Sports At Politics

President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency in order to build a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, despite the lack of a legitimate basis for such a national emergency. This is, by far, easily the most controversial national emergency declaration in U.S. history. Usually, a national emergency is declared by the president for a legitimate reason, such as, to use historical examples, the Great Depression and the 9/11 attacks. Trump's national emergency declaration to build a border wall is the first instance in U.S. history of a national emergency being declared for the purpose of achieving a purely political objective instead of due to the presence of a legitimate national emergency. Prior to today, the previous instance of a national emergency declaration being controversial was when then-President Richard Nixon declared a national emergency due to a postal workers' strike in 1970, in which members of the U.S. Armed Forces and the National Guard were used ...

With nearly 270,000 tweets in a short amount of time as I start to write this blog post at 7:10 A.M. U.S. Central Standard Time on January 18, 2019, "President Pelosi", referencing U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) being second in the official line of succession to the presidency, is officially a trending topic on Twitter right now. President Pelosi began trending on Twitter in response to a bombshell BuzzFeed report that the actual U.S. President, Donald Trump, directed former Trump attorney and convicted felon Michael Cohen to lie to Congress regarding negotiations between the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia and The Trump Organization regarding a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow: President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter. Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit...

Soon-to-be-former U.S. Representative Beto O'Rourke (D-TX), who is a possible candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, released this 48-second video, which made a very powerful case in opposition to President Donald Trump's demand for a border wall boondoggle among the U.S./Mexico border: pic.twitter.com/XONeh8HUf1 — Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) December 28, 2018 That might be the most well-produced web video that I've ever seen from a political figure of any kind, bar none. Beto did not physically appear in the video, and neither his voice nor anyone else's voice, was heard in the video. However, the video didn't need anyone to be seen or heard to drive home the message about the many reasons why the proposed border wall boondoggle would be an absolutely ridiculous idea, and the various images of the natural beauty of Rio Grande Valley also helped make the case against the border wall boondoggle. I will note that I am currently undec...

This will be my closing message, as a political blogger, before Election Day this year. As President of the United States, Donald Trump has completely disgraced America, and the Republican Party has enabled Trump's disgracing of this great country. It's almost impossible to count the ways that Trump has disgraced this country, but I'll list a large number of them. Early on in the Trump presidency, Trump crony Kellyanne Conway went on NBC's Meet the Press and helped set the tone for the entire Trump presidency by claiming that then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was using "alternative facts" to describe the crowd size at Trump's inauguration. Since then, it has become inherently clear that the entire Trump regime has been built on a pyramid of lies, deceit, fearmongering, and hatred. When it comes to immigration, Trump's policies and rhetoric pander to far-right extremists who want to end immigration to this country, even though America ...

Several hours ago, Cesar Altieri Sayoc, Jr., was arrested and indicted on federal criminal charges related to an attempted domestic terrorist attack targeting some of the most prominent individuals within the Democratic Party (including, but not limited to, two former Presidents, a former Vice President, and members of both houses of Congress) and national security experts: An outspoken supporter of President Trump from South Florida was charged on Friday with sending explosive packages to at least a dozen of the president’s critics, apparently bringing to a close an attempted bombing spree that has gripped the country just ahead of the midterm elections. The suspect, Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr., 56, was arrested outside an auto parts store near Fort Lauderdale after a fast-moving investigation in which the authorities said they were able to pull a fingerprint from one of the bomb packages and collect Mr. Sayoc’s DNA from two others. I will make a couple of very important point...

As someone who considers myself to be a nationalist, I was extremely disturbed by President Donald Trump proudly declaring himself to be a nationalist at a rally in the home county of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Trump's brand of nationalism is fascist and hypocritical. Trump's policies, particularly on issues like immigration and foreign policy, as well as his bigotry and political appeal to bigotry, are deeply rooted in Trump's brand of far-right phony nationalism. Trump's extreme anti-immigrant policies are deeply rooted in a white nationalist vision of America, and, when it comes to foreign policy, Trump claims to put "America first", but he pals around with fellow far-right authoritarians like Russia's Vladimir Putin and sells U.S. arms to the absolute monarchy that rules Saudi Arabia. My nationalist views are considerably different, and, in many ways, directly at odds with that with Trump. America is a nation of immigrants. To deny that America i...

