Category Archives: Politics

T&P

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We’ve been thinking more about this “thoughts and prayers” thing and we decided to look up a time when a political leader offered more than a trite phrase.

Abraham Lincoln’s letter to the Widow Bixby is considered a classic although it is surrounded by controversy. The supposedly had lost five sons in the Civil War (she lost three) and there is considerable evidence the letter was written by Lincoln’s Secretary John Hay. The original does not exist.

“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which would attempt to beguile  you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming,” the letter said. “But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly father assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

Thoughts, yes he had them for her. Prayers, yes, that she be comforted.

The letter is noted for its sincerity, its realness, its tenderness. It is a stark contrast to the cold thoughts and prayers message that has been sucked dry by repeated use after repeated tragedies.

There are many versions of an old saying and many reported originators of it.  But it is useful for us to ponder it today in light of the defense by some prominent Republicans that “thoughts and prayers” is somehow adequate, even sacred.   The operative quotation that applies to this phrase is, “The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.”

Substitute  “piety” for “success” in this instance and you’ve nailed their defense for mouthing words but showing no interest in doing anything meaningful to those who are suffering, have suffered, or will suffer.

Here’s the thing about “thoughts and prayers:”

The phrase has been used so often that it long ago lost any personal sincerity.  The people who fall back on this hackneyed expression have well-paid public relations staffers who surely could come up with something far better and more personal than the cold, tired, “thoughts and prayers” thing.

Using it is fake sincerity and suggests the people who have fallen back on it don’t really feel sorry for those who are suffering. The fact that there’s no follow-up action or even discussion of what can be done to combat repeated tragedies renders T&P even more hollow, even more nothing but fake sincerity. Put out the statement and then move on.

Making things even worse are the political attacks on those such as Psaki who come right out and describe what the statement really is.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had a typical response: “It’s incredible to me that Jen Psaki, Gavin Newsom and others would attack religion, diminish the faith of millions of Americans at a time of such great tragedy. There are a lot of common-sense things that can be done to protect children at school. This is not a time to politicize these issues.”

The National Rifle Association has had absolutely nothing to say but former Congressman Trey Gowdy, a favorite of the NRA when he was in the Congress told his FOX News viewers, “The only thing that can give us any modicum of peace at all, is those two children are with the person who loved them the very most, the person who created them, that being Jesus.”

At least he didn’t say thoughts and prayers. We wonder if his “us” includes the parents of the dead children or their classmates, or the children of families, wounded or unharmed except for the emotional damage of the event. Right now the idea that the two children are with “the person who loved them the very most” doesn’t mean much to the parents who loved them more than anybody in this life.

This is where Johnson and the others who have turned the overdue discussion about sincerity into a personal attack have it all wrong. Psaki wasn’t disrespecting religion or anyone’s faith. If anything she was challenging those who loudly proclaim their piety but do not demonstrate it in their actions. Her comments seem rooted in the admonition from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

Thoughts and prayers has become the “resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”  And assurances that their children are now with Jesus likely has limited comfort value to their parents. Pious assurances don’t go any farther than worn-out standard responses.

T&P and pious assurances are condescending at a time when condescension means little or less.

The Hill, a D.C. political newsletter quoted a national Democratic strategist who said last weekend,  “On this, Republicans are trying to own the space of faith just like they do patriotism. Scripture says faith without works is dead. The difference between us and them is we follow our thoughts and prayers up with action and they do not.”

Whether the Democrats follow through is questionable given the paltry record of really meaningful accomplishment, but Johnson was correct when he said, “This is not a time to politicize these issues.” It is, instead, a time for a meaningful reaction that seeks to help. There are plenty of people in times such as this who think, “Is that all they have to offer?”

Unfortunately, for Johnson and his cohorts including Tulsi Gabbard who charged Psaki is not someone who believes in God or His love, that IS all they have to offer. And to be honest, Democrats have very little to justify crowing.

Faith without action.  Professed faith without action. Clang, Clang, Clang.

Once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.

There was nothing fake about the shootings and the deaths and Jen Psaki’s reaction. It’s clear where and who  the fakes are.

Trump Invades His Own Country

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President Trump likes to rail against an “invasion” across our southern border. Whatever your thoughts about that claim, his present actions to put armed United States military personnel in our cities based on clear lies should be even more alarming because his military invasions, or threatened invasions, of our cities betrays our national founders and undermines one of the foundations that separates us from oppressive governments now and in the past, in other places.

Trump has deployed troops in Los Angeles and in Washington, D.C., and is threatening to do the same in Baltimore and Chicago. He has responded to Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s invitation to walk the streets of Baltimore with insults and increasingly frightening incoherence including a threat to withhold federal funding for the reconstruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

The governors and mayors in the cities he has invaded are Democrats. Republican governors and mayors have remained silent and unfortunately are likely to remain so until Trump’s actions, incoherence and name-calling reach a point that is so toxic that Republican leaders believe he is enough of a threat to their own survival that they, too, must turn on him—which they must have courage and selfless principles enough to do

Nations are lost when leaders become cowards.

Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker on Monday made a case against Trump that must not be ignored. The wolf is approaching the doors of all of us.  I hope you will heed what he said.

I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.

Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against, and it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances.

What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.

No one from the White House or the executive branch has reached out to me or to the mayor. No one has reached out to our staffs. No effort has been made to coordinate or to ask for our assistance in identifying any actions that might be helpful to us. Local law enforcement has not been contacted. We have made no requests for federal intervention. None.

We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did: We read a story in The Washington Post.

If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor, or the police?

Let me answer that question: This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.

This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections.

There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no inter- insurrection. There is no insurrection. Like every major American city in both blue and red states, we deal with crime in Chicago. Indeed, the violent crime rate is worse in red states and red cities.

Here in Chicago, our civilian police force and elected leaders work every day to combat crime and to improve public safety, and it’s working.

Not one person here today will claim we have solved all crime in Chicago, nor can that be said of any major American metro area. But calling the military into a U.S. city to invade our streets and neighborhoods and disrupt the lives of everyday people is an extraordinary action, and it should require extraordinary justification.

Look around you right now. Does this look like an emergency? Look at this. Go talk to the people of Chicago who are enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in this city. Ask the families buying ice cream on the Riverwalk. Go see the students who are at the beach after school. Talk to the workers that I just met taking the water taxi to get here. Find a family who’s enjoying today sitting on their front porch and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator. Ask if they’d like to pass through a checkpoint with unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school.

Crime is a reality we all face in this country. Public safety has been among our highest priorities since taking office. We have hired more police and given them more funding.

