Monthly Archives: March 2023

Sports: Who’s Next for Mizzou; Our Boys of Spring; Battlehawks Brawl; and Racin’

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(MIZ)—Missouri’s clutch victory over Ole Miss Saturday has earned the Tigers a double bye, meaning they won’t play until the Quarterfinals Friday afternoon. The opponent?  It might be Tennessee or maybe South Carolina—or maybe Ole Miss again.

Ole Miss, the 13th seed, plays South Carolina Wednesday night. The winner faces a short turn-around before playing Tennessee, the fifth seed, on Thursday afternoon.  The winner of that game plays Missouri.

Missouri has never reached the quarterfinals in the SEC Tournament—but their 11-7 conference record with tiebreakers over other 11-7 teams have put them there.  They have finished the regular season at 23-8 and they have shown they’re dangerous as the clock runs down. They have outscored their opponents through their first 31 games by only 5.3 points a game, a number that might surprise some folks who look at a 23-win team.

The Tigers’ four-game win streak going into the post-season seems not to be as impressive to the coaches who do weekly rankings.  Missouri is not one of their top 25 teams.  The Tigers are 30th.

College Football News, which swings to roundball in the off-season, projects Missouri as a number eight seed in the NCAA tournament.

And the NCAA doesn’t list the Tigers among its top 25 either.

A trio of big questions for Friday:  Will the Tigers come out a little rusty after the “long” layoff?  Can they play hot for both halves?  And will the failure of the coaches and the NCAA to think better of them be a motivator? (ZOU)

(BASEBALL)—The Kansas City Royals are the Cactus League leaders a full week into spring training.  The Royals are 9-2, including all six road games. They’re outscoring opponents 85-61, the largest run margin in the league. The Dodgers were 5-2 after the weekend; the Cubs 6-4; the Angels and White Sox 5-4.

The Cardinals are fourth in the Grapefruit League, trailing Boston, Houston, and Toronto.  St. Louis is 6-4

(BATTLING HAWKS)—Things got a little messy at the end of Sunday’s game between two of the unbeaten XFL teams—the St. Louis Battlehawks and the D. C. Defenders.  It became the highest-scoring game of the three-week old season.

St. Louis trailed 34-20 in the closing minutes but scored a touchdown and a two-point conversion.  That gave them an opportunity to maintain possession instead of trying for an onside kick.  XFL Rules say they have one play from their own 25 to pick up 15 yards and keep playing.  But Quarterback A. J. McCarron was sacked by D. C.’s Dalvin Bellamy, giving the Defenders the ball inside the St. Louis 20 as the clock ran down.

That’s when players from both sides went after each other.  After a few minutes, order was restored and two Defenders were ejected from the last few seconds. D. C. linebacker Francis Bernard and Defensive lineman Rod Taylor were thrown out, as was St. Louis running back Brian Hill.

The Defenders go to 3-0. The Battlehawks now are 2-1.

RACIN’

All three big-time racing series are underway for the 2023 racing season. INDYCAR and Formula 1 got rolling with INDYCAR on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida and F1 at the Bahrain Grand Prix.  And NASCAR went to the Busch brother’s home town.

(INDYCAR)—Marcus Ericsson, the winner of last year’s Indianapolis 500 stayed out of trouble and, has started 2023 with a win in a wild race on the street course at St. Petersburg.

Ericsson, who started fourth, finished 2.4 seconds ahead of Pato O’Ward. Six-time series champion Scott Dixon took the last podium position. Romain Grosjean, who started on pole, was one of those who dropped out because of what is called “contact” in racing.

A scary crash at the third turn of the race that saw Devlin DeFrancesco’s car airborne in a flat spin about twenty seconds after the first green flag. The crash eliminated DeFrancesco and four other drivers—500 winners Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud, plus Santino Ferrucci and Benjamin Pederson.  The crash took out both Meyer Shank entries and both of A. J. Foyt’s team cars.

