Eric The Blue

Those debating Dems

In "Kamala chats with Bill" I made something like a prediction that last night was realized when Kamala chatted with Joe and reduced him, too, to a pile of stammering incoherence.  She really is good at this.  Remains to be seen whether it'll give her a boost.  There is precedent for the sharp and well aimed spear striking its target without elevating the person who chucked it: see, for example, Chris Christie's evisceration of poor little Marco Rubio in a Republican debate during the early stages of 2016 presidential politicking.  Rubio was mortally wounded but I think Christie dropped out first.

In the category of morning-after-quarterbacking: is it naïve to think that being under attack is one of the times when honesty really is the best policy?  Had Biden been forthcoming, he might have said something along the line of:

Senator Harris, people are imperfect, err, fall short of the mark, and when you're past 70, as I am, there's a longer record of fallibility to unfurl.  When you were in grade school, and I was already in the Senate, I said things that I regret.  With regard to busing, it was a different time and I was hearing from a lot of angry constituents who told me their kids were being moved around like pawns.  But I understand what it looks like to you and a lot of others today.  And it's embarrassing for me to admit that the passions of the day more than timeless American principles account for what I said and positions I took.  I was wrong then and you're right today.  But if you look at my record over the last 40 years, there's a lot of evidence that I didn't come to this conclusion about having been wrong just last week or on the day after I announced my candidacy.  I'll be satisfied if people decide what kind of president I'd be after examining the whole of my record.  I acknowledge that I'm old, I mean experienced, and my record is long and sometimes more mixed than I wish, and the things I regret the most tend to be from longest ago.

Anyway, I'm guessing that would have been approximately honest.  It's better than what he said—a low bar, obviously, that raises the question of why he wasn't prepared for an entirely predictable line of attack from probably the likeliest source.  The atmospherics of the exchange might hurt Biden more than the specifics.  He doesn't look like a bigot, but last night he did resemble a somewhat befuddled old white guy who doesn't think he has to do his homework.*  Possibly candidates lacking white skin or a Y chromosome are under the impression that they have to be better. If so, it sometimes shows.  Were the Democratic nominating contest a strict meritocracy, the top tier might plausibly be occupied by Warren, Harris, and Buttigieg.  The only white guy in that group is 30-something and queer, so that's his excuse for knowing he better be up to speed.

I didn't watch Round 1.  The Twins were playing in a tight game, and it's not as if close scrutiny would reveal that one of the Dems is worse than Trump, who is in Japan joking around with Putin about election interference.

____________________

*Except for the part about not looking like a bigot, an apt if understated description of the other side's inevitable nominee.

Some 2020 scenarios

Dave Wasserman, of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, recently tweeted:

A very plausible 2020 scenario Democrats have to take seriously:

Trump loses popular vote by about 5 million as Dems narrow deficit in Texas, expand margin in California, and flip Michigan and Pennsylvania blue.  

But Trump narrowly holds onto Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin and wins reelection by a single electoral vote.

First observation would be that, as you'd expect, Wasserman's math checks out: if 48 states vote as they did in 2016, with only Pennsylvania and Michigan flipping to the Democrats, then Trump wins the Electoral College, 270-268.  How likely is this?  In the thread, someone asks how likely it is that the Democratic candidate does much better in Texas, thereby adding to the popular vote margin attained by Clinton, but can't make up two-thirds of one percent in Wisconsin.  Wasserman's answer is that an influx of new voters--Latinos and young professionals--accounts for the Dem's gains in Texas, and these conditions do not pertain in Wisconsin.  Another reasonable question: why would Michigan and Pennsylvania fall into the Democratic column but not Wisconsin?  Wasserman's answer concerns the different demographics of these states, specifically the percentage of non-college whites compared to the percentage of African Americans:

Pennsylvania 50%/10% 
Michigan 53%/13%
Wisconsin 57%/6%

I would add that in the 2018 midterms Republicans fared significantly better in Wisconsin than in either Pennsylvania or Michigan.  All three had statewide races for governor and US Senate, and the Democrats went 6-for-6, but their narrowest win by far was the Wisconsin governor's race.  The Democrats did not pick up any US House seats in Wisconsin, and, in the state legislature, Republicans held their large majorities in both chambers.  (State legislative districts in Wisconsin are so gerrymandered, however, that there should almost be a different word invented to describe the situation: in 2018, for example, Democratic candidates for State Assembly won 53% of the statewide vote, but Republicans won 63 of the 99 seats.)

So Wasserman's scenario seems plausible, especially if Trump's position improves modestly between now and November of 2020.  

