​Longtime baseball card company Topps just released a special run of a card with Dr. Anthony Fauci throwing out the Opening Day first pitch. The pitch itself might not have been what he wanted -- but the card had the Biggest Run in Topps 82-year History!  51,512 cards.

No word on a Trump card.

No, I didn't watch much -- almost none -- of William Barr's testimony yesterday.  But I admire though who did and reported on it.  I have my limits and spending hours watching the Attorney General of the United States lie to the House of Representatives for a few hours does not make it over my otherwise very low standards.

I did put the coverage on for a while, but kept the sound off.  When it looked like there was good questioning, I did turn up the volume, but it was rare.  Mainly, I knew that there would be analysis throughout the breaks and later in the day, with clips illustrating events.  But seriously, why would I put myself through watching the top law official in the country say to the nation's representatives things like, no, he never reads any of Trump's tweets?  His "answer" implies that he also doesn't watch or read the news, since those are plastered with Trump's tweets every day.-- not just quoting them, but generally showing graphics of them.  This is something I wish one of the people questioning him would have brought up.  Similarly, I would have liked someone to bring up that, while AG Barr said to Rep. Eric Swalwell with a straight, albeit dour face, that he's never seen a particular, notable tweet by Trump about Roger Stone, whose prison sentence he just commuted -- I would have liked Rep. Swalwell (who otherwise did a terrific job questioning) or someone to point out to Barr that the Trump/Stone tweet was so noteworthy that...it was included in the Mueller Report that Barr did, allegedly read!

The general reaction seems to be that Democrats didn't do an especially good job questioning Barr in the morning session.  In fact, someone tweeted that they thought the questioning was so bad they believed Trump's approval numbers would go up -- and this received several hundred likes and retweets.

Let me state that there is is no way on earth that Trump's approval will go up because of poor Democratic questioning.  Trump's approval has plummeted because of mismanaging the pandemic, 152,306 deaths, recommending taking bleach, 54 million new Americans on unemployment, mishandling the racial divide and Black Lives Matter, using paramilitary forces in U.S. cities on American citizens and 80% of the public saying that they think the country is going in the wrong direction -- and more.  They are not going to say, "Gee, y'know, I think that Democrats did a lousy job questioning William Barr, so I'm okay with Trump now."  And that's even if all that many people even watched.

I mean, seriously, folks, get a grip.

Happily, from what little I saw live and from analysis later, it seems like Democrats did a much more solid, aggressive and pointed job questioning AG Barr.  So, that ought to counteract all those people on the verge of switching the support to Trump...

By the way, one of the lines of questioning was the added paramilitary focus that AG Barr has given to Black Lives Matter protesters compared to other protests, like those anti-shelter protests wanting to open business in Michigan that called for the death and beheading of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.  The Attorney General tried to claim that he was totally unaware of this.  When the congressman questioning him was stunned and couldn't believe this, Barr tried to explain it away by saying "There were a lot of protests."  Yeah, right -- but then, a) there are a whole lot of Black Lives Matter protests, and b) none of the other "open up business" protests involved calling for the death of a governor.

All of which calls to mind Trump's ranting about needing these paramilitary forces attacking Americans in order to defend federal property.  Like this tweet this week --

We end with this reminder as a public service, something which has pretty much slipped under the wire in all of Trump's cries like this above, to protect federal property and federal statues.

For the record:  This is the same man who pardoned the Hammonds who were convicted of arson on federal property.

Back in June, I wrote here about watching Old TV Westerns and seeing all the now-major actors, directors and writers.  Well, today we return to our spurs head back out to another tale from the “Old TV Western” front.
 
On the show Wanted: Dead or Alive, I checked a day ahead and they had an episode scheduled for Monday morning that looked like it might be fun, so I set the DVR.  It was about a reporter from the East who wanted to follow around Josh Randall (played by Steve McQueen) to be the subject of a story he was writing on bounty hunters, and the episode was titled, “The Twain Shall Meet.”  So, of course I figured it was about Mark Twain.  But unfortunately it wasn’t – odd title then, and I thought a missed opportunity.  (Earlier this year, Have Gun, Will Travel had an episode I watched where Paladin helps Phileas Fogg on his race to get back to England.  The end credits even gave credit to the Jules Verne novel.)
 
So, not being as interested, I watched most of the show, but fast-forwarded through a lot of it.  At one point, there was a scene in a bar that caught my interest, so I stopped to watch.  The reporter is talking to a young saloon girl who’s spinning a tall tale about herself for his article.  It ends up having an impact on the plot, but mainly her voice seemed sort of familiar, and then they cut to a close-up of her.  I kept peering close and then it hit me – it was a young Mary Tyler Moore.  (I later checked, she was 23-year-olds, a year before “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”)
 
And then all the better, when the end credits came around, it turned out that the episode was directed by Richard Donner.  For those not up on your film history, Donner directed such works as all four Lethal Weapon movies, the Bill Murray comedy Scrooged, Conspiracy Theory, Superman, The Goonies, and appropriately for today's whimsy, the feature-film version of Maverick, among many others.
 
Great fun.
 
And all the more fun, here is a clip of the 3-minute scene with Mary Tyler Moore.  The image runs a touch slow for some odd reason, but is totally watchable.

In its article on an anti-Semitic ad from the Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) campaign, the article in The Raw Story twice references an apology. What I'd love is for Raw Story to point to where in the world the Perdue campaign "apologizes."

All the Perdue campaign says is it was a mistake and not intentional, The word or concept of "Sorry" doesn't exist.

Following on the footsteps of Congressman Ted Yoho (R-FL), I believe that this is a new phenomenon that my partner at the Apology Institute of America Nell Minow and I may have to hold a seminar on -- the press stating that someone has apologized who hasn't. Hey, at least Mr. Yoho *used* the word apology, even if inaccurately.

In fact, though the headline says that Perdue himself "apologized," not only was there no apology, as noted -- but the statement was released by a spokesperson who didn't even quote the senator, but just made a general comment about Perdue's record.

If you can find the "apology" in this, you will get credit towards entry into your fellowship program. Here's the statement --

“In the graphic design process handled by an outside vendor, the photo was resized and a filter was applied, which appears to have caused an unintentional error that distorted the image. Obviously, this was accidental, but to ensure there is absolutely no confusion, we have immediately removed the image from Facebook. Anybody who implies that this was anything other than an inadvertent error is intentionally misrepresenting Senator Perdue’s strong and consistent record of standing firmly against anti-Semitism and all forms of hate.”

Further, we look forward to a release of David Perdue's many strong condemnations of anti-Semitism...

Ron Klain was the Chief of Staff for Vice President Joe Biden.  He also headed up the Ebola Response Team for President Barack Obama -- an effort that resulted in zero Americans getting infected and dying from the deadly virus.

He has a six-minute video here that is quite wonderful.  He briefly lays out the history of "how we got here" with COVID-19 in the United States, then explains what Joe Biden would have done to handle the coronavirus if he'd been president (illustrated throughout with statements that Biden did actually make at the time) and then describes what a President Biden would do if he takes office on January 20, 2021.

The video is excellent and zips by.  My only quibble is that it was clearly made a week ago because he references there being 140,000 deaths from COVID-19, when in fact the number now is 150,393.