We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stocks, and high-capacity magazines. We invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs. We listened to our local communities, to the people who live and work in the places that are most affected by crime and asked them what they needed to help make their neighborhoods safer.

Those strategies have been working. Crime is dropping in Chicago. Murders are down 32% compared to last year and nearly cut in half since 2021.

Shootings are down 37% since last year, and 57% from four years ago. Robberies are down 34% year over year. Burglaries down 21%. Motor vehicle thefts down 26%.

So in case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump’s military occupations, take note: 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago.

Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.

Memphis, Tennessee; Hattiesburg, Mississippi have higher crime rates than Chicago, and yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there? Ask yourself why.

If Donald Trump was actually serious about fighting crime in cities like Chicago, he, along with his congressional Republicans, would not be cutting over $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants nationally, including cutting $158 million in funding to Illinois for violence prevention programs that deploy trained outreach workers to deescalate conflict on our streets. Cutting $71 million in law enforcement grants to Illinois, direct money for police departments through programs like Project Safe Neighborhoods, the state and local Antiterrorism Training Program, and the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, cutting $137 million in child protection measures in Illinois that protect our kids against abuse and neglect.

Trump is defunding the police.

To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is.

This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president’s actions.

Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.

Look at the people assembled before you today, behind me. This is a full cross-section of Chicago’s leaders from the business world, the faith community, law enforcement, education, community organizations, and more. We sometimes disagree on how to effectively solve the many challenges that our state and our city face on a daily basis. But today, we are standing here united, in public, in front of the cameras, unafraid to tell the president that his proposed actions will make our jobs harder and the lives of our residents worse.

Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, “Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?” Instead, I say, “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.”

You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.

Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever-more-alarming grabs for power.

As a governor, I’ve had to make the decision in the past to call up members of the National Guard into active service, and I think it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on how seriously I take that responsibility, and on the many things that I consider before asking these brave men and women to leave their homes and their communities to serve in any capacity for us.

As I’ve said many times in the past, members of the National Guard are not trained to serve as law enforcement. They are trained for the battlefield, and they’re good at it. They’re not trained to arrest people and read them their Miranda rights. They did not sign up for the National Guard to fight crime. And when we call them into service, we are reaching into local communities and taking people who have jobs and families away from their neighborhoods and the people who rely upon them.

It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the Guard to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.

I know Donald Trump doesn’t care about the well-being of the members of our military, but I do and so do all the people standing here.

So let me speak to all Illinoisans and to all Chicagoans right now.  Hopefully the president will reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city’s sovereignty. Hopefully rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days. If not, we are going to face an unprecedented and difficult time ahead.

But I know you Chicago, and I know you are up to it. When you protest, do it peacefully. Be sure to continue Chicago’s long tradition of nonviolent resistance. Remember that the members of the military and the National Guard who will be asked to walk these streets are, for the most part, here unwillingly. And remember that they can be court martialed and their lives ruined if they resist deployment. Look to the members of the faith community standing behind me today for guidance on how to mobilize.

To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your National Guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people, you would be failing your constituents and your country. Cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.

The State of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever at our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.

Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names.

This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf.

You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.

As Dr. King once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Humbly I would add, it doesn’t bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.

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The Repetition of History

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Philosopher George Santayana’s most famous quotation, taken from his Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress came to mind the other day while I was doing some research about former Jefferson City Mayor C.W. Thomas, who suggested 100 years ago this year that Jefferson City build a convention center.

But he died before that could happen. A few months later the stock market collapsed and the Great Depression gripped our country until World War II created the economy that got us out of it. By he time the Greatest Generation had led us to a country that was a positive example to the rest of the world, Cecil Thomas and his vision had been forgotten.

Our mayor badly wants to see a convention center built. And many of us are watching with dismay as our greatness is being destroyed, not returned.

Santayana wrote more than a century ago:

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I came across this editorial published March 19, 1920 in The Central Missourian, a Democrat newspaper published in the nearby town of Russellville that raises important questions that seem quite contemporary.

A Party Without Conviction

The Republican party has always been a party of expediency, for all its great claim to consequential policies and principles. Its affairs have usually been governed by men of rather lax convictions, who would trade anything for power. In former years, when the tariff fetish was set in the central altar of all apostles of political buncombe, nothing counted save an opportunity to promote the tariff policies demanded by the masters of Republicanism, Men and measures went by the board in the continuous and unremitting fight for prohibitive schedules and restrictive customs laws. Various bugaboos were used at different times to frighten the people, but there was always the tariff behind the whole Republican program.

Anything served to win with, if the manufacturers might control the tariff. But there came a time when the tariff schedules, mounting higher with every revision, fell of their own weight, and the progressive movement in the Republican party began, with great promise, at first, under sincere leadership. Then arose the greatest opportunist of them all, with all due respect, Colonel Roosevelt. He was more flexible of mind than the stand-pat leaders. He believed in the tariff, but he wanted four years more in the Presidency, and was willing to turn free trader, if need be, to win.

He capitalized the dissatisfaction of the Republican masses, and espoused the progressive tendencies of the times, sweeping aside the men whose earnest fights in Congress had built up the movement against the reactionaries. The Colonel could not rule, so he wrecked. For the first time in history the stand-pat forces had refused to compromise, in order that the party might win. In 1916, the Republican party had no issue, it had no leader save Roosevelt, and he was both feared and hated by the inner circle. So it invaded the United States Supreme Court and drafted Justice Hughes, concerning whom neither the country nor the leaders knew overly much.

The West deserted the camp, for the West had taken seriously the progressive movement, and, with native shrewdness, the West discerned the wolves of stand-pattism behind the Hughes mask., The expedientists lost their most important battle. The same situation is developing in 1920. The Republican party has no program. no policy, no leadership. And there are even disputes among the chief manipulators as to what considerations of expediency may dictate.

Meanwhile, candidacies of no special distinction, and without a particle of evidence of popular enthusiasm in any direction. are developing and delegates are being chosen. What will the Republican party stand for? No man can tell. What will the candidate represent? Nothing, except the desire of the Republican party to get into power and run the government, which it regards as its vested right. The candidate is likely to be merely a stuffed shirt, the platform a set of innocuous and meaningless phrases.

The Republican party must think the American people are a lot of weak-minded children, petulant, irritable and altogether foolish.

*****

“A tariff as a weapon for defense is wanted,” declared General Wood in his St. Louis speech. There is something too vague about this declaration to warrant much discussion, like nearly all of the utterances of the General, when he gets away from military matters. Does the General know that almost all of our commercial treaties with foreign countries forbid discriminatory duties, and provide that our tariffs shall be levied equally against the products of all nations? How then, could the tariff be used as a weapon of defense, or offense, either, so far as that goes? Then the General says we should have a tariff to “protect American industries that are essential to America, not a tariff to protect industries which are artificial and whose protection adds to the living cost of our people.” The General is on dangerous ground and might give away the whole Republican argument if this suggestion should be carried to its logical conclusion.