Second observation would be that, once you have contemplated the prospect of a 270-268 Trump victory in the Electoral College, it's natural to consider the possibility of a 269-269 tie.  As it happens, there are two states--Maine and Nebraska--that award their electoral votes by congressional district.  In 2016, Trump pulled one of Maine's four electoral votes, because, while he lost the statewide vote, he did outpoll Clinton in one of the two districts.  Meanwhile, Nebraska, though a deep red state, has one district, centered on the city of Omaha, that is competitive: Trump won it in 2016 by 47% to 45%.  If the Democratic candidate were to win one of these districts, but not the other, and all else shook out as described in Wasserman's scenario, then the Electoral College would not render a verdict, despite the Democratic candidate's popular vote margin of 5 million. I described here what happens in that event.   Briefly, the president is then selected by the House of Representatives, but, crucially, not by the vote of the full House--instead, each state delegation gets one vote, and the winner is the presidential candidate who is preferred by the delegations of at least 26 states.  Notwithstanding the Democratic majority in the current House, there are exactly 26 state delegations with more Republicans than Democrats.  In the scenario we are now considering, therefore, the Democratic candidate wins the national popular vote by about 5 million ballots, which, in percentage terms, would be something like 51-48.  Trump, however, ekes out a tie in the Electoral College, and is then "elected" president when, despite the Democratic majority in the House, he is the choice of a majority of state delegations--Wyoming and Idaho having between them twice the pull of California or Illinois or New York.

Third observation relates to the prospect of the presidential election triggering a national crisis of legitimacy.  Trump has "joked" persistently about not leaving office after his second term.  What if he loses in 2020 and declines to step down?  Since we're considering scenarios where the outcome is very close, we should remember that "very close" can equal "ambiguous," as in 2000 when Bush's Electoral College victory was secured after he was declared the winner in Florida by fewer than 600 ballots.  Gore, who won the national popular vote by more than half a million, conceded defeat after the Supreme Court ruled against him.  Who thinks Trump would act similarly in the event that, say, the election result hinged on the outcome in Wisconsin, where state election officials deemed the Democrat to have won by 500 votes?  What if some alleged "irregularity" was the basis of a lawsuit that then went to the Supreme Court, where Trump appointees supplied the votes that set in motion events that reversed the outcome?  What then would Democrats do? Lay down like lambs?  Might people stop going to work and take to the streets in mass protests?  It's mainly on account of our democratic traditions that such a scenario seems outlandish, but, as is often said, Trump has no regard for these traditions--he's proud of smashing them.

Fourth and last observation would be that the Electoral College is the root cause of these various scenarios, all regrettable to varying degrees and the last outright dangerous, for in every scenario there is no question about which candidate got more votes.  It wasn't even particularly close--5 million.  

Laffer awarded Medal of Freedom

 

The above, courtesy of Fox Business, is a video of the recent ceremony in which President Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom to economist Art Laffer.  Apparently Laffer hasn't been convicted of any crimes, so couldn't be pardoned, and the Medal of Freedom was therefore the only way to recognize him.  I believe the last person so recognized by Trump was Tiger Woods, who, if he hasn't gone broke, might be Laffer's equal as an economist. 

Laffer is famous mostly for the aptly named Laffer curve.  Here is a picture of it:

I didn't copy the picture from an economics textbook.  That would be impossible, since Laffer isn't in the economics textbooks.  The picture is from Martin Gardner's essay collection, The Night is Large, concerning pseudoscience.  One of the essays is on the Laffer curve.  As you can see, the curve purports to show the relationship between tax rates and government revenue.  The endpoints aren't very interesting since it's true, but trivial, that if the tax rate is zero government revenue will likewise by zero, while if the government takes everything incomes will dissipate (because people will stop working) and revenues will again approach zero.

Everything in between is a dream, but a lot of people find it an attractive or useful dream.  The thing to notice, I think, is that if you accept the smooth simple shape, and are further willing to assume that we currently are somewhere on the upper half, then, as shown by the curve, revenue actually increases when the tax rate goes down.  For example, moving from point A to point C involves a modest cut in the tax rate that nevertheless results in a significant surge in tax revenue.  The happy conclusion is that we can spend our way to a surplus, if we  only have the courage to cut the tax rate.  This is what Republicans mean when they say "tax cuts will pay for themselves," or when they defend their dreamy budgets by insisting that they be "scored dynamically"--forms of the word "dynamic" are their way of acknowledging that, if it turns out that arithmetic describes the world, the deficit is going to spike.

And the deficits spike.  The Laffer curve is a theory we shouldn't have to argue about, because it's been tried again and again, and the results are always what undynamic champions of arithmetic had supposed.  Reagan cut taxes and "rebuilt our military"--the deficit shot up.  George W Bush cut taxes and went to war--the deficit shot up.  Now Trump has cut taxes (mainly on the wealthy) and the "dynamism" is, as ever, invisible--the deficit is on the rise.  You can look this up.  Either the Laffer curve is bunk or Republicans keep misplacing us on the wrong half of the slide.  

I think it's bunk.  Here is a picture of Gardner's "neo-Laffer curve":

 

Among many Republicans, however, Laffer's simple, shapely curve will never perish.  I'm pretty sure nothing could happen that would make them say, "Well, I guess we were wrong about that"--because, if it were possible, it would have happened by now: the evidence is in. Economists probably regard Laffer the way doctors regard chiropractors who advertise on local tv at 2 in the morning, but he's useful insofar as he can supply some academic credentials for what Republicans are going to believe in any event.  

