really invent the Monopoly board game, as Hasbro would have us believe in their materials. It turns out that's just another capitalist myth. The original game actually dates back three decades before Darrow's patent, to 1903, and to actress Lizzie Magie's "The Landlord's Game," which she drew up as a tribute to the Socialist teachings of writer Henry George, a man who believed that no single person could "own' land. Below is an image of Magie's original board,
examined in detail in this week's issue of Harper's, in a piece by Christopher Ketcham.
Recognize the properties, the scrip, the "Chance" spaces, the utilities, the Central Park "free parking" square, even the "luxury tax"? Instead of a bank, there's a "public treasury." Oh, the irony that the world-famous parlor game devoted to the topic of unregulated capitalism would be the product of intellectual theft. Or to at least the capitalist appropriation of a game provided by an altruistic woman to the public domain. Parker Brothers, do not pass the "Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages" square. Do not collect $200.
When I have played the "Monopoly" game in the past, I have repeatedly tried to get my opponents to agree to the creation of an ad hoc regulatory commission among our members, a bureaucratic system of checks and balances that could help us to
avoid monopolies being formed on the board. I never understood how we could all jump into participation and get behind a system that left all but one of us financially destitute by the end. With cooperation between players, we could build so much more than just houses and hotels, we could build museums, schools, parks, libraries, the sky's the limit. This little history lesson proves I was on to something.
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The smallest army since 1940? The smallest navy since 1915? Twenty three percent across-the-board military cuts? I say it's high time we leap off that fiscal cliff! Are there better ways to cut defense spending? I'm sure there are. Are we going to see defense cuts otherwise? No.
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Really? Of all the horrific shit David Petraeus has done? Breaking his wedding vows was the big one?
And next comes the sellout: A tragedy in six simple steps
Courtesy of
Glenn Greenwald, a haunting prediction on how Social Security and Medicare get slashed even before Obama's second inauguration takes place. Greenwald calls this recognizable process "the standard pattern of self-disempowerment used by American liberals to render themselves impotent and powerless in Washington." It's fun bedtime reading.
"Step One: Liberals will declare that cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits - including raising the eligibility age or introducing 'means-testing' - are absolutely unacceptable, that they will never support any bill that does so no matter what other provisions it contains, that they will wage war on Democrats if they try.
Step Two: As the deal gets negotiated and takes shape, progressive pundits in Washington, with Obama officials persuasively whispering in their ear, will begin to argue that the proposed cuts are really not that bad, that they are modest and acceptable, that they are even necessary to save the programs from greater cuts or even dismantlement.
Step Three: Many progressives- ones who are not persuaded that these cuts are less draconian or defensible on the merits - will nonetheless begin to view them with resignation and acquiescence on pragmatic grounds. Obama has no real choice, they will insist, because he must reach a deal with the crazy, evil GOP to save the economy from crippling harm, and the only way he can do so is by agreeing to entitlement cuts. It is a pragmatic necessity, they will insist, and anyone who refuses to support it is being a purist, unreasonably blind to political realities, recklessly willing to blow up Obama's second term before it even begins.
Step Four: The few liberal holdouts, who continue to vehemently oppose any bill that cuts Social Security and Medicare, will be isolated and marginalized, excluded from the key meetings where these matters are being negotiated, confined to a few MSNBC appearances where they explain the inconsequential opposition.
Step Five: Once a deal is announced, and everyone from Obama to Harry Reid to the DNC are behind it, any progressives still vocally angry about it and insisting on its defeat will be castigated as ideologues and purists, compared to the Tea Party for their refusal to compromise, and scorned (by compliant progressives) as fringe Far Left malcontents.
Step Six: Once the deal is enacted with bipartisan support and Obama signs it in a ceremony, standing in front of his new Treasury Secretary, the supreme corporatist Erskine Bowles, where he touts his virtues of bipartisanship and making 'tough choices', any progressives still complaining will be told that it is time to move on. Any who do not will be constantly reminded that there is an Extremely Important Election coming - the 2014 midterm - where it will be Absolutely Vital that Democrats hold on to the Senate and that they take over the House. Any progressive, still infuriated by cuts to Social Security and Medicare, who still refuses to get meekly in line behind the Party will be told that they are jeopardizing the Party's chances for winning that Vital Election and - as a result of their opposition - are helping Mitch McConnell take over control of the Senate and John Boehner retain control of the House."
The CM Blog will keep its eye on this story in coming days as more develops.
My 2012 ballot
U.S. President and Vice President
Jill Stein and
Cheri Honkala, Green
U.S. Representative District 3
David Rosenfeld, Socialist Workers
State Representative District 34
Bruce L. Hunter, Democrat
Supreme Court
David S. Wiggins, Non-Partisan-- Yes
Public Measure Letter A - Polk County Water and Land Legacy Bond
Yes
Once more around the park
Damn it.
Ernie Hays has
died.
