Category Archives: military

Monstrosity

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President Trump says he wants to build a 250-foot tall arch to celebrate this country’s 250th anniversary.  It is yet another project that wreaks of excess and of self-promotion.  Whatever its official name becomes, it’s always going to be known as the arch that Trump built. Arch deTrump, some already are calling it.

The only thing taller in the area that stretches from the Arlington National Cemetery east to the Library of Congress across from the Capitol is the Capitol itself, and by only a few feet.

Grace, beauty, and appropriateness have never been in his lexicon.  Gross, ugly, and inappropriate too often define him to an increasing number of people.  Last week, in an oval office reveal of the design for this monstrosity. CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe asked the President who the arch is for.  “Me,” he said.

The fact checkers who have built their careers on Trump’s lies had a day off on that one.

The Commission on Fine Arts refers to it as the Triumphal Arch. To be honest, the  letter “i” should replace the “h.”

The only manmade arch that we have been able to find that is bigger than this is the one on the St. Louis riverfront.

Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in Paris is almost 100 feet shorter, at 164 feet.  The Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City is only 220 feet. The Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea tops out at 197 feet.

The four-sided arch that is the Pennsylvania State Memorial at Gettysburg, honoring the 34,500 Pennsylvania soldiers who fought there, checks in at 110 feet. Not far away, the National Memorial Arch at Valley Forge honoring those who wintered there 1777-78 is sixty feet high.

The top of the Memorial Arch in Huntington, West Virginia is only 42 feet from the ground. The Camp Randall, Wisconsin arch honoring Civil War veterans from that state needs only thirty feet to dignify them. The Bushnell Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Hartford, Connecticut is but 116 feet and the Washington Square Arch that commemorates George Washington’s inauguration in New York City gets the job done in 77 feet.

“It’s going to be beautiful,” he says.  Philip Kennicott with the Washington Post offers a brutal opposing view:

It is an insult to the men and women who risk their lives to protect democracy, who have fought in wars against fascism, who have actually achieved victory rather than merely declared and celebrated it. Its symbolism is borrowed and confused, and it will block a sacred vista that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the final resting place of the Civil War dead, and veterans from every major war and conflict this country has fought.

This is a subtly that escapes people such as Trump who think symbolic as well as real sledgehammers and wrecking balls are among mankind’s greatest inventions. The arch will stand at the southern end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, interrupting the flow of history from the Lincoln Memorial to the peaceful hillside that is Arlington National Cemetery, a cemetery on land confiscated from Confederate commander Robert E. Lee as a resting place for those who defended the Union in the Civil War.

Some critics say the planned arch will obscure much of he cemetery but will frame Lee’s mansion at the top of the hill beyond. Is that intentional?  Who knows, although Trump has expressed a fondness for honoring Confederate leaders.

Trump has said it will be 250 feet high as a symbol of the nation’s 250th birthday. As of last week, however, it is only colored drawings.  The first shovel of dirt for the project has not yet been turned and Independence Day is less than 90 days away.  As one critic put it, “If it isn’t going to be done this year, it really has nothing to do with the 250th Anniversary, and as Trump said, it’s for him.”.

Kennecott concludes, “It perverts a fundamentally American idea about war. We have fought them, we have died in them, and we have brought war to too many people who did not deserve our meddling with their politics and sovereignty.

“But no matter the cause, no matter how great the victory, we fundamentally honor sacrifice and service. We celebrate the end of wars and the achievement of peace, not victory. Roman victory arches are lovely to look at, but they were primarily political statements, assertions of personal power and propaganda by ambitious men”.

Caesar Trumpus wants his arch.

If it can’t be finished by July 4, maybe he can complete it in time to celebrate his glorious victory over Iran.

It’s Time to Order Another Obelisk 

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The Missouri Veterans Memorial at the Capitol is a quiet place,  of a slow-moving cascade of water flowing into a reflecting pool around which people can ponder how much is lost to war.

And how much will be.

To the east of the pool is a shaded walk that takes visitors past nine memorial obelisks remembering the nine wars in which Missourians have fought since statehood in 1821—Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and finally the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, less than a year after the ninth obelisk was dedicated—after an end date of that long war was determined—it is time to plan for a tenth one.

As this is written, no Missourian has been killed in Trump’s War—-which is not what it will be called in the black granite when the tenth obelisk is installed.  As of now, it probably will say “Iran War,” but it’s too early to carve anything into stone because we don’t know what the scope of this conflict will finally be.

Nor, apparently, does the man who ordered it. He started the war and now he is whining that NATO is giving him no help.

NATO, the people he has spent the last several years insulting and threatening, seems content to letting President Trump stew in his own juice.  NATO is more about protecting Ukraine (remember Ukraine, Mr, President?) and itself than helping President Trump.

The Coalition of the Willing has become the Coalition of the Unwilling.

To refresh our minds:  then-President George W. Bush declared at a NATO summit in 2002 that if Iraq President Saddam Hussein did not disarm (he was accused of having weapons of mass destruction), that the United States would assemble a “coalition of the willing” to do it for him.

Saddam didn’t. So George Bush’s United States and troops from 48 other countries backed the plan. Four countries eventually put boots on the ground—us, the UK, Australia, and Poland). More than three dozen other countries provided some troops but not major numbers. Some don’t even had standing armies but provide other kinds of help.

