On the other hand. Trump & Mamdani. AFT vs ICE. Haitians deported.

On the other hand. Trump & Mamdani. AFT vs ICE. Haitians deported.

Ode to the one hand backhand

In his guest post Wade lamented that status of college football and said that he might watch the US Open instead. Well, the Open is now happening with the New York Times observing that the one handed backhand is now virtually obsolete. “The one-hander was once common. Now, though, it’s going extinct. The Open features only two men and two women in the top 50 who still use it. So far, this is the first year since 1877 in which no one-handers have made it to the semifinals of a Grand Slam. “Players are getting stronger and whacking the hell out of the ball,” said Ava Wallace, who covers tennis for The Athletic. “You need two hands!””

Because of two arthritic knees and total shoulder replacement I retired my tennis racket 15 years ago. But being ahead of my time – I guess – when I played I featured a two-handed backhand. I do know the game is now a power game that features shorter rallies. I ask myself: is the game better and is it more fun to watch? The Times writer waxed rhapsodic about Roger Federer’s game saying it was gorgeous to watch, especially as he danced across the base line to prepare the shot. Federer retired in 2022. I wonder if today’s game is as “gorgeous to watch”?

Trump and Mamdani are buds

Mamdani and Trump are soul brothers? Both love having the government in control. Trump did say when they met in the White House that Mamdani was “a nice guy.” Mamdani called the meeting “productive.” Of course, both the far left and the far right lost their collective minds that they would even talk to each other. But why not? Both are economic socialists. Both want to fix prices. Trump says he is going to allow 300,000 tons of Argentine beef into the country setting the price at 25 percent below market. Not to be outdone Mamdani says that he will freeze rents and set his city-run grocery stores to sell stuff at 30 percent below market.

Mamdani is being sued by both landlords over rents and by immigrant and minority grocers over the government-run grocery stores. In the case of groceries, the irony is that the left has kept Walmart out because they argue that Walmart’s discounts would drive small businesses out of business. So now it is okay for the socialist government to do the same? I am sure that this has been brought to Mamdani’s attention. And I am equally sure that he doesn’t care so long as the grocers are driven out of business by socialism rather than by capitalism.

The AFT versus Target

I have long said that teachers’ unions should be decertified. Further evidence is the American Federation of Teachers asking its members to strike Target at the beginning of the school season. Target is headquartered in Minneapolis which was the “target” of concerted ICE enforcement. AFT’s president Randi Weingarten wants the company boycotted not because Target supported Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but because the company has stayed “silent” rather than condemning ICE. 

Target seems to not be able to stay out of the spotlight. Remember when the right called for a boycott because of a display in the stores prominently featuring trans clothing for kids? Then there was the boycott by the left accusing the company of abandoning DEI. Now its ICE. I don’t know of any other retailer that has gotten as whipsawed as Target. How does Walmart manage to stay out of the spotlight?

I would like to see a poll on whether AFT members condone what their leadership is doing and spending their dues on advocacy. But there is no doubt that the leadership of the Tennessee Federation of Teachers is on board with their national leadership and refers to Trump’s “anti-immigration campaign of terror.” https://tn.aft.org

Deportations continue

Speaking of which, over 300,000 Haitians are slated to be deported after having their “temporary” protected status revoked. Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, recently defended the action in light of the recent violence in Port-au-Prince that left at least 47 people dead and many others wounded in a raid by a gang in a neighborhood near the city. Homan said “I don’t know the conditions in Haiti. I’ve never been in Haiti. But we’re just enforcing the law and we’re doing it in a way that the American people voted for.”

What I want to know is how are the deportations being conducted? Do the Haitians self deport? If they don’t, does the government deport them instead? Last week, 160 were deported and flown into the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien because the main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous. Did anyone tell Homan this? The deportees were given $65 and immigration officials said “Those who cannot reach their homes today, we will host them in secure spaces and the next day the process will continue until all migrants return home as they should.” Query: Do they even have a home to go to?

Currently, the administration plans to deport around 10,000 annually which then will take 30 years to deport them all (if they stay alive all that time). If they deport 160 at a time, then that’s around 63 flights per year. But the children born here are US citizens. They cannot be deported. Ohio’s governor – a republican – wants them to stay despite Trump’s accusation that they were eating pets in Springfield. Trump said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” 

I guess he must have been saying that they eat cats and dogs in Haiti? That reminds me of the story that when the Vietnamese came to this country they were astounded that pigeons were walking around freely. Back home one of their favorite dishes was squab so they started taking rocks, hitting the pigeons on the head and taking them home to eat them. As someone observed “They did not leave a tern unstoned.”