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We Get A New Governor Today

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Mike Kehoe will be sworn in at noon today as our 56th Governor although it will be the 58th administration.  Two governors, Phil Donnelly and Christopher Bnd served two separate terms.

Kehoe succeeds Mike Parson, who now goes back to his farm in Polk County where he was working six years ago, when he was lt. Governor, when a Highway Patrolman showed up to tell hm he needed to get back to Jefferson City because Governor Eric Greitens was resigning.

I’ve referred to Govenor Mike Parson and Lieutenant Govenor Mike Kehoe as Mike 1 and Mike 2—and the Govenor’s Mansion for the last six years as the Parson-age.

Incidentally, a recurring political joke for many years asks voters if they would buy a used car from the candidate.  A lot of people did when he was a Ford dealer in Jefferson City.  He’s the second car dealer to be sworn in as Governor. Governor Arthur M. Hyde, who served 1921-1925 was a Buick dealer in Princeton and Trenton.

We’ve gone back over our notes on past gatherings to recall some special and sometimes not-so-special moments.

Each inauguration has some special touches. Sometimes the wheels fall off as was the case in 2013 when the usually reliable church bells tolling noon, the traditional time for the oath-taking, had a mind of their own and when the judge swearing in the governor mispronounced his name.

We listened back to The Missourinet’s recording of those events to put together this chronology showing how things fell apart at the critical moment.

11:59:56—band finishes playing “God Bless America.”

12:00:20—12:01:20—The bell at St. Peter Catholic Church tolls eight times.

Long pause.  Finally, Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey, the MC, approaches the podium, and just as he draws a breath to introduce the judge to swear in the Governor—

12:02:23—a ninth bell (crowd and podium guests laugh loudly) Dempsey throws up his hands and retreats to his seat.

12:02:33—tenth bell

12:02:42—eleventh bell.  Then silence. There is no 12th bell for the noon swearing-in.  Voices on the platform (including Nixon’s apparently) are heard confirming, however, that there had been the 12th bell. Nope. Just eleven).

12:04:18—Convinced there are no more bells, Dempsey introduces St. Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison to swear in Nixon.

12:04:52—And Judge Burlison begins the oath by mispronouncing the Governor’s name:, “I, Jeremy Wilson Nixon…”  Nixon repeats, “I, Jeremiah Wilson Nixon…”

12:05:25—oath completed.   Church bells ring joyously throughout the city. Helicopter flyover.

Nixon’s first inauguration in 2009 was the second time in three inaugurals when the governor was sworn in early. Master of Ceremonies Charlie Shields, the Senate president pro tem, noted about 11:45 that the event was running early and the band would play some music to fill time. However after one number he announced the swearing in of the new governor would proceed. Shields said the National Guard, which operates the schedule for the inaugurations, told him through his earpiece to go ahead with the oath-giving and taking.  The swearing-in of Governor Nixon began at 11:52 and the church bells rang early.

The 2005 inauguration is remembered by some for the relatively warm weather and for the governor’s attire.

Governor Blunt refused to be sworn in while wearing the traditional tuxedo, which he referred to in an interview with The Missourinet as a “monkey suit.”  That night he did wear a tux, although the traditional attire for the inaugural ball is white tie and tails.  It was a frustrating few days for one of the Jefferson City tuxedo shops with which Blunt did business.  The owner tried…and tried…but failed to convince Blunt to be traditional in his attire.

Blunt used two Bibles.  In his inaugural address he noted that one was the Bible he used each day.  The second one would be given to his son upon his birth, which was scheduled for March.  He said it reminded him “that what we do today, tomorrow and across the next four years will help define the future opportunities of every Missouri Child.

2005 was the second time in recent memory that the new first lady danced in the inaugural ball a few weeks before the birth of the first couple’s first child.  Matt and Melanie Blunt had their first child, Branch, in March.  In 1981, Christopher and Carolyn Bond’s son, Sam, was born two weeks after the inauguration.

Bob Holden’s inauguration in 2001 was a scrambled affair that saw the first early swearing-in, in many years. Supreme Court judge Ronnie White, the master of ceremonies, called for the swearing-in of Attorney General Jay Nixon right after the invocation.  The schedule called for the inaugurations of the lesser officials to take place AFTER remarks from former Senator Thomas Eagleton and after the introduction of platform guests.  After Eagleton spoke and the guests were introduced, the other inaugurations took place.

The event, which had started at 11;15 instead of the usual 11:30 saw the inauguration of lower-ranking statewide officials by 11:45.  Rather than wait 15 minutes for the traditional noon-time inauguration of the governor, the ceremonies went right on ahead.  Just as the church bell across the street rang once to signal it was 11:45, Governor Holden was sworn in.  Radio and television stations planning to join the ceremonies just in time for the noon inauguration of the governor found themselves switching to the Capitol after Holden was well into his address, or not switching at all.  The church bells did not strike 12 because it would have interrupted the speech.  In his press conference after the event, Holden explained that he decided to go ahead with the swearing-in because it was 27 degrees and people were getting cold.

The early swearing-in caught the flight of four F-15s from the St. Louis national guard unit unprepared.  The jets, which usually formed up west of Jefferson City and flew over the Capitol west to east were far from being ready when word went out that the swearing-in was taking place and the 19-gun salute was being fired.  The jets wound up flying over the Capitol, more or less on a north to south route with two jets together and two others straggling behind, well out of formation.

The parties ended at 11;30 that night with fireworks over the Missouri River.  The explosions caught many Jefferson Citians unawares and awakened several.  Dozens of 9-1-1 calls were made.  One woman said she thought somebody was trying to break into her basement and called police.

The first Carnahan inauguration, in 1993, first brought the festival atmosphere which existed in and around the Capitol for the rest of the day after the ceremonies. Carnahan was sworn in using an old family Bible used by his great grandfather, a circuit-riding Methodist minister.  At one time there was a hole in the back cover.  Family tradition held that the hole was worn by the saddle horn of his great grandfather’s saddle.  A new cover was put on the Bible in later years that replaced that worn one. He did not wear a top hat–which is kind of an on-again-off-again tradition for these events.  Some people wear them; some don’t.  In 1989, when he was sworn in for his second term as treasurer, Carnahan wore a beaver topper with a long and distinguished history.  But he told us before the inauguration in ’93 that he reviewed the tapes of that event and saw he was about the only person who wore the traditional hat for the ceremony.  Others who had them either left them indoors or carried them. So he decided in 1993 to leave the hat off.  It belonged to his father, former Congressman A.S. J. Carnahan, who served in Congress for 14 years and was the first United States Ambassador to the African country of Sierra Leone, appointed by President Kennedy.

But his father was not the first owner of that distinguished hat.  It originally belonged to Congressman John B. Sullivan of St. Louis, whose wife Leonore became the elder Carnahan’s  successor in Congress and served with great distinction for many years.

Some might find a bit of irony in the telling of that story, we suppose.  Anyway, the hat stayed in the box in 1993.

But—

In 1997, Carnahan wore the beaver top hat—a little bit. He only wore it for the trip from the Mansion to the Capitol.  The ceremony was held in the rotunda because of the cold weather.

—As long as we’re speaking of top hats, here’s a little top hat history for you.  In 1969, when John Danforth was sworn in as Attorney General, he was the only one of the state officers who did not wear one.

Thomas Eagleton wore one that day although he refused to wear such a thing in earlier ceremonies.  He had complained that all during his military service his hats had been either too large or too small and he had refused to wear any hats since.

In 1961, when Harry Truman attended John Dalton’s inauguration, he refused to wear a top hat in the parade.  He wore his customary felt hat instead.

One highlight of the 1989 inauguration was the opening of the huge bronze doors on the south front of the Capitol.  The doors had been closed for many years.  They had been opened only for very special occasions for about 40 years.  The state had paid $122,000 to repair and restore the doors.  The hinges and frames were rebuilt and the finish to the doors was restored.  The doors weigh 7,200 pounds, stand more than 18 feet tall and are 12-feet wide. It takes seven minutes to get the things open.  The doors are divided into four panels.  the second and third panels–the center panels–fold inward toward the Capitol and lock against the first and fourth panels, which also fold inward to provide a panoramic view up the 30-foot wide grand stairway to the third, or legislative, floor of the building.   At the time the doors were installed, they were called the largest bronze doors cast since the days of Ancient Rome.

The bronze doors have been restored to their original appearance and the mechanisms have been repaired just in time for this inauguration.

The 1985 and 1989 inaugurations of John Ashcroft included prayers from his father, an Assembly of God minister.   Ashcroft, following his faith, did not dance at his inaugural balls. Each time he played the state song, “The Missouri Waltz,” on a piano in the rotunda.

In 1985, new Governor John Ashcroft made some headlines on his inauguration day when he did not dance at the traditional ball because of his Pentacostal background that discourages drinking, smoking, gambling, and dancing. Instead, he played a piano, accompanied by famous New Orleans trumpet player al Hirt, and the St. Louis Cardinals most famous harmonica player, Stan Musial. He did a similar thing for his 1989 inaugural.

In 1985, Former Governor Hearnes did not attend the ceremonies, saying he had not been invited far enough in advance.  Supreme Court Judge Warren Welliver refused to attend, showing his disappointment that an associate justice of the court was swearing in Governor Bond instead of the Chief Justice.  The Associate Justice that day was Albert Rendlen, former Republican Party chairman (Welliver was a Democrat), who later became a Chief Justice.  While he held that office, he swore in John Ashcroft for his first term.  Ashcroft was sworn in for his second term by Judge Edward Robertson, his former aide that he had shortly before appointed to the supreme court.  Robertson, who became the Chief Justice and is now in private practice, did not not swear in Governor Carnahan.  In fact, most members of the Supreme Court were absent from involvement in the 1993 ceremonies.  All of them were Ashcroft appointees.

It is not mandatory that the Chief Justice swear in the Governor.  Circuit Judge Sam Blair swore in his brother, James T. Blair, in 1957.  In 1881, Governor Thomas Crittenden was sworn in by the outgoing Lieutenant Governor, Henry Brockmeyer, because members of the Supreme Court didn’t show up for the ceremony until Crittenden was giving his inaugural address.                                                  —–

In 1981, an empty chair was placed on the inaugural platform next to Kenneth Rothman, who became Lieutenant Governor that day.  Rothman had it placed there as a memorial to his father, who had died the year before.