The coalition did not hold and it became a topic of political ridicule (Busch had offered foreign aid to participants, a policy that one columnist termed “a coalition of the billing” and another observer considered “a coalition of the shilling.”) By mid-2009 everybody but the United States and the United Kingdom coalition had backed away.  The Coalition of the Willing was considered ended in 2010.

President Bush assembled his coalition before the fight began.  President Trump just barged right in—BOMBED his way right in—to a new war and did not ask for help until Iran fought back and closed the Straits of Hormuz. Only then did he look for friends in NATO only to find he didn’t have very many anymore.

He’s watching his foreign policy by sledgehammer wielded by amateurs turn into quicksand. He is so desperate that he has lessened some sanctions against Russia—imposed as a reaction to the invasion of Ukraine—in an effort to relieve some pressure on the oil supply which seemingly could help finance further Russian operations against Ukraine, if we understand where this policy is leading.  He’s firing missiles the way kids fire bottle rockets on July 4th while China watches our war-making or defensive armaments dwindle and also watches Taiwan. The early talk about not using troops is ominously sounding like —using troops.

Some observers have suggested that Iran is Trump’s Ukraine.

“Some people will die, I guess,” the President has said.

Order the tenth obelisk. Too bad the state can’t send the bill for it to President Trump.

A few weeks ago, my state representative, Dave Griffith, asked me if I could find how many Missourians died in the wars of the eighth and ninth obelisks (Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan).  I could not locate numbers but I did find a website that listed the names of all of the military people who died in those conflicts. I picked out the Missouri names and sent them to him.

Their names won’t be on the obelisks although the number of those who died will be someday.

Their names are on their own monuments scattered throughout the graveyards of Missouri and elsewhere, unfortunately soon to be joined by similar monuments from Trump’s War.  Here is the list from President Bush’s War, with the date of official notification.  We pray their tragic coalition will not be joined by a new coalition from Mr. Trump’s War, but we fear it will be.

Let us know if your loved one killed in these long wars is not on the list.

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War

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It was an interesting juxtaposition of events last Saturday night at a birthday party for a submarine at the American Legion Hall—the USS Jefferson City, which was launched on February 29, 1992.

The boat is based in Guam but none of us knew where it was at that moment.  We hoped it and its crew were safe regardless of whether they were involved in the war with Iran—and I think most of us believe it is in the area.

The Jefferson City isn’t the largest class of submarines; the USS Missouri. It is part of the first class of submarines beneath the group of which the USS Missouri is a part. It’s an attack sub longer than a football field with about 140 crew members. It is loaded with missiles.

So, our capital city has a reason to pay attention to what’s happening and what’s going to happen.

There’s not much doubt that the world is a better place without the Iran’s religious leader and ruler but there’s no guarantee his successor will be any less troublesome.

There are many things that are problems with this conflict, the biggest one being Trump pulling this country out of the landmark Iran Nuclear Deal, more formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. We have heard one talking head suggest the President Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA was done because it had been achieved during the Obama administration and we’re all well aware of  Trump’s disdain for anything Obama did. Among other things, the agreement required interference-free inspections by an international group looking for any signs Iraq was generating bomb-capable amounts of uranium.

The Obama White House said the agreement “blocks every possible pathway Iran could use to build a nuclear bomb while ensuring—through a comprehensive, intrusive, and unprecedented verification and transparence regime—that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful moving forward.”  The deal went into effect in January, 2016 after the Center for Arms Control reported Iran had “significantly reduced its nuclear program and accepted strict monitoring and verification safeguards to ensure its program is solely for peaceful purposes.”

President Obama called the issue the “most consequential foreign policy debate that our country has had since the invasion of Iraq.” The deal went into effect in January 2016 after inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency had dismantled and removed two-thirds of Iran’s centrifuges and certified that Iran had shipped 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium elsewhere and dismantled.

President Trump pulled this country out of the agreement, calling it “horrible,” a “decaying and rotten structure,” and “defective to its core.”

It’s too bad nobody has ever been able to pin him down on what was so wrong with the agreement that merited his flamethrower verbiage.

Time and the flow of information will tell us if he is repeating George H.W. Busch’s entrance into a Middle Eastern war because of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and an assumption that a populace relieved of the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein would welcome our troops as heroes—and adopt a democratic form of government.

Regime change is acknowledged as one reason for this war—with Israel as our only apparent ally— against Iran. He has not explained how his attack is a guarantee of peace and stability in the region.

Trump promised he would not involve this country in another endless foreign war.  But he has not announced any ending goal. Nor has he announced how Iran will be transformed into a peaceful democratic republic that is grateful to him to for eliminating the Ayatollah.  It is unlikely the Iranian military will give up easily or quickly. And it is hard to think that this war can be won without American boots on the ground and American bodies in it.

It is already more than an American-Israeli war against Iran.  Iranian missiles have hit other countries friendly to the Trumpian effort. Three American lives have been lost. Nine Israeli people are dead. The United Arab Emirates reports three deaths.

Trump has admitted, “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.”

“That’s the way it is,” he said.

