National Interest: The federal Reserve is poised this week to lower interest rates for the first time since the depths of the Great Recession, a signal that  they think the economy has gotten as good as it’s going to get.

  The Fed has been slowly raising rates to return them to a normal level and provide some maneuvering room for when the economy goes south again, as it surely will.

 But President Trump has been battering the Fed to keep rates low. He said Friday, “The Fed acted too soon. I turned out to be right, they acted too soon and too violently.” 

Black and White:In one of his favorite tactics of rhetorical truth-twisting, President Trump accused Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is black, of being what he has been accused of being himself — a racist.

  The President can’t get over Cummings’ criticism of conditions for detained migrants on the southern border in which he said during a House hearing, “I’m talking about human beings. I’m not talking about people that come from, as the president said, ‘shitholes.’ These are human beings. Human beings. Just trying to live a better life.”

  The President opened his retaliation with an accusation that Cummings is responsible for West Baltimore being run down and rat infested.

  Then Trump tweeted yesterday, “If racist Elijah Cummings would focus more of his energy on helping the good people of his district, and Baltimore itself, perhaps progress could be made in fixing the mess that he has helped to create over many years of incompetent leadership.”

  Today Trump expanded his attacks to include civil rights activist Al Sharpton who travelled to Baltimore to join the Trump resistance. Sharpton does have a checkered record. The President Tweeted, “Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing,” Trump wrote. “Hates Whites & Cops!”

  But never forget that as a New York landlord, Donald Trump was once sued by the federal government for refusing to rent his apartments to black tenants.

  NY Timescolumnist Charles Blow writes that, “The core of this man is racist in a way that is so fused to his sense of the world that he is incapable of seeing it as racist. It is instinctual for him to attack people of color. It is instinctual for him to denigrate the places they live and the countries to which they trace their heritage.”

  A Baltimore Suneditorial says,  “Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.”

National Insecurity:In a change of the guard that seemed inevitable after his open conflicts with the President, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats announced that he is resigning. He is to be replaced by the uber-conservative Rep. John Ratcliffe, a loyal follower and staunch defender of President Trump.

  Coats is a former senator and establishment Republican who angered the president by providing unwelcome assessments in particular of Russia and North Korea. He probably got in trouble for puncturing Trump’s fantasies and telling the truth.

 Announcing the move over Twitter, Trump dismissed Coats without praise. He said, “I would like to thank Dan for his great service to our Country.” 

 Ratliffe is a third-term Republican from Texas and former prosecutor who has bought into Trump’s conspiratorial theories about the origins of the Russia investigation. The representative was one of the toughest questioners of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller during hearings last week.

  The Republicans are being quiet about it, but members of both parties are reported to be worried that Ratliffe is too much of a political appointee who is more likely to tell the President what he wants to hear rather than what he needs to know.

The American Disease:Three people were killed, including a 6-year-old boy, and 15 people wounded in a shooting at the annual garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif. yesterday afternoon. Witnesses said a gunman emerged wearing combat fatigues and carrying an assault rifle. Police officers killed him. The shooter is reported to have evaded security by cutting through a fence.   

The Ghost Ball: Milwaukee Brewers relief pitcher Josh Hader has struck out an astounding 50 percent of the batters he’s faced this season with a pitch that has both batters and baseball analysts scratching their heads.

  What’s also mystifying is that the batters pretty much know what pitch he’s going to throw and they still can’t hit it.

  Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website, founded on the statistics of politics, analyzed the numbers of Hader’s pitches. He throws what’s called a four-seam fastball 88.6 percent of the time. The velocity of his pitch averaging 98.2 mph is not the fastest in the majors and it has a below average spin rate.

  Not only that, but the fastball itself is less likely to result in a swing and a miss than any other pitch, but batters are whiffing 44 percent of the time when Hader throws it.

  The key might be in how Hader throws what has been described as his “ghost ball.” He’s a lefty and throws from way below shoulder level so the ball comes to the batter almost from the ground up. That’s his natural “arm slot.”

  Asked to explain his pitch all Hader could say was that this is what comes naturally to him. It’s a ghost ball. 

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