Tumgik
#congressional baseball game
charonte-simi · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media
X
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
X
Tumblr media
X
1 note · View note
beardedmrbean · 6 months
Text
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was carjacked at gunpoint Monday outside his Washington, DC, apartment building, according to his office. 
The 68-year-old south Texas lawmaker was unharmed during the incident in DC’s trendy Navy Yard neighborhood at approximately 9:32 p.m., according to DC’s Metropolitan Police Department. 
“As Congressman Cuellar was parking his car this evening, three armed assailants approached the congressman and stole his vehicle,” Cuellar’s chief of staff Jacob Hochberg told The Post.
“Luckily, he was not harmed and is working with local law enforcement. Thank you to Metro PD and Capitol Police for their swift action and for recovering the congressman’s vehicle.”
Cuellar was reportedly outside “a dorm building in which dozens” of House members live, according to Axios reporter Andrew Solender, who cited a group chat used by the lawmakers who occupy the building. 
Three men reportedly held guns to Cuellar’s head as they took his phone and vehicle, which was parked on the street, according to the group chat. 
An MPD crime alert on the incident says police are on the lookout for “three black males wearing all black clothing” who made off with the congressman’s white Honda with Texas tags. 
The alert warns the public to “not take action” but instead call 911 if the vehicle or suspects are spotted.
Capitol Police told The Post that the armed carjacking is being investigated by DC police and USCP investigators.  
“Injuries were not reported. Detectives are working to track down the suspects,” a spokesperson for USCP said.
The incident is the latest in a series of violent crimes in the district this year that have affected members of Congress or their staffs. 
In February, Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) was assaulted in the elevator of her northeast DC apartment building by a homeless man with a long rap sheet. She suffered bruises as a result of the attack and got away by tossing her hot morning coffee at the assailant. 
The following month, a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)  was brutally attacked in broad daylight by a knife-wielding assailant in DC, on the same street where Craig was assaulted. 
The staffer, 26-year-old Phillip Todd, suffered serious injuries in the attack, including multiple stab wounds to the head and chest.
In June, a staffer for Rep. Brad Finstad (R-Minn.) was attacked at gunpoint near Nationals Park in Washington, DC, just hours after the conclusion of the annual Congressional Baseball Game. 
That staffer suffered minor injuries in the attack, which occurred in the same neighborhood where Cuellar was carjacked. 
To date, 750 carjackings have been reported in DC this year alone, with 75% involving a firearm. 
That is a 115% increase in the number of carjackings from this time last year, according to DC police crime statistics.
38 notes · View notes
celaenaeiln · 24 days
Note
hi howve you been!
much better, thank you anon! I hope you're doing great as well!! <33
Just for that, do you want to hear a fun story?
In 1955, there was a Great Onion Debacle.
Yes. Onions.
A little backstory - in finance, there are financial contracts called "futures". What futures are is a contract that lets a person buy an item in the future for the price it costs today.
So in 1955, onion futures (contracts) -of all things! Onions are amazing though so I guess I understand - were the most traded commodity on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange which is like a trading company sort of like Wall Street. Two men, Vincent Kosuga and Sam Siegel, realized this and were like "man, we can make a fortune out of this!". So what they did was they bought literally metric tons of onions and onion futures. They bought so much they controlled 98% of all the onions in Chicago. They were now an onion monopoly.
Because they controlled all the onions, they now decide to short sell the onion futures. Short selling is when you sell an item now and then decide to rebuy it in the future when the price drops.
So basically imagine your selling a house. You'll make tons of money but once the economy improves, the the price of the house will drop and you decide to rebuy it and thus make a profit. Because you sold it for more than what you bought it again for.
And that's what the two men did. Because they had control of all the onions and onion-related trading, they controlled the onion market (lol this is literally so funny. "onion market") using supply and demand. In the market, the more you have of something, the less if costs because there isn't a need for that much of the item. Like if you have a super rare pokemon card or baseball card, you're going to sell it for more because there's a less quantity. Whereas if you had a normal card, you would sell it for less because it's in abundance and everyone can get it.