A last word about the ceremony.  Trump's prepared remarks are dopey, and his ad-libs are even worse.  If you're going to watch, get ready to cringe whenever he stops reading and looks up from his paper to say something he imagines to be clever.  Laffer himself sometimes appears uneasy at these moments.  It's notable how the sources for Trump's quoted praise of Laffer are never other economists.  At just past the 8 minute mark, Trump looks up and starts babbling about how he himself had studied the "very important" Laffer curve as a business student at what he calls, grandiloquently, "the Wharton School of Finance."  Trump graduated from Wharton's undergraduate school in 1968; Laffer first presented his famous curve in 1974.  When the president subsequently hangs the Medal of Freedom around Laffer's neck, the image of a major fraud bestowing our country's highest civilian award on a minor fraud seems an apt distillation of Trump's America.    

In the news, sporting and otherwise

The party of Lincoln, so-called, had regarded with equanimity the concentration camps we're running on our southern border until AOC called them "concentration camps."  Who would have guessed that they are so into taxonomy?  Separate kids from their parents, don't give them soap or toothpaste or medicine (except to make them stop crying), hold them in pens where they sleep on concrete floors, lose track of whose kids are where, and assign to this arrangement the name of . . . what do they suggest?  freedom centers?

Meanwhile, this poor kid from Parkland, Florida, the teen-aged devotee of the Second Amendment who isn't going to Harvard after all on account of text messages and chat platform posts wherein he complains copiously about ni***rs and Jews: boy, my heart really goes out to him!  I hope he isn't reduced to enrolling at Florida State!  "He was only 16," complain his defenders.  Isn't that what college admissions offices do--make judgments about you based on what you did when you were 16? 

Here's a ritual of current times I could do without.  Someone of renown or status is discovered to have behaved poorly.  So they apologize and ask forgiveness, claim that's not who I am and I'll grow.  But they never start blubbering like this till the behavior comes to light. I guess performance art is a substitute for the unfortunate consequences that sometimes follow upon shitty deeds.

Willians Astudillo is back in The Show and in his first game last night had three hits, including a homer, while making the plays at second [sic] base.  In the nine June games he played for the Rochester Redwings, the Twins' triple-A affiliate, Astudillo went 20-for-38 with 3 homers, 11 RBI, and 10 runs scored.  I'm not counting, but I believe that in the same stretch of days Miguel Sano, our regular third baseman, struck out 106 times.  He (Sano) should be worrying about whether the brass might consider the possibility that, of visibly well fed options to play third base, Astudillo is the best choice.  

This day in presidential history

Having established the activities of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle on June 16, 1904, let us turn to today's date, June 17, in presidential history.  From the Mueller Report:

On Saturday, June 17, 2017, the President called McGahn and directed him to have the Special Counsel removed.  McGahn was at home and the President was at Camp David.  In interviews with this Office, McGahn recalled that the President called him at home twice and on both occasions directed him to call Rosenstein and say that Mueller had conflicts that precluded him from serving as Special Counsel.

On the first call, McGahn recalled that the President said something like, "You gotta do this.  You gotta call Rod."  McGahn said he told the President that he would see what he could do.  McGahn was perturbed by the call and did not intend to act on the request.  He and other advisors believed the asserted conflicts were "silly" and "not real," and they had previously communicated that view to the President.  McGahn also made clear to the President that the White House Counsel's Office should not be involved in any effort to press the issue of conflicts.  McGahn was concerned about having any role in asking the Acting Attorney General to fire the Special Counsel because he had grown up in the Reagan era and wanted to be more like Judge Robert Bork and not "Saturday Night Massacre Bork."  McGahn considered the President's request to be an inflection point and he wanted to hit the brakes.

When the President called McGahn a second time to follow up on the order to call the Department of Justice, McGahn recalled that the President was more direct, saying something like, "Call Rod, tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can't be the Special Counsel.  McGahn recalled the President telling him "Mueller has to go" and "Call me back when you do it."  McGahn understood the President to be saying that the Special Counsel had to be removed by Rosenstein.  To end the conversation with the President, McGahn left the President with the impression that McGahn would call Rosenstein.  McGahn recalled that he had already said no to the President's request and he was worn down, so he just wanted to get off the phone.

McGahn recalled feeling trapped because he did not plan to follow the President's directive but did not know what he would say the next time the President called.  McGahn decided he had to resign.  He called his personal lawyer and then called his chief of staff, Annie Donaldson, to inform her of his decision.  He then drove to the office to pack his belongings and submit his resignation letter.  Donaldson recalled that McGahn told her the President had called and demanded he contact the Department of Justice and that the President wanted him to do something that McGahn did not want to do.  McGahn told Donaldson that the President had called at least twice and in one of the calls asked "have you done it?"  McGahn did not tell Donaldson the specifics of the President's request because he was consciously trying not to involve her in the investigation, but Donaldson inferred that the President's directive was related to the Russia investigation.