Will George be proven correct more than a century after this observation?  Perhaps the answer is whether, in 2025, WE are the weak-minded children, petulant, irritable and altogether foolish or whether we recognize that we are led by someone who is.

The Theory

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Moderator: I was looking at one of Wylie Miller’s “Non Sequitur” comics the other day it inspired me. Look at this:

So we’re going to play a game called Conspiracy Theory.  Let’s make one up, right here.  All five of us around this table.  Each of us contributes one “fact” with the next person building on that “fact” until we have a theory we can float out there.

Person One: How about this? Donald Trump isn’t the real President.

Person Two:  He did win the office in an election, but—

Person Three: He’s just a figurehead!

Moderator: Wait a minute.  Figurehead?

Person Four: I think I agree. Yeah, he’s just the guy out front but somebody else is really pulling his strings.  Think of all the times he has said, “I don’t know” when he’s been asked questions by the press. And just recently when somebody asked him who stopped arms shipments to Ukraine, he said, “I don’t know. You tell me.”  We need to point a finger at someone we can pass off as the string-puller.

Person One:  Hmmm.  Why don’t we “suggest” it’s Stephen Miller?

Moderator: Wow!  That’s an interesting road to go down. How can we cook up something to explain that?

Person Two: Well, what about we say that Miller is dreaming up all of this deportation business.  I mean, he recently tried to explain how much better the country would be if we got rid of all of the immigrants. Like, “You would be able to see a doctor in an emergency room right away.” He was talking about how Los Angeles would be better but aren’t there emergency rooms all over the country that would be better off if we didn’t have immigrants falling off of roofs or burning themselves in a Mexican restaurant kitchen, or having a heart attack while picking lettuce on a 110-degree day? Stuff like that.

Person Three: Y’know, he also talked about schools. He said, “Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with.”

Person Four: And he also said “Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have special needs would get all the attention that they needed.” Of course, all of this was being said about the same time the administration was withholding tons of money for summer programs and other school things.

Person Two: Do you think his immigration talk was just a smokescreen to distract attention from the school forecasting?

Person Four: Interesting suggestion.

Moderator:  All of the claims are provable nonsense, of course. And here in Missouri, a lot of school funding is based on attendance numbers so that might mean LESS money for Missouri schools if there are fewer students.

Person One: And don’t forget: “There would be no fentanyl, there would be no drug deaths.”

Person Three: None?

Person One: That’s what he said.

Moderator: Thanks for mentioning that. It sure sounds like the kind of stuff Trump actually has said.  It’s also not true, but truth and conspiracy theories are incompatible. So, we need to make sure we say this thing about Miller often enough that people will think, “If they keep saying it, it has to be right.”

Person Two:  Those things do sound like stuff he might cook up to feed Trump to say during one of his cabinet meetings or maybe during a graduation speech somewhere.  Trump does like to be given a fact that he can blow up into a major talking point even if he doesn’t know what the fact is all about—-and then keep repeating it during his interminable public speeches.

Person Three: Speaking of feeding Trump things.  D’you think he really reads the executive orders he signs?  I don’t. Somebody announces what the thing is about and then gives it to Trump who signs the document, holds it up for the photo ops, then waits for somebody to tell him what’s in the next one. Somebody else clearly writes the things—the spelling and capitalization are all properly done and I haven’t heard yet that any of them end with MAGA!

Person One: And there are so many of them!  You can’t tell me that he personally signs all of them. We just see the ones he does on television. Why don’t we suggest the Trump autopen is in Miller’s office?

Person Four:  Good point. I’ve got another one. His speeches. He reads his prepared remarks as if he hasn’t seen them before and then goes off-script with some whoppers in his usual style for several minutes and then might drift back to the prepared remarks.  It must drive people like Miller crazy when he goes off the reservation like that. But we can make the case that he doesn’t sound like he knows what he’s talking about when he’s on-script because he’s just mouthing words provided by Miller until he thinks he can make the point better if he mixes it in with ad-libbed revenge language or something.

Person One: You’re right. The prepared stuff sounds too rational to be Trump’s real words and when he reads it off the teleprompter it sounds as if he’s never seen it before. It’s not until he goes off on a tangent that we get the real Trump and that makes people forget what somebody prepared for him. I think that makes our theory stronger.

Person Two: Hold on a minute. We’re kind of drifting away from creating a well-rounded theory here.  Let me suggest this: Stephen Miller actually runs Donald Trump.

Person Four: Could we suggest he’s a shape shifter and he actually IS Donald Trump?

Person One: That’s over the edge, I think—although people who dress up as Wookies might believe it.

Person Three: Getting back to our point. Maybe we can suggest it’s the kind of stuff that Trump will embellish to even more outlandish dimensions in his speeches or cabinet meetings, which will let the media think he’s the one most loudly pushing this stuff.

Person Four:  But we say he’s not, that the main thing he’s interested in is becoming wealthier so he lets Miller run the presidency and create quotes while Trump cooks up new ways to make more money

Person Two: And playing golf.

Person Four: And playing golf.  AND getting a gift airplane he can repaint to look like Air Force One and take it home as a souvenir when he leaves office.

Moderator: We’re drifting off topic again, folks. Let’s get back to the Trump-as-front-man for Miller theory.

Person Two: What else do we have?

Person Three: Well, there’s Jeffrey Epstein and Vladimir Putin.

Moderator: That’s an interesting pairing. But I think that’s going to take some work before we put it out there.  Remember, Trump has been accusing Ukraine of starting that war and he browbeat Zelinsky during that Oval Office embarrassment and now Trump has figured out that Putin doesn’t care what he says.  We need to spend some time figuring out how Miller can be behind that.

Person Three: How about Epstein?

Person Two: Oh, Lord, I’m not sure we can add anything to that mess. Let’s leave that to Glenn Beck. He has five theories and we don’t want to crowd the field. He’s creative enough to handle that himself and we should let nature take its course on that one. If there are a half-dozen conspiracy theories around, things will be confused enough that MAGA people can take their picks.

Sooner or later that drawing of the woman is going to leak out, if there really is one. However, even without that, we do know that Trump has used his magic marker to draw things for auctions as well as for things other than signing executive orders and re-drawing weather maps. So he and his marker are certainly capable of a lot of things. But we need to talk more about that.

Moderator: Listen, we shouldn’t get too complicated with our theory.  The best conspiracy theory is a simple one that susceptible minds—the gullible idiots—can easily latch onto. We don’t want to get over the heads of those people.