Jose Canseco Capas Jr., a former Major League Baseball player who admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs during his MLB career, wants President Donald Trump to appoint him to the soon-to-be-vacant U.S. ambassadorship to the United Nations: Hey little buddy @realDonaldTrump I am interested in United Nations leadership .dm me for ideas and confidential 90 day plan #readynow — Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) October 9, 2018 Canseco's attempt to get Trump to appoint him to the ambassadorship to the UN struck me as rather odd (although it sounds like a serious effort by Canseco to get Trump to appoint him) for a number of reasons: Canseco has never actually retired from playing baseball. As recently as earlier this year, Canseco played in a few games for the Normal CornBelters of the independent Frontier League . Canseco doesn't have any prior diplomatic or political experience of any kind that I'm aware of. Canseco publicly admitted to using performance-enhancing ...

At the behest of then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, a federal government photographer edited official photographs of President Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration ceremony to make it look like the crowd in attendance at the National Mall was much larger than before: A government photographer edited official pictures of Donald Trump’s inauguration to make the crowd appear bigger following a personal intervention from the president, according to newly released documents. The photographer cropped out empty space “where the crowd ended” for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama’s in 2009. [...] The records detail a scramble within the National Park Service (NPS) on 21 January 2017 after an early-morning phone call between Trump and the acting NPS director, Michael Reynolds. They also state that Sean Spicer, then White House press secretary...

Think of this single blog post as a three-part blog post about recent developments at the intersection of sports and politics. First, golf legend Tiger Woods generated some controversy after he refused to either praise or condemn some of President Donald Trump's policies, but asked Americans to respect the office of the President of the United States : The full exchange, with a New York Times reporter, was barely a minute long. Asked about his relationship with Trump, Woods reflected on their history playing together (including most recently last Thanksgiving weekend): "We've played golf together. We've had dinner together. I've known him pre-presidency and obviously during his presidency.” Then Woods was asked about whether his relationship with Trump was an implicit endorsement of Trump’s policies toward immigrants and people of color? Treading cautiously, Woods said he felt compelled to respect the office. "He's the President of the United States....

I recently discovered on Twitter that it is, as of this writing, physically possible to hit the heart-shaped like button on one’s own tweets. I have publicly recommended that Twitter disable the ability of people to like their own tweets, while preserving the ability for people to like others’ tweets: I think Twitter shouldn't allow people to like their own tweets. That sounds like something that egomaniacs do. Obviously, I do believe that Twitter should continue allowing people to like others' tweets. — Aaron Camp (@ProgMid) August 4, 2018 That got me wondering whether or not the world’s most infamous tweeter, President Donald Trump, has a habit of liking his own tweets. Trump has extremely rarely hit the like button on tweets, having only hit the heart-shaped button a total of, as of this writing, 25 times from his own Twitter account . However, eight of those 25 tweets, or 32% of the tweets that Trump has liked, have come from his own account. I'm not sure if anyon...

In perhaps the single biggest act of appeasement since the 1938 Munich Agreement that resulted in Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler seizing control of the Sudetenland, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, openly sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against the U.S. intelligence community : President Donald Trump on Monday publicly sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies, refusing to condemn the Kremlin for interference in the 2016 election and saying that “I don’t see any reason” why Russia would have hacked Democratic computer servers. Trump’s remarkable statements, during a joint news conference in Helsinki, Finland, after holding a two-hour one-on-one meeting with Putin, came after special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russians on Friday over allegations of involvement in the state-ordered election-interference operation. Trump repeatedly attacked the FBI, praised Putin as a “good competitor,” refused to s...

Barack Obama, who served two consecutive terms as President of the United States from 2009 to 2017, warned in his farewell address that democracy in the United States was threatened, by, among other things, "demographic change" : That's what I want to focus on tonight: The state of our democracy. Understand, democracy does not require uniformity. Our founders argued. They quarreled. Eventually they compromised. They expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity — the idea that for all our outward differences, we're all in this together; that we rise or fall as one. (Applause.) There have been moments throughout our history that threatens that solidarity. And the beginning of this century has been one of those times. A shrinking world, growing inequality; demographic change and the specter of terrorism — these forces haven't just tested our security and our prosperity, but are testing our democracy, a...