That evening, McGahn called both Priebus and Bannon and told them that he intended to resign.  McGahn recalled that, after speaking with his attorney and given the nature of the President's request, he decided not to share the details of the President's request with other White House staff.  Priebus recalled that McGahn said that the President had asked him to "do crazy shit," but he thought McGahn did not tell him the specifics of the President's request because McGahn was trying to protect Priebus from what he did not need to know.  Priebus and Bannon both urged McGahn not to quit, and McGahn ultimately returned to work that Monday and remained in his position.  He had not told the President directly that he planned to resign, and when they next saw each other the President did not ask McGahn whether he had followed through with calling Rosenstein. 

And you thought the legislative process was like a sausage-making factory!  Having read this, you have to laugh at the Republican talking point concerning how there was no obstruction of justice because "Mueller was allowed to finish his work."  It's like someone saying there was no crime because "I aimed and pulled the trigger but missed."  Saved by my incompetence!   I have to admit to a certain grudging sympathy for White House Counsel Don McGahn.  So would anyone who's ever tried to avoid interactions with their know-nothing boss.  It's the smallness in high places that's poignant and somewhat disorienting.  You don't imagine the White House Counsel pulling his phone from his pocket and, seeing that the call is from the President, thinking to himself, "Dammit, that idiot, I wish he'd just leave me alone, I'm not gonna do the crazy shit he wants, I'll quit first."  

It's plenty weird the way that "you gotta do it, you gotta call Rod, Mueller's gotta go, call me when you've done it, have you done it? have you done it?" fades into thin air.  So far as I know, the reason for this is not supplied by the Mueller Report.  It seems a reasonable inference would be that Priebus or Bannon figured out the details of the "crazy shit" McGahn wouldn't do and prevailed upon Trump to back off.  The change of direction reflects the basic incompatibility of the Administration's diverse defenses against obstruction of justice.  Mueller, we are told, "was allowed to finish his work" and also "the president has an absolute power to exercise his constitutional authority, which includes firing the Special Counsel."  Fine, but, if the former, why did he try to fire Mueller, and, if the latter, why did he fail to follow through?  The defenses are, considered together, self-cancelling.  I didn't fire Mueller, but it would be okay if I had, which is why it's okay that I tried, but then left off trying because ... (in an undertone) I didn't want to commit the crime of obstructing justice.  Seriously?  Reminds me of calling my eldest to dinner.  Nothing.  Call again, louder.  Still nothing.  Walk down hallway and shout into closed bedroom door, "Dinner!"  A minute later she pads into dining room and says, "You don't have to get mad about it, I didn't hear you the first two times."  Practicing to be president!

Bloomsday, 2019

On June 16, in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, there are almost exactly seventeen hours of daylight: the sun rises just before 5 in the morning and sets just before 10 at night.  For reference, the city is about 550 miles closer to the North Pole than Minneapolis.  It was on this date in 1904 that the novelist James Joyce went on his first date with the woman he would marry, Nora Barnacle.  When Joyce's father later learned her name, he quipped, "She'll never leave him."  They went out walking.  It was about all Joyce could afford.  Thinking about it on June 16, 2019, it seems pretty attractive.  I remember reading that Paul Westerberg, front man of the Replacements, went for walks with his first girlfriend in Minneapolis's Lakewood Cemetery for the same reason.  There is another consideration: when you're poor, the outdoors is almost the only place you can be alone. The long June evenings in Dublin must have been perfect for it.  Louis Menand describes the enchantment:

Joyce's Beatrice [the allusion here is to Dante's love, who was also one of the guides in his Divine Comedy], of course, was Nora.  She came from Galway, and was working as a chambermaid at Finn's Hotel, in Dublin, when he saw her walking along Nassau Street in a manner suggesting she was approachable.  "Sauntering" is how Joyce later described it. He duly approached, and asked her for a date.  She agreed, but stood him up.  He sent her a note.  "I went home quite dejected," it said.  "I would like to make an appointment but it might not suit you.  I hope you will be kind enough to make one with me--if you have not forgotten me!"  This time, they did meet.  They walked to Ringsend, on the south bank of the Liffey, where (and here we can drop the Dante analogy) she put her hand inside his trousers and masturbated him.

Joyce was sufficiently taken to commemorate the evening by setting the events of his novel Ulysses on June 16, 1904.  The book is among many other things a mock epic, a 20th-century version of Homer's Odyssey that includes, for example, a laundry receipt, the date of which (if memory serves) is one reason we know it is June 16, 1904, a Thursday.  No laundry receipts in Homer.  Also, Penelope has been true, fending off suitors like a champion as her husband, who might reasonably be presumed dead, takes years finding his way back to Ithaca, whereas Leopold Bloom's peregrinations around Dublin on June 16, 1904, are designed to keep him away from home, since he knows his wife, Molly, has arranged a mid-afternoon tryst in his bed with one Blazes Boylan.  Bloom's general attitude toward this might be described as discouraged resignation.  He works as an advertising canvasser, a notably un-Homeric occupation, and is a man not of action but of gentle decency and many sorrows.  He is the reason Joyceans around the world celebrate today as Bloom's Day, or Bloomsday. 

