A strong Republican citizen asked me the other day, “What do you know about John Wood?” And at the end of our discussion, he made an interesting suggestion about him.
John Wood is running for Roy Blunt’s Senate seat as an Independent. It’s far too late for him to file as a Republican but he’s the kind of moderate Republican that former Senator John Danforth has been hoping would give GOP voters an alternative to the crowd of candidates that Danforth considers so closely tied to ex-President Trump that the GOP could lose that seat in November.
My friend thinks Wood would pull votes away from candidates of both parties but would hurt the Republican nominee the most, especially if it’s Eric Greitens.
Here’s a thumbnail description of John Wood.
(This entire discussion becomes academic if he cannot gather 10-thousand signatures of Missouri voters and present them to the Secretary of State by the close of business on August 1. Barely meeting the minimum might say something about his candidacy. Getting thousands more than necessary might say something, too.)
He’s a 52-year old lawyer and is the latest product of the “Danforth incubator.” John Danforth used his election as Missouri Attorney General in 1968 to begin cultivating bright and young Republican assistants whose success in statewide office broke the Democratic hold on Missouri politics and produced the Republican control. Before he was a lawyer, he worked for Danforth. He clerked for U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who had been an Assistant Attorney General under Danforth. He also has worked at the United States Court of Appeals.
President George W. Bush appointed him the federal prosecutor for western Missouri in 2007. He served into 2009. After leaving that job he was chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. When John Ashcroft was United States Attorney General, Wood was the deputy associate general counsel in that office. He also filled that job in the Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget.
For a time he was the Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel for the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. He joined the January 6th Committee as a senior investigator at the invitation of Representative Liz Cheney.
He calls himself “a lifelong Republican” who has told the Post-Dispatch he is not interested in being part of “a race to the bottom” and an effort “to see who can be the most divisive and the most extreme.”
He thinks Greitens will win the Republican primary on August 2 but he thinks he can win in November behind “a coalition of common-sense voters,” most particularly Republicans who won’t back Greitens as well as moderate and conservative Democrats—and independents, of course.
We won’t delve into his positions on issues in this entry except to say they are distinctly mainline Republican. He has said he would support Mitch McConnell remaining leader of the party in the Senate and that he wants to be part of a “governing coalition,” an indication that he might work better across the aisle than many other Republicans (or Democrats) in Washington.
He says he’s not a spoiler, that he’s running to win.
Simply put, he’s a wild card in a race that needs one. He’ll have Danforth money and muscle behind him. But it doesn’t take much searching to realize that John Danforth doesn’t set the philosophical tone for the party that he once did.
All of that might be true, maintains my friend. However—-
Is he really running to gain statewide name recognition so that he can challenge Josh Hawley in 2024? After all, Danforth says supporting Hawley four years ago was the biggest political mistake he’s ever made.
John Wesley had a birthday last week. He would have been 219 years old.
He was the founder of the Methodist Church.
Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” commemorated his birth by passing along “John Wesley’s Rule,” noting that there’s no evidence he actually wrote it. But it’s a good thing to remember as we breathe the increasingly toxic political air that is being generated in these times.
You might want to print it out and post it in several places in your home.
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.
Sounds like a good platform for a candidate. A candidate adopting this standard as part of the campaign platform could certainly stand out in today’s political climate. Certainly wouldn’t hurt to see somebody try it.
(SRX)—Three races, three winners for the Superstar Racing Experience, which brings NASCAR and INDYCAR competitors together in just two weeks on the dirt track at Pevely. Series points leader Ryan Newman picked up his first win on the pavement at Stafford, CT during the weekend.
The point standings show four INDYCAR drivers and five NASCAR drivers in the top ten. Just behind Newman is series co-creator Tony Stewart, who was an INDYCAR champion before moving to NASCAR—the only driver to record that achievement.
Newman got past pole-sitter Marco Andretti after a competition caution with ten laps to go to win the third heat. Stewart was third with Bobby Labonte fourth and Hailie Deegan—a young woman from the NASCAR truck series—fifth.
The series races at Nashville next weekend before moving to Ken Schrader’s Federated Auto Parts Raceway near Pevely on the 16th, then wrapping up the season at Sharon Speedway in Ohio, owned by former NASCAR competitor Dave Blaney, father of current Cup driver Ryan Blaney.
(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick has won his first NASCAR Cup race in a fierce battle with Chase Elliott at Road America. Elliott had a narrow lead after the final pit stop with 18 laps left but Reddick got past Elliott two laps later and pulled away to win by 3.3 seconds. Kyle Larson was third, 21 seconds back.
Reddick is the fifth first-time winner this year and the 13th Cup driver to make it to victory lane. His win means there are only three playoff spots left to fill in the next seven races. His victory pushed former champion Keven Harvick out of the top sixteen in standings, endangering Harvick’s chances of making the playoffs. Harvick is tenth in points but fourth among non-winners.
The race is the third road course race of the year. Each has produced a first-time Cup career victory—Clay Chastain at Circuit of the Americas and Daniel Suarez at Sonoma.
(INDYCAR)—This one was for mom and dad.
Scott McLaughlin has on his second INDYCAR race of the season but it’s the first time his parents have seen him win since he moved from the Australian Supercar series two and a half years ago. They came to the United States in May to watch him run the Indianapolis 500, the first time they had seen him since he came to the Northern Hemisphere.
McLaughlin had to hold off defending series champion Alex Palou for the last 17 laps and got to the finish line about a half-second before Palou. The best drive of the day, however, was by Will Power, who started 21st, spun on the first lap and recovered from the end of the field to snag third place.
Pole sitter Pato O’Ward led the first 28 laps before his car started losing power and quit entirely while coming out of the pits on the 54th of 80 laps.
The race was a disaster for the Andretti team and confrontations between teammates Romain Grosjean and Alexander Rossi resulted in a team meeting called quickly after the race. Rossi, on the inside, ran Grosjean off the track by going wide on a turn and one lap later drove him straight off the course on another turn. Grosjean called Rossi “an idiot” after the race before a team employee took him away from a television interview for the meeting.