In 1977, when Joseph Teasdale was sworn in on a bitterly cold day, Senator Thomas Eagleton was sitting on the platform next to Senator Danforth.  He was so wrapped up in a shawl that Sally Danforth had given him when she went inside to get warm that a University of Missouri reporting program reporter mis-identified him as Senator Danforth’s wife.  The wind chill factor that day was 25 to 40-below, so you know why he was wrapped up so tightly.    The ceremony started in two-below-zero temperatures, (the high for the day was plus 3),  Nine inches of snow had fallen overnight, causing the cancellation of the inaugural parade.  Despite abysmal conditions—the pianist suffered frostbite on all of  her fingers–Teasdale decided to have the ceremony outside because of the large number of people who had come to Jefferson City–especially from his home town of Kansas City–to see him sworn in.   Many, if not the majority, of them stayed inside the Capitol, however, while the new governor earned for himself the nickname “Freezedale” from uncharitable critics, especially those who endured his event outdoors.Incoming Lt. Governor Ken Rothman reported later that Teasdale leaned over to him and said, “This must be my first mistake.” Senator Thomas Eagleton remarked later, “My feet damn near fell off.”

In his ten-minute speech, Teasdale said it was God’s will that he be elected governor, prompting State Treasurer Jim Spainhower—who would unsuccessfully challenge Teasdale in the 1980 primary—to tell a friend, “Don’t trust politicians with messianic complexes.” Spainhower was a minister of the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ.

The President Pro Tem of the Senate usually is the presiding officer, master of ceremonies, of the event—except in 1965 when the Speaker of the House presided.  That was the first inauguration of Warren Hearnes, who had run against the so-called “establishment” that ran the Democratic Party, and had defeated Lieutenant Governor Hillary Bush.  Former Senate leader Albert Spradling, Jr., recalled for the State Historical Society that Hearnes tried to gain control of the Senate but conservative senators stopped him by electing John W. Joynt of St.  Louis as the Pro-Tem.  Hearnes recalled in a similar interview that he had tried to get one of his campaign supporters, Senator Earl Blackwell of Hillsboro, elected President Pro Tem although Blackwell had been in the Senate only two years at the time.  The veteran senators also rejected Hearnes’ efforts to compromise by having Blackwell named Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The resentment caused by Hearnes’ tactics—before he was even Governor—so antagonized Joynt that  he refused to preside over Hearnes’ inauguration a few days later, leaving the job to Speaker of the House Thomas Graham.

Timing of the events leading to the noon inauguration was a problem, too, in 1965, during the first Hearnes inauguration.  Speaker Tom Graham, about whom we referred earlier, recalled in an oral history interview for the State Historical Society that all of the scheduled events leading to the governor’s inauguration had been finished ten minutes early.  He said, “I introduced everybody in sight.  I introduced Governor Dalton and his wife. I introduced my wife. I introduced the members of the House. I introduced the members of the Senate, and then I introduced the taxpayers.”  That killed enough time for the swearing-in of Hearnes to take place at high noon.

Thomas Eagleton figures in a couple of other odd moments on inauguration day.  On the way to the first Hearnes inaugural in 1965, Eagleton—who was to become Lieutenant Governor that day—was seen hitchhiking, dressed in formal attire.  The car being used to chauffer him around had run out of gas a number of blocks from the Jefferson City First Baptist Church, where an inaugural worship service was held in 1965.  Another was held there in 1969.  The Hearnes family was Baptist and Betty often sang in the church choir.

The year Eagleton was sworn in as Attorney General, 1961, the man administering the oath forgot it.  Former Judge Sam Blair, who had administered the oath to his brother Jim when Jim became governor in 1957, said he had sworn-in thousands of persons before, and the oath is really simple as can be.  But he said he suffered a complete mental block, which lasted about four seconds but seemed far longer and left Judge Sam a little shaken.

The 1961 inauguration as unusual in another respect.  The Lieutenant Governor was not sworn in with the other statewide officials.  Hillary Bush was inaugurated more than two hours later in the State Senate because the Lieutenant Governor is the President of the Senate.  He told the senators he respected the Senate tradition of “orderly and courteous procedure and the most searching examination into each and every law affecting our citizens.”  He promised to support “full and open debate,” saying “Good laws are not enacted after bearing only one side of a question. Minority views are just as important as the views of the majority. Sound debate often results in a decision acceptable to both sides and thus redounds to the benefit of the state”

However, several of Bush’s friends from Kansas City missed the event.  The passenger elevators were jammed by the large crowd, so a janitor agreed to let them use a freight elevator.  Fifteen to twenty people crowded in—and the elevator stopped about five feet from the third floor.   Several minutes of door-pounding and prying open the doors finally caught the attention of someone in the hallway who got on top of the elevator car and lowered a chair to the interior.  After about five people used the chair to get out, the car rose to the third floor and stopped normally.  But it was too late for those inside to witness the event.

The scariest inauguration might have been in 1913, when Elliott Major was sworn in.   The Capitol had burned in 1911 and a temporary Capitol was erected just east of the present building.  It was made of stucco, lath and wire.  One account says “it was jammed to suffocation and the structure groaned and creaked under the weight of the crowd.”  The building was still there when Frederick Gardner was to be inaugurated but officials were afraid to use it.  The situation led to the first outdoor inauguration four years later when the new Capitol remained unfinished enough for an indoor ceremony and nobody wanted to go back into the temporary building.

Things were a little straight-laced, compared to today, in 1913.  The inauguration committee issued an edict barring “ragging” at the ball, the playing of ragtime music.  modern dances such as the “bunny hop” or the “bear cat,” or the “turkey trot,” and  “all other of the 57 varieties of the terpsichorean art where swaying of the shoulders and other unnecessary movements” are made.

There were fears in 1881 that the inauguration of John S. Marmaduke might have to be delayed because he developed a severe nose bleed in St. Louis a few days earlier.   The New York Times reported (Jan 11, 1885) that three doctors worked to solve the problem by trying to keep him “perfectly quiet and free from all excitement.”  The newspaper reported the Marmaduke was at a St. Louis hotel “up in his room nursing his well proportioned nose, which has both nostrils solidly plugged up.”

Marmaduke was a bachelor and described in the article as “quite a ladies’ man.”  A few days earlier he had a date with the Widow Bernoudy and was her escort as she called upon several mutual friends.  During the outing he complained of a pain in the back of his head but she thought he just wanted sympathy.  After the calls, the pain in his head grew much worse and he was seized with intense bleeding. She called two doctors who took him to the hotel and spent the day and night before they finally stopped the bleeding.   He did recover in time to attend his inauguration.  However he died in pneumonia  in 1887 before the end of his term.

Governor Thomas Fletcher, chosen in the first election since the start of the Civil War,  took office about three months before the final collapse of the Confederacy calling for magnanimity and “forgetful of past differences, seek only to promote the general good of the people of whole commonwealth.”

He said in part: “Henceforth Missouri shall be an asylum for all nationalities and races and peoples; the repository of wealth, and a theater for the development of the labor and enterprise of the hand and spirit of Industry; and the home of free thought, free speech and a free press, where the prejudices of caste and class have no legal embodiment or political encouragement…Let it be announced that in the new era which has come, ours is to be the first of States, with the largest freedom and the widest charities…Where a free people…guards the right of permitting the position and privileges of every man to be such as his virtues, talents, education, patriotism, enterprise, industry, courage or achievements may confer upon him.”

In 1857, Trusten Polk was being inaugurated when it was discovered there did not seem to be a Bible anyplace in the Capitol.  The ceremony was delayed for several minutes while an intense search was done.  A Bible was finally located, several blocks away, at the state penitentiary.

One newspaper said afterwards that Jefferson City would be a tremendous field for missionaries, noting, “”We fear that the work of legislation can never go on properly in a place where copies of the Good Book are so scarce, and that it will be necessary for other reasons than the high price of board, to fetch the Legislature to St. Louis where, goodness knows, there are plenty of Bibles, whether we govern our lives by the precepts contained therein or not.”

Inaugurations have not always been spectacular events.  When Missouri’s first state Governor, Alexander McNair, delivered his first message to the legislature in 1821, he did the entire thing—the swearing-in and the speaking—so quickly that a number of lawmakers in a nearby St. Charles pub missed the whole thing.  St. Charles was the temporary state capital then.   McNair refused requests to give his speech again.

Anniversary

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I was among those asked to keep a daily journal during the pandemic so that people of the next great pandemic would know how we survived the anxious pre-inoculation months did it, the apprehensions we felt, the isolations we dealt with,  and the things we witnessed from a distance.

This is my lengthy entry for this day, four years ago. I offer it so we can recall the astonishing, abhorrent events and the reactions to them.

This recollection became more poignant when I read the reaction in 2021 of former President Jimmy Carter—-and the contempt for him by the man who will resume power in the White House in two weeks.

Although Donald Trump issued a statement of sympathy after Mr. Carter’s death, he cannot escape history recording that he once called Carter “the worst president” and when Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Trump reacted in a way that surprised no one:

“Crooked Joe Biden is the worst president in the history of our country. He’s the most incompetent and he’s the most corrupt president in the history of our country. And it’s not even close. In fact, I said, today, the happiest person alive today is Jimmy Carter because his presidency looks brilliant. Brilliant by comparison.”

Historians, on the other hand, who are not as self-absorbed as Mr. Trump, a few years ago ranked the worst presidents as James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Donald Trump.

President Biden has asked that flags be flown at half-staff for a month in honor of Mr. Carter, not an unusual way to recognize the death of a past President—-and Trump has again shown his usual self-absorption and lack of class by complaining that the flags will be at half staff during his inauguration.

Jimmy Carter, a man who lived his faith in word and deed, is being disrespected by a man who borrowed a Bible for a photo op at a church across the street from the White House, someone who worships the putter on Sundays and who will never build a house for Habitat for Humanity.

Remember January 6, 2021? A newspaper article yesterday carried the headline that memories of it  are \fading. If we love our country, love it more than we love ourselves, we cannot let those events “fade” as the  inspiration behind them prepares to move back to the scene of the event. So I have decided today to recall what I—and others—wrote and thought that awful day, four years ago today, even as it unfolded. (I am omitting the pictures from the original entry.)

