Author Archives: bpriddy

The Appointing-est Governor—and some other election history

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Governor Mike Parson is going to have to do it again.

He’s going to have to appoint a new State Treasurer and a new Attorney General.

This time he has to appoint a new Attorney General to replace an elected Treasurer that he appointed Attorney General who now is off to Washington to become the second straight Attorney General Parson will replace.   Let’s walk through our governor’s record of appointing more statewide elected officials than any other governor.

Mike Parson ascends to the governorship with the resignation in disgrace of Eric Greitens (by the way, does anybody know where he has landed after Missourians found him significantly unfit for the Senatorship?).  Attorney General Josh Hawley, who eschewed any ambitions for immediate higher office when he became AG and then did exactly that, becomes a U. S. Senator. Former State Senator Eric Schmitt is elected State Treasurer.  Not all of these things happened at once. They accumulated over time.

Governor Mike Parson appoints outgoing State Senator Mike Kehoe to the Lieutenant Governorship.

He appoints Treasurer Schmitt to the Attorney Generalship to replace Hawley when Hawley lights out for Washington.

He appoints former House Budget Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick as the Treasurer, replacing Schmitt.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft quietly watches what’s going on, preferring to wait until 2024 when he will decide where he wants to go.

Roy Blunt decides that being the second-oldest person to serve as a U. S. Senator from Missouri does not mean he should try to become the oldest coot in Missouri Senatorial history, and announces his retirement.*

Eric Schmitt, with nothing to lose because his term as AG doesn’t run out for two more years, sees a chance for greater glory, downs a big glass of Trump Kool-Aid, and wins a race to replace our truly senior senator.

Fitzpatrick, with nothing to lose because his term as Schmitt’s successor as Treasurer, claims the last Democratic statewide office by being elected State Auditor.

As of the morning after the election, Governor Mike Parson has to appoint a new Treasurer and a new Attorney General.  Several ambitious people, knowing that incumbency will have advantages if 2024, think they could give up whatever they are doing now to fill those vacancies.

Governor Parson has until January to decide who will be the latest to get single-digit license plates and a leg up in the 2024 campaign for statewide office.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft continues to quietly watch, knowing that one of his potential opponents in the Republican Governor’s primary in 2024 is now otherwise occupied.

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Eric Schmitt will be the fifth Missouri Attorney General to become a United States Senator. He’ll be the second in a row to move from AG to Senator.  Using the Attorney General’s office as a stepping stone to federal office is a fairly recent circumstance in politics.

Tom Eagleton was the first former Attorney General to make the leap, but he did it from the Lieutenant Governor’s office where he served after being Attorney General.

John Danforth was the first to move directly from Attorney General to the Senate.  He was elected in 1976, defeating former Governor Warren Hearnes. Hearnes was chosen by a Democratic Caucus after Congressman Jerry Litton was killed on election night on his way from his Chillicothe home to a victory party in Kansas City. He had upset former Governor Hearnes and Congressman Jim Symington, who had been favored by many people to succeed his father, Senator Stuart Symington.

Some time after that, Danforth’s top lieutenant, Alex Netchvolodoff, told me that Danforth wasn’t sure he could have beaten Litton.  Danforth had voluntarily established campaign spending limits.  Litton had no qualms about spending as much as necessary and although I heard he had spent 96% of his liquidity to win the primary, he was a charismatic figure with eyes on the White House who was capable of raising huge sums of money.

John Ashcroft was the next AG to become a U.S. Senator, but he did it after serving eight years as governor.

Josh Hawley, who took office as Attorney General and said he had no plans to immediately seek higher office, did just that in 2020, as we noted earlier.

And now Eric Schmitt becomes only the fifth Missouri Attorney General in our two centuries of history to make the leap, only the third to do it directly.

*Roy Blunt will be 72 years, 11 months, and 24 days old when the new Congress begins with Eric Schmitt as his replacement.  Only Stuart Symington was older when he left the Senate. He was 75 years, six months and one day old when he departed.

He will become our seventh living former U.S. Senator. The others are John Danforth, Christopher Bond, John Ashcroft, Jean Carnahan, Jim Talent, and Claire McCaskill.

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When Eric Schmitt celebrated his victory last week he said, “We want our country back.”  Hmmm…..that’s the same thing a lot of voters thought they were doing when they reduced the Great Red Wave to a ripple.

Electing Time Travelers

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Some of the people we elected yesterday will decide how we travel through time.

This weekend we fell back from daylight savings time to standard time. Officially the change comes at 2 a.m. yesterday. There always are some folks who don’t get the message or forget the message and find themselves arriving at the end of church services instead of at the beginning, or an hour late for tee time if they worship the putter instead.

There are a lot of folks who think we should have daylight savings time year-around.  Going back to standard time will give us more daylight in the mornings but we’ll be in the dark an hour earlier in the evening. The Hill reported last week about the efforts in Congress to keep daylight time year around. It cites a poll that says, “Most Americans want to abandon the time change we endure twice a year, with polls showing as much as 63 to 75 percent of Americans supporting an end to the practice. But, even if the country does do away with the time change, the question still remains whether the U.S. should permanently adapt to Daylight Saving Time (DST) or Standard Time (ST).”

Most of the country is on daylight time eight months of the year and switches to standard time for four months. There are always some contrarians, of course. Hawaii and Arizona stay on standard time all year.  Hawaii decided the Uniform Time Act of 1967 meant nothing to a state that is so close to the equator that sunrise and sunset are about the same time all year.

Arizona has a different reason.  It doesn’t want to lose an hour of morning time when it’s cool enough for people to go outdoors in the summer.