Earlier in the race, Grosjean pushed teammate Colton Herta off the track and Rossi tangled with another Andretti teammate, Devlin DeFrancesco. The four Andretti drivers finished 15th to 21st.
(FORMULA 1)—The Grand Prix of Britain started with a frightening crash and ended with a first-time winner.
Ferrari’s Carolos Sainz got the win in his 150th F1 start. Lewis Hamilton, who had his best finish of the year, in third, called the race “Formula One at its best.” Sainz is only the second Spanish driver to win in the long history of Formula One. Two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso was the first.
The first lap was hardly racing at its best. It was, in fact, racing at its scariest. The only Chinese driver to ever compete in F1, Guanyu Zhou, in an Alfa, got upside down on the start after a bump from Mercedes driver George Russell as a crowded field headed to the first turn. His car skidded off the track, through a gravel area, and flipped over the SAFER barrier into a catch fence in front of dozens of fans. Several other cars were damaged in collisions in the melee and the race was stopped until rescue teams could get Zhou out of his car and onto a stretcher.
He later sent a message saying he was fine but gratified that Formula 1 had begun using a “halo” cockpit protection system that he thought saved his life. Doctors say he’s cleared to drive in the next race in the series.
The red flag at the start of the race might have prevented an even more tragic event seconds later as the cars roared down a straightaway. Instead, they were going slowly enough to avoid a series of climate protestors reportedly from Just Stop Oil who had gotten onto the circuit and sat down on the track. Police arrested five men and two women.
(Photo credits: Newman at Indianapolis 2019, Rick Gevers; Reddick and McLaughlin at WWTR, Bob Priddy)
This is a day of eloquent words. The celebration of that eloquence is overshadowed by the festival this day has become.
We’re not talking only about the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress on this day (but not signed by the 56 delegates for some time), but for the eloquence of a speech by a special man before thousands of admirers on this date.
This is the day in 1939 that Lou Gehrig, one of the greatest players and greatest people to play baseball, said goodbye—with words of courage and gratitude before a crowd of almost 62,000 people in Yankee Stadium who had come for baseball games but mostly to pay tribute to Lou Gehrig.
The words were spoken a little more than a month after a consequential trip to Missouri.
The most memorable line came at the beginning, not the end—as is the case with the Declaration’s most famous line.
“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
“Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.
“When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift – that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies – that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter – that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body – it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed – that’s the finest I know.
“So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”
As far as the trip to Missouri—
Gehrig had sensed something was wrong when he hit “only” .295 in the 1928 season with 29 home runs and 114 runs batted in—the kind of season most of today’s major leaguers would love to have. But it lowered his lifetime batting average to .340 and left him 287 hits short of becoming the seventh player with 3,000 hits, an achievement he could have expected to reach in 1939 under normal circumstances. It also left him seven short of 500 home runs and six short of 2000 runs batted in, both statistics he would have achieved in ’38 if he had had a normal year.
He was troubled at the start of the 1939 season by the fact that he was only four for fourteen in the World Series, all of the hits being singles, and going four-for-28—again, all singles—to start the year. He didn’t hit a home run during spring training and his coordination in the field was off. He played his last major league game on April 30, then told manager Joe McCarthy he was benching himself after 2,130 straight games.
But there would be one more game. Gehrig was still the Yankees’ captain, often the man who took the lineup card to the home plate umpire at the start of the game, as he did during a series in June against the St. Louis Browns. It was there that Gehrig told reporters he was going to the Mayo Clinic soon for some tests but expected to return to the playing field during the summer. “I can’t help believing there’s something wrong with me,” he told them. “It’s not conceivable that I could go to pieces so suddenly. I feel fine, feel strong, and have the urge to play…I’d like to play some more and I want somebody to tell me what’s wrong. Usually a fellow slows up gradually.” But this year, he said, “Without warning…I’ve apparently collapsed.”
After wrapping up the series with the Browns, the Yankees went to Kansas City for an exhibition game against their best minor league team, the Kansas City Blues, team that matched rising Yankee star Joe DiMaggio against brother Vince, who played the same position for the Blues against the Blues’ up and coming double play duo of shortstop and future Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto and second-baseman Jerry Priddy, who combined that year for 130 double plays, a league record. They were called up by the Yankees in ’41.
Lou Gehrig played his last game on June 11, 1939 in Kansas City. He played in great pain, but played errorless ball at first base. His last at-bat was in the third inning. He grounded out to Priddy.
While the rest of the team took a train to Cleveland for a series there, Gehrig and his wife, Eleanor (in this AP photo from 1936), flew to Rochester for tests on the 13th that she had arranged. Six days later, the clinic’s Dr. Harold C. Habein issued a “Two whom it may concern” letter telling Gehrig he had been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, an illness that “involves the motor pathways and cells of the central nervous system and in lay terms is known as a form of chronic poliomyelitis—infantile paralysis.”
The letter concluded, “The nature of this trouble makes it such that Mr. Gehrig will be unable to continue his active participation as a baseball player inasmuch as it is advisable that he conserve his muscular energy. He could, however, continue in some executive capacity.”
Gehrig took the letter to manage Joe McCarthy and team president Ed Barrow on the 21st. They released the information to the media that day and announced that July 4th had been set aside for Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at the stadium.
Gehrig admitted he was shocked by the findings. He told New York sportswriters, “Mrs. Gehrig and I are fully resolved to face the situation calmly” and he called the trip to the Mayo Clinic “the best move I ever made.” But he didn’t ignore the reality of his situation. “My friends tell me not to worry. They slap me on the back and say, ‘Don’t worry, Lou. Everything is going to be all right.’ But how can I help worrying.”
