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Hot Baseball; Winning Football; and the Power of Palou

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Our baseball teams are hot.

(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals finished the week with two straight series wins and a winning streak of eight games The streak has pulled the ‘birds into second place, one game behind the Cubs. The Cardinals, once at 14-19 are now at 22-19. Theu rank second in all of major league baseball with a .261 team batting average. The’re ninth in hits.

(ROYALS)—Although they lost two games in a row last weekend, the Kansas City Royals still have won 16 of their last 20 and are tied with Cleveland for second in their division, 2½  games behind Detrot.  Kris Bubic has the fourth best ERA in MLB, 1.69.

(AS WE GO TO PRESS)—The Cardinals extended their streak nine with a win over the Phillies in the first game of a midweek series.  The Royals ended their four-game losing streak with a series opening win against Houston and now have gone 25% of the way to a 100-victory season.

(UFL)—The St. Louis Battlehawks aren’t scoring a lot of points with their backup quarterback but they don’t need to, given their defense.

They ran their record to 5-2 during the weekend with a 19-9 victory on the home field of the Memphis Showboats. St. Louis broke the game open with ten first-quarter points. After Memphis closed to 10-6 in the second quarter, St. Louis bounced back with a 78-yard that made it 16-6 at the half. The teams traded field goals in the second half.

Next for Battlehawks: the Birmingham Stallions, in the St. Louis Dome, next Saturday noon.  The Battlehawks, Birmingham, and the Washington Defenders are 5-2 heading down the stretch in the UFL season. Birmingham will play the ‘hawks next weekend in the St. Louis dome.

(INDYCAR)—It’s May and for racing fans the word is Indianapolis.  INDYCAR has started the month with a race on the speedway road course. And Alex Palou has continued his run in the leadup to the biggest race of the year for the series.

But that’s the longest race so far this year and Josef Newgarden will be shooting for an unprecedented third straight win.  The 500 championship could be a matter of which of the biggest teams in the series gets the Borg-Warner trophy.

Palou is on track to have the greatest INDYCAR season in 61 years.  His win on the speedway road course is his fourth in five races this year and makes him the clear favorite to add a fifth win in the Indianapolis 500 on the 25th.

Palou had a ten-second lead when the first caution period this year came along after 408 green flag laps to start the season. But he pulled away on the restart and in the remaining dozen laps rebuilt his lead to more than five seconds.

Pato O’Ward picked up his second runner-up position of the season.

Through five races this year, Palou’s average finishing position is 1.2.  INDYCAR says the only start in the last half-century that comes close to that is the season-opening run by Sebastian Bourdais in 2006, who was at 1.4 after four victories and a third place.

While his start to the year has been spectacular, he has no lock on the 500, a race much longer than the first five races of the INDYCAR season. Josef Newgarden, who finished twelfth on the road course, will aggressively chase his goal of being the first driver to win three consecutive 500s. Former winner Will Power has had top tens in the last four races, including third on the road course last weekend. Power says he will be “shocked” if Palou dominates the 500 as he has dominated the first five races.

And O’Ward, who has two heart-breaking seconds in the big race, now has two seconds so far this year and wants to taste the champagne.

Scott Dixon, who finished fifth in the race, is a six-time series champion and has led more laps in the 500 than any other driver, wants to lead at least one more and get his second win in the race.

The 500 is likely to have seven drivers who have combined for 12 wins.

(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson’s car wasn’t 100% healthy when he crossed the finish line for his second straight win at the Kansas Speedway, but it was enough to get to the checkered flag seven-tenths of a second before Christopher Bell did.

He babied his right side tires for the last few laps, especially the last one when pieces of rubber were seen flying from the right front.

It was Larson’s third win of the year. He started from the poll and led 221 of the 267 laps to join Bell as the only three-time winner in the NASCAR Cup series this year.

He now ranks third among active drivers in laps led with 10,073. He has more than five-thousand laps to lead before he gets to Denny Hamlin and more than nine thousand before he equals Kyle Busch.

(Photo Credits: Palou, INDYCAR

Why Stop With One Gulf?

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Or any other map feature?

Marjorie Taylor Greene, hardly one of the sharpest knives in the Congressional drawer, introduced the bill that makes a federal law out of President Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

The House of Representatives reportedly is going to vote on it soon. Whether there are enough worshipful Republicans to pass the bill is uncertain. The House can lose only four GOP votes for the bill to fail. One GOPer already has announced he’s a “no” vote.

Republican Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska is spot-on in calling the whole thing “juvenile” and told CNN, “We’re the United States of America. We’re not Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany or Napoleon’s France…We’re better than this. It sounds like a sophomore thing to do.”

What’s worse is this: the bill tells Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, to update a database of the geographic features in the 50 states. We can imagine how that will go.

Probably at some time during your school years, you took a geography course.  Welcome to today’s expansion of that subject.  We call it Trumpography.

If Trump really wants to be king of his world, there are ample opportunities for him to order the renaming of all kinds of places. He already has decided he can meddle in the Arab world by having this country call the present Persian Gulf the Gulf of Arabia, an idea that is beyond ludicrous.

