Category Archives: elections

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.

 

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.

 

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.

Tread Carefully

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The Missouri General Assembly convenes in a special session in a few days to consider a significant cut in the state’s income tax and other issues.

The past and the present and two seemingly unrelated situations suggest this is a time to tread carefully—-although, this being an election year, politics could take a higher priority than should be taken in considering the tax cut.

Let’s set aside politics for a few minutes and raise some concerns based on years of watching state tax policy be shaped.

Days after Governor Parson announced he was calling the legislature back to cut the income tax, President Biden announced his program to eliminate a lot of college student loan debt.  The two issues, seemingly wide apart, actually are related in this context. It will take some time to explain.

We begin with the Hancock Amendment. In 1980, Springfield burglary alarm salesman—later Congressman—Mel Hancock seized on a tax limitation movement sweeping the country and got voters to approve a change to the state constitution that tied state government income to economic growth.  If the state’s tax collections exceeded the calculated amount, the state had to send refund checks to income taxpayers.

Some of the Hancock Amendment was modeled on Michigan’s Headlee Amendment adopted two years earlier. But the timing of Hancock could not have been worse.  While Michigan’s amendment was passed during good economic times, Missouri’s Hancock Amendment went into effect during a severe economic recession considered to be the worst since World War II.

Missouri therefore established a limit that had a low bar. There are those who think the state has suffered significantly because of that.

Except for one year the Hancock Amendment has worked well.  Too well, some think, because it has encouraged state policy makers to underfund some vital state programs already hampered by Hancock’s low fiscal bar.

In 1998, the state revenues exceeded the Hancock limit, forcing the Revenue Department to issue about one-billion dollars in refund checks (averaging about forty dollars per household).

The legislature decided it did not want to repeat that. So it decided to cut taxes to keep from hitting the Hancock limit again.  Not a bad idea, except that when the national and state economies took a dive, financing of state institutions and services was severely lowered.  Had the refund program remained in effect, the economic downturn would have meant no refunds but institutions and services would have been hurt far less because the tax base would have stabilized funding.

The MOST (Missouri Science and Technology) Policy Initiative, a fiscal think tank, has recorded twenty tax cuts from 1993-2013.  The result is that Missouri is almost four-billion dollars under the revenue limit set by Hancock, according to the latest annual study done by the state auditor.

Missouri is unable to do a lot of things it could be doing because the legislature eroded the state tax base instead of issuing checks.

Now the legislature will consider an even deeper tax cut.

Nobody likes to pay taxes. But there has been cultivated in our state and nation a culture that seems to think the benefits of government—education, public safety, infrastructure, care for the sick and elderly and indigent, and other parts of our lives we take for granted—should be free.  Or, to the way of thinking of some people who don’t need those things, eliminated.

How does the Biden program to forgive billions of dollars in student loans provide a cautionary element to consideration of the Parson tax cut?

When I was in college in the previous century, I knew many people who worked their way through school. Some could do it with part-time jobs on campus or in the community. I had one friend who worked for a semester and then took classes for a semester.  I have one friend who  financed his college education by selling thousands of dollars worth of Bibles and other religious books during the summer.

But the expense of a college education today makes that kind of self-financing impossible, or almost impossible.  And here is a major reason why.

Back when my generation and the generation after us, probably, could work our way through school, the state provided for a substantial cost of higher education.  Today, the percentage is much lower.

Last year, one of Missouri’s most distinguished attorneys—who also was appointed by Governor Parson to the Coordinating Board for Higher Education—W. Dudley McCarter, noted in The Columbia Missourian, “After striving to attain this goal over the past 10 years, the state of Missouri has now succeeded in becoming the state that is at the very bottom in funding for higher education. No, it is not Mississippi, Arkansas or Alabama — it is Missouri. Over the last 10 years, state funding for higher education has increased nationwide at an average of 12.40% with some states increasing funding by over 40%. In Missouri, however, funding has decreased during that same period by 13.70% — the only state that had reduced funding. When adjusted for inflation, the decrease is actually over 26%. The national average for funding is $304 per student, with some states providing over $700 per student. In Missouri, the funding is less than $200 per student.”

The downward trend has been going on far longer than that. The internet site Ballotpedia has noted that state appropriations per full-time student dropped by 26.1% in the first decade of this century, about twice the national average.

A study done a few years ago for Missouri State University showed that, nationally, student higher education tuitions made up 30.8% of higher education revenues in 1993. By 2018, tuition was financing 46.6% of higher education costs—and the costs were higher. It was during that time that student borrowing ballooned to offset declining percentages of state and federal higher education support.

The Biden student loan forgiveness program deals with those who have debts already. It does nothing to prevent current or future students from incurring crippling student debts, because government has reduced its support for higher education.  And now, the legislature is being asked to reduce state revenues even more.

We lack the expertise to get too far into the weeds of economic nuance.  But reducing the state’s ability to meet its fiscal responsibilities in the future, whether it’s in higher education or numerous other fields is a long-term issue that must be approached with great caution.

