​When an umpire strikes out

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

A Supreme Court umpire should call for replays on every act

For more than 20 years I have been wondering what makes Chief Justice John Roberts tick. During a Senate confirmation hearing he slid and slud around this rather mysterious comparison of two jobs, the umpire in softball or baseball games or judge in traffic or war crimes court. He dazzled senators with this statement: “Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them. Nobody ever went to a baseball game to see the umpire.”

Actually, I went to hundreds of baseball games because I was a pitcher who threw fast, curve, screw, and knuckle balls over a 17-inch white target 60 feet and 6 inches from the pitching mound in high school, college, amateur, and semi-pro baseball games for nine seasons. Following three years in the Marine Corps, I coached baseball for eight years for the Fargo Park Board and the Fargo American Legion B team. Besides baseball, I and a friend umpired adult softball games in Little Falls for one summer when we were high school seniors and made $5 a night. I have watched and evaluated lots of strikes and balls and thousands of other close plays.

The son of a wealthy Indiana steel plant manager, Roberts attended an expensive Roman Catholic boarding school called La Lumiere, where the student-teacher ratio is 7-1 and which charges $58,300 tuition a year in 2025. He was captain of the football team, region champion in wrestling, sang in choir, starred in drama, was co-editor of the school newspaper, and was valedictorian in 1973. Then on to Harvard and a history major and law degree. Time marches on to a beat of 120 a minute. So why is he such a complex character?

At age 13, Roberts wrote fascinating sentences on a school application

Evidently, he had early goals in life: “I have always wanted to stay ahead of the crowd. I’m sure that by attending and doing my best at La Lumiere I will assure myself of a fine future.”

Is this the beginning of another man handicapped by narcissism? I have taught and coached thousands of boys between the ages of 13 and 17. I can’t think of a single one who would put those words on paper, although some might have thought that about their future.

He wrote this while at Harvard: “I didn’t view myself as conservative until I went there and kind of reacted against orthodoxy. I suffered culture shock surrounded by liberal students protesting the Vietnam War.”

“Roberts came out of Harvard with a flawless veneer,” his biographer Joan Biskupic said in 2019. “He has always shown a keen interest in how he is portrayed in the media. Even as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he demonstrated an awareness of messaging. He has kept his personal convictions largely hidden, shrouding himself and his leanings in narcissistic mystery. He is his own enigma.”

John Roberts has demonstrated he is a white nationalist and a white supremacist. As an associate counsel for Ronald Reagan, he was hostile to civil rights for Black and brown people. He is a racist. He opposed voting rights and voting protections for racial minorities. As an “instinctively disordered” Roman Catholic, he refuses to recognize that 10% of the world’s population is homosexual with 1% being transgender. So, Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo, the two most famous and talented Catholic artists and engineers of the first 21 centuries are “intrinsically disordered?” The Devil made them do it while in St. Peters Square?!!

Now let’s get him behind the Constitution calling balls and strikes

The big question is, why has Chief Justice John Roberts and his 6-3 majority called strikeouts on democratic cases and called balls on all conservative cases so they have walked around the bases and scored? In major league baseball playoffs, the game usually has six umpires led by an Umpire-In-Chief who is “rotated” each day from the crew. He manages the game, calls balls and strikes at home plate, calls the plays at home plate, decides when the game will start, and when it will be suspended due to weather or other incidents. Before the game, he inspects each baseball that might be used. The umpire crew also has a crew chief who is the most senior member of the crew. He serves as a liaison to the league office concerning game delays, protests, player ejections, and other “business.”

On the United States Supreme Court, the Chief Justice job at home plate is never rotated. John Roberts has been Umpire-in Chief for 20 years and decides who will write the majority opinion.

The longest winning streak in major league baseball is held by the 1916 New York Giants, who won 26 in a row. The current Roberts Court has walked 18 cases around the legislative field and won 18 cases in a row for conservatives. It is a dream win record for Donald Trump and his collection of billionaires, liars, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christians who have decided not to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ anymore. It is a mob of Trump sickofans who have no idea of when enough is enough. The Supreme Court’s Umpire-in- Chief created a section of the Constitution that only one man is above the law in the Divided States of America, and that man is Donald Trump who said he was going to be a dictator the first day in office. Every time the liberals came up to bat the case, the Umpire-in Chief struck them out regardless of where the policy was pitched — and called every pitch thrown as balls, whether they went over home plate or not advanced them to a win.