This means that all of our military people who thought they had fought the Persian Gulf War fought the Gulf of Arabia War.  What’s next? Renaming Omaha Beach—oh, wait, that’s already an American name. There are about two dozen communities in this country named Paris, a French word. Wee shouldn’t have American towns maned for a French City. He needs to start calling Paris, France; Springfield, France.

Perhaps it will occur to him or to other sharp knives in the administration that there should be a penalty for Canada not jumping at the chance to be our 51st state.   Goodbye Lake Ontario.  Hello Lake Trump!

And the Canadian River!!! We cannot have a major river that flows more than 16-hundred miles from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to its junction with the Arkansas (Are-Kansas, is how it’s pronounced by the way) with that name.  Call Doug to update that feature that flows through states 38, 47, 28, and 46.  Since Russia already has first dibs on Don as the name for a river, perhaps this one can be the Donjr River.

Toronto, Ohio has to become—oh, I don’t know—Eric, Ohio. It would be only the second place in the whole world named Eric. The other is in Turkey. There is an Erik, Oklahoma on old Highway 66 that was the boyhood home of country singers Roger Miller and Sheb Wooley. When we were there several years ago I think it was called EAR-ick.

If he has his undies in a knot about Doug Ford, the uppity premier of Ontario, he could order seven cities in the states of Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, and Washington to change their names from Ford to some of his better appointees or political lackeys:

Gaetz, Iowa; Stephenmiller, Kansas; Musk, Kentucky; Habba, Mississippi; Giuliani, Montana; Lindell, Tennessee; Ephshteyn, Washington.

And in terms of Ontario: Towns in Montana and New  York, will have to give up names of Ontario cities Hamilton and Kingston.  Hello Lara, New York and Melania, Montana. Quebec, Louisiana will become Ivanka, Louisiana.  Winnipeg Kentucky can be Barron; Victoria, BC will be Tifany BC; Halifax, North Carolina will be re-christened Hegseth, NC; and Edmonton, Kentucky can become EdMartin, Kentucky.

An interesting situation exists near Buffalo, New York.  Famous waterfalls.  And since Trump is good at renaming entire bodies of water although our country occupies only a small part of the whole thing, he should insist that the American Falls be extended and the Niagara Falls also become the American Falls.

Do unto Canada what has been done unto Mexico.

If he can rename the Gulf of Mexico, there’s nothing to keep him from renaming every other place on earth. Nothing is safe. He’s so fixated on Mars, he should rename it Deejaytee, a subtle reference to his initials.

And don’t forget Atlases.  His protectors of our reading material would do well to throw out all atlases. Talk about DEI!  Punish the countries that send five-year old rapists, fentanyl dealers, escapees from mental hospitals and prisons and their families by eliminating their countries from all atlases.  “Mar-a-Lago Territories” has a nice ring to it as a replacement.

Since he can’t forge peace between Russia and Ukraine, perhaps he should just declare the two countries as one country named DonaldJohn.  And Israel and Gaza could be combined as Magaland.

This is real: he has said he’s thinking about changing the name of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Gulf. Trump has hinted that he might do that before he makes a trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

No, really. He has said it.

We and he could go on and on playing his juvenile game.  We already have exceeded the bounds of absurdity, But, mom, he started it.

And that’s all it is, really.  A rich little kid looking to fill the time when he’s not playing golf.

The world would be better served if he just concentrated more on his putting.

The New Pope

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I remember as a young boy in downstate Illinois watching The Chicago Cardinals play their NFL games with Red Grange describing the action from the broadcast booth.

Finally, after all this time, we have a Chicago Cardinal as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Chicago Cardinals later moved to St. Louis and became the St. Louis (Football) Cardinals.

It turns out that the new Pope did the same thing.  The football team lasted longer in St. Louis than he did. Today, they’re in Arizona. The man known to friends in St. Louis as Bob Prevost has moved to Vatican City, the world’s smallest nation.

We watched his speech, given in—I think—at least three languages, none of them English. Or French, of which I have a certain familiarity since I passed three of four semesters of it.

I was reminded of a story I once heard about professional baseball players who went out to battle areas during World War II to entertain the troops. We’re most familiar with stories of entertainers who did USO shows, but baseball players who were ineligible for the draft volunteered to cheer up the troops and would go out, about four at a time, and visit areas that were (mostly) recently cleared of the enemy.

One such troupe was made up of former Gashouse Gang shortstop Leo Durocher, then the manager of the Dodgers, Nick Etten who led the American League in 1944 in home runs and walks as a first baseman with the Yankees, New York sportswriter Tom Meany, and Joe “Ducky” Medwick, also a former Gashouse Gang guy but who was by then a member of the New York Giants.

They did at least four shows a day in Italy at a time when the Allies were taking the country town by town. Meany would be the emcee. A 22-minute film of the 1944 World Series (St. Louis vs. St. Louis with all six games in Sportsman’s Park) and then the three players would talk. There would be a true-false quiz show with the winners getting autographed baseballs, and then the guys would stick around for autographs and talks with the soldiers.

