By Bob Gaydos

P.T. Barnum, like Trump, knew how to make a shady buck.

    Occasionally, the Universe conspires to make life a bit more challenging for those who cover the news of the day, as in the previous week when three major stories competed for front page attention, (1.) the much-anticipated assassination in Russia of Yevgeny Prigozhin, (2.) the eagerly awaited arrest and first-ever mugshot taking of a former American president, in Atlanta, and (3.) the totally unexpected report from Los Angeles that the best player in baseball, Shohei Ohtani, the only successful pitcher/hitter since Babe Ruth, had suffered a serious injury to the elbow of his pitching arm and will (4.) require Tommy John surgery (named after the first pitcher to have it done*) or full arm rest to repair his elbow, meaning he will not pitch again this year, or ever again, and will likely (5.) see his asking price for a new contract when he is a free agent at the end of the year fall by a few hundred million dollars (that is correct for non-sports fans), and maybe even worse, put an end to his brief but marvelous career as simultaneously one of the game’s great pitchers and hitters, limiting him to merely hitting home runs every day, which, of course, is still a far better fate than that of Prigozhin, who (6.) incredibly was still hanging around Russia two months after abruptly stopping his coup attempt against Vladimir Putin about 150 miles from Moscow, (7.) foolishly trusting Putin’s promise to let him go live peaceably in Belarus and (8.) inexplicably packing his private plane with other leaders of his Wagner paramilitary force, making it easier for an “unexplained” explosion to wipe them all out in one fell swoop, (9.) demonstrating that Putin is not limited to using falls from high windows or poison to eliminate those he perceives as enemies, (10.) a scary reputation that the aforementioned arrested  former president, Donald Trump, would undoubtedly  enjoy having, rather than that of a (11.) lying traitor who led a conspiracy and fomented

The mug shot.

violence to try to overturn a legitimate election he had lost, (12.) illegally concealed classified government documents, (13.) used campaign funds to pay hush money to cover up an affair he had with a porn star while his wife was tending to their young child, (14.) raped a woman in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman and slandered her even after he was found guilty, (15.) defrauded New York State of millions in taxes, and (16) continues to threaten and insult judges, prosecutors and (rare) political opponents who dare to speak the truth about him and to support the rule of law, all to (17.) rile up his supporters and to ostensibly raise money for his presidential campaign, but which will probably go to (18.) pay his monumental legal expenses so that he can find lawyers willing to represent him, which is not easy given his cheapskate reputation, none of which seems to bother his legion of loyal followers, who (19.) continue to ignore reality and send him money every time he plays the “victim” of the system routine, proving that (20.) P.T. Barnum was right when he (allegedly) said, “There’s a sucker (or a few million) born every minute,” which includes anyone who believes that the flabby Trump is 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighs a mere 215 pounds, as an aide entered in the record for him when he was booked in Atlanta, (21) in a circus scene lacking only Barnum’s famous sign, “This way to the egress,” * (22.), to which I say, soon, please, Universe.

      Shohei wins.

(* Tommy John was a good left-handed pitcher, who won 288 games in 26 seasons, including two 20-win seasons for the New York Yankees.)

(*When you went though the door to get to the  “egress,” you had to pay to get back in to the sideshow. Trump would’ve loved Barnum.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos    

The amazing watermelon.

   I’ve noticed that my creative juices tend to evaporate a bit in the heat of August, especially since there has been essentially just one major story to write about for some seven years.

    When that happens, I look for inspiration for stories in everyday life, which can often produce amazing results.

    For example, you know what’s amazing? Watermelon. Watermelon’s amazing.

       Think about it. It is sweet, juicy, virtually free of calories and is loaded with nutrients, including Vitamin C and lycopene, a combination which, the science suggests, may fight off cancer, heart problems, macular degeneration, inflammation and cell damage, while protecting your skin and hair. Also, being mostly water with a little fiber, it’s good for digestive health. You can eat it or drink it, it grows anywhere that it’s not too frigid and if you binge on it, it’s a terrific diuretic. Yum today, gone tomorrow.

