Atlanta 'Hammers'?

 Some weird activist group started up a trending topic yesterday....with the death of former Braves great, Hank Aaron.  His nickname during his career....'Hammer' of course.  

Since Braves is considered bad form, the subject group suggested that the Atlanta team rename itself....the Atlanta Hammers.

Odds of this happening?  Ten years ago, I would have said 1-percent chance.  Today, I'd say it's near 40-percent.

The thing about this as the name and symbol of the team?  Well....if you go and type 'hammer' into google....you tend to get a symbol of a hammer and sickle (the Communist brand).

The symbiology through history of the hammer?  It's supposed to mean sacrificial efforts were made....affecting society and culture.  You gave up something of value and signficance....to get something that you thought was of more value (usually it wasn't).

The Braves name?  This goes back to the 1870s, when some Cincinnati baseball folks packed up and left for the east coast.  Arriving in Boston, they found interest in a team, but this ran through several decades of varying economic success and different names being used.  

At some point in 1898....the team caught on fire and had a 102-47 record....which if you did the statistical average, it's one of the impossible records possible.

The team fell apart in 1901, when the league agreed to a second Boston team in the local area.  Fan support dropped by a substantial amount.

From a period of 1900 to 1913....the changing names soon-to-be-the-Braves team was crap.  At some point in 1912....the name 'Braves' started up and by 1914....the luck of the team had changed, in an odd way.

The 1914 season has the Braves in last place at the end of the first 22 games.  Somewhere around the halfway point of 1914....they were around 26 wins and 40 losses.  Then some crazy action occurred, and the team wrapped up the season at the top of the National League.  It's one of those stories talked about on a rare basis, and no one jumps into the season....where the Braves go onto the World Series and defeat the A's.

From that point on....they were the Boston Braves.  

Babe Ruth, a member of the Braves?  No one mentions this much, but in 1935....the Yankees traded Ruth away.  Ruth came to the Braves and played a brief 28 games, then retired from baseball (not even making it to the mid-way point).  That season for the Braves?  One of the worst of all time, with only 38 total wins at the end of the season.  

If this goes to a name-change...to the Hammers?  I suspect it'll be around for three or four seasons, and the players will mostly all agree that Hammers doesn't work and everyone is using the stupid hammer-and-sickle symbiology for fake team t-shirts.  

Roberts Out, Leahy In?

 As the impeachment business maneuvers forward....Chief Justice Roberts said 'no'.....he would not participate.  Reason given?  None so far.

If I were to speculate....he sees a number of issues over the case.  The biggest is that you are dealing with a sitting President, which the Constitution seems to suggest it's not possible to do this.  I would imagine he thought about the end-result, and this being challenged to the Supreme Court, and that Thomas-guy would rip his creditability to the ninth-degree.

So why Leahy?  I sat and looked over the 50-odd Democrats in the Senate.  Around one-third of them hold a law degree....but if you asked how law have they actually practiced....most would admit less than ten years.  In Leahy's case?  He hasn't actually practiced law since 1974-timeframe.  Nearing fifty-plus years without a single court case?  Then you get some judge role?

I might suspect that when they openly discussed this 'who would run this show'....it was probably fewer than three volunteers, and one of them probably was either a farmer in life, or some music-teacher.    

There will be an initial round of questions thrown at Leahy.....asking if he's ever been a judge, and the answer is 'no'.  

Obviously, he's there to limit entry of challenges by the Trump lawyer, and to make this more of a guaranteed win for the Democratic cause.

The discussion that the vote will be held in secret?  That came up yesterday, and it's being discussed now.  Secret ballots?  This kinda sounds like Bolivia or Ecuador.  On that count, it'll be challenged as well.

The fact that Leahy is 80 years old?  Well....I would suspect around the 7th consecutive day of the 'show'....he'll be stressed out and completely run-down.  

One can laugh about this 'show', but it'll be discussed for the next hundred years.

The Mogadishu District?

 This came up today, and it's one of those stories to make you wonder about things.

The acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security (Ken Cuccinelli) made this comment over last week (after events of the 6th).

In some interview on Fox News....the journalist was interviewing Ken and wanted to hype that the 25k National Guardsmen were way more than currently servicing in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

Ken kinda agreed with her, then said it was basically the equal of a Army division.  Most former Army guys would let you know that when you start talking about a division....that's usually an invasion force and it's meant for real serious business. It's not a force for door-guard duty.  

Then he came to this odd piece of information about the request for Guardsmen.....House Speaker Pelosi wanted him to make sure they were armed with "crew-manned machine guns".  

I paused over that.

Typically, that kinda means that folks are in APC's or HUMVEEs.....with 50-cal guns, M249 guns, M-60s, or MG-338s.  For plain raw killing power, with three or four HUMVEEs set up like this....you could take down a thousand unarmed protesters real quick.

Did Pelosi even know what "crew-manned machine guns" were?  I have my doubts, and it was probably on some 3x5 inch index card that she was reading off, or she saw it on some war documentary.

Sounding like a Mogadishu-scenario?  Well....yeah.  Or maybe some Iraqi 'Green-Zone'.  

What's likely to come in the months ahead?  I think Pelosi will somehow get the President to authorize the Capital Police to have APCs, small armored vehicles, and a reactionary Capital Guard force of a thousand men available. 

In simple terms....this will look like some banana republic in South America and tourists will be scared of the landscape in DC.

How did Ken react to the request?  Nothing else was asked, and he kinda skipped the rest of this discussion.  Based on what I've seen in video action from the 20th....the Guardsmen had M-16s only.  

You just get the impression that things in DC are not that sane or safe, and the last place you ought to allow your kid or school group to 'tour'.....is the DC area.  