Eventually their tour took them to Rome where Medwick and Durocher got to meet Pope Pius XII. Durocher asked the Pope to bless his rosary, which he did. And then the Pope turned to Medwick and asked him about his background.  And Medwick supposedly answered:

“Your Holiness, I’m Joseph Medwick. I, too, used to be a Cardinal.”

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Three members of the 133-member Conclave also have ties to the St. Louis area. Wilson Gregory of Washington D. C. was the Archbishop of Belleville Illinois, and in 2020 became the first African-American Cardinal in 2020. Raymond Burke was the Archbishop in St. Louis, 2004-08 and became a Cardinal in 2010. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who became a Cardinal in 2012 was the Auxiliary Bishop in St. Louis 2001-02.

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In 1977, fresh Villanova University graduate Robert Prevost (the picture is from the 1977 college yearbook) joined the Augustinian order and went to the Compton Heights neighborhood of St. Louis and became took his first step in the priesthood as a novice at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. He took his first vows a year later and four years after that, he took his final vows.

The Post-Dispatch interviewed St. Louis Zoo employee Steve Baker, a friend from those early days. “Never in my life did I think that someone that I knew was going to be the pope,” he told the PD. “I mean, I sat at a kitchen table and drank coffee with this man…This guy was a rock star. You cold tell even then he was destined to be great.”

Now, however, comes a critical question: Can the new Pope, a Chicago native, be a Cubs fan?

Breath a sigh of relief St. Louis Cardinals fans.  He’s a White Sox guy.

Whew!

The mental image of Pope Leo XIV leading the crowd in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Wrigley Field would have been impossible to take.

(If you want a much better telling of the Medwick and the Pope story, go to Ducky and The Lip in Italy – Society for American Baseball Research)

I Don’t Know 

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ne of these days a reporter who has some rare time on his or her hands will compile a list of all of the times a president who has claimed “only I can fix it” doesn’t know anything.

He has said, “I don’t know….” so many times that one has to question, “What DOES he know?”

In 2019, USA Today counted eleven people Trump claimed he never met or didn’t know “despite evidence to the contrary.”

One was Jeffrey Epstein, whose sex trafficking of young girls sent him to prison where he committed suicide. Trump called him a “terrific guy” and someone  he had known for fifteen years who was “a lot of fun to be with. It is even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side” in a 2002 magazine article.

But when the fertilized hit the ventilation system it was a form of “I don’t know” when he said, “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him…I was not a fan.”

Sooooo….Trump didn’t know him after all?

There have been assorted other people, some who have been close to him, that he suddenly didn’t know after they wrote or spoke about him critically.

The latest “I don’t know” moment came last weekend when he was interviewed on NBC’s Face the Nation and was asked on NBC’s Meet the Press if throwing thousands of immigrants out of the country without recognizing their rights to due process is Constitutional, he indicated that his power is greater than the Constitution.

“I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” he said.

A little more than 100 days ago, he took the oath for the second time that includes “”I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Given his recent actions, it appears preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution is beyond his ability, a strange attitude for someone who has had previous experience in the office.

We know he doesn’t read so he must not have read the Fifth Amendment that pretty clearly says nobody will be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

It does not say “citizen.”  It says “person.” The Supreme Court has ruled that people who are not citizens remain people and have basic rights.

But Trump complained that following the constitution would be a nuisance. “I don’t know,” he said again. “It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.  We have thousands of people that are—some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth. I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it.

But “some” is unlikely to be as many as three million protected “people.”

He was asked, “Even given those numbers…don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?”

You don’t have to guess at his answer.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

He must not have talked to his brilliant lawyers or his brilliant lawyers lack the ability to read at least three recent decisions that protect due process rights for immigrants.

As far as one to three million trials—-

There would be far fewer “trials” if Trump and his minions obeyed court rulings and acted Constitutionally.  And if they actually did focus on immigrants with serious criminal records. Many of them have fled from countries where it is a criminal offense to try to exercise OUR constitutional rights—that their country does not recognize.

And there would not be full-blown trials. These folks would go before an immigration judge, such judges being employees of the Justice Department, not part of the constitutional judicial branch.

That would not require full trials, as Trump suggested. What it would require is the chance to appear before an immigration judge. Such judges are not part of the judicial branch; they are employees of the Justice Department. Regardless, Trump’s brilliant lawyers would have to prove that these bad people are in fact members of Venezuelan gangs, a legal nicety Trump chooses to ignore.

That might bring about a definition of “invasion,” which Trump too casually claims to justify round up people under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.  It would be inconvenient to have to prove that the chicken plucker, pork processor, roofer, and operator of a restaurant with an international cuisine.

The Supreme Court already has ruled twice that men facing terrorist charges cannot be shipped off to the friendly El Salvador prison without due process, namely a hearing. There has been at least one “administrative error,” but that’s too bad. The victim of it has to say in the Salvadorian lockup.  When asked if anybody in his administration is in touch with the Salvadorian government to secure the mistake’s release, Trump said,

“I don’t know.”