        Amazing. Who thought of this?

        Well, we don’t really know. It was just kind of here, like a lot of other stuff, just waiting to be discovered, apparently in West Africa, from which it spread to Egypt, India and by the 10th Century, China, which is today’s largest producer of watermelon. Europeans brought it to the New World in the 16th Century and the Japanese, to the dismay of seed-spitters, developed a seedless variety in 1939. Today, there’s a watermelon variety for every palate or picnic.

        One more bit of watermelon trivia: In 2007, the Oklahoma State Senate declared watermelon the official state vegetable, although the rest of the world considers it to be a fruit. Oh, Oklahoma.

         But the point here is that this fruit grows abundantly, is both delicious and healthful and has virtually no significant risks associated with it. It’s like someone left us a gift and hoped we would find and appreciate it: You’re going to need and enjoy this, earthlings. Until recently, I hardly gave it a thought. But no more. Go ahead, the season’s about over, go find one and take a bite.

       Amazing, right?

       You know what else is amazing? Benford’s Law. In fact, it is mind-numbingly amazing, in my humble opinion. It’s also called the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law. By any name, it’s, well, you know.

        As simply as I can explain for the non-mathematicians or non-accountants (like me) out there, the law states that in naturally occurring sizable groups of numbers, be it dollars in a budget, acres, heights of mountains, populations, street addresses or stock prices, the first number of each entry is likely to be 1 about 30 percent of the time, while 9 is the leading number only about 5 percent of the time. And, the frequency moves downward from 1 to 9 in a predictable curve. This happens all the time, unless the sample is too small or there are restrictions in the collection, such as the height of basketball players (5 to 7 being the range).

         In practical terms, this means it’s possible to determine if someone is cooking the books, since the natural tendency of humans is to distribute numbers randomly, with each number having an equal chance of lead status. The law has been admitted in criminal fraud cases at local, state and federal levels. The IRS must use it because it won’t even comment on it. A  study of reported Covid-19 cases indicated that results from Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Denmark, Belgium and Chile were suspicious because the numbers didn’t match the Benford Curve.

    I learned about this amazing law from the Netflix series, “Connected,” which I recommend for those who like their science approachable and with a little humor. It turns out the law had a leading role in another Netflix series, “Ozark,” in which it was used to detect fraud in a cartel financial statement. And in the 2016 movie, “The Accountant,” Ben Affleck uses It to expose the theft of funds from a robotics company.

    So I’m really late to the game on this one. But that doesn’t make it any less amazing that, in the seemingly randomness of our numbers-crazy society, someone/thing/power has provided order, if we only know where to look for it. Physicist Frank Benford knew where to look in 1938 when he did an extensive test of the phenomenon first noted by astronomer/mathematician Simon Newcomb in 1838. Newcomb noted that the early pages in a book of algorithms were used much more often than the later pages. Benford took Newcomb’s observation and gave it meaning.

       Here’s one more amazing thing I recently learned after years of taking it for granted — horses can jump fences even though they don’t really see them the way humans do. It’s not as simple as see the fence, jump the fence.

See the fence; jump the fence.

    For starters, horses’ eyes (the largest of any land mammal) are not in the front of their heads like ours are. Horses have one eye on each side of their face. Just take a look. Never gave it much thought because, well, it looks right and normal, which it is. But it also means horses have to turn and raise their heads a lot more than we do to see the full picture of things in front of them, including fences they have to jump.

         Briefly, according to British Eventing Life, horses have two kinds of vision. One, monocular vision, means they see each side separately with either eye. This gives them a remarkably wide field of vision, except for what’s right in front of them. So they can see both sides of the fence as they approach it, but they can’t tell how close they are until they’re within about six feet. That’s when their binocular vision kicks in. They raise their heads to see directly in front of them to judge distance and height. Not much time when you’re cantering.