Will our democracy survive the new term of the Supreme Court?

I think chances are slim to none that the Divided States of America will be around to experience the midterm 2026 elections…and Slim has already moved his citizenship to New Zealand. The Umpire-in-Chief John Roberts and his crew of five conservative Christians calling runners safe or out don’t believe much of what Jesus Christ taught about loving neighbors even if they are very poor. The court will have at least 39 decisions to make about life in America during their current term. Here are just a few:

The first case involves a Colorado Christian sex therapist who thinks she can teach a homosexual to become heterosexual in a “conversion” case. The American Psychiatric Association stated that homosexuality is not a disease 50 years ago and medical authorities have declared homosexuals have a higher rate of suicide if they undergo “treatment” by conversion therapists. The failure rate is very high. Some treatments, such as electric shock, have been used for centuries in torture chambers. The Vatican calls homosexuals “intrinsically disordered” because they “traffic” with Satan. Guess who is going to strike out with this law on third base. Will the court members play doctor again?

Several years ago, Umpire-in-Chief Roberts decided that politicians, not judges, should determine how voting districts are determined by state. Well, guess what? Gerrymandering and Trumpmandering have created new voting districts that look like crazy and bewildering Rorschach Inkblot projecting psychological tests in Trumplican states. It’s an attempt to steal votes from Black, brown, Asian, and Native Americans citizens and to steal the 2026 midterms and the House of Representatives from Democrats. Gee, I wonder how this Supreme Court will react to these voting laws?

Will the court assure the Manhattan Village idiot he can hire, fire, and refuse to pay federal workers who are suing him by the thousands in several cases? Stay tuned.

What will the court do about the 35-year-old unmarried woman in Tennessee who was denied prenatal health care by a state law that allows health care specialists and providers to deny treatment and services that go against their religious beliefs? In this case, doctors who denied her care claimed they did so because of their “Christian values.” Evidently this promiscuous “bitch” was not a neighbor.

Several federal courts have ruled that Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship is unconstitutional based on the 14th Amendment. Several court actions have brought birthright to the Supreme Court. What will the “originalists” on the court do? Will Umpire Roberts call Trump out?

Will transgender individuals be allowed to enlist in the military service and have medical care and gender surgeries covered by the government? Remember when Barry Goldwater, a Republican icon, stated these immortal words: ”You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.” Our first Commander-in Chief George Washington promoted a Prussian homosexual to be his top general. He efficiently organized the ragtag soldiers at Valley Forge into effective fighting units. At the same time, General Baron Friedrich William von Stweuben wrote the first U.S. Army manual which was used for thirty years, and then he designed West Point Army Academy in his spare time.

There are several cases involving the operation of business on a global level and the firing of confirmed leaders of bureaus, departments and commissions that regulate business functions. Trump has been trying to fire members of the Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve Board. One could say: “Good luck with that.”

When will Trumplicans accept members of the LBGTQUIA+ community as normal Homo sapiens? When will they allow them to participate in all sports as normal human beings? There are 3.6 million LBGTQUIA* people over 50 in the DSA! There are 21 queer senior housing centers scattered around the country. Trump’s aggressive use of executive orders loaded with lies has created huge crash scenes on the steps of the Supreme Court. According to the Bible, God has already inspected and approved all people in the womb.

Trump’s ICE agents learned about terror from Hitler’s Gestapo

Ann Toback is the CEO of the Workers Circle, a Jewish organization that is a member of the national Not Above the Law Coalition’s “Disappeared in America” campaign. Ann, the niece of a Jewish great uncle “disappeared” by Nazis in 1942 in Belgium, wrote a column in the November issue of The Progressive titled “Standing Up to ICE is a Moral Imperative.” Her uncle was never seen again after a knock on his door on a dark night.

Donald Trump’s right-hand Nazi Stephen Miller, who runs the Final Solution deportation program involving undocumented immigrants, has demanded that 3,000 undocumented people be arrested each day, detained in horrible conditions, and then deported to distant lands they know nothing about, where they might be killed. Under his direction (and that of Director of Homeland Security Krazy Kristy Noem, who loves to wear tight T-shirts and $50,000 Rolexes in male prisons), the pair create terror by repeating the Nazi “Kristallnacht” where minorities and undocumented people live. ICE officers conduct predawn and dark night raids without warrants, imposing months of cruel detention, all without proper food, water, medical care, or access to lawyers, often detaining legal residents because of their color. 

Welcome to Trumpistan.