Redskins Win! (Not at Football)

The Supreme Court recently ruled unanimously on Matal v. Tam, allowing the front man of a band called The Slants to register the band's name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office.  In the case, SCOTUS ruled a ban on names deemed offensive by the government as unconstitutional.  This is great news for the Redskins, and the other shoe dropped today when The Justice Department told a federal appeals court that they are conceding that the Redskins of the NFL will not have a trademark revocation.

This was, in my opinion, the correct decision, and it makes me feel a bit better about my country that it was a unanimous decision, meaning that even the justices often considered to be far Left were in agreement with an obvious defense of the First Amendment.  Sure, The Slants are an Asian-American band, so it's accepted to be fine and not racist, like when an African-American uses the N-word.  But the point is that the U.S. Patent and Trademark office can't block things that it finds offensive, that other people might find offensive, or that someone can construe as hate speech.  This is a huge win for free speech.

While the Redskins are different than The Slants in that the Redskins are not an exclusively Native American football team, it's a name that's been around since the days of the Great Depression.  No one seemed to have a problem with it until recently, and even now, it seems to be a handful of people on the far Left who have nothing better to do than protest the names of things and search for Native Americans who will agree with them to legitimize their triggered state.  While I understand why "Redskins" is a poor choice for a football team and "The Slants" is a poor name for a band, because we live in a free country, it's really not my decision to make.  Nor should it be.  If people are really upset by the name of something, the free market would serve to punish the business owners.  If I opened up a business called The Mountain Wop Shop, that should be my decision, and not only because I'm Italian-American.  If I want to name a cleaning product Spic and Span, that should be my decision, even though I'm not Hispanic.  ...Oh wait, someone already did that?  Where are the protests for that?

Not too far down the road from where I live is Yale University, where they are changing the name of Calhoun College because of John Calhoun's dealings in the slave industry.  Although it amounts to caving to the demands of angry Leftists who are always looking for things to complain about, that's Yale's decision to make.  But if Yale students are really serious, I wonder why they aren't protesting for Yale University to change its name.  Elihu Yale was a slave trader.  Could it be because it would be directly opposed to their self-interest?  Yale is a prestigious school--arguably the best in the world.  It's a well-recognized and well-respected name.  Changing its name to Tubman University or something, while it may make some folks feel good or vindicated, would be an absolute disaster.  It would take a long time for Tubman University to become a household name.

And it would be a long time until the Washington Red Hats or Potato Skins or Red Potatoes or whatever they would be called in lieu of the Redskins became a household name (Washington Congress would be great because they lose a lot and have a low approval rating).  And while we're at it, we must consider the feelings of those on the far Right.  Somewhere out there, there are conservative Christian mothers angry that Eddie Vedder's band is called Pearl Jam, which is just a term that means semen.  How about we start calling them Raspberry Jam instead?

One day a student would escape the oppressive Leftist regime at Tubman University via an underground railroad, catch a Red Potatoes game at a local bar, and get invited to attend a Raspberry Jam concert with new friends.  But later, his new friends would decide to give his ticket to someone else because they were Indian givers all along.

Political Toxicity Beyond Fever Pitch

Last Thursday was a shitty day in our nation's history.  Former FBI Director James Comey was called to Capitol Hill to testify under oath, and neither Democrats nor Republicans could stop themselves from being partisan.  I listened to the beginning of the hearing streaming from Reuters on my computer at work, with one ear bud in.  I shut it off after a while and left to meet a friend for lunch.  We talked about a lot of things, but one of the things I told him I would be doing when I got back to work was checking the headlines on the various news sites and comparing them to each other.  The same testimony would certainly yield very different, very partisan headlines.  I was right.  Fox News was focused most on the inappropriate things former Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, while CNN and MSNBC were focused on the inappropriate things President Donald Trump said and discussing how it was probably obstruction of justice.  The conservative news organizations talked about how great it was that Trump was right about not being personally under investigation for collusion with Russia, killing the Left's narrative.  The liberal news organizations talked about how great it was that Comey said he was afraid Trump would lie and that he took Trump's statement about hoping Comey could let Flynn go as a directive that went unheeded.  Reuters was somewhere in the middle.  That's been a decent homepage for the last several months.

President Trump went on to say more dumb things after the hearing, calling out the credibility of Comey's under-oath testimony.  Predictably, the Left pivoted from the narrative of Trump lying about Comey having told him three times that he wasn't personally under investigation (CNN even made a rare retraction of a fake news story when Comey confirmed Trump's account there), and to the narrative of Trump obstructing justice by saying he hopes that Comey could let Flynn go.  Trump's son made a good point about that statement though, that most people who know anything about Trump would probably believe to be accurate, in that when his father tells someone to do something, there is no question that he is telling them to do something.  There is no, "I hope you can do this..."  Even Comey had to admit that he couldn't think of a time when someone was prosecuted for a comment of that nature.  Of course, he didn't go quite as far as he did with the Hillary Clinton investigation, where he inappropriately suggested that no reasonable person would try to prosecute her.  The way in which he "learns from his mistakes" seems rather partisan.  That was the reason cited for him refusing to say publicly that Trump wasn't under investigation anyway.