Person One: That’s a good point. Why don’t we just go out there with the “Trump is just a front man” theory. The mainline media will pummel that possum flat and the Trumpers will deny it. But a few of them might think, “Maybe there’s something there.” We use this as our first theory to weaken the obsessive support Trump has from a lot of people and then we flesh out some of the other things we’ve kicked around or that might come up.

Person Two: We could do a lot with swollen ankles, you know.

Person Three:  Oooh, great idea.  Maybe we can suggest that problems with blood flow to his legs can be an indication of problems with blood flow to the brain.

Person Four: What makes you think that would work?  The medical profession probably wouldn’t support it?

Person One: I think it COULD work. With RFK Jr., running the country’s health agency, a lot of the public might buy the brain vein idea and probably some other theory we can develop—like Trump wearing a catheter. That could be a good one, too.

Person Two: What could we do with his bald spot?

Moderator (ignoring Peron Two): Okay, I think we need to stop before we go farther off the deep end. We’ve come up with some great ideas. Let’s get together in the next few days and polish our first one before we send it to MSNBC where Rachel and Chris can spend a week or more developing it for us.  We probably should make sure FOX hears about it, too, so they can interview Trump whose denials and threats will only add credence to our theory.

Person Four: Don’t forget to give it to One America and Newsmax. They won’t be able to ignore it and we’ll get even more exposure when they call it a hoax.

Moderator: Now, listen.  You raised the issue of threats. We have to be careful so that nobody knows where this came from. We don’t want to get sued by Trump. Of course, we don’t have nearly enough money to make it worth his while but that doesn’t stop him.  We’re just innocent private citizens having a little fun at his expense.

Person Two: You know, of course, that we wouldn’t have to worry about such things if Trump had a sense of humor.

Moderator: Yeah.  Well…….

(Non Sequitur by Wylie Miller is distributed by Andrews McMeal syndicate.)

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Sometimes—-

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I wish I was a reporter again. God! I used to love to ask important people, “What the Hell do you think you’re doing?” although I didn’t use those words. The point of the questions was the same.  I loved those moments, as good reporters do.  It’s what we are there for, actually.

Bloomberg News has quoted the leader of the Missouri Senate saying President Trump wants our congressional districts redrawn “to be sure Missouri’s representation matches Missouri’s Christian conservative majority.”

If I were still a reporter, I would have several questions. .

What are the values of a “Christian conservative majority” that are lacking in any of our present congressional districts—or members of Congress?  Is it just a matter of Democrats serving from two of those districts?  Does the election of Democrats indicate a majority of the people in a district lack Christian values, particularly “Christian conservative” values?

Given that our two Democratic controlled districts are centered in our biggest cities, is she suggesting St. Louis and Kansas City are to some degree not Christian?

Are these congressional districts that are not conservative Christian Muslim?  Shintoists? Buddhists? Sikhs?  Atheists?  One of the Congressmen is a Methodist Minister. Is he not Christian enough?  He’s the one in the crosshairs. How about Methodists generally?  The denomination has split recently. Which side is most Christian?

How does the Trump administration reflect the Christian values of being our brother’s keeper, of being the Good Samaritans, of helping the poor, of healing the sick? How does President Trump fit into that description of Christianity?

How is ICE and its behaviors a reflection of “Christian conservative values?”

How does she square Paul’s letter to the Galatians that proclaims, “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

—Or even how well the leader of our government fits the admonition from the Old Testament Prophet Micah:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

It seems from here that there are shortages in the justice and mercy categories. And humility is not a word in the Bible he’s peddling.

One of the joys of being a reporter is being curious about things and having access to people who can discuss answers to that curiosity.

I was away from the Capitol for about five years after I left my life in the newsroom and when I went back to the Capitol to try to convince the legislature to do things the casino industry won’t let it do, I realized how much I missed the intellectual give-and-take of the place. A reporter’s job is to question and questions by reporters should not be automatically interpreted as hostile as often as they are, especially today when some political skin seems horribly thin.

How can we understand the religious attitudes that are dividing us if we refuse to ask or refuse to answer questions that test what we believe. And how Christian is it to claim that there is no room for different interpretations whether they are personal, denominational, social, or political?

Religion is an especially touchy subject these days when it has become a political tool or weapon. I struggle to accept those who think differing views make someone less Christian.

As I have often remarked, “Nothing screws up faith more than religion.”

I’d like to know what religion has to do with congressional redistricting.  I doubt that Donald Trump has made that one of his reasons for trying to gerrymander-rig the 2026 elections.

Apparently, six Christian districts and two heathen districts isn’t good enough.  We’ll be watching how legislators suddenly take a heathen area and with a few strokes of their genuine Donald J. Trump Sharpie, legislators will turn a heathen part of the state into a Christian one.

I’m pretty sure that is not something James Madison and his fellow creators anticipated when they wrote the Constitution. And I’m also pretty sure the court system has never ruled that congressional districts must be drawn intentionally to reflect Christian values.

I’m just an observer now. But, man oh man, there are times when I wish I could walk up to someone who thinks they’re important and ask things like this.

One Christian to another.

 

Hey, Donnie!!!! 

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We’re feeling left out, here in Missouri.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be Careful What You Wish For 

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It’s an old idiom with several variations but it has a currency in today’s politics as some states are hopping to President Trump’s demands to redraw congressional districts so a cooperative Republican majority will not offer any checks or balances to his policies throughout the rest of his term.

Republican friends, you would be well-advised to tread carefully into this Trumpswamp.

We have witnessed numerous lawsuits stemming from the seven redistrictings we have covered or observed. The authors of the realigned districts always deny they have gerrymandered districts either to protect an incumbent or to oust an incumbent the majority party wants to target.

But this is different. The President has specifically asked legislatures to gerrymander districts to make sure more Republicans are elected to the U. S. House in 2026. He has a small and shrinking majority there now and he is seeing some ferment within his MAGAites and his response is not to correct any of his own behaviors but to ask state legislatures to make sure he doesn’t have to.

Some leaders of the Missouri legislature would not be surprised if Governor Kehoe calls a special session to redraw our congressional districts to oust one of our two Democrat members of the House, in this case the Rev. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, one of our senior congressmen.

They tried to do that once before, putting him in what I called a “dead lizard” district (because its outline looked like a dead lizard, lying on its back with its feet up) that stretched as far east as Marshall, thus putting more rural conservative voters in play. But the legislature made a mistake by letting him keep too many of his Kansas City constituents and he won anyway.  It is unlikely the legislature will make that same mistake this time.