I'm not a fan of the White House Correspondents' Dinner (WHCD), as the WHCD is a textbook example of the corporate media caring more about themselves than the interests of the American people, but the star of the show at the WHCD last night was comedian Michelle Wolf , who basically said what she thought of President Donald Trump (who was not at the WHCD so that he could falsely and absurdly try to take credit for improved relations between South Korea and North Korea) and his cronies and enablers: (Wolf) told the crowd she was 32, or "20 years too old for Roy Moore. That's right, he almost got elected." Wolf then added, "It's 2018 and I am a woman, so you cannot shut me up. Unless you're Michael Cohen and you wan to wire me $130,000," referring to the reported $130,000 that Trump's personal lawyer paid adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford (better known under her stage name Stormy Daniels) to remain silent about an alleged affair wit...

This tweet from President Donald Trump may have just sunk the joint bid by the United States, Canada, and Mexico for the right to host the 2026 edition of the world's most prestigious men's soccer tournament, the FIFA World Cup: The U.S. has put together a STRONG bid w/ Canada & Mexico for the 2026 World Cup. It would be a shame if countries that we always support were to lobby against the U.S. bid. Why should we be supporting these countries when they don’t support us (including at the United Nations)? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2018 In other words, Trump, at least implicitly, threatened to revoke U.S. foreign aid from countries that intend to vote for Morocco's bid to host the 2026 World Cup over the joint USA/Canada/Mexico bid. Morocco, a country in northwestern Africa, was thought to be a heavy favorite to be selected to host the 2026 World Cup even before Trump's threatening tweet, and is probably even more of a favorite to be selected ...

Under normal circumstances, I would not advocate for candidates for seats in either house of Congress openly campaigning on a platform that included support for a plan to impeach and remove the sitting President of the United States. However, the current state of affairs in this country is not normal circumstances. There is already a sizable segment of the Democratic base voters who are demanding the impeachment of President Donald Trump over, among other things, his role in the collusion between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government. At this time, I would consider it to be too risky of a political strategy for Democratic candidates in the U.S. House of Representatives to openly campaign on impeaching Trump, as that would simply allow Republicans to accuse Democrats of attempting a political power grab. However, if President Donald Trump fires either Special Counsel Robert Mueller or U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, that would, in an of itsel...

Kim Jong-il, the now-deceased former North Korean dictator and father of current North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, once claimed to have made holes-in-one at five different holes at a golf club in North Korea , although that feat probably never actually happened, since a single hole-in-one in a round of golf is rare, even at the professional level, and actual instances of multiple holes in one in a single round are extremely rare. I'll let you guess who is also exaggerating about their golf scores...: LPGA legend Suzann Pettersen is fond of the sitting U.S. president. But she's not so sure about his handicap. [...] "He cheats like hell," the 15-time LPGA Tour winner said. "So I don't quite know how he is in business. They say that if you cheat at golf, you cheat at business." Pettersen also said the president must pay his caddies well, as drives that are headed for the woods always ends up back in the fairway. She also mentioned his fondness...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Michael Cohen, who was, at the time, the top attorney for The Trump Organization, arranged a $130,000 hush money payment to conceal a 2006 sexual relationship between now-President Donald Trump and Stephanie Clifford: A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment [...] a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said. Trump married now-First Lady Melania Trump in 2005, according to Daily Kos's Jennifer Hayden: The alleged 'sexual encounter' took place in 2006. He married M...

Let me make it inherently clear that Kim Jong-un is a brutal dictator who has repeatedly threatened global armageddon by threatening to use nuclear weapons against the United States, has killed his own relatives, and leads a brazenly corrupt and completely undemocratic regime. I am absolutely not, in any way, a supporter of Kim or his political philosophy, and Kim should never be, in any way, a role model for current or future leaders of our great country. In fact, there are some similarities between Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump. For example, Trump is probably the most authoritarian-minded person to ever be president in our great country, and Trump is already one of the most corrupt presidents in U.S. history. A pair of North Korean athletes qualified for the 2018 Winter Olympics in pairs figure skating, although the North Korean Olympic committee did not officially enter the athletes prior to December 21, 2017, so any North Korean entry into the Olympics would be via...