So that's what they did. After collecting all the onions in chicago, they basically dumped all the onions at once back into the market, and because there was so much, the price of the onions shot down. Not only that, once the onions spoiled, they would throw out the old and bring in new ones. From an outside perspective, it looked like there were sooo many onions and onion shares so the price of the shares dropped drastically too, making it really cheap. And when I mean he dumped them, HE LITERALLY DUMPED THEM! He took what onions he had left in storage and trucked them to the Chicago Board of Trade, literally flooded the market and streets with onions. Onions, worthless at that point, were dumped into the Chicago River! 30,000,000 pounds of onions! 14,000,000 kgs!
Kosuga and Siegel made millions. $1 in 1955 is equal to $11.51 dollars in 2024. Kosuga, mainly, made $8.5 million which is equal to $97,835,000!!! THATS ALMOST A BILLION DOLLARS COMING FROM SELLING ONIONS. That's freaking insane 😭😭😭 biggest almost scam of the century and listen to this -
While the guys were raking in the big bucks, the sheer amount of onions being shipped to Chicago caused nation-wide shortages of onions everywhere else!!!
ADS;FKJNDAK FOR REAL ONIONS IN CHICAGO WERE GOING FOR LIKE $0.10 FOR A BAG WHEN THEY USED TO BE $2.75! THATS A 96% DROP IN THE COST OF ONIONS!
The Commodity Exchange Authority caught wind of Siegel and Kosuga’s little game and they immediately initiated an investigation, while congressional held actual hearings on the issue. In the end, congress created an Onion Futures Act which banned the futures trading on onions 😭. The law is still in effect today, making onions the only banned trading commodity in the United States.
And here's the kicker - after creating possibly on the the biggest scams of the century, Kosuga got away with all this scot free. Despite the massive amounts of damage his calculated betting did to literally everyone else but him, he technically didn't break any rules because there were no rules on this for him to break. He even became a businessman and philanthropist and later on he opened up a restaurant called "The Jolly Onion Inn", and became a chef. The restaurant quickly grew until it was one of the most popular restaurants.
I don't know what the moral of this story is but if you're smart you can get away with any thing 😂😅
But the fact that onions caused the biggest scam of the century 😂😂😂 wild.
12 notes · View notes
myrddin-wylt · 10 months
Note
OOO- I have facts about Parliament if you fancy some!!! One rule they uses to have in Parliament is that they used to only let you speak if you wore a hat and they passed it around for some semblance of order.
The speaker used to also be an undesirable job as if the parliament was unproductive and progress was considered unsatisfactory by the king, the sword - which is now ceremonial would subject the speaker to beheading. This means traditionally the speaker gets dragged to the chair by his hair.
There is also a mace - that if removed means parliament can't continue- this has been brandished in the past
Technically you have to reference to people by 'Right Honorable Lady/Gentleman' otherwise is considered unparliamentary language and people have been kicked out for referring to each other as 'cockwombles' 'cockwallet' and 'liar'
There is so much fun madness with the parliament - it almost makes politics bareable
(Apologies for the info dump)
Are there any interesting traditions in the US congress?
Deeply amused that Parliament used to require a hat to speak, but US Congress (and I'm specifically talking about the House) has banned all head coverings, with religious exemptions.
SEE HOW- HOW?? You're telling me that the multiple centuries-old institution - which was literally medieval in the case of England's - has multiple traditions that involve both weapons and physical violence or threats to commit such, and throughout its history has had a few very notable civil wars - and what the internet is telling me is that NOT ONE person had been beaten to death on the floor??? What???????? they had significant problems with dueling but never a fight inside??????????? also, uh, I'm gonna stick this under a readmore because length and idk how long a post can get before tumblr automatically puts it under one.
also no apologies, these are delightful. in contrast, the US congressional traditions are very boring because we can't have nice things. You shall see why shortly, but first, the traditions:
an on-and-off tradition is that every new member of Congress is given a copy of the Jefferson Bible, which is the Bible with all the supernatural elements edited out. so it's literally a deist Bible, which is deeply interesting imo
Senate Bean Soup. Yup. there are two official recipes, and custom says that bean soup is on the menu re: the Senate restaurant every day for dinner and no one is entirely sure why or how this tradition started. just bean Soup.