His actions have united our allies and our enemies. Russia has called it “an unprovoked armed aggression” China has expressed “deep concern” and has urged respect for Iran’s security, territorial integrity, and respect for its sovereignty—-something it has not suggest Russia do in is Ukraine war. Europe is keeping its distance. The European Council President calls the attacks “deeply disarming” and calls for full respect for international law.

Good luck with that one.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have condemned the Iranian retaliatory missile attacks that have expanded the conflict to other countries such as Sudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and the Arab Emirates agree.

Congress is waiting to hear about all of this, officially, and might soon be considering stiffening the War Powers Act because of Trump’s attack on Iran as well as his miliary action in deposing Venezuela’s leader.

Is it only an effort to take away Iran’s nuclear capability.  Or are his conquests, or planned conquests in Venezuela and Iran focused on controlling much of the world’s oil supply and weaponizing it? Trump has offered no cogent reason for his attack, especially after withdrawing from an agreement that might have made it unnecessary.

If he thinks this conflict with Iran is going to reverse his increasing unpopularity, he’ll find that each American soldier death in what we now can call Trump’s War certainly will not improve his standing.

The United States fought a two-front foreign war in the 1940s in Europe and in Asia. But no President ever has fought a war against an enemy abroad and also fought one against people in his own country until Donald Trump.

Lord knows how all of this will end. But there will be more American blood spilled.  In every war there has been a first casualty and nobody ever has found a way to calculate how many more there will be.

“That’s the way it is,” says the man who is causing this.

Tiananmen Square in Minnesota

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When will President Trump send in the tanks?   He has 1500 soldiers trained in Arctic warfare on alert in Alaska, ready to make an increasingly tragic confrontation in Minneapolis even worse. He’s obsessed with the Insurrection Act and is ready to pull the string on it at almost any moment—probably with an overnight eruption on his unsocial media site.

(Missouri is safe from anything like this. We have insurance.  We have a Republican Governor.)

But a little soul-searching might be good for us here in safe Missouri. Suppose the ICE goons showed up in St. Louis or Kansas City and started “maintaining order” and cleansing those cities of immigrant populations—a lot of Bosnians in St. Louis and Kansas Cityhas its own Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

The situation in Minneapolis shows no signs of easing, even as to-us intolerable weather conditions prevail. When people are angry enough to take to the streets in these conditions, it is easy to fear the confrontations will become more likely.  A Kent State waiting to happen, perhaps.  Or perhaps an American Tiananmen Square.

Is Minneapolis going to be America’s Tiananmen Square, a place where courageous people stand up to blunt force authority?

Thirty-seven years ago this June, more than two months of protests took place in Beijing, China. Negotiations between protestors and the Chinese government to reach a peaceful solution broke down, leading the government to send troops to occupy the square. The occupation turned into a massacre that is reported to have taken hundreds of lives.

The next day one man refused to get out of the way of the tanks. Who he was or what happened to him is buried in the secret government files.

Courage can be one man in front of a tank and it can be many citizens in front of an American agency unmatched in modern memory for its recklessness, cruelty, and lack of respect for freedom. From day one it seems to have gone far beyond our President’s announcement that it would seek out only the “worst of the worst.”  What is happening among the protestors in Minneapolis is part of the American character.  What is happening with ICE in Minneapolis is contrary to every principle of our founders that has guided us, albeit imperfectly at times, for 250 years.

We are likely to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our free country strikingly less free as a whole than at any time in our lifetimes. The thought that we would celebrate this significant anniversary under these continuing circumstances is beyond depressing.

There are only losers in America’s Tiananmen Square in frigid Minnesota today. But this is the United States of America.  The people will win.

We turn to the words of the great author, William Faulkner and his Nobel Laureate address in 1950 in which he spoke of the lasting power of the writer, of the poet. I believe what he said, not only about poets, but about the lasting power of a free people.

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures but because he has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

The defiance of the people of Minneapolis should remind all of us of “the courage, and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of (our) past.”  I believe the people of Minneapolis, and the people of this nation, will prevail against those who ignore all of those basic values that have sustained us as a nation.

Sports; Tigers Having a Long Drink and Wait for a Bowl; Chief Playing for Highest Draft Pick in Years; It’s Basketball Season 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MIZFB)—Missouri ground up Arkansas and spit it out as it wrapped up its 8-4 season that leaves fans with several “what ifs.”   What if Sam Horn hadn’t lost his season in his first game of the year? What if Beau Pribula had not lost three games with his ankle injury and wasn’t mobile for a fourth? What if the team’s field goal kicker had not been hurt.

—all of which is meaningless, of course. Missouri is 29-9 in these last three seasons with a chance to win 30 games in three years for only the third time (Missouri was 30-11 twice, from 2007-09 and from 2006-2008) in school history. For the record, Missouri went 40-14 from 2007-2010, 38-16 from 2006-2009 and 36-17 from 2008-2011.

Three Tigers had more than 100 yard of offense in the game: Ahmad Hardy with 149 rushing yards, Jamal Roberts with another 100, and Pribula, who was 4-7 passing for only 25 yards but who ran for 78.  It’s Hardy’s eighth 100-yard game of the year.

