Hi:
For the third Saturday in a row, we had more rain. Not nearly as bad as last weeks, that left whole blocks underwater, but still, it was a nuisance.
Many of us woke up Saturday morning to hear that Israel was attacked by rockets fired by Hamas. The death toll continues to grow by the hour. I don't want to not acknowledge what is going on, or act like I don't care, it’s a horrible situation that I really can’t find the words for. The Yom Kippur war was 50 years ago this week, it just never ends in the Middle East does it?
It just never ends.
With that, we move on to other things going on here.... we have issues of our own, namely the position of second in line to the Presidency was rendered vacant this week. Let's start there..
POLITICS: HELP WANTED-ONE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTITIVES
Last Monday night, Matt Gaetz-(R-FL) introduced a motion to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. On Tuesday, the vote was taken and by a count of 216-210, McCarthy was indeed removed.
All Democrats and 8 Republicans voted yea on Gaetz' resolution.
My first reaction to all this was to ask if perhaps some Democrats may have considered keeping McCarthy in the Speaker's chair. After all, the reason Gaetz made his motion to vacate was that McCarthy had worked with Democrats to come up with a stop gap spending bill to keep the federal government from shutting down Sunday morning.
I can't stand Gaetz and would find it hard to support anything he sponsors. Him, along with Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Lauren (Hands) Boebert, and the whore representing Georgia's 14th Congressional District to me are the 5 biggest problems in the House on the GOP side. (The Democrats have issues of their own, which I will get to shortly.) And McCarthy? I'm no fan of his either, he's got the spine and makeup of a jellyfish, another guy who talks a lot without saying much of anything.
But at the buzzer, he came up with a plan that would keep federal employees working and saved millions of people who rely on federal funds to survive. Remember, while so many federal employees get furloughed, members of Congress still collect full salaries and benefits. How the hell is that fair?
So for once in his life McCarthy does something constructive and for his trouble he loses his job. And again, observing here from the outside, I wondered if at least a few Democrats might have tossed McCarthy a proverbial bone.
Nothing doing, but why?
There was an article by Alexander Nazaryan, the senior White House correspondent for Yahoo News that answers that very question.
For starters, most of them, (rightly I may add), feel that McCarthy caved in on January 6th. At first, he condemned the attack, even angrily yelling at President Trump during a phone call that day that they were "trying to fucking kill me" and being caught on tape telling other Republican lawmakers he was going to ask Trump to resign because "I've had it with this guy."
McCarthy now acts as if that was someone else who said all that stuff and that January 6 was a big misunderstanding. He went on to oppose the the bipartisan commission to investigate the attack and also gave security footage from the Capitol to former Fox News stooge Tucker Carlson, who of course distorted it and presented it falsely.
That was disgraceful behavior on McCarthy's part, and a prime example of what a gutless turd he is.
But add to that the bogus impeachment inquiry he had authorized against President Biden, and the incentive to toss McCarthy a lifeline from the left became non-existent.
Of course the issue now is who gets the gavel? A couple of the aforementioned Foolish 5 said that they would support Captain Orange as Speaker, and indeed the rules say you don't have to be a sitting member of Congress to be Speaker. (You do however have to not be under indictment for a felony-so that's a no-go). Two other possibilities are Jordan, who would be 100 times worse than McCarthy, and Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
It's another big mess, and ultimately the ones who are getting screwed here are We the People.
Now I meant to write about this last week, but I ran out of time and I didn't have all the facts straight. NY Congressman Jamaal Bowman pulled the fire alarm at the Capitol last weekend. He did this in order to delay the vote on the stop gap funding bill which not everybody had gotten to read.
His defense was that the door he was trying to get through to get to the vote was locked and he thought pulling the lever would open the door.
Sorry folks, I'm not buying that one either.
And I would say, Bowman should be reprimanded by the House, (which is going to be tough without a Speaker) and should be subject to any civil penalties pulling a false alarm would entail. What I wouldn't do is expel him from Congress or have him arrested. Some of the same people that want Bowman arrested for pulling a fire alarm at the Capitol want the people who broke into the Capitol, attacked Capitol cops and threatened to kill people working in the Capitol to be let out of jail.
Let that sink in.
Onto less important but equally aggravating news...
BASEBALL: Bye-Bye Billy Eppler
Driving home from work Thursday, WFAN broke the news that Billy Eppler had resigned as Mets GM. Evan Roberts, the FAN's afternoon man said he didn't think it was a big deal since new head of baseball ops David Stearns was going to make the big decisions anyway.
