Dear Jolter,
First, let’s get the day hopping, the blood flowing. I recommend cranking up the volume and listening to Tommy Dorsey’s “Opus One.”
Second, sorry to burst your bubble, but you ain’t gonna find anything in this WJ edition about Roseanne or Dinesh or Kim.
Third, there is no third. Let’s get on with the editorials, but before we do that . . .
Consider . . .
National Review Plus. Yeah, it’s big. And if it had a sonic it would be a super one (but more on that below).
Editorials
1. We slam the steel tariffs. From the editorial:
Economically, we will pay for these tariffs twice over. Companies that rely on steel and aluminum will pay higher prices — and those companies are responsible for far more employment than the steel and aluminum industries themselves. For that reason, President George W. Bush’s steel tariffs were estimated to cost more jobs than they protected, as were President Barack Obama’s tire tariffs. There is no reason to expect happier results this time. And other countries are also imposing retaliatory tariffs on us.
Podcastapalooza
1. On the brand-spanking-new edition of The Editors, Rich, Reihan, MBD, and Charlie discuss the fracas over the border, Ireland’s decision to repeal Amendment Eight, and the cancellation of Roseanne. Tune in here.
2. John J. Miller gets his Bookmonger juices flowing and interviews Michael Walsh about his new tome, The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West. You’ve just got to listen, which you can do here.
3. It’s titled “Bibs, Tuckers, and Songs,” and to figure out just why it’s earned that moniker, you’ve just got to hear the new episode of Jaywalking. This week, Mr. Nordlinger talks about the opioid crisis, Seattle, the flag, the Gap, and more. And he does it with a little help from his friends — among them Elton John and Kander & Ebb. Warm up the earphones and listen here.
4. On The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, our intrepid host takes a break from book-selling Suicide of the West: How the Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy to memorialize his late, larger-than-life father-in-law, address the books’ critics, and engage in rank punditry on Mueller, China, and North Korea. Lend an ear here.
5. On the Great Books podcast, JJM and Hillsdale prof Paul Rahe discuss historically naughty The Arabian Nights (here’s the link for Volume 1, and here’s Volume 2). If you listen, I won’t tell your mother. Do the former here.
6. Thomas Sowell is the guest on The Jamie Weinstein Show, where the duo discuss his new book — Discrimination and Disparities — and much more. Catch the convo here.
7. On the new episode of Ordered Liberty, David and Alexandra catch up with Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma and discuss his transition from pastor to politician, his efforts at racial reconciliation, political polarization on Capitol Hill, and whether there’s hope for fiscal responsibility in Washington. Friends, Oklahomans, countrymen, lend an ear here.
8. Ricochet editor in chief Jon Gabriel visits the Political Beats asylum to discuss New Order with the Double B Boys (Scot Bertram and Jeff Blehar). Play that funky podcast: Listen here.
9. Colin Sharkey, executive vice president of the Association of American Educators, joins Reality Check with Jeanne Allen to discuss the challenges facing today’s teachers, especially with the looming SCOTUS decision on Janus. Sit up straight and listen here.
10. On the new “Grapes of Wrath” episode of Radio Free California, David and Will discuss the city of Stockton’s proposal to pay potential shooters not to shoot people; Steve King’s bill that would put people like Oakland’s mayor in prison; and a California court’s ordering the state to count ballots that have been locked in a Sacramento safe for five years. And this: Art Laffer’s prediction that the Trump tax plan will send Californians packing for low-tax states. Catch all the wisdom here.
Eleven Juicy NR Pieces of Colossal Importance
1. The title of Andy McCarthy’s piece — a smackdown of a lot of people, in particular Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio — says it all: “Yes, the FBI Was Investigating the Trump Campaign When It Spied.” Here’s a slab:
First, to repeat, the question raised by the FBI’s use of an informant is whether the bureau was investigating the Trump campaign. We’ll come momentarily to the closely connected question of whether Trump can be airbrushed out of his own campaign — I suspect the impossibility of this feat is why Gowdy is resistant to discussing the Trump campaign at all.
It is a diversion for Gowdy to prattle on about how Trump himself was not a “target” of the Russia investigation. As we’ve repeatedly observed (and as Gowdy acknowledged in the interview), the Trump-Russia probe is a counterintelligence investigation. An accomplished prosecutor, Gowdy well knows that “target” is a term of art in criminal investigations, denoting a suspect who is likely to be indicted. The term is inapposite to counterintelligence investigations, which are not about building criminal cases but about divining and thwarting the provocative schemes of hostile foreign powers. In that sense, and in no other, the foreign power at issue — here, Russia — is always the “target” of a counterintelligence probe; but it is never a “target” in the technical criminal-investigation sense in which Gowdy used the term . . . unless you think we are going to indict a country.
