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Writer's pictureGeoff Schoos

Multiple mini posts in one

Random thoughts on a hot August Day:


A Personal Note: Recently, several readers have indicated how much they appreciated my posts. To those people who voiced support and to those who appreciate these posts in silence, a humble but an effusive THANK YOU! Too often people don’t thank others when thanks is warranted. I try not to be one of those people.


If you do like my posts, please share them with others, sign up on my blog and urge others to do likewise. That way you can receive these posts in your email immediately upon them being posted. The miracle of our technological age.


Life is like baseball: I’ve been trying to figure out the difference between Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County (Ga) District Attorney Fani Willis, particularly when it comes to charging decisions. I think part of the answer lies in an understanding of the game of baseball.


In this age of mind numbing mathematical analytics, baseball at its heart is a very simple game. Two teams confront each other and comply with very specific rules. Each game is controlled by umpires.


Each team must master three basic functions: throw the ball, hit the ball, and catch the ball. The team that excels in at least two of three of these functions will usually win the game. In each game, one team must prevail over the other, there are no ties allowed. Strategy in employing these three basic functions is vital to success.


There are two basic approaches a team on offense can take. The first is “small ball” where batters get on base by hits or walks, if they have foot speed they try to take the next open base, and on the next ball in play try to score. Small ball is opportunist and tends to be incremental, one base at a time.


The second offensive strategy is “long ball,” where a team relies on extra base hits and home runs to produce runs. My beloved Red Sox and the hated Yankees are, or were, examples on this approach. Long ball tends to be loud and brash, thus more exciting and entertaining, keeping fans glued to the game lest they miss a fortunate run producing blow.


Smith is playing legal small ball, Willis is long ball. Smith is meticulously incremental, trying to set the game action to give his team a chance to win. If reports are even remotely accurate, Willis is swinging a big legal bat to try to score multiple runs. Depending on how they see their legal “game,” either approach is appropriate, as long as they correctly analyze their respective “games.”


Forrest Gump’s mother liked to say that “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’ll get.” I would argue that baseball is life in which strategy and execution yields a greatest chance of success.


Be careful what you ask for: For years the republicans have been screaming, crying, holding their collective breath, and stamping their feet because a Special Counsel is not investigating the activities of America’s newest crime lord, Hunter Biden (and by extension the “Biden Crime Family”). After an extensive – at least in time – investigation, a plea agreement was filed in federal district court – Delaware by Biden and US Attorney for Delaware David Weiss on two tax charges and one gun possession charge. The expectation was that U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika would accept and approve the agreement. A couple of weeks ago, for reasons in dispute, the deal fell apart. The court ordered the parties to resume negotiations and report to the court when they had it in place. Republicans once again screamed, cried, held their breath, and foot stomped!


Last week, US Attorney Weiss notified the court that negotiations had failed to reach any acceptable agreement, thus leaving the charges for trial. Weiss also asked Attorney General Garland to name Weiss Special Counsel, a request Garland granted.


So having obtained their dream of having a Trump appointed Special Counsel named (with extensive prosecutorial powers and authority) to lead the Biden investigation, what did the republicans do? They went apoplectic!


There’s no pleasing some people who are actively trying to pervert the judicial process and the rule of law to advance their partisan political agenda.


Wherefore Art Thou Romeo?: Well, Juliet, he’s probably not in Florida. At least not in some Florida school districts. Shakespeare s A Midsummer’s Night Dream has been restricted to 10th through 12th graders. Hillsborough Country school board has reduced Shakespeare’s plays to excerpts.


These efforts along with others are designed to protect hormonally infused teenagers from thinking, much less knowing about sexual activities of Renaissance era adults or – the gods forbid – Renaissance Italian teenagers. Heavens forbid that a random innuendo or a stray remark would incite lustful urges is ludicrous. That’s the internet’s job.