But I thought the timing was curious. What had changed between Stearns press conference, in which he re-iterated that he wanted Eppler to stay, and Thursday when Eppler said he wanted Stearns to have a "clean slate"?
As usual with the Mets, the truth is a bit blurry.
Apparently Eppler is under investigation for using "the phantom IL" that is, he put guys on the injured list that might not have been as injured as they led the world to believe. If that's the only thing I can't imagine it being a big deal.
Which leads me to wonder what the hell is really going on? Did Eppler put a healthy player on the injured list or did he keep an injured player off the list? Is it either of these things or neither of them?
And apparently MLB was alerted to whatever transgressions Eppler allegedly committed by an anonymous letter. OK, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the letter wasn't anonymous, but the league is protecting the whistle blower under the federal law. They have to damn well know who is making the accusations, otherwise we can all write letters to Rob Manfred and say whatever we want right? I'm curious as to who dropped the dime, but suspect we will never find out.
This is just more embarrassment in what has already been an embarrassing year with no end to the embarrassment in sight.
That said, I’m not broken hearted to see Eppler gone, especially having read in the Post that one of the issues on which he clashed with Buck Showalter was over Daniel Vogelbach’s playing time, with Eppler insisting that Buck play the underperforming Danny Burgers while Buck wanting to play some of the younger players. Vogelbach was part of the Mets disastrous 2022 trade deadline, orchestrated by Eppler.
He had his moments here, and to be honest, I’ll always be somewhat grateful to him for taking a job that nobody else seemed to want. But his record was spotty, and how he handled Buck (which in fairness was also Steve Cohen and David Stearns fault too) was a disgrace.
As for the baseball playoffs, the four teams that advanced this week did so in the bare minimum of 2 games. The Twins and Phillies won their series at home against the Blue Jays and Marlins respectively. The D'Backs swept the Brewers in Milwaukee and the Rangers sent the Rays packing in front of a more than half empty Tropicana Field. I have never seen a baseball stadium that empty for a post-season game in my life. I don't like to get on fans for not going to games, I know tickets are expensive and people are struggling, but that just looked very surreal.
FOOTBALL: Jets, Giants wrap up
I thought the Jets actually played better last week against the Chiefs and they did on Sunday against the Broncos. But a lot of what I saw on Sunday I liked.
I suspect sports radio in New York is going to once again criticize Zach Wilson for the interception he threw in the 4th quarter and for not getting the play off before the end of the first half, but I thought he threw the ball with more confidence.
It helped that Breece Hall had a tremendous game. If they get the running game on track, the passing game will be all the more easy.
The Jets defense has played well late in the games, but gives still gives us an awful lot of yardage, especially in the run. Both Patrick Mahomes (which is understandable) and Russell Wilson (less so) had huge runs. That has to stop.
A win is a win, and lord knows they needed it.
As for the Giants, I didn’t get to see much of that game, but I was watching when Jason Pinnock picked off Tua Tagovailoa and took it 102 yards to the house. Unfortunately that was the lone highlight for Big Blue and for good measure, Daniel Jones suffered a neck injury. As of this writing, his condition is still unclear.
HOCKEY:
The new season kicks off this week. I haven't been less psyched for a season in a few years...
The Rangers did little to improve a team that got knocked out of the playoffs in the first round last year. They brought in a retread coach to replace the retread coach they already had. And not to put much stock in pre-season hockey, but so far, the Devils look like world-beaters.
I mentioned briefly last week that I made my maiden voyage to UBS Arena at Belmont Park last Saturday night (thank you Ed, Mary Brendan and James). What a great place to watch a game! The seats were confortable and the sight lines were perfect. The lighting made the ice look brighter and it had all the modern amenities.
And actually if I have one beef with the place, it's the modern amenities.
After the 1st period, I went to get Tara and I some food, and to find just a place serving hot dogs, pretzels and popcorn was harder than sending someone to the moon. I walked by a Chinese food stand, a sushi stand, a craft hamburger joint, several bars, and a deli. I had the hardest time just findiong a place that serves the basics. Citi field had all that fancy shit too, but they are all together in one place. The easy standard stuff is right there when you leave your seats. At UBS, it's the other way around.
But for watching an event? It's a really nice place. I can't wait to get back there.
I know the term thoughts and prayers gets ridiculed around these parts sometimes, but I really don’t know what else to say regarding the attack on Israel over the weekend. It’s been going on for 2000 years, people much smarter than I haven’t been able to solve it. I’ll have more to say about it next week.
For now, everyone hang in there.
Stay Safe
and Have a Great Week
No comments:
Post a Comment