“You’d have to ask the attorney general that question.” He said.  “I’m relying on the attorney general of the United States, Pam Bondi, who’s very capable, doing a great job.”  He then claimed that he is not involved in the legality or illegality of such things.

In other words, we have a president who thinks he is personally above the Constitution and he has no responsibility for illegal acts of his administration.

Moving right along.

He has threatened to take the tax-exempt status away from Harvard University because it refuses to bow to his demands to eliminate DEI on campus. That, he was reminded, flies in the face of federal law that says a resident cannot direct the IRS to rescind the tax-exempt stature of an organization.

This time he did not directly say, “I don’t know.”  He’s just following what his lawyers, hired on the basis of loyalty, say.  The he blundered through, “They say that we’re allowed to do that, and I’m all for it. But everything I say is subject to the laws being 100% adhered to.”

Uh….what?

If being ignorant on so many things or about so many people makes him a “stable genius,” then by comparison the rest of us should be able to go into the kitchen and mix up a brew of cold fusion.

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Bombs Away for Kansas City; Sweep for the Birds; Gem for the Battlehawks. Blues for the Blues. But first, some history for today.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

May 6, 1917—-Bob Groom of the St. Louis Browns throws a no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox a day after the Browns’ Ernie Koob had no-hit the Sox at Sportsman’s Park. The catcher for both games was Hank Severeid, the only catcher in MLB history to catch no-hitters on two consecutive days.  Groom went on to an 8-19 record that year and finished his ten  year career a year later.  Ernie Koob was 6-14 that year and out of baseball after another year and a five-year record with the Browns of 23-31.

The Browns were 57-97 that year, seventh in the then-eight team America League which is about what they usually were before they left St. Louis after the 1954 season to become the Baltimore Orioles (of which we will have some news in a few more paragaphs)

Baseball Reference records, “The St. Louis Browns are perhaps history’s worst Major League franchise. The Browns existed from 1902 to 1953 in the American League and managed just 11 winning seasons over that span. They lost more than 100 games eight times, finishing dead last in the AL 10 times. They finished as high as second in the AL standings just three times. The Browns won just one pennant, in 1944, when the majors were not at full strength due to World War II.”  (To which we add that they lost in six games to the Cardinals during the “trolley car series,” when all games were played in old Sportsman’s Park.

But for two days in 1917, the Browns were untouchable.

 

Severeid went on to a solid career, ten of his years with the Browns for whom he caught 100 or more games eight times. He had a solid major league career (.289 career batting average) and spent several more successful years as a minor league catcher and manager. He died in 1968 at the age of 77, still the only catcher to get pitchers through no-hitters on successive days.

Only one pitcher has ever thrown back-to back no-hitters: Johnny Vander Meer of the Reds beat the Boston Bees (later the Braves) on June 11, 1938 and no-hit the Brooklyn Dodgers in his next start June 15.

The only time there have been back-to-back no-hitters involving the same two teams was in 1968 when Gaylord Perry of the Giants beat Bob Gibson of the Cardinals 1-0 and the next day when the Cardinals’ Ray Washburn beat the Giants the next day 1-0. The last two outs he got that day were future Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Willie McCovey.

Those two games are the only time in MLB history there have been no-hitters in two consecutive games.  The second Browns no-hitter had been in the second game of a double header. 

That’s your baseball history lesson for the day. Now let’s look at the history being made by today’s players.

(Royals)—The Kansas City Royals started their week against the Chicago White Sox last night  after finishing their previous week with a team-record seven home runs in one game.  They polished off the Baltimore Orioles 11-6 to go three games over .500 at 19-16.

It was a historic game for catcher Luke Maile, who homered for his first hit with the Royals. He’s the 29th player in team history to have a home run as his first hit.

Cole Ragans already was playing at a historic level going into the game. Although he’s just 1-1 with a 4.40 ERA so far this year, he has struck out 11.16 batters per nine innings through five starts this year and has allowed 0.69 home runs per nine innings.  OptaSTATS says only two other pitchers since 1901 have ever started a season with allowing fewer than 0.80 homers and at least 11 strikeouts through fifty starts with a team are Nolan Ryan and Kevin Gausman.,

We all know who Nolan Ryan is. But Kevin Gausman? He’s bounced around among five teams in thirteen years, has a career record of 104-105.

Ragans was dominant in his return to the mound Monday, tying a season-high with 11 strikeouts in five innings as the Royals shut out the Chicago White Sox 3-0 at Kauffman Stadium. With that, the Royals continued their current hot streak. KC won its 12th game in 14 tries and also improved its season record to 20-16.

Ragans didn’t appear to show any ill effects from his earlier problem.

(CARDINALS)—-A double-header sweep of the Mets gets the Cardinals within three games of break-even 35 games into the season. They can thank Mike McGreevy, who was called up from Memphis by a rule that lets teams add an extra player for doubleheaders. McGreevy relieved Andre Pallante in second game when the bases were loaded and there was only one out in the fourth inning. McGreevy shut down the Mets on one hit and one walk the rest of the way, struck out five, and got the Mets to hit into five groundouts.