Who was QAnon Really?

 What QAnon reminds me of?

Back in the 1930s....the Ovaltine company invented this 'secret-ring society', where cryptic messages were passed around about Ovaltine (via radio) and you needed the decoding booklet to know that the message really was all about, and the secret ring.

You felt kinda important...even at nine years old....having the ring...listening to the secret message, and then decoding it.  

Here in this case (2016 to 2020) it simply went up 100 notches to the modern technology level, and the QAnon head group was probably three or four retired CIA officers working for some Biden-team lobby group...pretending to hand out secret messages in supporting the Trump agenda.

All fake?  No....just not the type of 'brand' or 'message' that most people would hook onto and feel as truthful.

Discussing VMT

 This came up in the week and it's worth a moment to pause over.

The new guy as Transportation Secretary....Pete Buttigieg....was being asked questions before his confirmation, and he came to the topic of a Biden idea....a 1-trillion infrastructure project (basically roads and bridges across the nation).

On one side....most everyone is agreeable to replacing or renovating a ton of bridges in the nation (more than 200k).  On the other side, no one can explain where this trillion will come from.

So Buttigieg stood there and said that he wants to create a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) program.  As you renewed your registration and got inspected....they would average out the miles and say you owe X-amount (probably figured to your registration fee for the tags, and be federally 'grabbed').

How much would this add up to?  Well....if you traveled 100 miles a day to your place of work....the general estimate would be around 1.7 cents per mile.  So you'd owe $1.70 (per day).  A week?  Adding up to $6.35.  A month?  Around $26.  But that's strictly for work-and-driving.  Then you add in the grocery shopping, your doctor visits, the veterinarian visits, the flea-market visits on Saturday, the pick-up of your pizza, visits to your cousin Earl, night-time rendezvous visits to the Piggly Wiggly cashier-lady who plays the banjo while indecently dressed, and visits to the farm-store for dog-food.  So your monthly tax is going to around $50-to-$70.  

Go figure per year, it'll amount to around $600 minimum and approaching $1000 for fifty-percent of folks.  

So there are three basic problems here.

1.  Would the 1.7-cent scheme stay there, or increase?  I'm of the mind that it'd go within four years to 2-cents and be hooked up to some type environmental policy that never makes sense except to 5th-grade kids.  At the 8-year point, it'd probably go to 2.4-cents per mile.

2.  How many folks would cheat and have the speedometer rigged up?  Ten-percent?  Twenty-percent?  Forty-percent?  I know some mechanically-minded folks in the Netherlands who can rig a speedometer system to any number you desire.  If you wanted to show only 100 miles per year driven....they'd rig it up to say that.  

3.  Why the big push?  Well....in ten to fifteen years....a fair number of cars in America will be electric, and the gas-tax business which pays for the roads and bridges....will be screwed-up entirely.  So arguing against the VMT is nearly impossible at this point.  

Just something to ponder upon.

The Landscape Shift

 There on Wednesday....poll-guru Frank Luntz attempted to run a focus group chat after President Joe Biden gave his unity-speech.  

His effort was geniune....at least he attempted to make this group of roughly a dozen folks an even split.

Control?  I would suggest (having watched clips of this)....five minutes into it....he was losing control, and by the 15th minute....things were going in a crappy way.

To make this work....Zoom was employed, which meant people sat comfortably in their homes or apartments and gave their commentary from long distances.

Shouting?  Yes....without any doubt.

Facts and counter-facts going around and disrupting the conversation?  Yes.

Just my impression....maybe at the 15th minute, it was all just a bungled-up mess.  

Explaining what has happened?  It's rather simple.

In the 1980s....a Republican and Democrat could sit at a table....pick up six topics and generally discuss the matter, with the difference of opinion amounting twelve inches for the landscape.  We really weren't that far apart on the six topics.

In the 2000-era....the same two could meet....pick up six topics and find that on half of them, we were pretty far apart.  The landscape?  Instead of a 12-inch situation....the landscape was now three-feet.  

In the 2016-period....the same two could meet....with none of the six topics being marginally agreeable.  The landscape?  It's close to twenty-feet.

Today, the two could meet....working with twenty topics, and find nothing agreeable.  That landscape problem?  It's now closer to sixty-feet.

What I expect in 2024....same two meeting?  A hundred topics with not a single one being agreeable.  The landscape approaching.....nearly 1,000 feet apart.

The Biden unity speech?  Maybe it would have worked in the 1990s timeframe....but we've advanced way past that point.  

If You Open Impeachment Wide Enough

 Yesterday, a Republican Senator (Cornyn, Texas) spoke and suggested that since a sitting-President was being pursued for impeachment.....there was no reason in two years (suggesting the Republicans would recover in the House, and the Senate)....to pursue past Democratic Presidents for issues.

Even dead Presidents?  Well...he didn't suggest that, but I noticed in social media that even that question came up and no one saw a legal stumbling block to say they were living or dead.

Now, an average guy sitting there would pause over this suggestion.

Yes, we could actually draw up paperwork and go after President Jackson, President Roosevelt (both Teddy and Franklyn), and even President Obama.  In fact, you could repeat this act every year.....going after virtually every single President.

The odds of this happening in 2022?  I'd say less than 10-percent...mostly because I see a 5-Senator advance with the Democrats.  

The problem for the Democrats.....we all got kinda used to this continued use of impeachment now.  It really wouldn't take much to start this retaliation business.  In fact, you could ease Senators, House members, and federal judges into this mess very easily....removing three or four each year, just for entertainment.   

It's a messy affair but we don't seem to have any limits anymore.