Florida faces stiff competition from other states in the race to the intellectual bottom. However, reducing Shakespeare to a set of Cliff Notes is a brilliant stroke in dumbing down kids who will eventually become dumb adults.


In A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Helena speaks of their union “with two seeming bodies but one heart;” in Othello, Othello and Iago make “sacred vows;” and in Troilus and Cressida, Achilles and Patroclus have long been seen as lovers. Not being satisfied with excising Shakespeare’s Troilus from classrooms, won’t Florida’s censors and morality police also want to ban Homer’s Iliad?


The gauntlet has been thrown. Texas, Oklahoma, and all the other states bent on protecting their young from any semblance of an education, it’s your move.


Make it four: as I was writing this piece, the news came that Trump and 18 others had been charged with various felonies, including the serious RICO charge. Serious because there’s a very harsh sentence if convicted.


In full disclosure, I haven’t read, let alone digested this indictment. However, it appears at first blush that I was correct about District Attorney Willis – she’s gone with the long ball strategy.


I’ll soon have something to say about the indictment but for now let me just ask, remember when Trump said we’d be tired of so much “winning?” Exactly when does all this “winning” start?


Legal process under assault – It’s been reported that the members of the Georgia grand jury that indicted Trump and 18 others have had their names and addresses posted on a pro-MAGA lunatic website that promotes violence.


Additionally, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over Trump’s conspiracy trial in the District of Columbia, was threatened by a Texas woman. The woman was no brainiac, leaving the threat in the judge’s voice mail. She was quickly arrested in Texas. I wonder if she was surprised?


These tactics are designed to thwart the orderly administration of Justice by placing the specter of violence over the proceedings. These people are not patriots, nor are they freedom fighters. They are authoritarian thugs who don’t give a whit about democracy, the rule of law, or any of the values that, sometimes tenuously, hold our society together.


They are the antithesis of who they claim to be. They cannot win. They can never win.


A final word about baseball – For the past few weeks I’ve been contemplating a post about baseball. Aside from giving me a chance to gripe about my beloved Red Sox, I could only imagine the groans by my readers. But there’s more to the game than hit, run, catch, and throw.


This is the year when the mighty have fallen. My team, after having won three World Series titles since the year 2000, is clinging onto a slender, frayed, thread hoping to get one of the wild card playoff spots. The only solace Red Sox Nation has is that our arch nemesis, the Yankees, are three games behind us in last place in the division.


These aren’t the only teams falling on hard times. The Mets and Padres have thrown more money the Croesus at players in order to basically buy a championship. As of this writing, the Padres are 5 games below .500, in fourth place in their division. For their part, the Mets are in free fall and are 11 games below .500, but by the grace of the Pirates are in fourth place in their position.


So who is performing well? In the American League East, the division once dominated by the Sox and Yankees, the Orioles and Rays are battling for first place. In the National League East, the Mets division, the Braves are running away with the division. The Padres are in the division dominated for 9 years (soon to be 10) by the Dodgers.


What is to be learned from this? First, the once powerful teams grew somewhat complacent and failed to make the adjustments necessary to respond to a changing environment. Nothing remains static, change comes whether we like it or not.


Second, it never profits anyone to throw money at a problem, at least in the long term. Problems tend to be systemic and unless they are specifically addressed all that comes of the quick infusion of cash is to kick the can down the road. Pretty soon you’ll come to the end of the road, and then what? Pain.


The successful teams are the ones who recognized that what they were previously doing was no longer working and made the necessary – painful – changes to compete in the changing baseball environment.


Other successful teams are constructed and managed to be responsive to a changing environment. Their business model must contain flexibility to be responsive to change, both foreseeable and unforeseeable.


What can we glean from this? Life changes, presenting challenges and opportunities. It pays to be flexible in order to appropriately respond to these changes. Spending voluminous resources rarely forestalls change, it only obscures reality. And change is inevitable, with those sufficiently aware and nimble positioned to weather these changes.


Like I said above, Baseball is Life!


And so it goes….









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