It would be fun to speculate about what the chambermaid from Galway made of the young James Joyce, but we don't have to wonder.  Describing their meeting on Nassau Street, she said: "I mistook him for a Swedish sailor--his electric blue eyes, yachting cap and plimsolls.  But when he spoke, well then, I knew him at once for just another Dublin jackeen chatting up a country girl."  He was more than he appeared to be.  Happy Bloomsday!

Polling

 

 

A recent Quinnipiac Poll of hypothetical matchups in the 2020 presidential race has been the source of a lot of analysis and, more to my liking, hilarity.  The high level results show Trump losing, no matter the opponent:

Biden 53, Trump 40

Sanders 51, Trump 42

Harris 49, Trump 41

Warren 49, Trump 42

Buttigieg 47, Trump 42

Booker 47, Trump 42

In summary, Trump gets 41 and the Democrat gets just under or just over 50, depending on name recognition.  The remarkably static results have inspired wits to speculate on additional races that Quinnipiac neglected to poll:

Stomach Virus 48, Trump 41

Ring Around the Collar 49, Trump 41

Waxy Yellow Buildup 50, Trump 41

&c, &c, &c--I'm indebted to the Twitterverse.  Relatedly, my 8-year-old told me after the last day of school that a boy in her class likes Trump.  When I remained silent, she continued, "So, I'm like, dude, either you should stay in second grade or else it's Opposite Day."

Life (and death) in these United States

My parents, always concerned for their children's education, subscribed to The Reader's Digest, and I remember dimly a regular humor feature titled "Life in These United States"--stories of funny things "made in America."  I think they were often just collections of news items from around the country.  Here's a candidate from Wednesday's South Florida Sun Sentinel.  If you aren't inclined to click on the link, it's a news story that ran under the headline, "He wanted to apologize to another driver . . ." and it began:

Keith Byrne was trying to do the right thing.  After the Marine Corps veteran accidentally cut off another car, he was ready to apologize at the next light.  

Before he could, a passenger got out of the cut-off car and shot him square in the chest.

The mortally wounded Byrne, 41, was also prepared to fight back.  With his own gun, he fired two shots at 22-year-old Andre Sinclair, and Sinclair died of his injuries at the hospital two days later.  Byrne died on scene.

Sinclair had been a passenger in the car his girlfriend was driving.  Their toddler was in the back seat.

Further on, the story notes that both decedents had conceal-carry permits.  As the big shots at the NRA would explain (if they weren't preoccupied with skimming money from the dues-paying rubes who join), the remedy for these "incidents" is clearly more guns.  Probably the girlfriend should have been packing, too.  It seems counterintuitive, which is why their arguments are are too subtle to remember. 

Be a man, keep safe, carry a gun--and make sure your life insurance is current.

Miscellany

 

I have sometimes ordered cakes for birthday parties at a bakery here in south Minneapolis--it's a good one, The Baker's Wife, at 42nd Street & 28th Avenue, a block down from Roosevelt High School.  They take down the information and ask about a message, which I dictate to the person taking the order:  "Happy 8th Birthday, Claire!", something like that.  No one is under the illusion that anyone in the employ of the bakery is actually wishing Claire a happy 8th birthday.  They don't know her!  They take dictation and transcribe!  I don't think anyone disagrees with that, and "Happy Baptismal Day" and "Happy Bat Mitzvah" are similarly unproblematic.  But oh god do not on the 1st of June ask a fundamentalist baker to write "Happy Pride" on a cake.  You are forcing the owner of the bakery to "create" a message with which he disagrees!   See you in court, Funny Boy!  Imagine an Amish person who had a sign-making business and declined a big order from the government for "Speed Limit 70" signs.  No sympathy for that idiot!  But the poor, put-upon baker!

Yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, I was zipping through the channels and stumbled on Fox News, which I watched for a few minutes--I also pick scabs--and it made me realize that I have attained (almost) the age of 61 without ever being moved to think, even once, "Boy, this would be a lot less dicey if only I had a gun, I sure hope that motorcycle dude who just drank three whiskeys is packing or else we're probably toast."  Yes, yes, you guessed it: the same 250 seconds or whatever of Fox News is what got me thinking about these bakers who are devoted to the Third Book of Moses even if they do occasionally enjoy a ham sandwich.

I think the above clip is pretty funny and, as it may be superannuated before the day is done, watch it now.  "Everyone is playing right."

Travels of Twins, travails of Astudillo

 

The Twins keep rolling along even without Willians Astudillo, who was sent to the minors yesterday in order to make room on the roster for another pitcher.  I'm in mourning, despite having seen it coming: Marwin Gonzales, a switch-hitter who can play as many different positions as Astudillo, has been on a batting tear, as has Ehire Adrianza, another versatile utility player.  Meanwhile Astudillo has been batting below the Mendoza Line since returning to the active roster after a May injury, and his average for the season had dropped to .250.  To console myself I've been watching the above video over and over again.  When he runs, he looks like an animated cartoon character, legs churning in a perfect circle below that impressive torso.