After other bumping, banging and visits to tire barriers that brought out four more cautions, Pato O’Ward appeared headed to victory when his engine briefly lost power, letting Ericsson through for the win.

INDYCAR will put the pieces back together to head to the high banks of the Texas Motor Speedway on April 2.

(NASCAR)—A race within the race made William Byron a winner at Las Vegas Sunday.  Byron, who led 176 of the race’s 271 laps, beat teammate Kyle Larson off pit road on the last stop with an overtime restart coming up. He got the jump on the green flag and beat Larson to the finish line by sixth-tenths of a second.  A third Hendrick driver, Alex Bowman, finished third.  Hendrick cars dominated the race, leading 239 of the laps.

Missing out on the fun was the fourth Hendrick driver, Chase Elliott, who’s going to miss out on a lot more fun because he broke a leg bone in a snowboarding incident Friday before the race. He underwent surgery and will start rehab work this week. He is expected to miss several races, however.

NASCAR moves to Phoenix next weekend to wrap up its early-season West Coast tour.

(FORMULA 1)—Already there is some frustration being voiced in F1 circles that Red Bull driver Max Verstappen will so dominate the sport again that fans will become bored and some will turn away.  Verstappen won the Grand Prix of Bahrain to kick off the season in defense of his 2022 championship.  Teammate Sergio Perez finished twelve seconds back. Two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso was third driving for Aston Martin, a full 38 seconds behind Verstappen.

(photo credit: Bob Priddy at Gateway (WWTR), 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just About When You Think You’ve Heard It All—

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You know for sure you never will.

The St. Louis County Council got into a recent snit because some members wanted to go behind closed doors to discuss, brace yourself:

Missouri’s open meetings law.

The agenda also included rules for public comment at council meetings and learning more about the Sunshine Law itself.

Things bogged down when Council Chairwoman Shalonda Webb began to read from a handbook on the Sunshine Law published by the Attorney General’s office.  One council member accused her of filibustering.  Eventually enough council members walked out that there was no longer a quorum and the meeting could not continue.

The meeting represents the eternal conflict between a government of the people and a government in spite of the people.

Government, even in this great land of so many kinds of freedom, thinks it can operate best away from public view or later public scrutiny.  That’s speaking generally, of course.  But since Missouri’s Sunshine law was engaged fifty years ago, various individuals and groups have tried to carve out secrecy gaps for themselves.

Our campaign finance laws, for example, let us learn far less than an informed citizenry would find helpful in understanding who is buying what, or trying to buy what in our statutes and our bureaucracy.

Five years ago, voters changed the Missouri Constitution to require greater obedience of our sunshine law by the legislature.  But now the people you and I elected to represent our interest are pushing a bill that closes more records that reveal how our laws are shaped.

Bureau Chief Jason Hancock of Missouri Independent, a respected colleague in our active reporting days, whose agency is an important addition to a capitol press corps that has been greatly diminished in recent years, summed up Senator Andrew Koenig’s bill a few days ago: “Any record of a state lawmaker or their staff pertaining to ‘legislation or the legislative process’ would be closed off to public scrutiny, except for those offered during a public meeting or involving a lobbyist…The bill also closes records held by the government pertaining to a constituent, though lobbyists wouldn’t be covered under this provision. Koenig deended the proposal at a legislative hearing…arguing that sometimes lawmakers “need to be able to think out loud with your staff and before you get a finished product.” But to government transparency advocates, the push represents lawmakers trying to carve themselves out of a constitutional mandate imposed on them by the voters of Missouri.”

The concept of having secret time so candid policy discussions can be held is a constant excuse for closing doors. The idea is understandable on matters of national security.  But it is garbage most of the time.

Jason also quoted Litigation Director David Roland of the Freedom Center of Missouri, who said, ““The legislature really doesn’t like the fact that the people amended the Constitution to say that they had to provide a greater level of transparency than a lot of these legislators are comfortable with. But that’s what the people decided. And now legislators are trying to insulate themselves from oversight by the public.”

Some in government argue that extensive demands for records or copies of records that are supposed to be public constitute “abuse.”