(POTY)—Despite Hardy’s performance, including his astonishing tackle-busting TD run, SEC Player of the Week honors went to two other Tigers.

Wide receiver Kevin Coleman Jr., was named Special Teams POTW for his 67-yard punt return for a touchdown, the first return for a Missouri touchdown since 2022.  Defensive tackle Chris McClellan was the defensive lineman of the week for recording two sacks and three pressures. His sack after Coleman’s return created a six-yard loss on first down, putting the Razorbacks in a hole they couldn’t get out of, forcing a three-and-out that stifled any chance for a rally.

(MIZPOLLS)—Missouri will go to its bowl game as a ranked team, but just barely. The AP sportswriters led Missouri squeak in at 25 in their poll, only a couple of votes ahead of Tennessee.  The Tigers aren’t so highly regarded by coaches. Iowa and Houston are ahead of Missouri as the first teams outside the top 25 of their poll.

(DOAK)—Ahmad Hardy’s yardage against Arkansas moves him to 1,560 for the year, just 28 yards behind Jacksonville State’s Cam Cook.  He is one of the three finalists for the Doak Walker Award, given to the best running back in college football for the year. It’s named for the SMU All-American who won the Maxwell Award in 1947 and the Heisman Trophy in 1948.

How do the three stack up statistically?  Physically, really close. Performance-wise, close.

Ahmad Hardy  Missouri  5-10  206 pounds  241 carries 1560 yds.   6.5 average 16 TD

Kewan Lacy Ole Miss  5-11  200 pounds  258 carries 1279 yds.  5.0 average  20 TD

Jeremiah Love  Notre Dame  6-0  214 pounds   199 carries  1372 yds.  6.9 average  18 TD

Love is a Junior. Hardy and Lacy are Sophomores.

Here’s one stat that might give Hardy a leg-up, if you will: More than 1,000 of his yards have come after breaking at least one tackle.  His 53-yard touchdown run through, it seemed, the entire Arkansas defense could be a clincher.

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(DRINKWITZ)—His team won’t win ten games this year but Tiger Coach Eli Drinkwitz has won a bid extension to his contract—six years with an average paycheck of #10.75 million. The University Board of Curators authorized the extension through the 2031 season after rumor increased that he was on the short list of coach choices in several major universities.

The six-year deal is two more years than the extension he signed earlier. It’s worth $64.5 million, putting Drinkwitz in the top-ten list of football coach salaries.

He was frustrated by all of the speculation about his possible candidacy for a job elsewhere. He said he was never interviewed for any of the high-profile positions that gossip put as a favorite to take: Penn Sate, LSU, Florida, or Auburn. He said after the Arkansas game, “We’ve got to figure this out, where we’re not putting pressure on coaches and programs and people during the middle of the week where there’s nothing but speculation…We’ve got Twitter trending with bets on who’s going to be leading or get this job… That’s annoying. That’s bullcrap. OK? And it’s just speculation, it’s just media throwing stuff on the wall, and it’s tough on everybody. It’s tough on players, it’s tough on coaches…I just felt like we weren’t done yet. That north end zone isn’t completed. And, so, my job here is not completed yet.”

In his six years at Mizzou, the Tigers are 46-28 and 26-24 in the SEC. He’s 58-29 in his career after gpomg12-1 as a first-year coach at Appalachian State. The Mountaineers finished 18th and 19th in the polls that year.

(MIZMBB)—The undefeated season-opening string for the Missouri Tigers has reached eight games with a Dennis Gates homecoming win at Cleveland State, the school from which Missouri hired him four years ago. The hiring became something of a swap because Cleveland hired former Missouri coach (and former Gates assistant), Rob Summers, as its head coach.

The Tigers were never challenged in their 86-59 win, running off the first 23 points of the game. The Vikings were scoreless for half of the first half. Five Tigers were in double figures with Jacob Crews finishing with 19.

Seven-foot-five center Trent Burns saw action in his second straight game as he works his way back into shape after foot surgery. Although he was in for only six minutes and didn’t score, he two rebounds, a block, and a pair of assists.

Things get more serious now. The Tigers play Notre Dame tonight before facing the Kansas Jayhawks in Kansas City on the 7th.

Missouri got the 28th most vote from the AP, the 29th most from the coaches. Notre Dame did not receive any points in either poll. The Fighting Irish roundballers are 5-3.

Kansas is 21st in both with a 6-2 record.

(MIZWBB) The women’s team is off to a 7-2 start after a big win against Northwestern in the Fort Myers Tip-Off in Florida. The Lady Tigers used Grace Slaughter’s 33 points to win 85-70. It was a landmark day for two people.  Slaughter’s last bucket got her to 1,000 career points. It also lifted coach Kellie Harper to her 400 win.

Five players racked up double figures for Mizzou with Shanno Dowell getting her fourth double-double of the year—12 points and 13 rebounds.  Northwestern drops to 6-1.

Missouri faces California in the ACC/SEC Challenge Thursday night in Columbia. The Tiger women received no votes in this week’s Ap women’s basketball poll.  (ZOU)

(POST-SEASON)—Northwest Missouri State made it to the Division II playoffs but didn’t make it past Harding, losing 38-16 in the first round.