By the way, you know a guy's a fan when he knows Astudillo's first name is "Willians" and Adrianza's is "Ehire." 

I've also been lovingly reviewing the Twins' season so far, considered in blocks of games coinciding with road trips and home stands.  On April 18, the Twins lost to the Blue Jays, 7-4, thereby closing out a home stand with a 3-3 record and dropping their record for the season to 9-7.  They then went on a road trip and won 4 of 6 games against the Orioles and Astros.  They came home for a 7-game stand against the same two teams and won 6 times.  Then they went to New York and Toronto, winning 4 out of 6 games.  Back at home against the Angels and Tigers, they won 4 times in 7 starts.  Then they went on a west coast swing and won 6 of 7 games against the Mariners and Angels.  Returning  to Target Field to face the White Sox and Brewers, they won 4 of 5.  They then left on a 10-game, 3-stop tour--Tampa, Cleveland, Detroit--that ended today with a 12-2 rout of the Tigers, their 6th win of the trip.  

That is a long stretch of winning baseball: 34-14 if I've added right.  After an off day tomorrow, they have 13 games in 13 days starting with 9 home games against the Mariners, Royals, and Red Sox.  

Astudillo had three hits, including a homer, in his first game for their Triple-A affiliate in Rochester today.  

Criminal sentences

Mohamed Noor, the Minneapolis cop who last summer shot and killed a woman in an alley after she had called the police about a possible alley-way assault, was  sentenced yesterday to 12.5 years in prison.  He had been convicted last April of third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Being a meek abider of the laws, I don't think a lot about criminal penalties, but, when I do, they seem to me impossibly capricious.  Presumably there is such a thing as a "just" sentence.  If for the sake of argument we stipulate that Noor's sentence is just, then it seems to follow that 20 years would be unjustly harsh, and 6 years unjustly light.  But why?  I think I'd have an easier time giving a rational account of why positions a, b, and c in Bureaucracy B pay, respectively, salaries of x, y, and z.  In both cases you have panels of supposed experts arriving at conclusions that seem to me to be described by the coarse phrase, "pulling numbers out of your ass."  A question nerdy science types like to debate is: Supposing while you were asleep everything in the universe got twice as big, would you on waking be able to tell?  Supposing, similarly, that all criminal penalties were doubled, or halved, and our memory of the former guidelines obliterated. Wouldn't the new "rates" be justified by the same empty phrases used to explain why the current ones are "just"?  Yes, I think so.  I say the words are "empty" because they don't refer to anything real.  Being persuaded that the new sentences are just depends wholly upon our memory of the old just sentences being obliterated.  The justifying words function only to obscure the fact that old and new are both arbitrary.

It doesn't make more sense as you continue to ponder.  Obviously the severity of a sentence depends a lot on the conditions of incarceration, but those are arbitrary, too.  Some people think the purpose of incarceration is to rehabilitate, others that it's to punish, and still others, ignoring that these two goals are largely incompatible, say that it's both, and then, when questions arise, indicate by their solution which one they really believe.  For example, educational opportunities for prisoners is consistent with rehabilitation, but not punishment, especially when it's pointed out, as it inevitably is, that people who haven't been convicted of any crimes have to pay to go to school.  It all seems to me very careless and sloppy.  There is no evidence that prison has a rehabilitating effect on anyone, a lot of evidence that it has the opposite effect of creating hardened criminals, and no one worries too much, because the tale about rehabilitation is usually just more empty words.  We really believe in punishment for people we believe to be bad.  

So is Noor a bad person?  He was bad at his job, and should never have been hired.  Anyone who's ever been responsible for hiring and supervision will hardly be surprised.  More bad, arbitrary decisions!  The conclusion I come toward is that society has a right to protect itself by incarcerating people who are dangerous.  Who is dangerous?  I don't know, but probably not Noor.  I said he was bad at his job but all I really meant by that is that one night in a flash he made a terrible decision, and part of the job description for "cop" is making good decisions in a flash.  That it is good and just that he's going to prison for 12.5 years seems to me pretty dubious.  He won't be "rehabilitated"--he's not really bad to begin with.  Society doesn't need to be protected--in a position where he's not entrusted with decisions about the use of lethal force, he's likely about as dangerous as me and my regular golfing partners.  

There is the victim and her family to consider.  She and they suffered a wrong, not just bad luck, according to the jury.  But it seems fantastical to think punishing Noor compensates them.  It's analogous to having been treated shabbily by someone in your private life, and then taking pleasure when the person who's wronged you suffers some misfortune: a cheap thrill that wears poorly and anyway does nothing to cancel the wrong.  All that's really accomplished is another deposit in the bank of human misery.  Probably there's something very primitive, a vestigial evolutionary command, that  accounts for our irrational urges on this point.  Suppose someone offered to give you a million dollars, on the condition that if you accept they will give $2 million to someone you hate.  Rationality advises you to take the money, but it's harder than it ought to be to accept, so torturous is it to contemplate the enemy's greater good fortune.    