He was honored during a forty-minute ceremony held between games of a doubleheader against the Washington Senators. There were a lot of gifts including a fruit bowl and two candlesticks from the New York Giants. The one that might have had the most meaning was a 21-inch silver trophy from his 1939 teammates, their names and a poem by New York sportswriter John Kieran engraved on it.
To LOU GEHRIG
We’ve been to the wars together;
We took our foes as they came:
And always you were the leader,
And ever you played the game.
Idol of cheering millions:
Records are yours by sheaves:
Iron of frame they hailed you,
Decked you with laurel leaves.
But higher than that we hold you,
We who have known you best;
Knowing the way you came through
Every human test.
Let this be a silent token
Of lasting friendship’s gleam
And all that we’ve left unspoken.
Your Pals of the Yankee Team.
When Gehrig walked back to the dugout that day, the only one of the many gifts he took with him was that trophy.
Kieran said his poem was a “feeble interpretation” of how the players felt about Gehrig, who was his neighbor in the suburb of Riverdale, New York. Kieren often visited Gehrig as his health declined. One day, Kieran later related, Gehrig pointed to the trophy and said, “Some time when I get—well, sometimes I have that handed to me—and I read it—and I believe it—and I feel pretty good”
Lou Gehrig died, only 37 years old, On June 2, 1941. Six months later, the Baseball Writers Association of America voted unanimously to ignore the traditional waiting period for admission to the Hall of Fame and unanimously elected him.
When Eleanor Gehrig died in 1984 she donated that trophy to the Hall of Fame. It and other Gehrig memorabilia are on display in Cooperstown.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. There still is no cure for it. Nor is there an effective treatment to stop it or reverse its progression.
July 4th. A day we normally observe eloquent words. Perhaps a few of us today will remember, too, words not only of eloquence but of courage in the face of a life to come and gratitude for the life that had been.
Regardless of your feeling about the U. S. Supreme Court’s abortion ruling last week, here’s something to remember:
It’s not the final word.
It’s not the final word any more than the 1973 ruling in Roe was the final word. It just turns the tables on the argument. Abortion opponents have spent the last fifty years chipping away at the ruling and looking for the right legal lever to overturn the whole thing. Dozens, probably hundreds, of state laws (somebody might add up all of the ones in Missouri) have attacked the issue only to be thrown out at some level of the court system. This one finally worked.
The ruling obviously does not end here. The anti-abortion element of American society is on the defensive for the first time in almost a half-century. We will be interested to see if a pro-choice population that has watched as pro-life elements have attacked Roe will be galvanized into activism.
It is not generally a good idea to poke a dozing Tiger with a stick.
Survey after survey has indicated a general approval of Choice by Americans. The Gallup organization in early June reported, “A steady 58% majority believe that the…ruling…should stand while 35% want it to be reversed. These sentiments are essentially unchanged since 2019.”
The wording on Gallup’s poll question has changed somewhat through the years but, “Dating back to 1989, support for reversing the decision has averaged 32%, while opposition has averaged 59%.”
In the most recent poll, the question focused on the impact of an overturn and whether respondents favored letting states set their own standards. That survey, run last month, showed 63% of respondents thought it would be a “bad thing” to let states set their own policies. Those who said it will be a “good thing” were at 32%.
There has been no doubt this issue has been a partisan thing for a long time. In the most recent Gallup survey, 80% of Democrats and 62% of Independents favored the status quo. Among republicans, 58% favored what the court ultimately has decided. Only 34% of independents and 15% of Democrats favored reversal.
But the U.S. Supreme Court is not ruled by polls although its makeup might be determined by people whose political positions ARE ruled by polls.
Catholic voters, for example.
A Pew Research Center 2019 survey found 56% of Catholics felt abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Forty-two percent disagreed. The 56% is close to the 60% of non-evangelical Protestants and 64% of Black Protestants who supported legal abortion. In one of the fastest-growing demographics—people who are not religiously affiliated—83% told pollsters that abortions should be legal in all or almost all cases.
Writing in America, the Jesuit Review in 2018, Patrick T. Brown, a former government relations staffer for Catholic Charities USA, said, “Since 1973, no institution in the United States has been more firmly committed to protecting the unborn than the Catholic Church. Yet Catholics are just as likely to procure an abortion as other U.S. women. Why?
“According to the latest numbers from the Guttmacher Institute, 24 percent of women who procure abortions identify as Catholic, almost the same as 22 percent of all U.S. women who called themselves Catholic in a 2014 survey by Pew Research Center. In the same sources, evangelical Protestants made up 27 percent of all women in the United States but only 13 percent of those who underwent abortions, revealing a greater reluctance toward choosing abortion, a greater reluctance toward revealing their religion on a survey or both.”
Here’s one thing you won’t hear: Republicans who are critical of “activist” judges when discussing this ruling. You won’t hear Republicans railing against “legislating from the bench” either.
Again, this ruling tends to reverse the table.
There are fears this ruling is just the beginning of court-established national policies on contraception, LGTBQ+ rights, and gay marriage being dismantled and becoming matters of states’ rights. Roe does not mean the court’s rulings on those issues automatically will be part of the Right’s version of a cancel culture but those who want them reversed should ponder how hard they want to poke those Tigers and what the reaction will be when they have poked too hard.
This ruling is certain to become a significant election issue in November when we will learn if it and reactions to findings of the January 6 Committee as well as fears of the present court’s future actions will produce less of a Red Wave than many on the Right expect.
Pro-life interests have prevailed.
For now.
But a younger generation born and raised in an era of birth control, abortion, and gender recognition in its various forms might be maturing with different outlooks.
In times such as these and decision such as this, we often return to former New York Governor Al Smith, a Catholic who ran for President in 1928, a time when there was a lot of “anti” attitudes in our nation. Many think Smith’s greatest liability in the election was his religion. He warned:
“It is a confession of the weakness of our own faith in the righteousness of our cause when we attempt to suppress by law those who do not agree with us.”
(SRX)—Drivers in the six-race made-for-TV Superstar Racing Experience Series have given Missouri racing fans an energetic preview of what to expect in three weeks when they race at a local track a few miles south of St. Louis.