Missouri State and Delaware are the last two teams to get into the 82-team FBS post-season tournament. The Bears will learn next Sunday who their first-round opponent will be. They’re 7-5 (5-3 in Conference USA) after losing their last regular-season game, 42-30 to Louisiana Tech.

(CHIEFS)—The Chiefs continue to make it appear likely they’ll be in the best position inyears for the college draft next Spring. Their 31-28 loss to the Dallas Cowboys dropped their record to 6-6.

There still is time to mess up their draft status, though. Last year the Chiefs also had split their first dozen games and wound up in the Super Bowl.

It was a familiar story against Dallas—inconsistency, a leaky offensive line, momentum-robbing penalties, and a vulnerable defense.

(BASEBALL)—Other than the Sonny Gray trade to the Red Sox for two minor league pitchers, the Cardinals have been pretty quiet. Any speculation that reliever Ryan Helsley would come back to St. Louis after his trade last season to the Mets has been killed by Halsley’s two-year $28 million dollar deal with the Orioles.

The Royals have been quiet, too.

Nineteen of the game’s top 25 free agents remain unsigned as we head to the winter meetings, starting December 10 in Dallas.

As we experience our first bitter cold and snow of the winter, here’s a warming reminder—Pitchers and catchers report for spring training on February 11. The days can’t pass fast enough.

Speaking of things that are fast—

(INDYCAR)—The 110th Indianapolis 500 next May will have an even more patriotic mood about it than usual, as the race and the nation celebrate the 250th anniversary of the document that created our nation, the Declaration of Independence.

The first part of the race’s promotion is the unveiling of next year’s logo.

The speedway says, “the logo colors directly match those of the American flag. The shield harkens back to the coat of arms, now called the Great Seal of the United States. The red stripes represent the stripes of the flag, as well as the wings of the IMS Wing & Wheel logo, while the four stars represent IMS’s four “founding father.”

At least one of the cars will carry the theme.  A. J. Foyt Racing will have this car for Santino Ferrucci next year.

HFOT stands for Homes For Our Troops a nonprofit organization that provides custom homes for severely injured post 9/11 veterans. A team statement says, “Most of these veterans have sustained injuries, including multiple limb amputations, partial or full paralysis, blindness, severe burns, and/or severe traumatic brain injury.

(NASCAR)—The antitrust lawsuit filed by two NASCAR Cup teams against the sanctioning body (and owner of most of the tracks where the series’ major races are run has begun. The pre-trial climate has been increasingly ugly and the trial is expected to follow suit.

(FORMULA1)—The last race of the last major racing series to call it a year will be Abu Dabi next weekend. Max Verstappen’s win last weekend moves him to only 12 points behind Lado Naorris.

 

 

The Magnetic Personality

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Magnetism is a property of certain metals that causes them to attract or repel one another. Iron, cobalt, and nickel are among the metals having those properties. There is nothing rare about these metals.

Magnetism has provided President Trump with another opportunity to cause jaws to drop, heads to shake, and speculation about his mental faculties (we’ll have a serious discussion about that in a little bit).

A few days ago, during an Oval Office press conference, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked him about Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green’s suggestion that he put more focus on domestic policy.  His answer was an all-too-common digression into nonsense. He eventually got around to talking about China.

The transcript of his remarks was published by the internet side Mediaite.

“China was going to hit us with rare-earth. Now, everybody says, ‘Oh, what does that mean?’

“Magnets. If China refused to give magnets, ’cause they have a monopoly on magnets ’cause they’re allowed to happen over a 32-year period, there wouldn’t be a car made in the entire world. There wouldn’t be a radio. There wouldn’t be a television. There wouldn’t be internet. There wouldn’t be anything because magnets are such a part.

“Now, nobody knows what magnets are. And not overly sophisticated, but to build magnet system would take two years. So if I weren’t able to say to China, “Look, if you’re gonna do that to us, we’re gonna charge you a 158% tariff.” It was 100% on top of 58%. And China called up immediately and, “Listen, we will make peace.” And we made peace. We made a great deal. We made an unbelievable deal. China’s paying tariffs to the United States. Not the United States paying tariffs to China, which has always been the way it was. Nobody can believe these deals.”

Did he just call himself a “nobody?”  Or did he admit he’s ignorant?   Or both?

I’ve known what magnets are from my youngest years when I played with a couple of little scotty dogs, one black and one white, who were attracted to each other by magnetism.  We don’t know if he had a similar toy although we do know he doesn’t have a pet—dog, cat, hamster, or what seems appropriate—a gold fish. He has indicated, however, that he thinks he has a certain animal magnetism.

A few days ago he came up with an astounding scientific theory.

Somehow, it appears, Trump knows how to make magnets quit working, information that might earn a Nobel Price in Physics to make for the peace prize he is unlikely to get. He told a campaign rally in Iowa last year, “Now all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets.”

He got on the topic a few weeks ago in his dislocated ramblings with American soldiers in Japan. “You know, the new thing is magnets,” he advised them before wandering into even deeper into his mental swamp. “So instead of using hydraulic that can be hit by lightning and it’s fine. You take a little glass of water, you drop it on magnets, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

We need some clarification, Mr. President, on a couple of things. First, you apparently do not know what will happen when you pour water on magnets.  But would you please explain what you mean by “hydraulic that can be hit by lightning and it’s fine?”