Residents of or visitors to Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands and American Somoa don’t tinker with their clocks twice a year either.

And there’s the rub, as Hamlet says in his soliloquy.  Some folks like permanent standard time because it’s more in line with our circadian rhythms and hels stave off disease. But in March, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would make DST permanent—the Sunshine Protection Act (who thinks up these insipid names for bills?)—because of its economic benefits because more Americans would go shopping if it remains lighter in the early evening hours.

The movement to protect the sunshine has been led by Senator Marco Rubio of the Sunshine State of Florida. He says the change would reduce the risk of seasonal depression.  That strikes us as a little silly and reminds us of the time when Missouri decided to adopt DST in 1970 when some of the ladies who were regular listeners of “Missouri Party Line” on the local radio station where I worked were vitally concerned that their flowers would not get enough sunlight if we tried to “save” daylight.

The Senate has passed the bill, as we have noted. Final approval is iffy because the Lame Duck Congress has only seventeen working days left before it becomes history.  But if the House approves it, permanent DST would go into effect a year from now.

—Except in states that now operate on Standard Time. They won’t have to switch.  We recall the days before DST became more common when we had to change our watches when we crossed certain state lines.  Our annual trips from Central DST Missouri to Eastern ST Indiana in May always left us uncertain about whether to change our watches until we stopped some place with a clock and learned that CDST was the same as EST.

At least, I think that’s how it went.

Polling has found no consensus on which time should be the permanent time.

If we eliminate switching back and forth, we could be endangering our safety.  Various safety officials tell us that we should replace the batteries in our smoke and carbon monoxide detectors when we change our clocks.  To keep some battery life from being wasted, it is suggested that they be changed either when clocks are adjusted for DST or when they’re adjusted for plain ST.  That assumes the battery-changer remembers which time is the time to switch. We know of no one who marks their calendars for such events.

The article in The Hill’s series “Changing America” delves into the pros and the cons:

Sleep experts say the health benefits that could come from a permanent ST are crucial for a chronically sleep-deprived nation. In response to darkness, the body naturally produces melatonin, a hormone that helps promote sleep but is suppressed by light. Thus, having too much sunlight in the evening can actually work against a good night’s sleep. 

The status quo leads to circadian misalignment, or “social jetlag,” says Beth Malow, a professor of neurology and pediatrics and director of the Vanderbilt sleep division. Malow also authored the Sleep Research Society’s position statement advocating for a permanent ST. 

Under DST, our work and school schedules dictate our actions; while in an ideal scenario, environmental changes like lighter mornings and darker evenings would regulate sleep patterns, Malow explained in an interview with Changing America. 

“There’s a disconnect when we have to wake up early for work or school and it’s still dark outside and we want to sleep,” she said.

Light in the morning wakes humans up, provides us with energy, and sets our mood for the day. “It actually aligns us so that our body clocks are in sync with what’s going on in our environment,” Malow said.

Having more energy in the morning can also make it easier to fall asleep at night when it’s darker outside. 

Overall, ST “maximizes our morning light and minimizes light too late at night,” Malow said. 

When the body doesn’t get enough sleep, risks of developing heart disease, diabetes, and weight gain all increase.  Insufficient sleep is also linked to some forms of cancer.

Polls show younger individuals are less likely to support abolishing the clock change, largely because they’re more flexible than their older counterparts who support nixing the practice. 

But teenagers and young adults are at a higher risk of negative impacts from permanent DST, partially because they’re already primed for sleep deprivation.

“What happens when you go through puberty and you become a teenager is…your natural melatonin levels shift by about two hours, so it takes you longer to fall asleep,” said Malow. “[Teenagers] end up going to bed or being tired at 11 o’clock at night, even midnight sometimes, but they have to wake up early for school.” 

Students who wake up in darker mornings and drive to school could be at a greater risk of car accidents. The same is true for workers with early commutes and individuals in the north or on western edges of time zones who tend to experience more darkness overall.

“Sleep is really, really important to our health. And right now, what we’re doing is imposing mandatory social jetlag for eight months out of the year,” Malow said. “And we’d like to—rather than going to mandatory social jetlag for 12 months out of the year—to stop the clock and go back to Standard Time which is much more natural.” 

Despite the myriad of health benefits that come from adopting ST year-round, having more sunlight in the evenings if DST were permanently adopted is a tempting prospect for many Americans, especially those who work or attend school indoors all day.

Who got us into this mess?  The Washington Post says we can blame two guys. George Hudson, from New Zealand, wanted more daylight time in the late afternoon to collect bugs.  Britisher William Willett wanted more time to play golf late in the day.

Their idea didn’t catch on until World War I when Germany, bogged down in trench warfare with the French and the British, adopted it to save coal. England soon followed suit. It didn’t catch on in this country until 1917 when stockbrokers and industries lobbied for it. The Post says they overcame opposition from railroads that feared the time change would confuse people and led to some bad crashes.  And farmers opposed it because their day already was regulated by the sun and they saw no reasons to fiddle with the clocks.  David Prerau, who wrote Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Savings Time, told the Post dairy farmers didn’t want it because they’d have to start their milking in the dark if they wanted to ship their product out on the trains. “Plus, the sun, besides giving light, gives heat, and it drives off the dew on a lot of things that have to be harvested. And you can’t harvest things when they’re wet.”  Getting up an hour early didn’t solve that problem.

This country adopted DST in 1918 with the Standard Time Act. DST was repealed the next year and wasn’t seen again until FDR reinstated it during WWII for the same reason it was instituted in The Great War—to save fuel.