Series co-founder Tony Stewart was steaming after the second heat of the weekend race at South Boston, Virginia and told his fellow drivers “Uncle Tony” was “about ready to get a dose of it that they don’t want…I know every dirty trick and got it in my bag…I’m done playing nice with everybody…Anybody who touches me, I’m touching back times five.”
Trans-Am racer Ernie Francis Jr., set off Stewart by bumping him to the inside as both were trying to avoid a spinning Paul Tracy in the second heat. But there was plenty of other bumping and banging with INDYCAR driver Ryan Hunter-Reay and Tracy bumping each other into the wall and Michael Waltrip getting into it with RHR in another bumping incident. Waltrip and Tracy couldn’t finish the race.
In the final, Stewart bumped leader Marco Andretti several times before getting past him for the win. Andretti later spun out of contention while racing against runner-up Greg Biffle.
Stewart said after the race it’s time for a “dad talk” with the other drivers who have taken some bad habits from their regular series’ to the SRX short-track races. Among other concerns for him is the limited number of cars available for the remaining four races. About half of the cars need significant repairs before they can be shipped out Wednesday for the next race in Stafford Connecticut. The cars are identically prepared for each race.
The SRX show comes to Missouri on July 16th with a race at the I-55 Speedway at Pevely. The track is owned by NASCAR veteran Ken Schrader who will be the “guest” driver for the night.
(NASCAR)—Chase Elliott’s long day’s journey into the Nashville night has given him his second win of the year and boosted his points lead over Ross Chastain.
Elliott had to wait out two interruptions because of lightning near the track—the second delay stretching to more than two hours because heavy rain was included—before speeding into the lead with 39 laps to go and then holding off Kurt Busch by a half-second.
He joins Ross Chastain, Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin and William Byron as two-time winners this year. Elliott stayed out on old tires during the last caution period with seven laps to go. Several challengers gambled that pitting for fresh tires would give them the grip to catch Elliott, but the strategy backfired when the race was restarted with only four laps left, not nearly enough time for them to catch him.
Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson, and Chastain took the rest of the top-five positions.
Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., and Kyle Busch led 250 of the 300 laps but were among those who gambled during the last caution while Elliott and Kurt Busch and eight other drivers stayed out. Hamlin, who led a race-high 114 laps, could only get back to sixth. Kyle Busch, who led 54 laps, made it back to 21st and Truex, who led 62 laps, was 22nd.
Lightning in the area stopped the race the first time for more than an hour after the 41st lap. The checkered flag didn’t fall until after 10 p.m., because of red-flag time totaling three hours, eight minutes.
(INDYCAR and F1)—INDYCAR returns to action July 3 on the Mid-Ohio road course. Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson head into the race as the championship points leader with teammates Will Power and Josef Newgarden trailing.
Formula 1 runs the British Grand Prix at Silverstone with Max Verstappen, winner of six of the nine races so far this year well ahead in points.
We’ve had several days now to hear the reactions to Eric Greitens’ commercial for hunting RINOS.
He seems to be the only one who thinks it’s funny. “Every normal person around the state of Missouri saw that is clearly a metaphor,” he is quoted as saying, a remark that is reminiscent of the story of a man who gets a call from his wife who says, “Be careful on your way to work this morning, The radio says there’s a driver going the wrong way on the highway,” and the husband replies, “One guy? There are hundreds of them!”
Greitens says the abnormal people expressing strong misgivings about his video are expressing “faux outrage.” No, Eric, in this campaign where voters have to determine who is a friend or a faux, we know who the leader of the faux brigade is.
His primary election opponents, most of them experiencing a moment of clarity instead of telling us how much they worship at the Trump Temple, are aghast.
Aghast!! Eric Greitens is still the lovable fellow who convinced voters six years ago that he knew how to be governor by firing an automatic military-style weapon with a large magazine (necessary in case the aim isn’t too good) at something that eventually exploded.
I went back and looked at that commercial last week. I think he fired ten shots before hitting the exploding target.
Perhaps showing his sensitive side in 2022, he’s carrying a shotgun instead of that military-style automatic weapon when he humorously knocks down the door of an empty house and joins his storm trooper friends amidst the smoke of a flash-bang grenade that apparently not only has scared all of the RINOS out of the house but has scared out all of the furniture, too.
This is an impressive example of the kind of leadership we need in Washington.
—somebody willing to round up a bunch of guys pretending to be soldiers of some kind to launch an attack on an empty house. And to suggest that anyone who opposes him needs to be “bagged” and there are no limits on numbers.
Vigilantes, they are. No badges. No authority. No warrant. But they’re going to protect us from Republicans in Name Only. At least RINOS as Eric the Seal defines them. If he does this to protect us from RINOS, can we expect tactical nukes in November against DEMS?
He begins the attack with a lie within the first ten seconds. “I’m Eric Greitens, Navy Seal,” he says.
No he isn’t. He’s not even in the Navy.
He WAS a Navy Seal once. He’s not now. In fact when he fell back on the Navy after quitting his state job under a giant cloud, the Navy wouldn’t let him become a Seal again. And judging from Phil Klay’s article in The New Yorker of May 17, 2018, there were good reasons. Klay wrote:
seals have traditionally embraced a culture of quiet professionalism. Part of the seal credo reads, “I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions.” In the last two weeks, I spoke to more than half a dozen current and former seals about the spectacular implosion of Greitens’s public image. Most chose not go on the record, but all expressed frustration that a peripheral and contentious figure in their community, one who served overseas but never served with seals in combat, became a public face of the seal community. Many complained to me that it tends to be those who are least representative of seal core values, such as Greitens, who end up trading on the group’s reputation and representing it in public, earning respect from American citizens but contempt from other seals.
Not only is he not a SEAL, as he identifies himself in the video, he’s not even in the Navy. Or even in the Navy Reserve. The Kansas City Star says he resigned his commission on May 1, 2021 after deciding to seek glory in the U. S. Senate alongside Josh Hawley.