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

I begin this entry at 1:50 p.m. while watching something happen in Washington that neither I nor my citizen ancestors going back to the days of Washington, Jefferson, and even earlier founders could have imagined—thousands of supporters of our president, egged on by him in an hour-long tirade near the White House—have laid siege to the United States Capitol, interrupting the debate on certifying results of the Electoral College. I am watching FOX, the network that has been uncomfortably friendly with our president for years, as some demonstrators are trying to break through the doors into the House of Representatives.

Reporters just said law enforcement officers are guarding the doors with guns drawn, and another of the reports said moments ago that he’s been getting text messages from ambassadors saying this country would be highly critical of other countries if anything such as this happened there.

What we are seeing is appalling.  One observer calls it “a breakdown of the constitutional process.”  It’s the most significant incursion inside our Capitol since the British attack in 1814.  There is no doubt our president stoked this outrage and has been doing it for months, years. This morning, he and his children and other supporters had a rally near the White House.  His son, Donald Junior—who hopes to become the next national chairman of the Republican Party—told the crowd that their presence should tell mainline Republicans their day is past. “It should be a message to all Republicans who have not been willing to actually fight, the people who did nothing to stop the steal. This gathering should send a message to them: This isn’t their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party. We’re going to try and give our Republicans the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”  Then his father ranted for about 90 minutes, speaking to a crowd he had been begging for several days to show up in Washington today.  He urged the protestors to go to the capitol.

They did and about an hour after Congress started the process and started dealing with the first protest—of the Arizona results the House and Senate suddenly adjourned.  When I saw that happen (on C-SPAN) I switched to CNN and then to FOX because I suspected there was trouble developing.

FOX reporters are as stunned as anybody on the other (less Trumpish) networks by what is unfolding in front of them. Others got into the hallways and office areas.

Protestors get into the capitol and are shown on video walking through Statuary Hall.

One reporter on Pennsylvania Avenue just reported things are becoming increasingly violent in the streets. Senators and Representatives are locked in their offices. The Vice-President, who was presiding over the joint session, has been evacuated.  The President apparently is in the oval office where he earlier sent a Tweet criticizing the VP for lacking courage to overturn the election results today.  That was after VP Pence told members of Congress he would not try to singlehandedly throw out electoral votes. He had sent a letter to all members of Congress saying, “It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”

A few minutes ago he tweeted, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our country. Stay Peaceful!”

One senator just tweeted a picture of protestors in the Senate Chamber.

The Mayor of Washington has instituted a 6 p.m. curfew.

So far, Josh Hawley has been silent—and he’s one of those who lit this fire several days ago when he announced he would challenge the election results. He was later joined by a dozen others, and the president who “rallied” his supporters in Georgia Monday and who encouraged demonstrators this morning to march on the Capitol.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, interviewed on FOX “cannot be sadder or more disappointed. This is not the American Way. I’m with capitol police; I’ve heard on the radio shots have been fired.”   (we later learned a woman had been shot, apparently while with the crowd trying to break into the House chamber.) “This is Un-American, what’s going on.” He called on Trump to make a statement.  The president sent out a Tweet shortly after that, about 2:15: “I am asking everyone at the U. S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No Violence! Remember WE are the Party of Law & Order—respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

About the same time, Brett Baier on FOX reported Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had asked that the National Guard be deployed to clear the protestors.

2:30—FOX shows protestors breaking windows and climbing into the building.

Fox at 2:50 showed a photograph of a demonstrator sitting in the chair in Nancy Pelosi’s office.

The New York Times reported later that night that he’s from Arkansas, Matthew Rosenberg, who left a quarter on the desk and took a personalized envelope from the office. And he could be in very bad trouble. His Congressman, Steve Womack, tweeted about him, “I’m sickened to learn that the…actions were perpetrated by a constituent. It’s an embarrassment to the people of the Third District and does not reflect our values. He must be held accountable and face the fullest extent of the law. This isn’t the American or Arkansas way.”  And Arkansas Senator Jim Hendren tweeted “Don’t know this guy, but he needs to go to jail.”

Another photo shows a demonstrator sitting in the Senate President’s chair.

Haven’t seen an I-D of this creep yet.

(all Photos in this post are from Getty Images unless otherwise noted)

2:52—Pelosi and Shumer call on president to go on the air and call on protestors to leave.

2:55—DOD mobilizes troops.  A barrier will be set up around the capitol, crowd to be cleared out. And a tight lockdown will be put in place.

2:20—FOX reports at least one person has been shot.

2:20—senate secured and demonstrators are being pushed out of the second and third floors of the rotunda.

3:05—President-elect Biden goes on the air.  He began, “At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault, unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times. Let me be very clear: The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect the true America, do not represent who we are. I’m genuinely shocked and saddened that our nation, so long a beacon of hope and light for democracy, has come to such a dark moment. America’s about honor, decency, respect, tolerance. That’s who we are. That’s who we’ve always been.”

He demanded the president call on his supporters to end an “unprecedented assault” on democracy. “I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege.”  He urged the protestors to end their occupation of the House and Senate and blamed today’s violence on Trumps refusal to accept defeat. “At their best, the words of a president can inspire. At their worst, they can incite…This is not dissent. It’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition, and it must end now. I call on this mob to pull back and allow the work of democracy to go forward.” He finished, “President Trump, step up.”

A few minutes later the White House released a taped message from Trump encouraging people to go home—-but most of his 61-second message was a whine about the election:

“I know your pain, I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us, it was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side.  But you have to go home now, we have to have peace. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order we have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us from me from you from our country. This was a fraudulent election. But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens, you see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home and peace.”

We love you. You’re very special. ??????  No condemnation, no criticism.  Whine and pat these domestic terrorists you have encouraged on the heads and tell them to go home.

3:40—FOX shows video of woman shot in the capitol. She’s reported critical at a hospital. This is the only reported shot fired and only reported person injured.

It’s dusk in Washington now and reporters and city officials are worried about what will happen tonight, despite the curfew.  The Mayor and metropolitan police have announced anybody on capitol grounds after 6 p.m. will be arrested.

4:15: Rep. Steve Scalise says he hopes to get the capitol open and continue the debates tonight. Some other members reportedly feel the same way but we haven’t heard from the Congressional leadership yet.

At some point in all of this, this afternoon, the networks proclaimed John Osoff had won the Georgia Senate election although the margin is so thin that a recount is likely. He’s 33 and will be the youngest member of the Senate although not the youngest person elected. That honor goes to Joseph Biden.

About 4:55 it was announced that police think the capitol is secure again.

About an hour ago, Hawley tweeted: Thank you to the brave law enforcement officials who have put their lives on the line. The violence must end, those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted, and Congress must get back to work and finish its job.

He drew three quick responses:

Samuel George

Sir – you inflicted this by rejecting the vote of the people

Your name will always be associated with today. Cool legacy.

Alex Rozar

This was your doing.

Former President George W. Bush released a statement late this afternoon “A statement on the insurrection at the Capitol,” a pretty plainspoken comment.  It’s especially impactful because he has seldom spoken about things since leaving the White House—as past presidents traditionally have done.  But there’s no love lost between the Bush family and Trump.

“Laura and I are watching the scenes of mayhem unfolding at the seat of our Nation’s government in disbelief and dismay. It is a sickening and heartbreaking sight. This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic.

“I am appalled by the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election and by the lack of respect shown today for our institutions, our traditions, and our law enforcement. The violent assault on the Capitol — and disruption of a Constitutionally-mandated meeting of Congress — was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes.

“Insurrection could do grave damage to our Nation and reputation. In the United States of America, it is the fundamental responsibility of every patriotic citizen to support the rule of law. To those who are disappointed in the results of the election: Our country is more important than the politics of the moment. Let the officials elected by the people fulfill their duties and represent our voices in peace and safety.  “May God continue to bless the United States of America.” 

Former President Clinton: “Today we faced an unprecedented assault on our Capitol, our Constitution, and our country. The assault was fueled by more than four years of poison politics spreading deliberate misinformation, sowing distrust in our system, and pitting Americans against one another. The match was lit by Donald Trump and his most ardent enablers, including many in Congress, to overturn the results of an election he lost.”

Former President Obama: “History will rightly remember today’s violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation. But we’d be kidding ourselves if we treated it as a total surprise. Right now, Republican leaders have a choice made clear in the desecrated chambers of democracy. They can continue down this road and keep stoking the raging fires. Or they can choose reality and take the first steps toward extinguishing the flames. They can choose America.

“I’ve been heartened to see many members of the President’s party speak up forcefully today. Their voices add to the examples of Republican state and local election officials in states like Georgia who’ve refused to be intimidated and have discharged their duties honorably. We need more leaders like these — right now and in the days, weeks, and months ahead as President-Elect Biden works to restore a common purpose to our politics. It’s up to all of us as Americans, regardless of party, to support him in that goal.”

Jimmy Carter: “This is a national tragedy and is not who we are as a nation. Having observed elections in troubled democracies worldwide, I know that we the people can unite to walk back from this precipice to peacefully uphold the laws of our nation, and we must. We join our fellow citizens in praying for a peaceful resolution so our nation can heal and complete the transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries.”

Twitter has shut down our president’s access for 12 hours because of a message he put out this afternoon.  Facebook took down his “We love you” video and has banned him for 24 hours.

The Kansas City Star tomorrow morning:

“No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley, the 41-year old junior senator from Missouri, who put out a fundraising appeal while the siege was underway.  

“This, Sen. Hawley, is what law-breaking and destruction look like. This is what mobs do. This is not a protest, but a riot. One woman was shot and has died, The Washington Post reported, while lawmakers were sheltering in place.

“No longer can it be asked, as George Will did recently of Hawley, “Has there ever been such a high ration of ambition to accomplishment?” Hawley’s actions in the last week had such impact that he deserves an impressive share of the blame for the blood that’s been shed.

“Hawley was first to say that he would oppose the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. That action, motivated by ambition, set off much that followed — the rush of his fellow presidential aspirant Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and other members of the Sedition Caucus to put a show of loyalty to the president above all else.