In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Law. In the 1970s we got permanent DST for a while, also an energy-saving issue because we were in the midst of an energy crisis caused by the Middle East Oil Embargo. That situation caused major inflation issues including in energy prices—at the gasoline pumps and in home heating and electric bills—to skyrocket. The great minds in Congress decided we needed permanent DST to reduce excess utility costs.  But the public didn’t like it and the experiment ended after ten months.

Then George W. Bush got the Uniform Time Act amended to change the sates when clocks were to spring ahead from April to March and we’ve had our present system since then.

Does it really work or is it just something to politicians to fiddle around with from time to time?

A 2008 Department of Energy report said the Bush change cut the national use of electricity by one-half of one percent a day.  Ten years or so later, someone analyzed more than forty papers assessing the impact of the change found that electricity use declined by about one-third of a percent because of the 2007 change.

More contemporary studies show similar small changes in behavior when DST kicks in.

One study supporting the economic advantage of permanent DST was done by JP Moran Chase six years ago.  The study looked at credit card purchases in the month after the start of DST in Los Angeles and found it increased by 9/10th of a percent.  It dropped 3.5% when DST ended.  That was good enough to recommend fulltime DST.

Another report showed robberies dropped by 7% during DST daytimes. And in the hour that gained additional sunlight, there was a 27% drop in that extra evening hour. That’s in Los Angeles.

Rubio maintains that having more daylight in the evening could mean kids would be more inclined to get their noses out of their cell phones, tablets, and computers and go outside and run around playing sports.

Maybe they could take up golf.  Or looking for bugs that proliferate in the twilight. Imagine a parent suggesting those ideas for their nimble-thumbed children.

So what’s better—having kids standing in the dark waiting for the morning school bus or riding the school bus into the darkening evening and arriving at home where the lights are all on?

The people we elected yesterday are likely to make this decision sooner or later. Let us hope they’re up to it.

 

Sports: Championships come in Twos in 2022

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Baseball Season’s done. So is NASCAR for the year.  Champions have been crowned. Changes already are coming in the dugouts and the cockpits.  And the Tigers can’t get over the hump.

The Houston Astros brought down the curtain on Major League Baseball’s 2022 season Saturday night winning the World Series from the Phillies four games to two. It is the second time the Astros have won the World Series. The first time was against the Dodgers in 2017.

(CARDINALS)—Most of the speculation focuses on who the Cardinals will pluck from the free agent market or trade for in the offseason. But it’s changes in the dugout that make the first headline.

One-time fan favorite Matt Holiday will be wearing the birds on the bat again. He’s the new bench coach for Oliver Marmol’s second season. Holliday is still young enough to play (in Wainwright years, at least).  He’s been coaching at Oklahoma State University since winding up his playing days with single seasons with the Yankees and a return to the Rockies in 2017-2018.  He spent eight years with the Redbirds during which he hit .293 and was a member of the World Series-winning team in 2011.

Dusty Blake comes aboard as pitching coach and Turner Ward is the new hitting coach. Blake will have help from Julio Rangel, who comes over from the Red Sox, and Holliday will have help from Brandon Allen, who has been a member of the Cardinals Minor League coaching staff.

Ward is a holdover as the hitting assistant. He was the hitting coach for the Dodgers for three years, the Diamondbacks for to, and the Reds for one.  Blake was a pitching strategist for the Cardinals last year after three years as the pitching coach for Duke University. Allen spent four years playing major league ball for Arizona, Oakland, and Tampa Bay before joining the Cardinals minor league staff six years ago.  Rangle was in the Yankees minor league system as a player for seven years, did a couple of years as the pitching coach for the Texas Rangers, and for the last two seasons was the Red Sox Pitching Coordinator.

Several guys are holdovers including Willie McGee and Patrick Elkins along with First Base Coach Stubby Clapp, Third Base coach Ron “Pop” Warner, and bullpen catchers Jamie Pogue and Kleininger Teran.

(ROYALS)—The Royals and new manager Matt Quatraro are waiting for some other shoes to fall before deciding who needs to be replaced on their coaching staff. The White Sox, who have lured Pedro Grifoil away from the Royals bench to be their manager reportedly are talking to some other members of the Royals coaching staff. The Royals, in turn, are thought to be talking to some coaches on the Tampa Bay Rays staff to see if they want to follow Quatraro to KC.

(TIGERS)—It was a winnable game that would have put the Missouri Tigers clearly in the postseason bowl picture.  But things went wrong, again, and they now stand at 4-6 after going their sixth straight game with only two touchdowns.

On the bright side: the defense is averaging 7.1 tackles for loss per game, the best in the conference. The Tigers are 18th nationally in total defense. They have the 11th best pass defense and 13th best third-down defense in the country.

Both sides will be bested next week when Missouri meets Tennessee, ranked fifth in the country. They close out against New Mexico State and Arkansas.  New Mexico is 3-5. Arkansas is 5-4 but plays two tough games before meeting Missouri: seventh-ranked LSU and 11-ranked Mississippi.  Missouri needs to win two of the three games to be bowl-eligible.

(CHIEFS)—Patrick Mahomes’ dash for a two-point conversion kept the Kansas City Chiefs from losing to the Tennessee Titans Monday night.  Harrison Butker, who had missed two kicks (a field goal and an extra point) drilled a field goal home in overtime to give the Chiefs a 20-17 win.

Mahomes scored the touchdown that set up the conversion and lifted his team from an eight-point deficit as the clock was running down.

Mahomes set a personal record in the game.  He needed just 105 yards passing to break Matthew Stafford’s record for the fastest quarterback to 20,000 yards passing.  He finished his 71st game going 43-68 for 446 yards, running his career total to 21,596.  It took Stafford 75 games to reach 20,000 yards.