When he fled from the governorship, he asked the Navy to be reinstated to active duty. The Navy, not jumping at the chance to do that, did nothing until Vice President Pence, who is admired by Greitens, put in a good word for him. The Navy decided he could come back as a reserve office and No, he could not be a Seal again. So he got a desk job of some kind while he lobbied to be assigned to Washington, D.C., to work with the National Security Council. That didn’t work either. Then he resigned.
As if all of this isn’t enough, he’s locked in a bitter dispute with his ex-wife who seemingly is accusing him of being all of the things a husband should not be.
He still has a loyal following although several people in his party, are trying to find a way to beat him in August. But anybody who thinks a person of his qualities doesn’t represent what the Republican Party is supposed to be about is probably just a RINO and they might want to duck.
There are a lot of Republicans in that primary election and it won’t take many votes to make Greitens the winner in August, especially if some D’s cross over in hopes that he’ll be the candidate easier for a Democrat to beat in November. And that scares the socks off the party he claims.
We haven’t figured out what his solutions to the nation’s problems are. Haven’t seen or heard specifics about what policies he will advocate if he’s elected. What does he think should be national policy on inflation? What would he advocate to bring down gas prices? How would he improve healthcare? How would he end the shortage of people in the workplace? How would he solve supply line problems?
Most obviously: What does he think of the gun control legislation rushed through Congress after the Uvalde school shooting (and other mass shootings before and since)? The mere fact that he saw fit to release his video in the midst of so much national anger at firearms violence shows, if nothing else, a dismaying lack of serious concern for anything outside of himself.
He’s shooting blanks on those issues. As The Kansas City Star put it bluntly a few days ago, “He’s also a coward. He’s a tough guy with a gun on TV, but ducks every debate and every legitimate press interview.”
If he wants to show us how truly committed he is to democracy and freedom more than he is committed to himself, maybe he can find a flight to Ukraine where there’s nothing faux about doors—and everything else—being knocked down.
In early August, we’ll learn if this video SEALED his fate.
” All my life, I have said (as to myself, and at times, by way of sarcastic prescription for others) that I never . . . talk . . . any . . . faster . . . than . . . my . . . mind . . . can . . . think.”
—Judge Michael Luttig. June 16, 2022 before the January 6th Committee.
Nancy and I had the same reaction as we listened to Judge Luttig’s testimony. We both recalled a routine by the comedy duo of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, Bob & Ray, in which Ray interviewed the President of the Slow Talkers of America.
Sometimes we talk too rapidly. We are so accustomed to talking rapidly, even before we have understood a question or a discussion point, ignoring the admonition from the Gospel of James: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires”
The most underrated part of speech is the pause.
—-because pauses give listeners the chance to process what we say.
As we watched, it became apparent to us that Judge Luttig realized the gravity of his appearance before the committee, and wanted to so carefully respond to questions that there could be no lack of clarity in his responses or misunderstandings of what he said. His pauses made us listen more closely.
We were drawn into his answers not only by the pauses but by the exactness of his words. And it was because his pauses caused us to listen so carefully that one line had an impact (at least to this listener) greater than all of the others. It came as the committee was discussing the erroneous advice given President Trump that history and law establish a precedent for the Vice-President to overturn a presidential election. Judge Luttig, after refuting that claim, told the committee: “I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the Vice President overturn the 2020 election on the basis of that historical precedent.”
He didn’t say that as the written transcript preserves it. Without raising his voice, the pacing of his statement carried an unmistakable power and a passion as he carefully formed his thoughts, pausing as he did so, knowing that his words became history a soon as he spoke them.*
Near the end, his carefully-delivered words carried a warning:
Today, almost two years after that fateful day in January 2021, that still Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.
In the days since his testimony an unusual thing has happened. The judge has explained why he spoke as he did. Several organizations have reported his explanation. It began with praise from a writer for Vanity Fair, Joe Hagan, who wrote on Twitter:
“I like how this guy treats every line of his testimony like he’s engraving it on a national monument. And frankly, he really *is* engraving it for history. And he seems to know it. I also respect, despite how halting he may sound, that Luttig is not setting himself up to be a mere soundbite maker. He’s speaking to history, not TV. His sobriety, his graveness, his hallowedness, is so foreign to our modern sensibilities — but that’s the point. That is the precise point.”
Judge Luttig saw what Hagan had written and responded that Hagan “almost presciently understood precisely what I was at least attempting to do…”
What you could not know, and did not know, but I will tell you now, is that I believed I had an obligation to the Select Committee and to the country, first to formulate . . . then to measure . . . and then . . . to meter out . . .every . . . single . . . word . . . that I spoke . . . , carefully . . . exactingly . . . and . . . deliberately, so that the words I spoke were pristine clear and would be heard, and therefore understood, as such.
I believed Thursday that I had that high responsibility and obligation — to myself, even if to no other. Also please bear in mind that Thursday was the first time in 68 years, to my knowledge, I had ever been on national television, let alone national television like that. And though not scared, I was concerned that I do my very best and not embarrass myself, as I think anyone who found themselves in that frightening circumstance would be.
I decided to respond to your at once astute and understanding tweet finally this afternoon, because I have been watching the tweets all day suggesting that I am recovering from a severe stroke, and my friends, out of their concern for me and my family, have been earnestly forwarding me these tweets, asking me if I am alright. Such is social media, I understand. But I profoundly believe in social media’s foundational, in fact revolutionary, value and contribution to Free Speech in our country, and for that reason I willingly accept the occasional bad that comes from social media, in return for the much more frequent good that comes from it — at least from the vastly more responsible, respectful speech on those media.