Whether or not a reasonable person would ever try to prosecute Trump for his statement to Comey about his hopes for Michael Flynn, Trump's statement was highly inappropriate and worrisome.  Comey was certainly right about that.  That is not how a President should act.  Though not criminal and not solid ground for impeachment, it's concerning and problematic that he said that.  And if I can admit that, the Left should be able to admit that Loretta Lynch's statement telling Comey to call the investigation into Hillary Clinton a "matter" rather than an investigation during the election cycle was highly inappropriate.  And don't even get me started on Eric Holder, Barack Obama, and Fast and Furious...  But the difference between Lynch's comment to Comey and Trump's statement to Comey was that Comey appeared to obey Lynch's suggestion and ignore Trump's suggestion.  He should have ignored both.

Ever since Comey was fired, I've said that he's going to get a multi-million dollar book deal, and that appears to be happening.  He's an intriguing and tragic character who I believe has inadvertently contributed to the deep political division of our country.  I think he started out with good intentions and ended up in some impossible no-win situations, with several unfortunate election-cycle announcements that likely impacted voters.  In my opinion, he's near the center politically, and he tried to stay out of politics, though he probably preferred Clinton to Trump.  When Trump got elected, he felt responsible and developed an extreme distrust of Trump, and the media helped fuel the fire, so he felt the duty to take detailed notes on all of his meetings with Trump and ultimately testify before Congress, having construed Trump's worrisome behaviors in the worst ways possible.

In the long run, Comey's testimony won't impact very much, though it's at least understandable why he testified before Congress.  Having Sessions testify was a waste of time.  Foghorn Leghorn isn't in cahoots with the Russians either.  But here we are in mid-June, with the NBA and NHL champions crowned, the dog days of summer just around the corner, and America's pastime, baseball, in full swing.  There's nothing like baseball to bring people together.  The Republican congressmen and Democratic congressmen were practicing for their ballgame against each other this morning, and a gunman opened fire on the players on the Republican diamond.

The gunman was a Leftist who volunteered for the Bernie Sanders campaign.  He was frustrated with "the one percent."  He disliked Trump, he disliked Republicans, and he was a complete lunatic.  If not for the policemen with guns on scene, there would have been many more deaths than just his.  As of now, there are some severe injuries, but thankfully no deaths.  The Democratic Congressional team got together and prayed for those who were hurt, a classy move.  And apart from a few crazy far Leftist reactions, the act was universally condemned by Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Independents.  For those few who suggested that it was a good thing, or normalized violence by saying it was self-defense for Republicans trying to repeal Obamacare, while being upset with people who normalize or even humanize Trump (a human being who is President of the United States whether you like it or not), you're even worse than the crazy people on the right you hate so much for being alright with the killing of abortion doctors or bombing of abortion clinics, although I can't even remember the last time that actually happened.

But the only person to blame for what happened this morning is the gunman.  The media was all about blaming the far right when a Democratic Congresswoman was shot, as well as in pretty much every crime that was even possibly politically-motivated where they could spin it in a way to blame Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump or whoever else.  Was Keith Olbermann the most recent pundit to play that card?  I don't remember, because it's happened so often.  But I don't blame him, or Bernie Sanders, or the actors in the plays portraying Trump being murdered, or even Kathy Griffin.  They have the right to say and do what they want under the First Amendment, short of actually calling for and inciting violence, shootings, and murders.  The blame rests squarely on the psychopath gunman, but the increasingly divisive political climate in our country certainly doesn't help.

And for fuck's sake, can we stop with the narrative that we need more gun control every time some psychopath goes on a rampage?  The idiot Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, said that it wasn't the time for that, but in the same breath called for more gun control and cried about the "93 million" people killed by guns in America every day.  That would leave us with a population of zero in four days, or roughly how many people would be left it all of the bad guys had guns and none of the good guys did.

Maybe we can start to bring this country back together.  Maybe all the cable news networks can air a live baseball game between Red and Blue members of Congress.  We can raise money for charities that both sides agree on as worthy, we can enjoy watching Rand Paul slide Brillo pad first into second base, and we can all just drink a beer and watch a ballgame together as Americans.  At least until Bernie Sanders complains that, "Eight Republicans came to bat in the same inning where only four Democrats came to bat.  It's an injustice!  Shouldn't both teams be allowed to send six men to bat?"
"Bernie, that's not how baseball works," Ted Cruz will say.  "Both teams are allowed three outs."
"Baseball is unfair!"