The Chiefs are tied with the Bills for the best record in the AFC at 6-2.  The NFC has the league’s only undefeated team, the Eagles at 8-0. Minnesota is 7-1.

(NASCAR)—It’s two for the 22 in ’22.   Joey Logano has won his second NASCAR Cup, driving car number 22.  Logano didn’t need to win the last race at Phoenix to become the champion but he did, beating three other drivers who qualified to run for the championship.

Logano and teammate Ryan Blaney finished 1-2.  Logano’s championship means team owner Roger Penske has had a historic year with championships in the two major racing series in this country.  Will Power won the INDYCAR championship a few weeks ago.

Logano, who started from the pole, led 187 of the race’s 312 laps. Blaney led 109. Only three other drivers led laps during the race. Logano the first driver since Kyle Busch in 2019 to achieve multiple NASCAR championships and the first Ford driver to win two of them since David Pearson went back-to-back in 1968 and 1969.

The race was the last for Kyle Busch with Joe Gibbs racing, a sad day that turned into a grieving day when the team learned that co-owner Coy Gibbs had died in his sleep hours after watching his son, Ty, win the Xfinity championship Saturday. He was 49, the same age as his brother J.D., who died three years ago.

The race started with four drivers running for the championship.  Ross Chastain, who started farthest back, in 25th, finished third. Christopher Bell, who was threatening late in the race, was derailed by a too-lengthy pit stop and finished tenth.  Chase Elliott’s car was damaged when he and Chastain went after the same racing area. Repairs to Elliott’s car left him two laps back, in 25th.

NASCAR’s next race will be the second annual pre-season exhibition race in the Los Angeles Coliseum 88 days from today.

(INDYCAR)—RM Sotheby’s, the famous auction house, called it “the largest sale ever of open-wheel race cars ever auctioned,” last week when 237 registered bidders took part in the sale of forty race cars and racing memorabilia left over from Newman-Hass-Lanigan Racing, which competed in INDYCAR and CART from 1983-20011.  The team won eight series championships and 107 races.

The sales totaled about $6.1 million, with the 1993 Ford/Cosworth car driven by former Formula 1 Champion Nigel Mansel the year he won the INDYCAR series championship.  It brought $995,000 from McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown.A helmet worn by Mansel went for $90,000.

The other big-ticket car was a 1984 Lola T800 that Mario Andretti drove to wins at Mid-Ohio and the Meadowlands. It brought $401,000.

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INDYCAR’s most important trophy returns to its Indianapolis Motor Speedway home this week after a tour of Sweden, the home country of this year’s Indianapolis 500 winner, Marcus Ericsson.  The trophy includes the newly-installed carved image of Ericsson’s face.

Ericsson is the second driver from Sweden to win the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. Kenny Brȁck won the 500 in 1999.

The trip to Sweden is only the fourth time the big trophy has left the United States.  It toured Japan in 2017 in honor of Takuma Sato’s first 500 victory.  It was displayed at the Silver Anniversary Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in 2018 and it went to Paris the next year for the unveiling of the likeness of 2019 winner Simon Pagenaud, a native of Montmorillon, France.

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Bryan Herta, whose career was thought at times this year to be headed to Formula 1, has signed a contract extension that will keep him at Andretti Autosports through 2027.  Herta is the youngest driver ever to win an INDYCAR race, at age 18. He becomes the senior driver for Andretti at the age of 22 (that’s from point of service, not age).

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 finishes its year next weekend with the Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi.  Max Verstappen wrapped up his second straight championship last month.

(Photo Credits:  Logano—Bob Priddy; Mansell car—R. M. Sotheby’s)

Notes from a Quiet (Leafs in the Gutters) Street

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Tomorrow is election day. At least it is for the thousands of people who have not voted early.  We are two of those who have. Visited the courthouse last Wednesday.  We passed three people coming out when we arrived, and four people going in when we left.  Not sure what our numbers were but we were probably closed to numbers 1999 and 2000.

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We like early voting. No lying about being out of town.  There were times when you had to have an excuse, such as being out of town on election day, to vote absentee.  I was always tempted to vote absentee and then on election day drive outside the city limits and then come back in, thus fulfilling the statement that I would be out of town that day.  The language never says the WHOLE day.

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The first Christmas catalogues arrived before Halloween.  One of them has, among other things, t-shirts with humorous messages on them—at least humorous to some.

One of the t-shirts says, “If YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook merged, you would have Youtwitface.”

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Originalist thinking by some judges interpreting the Constitution seems to overlook a lot of things that have happened since 1791.  Upholding the purity of the Second Amendment is seen by some as allowing the use of large-capacity magazines in today’s weapons.  But the authors of the Bill of Rights lived in a time when guns fired only one bullet at a time and required several seconds to reload, prime, cock, aim, and fire again.

Where’s the National Musket Association when we need it?

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Inflation was portrayed during the recent campaign as an issue caused by one person and that can be cured by one party.  If it was that simple, we wouldn’t have inflation.

Or climate change (for those who believe in it). Or a drug problem.  Or a crime problem.

And for those who preach simple solutions—I have this rash…….

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Once again, we gave away no treats for Halloween.  We went to a movie instead.  It’s a matter of self-preservation.  We don’t want to be caught with all that chocolate left over.

We saw the latest Julia Roberts-George Clooney movie.  George was George. Julia was Julia. The popcorn was pretty good, too.

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We noticed a sign of what the movie theatre business is becoming.  The ticket booths were closed.  We bought our tickets at the concession stand.                                                    -0-

Had a doctor’s appointment earlier that day.  The nurse was dressed up as Lilo, as in Lilo and Stitch (a Disney animated sci-fi movie of a decade ago). Given what nurses deal with, we thought she should have been dressed as Stitch.