Candy desk: a senator is picked or volunteers, not sure which, to keep the desk near the back stocked with candy. the choice of candy is up to the Senator.
Apparently the House also has a ceremonial mace tradition, which they took (the tradition, not the mace) from parliament. huh! I didn't know that.
Congress has an annual baseball game out on the mall lawn, with teams split by party. Senators can play but it's mostly Representatives.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of informal traditions in general, presumably because the House has A Thing about writing EVERYTHING down as procedure. incidentally, the people who decide the rules on House procedure and debate are the, uh, Rules Committee, which makes it one of the most powerful committees on the federal level. Remember back in December 2022 when there was a debacle in the House because no one could pick a Speaker? yeah, that means no Rules Committee, and no rules means Democrats bringing popcorn into the chamber and yelling memes during the votes while Republicans nearly decked each other. Only nearly though.
And here's why we can't have nice things!
Okay this isn't technically US Congress, but in 1837, the Speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives actually stabbed another representative to death with a bowie knife on the chamber floor. Over an insult. Because this is Arkansas. He was forced to resign but ended up being acquitted, because this is Arkansas.
Between 1830 and 1860, there were 70 incidents of violence between members of the US House and/or Senate, "mostly related to disputes about slavery."
Most infamous is the caning of Charles Sumner in 1856, where a pro-slavery Senator beat the shit out of abolitionist Senator Sumner with, what else, a cane. I was absolutely CONVINCED Sumner died from this but I'm reading that he eventually recovered???? Huh. anyway the reason no one helped Senator Sumner is because another congressman, Rep. Laurence Keitt, pulled out his gun and refused to let anyone get near, even after his attacker was done. so that's a big asshole move.
But Keitt isn't done yet (hint: he's from South Carolina). in 1858, motherfucker used some fascinating and very unparliamentary (and wildly racist!) language toward another congressmen; the congressman insulted Keitt in return, and Keitt immediately tried to choke the dude out. cue
A large brawl involving approximately 50 representatives erupted on the House floor, ending only when a missed punch from Rep. Cadwallader Washburn of Wisconsin upended the hairpiece of Rep. William Barksdale of Mississippi. The embarrassed Barksdale accidentally replaced the wig backwards, causing both sides to erupt in spontaneous laughter.
This is some serious Looney Tunes shit is what it is.
In April 1860 (ie a month or less before the Civil War breaks out), there was almost another fight, when pro-slavery Democrat congressmen nearly attacked a Republican congressmen for insulting the entire Democratic Party to their faces for being slavers. The reason the fight was avoided was because the Republicans came ready to fucking rumble and immediately squared up into formation to protect their man.
In 1887, we have another major brawl, this time in the Indiana legislator. Notice that I don't specify whether it was the Indiana House or Senate, because
The matter came to a head when Robertson attempted to enter the Senate chamber to be sworn in and take his seat presiding over the session; he was attacked, beaten, and thrown bodily from the chamber by the Democrats, who then locked the chamber door, beginning four hours of intermittent mass brawling that spread throughout the Indiana Statehouse. The fight ended only after Republicans and Democrats began brandishing pistols and threatening to kill each other and the Governor was forced to deploy the Indianapolis Police Department to restore order.
How is this AFTER the Civil War????? A FOUR HOUR BUILDING-WIDE BRAWL???? like ngl at this point I'm impressed. oh, also, that fight is why the US Constitution was amended so that Senators would be elected via direct vote. apparently no one wanted to risk a repeat but in the US capitol.
in 1902 we have another fight because with friends like these, who needs enemies? Naturally, this one was also started by a congressman from South Carolina, who had been accused of... some sort of corruption idk. My favorite part of this is that the rest of the Senate got them to stop fighting and apologize, and then they immediately tried to fight again before getting sent to time-out.
it's 1985 and WOOOO, NOW WE'RE MODERN AND HAVE NO FUCKING EXCUSE, BABY, AMERICANS ARE JUST LIKE THIS. this time the context is that during the Vietnam War, one Representative made a speech that involved calling another Representative a "wimp." clearly fighting words. however, it quickly becomes... pretty gay, honestly?????