2. More Must-Read McCarthy: Andy’s latest piece was preceded by this beaut, in which he takes on the Obama Administration’s “hypocritical pretext” for spying on the Trump campaign. Here’s how this analysis winds up:
That could not have been known in the spring of 2016, when it appears that suspicions about Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and Paul Manafort prompted Obama national-security officials to begin investigating Obama’s (and Clinton’s) political opposition. The Obama administration could have been more measured. If its concerns were based in good faith rather than political opportunism, it could have dispatched the FBI to interview Page (whom agents had interviewed several times since 2013, and apparently did interview in March 2016), and Manafort (who, along with his partner, Richard Gates, was speaking with the Justice Department in 2016 about their work for the Kremlin’s favored Ukrainian political party). It could have given responsible Trump campaign officials a defensive briefing to alert them about its concerns.
Instead, the Obama administration decided to use its counterintelligence powers to spy on the Trump campaign, using at least one covert informant, electronic monitoring of communications, and other intelligence-gathering tactics. It ignored the norm against deploying such tactics against political opponents, not based on evidence of a Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy, but on speculation about the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts and Russia sympathies. Speculation by a government, an administration, and a Democratic-party nominee with their own abysmal histories of Russia contacts and Russia sympathies.
3. Even More Andy: And that piece was preceded by another gem, “Spy Name Games,” which takes to task the politicization of America’s security, intelligence, and law-enforcement arms by the Obama administration. A chunk of its wisdom:
In the Trump–Russia affair, officials of the Obama-era intelligence agencies suggest that there are grounds to believe that the Trump campaign was in a traitorous conspiracy with the Kremlin. What grounds? They’d rather not say. You’ll just have to trust them as well-meaning, non-partisan pros who (all together now) can’t be expected to divulge methods and sources.
Countering that are not only Trump fans but growing ranks of security-state skeptics. The Obama administration blatantly politicized the government’s intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus. Their Chicken Little shrieks that public disclosure of FISA warrants and texts between FBI agents would imperil security have proven overblown at best (and, in some instances, to be cynical attempts to hide embarrassing facts). “Trust us” is not cutting it anymore.
In the end, it is not about who the spies are. It is about why they were spying. In our democratic republic, there is an important norm against an incumbent administration’s use of government’s enormous intelligence-gathering capabilities to — if we may borrow a phrase — interfere in an election. To justify disregarding that norm would require strong evidence of egregious wrongdoing. Enough bobbing and weaving, and enough dueling tweets. Let’s see the evidence.
4. Victor Davis Hanson says the post-WWII “World Order” is kaput. His piece is a must-read, and here’s a taste:
Empirically speaking, neo-Ottoman Turkey is a NATO ally in name only. By any standard of behavior — Ankara just withdrew its ambassador from the U.S. — Turkey is a de facto enemy of the United States. It supports radical Islamic movements, is increasingly hostile to U.S. allies such as Greece, the Kurds, and Israel, and opposes almost every foreign-policy initiative that Washington has adopted over the last decade. At some point, some child is going to scream that the emperor has no clothes: Just because Turkey says it is a NATO ally does not mean that it is, much less that it will be one in the future.
Instead, Turkey is analogous to Pakistan, a country whose occasional usefulness to the U.S. does not suggest that it is either an ally or even usually friendly.
5. The World Cup looms. Jim Geraghty, tongue firmly implanted in cheek, sees the forthcoming Russia-based tournament as an opportunity to consider the . . . 2022 World Corruption Games. Take it away, sports anchors.
6. Jonah Goldberg remembers his late father-in-law and reflects on immigration and the compelling, American, story of this heroic immigrant.
7. Son of Concorde: Could supersonic jet travel between NYC and London revive the “special relationship” between the UK and the USA? Samuel Hammond thinks so. Hold on to your Jetsons:
The return of commercial supersonic flight could be one gravity-defying possibility, helping bridge the Atlantic through speedy business travel. The Concorde, which retired in 2003 after 27 years of service, was beset by poor fuel economy and exorbitant ticket prices, earning its reputation as an engineering wonder but a massive commercial failure. This was hardly a surprise given its origins in a quite literal case of “design by committee.” Today, in contrast, a confluence of technological breakthroughs, from carbon-fiber airframes to better jet engines, mean the next generation of supersonic passenger jets are well under a decade away and driven by a bevy of private-sector players with every intention of making supersonic flight practical — and profitable.