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With the end of the elections, the first round of legislative chaos is about to begin.  The offices of those defeated or who were term limited are now available for surviving incumbents to scramble to get. For the next few weeks the Capitol will look like a big used furniture emporium with furniture stacked in the hallways waiting to go to its new offices.

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Will the Missouri Tigers go bowling this year?  Sure.  The Columbia Mall has several lanes available.

 

Woke

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I’m Woke.  At least I think I am.  If it means being aware of the world around me and not being afraid to learn the world around me is something other than what I have thought it to be, I’m Woke.

Woke is a carelessly-used pejorative that has been used to blindly attack progressive views of almost any level. Not just progressive views, either.  It’s been thrown around in public and private arguments about what we should know about our history and what history our children should be taught.

It is a one-word example of today’s bumper sticker politics in which it is easier to call someone a name or disparage their ideas rather than have the courtesy or curiosity to discuss differences.  It is perceived as coming from someone with a “my way or the highway” attitude that replaces thoughtful dialogue with a one-word dismissal.

It’s childish.  Name-calling is a refuge of fools with nothing substantial to say.

A challenge to those who label others as Woke has come from a report by the United Kingdom version of the Huffington Post (HuffpostUK).

Rakie Ayola is an award-winning Welsh actress and producer born of a mother from Sierra Leone and a father from Nigeria. She is now starring in a six-part BBC series called The Pact about some friends who are tied together by a secret. On the BBC Breakfast show the other day, one of the co-hosts suggested some viewers would consider the program “a ‘woke’ version of the Welsh family.”

“If anybody wants to say that to me,” Ayola said, “what I would say first is, ‘explain what you mean by woke – and then we can have the conversation.’”

“If you can’t explain it, don’t hand me that word.

“Don’t use a word you cannot describe.

“Or maybe you know exactly what you mean, and you’re afraid to say what you mean, then let’s have that conversation.

“Not even afraid – you daren’t. Do you know what I mean.

″Sit there and tell me what you mean by ‘woke,’ and then we can talk about whether this show is woke or not.

“Then I can introduce you to a family just like this one – so are you saying they don’t exist, when they clearly do? Are you saying that they’re not allowed to exist? What do you mean by that?

“Let’s have a proper conversation. Don’t throw words around willy-nilly when you don’t know what they mean.

“If you don’t know, then please be quiet because you are incredibly boring.”

Seems to be pretty good advice.

You can watch that part of her interview at:

Rakie Ayola Has The Perfect Response To Anyone Who Uses The Word ‘Woke’ (msn.com)

She makes a good point. Those who throw the word around should be able to define it. And there is some doubt that most can.

Part of the problem with Woke is that most of us are not aware of the word’s history and the reasons for it. So let’s discuss that a little bit.

A significant part of the history of Woke is related to the Ferguson killing of Michael Brown in 2014, in fact.

New York magazine published an excellent article about the history of Woke two years ago. For most of its history, it has been a word of caution within the Black community, not a weapon of division of society in general.

https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy

White folks understanding of the history of Woke is part of the understanding of Black culture and, perhaps, in understanding it, respecting it.

Seeing other cultures and understanding how they see the dominant white cultural history of our country is a matter of respect. Unfortunately some in our political world find it more profitable to denigrate those efforts. History will prove their short term infliction of politically-advantageous pain will have been an unsuccessful bump in the road for the people our grandchildren’s grandchildren will be.

Facing our history, celebrating the noble parts and acknowledging and correcting the bad parts, can be difficult.  But we need not be afraid to do both.

A few days ago I picked up a copy of a 2015 National Book Award-winner, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, whose mother—born in Joplin—probably was part Cherokee. Early in her book, she talks of an exercise she has given her students in Native American Studies at California State University-Hayward. She asked students to draw a rough outline of the United States when it gained independence from Britain. “Invariably most draw the approximate present shape of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific,’ she writes. When she reminded students the only things that became independent in 1783 were the thirteen colonies, the students often were embarrassed. “This test reflects the seeming inevitability of US extent and power, its destiny, with an implication that the continent had previously been seen as terra nullius, a land without people…The extension of the United States from sea to shining sea was the intention and design of the country’s founders. ‘Free’ land was the magnet that attracted European settlers.”

“…In the United States, the founding and development of the Anglo-American settler-state involves a narrative about Puritan settlers who had a covenant with God to take the land.”

“Indigenous peoples were…credited with corn, beans, buckskin, log cabins, parkas, maple syrup, canoes, hundreds of place names, Thanksgiving, and even the concepts of democracy and federalism. But this idea of the gift-giving Indian helping to establish and enrich the development of the United States is an insidious smoke screen meant to obscure the facts that the very existence of the country is a result of the looting of an entire continent and its resources.”

—And the destruction of dozens of Indian nations, a truth that’s hard to accept in a country in which the cowboys always defeat the savages and the cavalry always arrives to drive them away.

The fact is that this was not “a land without people” at all.  They just weren’t the right kind of people. (Go back to our July 25th comments if you would like more background.)

The insistence by some that we are better if we see our history through the eyes of those who were enslaved or driven from their lands is too often dismissed as “Woke.”

If we are afraid to see ourselves as we really are, and as we really have been, we short-change our opportunities for what we can be.

Sports—Doing What You Have to Do

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—The Cardinals and the Royals have taken major steps for 2023, the Cardinals by locking in their All-Star third basemen through 2027 and the Royals hiring a new manager.