In the past, legislators accused in lawsuits of gerrymandering denied doing so intentionally, forcing critics to prove their defenses untrue.  This time, however, there will be no denying intentional gerrymandering; the President has ordered it.

It will be blatantly intentional, therefore harder to defend.

There are other issues in play, too. They must consider whether they are enacting a boomerang.

First, there is the question of the population basis for the new plan. Trump wants a new census that can be used in apportionment. That’s a reason to delay redrawing the lines. His desire to exclude some people in that census will draw lawsuits. More delay.

Why, therefore, the rush?  No census. No determination of the census’s legality. How can the numbers used to calculate new districts be accurate without that census and the determination of its constitutionality?

Whether the districts will exist a year from now, in the 2026 election cycle, depends on the court attacks on the plan—and there will be attacks. The timing of the challenges, the hearings, the appeals, the appeals hearings, the rulings and the appeals to an even higher level will chew up a lot of time.  The legislature can approve the plan. But whether it will withstand vigorous court challenges on numerous fronts from the accuracy of population numbers as well as the overt partisanship behind it is uncertain. Whether opponents can run out the clock on the plan also is uncertain.

It also is possible that Trump’s continued misadventures politically, legislatively, socially, and judicially will have further inflamed his existing and his new critics by election time in ’26 and voters will take it out on Republicans generally and the Republican running to oust an incumbent Democrat in particular.

If this plan goes into effect, Democrats can launch numerous attacks and use it to put forward attractive candidates than will have a significant ready-made issue to make a strong run at Republicans. It could backfire.  Some concerns already are being heard in the GOP ranks.

Sometimes it is better to let incumbent dogs lie (read that how you prefer) than it is to stir up a public that is capable of switching to the other party on election day. Experience shows that the public is a fickle creature.

It’s a risk/reward situation for Republicans no matter how they cut it. They should consider the potential hazards of getting what they wish for because they easily could get what they don’t desire, especially if Trump continues in the next year to alienate his base and Americans generally with his Big Ugly Bill and subsequent actions and legal problems.

Present trends seem to indicate his behavior is doing potentially prospective Republican candidates no service, something incumbents might consider as they ponder their own futures. Is he worth the risk in which they might be placing themselves?  And if they decide he isn’t, will they have the courage to stand up?

Rigging the Election

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A normally sane person might think that a person who has claimed a rigged election is wrong would be reluctant to try to rig one himself.

But we are living in Trumpworld.

President Trump wants red states such as Missouri to adjust their congressional districts so more Republicans might be elected next year. A president’s party historically loses congressional seats in midterm elections and Trump and his party don’t have any seats he can spare.).

Texas Republicans have jumped at the opportunity to make the master happy although the GOP already dominates the state’s delegation in the U. S. House of Representatives 27-12.  That’s not good enough for Trump. The effort has led to a confrontation with their Democratic colleagues that has become, our mind at least, a national embarrassment for Texas politics and politicians.

What’s going on here?  Trump is scared.  Of what?  National Review correspondent Audrey Fahlberg said recently on CNN, “The White House is driving this because clearly they are worried about losing the midterms.  They’re convinced that if House Democrats flip the House, that Trump is going to get impeached again…The ‘big beautiful bill’ is not polling super well right now, so they’re going on offense here. They’re driving this into motion in Texas. They’re looking at other states, as well. We may see this continue in states like Florida, Indiana.”

And Missouri appears likely to get into this, too. Republicans have six of our eight House seats but apparently that’s not enough. Senate leader Cindy O’Laughlin has told the Missouri Independent that it is “likely” the governor will call a special session to redraw lines so Republicans would be likely to take away the seat held by one of our senior members, the Reverend Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City. He’s one of two Missouri African-Americans in our congressional delegation.

Missouri is not out of whack in the D/R balance of our congressional districts.  Last year, President Trump got 58 percent of the popular vote in Missouri. Kamala Harris and minor candidates got 42 percent.  A 6-2 congressional breakdown fits those results.

The Missouri legislature is more than 2-1 Republican so a walkout by Democrats similar to the Texas walkout wouldn’t stop the GOP from aiding and abetting Trump’s need to have a pliant Congress. The Missouri House Minority Leader, Ashley Aune of Kansas City, has told the Independent, “Everyone I’ve talked to, especially on my side of the aisle, expects to go down and get steamrolled…during a special session.”

In about a month, legislators will reconvene to consider overriding any vetoes dispensed by Governor Kehoe after the regular session and a special  session could meet concurrently with that veto session. It’s been done a few times before.

We can anticipate one of the arguments opponents will make. Our state constitution’s Article III, Section 45 says:

 When the number of representatives to which the state is entitled in the House of the Congress of the United States under the census of 1950 and each census thereafter is certified to the governor, the general assembly shall by law divide the state into districts corresponding with the number of representatives to which it is entitled, which districts shall be composed of contiguous territory as compact and as nearly equal in population as may be.

The average citizen is likely to think this language is clear—the state constitution provides for redistricting after each census but has no authorization for redistricting midway through a census decade. The language about “contiguous territory as compact and as nearly equal in population as may be” has been used from time to time to challenge redistricting plans that critics think wander too far from “contiguous” and “compact.”

Missouri has revised congressional district maps after the decennial census is taken beginning, as noted in the language, after the 1950 census. The only time the legislature redistricted between census counts was in the 1960s with a case that went to the United States Supreme Court that ruled against a redistricting map. A key part of the ruling said:

Missouri contends that variances were necessary to avoid fragmenting areas with distinct economic and social interests and thereby diluting the effective representation of those interests in Congress. But to accept population variances, large or small, in order to create districts with specific interest orientations is antithetical to the basic premise of the constitutional command to provide equal representation for equal numbers of people. “[N]either history alone, nor economic or other sorts of group interests, are permissible factors in attempting to justify disparities from population-based representation. Citizens, not history or economic interests, cast votes.”

If we understand Trump’s demands, he wants the Missouri legislature to create “districts with specific interest orientations.” The U. S. Supreme Court is much different than it was in the sixties so we’ll have to see if this precedent carries any weight with today’s Trump-dominated court.

Not all Missouri Republicans are in lock step with Trump. One is Senator Mike Moon of Ash Grove, a member of the so-called Freedom Caucus, a minority group within the Republican Party that took control of the chamber and blocked action on hundreds of bills in the last three years. Another is the Speaker Pro Tem of the House, Chad Perkins of Bowling Green who worries that “a 7-1 map is easily a 5-3 map in a year that doesn’t go the way that conservatives want it to go.”

Perkins also makes the point that Democrats should not moan and wail too loudly about Republican attempts to hold their advantage by changing districts in the middle of a decade because the Democrats in Illinois and California are doing the same thing to gain an advantage to offset any pick-ups Trump might make in other states.