Does anybody else think it is absurd that a citizen has a right to get supposedly public records without being hassled or without having to get a second mortgage to pay for cophing or—as has been proposed—the time spent REDACTING INFORMATION THE CITIZEN CAN’T KNOW?

Who’s the abuser here?

It is a mistake to think that the only people who care about this issue are members of the press. Yes, open meetings and open records laws are important for those who believe they work as trusees for the public. But “the public” needs to understand that there are all kinds of records about it and the public has a right to see those records.

That right is enshrined in one of the sacred documents of our nation—“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

“The governed” should be wary of lawmakers who decide the people do not need to know or are incapable of understanding how their government is run or who really runs some of it.

Too many of those we entrust to govern us do not trust us to know what they do.

By, for, and of the people?

Let’s not kid ourselves to often.

 

 

Worlds Apart

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Most people remember singer Roger Miller for his wacky popular country-oriented songs in the 70s.  He died more than thirty years ago at only 56.

In the mid-1980s he was offered a chance to write a Broadway musical based on Huckleberry Finn.  The musical won seven Tony Awards, including “Best Score” for Miller. One of the numbers was sung by “Jim.”

I see the same stars through my window

That you see through yours

But we’re worlds apart, world’s apart.

And I see the same skies through brown eyes

That you see through blue.

But we’re worlds apart, world’s apart.

The song has been going through your correspondent’s mind since watching a couple of interviews a few days ago involving actor Bryan Cranston and Mike Wallace and Cranston and comedian/talk show host Bill Maher.

The focus was on our cultural divide and the phrases we use to divide us.

For some the words “liberal” and “woke” are interchangeable.  Not for Maher, who told Cranston, “To me there is a difference between liberalism and woke-ism. Liberalism is about lifting people up. Wokeism is just about self-loathing and hating yourself and scolding everybody and virtue signaling.  It doesn’t really help anybody.  Lifting people up who have gotten a bad shake in the country, who are for some reason downtrodden or have been cheated, absolutely, I’ve always been for that. But I don’t think that’s a lot of what’s been going on.

“People, especially immigrants, they don’t like this unrelenting negativism about this country. They’re like, ‘You should see the…river I swam through to get here. And I get here and all you people do is (criticize) your own country and tell me how horrible it is. You know what? I came from horrible. You want to know horrible, I’ll tell you…stories.”

In his interview with Chris Wallace, Cranston was asked, “When you look at the political discourse in our country today, and the role the media plays in it, what do you think?”

Cranston’s answer latched onto a politically popular (in some circles) “unrelenting attitude” that this is no longer a great country. He referred to his conversation with Maher:

“We were talking about Critical Race Theory and I think it’s imperative that its taught, that we look at our history much the same, I think, that Germany has looked at their history and involvement in the wars, one and two, and embrace it. Say, ‘This is where we went wrong. This is how it went wrong.’  When I see the Make America Great Again, my comment is, ““Do you accept that that can be construed as a racist remark? And most people, a lot of people, go, ‘How could that be racist? Make America Great Again?’ I say, ‘Just ask yourself, from an African-American experience, when was it ever great in America?’ … So, if you’re making it great again, it’s not including them.”

And the question goes to another major group in our nation’s history.  Ask yourself from the Native American experience. When was it ever great in America?  The answer, of course, is “before the Europeans came.”

Are they included in MAGA?

Doesn’t seem like it.

It’s time we quit running down our country. It’s time we are honest about our history. We did have slavery and what this country did to the people who met the Europeans when they got here is a long-standing blot on our national character.

Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri’s greatest 20th Century artist, told one of his critics who didn’t like the way our past was portrayed in one of his murals that if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, we have to accept our history “warts and all.”

Before we worry about doing something, maybe we should worry about finishing the first job. We have a long ways to go. We can’t become greater if all we do is call each other names, ignore our past, and refuse to see how we are more the same than we are different.

After all:

I see the same skies through brown eyes that you see through blue.