We think we know what he thought he knew that he was talking about.

Somebody must have mentioned to him that the newest aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, uses an electromagnetic launch system and an advanced system of arresting gear for landing planes.  The Navy has spent years perfecting the technology replacing the steam launch systems and the hydraulic cable-arresting system.

He has a tendency to seize on something he doesn’t understand and babble about it, unaware of the level of ignorance he unabashedly displays.

He does this so much that there is real concern that he is deteriorating mentally. An interview with a psychologist on a Times Radio podcast offers in-depth concern:

‘Trump will not make it to the end of this term compos mentis’ | Psychologist analyses Trump

Times Radio is part of the London Times and The London Sunday Times, two Murdoch-owned newspapers in the United Kingdom.

(Photo credit: Vermont Country Store)

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Keep Them Ignorant and Pay the Cost

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I was in Romania a little more than a year after the Iron Curtain fell and the people of Romania revolted against one of the most oppressive regimes that had been behind it. The Romanian Revolution was part of a historic period when unrest boiled over in several former Iron Curtain Countries that were still controlled by dictators—-it was the same year of the Tiananmen Square Protests in China that did not turn out as well.

In December of 1989, a church leader’s speech against the government triggered huge protests in Timisoara, which led to a military crackdown under Premier Nicolai Ceausescu (Chow-chess-kew).  He made a speech from his palace, which wasn’t too far from the hotel where I later stayed, and from the Hall of the People where I lectured and interacted with young journalists wanting to learn how to be free journalists.

The crowd at Ceausescu’s speech began booing and chanting “Timisoara!”

The military turned on him. Ceausescu and his wife, who also was the Deputy Prime Minister were driven out of the palace and captured by some of the angry citizens. They were take into some woods near Bucharest and shot to death on Christmas.

A new government took over. The death penalty was abolished. An election was held the next May and the new government was overwhelmingly approved and quickly moved to enact democratic reforms.

While I was there, Moldova declared its independence from the Soviet Union. I remember seeing people sitting in their cars listening to reports of what was happening in their neighboring Soviet satellite, now a free country.  It was of particular interest because many of the people in Moldova are of Romanian ancestry.

Romania joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007.

I have thought often of the people of Romania—and of Poland, where I did seminars in Warsaw after traveling from Bucharest—as I have watched Ukraine hold on against Vladimir Putin’s major effort to reassemble the USSR and I know from those long-ago days that the people of Romania and Poland are living with uncertainty, knowing that if Putin wins in Ukraine, Moldova and Romania and Poland might be next.

All of this is the long way around another impression I had in Bucharest, where my hotel, still displaying bullet marks in its stone walls, once was a nice hotel in the pre-Communist times but now was reminiscent of a 1950s hotel that had never been updated.  My room had a big square television set, black and white, and there were only two or three channels, all former government-run stations, none of which told viewers much about the outside world or even about Romania.

Were it not for a small Radio Shack shortwave radio I had brought with me to listen to the Voice of America, I would have been ignorant of what was happening in Romania and Poland, in Europe, and in the word. The Iron Curtain was down. But the window of open information was still being opened.

You will understand, then, why I watch the Trump administration’s increasing efforts to choke off the free flow of information and discussion in this country whether it is by threatening broadcast licenses or the recent despicable action by the Secretary of Defense (Sorry, Donald, I’m not going to use your word for the department any more than I am going to call the Gulf of Mexico by the name  you demand it be called).

A few days ago, somebody posted this sign in the correspondents’ corridor near the Pentagon press room.  

“Journalism is not a crime.”  To Pete Hegseth and his boss, Donald Trump, it would be, complete with prison sentences, if they could get away with it.  And it would not surprise me if Trump someday accuses a particularly persistent reporter doing the job reporters must do in a free society with treason or some other crime.

Trump heartily endorses Hegseth’s ban on reporters doing stories questioning what he says and does, and banning those who do not agree to be just a mouthpiece for Hegseth’s part of the administration. “I think he finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace,” said the man who calls people such as me “enemies of the people.”   He went on, “The press is very dishonest.”

Only one news organization is now accredited by the Pentagon, The One America News Network, an organization that wants to curry a lot of favor with Trump.  Even other networks that lean more to the right  such as FOX, the Washington Post, and NewsMax  have refused to abide by Hegseth’s rules to limit the flow of information to only that which is politically favorable.

It’s another effort to keep the people at large ignorant not just of what is happening but who is making it happen, often for their own great benefit.

The thing about trying to repress journalism in this country is that it just makes journalists work harder. But if Trump/Hegseth think they can control the flow of information to the public in this country, they are mistaken. We will learn of their increased militarism at home and abroad no matter how many press room doors are closed in however many places.

Trump knows his policies have turned many of his supporters away from him. Newsweek reported last week that every swing state—-the ones he constantly interrupts his speeches to brag about carrying in ’24—is now against him. He’s -8 in Wisconsin, underwater by five points in Michigan, down by three in Nevada and North Carolina. He’s minus-2 in Pennsylvania and Arizona and minus-1 in Georgia.