That is why, 16 years after my retirement from the Bench, even then as a very skeptical, curmudgeonly old federal judge, I created a Facebook account and then a Twitter account — slowly . . . very slowly . . . one account first . . . and then . . . followed . . . by the other. All of this said, I am not recovering from a stroke or any other malady, I promise…
I was more ready, prepared and intellectually focused (I had thought) during Thursday’s hearing than I have ever been for anything in my life. I gather my face appeared ‘too red’ for some on Twitter, betraying to them serious illness. The explanation was more innocent than that. At the last minute, I had been able during the weekend preceding my testimony to help my daughter get settled into her new home, where the temperatures were in the upper 90s, and where I was appreciatively, though unwittingly, to get just a little bit of needed suntan!
What I will say, though, is this. And I think it explains it all. All my life, I have said (as to myself, and at times, by way of sarcastic prescription for others) that I never . . . talk . . . any . . . faster . . . than . . . my . . . mind . . . can . . . think. I will proudly assure everyone on Twitter that I was riveted, laser-like as never before, on that promise to myself… beginning promptly at the hour of 1:00 pm Thursday afternoon.
What is more, as consciously as one can be aware of something subconsciously, I was…supremely conscious that, if I were chiseling words in stone that day, it was imperative that I chisel the exact words that I would want to be chiseled in stone, were I chiseling words in stone for history.
He concluded, “I can assure you that on last Thursday, June 16, I had never felt, or been, better in my life.”
Judge Luttig, in addition to contacting Politico to explain his careful presentation, shared with the political news site a reflection he wrote in February about those who were heroes on January 6. He called the piece “the most important words to him that he has ever written” and said they are the words “that he wants remembered.” You can find it at:
Writing has no pauses. We, and many others, will remember Judge Luttig not for those words he wrote in February but the words and the pauses that he gave us on June 16, 2022.
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*National Public Radio (and others, probably) has been publishing transcripts of each day’s hearings. We have edited the NPR transcript for that hearing to highlight Judge Luttig’s testimony. For the full transcript, please go to https://www.npr.org/2022/06/16/1105683634/transcript-jan-6-committee
The transcript (excerpted)
LIZ CHENEY:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Judge Luttig, thank you as well for being here with us today. You issued a very important statement earlier today, which I urge all Americans to read. And I’d like to ask you, Judge, about one of the sentences in your statement and ask if you could explain to us the significance of it. You say, had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis.
Could you elaborate on that for us, Judge?
MICHAEL LUTTIG:
Thank you, Madam Vice Chairman. That — that passage in my statement this morning referenced the — the most foundational concept in America, which is the rule of law. Thus, as I interpret your question, you are asking about that foundational truth of these United States, which we call America. The foundational truth is the rule of law.
That foundational truth is, for the United States of America, the profound truth, but it’s not merely the profound truth for the United States, it’s also the simple truth, the simple foundational truth of the American republic. Thus, in my view, the hearings being conducted by this select committee are examining that profound truth, namely the rule of law, in the United States of America.
The specific question of course before you and before the nation, not before me, is whether that foundational rule of law was supremely violated on January 6, 2021. Now, to the question specifically that you asked, Madam Vice Chair, I believe that had Vice President Pence obeyed the orders from his President and the President of the United States of America during the joint session of the Congress of the United States on January 6, 2021 and declared Donald Trump the next President of the United States, notwithstanding that then President Trump had lost the Electoral College vote as well as the popular vote in the 2020 Presidential election, that declaration of Donald Trump as the next President would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America, which in my view, and I’m only one man, would have been the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the republic.
LIZ CHENEY:
Judge Luttig, did the Trump electors in those seven states who were not certified by any state authority have any legal significance?
MICHAEL LUTTIG:
Congresswoman, there — there was no support whatsoever and either the Constitution of the United States nor the laws of the United States for the Vice President frankly ever to count alternative electoral slates from the states that had not been officially certified by the designated state official in the Electoral Count Act of 1887. I did notice in the passage from Mr. Eastman’s memorandum and I took a note on it, and correct me if I’m wrong, but he said in that passage that there was both legal authority as well as historical precedent.
I do know what Mr. Eastman was referring to when he said that there was historical precedent for doing so. He was incorrect. There was no historical precedent from the beginning of the founding in 1789 that even as mere historical precedent as distinguished from legal precedent would support the possibility of the Vice President of the United States quote, “Counting alternative electoral slates that had not been officially certified to the Congress pursuant to the Electoral Count Act of 1887.” I would be glad to explain that historical precedent if the committee wanted, but it — it would be a digression.
JOHN WOOD:
Judge Luttig, I had the incredible honor of serving as one of your law clerks. Another person who did was John Eastman. And you’ve written that Dr. Eastman’s theory that the Vice President could determine who the next President of the United States is in your words incorrect at every turn.
Could you please explain briefly your analysis?
MICHAEL LUTTIG:
It was my honor, Mr. Wood, to have you serve as my law clerk. I — I could answer that question perfectly if I had at my disposal either Mr. Eastman’s tweet or my own analytical tweet of September 21st. But I don’t. But that said, let me try to remember the analysis of — of Mr. Eastman’s analysis.
JOHN WOOD:
And — and Judge, I can read to you and to the audience I think what was a really key passage from your very insightful analysis when you wrote, “I believed that Professor Eastman was incorrect at every turn of the analysis in his January 2nd memorandum beginning with his claim that there were legitimate competing slate of electors presented from seven states.”
You’ve already addressed that issue. But your next sentence said, “Continuing to his conclusion that the Vice President could unilaterally decide not to count the votes from the seven states from which competing slates were allegedly presented.” So what was your basis for concluding that Dr. Eastman was incorrect in his conclusion that the Vice President could unilaterally decide not to count the votes from these disputed states?
MICHAEL LUTTIG:
I understand. As I previously stated in response to Congresswoman Cheney, the — there was no basis in the Constitution or laws of the United States at all for the theory espoused by Mr. Eastman at all. None. With all respect to my co-panelist, he said I believe in partial response to one of the select committee questions that the single sentence in the 12th Amendment was he thought [unartfully] written.