Arenado had an opt-out provision in his contract and after a disappointing two-and-out playoff series with the Phillies had said some things that raised doubts in fans minds that he would come back next year.  But the Cardinals sent President John Mozeliak to California for a heart-to-heart discussion and the best third baseman in baseball today.  Teammates Paul Goldschmidt and Adam Wainwright also had been telling him how much they wanted him back.   So he’s staying for the last five years and $144 million of his contract. He’s 31 and playing in his prime. He’s expected to compete with Goldschmidt for MVP honors.

The Royals have picked Tampa Bay bench coach Matt Quatraro as Mike Matheny’s replacement as manager. Quatraro finished his fifth year as bench coach this year. The Rays went 86-76 and lost both games of the wild card playoff to the Guardians. Quatraro got as high as Triple-A as a catcher, outfielder, and first baseman, then managed four years in the Tampa Bay system in Sigle-A and was Cleveland’s hitting coach in 2014.

During his five years on the Rays bench the team went 412-296 (.574), made the playoffs four times, lost the 2020 World Series, lost twice in the Division series and, this year, got knocked out in the wild card games.

Quatroro has his work cut out for him and likely will need some front office help.

He takes over a team that finished 27 games behind the Guardians, lost 97 games, and was under .500 at home. It ranked 24th in runs per game, 26th in run differential with opponents, had the 8th most strikeouts per 9 innings, ranked 27th with a team ERA of 4.70. Pitchers ranked 28th in strikeouts per nine innings and 29th in hits per nine innings.

Both the Cardinals and the Royals have some things to do in the offseason, however.

(CHIEFS)—No game this weekend but the Chiefs picked up some depth at receiver by giving the New York Giants a couple of next year’s low draft picks to get Kadarius Toney, a former number one pick of the Giants (2021). NFL observers say that he might be a significant outside threat for Kansas City—if he can stay healthy.

Now, Racing:

(NASCAR)—-Christopher Bell did what he had to do for the second elimination race in a row and Ross Chastain did what he had to do with an astonishing run through the last half of the last lap.

Bell, far down in the standings after last week’s bad-luck crash, had to win to make the final four for the season’s last race next Sunday at Phoenix. He grabbed the lead during pit stops with about 100 laps left, but dropped to sixth during the final round of stops, coming out sixth with 24 laps left on the short Martinsville track. He got past Ryan Blaney, another contender who had to win to advance to the final four, with four laps to go and held on to edge Kyle Larson at the line.

But behind the finishing gaggle, Chastain had started a desperate dash to the front.  Too far back to pass enough cars to make the playoffs, Chastain floored it, and ran full speed scraping the wall for the last two turns of the race, going 50-70 mph faster than other competitors, and nipped rival Denny Hamlin for fourth place, knocking Hamlin out of the playoffs.

https://www.nascar.com/video/franchise/nascar-cup-highlights/see-multiple-angles-of-chastains-last-lap-move-to-advance-at-martinsville/

Hamlin, who has had several run-ins with Chastain this year, came out of the last turn of the race two points ahead of Chastain in the points standings only to find himself displaced by Chastain’s mad dash.  Hamlin called the tactic “brilliant.”

Bell and Chastain, along with Chase Elliott and Joey Logano will fight for the championship next weekend in Phoenix. Whoever finishes highest gets the NASCAR Cup.  Logano and Ellott will be racing for their second championship.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen arguably has had the greatest season in Formula 1 history—and there are still two races left. Vertappen’s win in the Mexico City Grand Prix is his 14th win of the year, breaking the record held by Michael Schumacher in 2004 and tied by Sebastien Vettel in 2013.  His win gives Red Bull Racing its ninth victory in a row, tying the team record, and its 16th win in 21 races. Lewis Hamilton finished second for the second race in a row and Sergio Perez, Verstappen’s teammate, finished third, the second year in a row he has run third on his home track.

 

Giving Up Hope

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Tomorrow is the first of November.  Next weekend is the end of Daylight Savings Time for the year.

We’ve been getting cold leaf-dropping rains.

We call this season “fall” because that‘s what the leaves do.  And moods.

The baseball season will end this week.

The last NASCAR race of the year is coming up  next weekend.

It is always hard to admit—always—-that summer is gone. But when Thanksgiving is only about three weeks away and Christmas is less than 60 days in the future, the reality I have been ignoring wraps its cold arms around me and I must at last abandon hope that I will be warm for about five long, dark months.

Every year, I go around in short-sleeved shirts and feel cold because I am reluctant to admit it’s time to start wearing long-sleeved shirts and jackets.

The lightweight sweatshirt I wear to the YMCA three days a week is enough for now and the cold air against my uncovered legs makes me grateful for heated seats and a heated steering wheel in the car, both of which are operating by the time the car and I get to the stop sign up the street.

Nancy has gotten me some nice wool shirts. They’re hanging next to each other at the end of a rack in my closet.  The polo shirts are still at the front.

Not for long.  My resistance to wool shirts is weakening.  Soon, I will promote the long-sleeves to the front and the short sleeves to the back.  Soon I will remove the shorts (remember when they were called “Bermuda Shorts?” You have to be of a certain age, I think.) from the hook in the closet, and when they’ve been through the washing machine put them in a drawer—-but maybe there will be one more day to wear them. All day.

Nancy was raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Yep, I married a “Yooper.”  She likes these crisp, chill days.

Opposites attract, you know.

When people complain of the heat, I tell them, “I waited all winter for days like these.”

In a previous life, I was an indoor cat who always looked for the sun spots.

Baseball is gone. But there’s football and the Tigers have figured out how to win a game or two and the Chiefs are on a roll.  And soon there will be college basketball—a game played by people in shorts.

But then come the fallow days when our basketball team has lost its last (tournament, we hope) game. When the Super Bowl is over.  And all that is left is golf (Leon Wilson’s 1905 book was the first to call it “a good walk spoiled.”) and the NBA and the NHL, both of which—in this house—generate no heat.