“After mayhem broke out, Hawley put out this uncharacteristically brief statement: “Thank you to the brave law enforcement officials who have put their lives on the line. The violence must end, those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted, and Congress must get back to work and finish its job.” So modest, Senator, failing to note your key role in inspiring one of the most heartbreaking days in modern American history. We lost something precious on Wednesday, as condolence notes to our democracy from our friends around the world recognize.

“Among those Hawley got to emulate him was Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, whose very first act as a member of the world’s greatest deliberative body was to sell out his country by attempting to overturn the outcome of a legitimate election.

“This revolt is the result, and if you didn’t know this is where we’ve been headed from the start, it’s because you didn’t want to know.”

“’The Frankenstein just tore down the doors to the palace,” U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri, told The Star. Which happened because, as he said, “One-third of the nation has bought into a bald-faced lie, and they are living in a fact-free America.’

“’I’m currently safe and sheltering in place while we wait to receive further instruction from Capitol Police,’ tweeted U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat from Kansas. ‘Today is a dark day for our country. It’s unacceptable that we have a President who has repeatedly condoned and even encouraged this despicable behavior. It must stop.’”

“We’ll say again what Davids is too polite to say: Trump did not manage this madness on his own. Far from it.

REPUBLICANS KNEW TRUMP’S FRAUD CLAIMS WERE BOGUS

“Just before the putsch began, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said sadly that we need to once again work from an agreed upon set of facts. Only now has he noticed that lying to the public on a daily basis poisons democracy.

“People have taken this too far,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Fox News. Until he had to run for cover, McCarthy was fine with this sick stunt.

“U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky, said in a statement, ‘Today’s events at the U.S. Capitol are tragic, outrageous, and devastating. They are wholly inconsistent with the values of our constitutional Republic.’

“Yes, they are. But they are wholly consistent with Trump’s calls to overturn this election to address nonexistent fraud. And they are wholly predictable, given the willingness of most Republicans to repeat these baseless claims.

“When we wrote that Hawley’s actions were dangerous — and that those of Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt and others were too, in their pretending for far too long that the election wasn’t over — some readers found that absurd. ‘Oh my goodness, how will democracy and our country survive?’ one reader wrote in sarcasm. ‘How will Biden possibly govern? The Star editorial board’s hysteria over nothing is approaching CNN levels.’

“No doubt plenty of Americans will see even this free-for-all in the temple of democracy as defensible. And those of you who have excused all of the brazen lawlessness of this administration can take a little bit of credit for these events, too. They couldn’t have done it without you.

“Hawley, Marshall and other Republicans who upheld Trump’s con about widespread fraud knew all along that his claims were bogus. Now that they’ve seen exactly where those lies have landed us, decency demands that they try to prevent further violence by making clear that Joe Biden did not win by cheating. Please, gentlemen, surprise us.”

(Hawley gestures to the demonstrators this morning as he goes into the Capitol.)

About 9:30 tonight the Senate defeated the challenge to Arizona’s electoral votes 6-93 as several of the original protesting Senators withdrew their support of the challenge after today’s actions.

A TV station in San Diego (KUSI) says it has confirmed the identity of the woman who was shot to death inside the capitol.  It says she’s Ashli Babbit, a USAF 14-year veteran who did four tours overseas. The French news agency, AFP, said tonight that Babbit tweeted yesterday about those going to Washington for the rally, “Nothing will stop us….they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours….dark to light!”,

I had said right after the election that one of my greatest concerns was how much damage Trump could do before he left.  I’ve written a couple of pretty harsh blog pieces (the most recent one was Monday) about him.  I can’t say I was surprised by what happened today—I was surprised by the scope of the events but not that there was mob violence based on his encouragement of it. Now, with two weeks to go before he departs the White House, there are some concerns being voice in tonight’s news coverage about this deranged man with his finger on the nuclear trigger remaining in his job for those 14 days.

Tonight (it’s 10:15 p.m.) there’s talk about whether steps need to be taken under the 25th Amendment to remove him.  And there are reports of several resignations from his staff and possible resignations from his cabinet or high-level staff.  There are also a lot of questions being asked about how the mob could have penetrated the Capitol security.

I don’t think I would want to be in the White House tonight.  Our president must be in a rage that borders on insanity, not only because Pence hasn’t done his bidding and Congress not only won’t do his bidding and because some of his closest associates are on the verge of bailing out, but because he has no access to s social media, no way to rant and rave at an unprecedented level.

This has been one of those days that will be a “What were you doing when….” question is asked. It’s a landmark day in national memory much as the Kennedy assassinations and the King murder and the Moon landing, and the Twin Towers attack (and in Jefferson City’s case, the 2019 tornado). This one is so special because even the Kennedy and King assassinations didn’t leave people this shaken about the future of our republic.

It’s now after midnight.  The TV nets are reporting the streets of Washington are quiet.  The day’s toll, according to various reports:  Four dead—one shot to death by a police officer and three who had medical emergencies.  Fourteen police injured , two hospitalized, one critical.

The joint session re-convened. Two or three protests were offered but none had a Senator’s name on it—the first House member with one protest said the Senators had withdrawn their names. The count stopped with Pennsylvania when several House members and Senators Hawley and Cruz filed a protest.  The Senate dispatched with the Hawley-Cruz part of it 7-92.  The House is voting down the protest on its side of things but it’s time to call it a terrible day and go to bed.

While all of this has been going on, the common folks were dealing with the coronavirus.  MODOH reports yesterday’s positivity rate was 21.5% and hospitalizations just under 2800. Nationally, yesterday was the deadliest day in the pandemic.

MODOH was my shorthand for the Missouri Department of Health.

—A week later, I added to the journal the text of Trump’s remarks so that those a hundred years from now (I hope we don’t have another pandemic for at least that long) will understand how Trump encouraged those events and how stunning it was to watch them.

And how our then-junior Senator fanned the flames.

Jimmy Carter is dead and today the House and Senate will make the electoral college vote official with the same ceremony Trump tried to stop four years ago.

And the flags will be at half staff. Read into that circumstance what you wish.

 

LIGHT

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Just in time—–

The Christmas Cactus is blooming.

It’s called a Schlumberia in formal language.  The story is told of a Jesuit missionary, Father Jose, working Bolivia to convert the natives but failing.  He could not convince them of the Christmas story but as he was praying on Christmas eve, he heard them singing a hymn he had taught them, the children coming toward him with a plant with beautiful flowers that they gave him to decorate his altar.

It is summer in Bolivia now, in the southern hemisphere.

We checked the weather in the northern hemisphere, Bethlehem on the West Bank of Israel to be precise, a couple of day ago and we learned that it’s going to be in the upper 50s and lower 60s there today.  December is the third coldest month of the year there—generally damp and mild with highs of about 59 and average lows of 43.

Okay, that’s not bad.  A baby probably would be quite comfortable in a stable and many people in those days lived in the same house with their animals anyway.

We don’t know exactly when He was born; some celebrate it on December 25 but others celebrate it on January 7. In fact, there are those who study ancient history who think he was born in 4 BCE.

That’s an archaeological term that doesn’t try to pin things down too exactly in a time when there were no calendars from the bank or the insurance company or the university hanging on the wall. “BCE” is an archaeological term that denotes periods, not exact dates. It means, “Before the Christian Era,”  a secular starting point that lacks specificity but defines eras when events happened.

So, Jesus—some calculate—was born four years before the start of the Christian Era. BCE, therefore is a way of dating things in a way that works for Christians, Buddhists, followers of Shinto, the Hindus—whatever.

To most of those who peruse these lines, today is December 25, 2024, according to the Gregorian Calendar that we use, introduced in 1752.  In adjusting away from the Julian calendar, which dates to 45BCE, some days had to be eliminated—ten of them. We won’t go into all of the explanation except  to note the Gregorian Calendar is a more accurate way to measure the time it takes us to go around the sun.

But today, as it as well as we can determine, it’s 24 Kislev, 5785 on the Jewish calendar and Jumadal Akhira 16, 1446 AH on the Muslim calendar.

Scientists looking at other recorded events, Biblical references, and seasons suggest the birth happened in  mid to late September. The conception, they calculate, is what happened about now in the Jewish month of Kislev.

But really, it doesn’t matter, does it?  This is the day we celebrate the birth.

Have you noticed the days are getting longer now?  The winter solstice has passed and it’s getting lighter…..at the time we celebrate the birth of Him who is called “the light of the world”  There are more than 35 verses in the Bible using that phrase or something akin to it.

We celebrate His birth as light coming into the world.

Perhaps some time today there will a minute or two to think about that.  And about how His followers themselves can be lights to others.  Every day.

(photo credits:  Bob Priddy. The candle is a painting done by Sara Elizabeth Priddy for her Grandma Priddy a long time ago.)

Let the Ethnic Cleansing Begin—Part Two

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We painted a rather pessimistic view in our last entry of our retread President’s plans for the largest deportation effort in our history. We looked at a Mother Jones article from a few months back that tried to gauge what the difficulties would be if he carries through with his plan.

The article displayed concerns about grave economic consequences of deporting 11-million people. Most of the adults in the group would be forced to leave their jobs behind, producing a crisis in the chicken plucking, roofing, and agricultural industries.

Here’s how to deal with this:

During his campaign, the incoming President asserted that these brown people from the south and the (probably) predominantly white people form the north—all of those thieves, killers, rapists, robbers, insane people, and major drug carriers, you know—were taking jobs away from Americans. Late in the campaign, speaking to a special group, he emphasized that these jobs were “Black jobs.”

You might remember from his June debate: “They’re taking Black jobs, and they’re taking Hispanic jobs, and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”

Hispanics taking Hispanic jobs?   We’ll let him try to make that logical some other time, which might be one of the few times he has done that.  But what about “Black jobs?”

If I were an African-American, I might take great offense at his assumption that there are certain jobs set aside for Black people. I thought our civilized America had pretty well gotten beyond that, but maybe he was too busy bankrupting his latest business venture to notice.

Incidentally, did he ever check the citizenship status of the cleaning staff at his hotels, clubs, and other properties? And what color were those jobs?

Well, not to get toooooo snarky—

The Hispanic people that he seems to have a hate/love relationship with do the farming, roofing, hotel cleaning, and healthcare jobs that include, as one source put it in our last entry, “emptying bedpans.” But if we export the Hispanics despite them having “Hispanic jobs,” then Black people seem to be the correct substitute, especially since those folks took black jobs to begin with.