        This feat also requires considerable teamwork from the rider, whose job is to give the horse every chance to succeed. That means providing a good approach and verbal, hand, leg and seat prompts, if necessary. Well-trained horses make it look easy, but here’s another amazing thing: Horses’ brains have a left side and a right side, which act as two separate brains, meaning horses have to be trained from both sides. Their amazing double brain quickly computes the data received from both visions as the horse approaches the jump. Up and over. I don’t know who thought of this. By the way, if I messed up any of this explanation, I hope horse people will forgive me. I just find this animal to be amazing.

        Finally, I guess my point here is that, at a time when amazingly evil and stupid things are happening in the world, it is still possible to find some amazingly positive things in everyday life. As a friend told me some 40 years ago, I just need to be present in my own life and keep looking for them.

     Thanks, Victor.

                                   ***

(Full disclosure: Loyal readers will recognize this as a slightly edited version of a column I wrote two years ago. But the amazing facts are still the same. Horses still jump fences the same way, numbers still show up predictably, one through nine, and watermelon is still delicious, although I have managed to prove that they don’t necessarily grow “anywhere.” But the kale came through.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

The Marion County Record … still publishing

     There has been plenty of news coverage of the daily stream of complaints from the twice-impeached, four times indicted former president that (1.) accusing him of crimes (91 of them) for things he has said and trying to silence him from talking about the accusations constitute an attack on his First Amendment right of free speech, but (2.) the most recent legitimate threat to the First Amendment has received much less attention, possibly because it happened in Marion, Kansas, where the entire sheriff’s force raided the offices of the local paper, the Marion County Record, and the home of its owners, taking computers, phones, notebooks, etc., looking for the source of information on embarrassing news about a local politician and a business owner, even though the paper had not published articles on either person and despite a warrant that the local DA invalidated two days after the raid as unwarranted, leading (3.) news media organizations to denounce the rare government interference in the operation of a free press, an action which the editor said (4.) created stress which contributed to the death of his 98-year-old mother and newspaper co-owner a day after the raid, which is tragic, as is each of (5.) the estimated 49,500 people who committed suicide in the United States last year, the highest number ever, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control, which said suicides had become more commmon in America than any period since just before World War II, a war whose outcome established the former Soviet Union as a world power, to fear and grudgingly respect, both of which were absent as (6.) Ukraine continued its counteroffensive in the disastrous war launched against it by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which revealed the weakness of Russia’s military, and (7.) Russia’s robotic Luna-25 spacecraft crashed on the surface of the moon, much as (8.) Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax fraud and gun charges did when a judge

Hunter Biden

refused to accept the terms and (9.) Britain’s hopes of magically winning a World Cup in women’s soccer did when gritty Spain won the title match, one-nothing, which (10.) experts said was pretty much what Hawaii had done to prepare for the disastrous wildfire that devastated Maui, leveling a town and killing more than a hundred people, the kind of devastation Democrats could experience in 2024 if (11.) the deceptively named No Labels Party runs a candidate for president, since the moderate-conservative group wouldn’t take away any of Trump’s loyal followers (assuming he’s not in prison), but could sway some independents away from voting for Joe Biden, who (12.) practiced statesmanship by hosting the leaders of Japan and South Korea, traditional rivals if not enemies, at Camp David, to forge an alliance in the three countries’ favor, kind of the opposite approach of Trump, who (13.) said he would skip the scheduled Republican presidential candidates debate in favor of an interview with Tucker Carlson somewhere Trump can presumably demonstrate his right to free speech ad nauseum without fear of someone confronting him with facts, kind of like (14.) Rudy Giuliani‘s approach claiming that the RICO law, which he is charged with violating in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, does not apply to conspiracies among political  figures, even though, as the first U.S. prosecutor to use the law, Giuliani, who (15.) has experienced an epic fall from 9/11 grace, (16.) once bragged how he used it against Mayor Ed Koch and other New York City political figures. 