This must account too for the pleasure I felt, somewhere in the vicinity of the base of my brain stem, when reading in the Times that Paul Manafort was being transferred to the notorious prison on Rikers Island, where he'll be held in isolation while awaiting his next criminal trial.  So I'm afflicted with the same impulses I criticize in others!  It must be a weakness of democracy that the most common human failings become a ground of public policy.  Our shortcomings are codified in law.

Roger Angell on D Day, June 6, 1944

I've worried off and on about Roger Angell lately.  He's the longtime New Yorker writer and editor whom I wrote about too briefly here.  I don't think anyone has ever written better about baseball, and he was also for many year's the magazine's fiction editor, in which role he took up the placement of commas in John Updike's "copy" and perhaps gently suggested a different word here and that one be elided there--a little like suggesting to Ted Williams that he might consider modifying his stance in the batter's box.  Angell is well into his 90s now, and the elapsed time between appearances of his byline at the magazine's website has been stretching alarmingly.  Then this year baseball's Opening Day came and went, an event that would stir him if anything could: nothing, and I figured he's sick, moribund, mentally addled, on the injured reserve list permanently.  But another thing about which he's passionate is his military experience in World War II, a formative event he shared with many of his generation.  And today, the 75th anniversary of D Day--well, here you go.  The whole thing is worth reading but here is his opening:

On June 6, 1944, D Day, I was an Air Force sergeant in the Pacific, half a world away, but, like almost everyone around the globe, I followed the extraordinary event with acute interest.  Some future New Yorker colleagues of mine had a closer look.  Gardner Botsford, a top-level editor at the magazine for almost forty years, was a young infantry officer aboard a landing craft at Omaha Beach, and he can be seen clearly in one of the most famous photographs of the day, on the starboard side of the picture, in left profile, standing tensely behind the soon-to-be-dropped gate.  As he revealed in a memoir, A Life of Privilege, Mostly, he had a double task that day, since he was also on an intelligence mission to make contact, within two days, with members of the French underground, at a farmhouse a mile or two inland.  He did indeed perform this mission, along with much more, including extended combat, which he talked about only late in life, and with extreme reluctance.  The price of this could be seen sometimes during the course of a passing thunderstorm, when he would fall silent and grip his chair.

Forget about the author's age: how's that for a paragraph of English prose?  I'd say it was merely "distinctive" until that last sentence, which, in retrospect, everything before was building toward.  The photograph he describes is at the top of this post.  

Justin Amash adds 2 and 2, gets 4

 

Justin Amash, the  conservative Republican congressman who represents the Grand Rapids, Michigan area, has earned considerable praise for laying out the case against Trump on his Twitter feed and for insisting the president should be impeached.  Clips of a town hall he held in his district have been played repeatedly on cable news (see above).  It's a conservative district--Trump carried it by ten points--but the first questioner began by thanking Amash for his courage, thereby eliciting a standing ovation from the crowd.  Later, he got more applause by politely batting away the criticism of a stammering Trump supporter.  Afterwards, a woman attendee told a reporter that she only listened to "conservative news" and had no idea, until her own congressman weighed in, that the Mueller report had not completely exonerated Trump.

Amash's "honesty" and "courage" have been contrasted to the on-the-one-hand-on-the-other dithering of the Democrats, and the hero's welcome he received at his town hall has been put forward as proof that the political fallout of impeachment is not what Nancy Pelosi et al fear.  Though Amash deserves credit for breaking with his craven colleagues, I think his heroism, and the Dems' foot shuffling, is overdrawn.  Plenty of Democrats have been saying exactly what Amash is saying.  So partisan are the times, however, that everything they say is discounted until, finally, it seems only a Republican can possibly indict Trump.  The principle underlying "only Nixon can go to China" has achieved the status of a universal law of political discourse in America.  That Trump has committed impeachable offenses is beyond dispute.  For example, he has, notwithstanding his oath to see that the laws are faithfully executed, publicly encouraged witnesses not to cooperate with a federal law enforcement investigation, has further encouraged noncooperation by dangling pardons, and has directed a White House lawyer to manufacture false evidence "for our files."  His nonchalance about Russian interference in our election is shocking, and having said this much we've barely begun the enumeration of his impeachable conduct.  But when Democrats complain, it's just the hydrogen and oxygen of  the water everyone's swimming in.  Of course the Democrats complain.  Only Republicans can credibly aver that twice two is four.  Now one of them has.  He's a hero, I guess.

According to one of the gasbags on one of those Sunday political shows, the precedent being set is that the president is above the law if his party is in the majority in either the House or Senate.  Actually, it's worse than that.  The precedent being set is that the president is above the law if his party holds more than a third of the seats in the Senate.  In other words, practically speaking, the president is above the law.  He can't be prosecuted for a crime on account of a Justice Department guideline that forbids charging the current president.  And he can't be impeached on account of party spirit.  But we should conduct the experiment and verify that the case is for sure that bad.