The Kansas City Royals and the Texas Rangers play the first game in the Cactus League on February 25 in Surprise, Arizona. The Grapefruit League, in Florida, begins the next day in Jupiter, with the Cardinals against the Washington Nationals.

116 days from today is the first true sign of spring.  The voice of Rooney will be heard in the land once again. And hope will be restored.

-0-

Eric the Meddler

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Our Missouri Attorney General has sued China for not coming clean about COVID. He has meddled in how Pennsylvania ran its 2020 presidential election. He sued more than a dozen school districts that had decided their students were safer if they wore masks to limit COVID exposure. Now he is demanding emails from academics that he thinks are critical of him or might be teaching something he finds it politically advantageous to criticize.

Does this sound like the person whose duties are described on his own office webpage?

The Attorney General serves as the chief legal officer of the State of Missouri as mandated by our Constitution. The Attorney General is elected by Missouri voters, serves a four-year term, and is not subject to constitutional term limits.

The Attorney General’s Office represents and provides legal advice to most state agencies; defends challenges to the validity of state laws; enforces civil law, including consumer protection and environmental laws; defends the State’s interest in civil actions, including bankruptcies, workers’ compensation claims, professional licensing cases, and habeas corpus actions filed by state and federal inmates; and serves as a special prosecutor in criminal cases when appointed. In addition, the Office handles all appeals statewide from felony convictions.

The Attorney General’s Office brings and defends lawsuits on behalf of the State and prepares formal legal opinions requested by State officers, legislators, or county attorneys on issues of law. The Office represents the State in litigation at all levels ranging from a variety of administrative tribunals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Frankly, it seems our attorney general hasn’t read his own webpage lately, although he seems to be pretty loose in his interpretation of bringing and defending lawsuits on behalf of the State.

A few months ago, Schmitt’s office filed open records requests with the University of Missouri-Columbia. One demanded three years of emails seemed to target a research program to help teachers helping teachers promoting social emotional learning. The Rand Corporation says social emotional learning gives students “the skills they need to work in teams, communicate their ideas, manage their emotions — even stand up to a schoolyard bully. For anyone who has ever complained that kids these days don’t have the strength of character, the stick-to-it-iveness, of previous generations, here’s one way to better ensure they do.”  The second letter demanded four years of emails from a couple of Journalism School professors sent to the head of Politifact, a political fact-checking website.

Why is he interested in these things?  Schmitt’s office has told The Kansas City Star he’s “simply trying to get to the bottom of the fact checking process.”

—whatever the heck that means.

His latest target is Missouri State University Assistant Professor Jon Turner who reacted on Twitter after Schmitt asked parents to report “divisive” curriculum in their kid’s schools.

The Missouri Independent has reported that Turner tweeted that Schmitt used to be known as a moderate state Senator but since becoming AG, he has become “so ANTI-TEACHER I just can’t wrap my mind around the flip-flop” and he said he was working to “make sure this dangerous, hateful political jellyfish never gets elected to anything again.”

Schmitt did not take such remarks lightly.  His office fired off a letter to the university demanding all of Turner’s emails for the previous three months as “part of a fact-finding process we undertook that was looking into the practices and policies of education in our state,” as Schmitt’s spokesman put it.

Turner has told the Independent that his reseach looks at the four-day work week and other challenges facing rural schools, not something Schmitt’s office should bother Schmitt.

Turner says Schmitt’s “attempted intimidation” has just made him more concerned that Schmitt is politicizing his position.

Schmitt also has targeted MSU. Earlier his office demanded emails from various professors and documents related to a training seminar sponsored by the University called the “Facing Racism Institute.”.

The University describes the institute as “the area’s leading program for uncovering racism and understand its impact on individuals and the workplace. It says more than 600 people have attended the institute. The university says, “Racism is still a powerful force in our lives and community. The Institute challenges participants of all backgrounds to be part of an equally powerful dialogue. We provide a safe space and neutral guidance needed to help that dialogue emerge.”

Again, it appears he hasn’t read his own office’s mission statement on its web page although he takes the language about bringing lawsuits on behalf of the state rather freely.

A good friend of your correspondent, who headed the Springfield Chamber of Commerce for many years, called the Institute “the best experience that we have found to have people understand the challenges and perspectives of folks unlike themselves. It is hard to be inclusive if you don’t understand what others might feel like.”

Itt appears that Eric Schmitt is guilty of something we hear his party blasting the Democratic congress and administration for:  government overreach. Whether he has, as Turner says, politicized his office is something we’ll let you decide.

Some of those he has targeted accuse him of trying to intimidate them. Others think he’s involved in political meddling in things that are not part of his official duties (read the intalicized description of the AG’s duties again).

In truth, he’s just being political.

We covered Eric Schmitt when he was a state senator.  We found him to be a thoughtful conservative.  We watched him struggle to pass a major autism bill.  We watched as he tried to transform Lambert-St. Louis Airport into a major trade hub with China—in a time when China’s economy was booming and its geopolitical ambitions had not turned perilous.

We kidded him about his claim that he was the tallest person ever to serve in the Missouri Senate, especially after we found an old newspaper clipping indicating he might only have tied for that distinction.

He’s not that Eric Schmitt today.

Perhaps political ambition is behind it.  Perhaps his advisors have told him he has to behave as he has behaved and is behaving because that appeals to a political base ginned up by and encouraged by Donald Trump—a man who has no compunction about dragging others down to his basest level.