8. Conrad Black knows from whence he speaks, and writes. In his new column, he praises the long-overdue movement on criminal-justice reform. From his piece:
The assault on the Trump presidency and his counterattack on his tormentors will run their course. But the best possible result that could come from this affair, apart from the end of the routine criminalization of policy differences between partisan political opponents, would be a massive overhaul of the medieval torture chamber of the American criminal-justice system. The plea bargain must cease to be a process of extorting and suborning perjured inculpatory testimony under threat of prosecution and inducement by immunity for the catechized perjury. Notions of civilized penal reform must return, such as assisting convicted people to learn how to earn honest incomes on release, and encouraging wholesome relationships with families and friends during incarceration. The entire spirit of the system must change, from unlimited punitive severity in pursuit of political kudos, to policies that encourage law-abiding conduct as efficiently as possible, facilitate rehabilitation where it is reasonable to aspire to it, while protecting the public from wrongdoers with any tendency to violence.
9. Open office spaces are . . . sexist. Discriminatory! Kat Timpf, on Lunacy Patrol, has the story.
10. Will Trump’s steel tariffs hurt? Yep, says Benjamin Zycher, and in plenty of areas, including national security. From his piece:
Consider energy, for example, a sector of the economy that involves not only producing energy products, but also transporting crude oil to refineries, refined products to users, natural gas to power plants, and on and on. Those industrial activities are clearly important to our national security, and higher costs could result in a reduced ability to “meet [petroleum] demands for national defense and critical industries in a national emergency.”
The cost of steel represents roughly 10 to 20 percent of the overall cost of constructing and operating an oil field. Pipelines often are made of specialty steels not currently produced in the U.S., and replacing that foreign output domestically will raise prices. The cost of pipeline construction is roughly $5 million per mile, depending on local conditions, of which materials are 15–20 percent. The proposed steel tariffs would increase overall construction costs by 3–5 percent; for an average 280-mile project, that cost increase would be about $75 million. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) estimates that the tariffs would increase the cost of the proposed Alaska natural-gas pipeline by $500 million.
11. Last but never least, Boss Lowry pens a new column on border hysteria and the el blarnio of the “1,475 lost children” story being propagated by the MSM. From Rich’s piece:
Trump is right to want to get a handle on the border. According to the Justice Department, over the past two and half years, more than a quarter million migrants who came here as unaccompanied children or part of a family group have been released into the country.
As long as migrants know they can get in, they will keep coming — and bringing their children on a harrowing journey. Minors have become chits. Azcentral.com reports that it is “common to have parents entrust their children to a smuggler as a favor or for profit.”
But separating parents and children at the border is a significant downside of the Trump policy. Congress can help by fixing the consent decree that makes it impossible to detain kids, even if they are with their parents, and by spending more on detention space. There’s no reason we can’t handle these cases quickly and humanely, except for our insanely self-sabotaging immigration system.
BONUS: Thanks to the efforts of intrepid NR reporters Jack Crowe and Mairead McArdle, the original sources of the “lost kids” cock-and-bull — USA Today and azcentral.com — have been (embarrassed into?) correcting their stories. Rich high-fives NR’s dynamic duo in this Corner post.
The Six (and Then Some)
1. In City Journal, Lance Morrow reflects on an old Georgetown neighbor, Bobby Kennedy, on the 50th anniversary of his assassination. From his piece:
Of course, the entire Kennedy family phenomenon is impressive as a prototype of publicity leading on to myth. The Euhemerus process in modern times is much accelerated and intensified by globalized electronic information and social networks. As time passes, the business of fame—carried on in the complicated, unstable metaphysics of the global imagination—becomes increasingly savage and strange. It’s not impossible to become a god these days, but it’s nearly impossible to remain one. The Euhemerus effect now runs powerfully in the negative direction, down from Olympus: incipient gods are disgraced and discarded overnight. The web is Moloch.