But before we jettison all of these brown rapists, drug smugglers, etc., we can make them build the wall on our southern border that Mexico was supposed to pay us for building. We’re still waiting to hear that the check has cleared.

NBC had a story this summer reporting that Black workers often are overrepresented in government and health care work. There are eight Fortune 500 companies already headed by black executives, and Black people cause a problem for this scheme elsewhere. Under the first Trump administration, black unemployment dropped to 5.3%–in September 2019.  Under Joe Biden, it dropped to 4.8% in April 2023.

But that’s good news because the Army and the National Guard won’t have to round up a real big bunch of people to fill vacancies in Black people’s Black jobs. That’s good news because he won’t have enough federal military or state national guard units to round up all of the Black people who will be told to fill in for the rounded-up Hispanics.  Federal law tends to oppose that sort of thing anyway—-although the Trump Supreme Court might refine that provision.

Oh, wait! We DO have enough troops to do all of this. We just bring home soldiers helping protect our NATO allies and our sailors whose ships are protecting Israel from Iranian rocket attacks, and sailors from the ships protecting Taiwan, and troops keeping peace or holding enemies at bay in other places.  He doesn’t seem to think many of them belong out there anyway, so that’s not an employment gap he needs to worry about filling.

But then, who will replace all the Black people who are going to replace the Brown people thrown out of the country?

The solution is too easy.

Round up all the homeless people and make them fill in for all the Black folks who will regain all the jobs the brown people took away from the black people who will get their jobs back when we get rid of the Hispanic people who risked everything to come to this country to get jobs, many of whom sent some of their earnings back to other people in their home countries .

Now, all of those people who sent money home from America will be no longer sending money back home that helps their national economies. Instead, they will become a burden to those counties that we consider our allies.

Getting back to the homeless—

There are studies that show many of the homeless have mental problems but they can’t be treated because Ronald Reagan killed President Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act that continued funding federal community mental health centers. In a matter of weeks after he took office, Reagan changed things to give states block grants which haven’t made up for the loss of the Carter program. So we have a lot of mentally-ill homeless people among us and it’s easier to complain about them than do something about their problems.

But if we can take these folks, even those with mental health issues, round them up, get them off the streets and then distribute them out for mental health care duties now handled by Hispanic and Black people, everything’s fine.

Elon Musk wants to slash government spending by billions of dollars so don’t look for any mental health help for the homeless folks that will be rounded up to complete this restructuring of our economy.  The buck has to stop somewhere.

But who is going to help those who have taken the remaining job openings that have trickled down after the Hispanic deportations?

Simple.

Our retread President tells all those countries for which he wants to inflict tariffs that if the armies in those other countries round up enough of their people and make them emigrate to the United States, we won’t have a problem.  Unfortunately, our immigration people might be so busy getting people out of the country that they won’t have time to check the legality of those coming in.

But there it is.  All the bases are covered.  America will be great again.

No charge.  No awards expected.

A lingering issue remains, though.  Will the Army and the National Guard be committed equally to rounding up Canadians, Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, and Swedes—among others—who probably are in this country illegally, too?

And then once we’ve got all of immigrants out of the country, who’s going to protect the rest of us from the Wampanoags, whose lands were taken by the Pilgrims who came here seeking religious liberty for themselves but not for Baptists and other unacceptable people who they considered the equivalents of our rapists, drug smugglers, criminals and crazy people, when the Wampanoags and other nations demand the interlopers get out of places such as Mar-a-Lago?

What’s Next: Part Two—The Looming Threat

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Greg Olson is a terrific historian from Columbia who has a deep interest in the 12,000-year history of the people who were here long before the Europeans showed up for commercial, more than religious, purposes to exploit, conquer, and subjugate them.  His newest book is a voluminous report on Indigenous Missourians; Ancient Societies to the Present. He presented part of his research in the July, 2021 issue of the Missouri Historical Review, the quarterly publication of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

He points out something few of us realize. When what is now Missouri became American Territory with the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, the United States did not really get very much. He wrote, “When Missouri was admitted into the Union in 1821, only three Indigenous nations, the Sacs, Foxes, and Osages, had ceded rights to any property inside the state. In all, it would take thirty-four years of negotiating twenty-two treaties with thirteen different Native nations before the United States finally established clear title to all the land inside Missouri in 1837.”

Remember that figure: thirteen different Native nations.

That’s where a possible threat to our thirteen commercial casinos could lie.

In October, 2021, the Osage Nation announced plans for a $60 million casino/hotel complex on 28 acres of land at the Lake of the Ozarks on land it claimed as ancestral lands, part of the territory covered by the Treaty of Fort Clark. An application was sent to the U. S. Department of the Interior for approval under the U. S. Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The Osage Nation asked to transfer the land into a federal trust with tribal sovereignty rights granted, clearing the way for a casino that will be exempt from Missouri laws and regulations.

The defeat of Amendment 5 has no impact on the proposed Osage casino except that it eliminated competition from a commercial casino.

Editor Shannon Shaw Duty wrote in Osage Nation newspaper in September, 2021 that Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear already was looking for a second, similar piece of land to buy for construction of another Osage Nation tribal casinos. “Tell the people of the United States that this is our homeland, this is our legally recognized homeland. There are treaties in place that we did not fully agree with that drove us out of there and we want to claim those properties,” he said.

The American Gaming Association says the United States has 352 land-based casinos, 266 tribal  casinos, 66 boats and 50 racinos. Fourteen states have only tribal casinos. The states with the most tribal casinos are Oklahoma (140), Arizona (85), Minnesota (40), and Washington (35).

Although tribal casinos are not regulated by the states, they cannot operate without an agreement, or compact, with each state. Oklahoma has compacts with 35 tribes. Its model compact is at Microsoft Word – Model Compact.doc (ok.gov).

A summary of Arizona’s 24 compacts can be found at KNXV-TV, Phoenix’s website: https://www.ok.gov/OGC/documents/Model%20Compact.pdf

Minnesota’s compacts are at: Gambling – Tribal State Gaming Compacts (mn.gov) Washington’s compacts are at: Tribal gaming compacts and amendments | Washington State Gambling Commission.

Missouri’s commercial casino industry and other tribes likely are all paying attention to the fate of the Osage Casino at the Lake of the Ozarks. Given Missouri’s history of First Peoples occupation and the lengthy period of treaty-making with thirteen nations, it would not be surprising that success at the Lake of the Ozarks could trigger a push by other Native American Nations to build tribal casinos throughout Missouri in areas not tied to the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers, a constitutional limit on the commercial casino industry.

Such developments, of course, would provide unwelcome competition to the existing casinos and could provoke significant developments in lesser-populated areas or other parts of Missouri untouched by commercial casino gambling. The situation is fertile for speculation.

Tribal casinos in the vicinities of Highways 36 and 61 would threaten the state’s smallest casino at Lagrange. A tribal casino at 36 and 63 would serve a large, unserved, part of north Missouri and would draw some business away from LaGrange and Boonville—which already might have lost southern constituents to the casino at the Lake of the Ozarks—and one at 36 and I35 would threaten the casino at St. Joseph. A casino at Highways 60 and I55 would threaten casinos at Cape Girardeau and at Caruthersville.

Only Kentucky and Tennessee of our surrounding states do not have Indian casinos. Iowa has four; Nebraska five; Kansas seven; Arkansas 2. Oklahoma has 143 Indian casinos operated by 33 tribes. The casino industry is considered the second-largest industry in the state. Revenues generated at Oklahoma Indian casinos is second only the revenues generated by Indian casinos in California.

How Native American Tribal casino gambling would mesh with cultural/religious concerns and regional economic needs could become a long-term storyline.

All that we have written in these two entries is entirely speculation.  But casino gambling is changing in numerous ways and the people of Missouri and those we send to the general assembly need to be aware that they will be asked to take actions of some kind—and those in the decision-making roles should understand where their responsibilities lie.

Amendment 2 might be just the start.

Twentieth Century American Gothic  11/6/24)

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While the nation is still trying to wrap up the most trying political campaign in our lifetime, we are going to look at something or somebody else. It will be something that we hope takes your minds off of what we’ve been through and what lies ahead.

Do you know these folks?

They look kind of familiar.  Where do I know them from?

You and I know them pretty well.  Or maybe not at all.

They are us.

Buzzfeed ran an article on November 4 in which it reported the results after asking Artificial Intelligence to create images of the way typical residents of each state would look. Nancy and I found this piece fascinating as we looked at the images for all of the states.

The same two people provided the faces.  A man and a woman who appear to be in their early 40s, perhaps (?).  The article says the results “reveal the biases and stereotypes that currently exist within AI models.”  Maybe, if we dwell on this deeply enough, we might find they exist with each of us.  Buzzfeed cautioned these people “are not meant to be seen as accurate or full depictions of human experience.”

They look pretty real to us.  But, then, that’s one of the scary things about AI.

It appears AI used a lot of demographic and cultural information to give these folks their special looks. What does it tell us about ourselves?

Nancy and I tried to “read” this Missouri couple. Here’s what we decided.  Both are intelligent with at least some higher education, maybe more than a little. He’s serious and pretty well set in his opinions. He’ll argue with you about them and probably won’t retreat. He’s sure he’s right. She’s her own person, one of substance, curious and considerate of your opinion. She might agree with you eventually, or partly or at least continue the conversation. He’s intense. She’s curious. You might walk away from a conversation with him convinced he thinks of himself as slightly superior.  You might walk away from a conversation with her with something to think about, and she might walk away thinking the same thing.

Who’s the Republican?  Who’s the Democrat?  Either? Both? Is one of them an independent?

What does it take to make them laugh or at least to smile?

If you are from St. Louis, what high school would they have attended?

What’s their favorite television show?

Do they go to church?

On a vacation, does he want to fish and hunt while she wants to hike?

Are they a couple?  Could be. If they are, they probably have some interesting discussions. Do they drink wine?  Yeah, but I think he’s the one more likely to order a beer at dinner. They could be Tiger fans and might even tailgate on Saturdays. They enjoy the company of others.  They don’t join organizations, or very many organizations.  They’re middle-income folks, educated.  If they are a couple, they would have a couple of children probably pre-teens with all of the challenges that comes with them.