You might not like to listen to or see CNN or MSNBC or any of the three over the air major networks and I’m not saying you should like them. But this nation was great long before the MAGA crowd came along and decided greatness should be determined not by the people but by one person. And he seems determined every day to burnish his future credentials as the worst president in American history. Taking abusive steps to shut off any reporter questioning his administration’s actions or his personal statements will not go well.

It is never good to poke a Tiger with a stick.

The swing states are sending a message that Trump can bluster about and lie about his own magnificent popularity. But a lot of people aren’t buying his garbage anymore.

We aren’t going to see an Army revolt and military overthrow of our government, as has happened in many countries but we have to ask how far he can push our military without the first blowup.

He’s not going to be taken to the woods, Ceausescu-style.  But the people are stirring; many are up-to-here with this man and his cronies.  The “No Kings” movement is growing. His polls are tanking. He is deathly afraid that a measure of political justice will be brought down upon him after next year’s elections, which might bring a measure of political justice down on a political party that, like Ceausescu’s loyalists, pays the price for blindly following and defending him.

He will do anything to keep journalists from their rounds, from questioning his policies, his actions, his intimidations, his lies, his business dealings as President, his character–

He will fail.  Dictators always fail. I saw the past, the present, and got a glimpse of the future in those days in Romania and in Poland. It is in my mind as I watch our president’s grasp for absolute power and the people’s growing disgust of it.

Our system provides for a peaceful overthrow of a tyrant. History shows the people will use whatever means their system gives them to do just that.

Carl Sandburg:

The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it….

Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

…In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for
keeps, the people march:
“Where to? what next?”

The poem is called “The People, Yes.”   We must find strength in one another to resist the worst that he can do.  He wants us to forget that long ago this country placed its faith in the concept that government flows from the consent of the governed.

But in this darkness with our great bundle of grief, we know and more are coming to know and the people are starting to march, for we are “the people so peculiar in renewal and comeback.”

That is the spirit behind the “No Kings” protests.

And neither National Guard troops invading other states nor goons from ICE snatching people from our streets can stop that march.

It has become, to borrow a phrase from another purpose and another time, “too big to fail.”

 

I Am An American Citizen 

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I am a citizen of the United States of America, not because of anything I have done to deserve it but because it is my birthright. I was born here and that is all I need.  I am not the child of former slaves but, instead, am a descendant of a long line of white Northern Europeans who came here for the same reason brown people from the central and southern American continent come here today—with hope and for opportunity.

I am an American Citizen, a hyphenated German-French-Scots-Irish-English-American, whose ancestors by their everyday lives helped this country achieve a greatness too easily given away. I am married to a Swedish-American Citizen whose ancestors came here for the same reasons mine did—with hope, seeking a better and safer life than they had and could have in their old countries.  We are proud of our hyphens.

I am an American Citizen because the first person with my name settled in Virginia on land granted him by Queen Elizabeth I because of his work as the captain of a privateer who fought pirates on the Spanish Main. The first name is a common one in the family and carries with it genetic linkages to a courageous forefather.

I am American Citizen proud of the good that our country has achieved regardless of how increasingly embarrassed I might be with what its contemporary leadership wants it to be.

I am an American Citizen who loves his country even when given manifold opportunities to dislike it.

I am an American Citizen free to practice my religion but not free to force others to adopt it, and free to object to those who by social or legal means try to force their religion on me.

I am an American Citizen who respects the National Guard but will oppose a National Police. I will not show an identity card to one of them who greets me at my polling place or anywhere else. Nor will I acknowledge them as I walk freely down any street where they have been directed to patrol.

I am an American Citizen who believes my voting records are between me and my county election authority and no one, not even a federal agency, has any right to them.

I am an American Citizen who believes I can call myself by any party name I wish at any time in my life, and—in fact—have spent my life loyal to no party, which also is my right as an American Citizen.

I am an American Citizen unafraid of my past, knowing that slavery WAS “that bad,” and acknowledging that some members of the southern branch of my family undoubtedly owned black people. I will not apologize for them; the historical records are unavoidable despite any efforts to obscure them. The “original sin” of America remains a sin only if we continue to avoid responsibilities all of us share with and for each other regardless of color, heritage, belief, or self-identity today.

I am an American Citizen who believes acknowledging the past and moving to correct its faults is a mark of national greatness, who believes it takes more courage to correct than to hide, that hiding is a sign of American Cowardice. Progress, not regression, makes greatness.

I am an American Citizen who cherishes my right to see, to hear, to read, to learn, and to therefore think and act, a library board president who will vigorously oppose all who profess to be the ones who can dictate truth or limit opportunities to find it, an information consumer who abhors the consolidation of media on the basis of financial self-interest above the public interest, particularly that segment overseen by a federal government agency with licensing power that wants to control the variety of voices we once had and must regain.                                                                                                                            I am an American Citizen who refuses to believe that all other rights in all other amendments are possible because of the Second Amendment.

I am an American Citizen who believes none of the other amendments would be possible without the FIRST Amendment. In particular, I believe all have a right to responsible speech, agreeable to me or not and the right to petition our government for redress of infringements on the rights granted to me by national documents and physical heritage.