     Ain’t karma great?

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Special Counsel Jack Smith.

  The first season of Jack Smith saves democracy finally started steaming into our consciousness in Washington, D.C., this week as the special counsel (1.) leveled three federal counts against Donald Trump for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a coup, in effect, to which the now thrice-indicted defendant’s lawyers (2.) kept arguing that free speech gave Trump the right to lie about losing the election, which Smith never denied or charged him with and which (3.) former Vice President Mike Pence suddenly realized he always had a right to when he said (out loud and in public) that Trump asked him to reject the votes of the legitimate electors on Jan. 6, which apparently (4.) prompted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 has been a disaster, to also forget the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil GOP mantra and say, “Of course he lost the election,” when asked about Trump and 2020, even as (5.) other Republicans stuck to the script and plotted with the “conservative” Heritage Foundation to devise a “battle plan” for the first 180 days of a Republican presidency in 2025, including a strategy that would negate current efforts to slow global warming by eliminating regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling most clean energy programs in the federal government and increasing the production of fossil fuels, even as (6.) the planet suffers through the hottest year on record, which, no one is admitting but seems at least plausible, (7.) could have contributed to flight controllers at NASA’s Cape Canaveral losing track of the Voyager 2 spacecraft for several weeks because they were, in effect, looking in the wrong place, which (8.) is what President Biden told Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who has been lobbying to move the new Space Force headquarters from Colorado, where the Air Force Academy is located and recreational pot is legal, to Alabama, where anything Republicans don’t like (abortion, LGBTQ rights, voting rights …) is illegal or tough to come by, when Biden rejected an order by Trump, who created the new military force, to locate it in Alabama, thereby also (9.) sending Tuberville a nasty message for his one-man crusade of putting a hold on hundreds of top Defense Department promotions, which has resulted for the first time in (10.)the Marines and Army both operating with acting commanders and the Joint Chiefs being short-changed, all because (11.) one man objects to a Pentagon plan to provide transportation to service members needing to go to another state for an abortion, a sensible plan in the same vein as (12.) a new Pentagon policy that places control over military sexual assault cases in the hands of a team of independent prosecutors, rather than base commanders, thereby eliminating coverups and favoritism, a policy which came in response to numerous complaints from female service members which led to (13.) legislation creating the new policy, which was spearheaded by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and which Biden signed into law, displaying a concern for the health and well-being of Americans in uniform that (14.) was seriously lacking in the case of Anthony Rizzo, who gets paid millions of dollars to put on the uniform for the New York Yankees, and was apparently allowed to play (poorly as it turned out) for two months while suffering from post-concussive syndrome and also sharing a locker room with Domingo German, who (15.), only four weeks after pitching a perfect game, proceeded to trash the Yankee clubhouse, fight with teammates, get suspended for the season and sent to alcohol rehab, which (16.) gives a whole new level of meaning to the concept of functioning alcoholic and is topped for a New York headline only by (17.) the crosstown Mets trading away Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander, their two aging super aces, whom they’re paying tens of millions of dollars to apparently try to win the pennant for two different teams in Texas, (18.) and that’s why reading the sports pages first thing in the morning isn’t as much fun as it used to be, aside from the fact (19.) in the current stream of things, you can’t find them anymore, but then, (20.) there’s always Jack Smith, Season 1, episode 1.

      Binge.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Barbara Bedell

 A colleague with whom I spent 29 years carefully avoiding talking politics died the other day. In my sorrow at her passing, I contemplated what it would be like talking politics with her today.

    She would have hated it.

    Barbara Bedell was a prominent fixture at the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, NY, when I started working there in 1978. She was an even more prominent fixture when I retired from the newspaper 29 years later.

      She remained another 10 years, cranking out her daily column of news you can’t find in local papers today. Fund-raisers, charities, non-profits, civic organizations, the stuff that makes a community. Names, names, names. Everyone wanted their name or their group mentioned in Barbara’s column.