Their professions?   Not teachers.  Not lawyers.  Maybe she’s a social worker. Maybe he’s a fireman.  Maybe he runs an auto parts store and she has a fabric store.  Or maybe he sells boats and she’s the administrative assistant to a college dean.

He drives a pickup truck, maybe a Dodge Ram.  She drives a Prius.

What do YOU think? Who are they?  Who are we?  How would we look and dress to show what typical Missourians look like?

If you want to see what this couple looks like in other states, go to:

I Asked AI What The Typical Person From Each State Looks Like, And Here’s What It Came Up With (msn.com)

We found some surprises. We found some that (in our personal stereotypes) were dead on.  We were interested in how they are placed in the pictures of some states’ representatives. Sometimes she’s in front or more by his side..

We love Iowa’s couple and consider them a 21st Century American Gothic, an updated version of Grant Wood’s famous painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know what we think would be fun?  Have some folks over and show them the pictures representing each of our states and let the group discuss the things Nancy and I have discussed.

Thirty years ago, Robert Fulgham was a best-selling author of self-understanding books. One of them was Well, What is it You Do? He said, “I—and you—we are infinite, rich, largely contradictory, living, breathing human beings, children of God and the everlasting universe. That’s what we do.”

Maybe that’s a good place to start when you “read” these Missourians.

Spend some time with them and if you would like, tell us in the comments box how YOU read them—and what they say about our state.

The Gun, The School, The Town , The Times

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I took a gun to school once.

In a more innocent time.

A long, long time ago.

It was a revolver that held seven .22-short bullets.

It wasn’t loaded.

Here is the gun:

Well, not really THE gun. Our house burned down three weeks before Christmas when I was a high school freshman.  I lost my coin collection that included a mis-strike nickel that had two heads, several plastic model airplanes, a baseball card collection that probably included a Mantle rookie card, a few Red Man Chewing Tobacco cards, and assorted other baseball cards that would have put both of our children through college had the collection survived, a collection of Lone Ranger novels (since re-accumulated through the years), my old maid aunt Gertrude’s National Geographic collection that began in 1907 (I had looked through only a few as I sought out the ones that had stories about African natives whose lack of above-the-waist attire was very interesting to a boy my age), and the gun.

Today I would be rushed to the principal’s office; my parents would be called; I would be home-schooled for a while, to say the least.

My great-grandfather played the fife for the 126th Illinois Infantry that served under General Sherman at Vicksburg and then was instrumental in gaining control of northern Arkansas, including the capture of Little Rock.  He enlisted in another town in Moultrie County and after the war lived in what we called a big city in those days—Decatur—for sixty more years where he once owned an ice cream store.

His pistol was the first Smith & Wesson pistol.   Not THE first, but—well, you get the idea.

I think I took it to school because we were studying the Civil War in an elementary school class and it was no big deal.

I don’t remember the duck-and-cover drills some children of that vintage practiced, thinking that hiding under a school desk would save them from an Atom Bomb.   We had fire drills, though.  A couple of times a year.  Outside we’d go. Never in rain or snow but I do remember some cold days standing on the sidewalk while the teachers checked every room to make sure one of my classmates hadn’t decided to hide out.

I grew up in two towns in which Abraham Lincoln, then a circuit-riding lawyer, occasionally visited to take part in trials.  I have been told that the one in which I spent the most time had a Sundown Ordinance—no Negroes allowed in town after dark.  (I use the word because that’s the word that was used then.) Many years later I considered the irony of a town where Lincoln was a sometime-lawyer that told black people they were not welcome after sundown.  But then, as I have learned, Lincoln’s own attitudes toward black people were pretty undeveloped then.

My class was the first to graduate from the new high school that I could watch being constructed when I was in my Junior English class in the old high school—which was torn down a few months ago. Some black men from Decatur were part of the construction crew and one day one of my classmates told me he had heard that they planned to move their families to our town after the new school was built and “if they do, there’s going to be trouble.”

I couldn’t understand why he felt that way. I was young, innocent of worldly things.  I did not meet my first black people until the second semester of my freshman college year when the Residential Assistant for my dormitory floor brought a couple of black guys around to every room and introduced them.  To me they were just guys.  Years later, I figured out that the university was integrating the dormitories (I watched the first black football and basketball players perform for the school).  By the time I left, America had undergone a painful change. I had changed, too, picketing a segregated bowling alley one evening with my church group, and came to work in a segregated city with an HBCU that would taste violence during the Civil Rights struggle.

My little town surrounded by the rich land of the Illinois prairie still has high school sports teams unapologetically called Redskins. It’s about fifty miles from the University teams are called the Fighting Illini. My class ring, safely in a bank deposit box, features the abstract image of a Native American Chief.  Or at least the profile of a Native American in an ornate headdress.

Not commenting. Just saying.

One of our World War II heroes was a B-25 pilot who wasn’t satisfied to just fly over his hometown. He buzzed it.  Stood that plane on its wing and flew around the courthouse dome.  That was before we moved there.  By the time we moved there he was our school principal.  Col. Loren Jenne’s Army Air Corps uniform is in the county historical museum.  It’s a really, really good recently-built museum constructed with the help of an advisor for the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.  Visiting it for a reunion a couple of years ago made me realize how lacking we are in Jefferson City for a good local historical museum.

The town library’s board room holds part of local resident’s collection of 700 hood ornaments and the former Illinois Masonic Home has one of the largest collections of sea shells in the country.

I had a laid-back high school history teacher who once told me he became a teacher because “it was better than working for a living.”  Everybody had to do a report on some historical event for his class. Mine was on the Battle of Gettysburg. It took as long as the battle took—three days. Even then I could write long.

I missed one of the biggest events in town history because I was in college.  Richard Nixon dropped in on this little town of about 3600 during his 1960 campaign. Town leaders had invited him and challenger John Kennedy to hold an old-fashioned debate at the annual buffalo barbecue.  Kennedy didn’t show but Nixon ate half a sandwich and then spoke to about 17,000 people who gathered in a park where I had learned to love playing baseball.  A Boy Scout who helped provide security at Nixon’s table picked up the remainder of his buffalo sandwich and took it home.  His mother put the remnant in a pickle jar and froze it.  Sixty years later, he published a book, The Sandwich That Changed My Life, recounting how the sandwich is still in that jar but occasionally had been on public display including the day he took it to Los Angeles for an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  Carson gave him one of his half-eaten sandwiches, which led people such as Tiny Tim and Steve Martin to make additional contributions.

Nixon wasn’t the first presidential aspirant to visit my little town.  When Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were holding their famous debates throughout the state—Lincoln was challenging Douglas for a seat in the U. S. Senate—Lincoln paused to give a speech in a little grove of trees that is now the site of the civic center. Douglas wasn’t there. However, a riot between Lincoln and Douglas supporters broke out on the town square during the 1858 campaign.

We had a Brown Shoe factory, as did many small towns, for decades. It was near the now-gone elementary school I entered late in my fourth grade year.  I hit a softball through one of its windows one day during a noon hour game on the vacant lot between the school and the factory. Foreign competition shut it down. The building is still there, re-purposed several times. .

I went away from that little town to study journalism at the University of Missouri.  In those first few days, new college students ask and are asked many times, “Where are you from?”  There were nods of the head when the answers were St. Louis, or Kirksville, or Joplin, or Polo, or Hannibal (my roommate), or other Missouri towns.  But when I said, “Sullivan, Illinois,” there was the second question:

“Where’s that?”

And I would reach into my back pocket and pull out an official Illinois State Highway Map, William G. Stratton, Governor, and I would unfold it and show them.  Today I would say, “It’s about 40 minutes north of Effingham” and everybody would know because Effingham, then a bowling alley and a gas station-small town on Highway 40, is a major stop on straight and boring I-70 between St. Louis and Terre Haute.  I’m sure some of my new classmates walked away thinking, “He’s too weird.”

In a few days, I’m headed back to Sullivan for my (mumble-mumble) class reunion. I cherish these get-togethers, especially as our numbers dwindle.  I have a nice red polo shirt, although I wish I could find an appropriate red and black sweatshirt or jacket to wear while I ride in one of the 1959 convertibles a classmate has arranged for classmates to ride in during the homecoming parade. It shouldn’t be as hard as it was the other day to find the right thing in Jay and Chiefs country.

But the other day I bought a new car that’s red with black trim and I hope that is appropriate.

A few years ago I came to the conclusion that the last time we met as a class was the night we graduated.  Now, we are the Community of ’59.  Then, were a homogenous group raised in the same county, for the most part, part of the same culture for the first 18 years of our life, no more acutely aware of the greater world beyond us than teenagers today probably are plugged into life outside their schools.  But since then, life has changed us, has filled us with our own unique experiences and we come together as diverse individuals shaped by the decades that have passed.

Yet, when I think of them, it is easy to see them in my mind as perpetually young. And when we meet, we don’t spend a lot of time reminiscing. Instead we talk as contemporary people who have been friends for a long, long time who have nothing to prove to each other or no reason to try to impress one another.  We are special friends bound together by long-ago experiences who can talk about present issues, even those on which we not unexpectedly differ, and then go back to our homes and our separate futures cherishing this one more chance to be with each other.

I’ve lived in Missouri (except for three summers while I was in college) for almost eighty percent of my life. Each year I travel from Jefferson City to Indianapolis for a couple of races.  I usually stop for lunch in Effingham.  And each time, I feel a little tug to turn north.

All of our towns and each of us have stories such as these. Someday, descendants I will never know, might read these stories.

Think about writing yours.

For them.

I went to school with a gun one day in a time my grandchildren probably would not understand, when the only drill we had to worry about was the fire drill.

That was a long, long time ago. But if nobody every tells about those times, how can anybody else ever hope that there ever can be that kind of safe era again?

-0-

 All Dressed Up and No Place to Go 

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Doggone it!  I have lost a lot of weight so my tuxedo fits well again, including my red vest and my red already-tied bowtie.  I look dashing—tuxes have a tendency to do that to some people and I am one of them if I say so myself.

It’s been probably fifteen years since I wore it.  The shoulders have a fine cover of closet dust. But I was all set to send it to the cleaners so I would really look spiffy and sharp. I had searched for and found the studs for my pleated shirt and French cuffs.  The patent leather shoes were still in their soft cotton protective bags and still fit when I found them under a bunch of stuff in the far corner of my closet.