Dornan claims Downey grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around, asking if he had actually called him a wimp. Dornan answered "I did and you are." The exchange became heated, and at some point Dornan accused Downey of having cost him the job two years earlier. According to Downey, as he began to walk away, Dornan grabbed him by the tie and collar and threatened him with "bodily harm." Dornan claimed he was just straightening Downey's tie knot, saying later, "I like all the members to look elegant on the floor, you know." Dornan, according to himself and other witnesses, then told Downey to "get out of my face."
gaaaaaaaaaaaay
anyway, Downey goes to tattle to the Speaker of the House, the congressmen then have some what I can only describe as Mean Girls-style drama, and essentially the House Speaker tells them verbatim, "You can settle it on the street, but don't settle it on the House floor." 'MURICA
and from 2007 to 2017, we've got three different fights in various state legislators (four fights if you count a city council meeting), the last one of which was in May 29, 2017, in my home state of Texas. okay yeah now I'm embarrassed.
Anyway presumably the reason Congress is so stuffy, whereas Parliament gets to have a little rambunctiousness, as a treat, is because Congress can, has, and will throw down if left unchecked. the Brits may turn Parliament into a circus but that's honestly better than reenacting the murder of Julius Caesar.
11 notes · View notes
madamspeaker · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi wave after the Charity Congressional Baseball Game at Nationals Park (14th June, 2023)
6 notes · View notes
imawkwardlysoc · 2 years
Text
currently thinking about how if sam won his race for the california 47th, he would’ve been in the annual congressional baseball games
the west wing staff would’ve been cheering for him in the stands 😭
13 notes · View notes
polirambles · 1 year
Text
Do you ever just think about Jon Ossoff at the congressional baseball game?
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Because I sure do
2 notes · View notes
dhaaruni · 2 years
Text
Gonna wear my “But Her Emails” hat to the Congressional Baseball Game tonight so everybody knows who I’m rooting for.
6 notes · View notes
bighermie · 2 years
Link
Democrats keeping it classy.
5 notes · View notes
4 notes · View notes
voskhozhdeniye · 2 years
Text
Hey you guys, the annual congressional baseball game is tonight in DC!
4 notes · View notes
macrofreedom · 2 years
Text
Last week Republicans beat Democrats in the congressional baseball game 10-0 (true story) but last night at 3 a.m. 11 new points were found for the Democrats so they actually won! Just like in 2020.
3 notes · View notes
Text
The problem with orienting your whole movement around something that doesn’t make sense as an organizing tactic is that the tactic doesn’t work if you tell everyone that’s why you’re doing it. So high-level climate wonks and policy writers like me get told the information that “Keystone is really about organizing” to try to discourage us from writing pieces making the point that factually, anti-Keystone politics are not effective climate policy. But the point of that is to mislead people inside and adjacent to the climate movement.
Of course this also becomes a form of anti-organizing.
Unions with concrete jobs at stake end up with their interests sacrificed not on the altar of climate change (a genuinely important issue) but on the altar of climate-adjacent organizing. Elected officials like Manchin who are pressured between local state politics and climate science learn that top environmentalists aren’t trustworthy.
But worse, once the organizing chum works you have a movement that demands ever more chum. In my neighborhood, there is a group of people who like to put organizing posters on the lampposts. For a while when energy negotiations were proceeding at a slow pace in the Senate, the posters all called for Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency. Declaring a climate emergency would not have meaningfully impacted climate change, but it was a thing Biden could do and therefore good organizing chum. The posters didn’t say “just give in to Manchin’s demands and get something done.” They said we needed a climate emergency. Then when talks came down, new signs went up calling for protestors to disrupt the congressional baseball game in order to demand climate legislation. When legislation was active, they didn’t want to talk about legislation — they wanted the emergency as chum. But then when legislation was dead, the baseball protest became new chum.