      I worked at a desk next to hers for about a decade. It offered handy access to the famous Bedell candy dish and was close enough to share gossip.

     Barbara knew a lot of people. But she also knew about being discreet and had learned to reconcile her somewhat conservative political views with the decidedly liberal views offered daily on the paper’s editorial page, editorials written for the most part by me.

     I knew she was a longtime, loyal registered Republican, a Ronald Reagan Republican, from her proud roots in Annapolis to stops in South Dakota and Poughkeepsie. She often donated to Republican political campaigns, but she never let her political preferences influence who was mentioned in her column. Or who was not. She played it straight.

     It was that straight-shooter trait I remembered when I ran into Barbara four years after I had retired. I was working on a column for my blog and the 2012 presidential campaign was in full swing.

   Not having talked politics in a while, I asked, in total innocence, “What do you think of the presidential candidates your party is offering?”

      She did not disappoint.

       “It is absurd, insulting. None of them is qualified. It’s embarrassing. Obama is going to win in a landslide. I couldn’t vote for any of them.”

    “Not even Romney?”

    “No.”

     “But how did this happen? How did this gang become the Republican Party’s best and brightest?”

     “They’re not. And all those (Tea Party) Republicans who got elected last time are going to lose next time. It’s a disgrace. I got phone calls from all the Republican campaign fund-raising committees. I told them not to call me. I’m not giving any of them any money.”

       “So who would you like to see run for president?” I asked Barbara.

        “Hillary Clinton. And don’t use my name.”

        “Spoken like a true Republican,” I wrote.

         It was a great kicker for the column, but how prophetic those last lines proved to be.

         A disgrace, she had called her party’s leading figures at the time. The Republican candidates for president in December of 2011, when Barbara and I had this brief conversation, were Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and the two Mormon candidates, Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney.

       The field ate each other up. Huntsman was too smart and reasonable. Romney simply said whatever the audience of the day wanted to hear. He won. Then, as Barbara predicted, Obama beat him.

        The story at the time was that loyal Republicans kept quiet about the candidates’ obvious lack of presidential qualifications until and unless they were vying for the same nomination. Republican candidates could see their fellow candidates’ flaws all too clearly. They keep quiet about them only when it suited them to do otherwise.

    The traditional party faithful, the “moderates,” as Barbara described herself, mostly kept their opinions of the candidates to themselves. And Barbara was wrong about one thing: Some of those Tea Party candidates kept winning. As a result, the party core steadily became more and more conservative, anti-science, anti-immigrant. anti-education, anti-gay, anti-anything but white, Christian nationalist philosophy.

      Mostly, they kept this to themselves as well. Then Donald Trump came along and let them out of the closet to trumpet their ignorance, intolerance and occasional inclination to violence. Party leaders, well aware of the shortcomings of Trump and many of their fellow elected Republicans, again kept it to themselves.

      And so fear and cowardice have become the bywords of the Republican Party today. It doesn’t matter that what you know in your heart is true, just do not speak ill of the ignorant elite if you don’t want to lose your job, or worse.

    Today, having become the party of Trump — a man twice impeached, found guilty of sexual assault, charged with campaign finance fraud for paying hush money to a porn star, indicted for attempting to overturn the legitimate results of an election, a conspiracy to threaten the rights of others, a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding before Congress and obstruction of an official proceeding, about to be indicted for a separate conspiracy to overturn the results of a legitimate election and indicted for concealing and refusing to return classified government documents  — the continued silence of most Republicans is deafening.

      So what would my departed friend and colleague, Barbara Bedell, think of the Republican Party candidates for president today?

       I don’t think she’d mind me speculating. Listening over the divider that separated our desks, I think I can hear her muttering quietly, “They’re a disgrace, Gaydos. An embarrassment to America. And you can quote me.”

rjgaydos@gmail.com