In an interview Thursday with ABC News, Attorney General William Barr ostensibly criticized his boss, Agent Orange, saying that his tweets make it “impossible for me to do my job.”
Here’ the full quote:
“To have public statements and tweets made about the department, about people in the department, our men and women here, about cases pending in the department and about judges before whom we have cases, make it impossible for me to do my job.”
Let’s be clear here. Barr is only too happy to whack the people Trump wants him to whack, only too happy to subvert the rule of law and justice, only too happy to interfere in matters where years ago he would praise the DOJ for being impermeable to politicization or meddling from above. In short, now that the justice current is flowing in the other direction, he’s only too happy to strap on an outboard and quit rowing.
He’s a hypocrite. He’s also a liar. And what he’s really doing here, is, well, let’s let Robert DeNiro explain…
If I ran the Houston Astros, I would have stepped to the microphone this afternoon and uttered a concise, four-word message:
“Not in the face”
Not in the face, please. When you bean us, and you’re going to bean us, and we can’t even be upset that you’re going to bean us, please, not in the face. Maybe not in the ribs, either. The hind quarters or ham hocks are fine. But not in the face (or the knees… and if you could stay away from the hand/wrist area, as there are a plethora of tiny bones there and not much meat). Okay, thanks.
From the little I saw, the Astros came out today and did what all stupid organizations in sport and elsewhere do: they asked for forgiveness without first saying they were sorry. The closest they came, from what I read, was this from Alex Bregman: “I am really sorry about the choices that were made by my team, by the organization and by me.”
You have to love how far Bregman put “I am sorry” from “by me” in that sentence, don’t you?
Astros owner Jim Crane apologized only for “breaking the rules” while countering that he did not believe Houston’s incessant cheating (my word, not his) had an impact on either World Series (or playoff series, plural) for that matter. Someone should have asked him if there were any “quid pro quo” or if it was a “perfect” call.
Let’s please understand: Rob Manfred, MLB commish, has also royally screwed up. What he should do before Opening Day is strip the Astros of their World Series title and ALCS titles. Done. You don’t have to award them to the Dodgers and Yankees, respectively; simply strip them of their 2017 title.
Done. Unless or until Manfred does so, there will be a ton of righteous anger inside baseball clubhouses and in the stands. And it’s going to get very, very ugly for the Astros this season. If Manfred at least made the punishment fit the crime, the fans and players would not be quite as zealous about their pound of flesh or 4 square inches of bruising. This is actually irresponsible of Manfred. By meting out only cash and draft pick penalties, which have no visceral salving effect for either opposing players or fans, he keeps this fresh. He allows for opposing pitchers and fans to feel as if they still deserve more retribution.
For a very good reason: they do.
Opposing pitchers should simply announce to Astros batters what they are about to throw this season before every pitch: “Four-seam fastball, in your earhole.”
Bregman also said, “I have learned from this and I hope to regain the trust of baseball fans.”
Sorry, Alex. Sorry, Jose. Sorry, George. Sorry to all of you. You can’t go back to being a virgin. It’s done. This is your legacy. For this baseball fan, at least, you and your teammates will always be known first as cheaters. That is in the first graf, if not the first line, of your obit. This was not a one-game or even one series thing. This was prolonged and premeditated cheating on the grandest scale.
You’re not sorry you did it. You’re sorry you got caught. Joe Jackson’s name has been sullied permanently for more than a century for the Black Sox Scandal, something he may not have even perpetrated. What Houston did was far worse. You’ll always be the Trashtros to me, Houston.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch: Fired.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (and his twin brother!): Fired.
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland: Fired.
And there are others. Donald Trump became famous on TV for saying, “You’re fired!” In the past week, in the wake of his Senate acquittal on impeachment charges, he’s fired everyone who had the courage to stand up to him and testify truthfully that he is a crook.
But what are we worried about? He hasn’t actually executed his enemies.
Yet.
But when he does, does anyone really believe Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell or any of the other 53 Republican toads in the U.S. Senate (maybe only 52 toads, Mitt) will be appalled? Wont’ they just find another way to equivocate the president’s maleficence?
Because this is pretty much the only thing Trump has yet to do. Torture and/or kill his political enemies. But you can imagine he’s feeling more and more empowered every day.
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This site will always be free but we’ve decided to try a new wrinkle: more frequent posts, no daily Starting Five, and we’ll add a PayPal address for any and all who’d like to donate.
PayPal: trumansparks88@gmail.com
Also, let me say that I’ve been thoroughly whelmed by the generosity of those of you who have sent a donation. Laura Moyer, I don’t know you, but much gratitude. Thank you.
Are we really getting to the end of this? Say it isn’t so! This has been a lot of fun for me and maybe not as much for you (and you have no idea how many times I’ve said that before). Here we go, with the best year of the decade:
The Big Short: My favorite film of the decade. How do you tell a complicated story of a financial tragedy while also making it fabulously entertaining and hilarious? Ask Adam McKay, who wrote the best script not penned by Aaron Sorkin of the 21st century. Ryan Gosling’s pitch scene (above) is a classic.
Mad Max: Fury Road: I still don’t know how the bungee guitar player didn’t make a cameo at the 2016 Oscars. I’m not an action-sequence car chase film guy per se, but this film was so riveting and also starkly beautiful that I found myself seduced. Charlize didn’t hurt.
The Martian: Gimme Matt Damon on another planet any day of the week. Jeff Daniels is also very good here, as is Donald Glover.
The Revenant: Okay, it’s way too long but the visuals are stunning and Leo beats up a bear, so there’s that. It never quite approaches the thrill of the opening scene after, but it’s still terrific.
Spotlight: Won Best Picture, but only because Hollywood voters were wearing their Social Justice Awareness Week pins. It’s good; not as good as these other four.
Also loved: Brooklyn, The Hateful Eight and The End Of The Tour. Need to see: Sicario. Below, a scene from a 2014 film, The Skeleton Twins, that we forgot to include yesterday. If you’ve never seen it…
The General, with his greatest floor general, Isaiah
Former Indiana hoops coach Bob Knight infamously once told Connie Chung in an interview that he knew was going to air on network TV, ““I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”
Meanwhile, yesterday current Ohio State football coach Ryan Day dismissed two players, defensive backs Amir Riep and Jahsen Wint, who have been charged with rape.
That was swift.
Loyal reader and delinquent donor Susie B. asked what I thought about last Saturday’s Hoosier homecoming for Knight, age 79, at Assembly Hall. He hadn’t been back to a game in Bloomington in 20 years, since he’d been fired for putting his hands on a student (players, fine; students, uh uh, apparently).
Mixed feelings. People forget that Knight was every bit the institution on his campus and throughout college hoops from the mid-Seventies on that his former pupil, Coach K., has been at Duke. The dude won three national titles in an 11-year span when before that John Wooden had owned college hoops.
Knight was an institution at an institution. He was also, unadulterated and unapologetically, a bully. Now, I’ve known people who’ve told me that Knight has done wonderful, altruistic things for them with no fanfare and without wanting any thank you’s. He can be very generous if he sees the right work ethic and ambition and yes, decency, in a person. He’s also incredibly stubborn and he seems to enjoy belittling people.
A total mixed bag. Deep down, I’m glad for him that he had his moment of, as the great Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel called it, “catharsis.” He’s always going to be who he is. For a long time, he was great for college hoops and even better for Indiana. The fans got to say thank you last Saturday.