The Cardinals had won the first game 5-4

Alex Burlison broke out of his season-longer homerless streak with a two-run rip in the first game. In fact, he hadn’t hit a home run since last August 17. He’d had only three extra base hits so far this season.

The Cardinals kept rolling last night, beating Pittsburg 6-3 in a series opened. Home runs by Jose Berrero hitting his first home run since 2023 with Alex Burlison and Wilson Contreras adding shots of their own to give the Cardinals the lead.

(ST. LOUIS BLUES)—The coach has turned into a pumpkin for the St. Louis Blues. There will be no Cinderella story for them this year.

Once almost written off as a playoff team, the Blues stormed through the last third of the season to make it in the field.  Down two games to none to Winnipeg in the first round of the playoffs, but Blues came back to force a seventh game.

The Blues led by two goals with less than two minutes to play but the Jets tied the game with 1.6 seconds left and got the game winner at the 16:30 mark of overtime.

(FOOTBALL)—-Spring pro football reached the halfway mark in the regular season last weekend.

(BATTLEHAWKS)—Two weeks after losing their first game of the year to Arlington, the St. Louis Battlehawks put together what was called a “defensive gem,” against the same team, 12-6.

The Arlington Renegades had  scored thirty points three times this year, including the first game against St. Louis, in Arlington.

Battlehawks linebacker Pita Taumoepenu was the key to the St. Louis defense. With less than two minutes to play, Taumoepenu slapped the ball out of the hands of Arlington’s quarterback and two teammates pounced on it. It was the fourth turnover forced by the Battlehawks, the second within the final five minutes.

The win keeps St. Louis’ title hopes alive as they go to 4-2 on the season and get back to 2-2 in their UFL conference.

Now we move to sports with another turnoff the wheel.

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou heads to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with momentum rarely seen in INDYCAR—winning three of the first four races of the season and already building a big lead as he runs for his fourth series championship.

Palou calls his start from the pole and his win on the road course at Barber Motorsports Park “the best race” of his career. He led 81 of the 90 laps. “It was a perfect day, a perfect weekend,” Palou said. “The car was amazing, super-fast. I had a ton of fun. I was a bit lonely there, but I loved it. It was an amazing day.” He was lonely, it seemed. His margin of victory over Christian Lundgaard was sixteen seconds. Penske driver Scott McLaughlin, who had won the last two races at the track, finished third.

Palou’s worst finish in the firs four races is second.

Next up will be two races at the track that gives the series its name, a race on the infield road course next weekend and then the crown jewel of the year for the series, the Indianapolis 500, where Josef Newgarden will try to become the first driver to win three 500s in a row.

(NASCAR)—Consider last weekend’s NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway a breakthough run for defending Cup champion Joey Logan, who avoided trouble as he worked his way from 27th starting position to victory circle. It’s his first top-five finish of the year.

He had worked his way up to second place behind Michael McDowell but took the lead with four laps left in regulation.  McDowell, a lap later, got into some dirty air behind Ryan Blaney and wrecked. He finished 26th.

Blaney was passed by Ross Chastain, who had started 31st, on the restart. It’s Chastain’s best finish of the year.

Nobody led more laps than Kyle Larson  but the best he could do at the end was fourth.

For the first time after 21 straight races, Denny Hamlin did not finish on the lead lap. He lost an engine early. His string of 21 straight top fives is the eighty longest in NASCAR history.

(FORMULA 1)—Oscar Piastri picked up his fourth win of the year in the Grand Prix of Miami. Teammate Lando Norris came home behind him.

(Photo credits: Severeid–Becket Marketplace; Palou–Rick Gevers, Indianapolis 2024)

 

 

 

Is the Pen Mightier Than the Pen?

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President Trump thinks his is—-

(Before we dive into his most serious effort yet to destroy press freedom, we have to get off our chest the total disgrace our president has brought to the office and to this country with the proud display on his social media site and on the White House site of the AI-generated image of him as the next Pope. He might think it is funny but it is an international insult to hundreds of millions of Christians, Catholics in particular, and is unforgivable. How his religious right followers can find this acceptable in any way is beyond comprehension and their silence reveals a great deal about their—well, to use a word often  used against the left—weaponization of religion to get and keep political power.)

And his use of his pen–or marker—to try to silence the pens of the press, in this case, National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service is clearly the pen of a frightened dictator, not a president.

Dictators are scared to death of the press or of anyone who refuses to swallow whole their statements or who opposes them whether it is on the streets, in the chambers of congress, or in the courts.

I am the press.

I am the mainstream media.

I am one of Trump’s “enemies of the people.”

And I have never been afraid of the minor league Trumps I have encountered on rare occasions and I shall not be afraid of this Political Sultan of Swat who wants us to fear him because he thinks he is bigger than the game. He is not.