Things are flush right now, thanks partly to inflation and the massive injection of federal Covid relief funds in the last few years.  But Missouri still is far short of its own limit on the state tax burden and still far short in funding numerous human-service needs.

It is politically popular in an election year to cut taxes. The public seldom recognizes the long-term penalties that might result.  Tomorrow’s college graduates might be among those paying a high price for today’s popular tax cut and incurring new student debt burdens.  And if a recession hits next year, as some economists keep predicting, some unfortunate results of this year’s tax cut could become painfully clear.

Governor Parson has taken a wise step in meeting with members of both parties to explain why he thinks a tax cut is appropriate today. We suspect he had an easier sell with member of his own party than he did with the other side. We expect some passionate discussion of this issue during the special session.

We also expect a cut will be enacted.  We hope, however, that we do not have a repeat of the unfortunate post-refund tax cuts of decades ago. We must be careful as we consider what we might do to ourselves, our children, and our friends.  Tread carefully.

Unprecedented

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“Unprecedented” is a word frequently heard these days in our national political discussions.  We thought it might be interesting to see what other times “unprecedented” has been applied to our Presidents.   “Unpresidented,” if you will, although it isn’t a real word.

It was unprecedented when the nation selected its first President who was not a member of an organized political party.  He also was the first President unanimously elected, a truly unprecedented feat: George Washington.

The idea that a President would never veto a bill while in office was unprecedented when John Adams did, or didn’t, do it. Adams had a lot of “not” precedents: the first President who did not own slaves; the first President who was a lawyer; the first President to lose a re-election bid and the first President who did not attend the inauguration of his successor.

Thomas Jefferson’s defeat of an incumbent President (Adams) was unprecedented. (So was the method of his election.  In those days the President and Vice-President each accumulated electoral votes.  Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, each got 73 electoral votes. Incumbent John Adams had 65 but his running mate, Charles Pinkney, only had 64.  The House of Representatives cast 36 ballots before Jefferson won 10 of the 16 state ballots. Burr had four and Maryland and Vermont delegations tied within the delegation.  All of this was unprecedented, too, of course.)

James Madison took the unprecedented step of asking Congress for a declaration of war.

The election of Senator James Monroe to the presidency was unprecedented.

John Quincy Adams’ election was unprecedented because he was the first President who lost the popular vote.  (None of the candidates got a majority of the electoral vote, throwing the election into the House of Representatives under the 12th Amendment. Thirteen state delegations favored Adams, seven favored Andrew Jackson and four favored William H. Crawford.)

Andrew Jackson’s administration was the first administration to pay off the entire national debt.

Martin Van Buren’s presidency was unprecedented because he was the first President who was born an American citizen (all of his predecessors had been born as British subjects).

The death of William Henry Harrisons while in office was unprecedented.

The House of Representatives took an unprecedented vote to impeach President John Tyler.  It failed.

James K. Polk took the unprecedented step of refusing to seek a second term.

Zachary Taylor had never held a public office before becoming President, an unprecedented event.

Millard Fillmore took the unprecedented step of installing a kitchen stove in the White House.

His successor, Franklin Pierce, took the unprecedented step of installing central heating in the White House.

James Buchanan was our first bachelor president. Historians debate whether he was gay.

No president had been murdered until John Wilkes Booth took the unprecedented step with Abraham Lincoln, who is the only president to hold a United States patent.

The House of Representatives held a successful unprecedented impeachment vote against Andrew Johnson.  The Senate held an unprecedented trial and failed to convict him.

U. S.  Grant vetoed more than fifty bills, an unprecedented number.

It was unprecedented in modern election history when Rutherford B. Hayes won the electoral vote but not the popular vote.

James Garfield was an unprecedented President because he was left-handed or ambidextrous.

Chester Arthur took the unprecedented step of having an elevator installed in the White House.

Grover Cleveland set several precedents—the first President married in the White House; the first to have a child while President, and the first President to veto more than 100 bills.

Benjamin Harrison set a precedent by being the first President to have his voice recorded.

William McKinley was the first president to ride in an automobile.

Teddy Roosevelt set a precedent by becoming the first president to ride an airplane. (He got aboard a Wright Brothers airplane piloted by Arch Hoxsey and flew for about four minutes at Kinloch Field in St. Louis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaFulqGGkwk). He also took an unprecedented trip on a submarine.

The first president to throw out the first ceremonial pitch of the baseball season: William Howard Taft.

The first president to hold regular news briefings was Woodrow Wilson. He also took the unprecedented stop of appointing a Jew to the U.S. Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis.

Warren G. Harding learned of his election in an unprecedented way—he heard about it on the radio.

In 1927 the Lakota Sioux tribe took the unprecedented step of adopting a U.S. President as a member of the Lakota nation. Calvin Coolidge.

Herbert Hoover took the unprecedented step of having a telephone installed on his desk.