But the Kennedys, despite scandals, have survived, as if they had been grandfathered into the myth-systems. The grandfather was Henry Luce. Just before World War II, Life began glorifying the photogenic family. Ambassador Joe Kennedy went to London, and Rose and the children came after him, stepping off the boat as bright as newly minted dimes. Less than a century after the potato famine, America’s immigrant Irish returned across the water, transformed by America, civilized by Harvard, their money and their white teeth gleaming. The Kennedys have lived ever since in a Euhemeristic borderland in the American imagination.
2. Also from City Journal, Walter Olsen says the “Republicans’ Millennial Problem Isn’t What You Think.”
3. Sometimes it’s good to have a little bit of the obvious: New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin says Hillary as POTUS would have made things much worse for America. From his piece:
Of all the possible scenarios, there is one about which we can be certain: A Clinton victory would have kept the public from learning about the Obama administration’s extensive abuse of its powers to help her.
Her victory would mean Stefan Halper, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos would remain anonymous private citizens, and key players involved in the scheme would still have their reputations intact.
Loretta Lynch, for helping to minimize the various probes, might be Clinton’s attorney general. John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice and Samantha Power might have important government jobs instead of having to fight to keep their dirty tricks buried.
4. O(y) Canada: Campus anti-Semitism is alive and well north of the border. Philip Carl Salzman reports for Gatestone Institute. From his piece:
Canadian campuses are home to the organizations Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association which actively campaign against Israel in such events as “Israel Apartheid Week,” and which sponsor boycotts of Israel and a wide array of anti-Israel speakers. Although these anti-Israel advocates, many of them Middle Eastern and Muslim in origin, claim not to be antisemitic even while denying Jews a 3,000 year history in their historical homeland, their animosity toward Jews repeatedly breaks out. For example, a Facebook post celebrating an anti-Israel event at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology asserted that “Jews are rodents.” Other media posts advised Jewish students to “Go back to Palestine.” At Toronto’s Ryerson University, Holocaust education was opposed with a staged walkout.
At McMaster University, numerous incidents have been documented of students writing antisemitic social media posts. Nadera Masad, a member of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, tweeted “hitler should have took you all.”
5. From mid-April, but timeless: Paul Kengor writing in The American Spectator about Ted Kennedy’s 1983 Kremlin outreach to sabotage Ronald Reagan, and his 1980 outreach to Commies to undermine his Democrat presidential primary foe, Jimmy Carter. From the piece:
Again going to Soviet archives, here’s what we now know Kennedy relayed to the Kremlin — this time regarding Jimmy Carter, a Democratic president:
According to the Mitrokhin Archive, Kennedy, in March 1980, had sent his liaison to Moscow. That liaison, once again John Tunney, likewise informed the Soviets that Kennedy was troubled by rising Cold War tensions, which Kennedy blamed not on the Kremlin but on the Carter administration. Yes, Kennedy blamed Carter for being provocative — the alleged saber-rattling of Jimmy Carter! An amazing charge.
What exactly did Kennedy say?
In Mitrokhin’s description, the Massachusetts senator maintained that the Carter administration was trying to “distort the peace-loving ideas behind Brezhnev’s proposals.” There was an “atmosphere of tension and hostility” that was being “fueled by Carter.” Yes, note the charge: fueled by Carter! The Carter White House was “feeding public opinion with nonsense about ‘the Soviet military threat’ and Soviet ambitions for military expansion.”
6. At The Imaginative Conservative, Bradley Birzer pens an essay on “The Andrew Jackson & John C. Calhoun Divide.” Yeah, it is quite interesting. From the piece:
Calming down, he wrote a note to Calhoun, hoping to get the South Carolinian to explain or clarify. “That frankness which I trust has always characterized me thro’ life, toward those with whom I have been in habits of friendship induces me to lay before you the enclosed copy” of the evidence that he had undermined Jackson in 1818, contrary to his professions to Jackson in private correspondence. “My object in making this communication is to announce to you the great surprise which is felt, and to learn of you whether it be possible that the information given is correct.” If Jackson coolly offered Calhoun an out, the South Carolinian refused to take it. In his response of May 29, 1830, he made no apologies but rather expressed contempt that Jackson only now learned of Calhoun’s views from 1818. Then, in typical Calhoun fashion, resembling some Dantean figure in the Inferno, he justified his actions at great length and with the vomiting of much ink and paper. Jackson responded with a swift cut. Calhoun clearly misunderstood the purpose of his letter, Jackson wrote. It was merely to state “et tu Brute.”