I have often said that I never broadcast fake news but I have broadcast news about fakes and Donald J. Trump is deep in the second category, a man who knows much about power and cares little about service, who knows little about law and cares even less about courts, a president who swore to uphold the Constitution who tries daily to dismantle it, a billionaire to says lesser people, many of whom helped elect him, will just have to live with his tariff-triggered tax increases. His suggestion that children will have to live with just two dolls for Christmas instead of thirty is astoundingly arrogant and completely unfeeling.

From his relentless attacks on the press that dares to challenge his lies, to his snatch, grab, and deportation of people too often without regard to their citizenship status or near-status, to his disregard for legal process for all within our borders, to his unreasoning chainsaw approach to turning bureaucrats into burdens on our unemployment system, there is nothing about this man that indicates he is anything but a power-devouring plutocrat.

He is not man enough to deal honestly with those who differ with him, particularly with those who point to his dishonesty.

Whether you agree with government funding of news organizations, even those our own government has used to penetrate the darkness of dictatorships in other parts of the world, is less important than what is really behind his executive order on funding of PBS and NPR.

It is censorship.

His disrespect of our system of government is on blatant display here.  We can expect legal challenges (likely to be accepted by judges who place law over loyalty) asserting his actions are obvious attempts to shut down media that he cannot control or that doesn’t parrot what he says. They need only to point to his disrespect for political process to prove their point.

The proper path to follow for a president who does not agree with something Congress has funded is to veto the bill or the line item in it. Congress then has the check on that power by having the ability to override the veto by two-thirds votes in each chamber.

But it’s too late to veto the funding this year and he doesn’t want to wait to veto it next year, so he’ll give some lawyers more billable hours when they challenge the latest executive order as unconstitutional.  And there are plenty of law firms that he can’t bully who will protect the constitution that he seems to relish violating.

“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” said his order, an obviously hypocritical  statement from someone who is, himself, corrosive to journalistic independence. s. He would not have signed his order if he did not fear reporting that does not fit his definition of loyalty and is thus is independent of him. That’s why the key phrases are “in this environment” and “the appearance of journalistic independence.”  There is no room for journalistic independence in the mental and political “environment” he lives in and wants to force on our country.

First amendment protections of free speech and a free press be damned. This is another example of Trump’s disdain for two of the foremost parts of the foremost statement in the Bill of Rights.

The White House propaganda office put out a statement proclaiming, “President Trump Finally Ends the Madness of NPR, PBS.”

Here is one of the complaints:

  • In 2021, NPR declared the Declaration of Independence to be a document with “flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies.”
    • In 2022, NPR scrapped its decades-long Independence Day tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on air to instead discuss “equality.”
    • NPR subsequently issued an “editor’s note” warning the Declaration of Independence is “a document that contains offensive language.”

And what does Trump KNOW about the Declaration? Apparently nothing that requires any thought. To hear him describe it in a recent ABC interview in his office where he keeps a copy of the document, he doesn’t know jack. He was asked what it means to him and his response clearly indicates it’s just a wall decoration.

 “Well, it means, exactly what it says. It’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot, and it’s something very special to our country.”

Love of—–who? Not George III, although Trump can identify with him.

Respect for—-what? Taxes on imported goods? Using the army to enforce civil law?

It just “means a lot” and it’s “very special.”  Too bad the interviewer didn’t ask him to quote his favorite line.

He has portraits of past Presidents on the office walls but when asked about their importance, his answers were disgraceful for someone who is their successor.

On FDR: “He was a serious president whether we like it or not. He was a four-termer and, uh, went through a war.”

On Lincoln: He was a great president. He went through a lot.”

(So says the great military genius who described the fight at Gettysburg as, “so much and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways.”)

“James Monroe: “The Monroe Doctrine. I think the Monroe Doctrine is pretty important. That was his claim to fame.” 

Not that Trump has ever read the Doctrine or understands why it was written.  And it is not Monroe’s only claim to fame.  Don’t ask Trump for any other things Monroe did.

To call him an empty vessel on such topics is wrong. He not an empty vessel.  His is filled with himself nobody else is important to have any room in it.

As attorney Ron Filipkowski, also an editor-in-chief of Meidas Touch News, put it, “Trump has absolutely no clue what the Declaration of Independence is or what it says.”

We don’t know that Trump’s defunding of NPR and PBS is intended to intimidate other mainline media outlets, some of which he has sued because he didn’t like the tones of their voices.  But it clearly shows a disregard for an important part of the constitution.

Unfortunately some media organizations as well as legal firms have buckled to his threats.  This is no time to do that.

Long ago I was told the best thing to do with a playground bully is to slug him in the nose the first time you meet him. Some judges, even those he appointed, aren’t afraid to do that. More people including lawyers and media organizations should be unafraid, too.

It’s important in light of this obvious censorship effort that people fight back.  We can fight back with donations to public broadcasting whether we agree totally or partially with what it says.  Protecting the right to say things is being taken from those unwilling to punch a bully in the nose.  Let it not be taken from us by whatever means he wants to take it.

He’s afraid of those who fight him.  A scared little man with delusions of adequacy that will cost us our country if we tolerate him.