The latest wrinkle in the planned rigging is Trump’s order for his Commerce Department to run a new census that does not include undocumented immigrants, the U. S. Constitution notwithstanding.

Article I, Section 2 does not seem to allow what Trump demands, at least for your observer’s untutored reading.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. 

The Constitution recognizes the census taken every ten years as the only legitimate census. By including “the whole number of free persons,” it does not exempt immigrants, which at the time the Constitution was written was a considerable number. Indians were not counted (although they were probably the freest people in the nation’s history until the Europeans showed up). Slaves WERE counted but since they were not free they were considered only three-fifths of a person—a provision the southern states demanded so representation would be balanced with states in the north.

And the article says the only census that will be constitutionally recognized is the one done every ten years.

Trump’s order is not helpful to his demand that new congressional districts be drawn. Right now. The first part of Amendment 1, section 2 says the districts will be drawn based on census figures.  The census has to come first, then the districts, a constitutional provision that seems to say Texas is jumping the gun and Missouri would be doing the same. Doing a census the way Trump wants it done could be pretty difficult and time consuming because a lot of Latino people whether here legally or illegally are making themselves as scarce as possible.

To coin a phrase, Trump seems to be engaged in unconstitutional bundling.

Trump’s political cynicism does nothing to reduce the general public’s distrust of our political system. In fact, he has played upon it to get elected.

Politics sometimes has been a mud-and-blood-and beer wrestling match although not as untrustworthy as many see it today. Some observers have suggested this state of decline began with Ronald Reagan’s inaugural remark 44 years ago that, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem.”

Reagan had it right but he sure didn’t foresee the much different way the statement is true today.

The central issue in this frantic competition to diminish a minority within a state’s congressional delegation is this:

We have a President and a GOP House and Senate that recognize their statements and their actions are counter to the public’s increasingly self-recognized best interests. They are uncertain that the public, if given the chance, will let them keep doing to the country and its people the things they are doing.

Thomas Jefferson and the Second Continental Congress had the answer many of today’s  politicians want to ignore:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Read that last sentence again.  When a despotic government becomes destructive of the inalienable rights of citizens like you and me, WE have the RESPONSIBILITY to resist and to form a new government that provides for our “future security.” The Trump bunch is afraid the people might want to do that now that the see that Trump was less than honest (to put it mildly) in his campaign.

Too many in today’s politics care less about life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness than they care about power, especially power that can be abused to benefit the few by harming the many. Re-drawing congressional district lines by those focused on power more than on the government our forefathers imagined helps assure that the people have reduced chances for benefitting from their inalienable rights.

There is an odor of desperation in the air on the part of those who believe in power above service as they see public sentiment for them weaken.

The redistricting game is being played by people who have come to believe they cannot win if they do not rig next year’s elections for Congress—-and they’re flouting their ambitions right before our eyes when they consider a mid-term re-drawing of congressional district lines based on ignoring counting “the whole people” to protect a President who now seems far less confident in his future than he did six months ago.

They might be imperiling themselves if they proceed, these legislators, as we will discuss in our next entry.

Is He Just Joshing Us?  

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“Joshing,” as in “teasing,” or “joking with” others.

Senator Josh Hawley recently proposed the federal government issue $600 tariff rebate checks per person—a family of four getting $2,400.

Such a deal he has for us!

What makes no sense is that in true Trumpian fashion, he is blaming President Biden for the perceived necessity for the checks. “Americans deserve a tax rebate after four years of Biden policies that have devastated families’ savings and livelihoods,” Hawley said as he announced his plan, and suggested, “My legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country.”

Now, hold on a minute. He’s spouting totally misleading statements that rely on public ignorance of how tariffs work.

We are going to un-ignorance any of you who think other countries are paying the United States big taxes, the tariffs of which President Trump is so proud. They are not.  WE are the ones taking it in the billfold. Britannica.com makes it easy to understand:

Let’s review how tariffs work.  First, neither a foreign company nor its home country pays any additional tax when it brings products here. United States companies buying the products are the ones paying a tax (the tariff) to Customs and Border Protection at the port of entry. They pay the foreign manufacturer the price of the goods and then they pay an additional amount to CBP before the products are released to them.

And how do those companies recover that extra fee, including the tariffs President Trump seems to arbitrarily set?  As the illustration shows, they make you and me pay more for our Korean refrigerator, our Canadian steel, our Chinese fireworks, Indonesian shirts, etc. We already are seeing some stores post signs telling customers how much more items cost because of the President’s tariffs. He’s intimidates some companies into not doing that. But he can’t scare all of them.

Therefore, Hawley’s proposal would have the federal government give us a rebate check to offset some of the extra money that we are paying for foreign-made products because of the Trump tariffs and we will use that money to buy more products with inflated costs because of the tariffs.

This is an economic program based on the Menard’s rebate system.

So, when Hawley says, ““My legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country,” he is indulging in nothing short of verbal sleight of hand. There is no money “returning to this country.” It is here already and WE will pay it. In effect, he proposes putting some money in our right-hand pocket after the Trump tariffs take money out of our left-hand pocket.

Six hundred dollars might not come close to reimbursing us for our tariff-increased out-of-pocket expenses in the purchase of a new car, or the accumulated costs of less costly things we buy throughout the year.

And how much will this gracious gesture cost our debt-ridden federal government? How much of the tariff-raised money that could go toward reducing the Trumpian increase in our national debt will instead be sent back to us as a fake bonus?

A few days ago the census bureau put our national population at 342,201,496.

In our calculations, we probably are over-simplifying the math and the subtleties of who would be eligible for a rebate. We don’t know, for example how many of those 342.2 million people are criminals, mental patients, gang members, and drug-sellers from south of the border who wouldn’t be eligible to receive anything and, if the administration has its way, won’t be here to collect a check anyway. But just by multiplying the population number by 600, we could up with a total expenditure of $205,320,897,600. That’s $205.3 BILLION of our own money that will be returned to us.

Missourians (our population of 6,282,690) would receive $3,769,614,000 of their own money back.  The best thing that can be said for the deal is that it’s better than the Menard’s rebates that you only get if you buy something else later.

HOWEVER all of us might not get one of these checks if Congress falls for this scheme—your vigilant observer for example.

Hawley has told listeners to Steve Bannon’s podcast that  Trump’s tariffs are “on track to raise over $150 billion this calendar year alone,” well short of the calculated total above. But that shortfall can be adjusted because Hawley says it won’t go to those who supported Trump’s favorite punching bag, Joe Biden. “You’d give it to our people,” he said. “The rich people don’t need it…All those Democrat donors of Wall Street, all these fund guys, who all hate the tariffs…We ought to give a portion back to our working class blue-collar voters who powered the Trump revolution, who got this president into office multiple times, and who are the backbone of this nation.” Multiple times meaning “two.”