Too bad the old Eric Schmitt isn’t the one running to join Josh Hawley representing Missouri in the U.S Senate. He seems to have left himself behind when he crossed the street from the State Treasurer’s office in the Capitol to the Attorney General’s office in the State Supreme Court building.

A Haunting Baseball Question—and Racing

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—A lot of stick-and-ball sports fans adopt the attitude that if their team gets knocked out of the playoffs, they’ll hope the team that did it goes on to the championship.

So some Cardinals fans will be rooting for the Phillies in the World Series that starts Friday.  The Phillies, winners of only 87 games in the regular season, have run the table so far against the Cardinals, Braves and the Padres to gain the right to take on the Houston Astros, who swept the Yankees in the American League finals.   Houston won almost 20 more games in the regular season, 106, than the Phillies did.

But Cardinals fans are left to ponder, “If we had beaten the Phillies, would it be our guys in the World Series?”  The Cardinals were one of eleven teams in major league baseball this year with better records than the Phillies.  But if the Phillies need extra inspiration they need only look at the Cardinals of 2006, who finished 83-78 in the regular season and beat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. Based on winning percentages, the 2006 Cardinals are the worst teams to win it all.

Five teams with fewer than 90 regular season victories have won the World Series including last year’s Atlanta Braves that finished 88-73, one victory more than the Phillies had this year.

(KC Chiefs)—-Sometimes it seems as if the only way the Kansas City Chiefs can lose is if they beat themselves—last week’s game against the Bills, for example.  For a few minutes against the San Francisco 49ers Sunday, the trend was headed in that direction. The Chiefs spotted the 49ers ten points and then outscored them the rest of the way 44-13 with thirty points in the second half.

The Chiefs have survived a tough first half of the season to go into their break week 5-2.

(TIGERS)—After playing just well enough to lose for a month, the Missouri Tigers played just well enough to win against Vanderbilt.  The Tigers went into the game favored by a couple of touchdowns in some forecasts but needed a fourth-down stop of a Vanderbilt running back to stop a drive that appeared destined for a tying field goal attempt or a winning touchdown.

Missouri is now 3-4 and faces another tough test next weekend against 25th ranked South Carolina.

Now, for the non-stick-and-ball stuff:

(NASCAR)—Unlike other sports where playoff losers go home and pack up the gear until next year, those who lose in NASCAR’s playoffs keep playing.  And winning.

Case in point, Kyle Larson, who won both stages and the race at Homestead-Miami Speedway last weekend.  Larson led all but 68 of the 267 laps. Larson was eliminated from the playoffs earlier as the NASCAR season winds down with only two races left.

Playoff contender Ross Chastain trailed Larson across the line by 1.3 seconds followed by A. J. Almendinger, Austin Dillon, and Brad Keselowski.  Chastain was the only playoff driver in the top five. Keselowski’s finish as his first top five of the year, the first top five since becoming part owner of what is now Roush-Fenway-Keselowski racing.

Joey Logano remains the only driver guaranteed a chance at the championship.  Chastain is the second-seed with Chase Elliott and William Byron holding the top four positions. Denny Hamlin is five points below the cutline. Ryan Blaney is eighteen points back.  Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe need to win next weeks’ race at Martinsville if they are to advance to the final four who will run for the title November 5 at Phoenix.

(INDYCAR)—Two fan favorites have sewn up rides for the 2023 Indianapolis 500.

Sponsorship has been found for a fourth car to be fielded by Andretti Autosport that will give Marco Andretti his eighteenth chance to get his face on the Borg-Warner Trophy.  Andretti was second as a rookie in 2006, sat on the pole in 2020 and has four top-three finishes and eight top tens.

The winner of the 2013 Indianapolis 500, Tony Kanaan, will drive for Arrow McLaren SP team in the 2023 race, which he has said in the past will be his last 500.  He’ll drive the fourth car in the race for AMSP. Kanaan finished third last year for Chip Ganassi Racing. It will be his 22nd 500. He has five top-three finishes including his 2013 win that as the fastest Indianapolis 500 at the time; the record was later broken by Helio Castroneves in 2021.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has three races left to set a new Formula 1 record for most victories in one year.  He won his thirteenth race last weekend at the Circuit of the Americas, in the United States Grand Prix, near Austin Texas, passing Lewis Hamilton with just six laps left and won by about five seconds.

Hamilton, a seven-time F1 champion, thought he had a shot at his first win of the year and admits he’s beginning to think this will be the first time in his career that he has gone without a victory all year. He’s been racing in F1 since 2007.

The win also locks up the constructors’ championship for Red Bull Racing. It comes the day after the death of the co-founder of the Red Bull energy drink, Dietrich Mateschitz.

Awful

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A few days ago, your faithful scribe heard someone say something terrible about the future of our democracy.  All of us should be threatened by her comment.

It was when Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker had his foot in his mouth for several says on abortion and other, issues.  Conservative radio talker Dana Loesch said, “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”

In other words, the character of someone seeking public office is not important.  The candidate is seen only as a number in a game where power is the only issue.

Have we become so craven as citizens, as voters, that we don’t really care what kind of person we are putting in a position of authority over us that we will vote for someone whose only qualification seems to be that they will do whatever they are told to do regardless of what that action might mean to their constituents and to their country?

If the only thing that matters about a candidate is whether there is an R or a D after their name, we are selling ourselves out. We are putting our trust in people who owe US nothing but who will owe their handlers everything.  And in today’s political climate, too many political handlers care nothing about service to anybody but themselves.

The key word in Loesch’s assertion is “control.”   She and her ilk want to “control” you and me, not to serve us, not to look out for the best interests of the broad and diverse people of our country.

Be very afraid that the Loesch’s of this country will succeed.

Do not sell out yourself when you vote.