That single sentence is not [unartfully] written. It was pristine clear that the President of the Senate on January 6th, the incumbent Vice President of the United States, had little substantive constitutional authority if any at all. The 12th Amendment, the single sentence that Mr. Jacob refers to, says in substance that following the transmission of the certificates to the Congress of the United States and under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the archivist of the United States that the presiding officer shall open the certificates in the presence of the Congress of the United States in joint session.
It then says unmistakably not even that the Vice President himself shall count the electoral votes. It clearly says merely that the electoral count votes shall then be counted. It was the Electoral Count Act of — of 1887 that — that filled in, if you will, the simple words of — of the 12th Amendment in order to construct for the country a process for the counting of the — the — the sacred process for the counting of the electoral votes from the states that neither our original Constitution nor even the 12th Amendment had done.
The irony, if you will, is that, from its founding until 1887 in — when Congress passed the Electoral Count Act, the nation had been in considerable turmoil during at least five of its presidential elections, beginning as soon thereafter from the founding as 1800. So, it wasn’t for — almost 100 years later until the Electoral Count Act was passed.
So, that’s why, in my view, that piece of legislation is not only a work in progress for the country, but at this moment in history an important work in progress that needs to take place. That was long winded. I understand.
JOHN WOOD:
Well, Judge Luttig, at the risk of oversimplifying for the non-lawyers who are watching, is it fair to say that the 12th Amendment basically says two things happen, the vice president opens the — the certificates and the electoral votes are counted. Is it that straightforward?
MICHAEL LUTTIG:
I would not want that to be my testimony before the Congress of the United States. The language of the 12th Amendment is that simple.
JOHN WOOD:
Thank you, Judge.
PETE AGUILAR:
I appreciate that. In our investigation, the select committee has obtained evidence suggesting that Dr. Eastman never really believed his own theory. Let me explain. On the screen, you can see a draft letter to the President from October 2020. In this letter, an idea was proposed that the Vice President could determine which electors to count at the joint session of Congress.
But the person writing in blue eviscerates that argument. The person who wrote the comments in blue wrote, quote, “The 12th Amendment only says that the President of the Senate opens the ballots in the joint session. And then in the passive voice that the votes shall then be counted”. The comments in blue further state, “nowhere does it suggest that the President of the Senate gets to make the determination on his own”. Judge Luttig, does it surprise you that the author of those comments in blue was in fact John Eastman?
MICHAEL LUTTIG:
Yes, it does Congressman. But let me — watching this unfold, let me try to unpack what was at the root of what I have called the blueprint to overturn the 2020 election. And it is this.
And I had foreshadowed this answer in my earlier testimony to Congresswoman Cheney.
Mr. Eastman, from the beginning, said to the President that there was both legal as well as historical precedent for the Vice President to overturn the election.
And what we’ve heard today, I believe is — is what happened within the White House and elsewhere as all of the players, led by Mr. Eastman, got wrapped around the axle by the historical evidence claim by Mr. Eastman. Let me explain very simply, this is what I said would require a digression, that I would be glad to undertake if you wished, in short, if I had been advising the Vice President of the United States on January 6th, and even if then Vice President Jefferson, and even then Vice President John Adams, and even then Vice President Richard Nixon had done exactly what the President of the United States wanted his Vice President to do, I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the Vice President overturn the 2020 election on the basis of that historical precedent.
But what this body needs to know, and now America needs to know, is that that was the centerpiece of the plan to overturn the 2020 election. It was the historical precedent in the years — and with the Vice Presidents that I named, as Congressman Raskin understands well, and the — the effort by Mr. Eastman and others was to — to drive that historical precedent up to and under that single sentence — single pristine sentence in the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Taking advantage of, if you will, what many have said is the inartful wording of that sentence in the 12th Amendment. Scholars before 2020 would have used that historical precedent to argue, not that Vice President Pence could overturn the 2020 election by accepting non-certified state electoral votes, but they would have made arguments as to some substantive, not merely procedural, authority possessed by the Vice President of the United States on — on the statutorily prescribed day for counting the Electoral College votes.
This is — this is constitutional mischief.
BENNIE THOMPSON:
The gentlelady yields back…
Judge Luttig, I want to give you an opportunity to share your thoughts on the ongoing threat. You’ve written the clear and present danger to our democracy now is that former President Donald Trump and other political allies appear prepared to seize the presidency in 2024 if Mr. Trump or one of his anointed candidates is not elected by the American people.
What do you mean by this?
MICHAEL LUTTIG:
Mr. Chairman, I’m honored beyond words by your words. I was honored on January 6th, 2021, and also honored beyond words to have been able to come to the aid of Vice President Mike Pence. I prayed that day just like the vice president prayed that day. I believe we may have prayed the — the same prayer to the same God. I prayed that same prayer with my wife this morning before I came into these hearings.
I have written, as you said, Chairman Thompson, that today, almost two years after that fateful day in January 2021, that still Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy. That’s not because of what happened on January 6th. It’s because, to this very day, the former president, his allies, and supporters pledge that, in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party presidential candidate were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020. I don’t speak those words lightly.
I would have never spoken those words ever in my life, except that that’s what the former president and his allies are telling us. As I said in that New York Times op-ed, wherein I was speaking about the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the former president and his allies are executing that blueprint for 2024 in open, in plain view of the American public.
I repeat, I would have never uttered one single one of those words unless the former president and his allies were candidly and proudly speaking those exact words to America. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear here today for these proceedings.
(Pevely, Mo)—A rare opportunity for Missourians to see Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500 winners race each other comes up July 16 in Pevely, a small town south of St. Louis on I-55.
Winners of five Daytona 500s and two Indianapolis 500s will be racing in Tony Stewart’s SRX series at the Federated Auto Parts Raceway in Pevely. The field includes winners of five NASCAR championships and winners of four open-wheel championships for Indianapolis-type cars.