Twins through May

The Twins finished the month of May twenty games above .500, 38 wins, 18 losses, which is a winning percentage of 0.679.  Over the course of their 162-game schedule, this win rate would yield a final record of 110-52.  The '27 Yankees, nicknamed Murderers' Row, are frequently nominated for "greatest team ever": they won 110 games that season (and lost just 44, the regular season being 8 games shorter back then).  Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth were both in their prime.  Gehrig, 24 that summer, hit 47 homers and 52 doubles while batting .373 and collecting 173 RBI.  The Babe, who was 32, hit 60 homers, batted a neat .356 (on-base percentage was .486), and drove in 165 runs while scoring 158 times himself.  OPS (on-base plus slugging) hadn't been invented as an official stat, but its component parts were tracked, and both players that season were north of 1.2 (1.0 is stratospheric).  

So, that's two of the nine slots in their batting order.  The team featured four other future Hall of Famers--outfielder Earle Combs, middle infielder Tony Lazzeri, and pitchers Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock.  In 1927, Lazzeri, the regular 2nd baseman, hit .309 with 18 homers and 102 RBI.  Combs, the centerfielder, led the league with 231 hits, including 36 doubles and 23 [sic] triples: his batting average was .356, same as the Babe's.  Hoyt was 22-7 with a 2.63 ERA.  Pennock went 19-8 and had an ERA of an even 3.  Both logged well over 200 innings.  

If you're skeptical about Combs's alleged 23 triples, look it up yourself, and remember too the cavernous center field in the old Yankee Stadium, where the '27 Yankees played 77 games:  before the first renovation, in 1937, it was 490 feet from home plate to the fence in straight-away center, and 460 feet in the left-center power alley.  Yours truly could have dumped a bucket of golf balls by home plate and, armed with a 7-iron, flied out to Byron Buxton on all but the shanks.  

That the 2019 Twins are to date touching the garment of this Yankee team shows what a great year they're having.  An arguably more realistic comparison, however, would involve glancing in the rearview mirror of franchise history.  Since the team moved to Minnesota in 1961, their winningest season was 1965, when they went 102-60 before losing in the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers.  The Twin teams of that era were known for their slugging--their star players were Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva--but, looking over their stat sheet for that season, I think it was actually their underrated pitching that propelled them to 102 wins.  Six pitchers--Mudcat Grant, Jim Kaat, Jim Perry, Camilo Pascual ("the crafty Cuban"), Dave Boswell, and Jim Merritt--started 148 of the 162 games played, and, of those six, the highest ERA for the season was Boswell's 3.40.  Grant logged what now seems a staggering 270 innings pitched.  He won 21 games, had an ERA of 3.30, and pitched 14 complete games, 6 of those shutouts.  Kaat's line for the season was similarly gaudy: 42 games started, 264 innings pitched, 18 games won, and an ERA of 2.83.

Though the Twins' slugging has gotten most of the headlines this season, I think it is their pitching that has, as in 1965, keyed their success.  Here are some of their pitchers with their to-date ERAs for 2019: Odorizzi (2.16), Berrios (3.27), Perez (3.71), Gibson (3.75)--those are the mainstays of the starting rotation--and then, for the relievers, Parker (1.86), Rogers (2.16), Harper (1.90), May (3.60), Duffey (2.63), Magill (1.35), and Morin (0.87).  That will win some games!  If the Twins' record of 102 regular season wins does not fall in 2019, it might be that they stop knocking the ball around and out of the park, but it's more likely that their pitching falls off toward the league mean.

Reviewing facts and figures relating to the 1965 Twins has elicited bittersweet reminiscences of the first baseball season I can remember very well.  Killebrew sustained a pretty serious midseason injury and played in only 113 games.  One X-factor for the pennant-winners was the play of his substitute, the forgotten Don Mincher, who, playing about two-thirds of a season (346 at-bats), hammered 22 homers and drove in 65 runs.  And, speaking of forgotten, Zoilo Versalles, the shortstop and unlikely league MVP, scored 126 runs while pounding out 182 hits, 76 of them for extra bases: 45 doubles, 12 triples, and 19 homers.  He led the league in plate appearances, at-bats, runs scored, doubles, triples, extra base hits, and total bases. He never had another season remotely like it.  His salary in 1965 was $28,000; the next year, he got a nice raise to $40,000.  The Wikipedia article on him concludes with a section titled "After Baseball" and reads:

Versalles returned to the Minneapolis area following his year in Japan, but found it virtually impossible to make a living, partly because he had never learned English and partly because of the lingering effects of a back injury he had suffered while running out a ground ball with the Dodgers in 1968.  Holding a series of menial jobs, he lost his house to foreclosure and was eventually forced to sell his MVP trophy, his All-Star rings and his Gold Gloves.  In addition to his back problems he suffered two heart attacks, underwent stomach surgery and was sustained solely by disability and Social Security payments.  

He was found dead in his home in Bloomington, Minnesota on June 11, 1995, [age 55].  An autopsy revealed that Versalles died from arteriosclerotic heart disease . . . . [He] was survived by his wife Maria, six daughters and several grandchildren.