And then they cancelled it.

I hadn’t bought my ticket yet but I was seriously considering using the event to break out the new, thin, distinguished ME and mingle with some of the most important people in the country. That’s how they were promoted. And it was for such a worthy cause.

I really wanted to get that signed #1 music chart plaque. I don’t remember hearing the song played on the radio, the National Anthem sung by twenty peaceful tourists jailed after visiting the National Capitol on January 6, 2021 while their greatest supporter and benefactor intones the Pledge of Allegiance over their voices. It’s not something that plays very often on Top-40 stations or whatever they call that format now, or on NPR or Country-Western stations.

Billboard reported in March last year that, “Donald J. Trump and J6 Prison Choir’s “Justice for All” enters Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart (dated March 25) at No. 1. The recording sold 33,000 downloads March 10-16, according to Luminate.”  It also drew 442,000 “official U. S. Streams,” whatever those are.

That’s pretty impressive, I guess.  The magazine has several charts of hit songs, one of which is the top 50 Streaming Songs that listed its number one as Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” with 38.9 million streams.  The Top 50 Radio Songs survey was listing Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers,” with an airplay audience of 106.7 million. But number one is number one and even it is a relatively small number one it is still number one and all I had to do to qualify as a possible recipient of a plaque commemorating this achievement was to buy a $1500 general admission ticket.

I’ve listened to the recording a time or two. While it’s a long ways from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, I can understand why some people might find a little charm in it.

But the general admission probably wouldn’t have let me get really close to the distinguished guests, one of whom is a co-founder of the sponsoring organization, Sarah McAbee.   The New York Times says she has a vested interest in it because her husband, a former sheriff in Tennessee, is one of the peaceful tourists of January 6, 2021 who has had the misfortune of being sentenced to five years in prison for being involved in the “prolonged multi-assistant attack on police officers.”

For an extra thousand dollars I could have gotten my picture taken the speakers. That probably was the best I could do.  Certainly it would have been exciting to have one of the speakers at my table but I couldn’t afford $50,000 for that and I don’t know eleven other people who have sacrificed so much to get into their tuxedos as I had sacrificed.

Mr. Trump was listed by the non-profit group planning the event—The Stand in the Gap Foundation—as an invited speaker but his campaign circulated word about ten days before the event that he wouldn’t be able to be there.  But that’s okay.  There were a dozen speakers confirmed and ninety minute or two hours of Mr. Trump after all of the other folks spoke would have taken me well beyond my bedtime anyway.

But some of the other folks would have been interesting although I’ve never heard of about nine of them. But there were three I either knew about or looked up—Rudi Giuliani, Peter Navarro, and Anthony Raimondi, identified by others as a “MAGA influencer.”  A fourth was an actor whose name didn’t ring any bells, so I looked him up.

Actor Nick Searcy has appeared in 40 movies playing such memorable characters as Highway Patrol Officer, Man at Party, FBI man, Construction Worker, Stan, Repairman, Mr. Miller, County Sheriff, The Farmer, Herb, The Captain, and Head of FBI Field office. I’m not impressed but then again, he’s been in forty movies (and a lot of TV shows) and I haven’t, so there’s that.

I’m sure they comped Rudi’s ticket.  That poor man has vigorously ridden the Trump bus—although I’m not sure whether he has a seat inside it or is hanging onto the frame under it—from fame to disgrace with all the dignity he can muster and so far has fended off lawsuit winners’ efforts to take everything but tomorrow’s underwear from him to pay judgements.

I imagine Peter Navarro could buy his own ticket. I’d like to sit as his table and hear him tell about the fun of the four months he spent in prison for contempt of Congress because he refused to turn over documents to the House January 6th Committee and also to learn how much he looks forward to going back on a Contempt of Court charge for refusing to turn over 200-250 documents to the National Archives.

The third face promoted on the invitation was completely unfamiliar. So I looked him up on the internet—and now I wonder what I should think about the other people I might meet there because if the Anthony Raimondi on the flyer is the Anthony Raimondi on the internet—-

Well, get this:

It’s Anthony LUCIANO Raimondi, who claims the notorious mobster Lucky Luciano is his uncle and says he was an enforcer for the Colombo mafia family in New York.  A New York Post article in 2019 says Raimondi claims he went to Rome in 1978 and helped to poison Pope John Paul I with cyanide, that he was among those recruited to do the deed by his cousin, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, then the head of the Vatican Bank who wanted to keep the Pope from exposing a massive stock fraud “run by Vatican insiders.”  He also claims he was recruited to kill Pope John Paul II until the Pope, fearful for his life, decided not to continue the investigation.

Another website says Raimondi claims to have killed 300 people as a teenaged sniper in Vietnam, winding up there in a plea deal that let hm escape a New York murder charge at age 16 if he joined the Army. .

If that’s the guy invited to be a speaker at this event, I’m not sure I want to cross paths with him.  He does have his critics who accuse him of being a huge liar and a major conspiracy theorist. I don’t think I could have a casual conversation with while nibbling on bacon-wrapped pineapple slices or toothpicked wienies dipped in barbecue sauce because I would worry that cement would damage my patent leather shoes.  Just my luck, he’d be the speaker at my table though, if I could afford to sit at one of the big bucks tables.*

I would have been interested, just from general curiosity, how much of this money actually reaches any of the families of the peaceful tourists.  I’m sure that the costs of the event at Mr. Trump’s New Jersey golf club will be quite high and some might find its way into his own legal fund or campaign fund, something that seems proper given that it is HIS club.

But the whole thing is moot now (I have a friend who refers to things as being a “moo issue—not even the cows care about it.”). It’s been cancelled without explanation on the website. One organizer has told a reporter it’s because of “scheduling conflicts of invited guest speakers.”

One of the conflicts is that U. S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will be deciding that day how to go forward with the election subversion case against Mr. Trump in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity from prosecution for presidential acts.

Well, truth be told, my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail, but I’m sure they would have taken my money if I wanted to buy a ticket anyway.  If they do reschedule this event for some time when Mr. Trump isn’t in court or creating his own conspiracy theories on the stump, I might think about the event again.  I’ll need to know about it far enough in advance to get a haircut.

And I hope it is on a day that is not the one where I give my pet fish his weekly shampoo. That’s something I never miss.

*I have entertained myself, if no one else, by writing about this event and the “distinguished” list of speakers but this Raimondi guy deserves some additional observation and it’s serious, assuming he’s the person mentioned in numerous internet entries and videos.  First of all, I cannot for the life of me understand why any presidential candidate or any group of his supporters would want to associate with a proclaimed mob enforcer and Pope-killer.  Second, Raimondi has critics who claim he is a complete fraud.  Third, an internet search turns up several reports that I find more credible than his claims about his sniper work in Vietnam including a 2023 article on Historynet (originally in Vietnam magazine) about Staff Sgt. Adelbert F. Waldron III being the highest-scoring sniper in Vietnam with 109 confirmed kills, for which he earned two Distinguished Service Crosses, a Silver Star, and three Bronze Star Medals. A directory listing all winners of these three awards during the Vietnam War does not list Raimondi receiving any of them. I will leave it to you to judge what kind of presidential candidate would allow himself to be pictured prominently with someone like this.

Who Will be Next?

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The fish are in the barrel.

The kids are back in school.

—and in Winder, Georgia a few days ago, a 14-year old boy with a gun went fish hunting.  He killed four.

It’s the 45th school shooting this year, the 385th mass shooting in the United States.

Newsweek has counted 2,034 school shootings in this country since 2004. California has had the most, 169. Texas has had 141, to rank second. In today’s culture, these numbers should not be unexpected; they’re our two most populous states.

A few days ago—September 7—the Associated Press reported the Georgia incident was the 30th mass shooting of 2024, producing 131 deaths. Four or more people have to die to be considered a “mass shooting” as compiled by the AP and USA Today, working in conjunction with Northeastern University. Last year was one of the deadliest on record, 42 incidents, 217 deaths..

It might surprise some people to hear someone such as Jennifer Briemann say it’s time to take school security seriously. Briemann is the Deputy Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. But she also tells Newsweek “The reality is that the proposals put forth by those who wish to disarm law-abiding citizens would not have prevented this senseless tragedy in Georgia.”

The rhetoric remains unchanged. So do the school shootings. There is a place for reasonable, pragmatic discussions—but they can’t happen as long as the political parties talk at each other instead of to each other.

A six-year-old video has re-emerged in the wake of the latest killings. It is an example of ongoing political unwillingness to confront this issue, the tendency to divert attention away from it, and the tendency to hide behind an illogical argument.

On March 24, 2018, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, whose critics consider her one of the nuttier members of Congress, decided to drive to Carbondale, Colorado where students were taking part in the national March for Our Lives in the wake of the 17-death school shooting in Parkland Florida. She apparently Facebooked as she drove and she said:

“So, I am on my way to Carbondale Colorado. There’s supposedly an organized march. The March for Our Lives is going to take place and I’m really interested to see if people know what they’re marching for.  I guess this is supposed to be the beginning of people speaking out to take away our Second Amendment Rights, and I’m not happy about it.  If this is really a March for Our Lives, let’s march against abortion, because I was looking at statistics and there are nearly one million abortions per year in America. One million!  Do you know how many gun violence deaths there are, gun related deaths there are in America, per year?  15,000. Hmmm.  A drop in a bucket, I’d say.  So, I left Rifle, Colorado; I’m not going into Shooters right now. I’m going to Carbondale and I’m going to see what these people really believe, if they know what they’re marching for. If they know that they are marching against their rights.  They’re marching, saying, “Hey, I have a right that I don’t want. Take it away from me. Get rid of this. (she is smiling as she makes these comments, by the way.) I want the people around me to not be able to protect themselves, to not be able to defend me.” I’m not—you know, I’m driving here, I think it’s kind of similar to talking on speaker phone so I guess I’m safe. But, I was thinking, my government requires me to wear this (shows her seat belt). I have to wear them to protect myself. And I can’t have my 9 millimeter to protect myself?  I don’t think so. I don’t think so, not today, no. (laughs).

She apparently though herself humorous for talking about the town of Rifle (a nice place on I-70 in the Rockies) and Shooters, the sports bar, in her soliloquy in which she ignored any of the humanity behind the demonstrations, showed no awareness of any of the pathos so many felt and were feeling, and offered nothing of comfort to the affected or a cure for the problems that compound the school shootings other than seemingly suggest that everybody should have a 9 mm pistol.