But then the Inflation Reduction Act happened!
At that point the sign could have said “hey, good for everyone, now we’re going to go home and urge Catherine Cortez-Masto to say and do anything necessary to get re-elected.” But that’s not organizing. You need new chum. So the new chum is that Democrats should stab Manchin in the back and double-cross him on this pipeline. It’s an idea that doesn’t make sense because it’s coming from a corner of the universe that rejects the idea that its object-level campaign goals should make sense.
i don’t understand why you don’t get off the train and start howling about what utter bullshit this is when they’re trying to pressure you into the noble lie, but it should stop somewhere, and here’s better than never
4 notes · View notes
zerodarkflirty · 2 years
Text
You know, fun fact: many people talk about packing the Supreme Court because these are lifetime appointments, but did you know that you can, in fact, *shrink* the Supreme Court and lifetime appointments can, in fact, expire prematurely? It's an odd lifehack, Google "Congressional baseball game" to find out more!
3 notes · View notes
cogitoergofun · 1 day
Text
The 1962 New York Mets, an expansion team, set the gold standard for baseball ineptitude by winning only 40 of 160 games. One player, Marv Throneberry, became a legend by hitting a clean triple yet still being called out because he failed to touch first base on his way to third. Of the team’s 45 players, 19 never played another season in the majors.  
The Republican majority on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability are proving to be the 1962 Mets of congressional investigations, and that may be unfair to the team.
In their first hearing of their impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, which Republicans claimed involved “the biggest corruption scandal” in a century, the majority called constitutional law expert Professor Jonathan Turley. Turley testified that he did “not believe that the current evidence” justified impeachment, which led committee member Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to call him a “crappy witness.”
The Republicans heavily promoted the “very crucial piece” of their case, which was the unverified claim by FBI informant Alexander Smirnov that Joe and Hunter Biden had each taken $5 million in bribes from a Ukrainian company. That did not work out well when the Department of Justice indicted Smirnov for lying to the FBI and alleged that Smirnov had fabricated the bribery claim.
Republicans responded by insisting that their impeachment inquiry was “not reliant” on Smirnov, after all.  Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), a former prosecutor who recently left Congress, criticized his fellow Republicans for “touting how significant this was without knowing the reliability of the testimony.”
At their most recent hearing, Republicans called two of Hunter Biden’s former business associates. One was Trump supporter Tony Bobulinski, who testified that the Chinese Communist Party had infiltrated the Obama White House through then vice-president Joe Biden. But then Bobulinski has a penchant for strange claims, as shown by his transcribed interview before the Oversight Committee.
During the interview, Bobulinski insisted that Wall Street Journal reporters, his former business partners, FBI agents and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchison had all lied about his statements and conduct or about Joe Biden.
Bobulinski claimed that Hutchinson had lied in her book, “Enough,” with her claim that Bobulinski had worn a ski mask at a secret meeting in Georgia with Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows. In response, Hutchinson produced a photograph that her lawyer said showed Bobulinski wearing a ski mask at that meeting.  
The other Republican witness, Jason Galanis, who once owned the nation’s largest payment processor for internet pornography, needed special video arrangements to testify because he is serving a 14-year prison sentence for, among other crimes, defrauding a Native America tribe. One federal judge had characterized him as “charming, manipulative and flat-out lying to people.” The investigating Republicans nonetheless Zoomed him into the hearing for testimony that provided no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.
Fox News host Jessica Tarlov called the inquiry “embarrassing,” saying that she was surprised that Republicans have “this high of a threshold for humiliation.”
0 notes
beardedmrbean · 6 months
Text
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former baseball MVP Steve Garvey joined the race Tuesday to succeed the late California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, giving Republicans a splash of star quality on the ballot in a heavily Democratic state where the GOP hasn’t won a Senate race in 35 years.