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Make America—

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America.

Let us NOT make America great again—

—because it has never been what those who mouth the slogan promote.

The reality is starkly different.  We should not want the greatness that is being advocated by the slogan-sayers.

The poem, Let America be America captures what we have never been but can be yet.

Not “again,” but to be the America we erroneously think we have been.

The poem comes from a member of one of the many minority communities to whom America’s greatness is not what was, but what is yet to be, people who do not seem to be part of the Trumpian equation of future greatness.

THIS is what we should be striving for in the words of the great African-American poet Langston Hughes of Joplin, Missouri ninety years ago when the ideals of America seemed far, far away for the racially and economically dispossessed.

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

 

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

 

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we’ve dreamed

And all the songs we’ve sung

And all the hopes we’ve held

And all the flags we’ve hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

 

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

Langston Hughes died in 1967 while our country was locked into a great struggle to be what American could be.  We are locked in another great struggle today to make America again—-but, in truth, it is a struggle to degrade the greatness it already was and the greatness it must still try to become.

—-a greatness the great slogan-speaker will never understand.

 

Sports:  Mizzou Draftees and UDFA’s; Cardinals championship architect dies; Blues tie, etc.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(DRAFT)—More former Missouri Tigers signed on with NFL Teams as Undrafted free agents than were picked up in the draft itself.

The New York Jets have signed quarterback Brady Cook, who was praised by NFL analyst Lance Zierlein for his toughness, athleticism, and arm talent. He calls Cook a “developmental prospect.”

One of his receivers, Theo Weese Jr., is headed to the Miami Dolphins, as is running back Nate Noel.  and edge rusher Johnny Walker Jr., and the Denver Broncos appear to be getting together.

Tigers taken in the draft were tackle Armond Membou, who calls himself “a mauler.”   His performance at the talent combine elevated him to the seventh choice in the first round, takenby the Jets. Jets GM Darren Mougey he’s a “natural fit” who will compete right away for a starting slot at right tackle.

Receiver Luther Burden III went to the Bears in the second round. He’s the first tiger WR to be drafted since J’Mon Moore in 2018. He’s the highest drafted wide receiver since Jeremy Maclin went to the Eagles as the 19th choice in 2009. He had a 13.3 yard career reception average. Moore lasted one year with the Packers and had two career receptions for 15 yards.

(BLUES—The St. Louis Blues appeared on the verge of being blown out of the first round of the National Hockey League playoffs before bouncing back with a pair of wins against Winnipeg to even their best of seven series at two each. One of these teams is going to win two of the next three to advance.

The Blues have picked themselves up off the mat before this year. Until a coaching change early in 2025 the Blues were headed for an early end to the 2024-25 season before they ripped off a franchise-record winning streak that put them back into contention. It has been more than nine weeks since they lost a game at home.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals continued their mediocre season during the last week and at the end of it they lost the architect of their latest championship-contending years.

Walt Jocketty, the general manager whose trading expertise built teams that won a World Series (2006), six NL Central Division championships, two National League pennants. The Cardinals made the post season seven times in his 14 years. He was the executive of the year three times. He was 74. He knew he had been voted into the Cardinals Hall of Fame and reportedly was writing his acceptance speech when he died.

(THE TEAMS)—Looks like a long season, folks, especially in St. Louis.

The Cardinals dropped to 12-17 after yesterday afternoon’s loss to the Reds in the first game of a four-game series.

The Redbirds have called up Jose Barraro from Memphis and they’ve sent Thomas Saggese down. Saggese had come up to fill in for Masyn Winn while he was out with an injury.

Barraro signed as a free agent in the offseason and had an impressive spring she he played 24 games, hit two homers drove in eight runners and stole four bases. At Memphis he was hitting .299 with ten extra base hits (four homers, 13 RBIs) and a recent 19-game on base string. He’s 5/6 in steal attempts this year at Memphis.

The Royals went into a four game series with the Rays last night after a 6-4 week that brought them back to near break-even at 14-15.

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Let’s return to football for a couple of notes.

(THICK)—The Thicker Kicker is ten out of eleven for the Birmingham Stallions of the UFL.  But he can’t hit them all—-and his first miss of the season became a spectacular touchdown last weekend that helped the Memphis Showboats beat his Stallions 24-20 in overtime.

Harrison Mevis is 10/11 in the UFL this year and remains consistent from mid-field.  But 63 yards was a little much. The Stallions trailed 10-3 as the first half wound down. Mevis’s field goal attempt was picked up by the Showboats’ Isiah Hennie, who took it 108 yards for a touchdown.

Mevis was an undrafted free agent last year who spent three months with the Carolina Panthers.

(ANOTER EX-TIGER)—Maty Mauk, an Ohio kid whose career with Missouri was cut short by three suspensions and an eventual dismissal from the team despite his talents, is now the head football coach at Principia High in the St. Louis suburb of Town and Country. He was an assistant coach at Springfield Glendale, along with his brother, while his father was the head coach there. His brother went to Monett last season with Maty and their father as assistants.