She was driving and glancing at her cell phone during the presentation, unaware that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated almost 44,000 people died in traffic crashes last year.

They’re just bigger drops in the bucket. The agency thinks more than 13,500 of those fatalities were alcohol-related.  Eh.  If it’s not an aborted baby, these deaths seem to be insignificant to her.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at least 3,000 of the 44,000 people who die in traffic crashes each year die because of distracted driving. Maybe they’re just mist in the bucket to her.

If those are just drops, how would she rate the World Health Organization’s estimate that eight-million people a year die because of tobacco-related issues.  The CDC says more than 480,000 deaths a year result from cigarette smoking—almost sixty years after the first warnings appeared on cigarette packages by federal mandate. More drops.

The National Center for Health Statistics estimated 49,476 people committed suicide in the United States in 2022.  Of those, 27,032 used firearms.

Drip, drip, drip.

Every one of those deaths, whether by traffic crash, smoking, or suicide is a tragedy to somebody. As is an abortion. But she seems to be saying that abortion is her only concern.

For one thing, her “15,000” gun related deaths are pretty low. But looking for ways to minimize those deaths is too insignificant for her to worry about.

As for the seat belt—It’s a government mandate that reduces the chance of death or injury, not just for her but for others riding with her or in the other vehicle.

Comparing a seatbelt to a gun is over the top. Seat belts protect those who should not be driving as well as those who have no restrictions. There are few mandates that affect people who should not have guns. Instead, her argument seems to be that if everybody had a 9-millimeter gun, they’d be safe.

Yeah. Right.  The students and the teachers in Georgia or in Parkland, Florida in 2018 or at any of the other mass-shooting sites in the last few decades would have had the presence of mind and the time to draw their Glocks from their holsters, backpacks, or desk drawers when someone walked into their rooms and immediately started shooting that the shootings would not have happened?

The students and others who were marching in Colorado, D.C., and other places that day were not saying they wanted to eliminate a right—the Second Amendment.  They were saying THEY have a right, too.  And if Boebert and other pro-life, pro-gun zealots don’t see the hypocrisy of the overlaps of the two issues and quit bloviating about the exclusivity of both, more fish in more barrels will be shot.

The right to life and the right to live are separate issues.  Policy makers who strain to put them together solve nothing and avoid arriving at responsible difficult answers.  There is shame in the repetition of that pattern.

And that is why more children will become fishes in barrels this year.

The school year is still young. Who will be the next fish in the next barrel while nothing is done by those who know a 9 millimeter pistol is not the real answer?

Medal

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I am really, really angry about our former President’s comments that the Presidential Medal of Freedom is better than the Medal of Honor.

Most of you have watched or listened to what he said a few days ago, speaking of the Medal of Freedom:

That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”  

She is the equal of soldiers who are “hit so many times by bullets or they are dead?”

What is it with this guy who shows no respect for honor, courage, or sacrifice, whose vacuousness regularly produces such instantly cringeworthy observations as his discussion of the Battle of Gettysburg?—

“What an unbelievable battle that was. The Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable—I mean, it was so much and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many different ways.  Gettysburg, Wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And the statement of Robert E. Lee—who’s no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? No longer in favor—‘Never fight uphill me boys, never fight uphill.’  They were fighting uphill. He said, “Wow, that was a big mistake.” He lost his great general, and they were fighting. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys,’  But it was too late”

Civil War historians have never found any verification that a native Virginian ever sounded like a native of Ireland in encouraging his soldiers to fight.  Uphill, downhill, or on flat land. Or that he said anything such as that or—

According to Trump, Lee said, “Wow, that was a big mistake.”

Wow?  Here is part of Lee’s report of the battle:

“The highest praise is due to both officers and men for their conduct during the campaign. The privations and hardships of the march and camp were cheerfully encountered, and borne with a fortitude unsurpassed by our ancestors in their struggle for independence, while their courage in battle entitles them to rank with the soldiers of any army and of any time.”

Lee lost. He did not say wow.  But he did honor his troops, living and dead, in the full report.

Sixty-four Union soldiers received the Medal of Honor for actions at Gettysburg.

Or his extensive knowledge of the American Revolution, shared in a July 4th speech in 2019 when he educated his audience this way:

“The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware, and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their Star Spangled Banner waved defiant.”

Fort McHenry and the Francis Scott Key’s poem about the flag are from the War of 1812, not the revolution.  And—what is his definition of “rampart.”  And seizing the airports????!!!

(There was no Medal of Honor in the American Revolution. George Washington established a Badge of Military Merit, the first medal applying to private soldiers, in 1782. The medal today is awarded for reasons Washington did not mention and is known since its formal establishment 150 years later as the Purple Heart.)

I’m getting too worked up as I go back over the uncounted instances of disrespect for those who have worn our country’s uniforms and the historical and scientific gibberish that he thinks is clever and smart and that far too many people who must be a whole lot smarter than him accept anyway. Let me get back to what I started to write.

I am not a veteran.  But I cannot describe the depth of gratitude that I have for veterans, whether they came under enemy fire or whether they were a clerk at a stateside base. I was honored to be asked to work with a dedicated group made up of veterans and Gold Star Family members (Gold Star families are those who have lost loved ones in wartime) to build a Gold Star Family Memorial Monument near the Capitol a few years ago. I provided the words carved into the memorial’s stones.

The Chairman of that group was my State Representative, Dave Griffith, a Special Forces veteran who has spent most of his life in positions of service to the public. We differ on some political issues—some—but that has not affected our friendship and our working on some legislation for next year that will restore millions of dollars in funding for our state veterans homes and for other causes.  It is an honor to associate with people such as him.  And it is that kind of respect that leaves me so angry when someone such as our 45th President diminishes the Medal of Honor and disrespects those who have received it as well as those who have served honorably whether on the front lines or in the back offices.

There seems to be nothing this candidate cannot cheapen with his words and his actions. He awarded 24 Presidential Medals of Freedom, fourteen of them to sports figures. He interrupted one of his State of the Union speeches to give one to Rush Limbaugh. The quotation at the start of this entry refers to the award to Miriam Adelson, a doctor known for her humanitarian work and donations to Jewish organizations.  But probably more important to him is that she and her late husband donated $20 million to his 2016 campaign and another five-million dollars to his inauguration fund, then a half-million more to a legal fund for Trump aides, another $100 million that went to conservative groups and Republican candidates in 2018. Open Secrets, which watches political donations, says the Adelson’s total giving to these causes and to a pro-Trump political action committee is close to $220 million dollars in 2019 and 2020. She’s also “a healthy and beautiful woman,” which most of us would not consider a qualification for a presidential medal.

Here’s an important difference between those who get the Medal of Freedom and those who receive the Medal of Honor:

Military members are encouraged to salute a Medal of Honor recipient who is wearing the medal, even if that person is wearing civilian clothes. The military custom is for junior offices to salute senior officers.  But the Medal of Honor recipient is entitled to receive a salute from anyone, regardless of rank.

No Medal of Freedom winner is entitled to that show of respect. The former President is correct that many recipients of the Medal of Honor are dead or have dealt with serious wounds.  To say that they are entitled to less respect from the President of the United States than someone who hits a baseball, shoots a basketball, hits a golf ball, or carries a football is unforgiveable—or gives a lot of money to his campaign and also is a good-looking woman—is beyond forgivable.

It is best to stop here rather than go on with the altercation at Arlington that was as much about honoring soldiers killed in the Afghanistan withdrawal (that he planned while in office) as staging a photo op at a D.C. church was about sincerely-held faith.

NO, ON SECOND THOUGHT IT IS NOT BEST TO STOP.

The above material was written last Wednesday.  On Thursday, he blamed the Arlington controversy on “very bad people” and suggested that the Gold Star families he was with made the video of the event public, not members of his campaign staff who have been accused of pushing a cemetery staffer out of the way when she tried to enforce the no-politicking rule for the area out of the way.

“This all comes out of Washington, just like all these prosecutors come out of Washington. These are bad people we’re dealing with,” he told an interviewer in Michigan. “They ask me to have a picture, and they say I was campaigning. The one thing I get is plenty of publicity… I don’t need the publicity.”

If he didn’t need the publicity, why did he have a video crew with him?

The Army has confirmed that the shoving incident happened when the staffer tried to keep a Trump campaign aide out of the area that has strict rules about media presence. The area is for recently-buried service members and regulations published by the Army and Arlington National Cemetery prohibit political activity there. The Washington Post reported that “ahead of the visit, Arlington National Cemetery officials had warned Trump’s team that he could visit the grave sites, but not as part of a campaign event. The cemetery made clear that while media could accompany Trump to a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, they could not accompany him into Section 60.”

Officials have told The New York Times the woman refused to press chages because “she feared Mr. Trump’s supporters pursuing retaliation.”  Trump Campaign Press Secretary Steven Cheung says she is “suffering from a mental health issue,” and senior adviser Chris LaCivita has called her a “despicable individual.

Trump’s campaign social media site shortly afterwards posted several pictures and videos that were taken during the visit, including a recording of him blaming President Biden for the deaths of American soldiers in the final hours of our occupation of Afghanistan.

When asked by NBC if his campaign should have published the images, Trump gave his familiar excuse: he knew “nothing about” that.  And when the reporter bored in with another question, he suggested parents of the dead servicemen distributed the images.

On HIS social media??????.

“I don’t know what the rules and regulations are. I don’t know who did it, It could have been them – it could have been the parents.”  When pressed even more, he said, “I really don’t know anything about it.”

The family that invited Trump was contacted by Trump nemesis Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter. She posted on X:

“Contacted by NYT, Michele Marckesano issued a statement from the family saying they support the families searching for accountability around the Abbey Gate bombing. However, she said, their conversations with Arlington officials indicated Trump staff didn’t adhere to rules.”

The Gold Star families are the “very bad people????”

There is a terrible irony to this deplorable incident at Arlington:

A 1998 law allows Trump, if he wishes, to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery—-

—-the burial place of more than 400 recipients of the Medal of Honor.

Surely, he wouldn’t——

would he?

(This entry was changed on September 2, 2024 to include Maggie Haberman’s post on X)