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GELFAND’S WORLD - When Trump marches into his rallies the next few days, instead of Hail to the Chief they ought to play Georgia on My MInd.
OK, so we got our little joke in. The more pressing news is that Trump's lawyers have been meeting with the federal special prosecutor, suggesting that an indictment is on the way for stuff that happened on January 6, 2021.
Like . . . soon.
The feds may therefore get there before the state of Georgia, which is apparently scheduled to act during the first week or two of August.
Today's meeting may be for the creation of advance arrangements for Donald Trump to turn himself in for arraignment, the way he did in New York City. The big question is what charges will actually be filed.
This brings up a topic that we shouldn't have to talk about, but we are going to get dragged into. It's the slow drip, drip, drip of Kevin McCarthy getting around to holding an impeachment vote against Joe Biden. Let's just get to the point:
If the House Republicans go through with this, it is purest political retaliation against another political party because they did what was required by ethics and morality in impeaching Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors -- because he had done them. Actually, he did a lot more than he was impeached for.
Unlike McCarthy's fantasy about Biden, Trump was wholly impeachable for what he didn't do during the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He should have been removed from office for doing nothing during an attempt to halt the process of American government. There certainly was willfulness and intent. Perhaps this will come up in the new indictments?
There were lots of other things that would have been impeachable for most any former president, such as taking bribes in the form of hotel payments from foreign governments. Remember the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C.?
So Republicans in the House want to mirror what the Democrats did, as if there is some acceptable reason to go after Joe Biden. I mean, other than the fact that the Democrats used the impeachment tool as specified in the Constitution. Apparently the Republicans -- the same party that has been willing to break every tradition over in the Senate, expects the Democrats to hold to an old tradition that you don't impeach presidents. So, therefore, the R's have decided that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and that means that Joe Biden -- who couldn't be more different from Donald Trump -- also must be impeached.
Let's cut to the chase on this one: There is no reason to impeach Joe Biden that anyone has explained. Yes, the Republicans claim to disagree with policy issues regarding the southern border, but that's what politics is all about. Yes, there is reason to suspect Hunter Biden of having used his last name to get corporate favors, but that wasn't during the current presidency, and we haven't seen evidence that Joe was involved.
Face it. If the current president were any other Democrat, he or she would be the target of impeachment talk. In fact, it's hard to think of any other Democratic president who would be less appropriate than Joe, considering that he has spent most of the last fifty years or so in the government, in full view of the national media.
It's all garbage and nonsense, and Kevin McCarthy is showing what he is made of by getting into this talk.
World Cup Talk
It was an evening of disappointment, elation, high hopes, and finally, of relief.
To begin:
Officially, they are the USWNT, which stands for the U.S. Women's National Team. They play in the Olympics, and they play a few practice games against other countries, the games that the soccer world refers to as "friendlies." But their grand and glorious purpose is to show up every four years for the women's world cup tournament.
Yes, it's officially the FIFA women's world cup, but as I said last time, we should avoid concerning ourselves about FIFA unless we want to compare its corruption to the City Council.
In the last women's world cup, played in 2019, the USWNT ran the table, winning 7 victories in 7 starts, and defeating the Netherlands in the final in a shutout. In the world cup of 2015, the USWNT won it's last 5 games, with one tie along the way. Therefore, since the end of the 2011 tournament, the USWNT had gone 14 games without a defeat, and adding this year's game against Viet Nam, the unbeaten streak was at 15 and the winning streak was at 13.
The U.S. also had another streak on the line. Since 2011, they had not trailed in any game, including all of 2015 and 2019.
On Wednesday evening, the US gave up an early goal to the Netherlands, breaking that streak, and frankly looking a bit listless in the process. The game announcers repeatedly commented on the U.S. problems, and openly wondered what the Americans (and their coach) would do about it.
At half time, Rose Lavell came into the game, and over the next half, the US started to perk up. Eventually they began to dominate the game. In the meanwhile, they gained the tying goal and spent the rest of the half frantically trying to salvage a win. They could not do so, and the game ended at 1-1. That was the relief part.
So right now, in the initial round robin part of the tournament, the US and the Netherlands are essentially tied in their group of 4, and both will probably go to the knockout rounds after playing their final group games. (The top 2 teams go on; the other 2 go home.) The problem for the US is that they will play Portugal in the next game, while the Netherlands will play Viet Nam. If it comes down to the total goals differential as a tie breaker (the difference between all your goals scored and the number of goals you gave up), then the Netherlands probably has the advantage. That's because the US only had 3 against the much lower ranked Viet Namese, and the Netherlands will go into their game knowing that they have to run up the score.
Both games are Tuesday night, late.
Is Europe doomed, due to a side effect of global warming?
More about this at a later time, but a warning has just been published in the journal Nature about some possibilities. See a story about this here.
The worry has been around for years, but the current state of affairs has been coming on sooner than was expected.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected].)