BONUS: Despite the government’s and court’s gag order on news about the arrest of the uber-controversial Islamofascist Tommy Robinson, who was creating a public fuss about the trial of Muslim “grooming” gangs (i.e., rapists of young British girls) that operated with impunity for years in Not-So-Jolly-Old-England, news is spreading, nationally and globally. Occasional NR contributor Bruce Bawer reports on the insanity for Gatestone — here’s his most recent update.
BONUS TWO: My pal Julie Kelly writes to her #Resistance ex-friends. A juicy slice:
Some of your behavior has been kinda cute. It was endearing to watch you become experts on the Logan Act, the Hatch Act, the Second Amendment, the 25th Amendment, and the Emoluments Clause. You developed a new crush on Mitt Romney after calling him a “sexist” for having “binders full of women.” You longed for a redux of the presidency of George W. Bush, a man you once wanted imprisoned for war crimes. Ditto for John McCain. You embraced people like Bill Kristol and David Frum without knowing anything about their histories of shotgunning the Iraq War.
Classified emails shared by Hillary Clinton? Who cares! Devin Nunes wanting to declassify crucial information of the public interest? Traitor!
But your newfound admiration and fealty to law enforcement really has been a fascinating transformation. Wasn’t it just last fall that I saw you loudly supporting professional athletes who were protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem? Remember how you fanboyed a mediocre quarterback for wearing socks that depicted cops as pigs?
BONUS THREE: In the Winter 2018 edition of the Claremont Review of Books, Matt Continetti pens a brilliant, take-no-prisoners review — “Senators and Their Pages” — of tomes by solons Mike Lee, Elizabeth Warren, Ben Sasse, Al Franken, and Jeff Flake. None emerge unscathed. Matt’s essay/review is long and fun and so well-written you do indeed wish it would not end.
More on Tommy Robinson
Maybe this should have been included in the NR links above, but as WJ is pieced together, your Friendly Writer notices up on the home page Douglas Murray’s long and detailed piece on the “grooming gang” madness that has led to unspeakable horrors in England, including the arrest and prosecution of Mr. Robinson. Here’s a healthy slab from Douglas’ piece:
The problem — as I said in 2015 — is that any challenge Robinson presents is all a secondary issue. The primary issue is that for years the British state allowed gangs of men to rape thousands of young girls across Britain. For years the police, politicians, Crown Prosecution Service, and every other arm of the state ostensibly dedicated to protecting these girls failed them. As a number of government inquires have concluded, they turned their face away from these girls because they were terrified of the accusations of racism that would come their way if they did address them. They decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation.
By contrast, Tommy Robinson thought it was worth the aggravation, even if that meant having his whole life turned upside down. Some years ago, after crawling over all of his personal affairs and the affairs of all his immediate family, the police found an irregularity on a mortgage application, prosecuted Robinson, convicted him, and sent him to prison on that charge. In prison he was assaulted and almost killed by Muslim inmates.
What can be said with absolute certainty is that Tommy Robinson has been treated with greater suspicion and a greater presumption of guilt by the United Kingdom than any Islamic extremist or mass rapist ever has been. That should be — yet is not — a national scandal. If even one mullah or sheikh had been treated with the presumption of guilt that Robinson has received, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the rest of them would be all over the U.K. authorities. But different standards apply to Robinson.
Thank You Rush
For slamming Her Crudeness, Samantha Bee. And boy oh boy, a la Andy, does he ever lay into Trey Gowdy.
Eye Candy
1. At the annual conference of Grove City College’s Center for Vision & Values, the great George Nash lectured on “The Aftermath of World War I.” Watch it here.
2. Geert Wilders says “the light of freedom is going out” in Not-So-Jolly-Old-England — Geert is sticking it to the UK for suppressing critics of Islam and standing in solidarity with Tommy Robinson. Here’s the video.
3. The go-to-college racket is the subject of John Stossel’s new video, in which he interviews economist and author Bryan Caplan about it being a “waste of time and money.” Watch it here.
4. Did I miss this? I think so: Peter Robinson interviews Thomas Sowell in a recent Uncommon Knowledge about his new book, Discrimination and Disparities. Make sure you give it a look, done here.
Didn’t I Meet You . . .
. . . on a summer cruise? If not, let’s meet on a winter one. Join us on NR’s 2018 Buckley Legacy Conservative Cruise, all the information about which you can find at www.nrcruise.com.
This One’s for You Walsh
As mentioned above on The Bookmonger podcast item, this week marks the launch of our old pal Michael Walsh’s new book, The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West. You want some endorsements of his latest tome? I’ll show you some endorsements!