The Superstar Racing Experience, created by former NASCAR Champion Tony Stewart and championship crew chief Ray Evernham matches drivers from NASCAR and INDYCAR for a six-race summer series on paved and dirt oval tracks in identically-prepared cars.
Each race also includes a champion driver from the featured local track.
Scheduled to run at Pevely on July 16:
Matt Kenseth 2003 NASCAR Champion; 2009, 2012 Daytona 500 winner
Hallie Deegan, who drives in the NASCAR Truck Series
Tony Kanaan 2013 Indianapolis 500 winner; 2004 Indycar champion
Ken Schrader (guest) 1988 Talladega 500 winner; Started on pole for Daytona 500 three straight years.
Tony Stewart 2002, 2005, 2011 NASCAR champion; 1997 Indycar champion; 2005, 2007 Brickyard 400 winner;
Ryan Newman 2008 Daytona 500 winner; 2013 Brickyard 400 winner
Marco Andretti 2006 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year; 2020 Indianapolos 500 pole winner; four top-3 finishes
Bobby Labonte 2000 NASCAR champion; 2000 Brickyard 400 winner
Paul Tracy 2003 CART champion
Michael Waltrip 2001, 2003 Daytona 500 winner
Ryan Hunter-Reay 2010 Indycar Champion; 2012 Indianapolis 500 winner
Greg Biffle 2000 NASCAR truck series champion; 2002 NASCAR Busch Series champion; 2005, 2006 Southern 500 winner
Schrader, who owns the Pevely track, helped develop the cars used in the series. He raced in NASCAR’s top series for 29 years and still competes at age 67 in the ARCA series and also on local tracks throughout the country.
The SRX races are televised on Saturday nights by CBS. This year’s first race, run at steaming hot Five Flags Raceway in Sarasota, Florida, was won by four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves, who had not been scheduled to compete until sponsorship for his car came through on Friday.
.Castroneves won the second of two heat races and finished ahead of local driver Bubba Pollard—who won the first heat race—with NASCAR’s Ryan Newman taking the remaining podium spot.
The second race of the series is next Saturday night at South Boston Speedway in Virginia.
The first four races of the season will be on paved speedways. The last two races, beginning at Pevely, will be on dirt. The track at Pevely is one-third of a mile oval with nineteen-degree banked corners that usually features various classes of stock car racing. The absolute lap record on the track was set by current NASCAR champion Kyle Larson in 2020 with a lap of 9.995 seconds (119.94 mph) in a winged sprint car.
(NASCAR.INDYCAR)—Neither of the big series was in action last weekend. NASCAR is at Nashville next weekend. INDYCAR returns July 3 at the Mid-Ohio Road Course.
(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen held off Carlos Sainz in the Grand Prix of Canada, run in Montreal, to pick up his sixth win of the year and build his championship lead to an impressive 175 points. Sainz, who could close on Verstappen but not get past him, finished less than one-second back. Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, who has endured a year of struggle and pain, was third after his car—and other F1 manufacturers—got some modifications designed to reduce bounding, or “porpoising” on high-speed runs.
Photo Credits: SRX Racing; Bob Priddy (Castoneves at indianapolis 2022)
Our ex-President has been raging on his personal social media platform about the January 6th Committee hearings and their discoveries. Last Thursday, after the third hearing explored the physical danger faced by the Vice-President during the Trump-inspired riot, Trump took to his own personal platform to complain, “It is a one-sided, highly partisan Witch Hunt, the likes of which has never been seen in Congress before. Therefore, I am demanding EQUAL TIME to spell out the massive Voter Fraud & Dem Security Breach!”
Your faithful correspondent suggests the ex-President make a minor change in his characterizations of the committee. It’s a small thing but precision in language is important in times of great personal and national stress. The committee hearings do not constitute a witch hunt. Witches are females. Males are Warlocks. It would improve his credibility as an intelligent individual if he referred to the perceived attacks on him with the proper term.
It’s a Warlock Hunt.
Your faithful correspondent also agrees with the ex-President that he should be allowed equal time to respond to statements made by numerous associates and advisers and played back during the hearings.
We believe his most equal time should be spent under oath.
Before the committee.
And the committee should extend to him the privilege of speaking in an open, public, widely-broadcast hearing in which he could explain at great length his thoughts, actions, and words—unlike the way the committee has handled his associates, with closed hearings and excerpts of their testimony played in the public hearings. After all he WAS the President of the United States and he deserves that special courtesy.
He’s correct in observing that these hearings are something “which has never been seen in Congress before.” It would REALLY be something that has never been seen before if he would explain to the committee under penalty of perjury—-as so many of his associates have done—his justifications for his words and his actions or his lack of actions.
But maybe his request should be refused because—
actually, the hearings are Democracy’s equal time to lies he told at all of the rallies he held before and after the 2020 elections.
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There’s another observation we have, uh, observed in the months since those events.
Some members of Congress deny the events constituted a violent uprising or insurrection or riot or whatever. The people who came into the Capitol that day, they say, were just peaceful tourists.
We were peaceful tourists at the Capitol once when we took our children to Washington, D.C. So we know about these things.
We didn’t see any of the Congressmen who say the people on January 6 were like our family greet us at their offices, as ours did. (Our Congressman even took the children down on the House floor with him during debate that day; our son wanted to go back the next day but we told him the only way he could ever do that would be to get elected).
One of our previous Congressmen once invited us to visit him in Washington and even told us he’d take us to the House cafeteria for some of the famous bean soup that’s served there.
We didn’t see any of those Congressmen go out on the front steps of the Capitol and get their pictures taken with their peaceful constituents that day. Ours did. He even signed the picture.
We’re sure the peaceful visitors would have enjoyed seeing their representatives and senators. They probably had worked up a pretty good appetite by then, too, and might have enjoyed some bean soup.
What a bummer of a day that was for those visitors. They go to all the trouble they went to to travel to Washington, to gather at the Capitol, to make a special effort to get in to see their Congress people only to find there would be no family picture and no bean soup.