Get out the hip boots, folks. It’s awfully deep in here.

I’m not saying I supported Joe Biden in 2024, thus becoming disqualified under this  Hawley/Trump frequent flyer program. It’s just that you will never find my lip prints on the presidential ring.

Pro-Trump blue collar folks will be rewarded for their loyalty but anti-Trump blue collar workers won’t be rewarded? We suppose he knows how to separate a red blue-collar worker from a blue blue-collar worker.  Perhaps he’ll use the people from ICE who are widely respected for their skills of discerning who gets hauled off to God knows where, largely based on physical appearance, to determine awardees.

This pinpointing of disloyal blue collar workers and keeping the Washington bureaucracy (what’s left of it, anyway) from sending checks to undeserving garbage men, grave diggers, and gas station operators should keep the total outlay below the amount we just computed.

And remember, this scheme just gives us back our own money that otherwise would be used for such things as building more wall in the Southwest where we are still waiting for the first check from Mexico that Trump promised would pay those costs, reimbursing this country for all those miles of fence.

This country is more than $30 TRILLION in debt. Where will it find the money for Hawley’s warm and fuzzy give-back plan? You and I will provide it by paying for Trump’s tariffs, as we have provided the money for the wall Mexico will pay for.

So far he hasn’t tied tariffs on Mexican products to the recovery of fence costs.

While thousands of his constituents have to deal with cutbacks in the food stamp program, the school meal programs, safety net reductions, cuts in disaster aid, attacks on disease prevention and control, and friends and relatives hauled away by masked hooligans in ICE outfits, he’s going to load up on a souvenir airplane, build a ballroom where even more of his friends can pay a lot of money to be in the same room with him, and gather as many other shiny tchotchkes that catch his eye. And he and Hawley hope to take our minds off of his meat-cleavering of programs that serve the people at large by giving us back a few hundred of the bucks it’s costing us to buy any of the myriad of things made somewhere else that they are making us pay more to buy.

Blaming President Biden for all of the broken promises or created problems of this administration as well as giant increases in the federal debt has become a misleading Republican whine that is beyond tiresome. Liars might figure, but figures don’t lie. And the figures show Trump stands balding head and shoulders above Biden and Obama when it comes to running up the national debt.

A study by consumeraffairs.com shows the Biden administration increased the national debt by $6.17 trillion while the first Trump administration drove it up by $8.18 trillion. (The Obama administration, ran it up by $8.34 trillion, but it took him eight years.) The calculations show Biden increased the national debt by 21.7 percent. Trump hiked it by 40.43% and some analysts say his Big Ugly Bill will add $2.5-3.8 trillion more.

Last we heard, Hawley hadn’t attracted any supporters, particularly others in his party, many of whom think the tariff revenues should be used to reduce the national debt or at least to retard its growth.

Next thing you know, Trump will be demanding the Nobel Prize for Economics—as he also wants it for Peace achieved through international bombing and national cruelty.

Let’s wait and see how Hawley figures out a way to get this dead bird to fly. Just remember, it’s our money that you and I might someday get back, not dollars paid by any foreign government or foreign manufacturer.

Six hundred dollars that we can use to pay tariff-inflated prices on other goods..

Maybe it’s not so different from Menard’s rebate system after all.

Sports: Trades but no immediate gains; Stadiums suit; History on the track

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Neither of our major league teams found any blocks to bust in the late-season trading period. But both got a little help and some possible future performers.

(ROYALS TRADES)—Backup Kansas City Royals catcher Freddy Fermin has been traded to San Diego for a couple of pitching prospects. The Royals get pitchers Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek, both of who started games last week. Kolek has made fourteen starts this year and comes over with a 4.18 ERA. Bergert is a reliever who has a 2.78  ERA and is averaging almost one strikeout per inning this year.

Fermin had been the backup to Salvador Perez behind the plate. No replacement for Fermin has been announced by the team as we go to press.

Kansas City got a last-minute deal done to strengthen its outfield defense by getting Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, a 34-year old veteran hitting .231 this year. He’s the son of Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski, he great Boston Red Sox outfielder. The Giants get minor league pitcher Yunior Marte from the Royals.

That deal paid off quickly for KC on Friday night when Yastrzemski homered in his first game in Royal Blue helping the Royals win for the seventh time in their last ten games and reach the .500 mark for the first time in a month.

Saturday, KC moved some of its player chess pieces around, adding Bergert and pitcher Baily Falter to the active roster, optioning Jonathan Bowlan to Omaha, and designating pitcher Thomas Hatch for assignment.

They had gotten Falter in their trade with the Pirates that gave Pittsburgh first baseman prospect Callan Moss and reliever Evan Sisk. .

Hatch had been cut loose by the Pirates after the 2023 season and spent the last couple of years playing in Japan. He signed a minor league deal with KC after the Hiroshima Toyo Carp announced he wouldn’t be retained this  year.  He was added to the Royals roster on June 5th and DFA’d the next day. Nobody else wanted him so he was sent down to Omaha before returning July 29. He pitched one inning and gave up two runs before his latest demotion.

The Royals started this week back at .500 for the first time since June 30

(DOWNHILL)—It didn’t take long for the Royals to decide a 45-year old journeyman pitcher couldn’t cut it with his 14th major league team.  Rich Hill was designated for assignment last week after two starts, both of which were no-decisions and the last of which was worth only four innings and led to some of the pitching staff’s 14 walks in a game.  In his two starts, he pitched nine innings, gave up five earned runs (seven overall) on nine hits.

Hill has asked to become a free agent instead of going back to Omaha.

Hatch took his place on the roster, but only briefly.

The Royals pitching staff is pretty lean now with Bubic out, probably for the year with a rotator cuff injury, and Cole Ragans (also with a rotator cuff strain) and Michael Lorenzen on the IL with a left oblique strain.

(CARDINALS)—-The Cardinals were not as active as some expected as the trading deadline rushed toward them, making some potential upside trades by unloading some expiring contract players. Some position players considered possible trades remain with the club, leaving St. Louis with some attractive bait for off-season and free agent acquisitions. Nolan Arenado and his no-trade clause remain in St. Louis.

Just a year after Ryan Helsley set a Cardinals record with 49 saves, he has been sent to the Mets with St. Louis getting three minor leaguers that are considered guys with solid futures: shortstop Jesus Baez and right-handed pitchers Nate Dohm and Frank Elissalt.