Franklin D. Roosevelt set a precedent by serving more than two terms. Among his other precedents—the first to fly across the Atlantic and the first to establish 100 days as the first benchmark for accomplishments in office.

The Secret Service set a precedent when it made Harry Truman the first President to have a code name (General). Television set a precedent by televising his 1949 inauguration.

Television set a precedent when it gave one of its Emmy Awards to President Eisenhower who was the first President to appear on color television.

First President who was a Catholic: John F. Kennedy. He also set a precedent by being the first former Boy Scout elected to the office.

The first President to be inaugurated on an airplane was Lyndon Johnson. He also set precedents by appointing the first African-American to the U.S. Supreme Court and appointing the first African-American to serve in a cabinet position

Richard Nixon set a precedent when he attended a National Football League game. Also: First President o resign.

First President never elected to the office or to the office of Vice-President: Gerald Ford.

Jimmy Carter broke precedent when he went by a nickname instead of the formal James E. Carter Jr.  As we write this, he moves into unprecedented territory by living longer than 97 years and being married for more than 75 of them.

Ronald Reagan set a precedent when he was re-elected, the first President re-elected older than 70 (73 at the time). He also set a precedent by nominating a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

George H. W. Bush set a precedent when he became the first President to pardon a Thanksgiving turkey.

First President who was a Rhodes Scholar, to have an official White House website, and to perform at a jazz festival (saxophone): Bill Clinton

First President to achieve a 90% approval rating in modern polling: George W. Bush.

America set a precedent by electing African-American Barack Obama, who was the first president born outside the 48 continental United States (Hawaii) and who was the first to endorse same-sex marriage.

First President with no prior public service experience, first to be impeached twice, first president to never see an approval rating above 50%, first president to refuse to publicly acknowledge re-election defeat: Donald Trump.

Joe Biden has set a precedent by being in office past his 77th birthday. He’s the first President to get more than 80-million votes.

First President to be indicted by a grand jury?  The first President to be brought to trial on criminal charges?  The first President to wear a prison uniform?  These are unprecedented possibilities that many hope never come to pass while many others hope come true.

That’s because we are living in unprecedented times.

 

Unfinished

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Eric Greitens has lost his Senate bid and a lot of Republicans are reported to be glad that his populist appeal finally has worn out. His opponents and news reports, and his own commercials, made it clear there was not a “new” Greitens who had changed from the scandal-plagued collapse of his career as governor and rising Republican star.

Is he finished politically now?  Will we never see his name on a ballot again?  Will we never again see a Greitens with a gun political commercial?

In politics it is advisable to use the word “never” with care.  Case in point: November 7, 1962.

Richard Nixon, who lost the 1960 presidential race to John Kennedy, challenged incumbent California Governor Pat Brown’s re-election two years later. He had lost the day before. And on November 7, in a press conference, Nixon blamed the press for his defeat and declared that reporters would miss him because, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”   The general consensus among the political punditry was that Nixon’s political career was over. We know how that turned out.

That brings us to another story—

Lucy Mercer Ruthefurd, the mistress of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, told her friend, artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff in 1943 that she should paint a portrait of her lover because, “He has such a remarkable face. There is no painting of him that gives his true expression.”

It was not until April, 1945 that Ruthefurd was able to arrange a two-day sitting by the President for his portrait.

About noon on April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt sat for the official portrait. As Shoumatoff was working her watercolor and Roosevelt was having lunch, he complained, “I have a terrific pain I the back of my head,” and slumped in his chair, unconscious. He died that afternoon from a stroke.

Shoumatoff never finished that portrait.

The political portrait of Eric Greitens remains incomplete after this defeat. He’s only 48.  Nixon was 49 when he held his “last” press conference.

For now, however, “never” might be too soon for Eric Greitens to think he has a political future in Missouri.

Recycle this sign?

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Saw this sign on the internet a few days ago:

There are many who harbor this sentiment as we go into the 2022 midterm elections and anticipate the heat and smoke of 2024.  Sad to say, too many of those we voters have put in positions of responsibility who are more interested in staying in positions of power have left too many voters feeling as this property owner felt six years ago.

The sign carries a message of hopelessness.  The present political climate encourages that feeling.

The sign is a message of self-pity at a time when self-pity cannot be allowed.

This sign could be seen, insead, a message of opportunity. A challenge.

The proper response lies within those who think a yard sign such as this is all they can do.

Because it isn’t

Channelled, controlled anger can be a powerful force.  Just make sure it’s directed at eliminating those who would leave us believing this sign is all we can do.  Just make sure the mind overrules the gut in considering the people who want our votes.

And maybe a scattered few will realize they are better than those who have created this climate and they will be replaced by those who represent our better selves.

Lightbulbs and voters have one big thing in common.  Both can be unscrewed.

 

Who is This Guy?

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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.

Stay tuned.

(Photo Credit: Twitter)

It’s Not Over   

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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.”

The Great White Hunter 

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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.