I am an American Citizen who will not tolerate those who seek power or seek to maintain it through division, derision, and disrespect.

I am an American Citizen because I believe we can be better tomorrow than today, by building on the best of what we have been, not tearing down the good that we are.

I am an American citizen who does not believe in the melting-pot but instead believes we are a stew made tastier by the separate ingredients that meld, not melt, within the national bowl.

I am an American Citizen who hates hate except toward those who fuel hate, take advantage of hate, and themselves hate others.

I am an American Citizen who fears not the present because he remembers the past and therefore can hope for a better future. .

I am an American Citizen who needs not wrap himself in the flag to proclaim his patriotism but will display his love of country in his daily living and his daily defense of all who seek, as our founders put it, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I am an American Citizen because I will not give up on my country, be accused of giving up on my country, or being told I must leave behind the country where I have lived for all of my life.

I am American Citizen who will not live by bumper sticker mottos but lives by thought and deed, and the words of Thomas Wolfe:

…To every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity—to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him — this, seeker, is the promise of America.

I am an American Citizen who will never forsake that promise—

—because I have lived it.

I

Am

An

AMERICAN

CITIZEN!

(Advertisement is from the Columbia Daily Tribune, probably in the 70s; Cartoon by Wiley Miller, distributed by Andrews McMeel Publishing)

Need Your Trash Hauled?

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Maybe the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois should not object so much to the President’s plan to  deploy National Guard troops to the Windy City.  Ditto folks in Memphis, the next American city in line to be invaded by the United Stats Army.

Based on the experience in Washington, D. C., the National Guard is making streets safer by picking up trash and doing gardening duties at national monument sites. One doesn’t want a tourist to trip over something or to be horrified by a wind-blown hot dog wrapper.

The National Guard reported during the Labor Day Weekend that its 2,000 troops had collected more than 500 bags of trash and cleaned more than 3.2 miles of roadways.

They’ve been doing a lot of the work that National Park Service workers would be doing if the Trump administration hadn’t fired thousands of them. One-fourth of the NPS workers were axed by enthusiastic DOGE-oriented actions. National Guard members, trained to fight on foreign battlefields and to serve in domestic disaster areas have instead helped with forty “beautification projects” in D.C.

Those National Guard troops also have disposed of three truckloads of plant waste.

It’s costing one-million dollars a day for the National Guard to serve as gardeners and garbage men in our nation’s capital.

As for fighting crime in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world, there are a lot of places in the world, and even in red states with far higher crime rates than D.C.  Or Chicago. Or Los Angeles.

The Guard reports it made 1,369 arrests in the first three weeks including one guy who threw a sandwich at a member of the Guard. But Trump’s choice for the district’s prosecutor, former FOX news host Jeanne Priro, reportedly hasn’t been able to get a grand jury indictment in a couple of high-profile cases, not even against the deadly sandwich thrower.

Numerous studies indicate many more cities are more “entitled’ to National Guard protection (or                                       trash collection and gardening) than D. C., LA, or Chicago, based on crime. Many of them do not have Democrats as mayors so they apparently will just have to let the garbage pile up and let the weeds grow in their parks and around their monuments.

There’s a lesson here.  If you don’t want the president to order the National Guard to invade your town and pick up your trash or spread mulch in your beautified public places, elect a Republican mayor.

Too bad, though. Your high murder rate will stay high and your city will not be cleaner and more beautiful.

If you want your low murder rate to stay down, but you don’t want to hire extra people to clean up your streets and your parks so that the President will send inexperienced trash-hauling soldiers to do that, elect a Democrat, especially a black one.

It’s not about crime. It’s about cleanliness.

-0–0-

Hey, Donnie!!!! 

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We’re feeling left out, here in Missouri.

Don’t you realize the mayor of our largest city is black? Shouldn’t we have National Guard soldiers on every street corner there protecting everybody from the major crime wave that you claim is rampant in cities run by African-American Democratic Mayors?

Drawing new congressional district maps to exclude one of our two African-Americans in Congress won’t end all that crime, you know, although you may get some jollies by making a red state less black by redistricting one of our African-American districts.. He’s from our largest city so you could accomplish a lot by making that city safer. Double your pleasure!

Think about it, Donnie.  MMSA.  Make Missouri Safe Again.  Camo Caps with those letters sewn in black would really make our Guard members look spiffy, don’t you think?

And don’t forget, those Guard members would make the streets safer so your ICE goons will be safe when they go out and kidnap brown people.

Think how much better your poll numbers will look if you can coordinate your attacks on Black- run cities that have brown people in them?

And did you know that Kansas City has a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce?  Better keep a close eye on them, too.

We’re worried that you think Kansas City is a second-rate city that doesn’t deserve protection by our military.

By the way, have you thought about drafting homeless people as a way to end homelessness AND provide extra security forces for our crime-ridden Democratic-run cities?

Do not leave that stone unturned as you make sure crime is eradicated in our crime-overcome metro areas.

We’re counting on you, Donnie, because we know you are deeply concerned for our personal safety and welfare.

This might be flyover country but it’s also Trump Country.

Don’t let all those Democratic criminals take it away from you.