Although he’s been a closer for St. Louis, he’s expected to be the setup man for Edward Diaz in New York. He worked his first game as a Met on Friday night, pitched one inning, allowed to hits but struck out the side in his 37th appearance of the year. His ERA dropped to 2.92.

Helsley’s departure leaves the Cardinals with JoJo Romero as their best closer option. But he’s also the only left-handed reliever, so Manager Oil Marmol has indicated the Redbirds will use the committee approach to close out games the rest of the way this year.

The key player for the Cardinals in this trade is Baez, a shortstop who is the Mets’ number five prospect and ranked 92nd in all of major league baseball. He’s hitting .242 after 75 games in the minors this year. He’s played other infield positions, too.

The Cardinals also got rid of reliever Steven Matz, shipping him to Boston for one of the top prospects in the Red Sox farm system,

Blaze Jordan, who is 22, a five-year minor leaguer with a career average of .291 with 55 homers and 303 RBI. This year he has hit .308 in double and triple-A, with a dozen home runs and 62 RBI. The Cardinals also like the fact that he strikes out only ten percent of the time.

He first attracted public attention when he was a kid. When he was 11, he hit a homer that went 395 feet. At thirteen, he hit one that came down 500 feet away from the batter’s box.

Shortly before the trade deadline, the Cardinals sent reliever Phil Maton to the Texas Rangers. Maton was having the best year of his career, with 40 calls from the pen, 48 Ks in 38.1 innings and a 2.35 ERA. In return, the Cardinals get some promising minor leaguers; pitchers Mason Molina, a starter, and reliver Skylar Hayes. Molina is in High-A and Hayes is in  Triple-A.

After the wheeling and dealing was finished, the Cardinals lost for the eighth time in their last eleven games Sunday to drop below .500 at the start of this week.

(FEDDE)—It took just 4 2/3 innings for the Atlanta Braves to learn why the St. Louis Cardinals dumped Erik Fedde.  Pitching against the Royals last week, Fedde gave up four earned runs on five hits (one being a home run). He struck out three in his first appearance.

(FOOTBALL POLITICS)—Whether the Chiefs and the Royals stay in Missouri has been thrown into some additional uncertainty by the filing of a lawsuit that challenges recent legislative action providing state funding to keep them from moving to Kansas.

Two state senators, Mike Moon and Bryant Wolfin have been joined by property rights activist Ron Calzone in filing suit saying legislation providing financial help is unconstitutional. Their suit challenges the proposed state funding as a “direct gift or bribe to the owners of the  Chiefs and the Royals.”

The legislation commits the state to issue bonds to pay for as much as one-half of the costs of renovating Arrowhead Stadium and building a new stadium for the Royals. Tax revenue generated by the teams would help pay off the bonds.

Kansas is promising to issue bonds paying up to 70% for new stadiums if the teams move across the state line.

Negotiations involving the two states and the two teams are continuing. The legislature meets in September to consider overriding any of Governor Kehoe’s vetoes of bills from the regular session that ended in May. Kehoe could convene a concurrent special session to pass a bill answering the court challenges but it is too early to make that decision.

The Chiefs play their first pre-season game next Saturday.

(UFL)—The United Football League is going to look different next spring but the changes do not directly affect the St. Louis Battlehawks.

The new man in charge of league business operations, Mike Repole, has announced at least two teams and maybe all four of the USFL franchises will be moved—the Memphis Showboats, Hosuton Roughnecks, Birmingham Stallions, and the Michigan Panthers. The Michigan Panthers won their division this year but lost the DC Defenders in the championship game, which was played in the St. Louis dome in March. The only new market confirmed so far is Columbus, Ohio although the league has trademarked four team names from the original UFL: Oakland Invaders, Philadelphia Stars, New Jersey Generals, and Tampa Bay Bandits.

Repole candidly admits attendance is one reason new markets are being sought. Last year, the Battlehawks drew about 30,000 fans per game but the rest averaged five-to-twelve thousand.

The XFL franchises, which include St. Louis, have not been mentioned for any changes. The Battlehawks’ division includes teams from Houston, San Antonio, and Arlington, Texas and the Defenders.

Repole says the league does not expect to expand for 2026 but he sees 10-12 teams within the next five years and 16 within the next decade.

Off to the Races:

(INDYCAR)—A major change in IndyCar and its premier event, the Indianapolis 500—Roger Penske has sold one-third interest in the racing series to FOX Sports for a reported $130 million.  The move is described as “a strategic investment and partnership designed to launch new growth for IndyCar.”  The deal includes an extension of the broadcast rights that FOX now holds as its first season of broadcasting IndyCar races begins to wind down.

Observers consider the arrangement to be part of Penske’s succession plan.  He’s 88 now and still heavily involved in the operations of his sprawling business empire that fields teams in four top-level motor sports series, his trucking company, and a number of car dealerships as well as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar series.  The speedway and the series are the only Penske operations that are now partly owned by FOX.

Penske bought the Speedway and the IndyCar series in 2019 and has poured millions of dollars into that ownership. Some voices, however, who admire him as a businessman don’t see the kind of promoter that they believe IndyCar needs. They think Penske Entertainment, the division that manages the racing partners, has taken a major step to be more entertaining and thus expand the open-wheel racing audience.

Although IndyCar does not run any races in Missouri, it has several within driving distances of various areas of our state with races just across the river in Illinois, in southern Iowa, Nashville, and (for a little longer drive) at the Circuit of the Americas near Austin, Texas.  And, of course, Indianapolis twice in May.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR was on the track in Iowa this weekend with William Byron stretching his fuel just far enough to win with three closes competitors also trying to reach the finish on their available fuel.

Most teams expected to get about 110 laps on the .875 mile track but Byron and his closest competitors got about 130, thanks in part to some caution flags that slowed the field and increased fuel mileage. A dozen cautions that covered 72 of the race’s 350 laps—21 of the last 100–helped drivers squeeze the last drop from their tanks.

It’s Byron’s second win of the year. He also won the season opening Daytona 500.

Chase Briscoe, who started on pole for the fifth time this year and the second race in a row, was about 1.2 seconds back, just ahead of Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney, and Ryan Preece.

Only three races are left in the regular season. Thirteen drivers have locked in positions for the 16 positions for the championship run-off.  Three non-winners are in the field on points: Tyler Reddick, Alex Bowman, and Chris Buescher. The three closest to them, Kyle Busch, Ty Gibbs, and A. J. Allmendinger are among those far enough below the cutline that they need a win to claim a spot in the championship round.

(Photo credits: Yastrzemski—Facebook; Jordan—Baseball Prospect Journal; Baez—Redbird Rants; Penske—Bob Priddy); Byron–NASCAR)