Garvey, 74, launched his campaign with a video lush with baseball imagery that recalled his career as a perennial All-Star who played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. It also signaled he would lean toward the political center in a party dominated by former President Donald Trump, the leading GOP presidential candidate who could share the ballot with Garvey next year.
“I never played for Democrats or Republicans or independents. I played for all of you,” Garvey said in the video, in which he also alluded to problems vexing the state from homelessness to crime. “It’s going to be a common sense campaign.”
In an interview, Garvey said he voted for Trump in the past but had not settled on a pick in the unfolding 2024 presidential contest. He did not answer directly when asked if he considered himself part of the Trump wing of the GOP. Trump lost California in landslides in 2016 and 2020, though he had support from millions of Republican and conservative-leaning voters in the state.
“I’m running the Steve Garvey campaign,” he said. “We need to bring people together again.”
Garvey’s entrance into a race gives Republicans a recognized name to many Californians, even though he may be unknown to millions of younger voters. He played his last major league game in 1987 after an 18-year major league career, and he was National League MVP in 1974.
Still, he will face the challenges of any first-time candidate: raising millions of dollars for TV advertising and building an organization to turn out voters in a field of candidates that already includes Democratic U.S. Reps. Katie Porter, Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee. The race could be further complicated if Sen. Laphonza Butler, whom Gov. Gavin Newsom recently appointed to the seat following Feinstein’s death, chooses to run.
He struck a series of familiar Republican positions, including calling for temporarily closing the border with Mexico, at a time when polls indicate widespread frustration with President Joe Biden’s handling of immigration. He was critical of the state’s push to ban the sale of most new gas-powered cars by 2035, saying “that’s not realistic.”
On abortion, an issue Democrats hope will galvanize the party’s base after the Supreme Court last year overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, Garvey said he does not support a nationwide abortion ban.
“The people of California have spoken … on abortion, and as their representative, I pledge to always uphold the voice of the people,” he said. When asked if he supported abortion rights, he added, “The people have spoken, and I will pledge to uphold that.”
As a Republican, he inevitably starts as a longshot. Democrats hold every statewide office and dominate the legislative and congressional delegations. Republicans — who are outnumbered about 2-to-1 by Democratic voters in the state — haven’t won a statewide race for any office since 2006.
California runs a primary that sends the two candidates with the most votes to the general election, regardless of political party. In California’s last two Senate races, GOP candidates performed so poorly that only Democrats appeared on the November ballot. The last Republican to win a Senate race in the state was in 1988.
However, given the large number of candidates who will divide the vote in the March 5 primary, it’s possible Garvey could slip into the November general election. He’d need to consolidate Republican and conservative voters behind his candidacy, and he has competition from attorney Eric Early, who previously has run unsuccessfully for state attorney general and Congress.
Garvey confirmed in June that he was considering entering the Senate race, and his candidacy was widely expected.
Garvey has flirted with the possibility of entering politics before, including after his retirement from baseball, when he teased a possible U.S. Senate run but never became a candidate.
In the interview, he said he was motivated to run this time by the “quality of life stress” that has spread throughout the state, and added his campaign would be anchored to reducing crime, improving education and working to lasso inflation and trim soaring gas prices.
He faulted long-running school closings during the pandemic for falling student test scores.
For young children, the extended school shutdowns “not only obstructed their pathways to learning, but to social interaction,” he said. “We’re behind in both of those areas.”
When Garvey confirmed in June he was considering the race, Early issued a statement saying the former baseball star “has more personal baggage than Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner,” an apparent reference to 1980s sex scandals that sullied Garvey’s reputation as “Mr. Clean,” a moniker that referred to his buttoned-down image from his Dodger days. At the time he admitted to having two children with women he wasn’t married to.
Asked about that period, Garvey said, “I think our life is a journey. I think there are chapters. Sure, I’ve gone through a difficult time here and there. I’ve learned from it. And I think I’ve been stronger.”
1 note · View note