Mollie Hemingway: “For decades now, the cultural Left has been waging a war for our souls and freedoms, and their success depends on our increasing inability to comprehend and appreciate the rich spiritual and intellectual heritage of Western civilization. In The Fiery Angel, Michael Walsh’s dazzling intellect is on full display and readers will walk away not just with a tremendous appreciation of the Judeo-Christian beliefs and heroic narratives that have preserved and protected us for thousands of years, but he also gives them the tools to go out and defend these ideals from the cultural onslaught.”
Angelo M. Codevilla: “This unique book teaches Western civilization and its agonists by acquainting the reader with the fundamentals of western art –music, literature, and painting. Walsh reminds us that the arts are the basic means by which any and all peoples interpret the experiences of life. The arts are civilization’s substance. Empires are epiphenomena. Shakespeare counts for more than Elizabeth I and Solzhenitsyn more than Brezhnev. Politicizing the arts destroys civilization, understanding them preserves it. Read this book. You will learn from it.”
John Lenczowski: “In his magisterial defense of Western Civilization, Michael Walsh shows how the cultural Marxist Left’s war against human nature, virtue, norms, and a nation’s culture is actually a war against God’s creation. It will ultimately be trumped by honest history and art that faithfully reflects the human condition — our perennial struggle between the better and worse angels of our nature. Ultimately, when we seek beauty and reject Promethean ugliness, we will come closer to basing our society on goodness and truth — and our civilization may even survive.”
Now go buy that book!
Baseballery
One can daydream: Back in his Red Sox days, did Babe Ruth pitch against Walter Johnson? Well, it turns out it happened a few times. In fact, in their first six head-to-head matchups through 1916, Ruth dominated, winning five of the six contests (two were 1-0 shutouts, two others were one-run games). But let’s look a little closer at the last three matchups, before Ruth became a full-time outfielder.
On May 7, 1917, the future Hall of Famers faced off in a classic pitchers’ duel at Griffith Stadium (attendance a paltry 962!). Ruth gave up two measly hits, Johnson four, but in the top of the eighth Inning, the Sultan of Swat drove in the game’s sole run with a sacrifice fly. Here’s the box score.
Payback: The last game of that season, on October 3 at Fenway Park, Johnson faced Ruth again. Both hurled complete games, but this time Ruth gave up six runs as Johnson shut out the Red Sox 6 – 0. At the plate, the Big Train tagged Ruth for a bases-clearing double (driving in three runs) to provide the margin of victory. Ye Olde Box Score is here.
Their final face-off came on May 9, 1918, at Griffith Stadium. Ruth started, pitched the complete game, and took the loss. Doc Ayers started for the Senators and went nine innings, giving up the tying run in the eighth and the go-ahead in the ninth. He was due to bat in the bottom of the frame, but manager Clark Griffith had Johnson (a career .235 hitter, not bad for a pitcher) pinch hit, and the Big Train delivered with a sacrifice fly that tied the game. Johnson held the Sox scoreless in the tenth (Ruth was caught stealing to kill a rally) and then in the bottom of the inning, Eddie Foster hit another sacrifice fly to bring home the Senators’ winning run, and Johnson added another W to his record. Here’s the box score. And get this: Ruth, batting cleanup, went five for five, with three doubles and one triple.
A Dios
Earlier this week NR wrapped up its webathon. We had a goal of $210,000. Thanks to a final-weekend surge, and I do indeed mean surge, we reached and passed that goal. To the thousands of you who gave, we thank you, truly and deeply. We love you for your selflessness and willingness to be our comrade, to stand aside us on the ramparts, to join us in the foxhole, to feed us the ammo belt. Pardon the martial talk but not the sense that this is a fight — and that it is our fight. Whether you gave or not (if the latter, and you’re feeling guilty, you can always donate to NR here), we hope you and yours will have a blessed and fruitful week, one in which you realize the Creator’s many graces and blessings, one in which you engage in the corporal works of mercy, and one in which your prayers find an answer.
God bless,
Jack Fowler
P.S.: jfowler@nationalreview.com is the least cool email address on the interwebs, but you can find me there if you need to complain about something or want me to take out the garbage or if you’re a Nigerian lawyer hoping for a chunk of my lottery haul.
P.P.S.: June is National Flag Month. Flag Day is the 14th. Get in the mood with the U.S. Marine Band playing John Philip Sousa’s classic, The Stars and Stripes Forever.