Principia was 1-9 last year. They are 3-33 in their last four seasons. Principia College used to have a football program but ended it after the 2009 season.

At Missouri, he emerged as a red shirt freshman in 2013 when starting QB James Franklin was hurt. The Tigers went 3-1 with him. He tied a school record with five TD passes in a game against Kentucky. He was a starter the next year and led the team to its second strait SEC East conference championship. But he had his problems and was finally dismissed in 2016. He finished his college career at Eastern Kentucky, and spent some time with the Saskatchewan Rough Riders in the CFL but injuries ended his pro career.

Speeding along—

(INDYCAR)—Thirty-four drivers aiming for the 33 positions in the Indianapolis 500 field a month from now have run 5,804 test laps (14,510 miles) in their first major test runs on the Speedway using the new hybrid power plant.

2024 Pole winner Scott McLaughlin had the hottest lap at 232.686 mph, with the extra boost allowed for qualifying. In race trim, the fastest driver was defending national champion Alex Palou, who was about ten miles an hour slower.

Takuma Sato, who has won the 500 twice, was second fastest to McLaughlin in the boosted runs at 232.565. But he crashed shortly afterwards and sat out the rest of the test day.

The day also ended badly for NASCAR star Kyle Larson, who is back for his second attempt at running “the double”—the 500 in the afternoon and the Charlotte 600 that night in his regular NASCAR ride. He crashed his car, too, ending his test session.

The hybrid engine debuted last year after the 500 so the test provided drivers with their first experience on the track, and at racing speeds. The added 100 pounds or so that the new system puts at the rear of the car left drivers feeling their cars were more ticklish. Palou said the added weight makes cars “tougher to drive, so it’s a lot easier to see people do mistakes.”

The new power plant provides for bursts of sixty extra horsepower for a few seconds. The tests gave drivers a chance to adjust to some new handling characteristics and a chance to test when and how to use the extra surge of horsepower. But Pato O’Ward, who has had two second-place finishes in the 500 says the new power plant will make the cars “less forgiving.”

INDYCAR runs at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama this weekend, then heads to the Speedway for a road course race and two weeks after that, the 109th running of the 500.

(NASCAR)—The Big One never happed at Talladega this time, leading to the last 69 laps being run caution-free and an eyelash win by Austin Cindric, ending a 30-race winless streak.

Cindric picked up the win over Kyle Larson with a last-lap pass and hung on for a in by .022 second.  It’s the first win of the year for Penske Racing.

The race was typical for a NASCAR superspeedway contest, with 23 drivers leading at least one lap and 67 lead changes. Cindric’s win makes him the tenth different winner in the last ten races on NASCAR’s longest track (2.66 miles). But the race was uncharacteristically free of crashes.  The  yellow flag came out only twice for on-track incidents.

(Photo Credit: Rick Gevers)

 

Remember Our Place 

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When things seem they could get no worse, it is helpful to turn to music for relief.  Long before William Congreve linked music with savage breasts (I am unable to envision such things as SAVAGE breasts), the Roman poet Lucan wrote an epic poem called Parsalia that talked of someone “..whose charming voice and matchless music” moved “the savage beasts, the stones, and senseless trees.”

—beasts, not breasts in the original Latin.

I draw sustenance from a movie song that reminds me all of the hot air emanating from the Asylum on the Potomac amounts to cosmic nothingness.

So the next time you find  your gorge rising (a phrase that was a gift to the English language by William Shakespeare in Hamlet: “I could never be a doctor. Blood, vomit, open wounds—all that stuff makes my gorge rise.”), be comforted and calmed by the internationally famous Galaxy Song.

It begins with this prelude:

“Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown, and things seem hard or tough, and people are stupid, obnoxious or daft, and you feel that you’ve had quite enough.”  And it continues:

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving,

And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour;

That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,

A sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me

And all the stars that we can see

Are moving at a million miles a day.

In an outer spiral arm,

At forty-six thousand miles an  hour.

Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.

 

Our galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars

It’s 100,000 light years side to side.

It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick.

But out by us it’s just 3,000 light year wide.

We’re 30,000 light years from our glactic central point.

We go round every 200 million years

And our Galaxy is only one of millions of billions

In this amazing and expanding universe.

 

The Universe itself keeps expanding and expanding

In all of the directions it can whiz

As it can go, at the speed of light. you know..

12 million miles a minute,

and that’s the fastest speed there is.

So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure

How amazingly unlikely is your birth.

And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space

Because there’s bugger-all down here on Earth.

The famous composer/lyricist duo of Eric Idle and John Cleese have given us this musical reminder that on the cosmic scale, it doesn’t matter what idiocy comes from the stable genius. He’s really just a tiny atom in the grand scheme and it would do all of us—citizens, law firms, judges, and schools for starters—to look at him that way.

Update

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A nice guy from the telephone company was still at work well past 5 o’clock yesterday plugging in our land line.

We’d call the phone company and say, “thanks.

But we don’t have its number.

But we now have a number to the Public Service Commission, thanks to a loyal reader.

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