Category Archives: Politics

Notes from a Quiet Hill (Geography Edition)

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Saw this pop up on the internet the other day.  We always like to remind folks the founders weren’t Europeans but were the people who met them when they arrived (as Will Rogers once remarked about his ancestors).  The t-shirt is being sold on the Honoringthetribe.com, which we couldn’t reach when we looked for it.

But we appreciate the image.  Our President might not be caught wearing this t-shirt even if they had one large enough to fit him. Even if he wore it, it’s doubtful that he would give a hoot about the message.

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I used to think, “This man cannot be more absurd that this” but he quickly dissuaded me of that opinion on a daily if not hourly basis, much of it driven by childish pettiness.  In recent days he has “punished” Canada by signing an executive order renaming Lake Superior “Lake America.”  Now, most recently, he has shown a new map of New Mexico with “Mexico” crossed out and the word “America” written in.

Why don’t he end this ridiculous business and sign an all-encompassing executive order and make it “Planet Trump” and be done with it?

Would it be enough or would he want more?  You don’t need to answer that.

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From a January, 1922 Jefferson City newspaper: “It is said to be an open question whether Congress at present represents public opinion.  If not, next fall will be open season on congressmen.”

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Question for folks in Jefferson City: When was the last time our member of Congress showed up in our town? I don’t mean slipping in to say hello to the office staff, but to meet with the voters. He cannot recall any visits in recent years. Your intrepid correspondent stopped by Congressman Luetkemeyer’s office one day. The door was locked.  When somebody let me in the basic attitude was, “What are you doing here?”  I had a note for the Congressman I wanted to drop off. I doubt he ever saw it because I didn’t even get one of those “Thank your four your interest” form letters.

I think I have run into Northwest Missouri’s Sam Graves more times at the Capitol than I have heard of our own members of Congress being around except to file for election.

Our current Congressman (we think) Bob Onder is one of two GOP politicians asking the U. S.  Supreme Court to overturn our Missouri Supreme Court order reinstating non-gerrymandered district lines.

We could not do any worse by having a Congressman from Kansas City.  In fact, it’s hard not to think a longtime Methodist minister would be anything but better.

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Went to Colorado to visit the granddaughters and their parents last month. We rather like driving across Kansas because of ancestral ties that help us appreciate the Flint Hills and the Tallgrass Prairie and the rolling limestone hills that used to be the floor of the Great Inland Sea.  We even like when we get West of Hays and the upland prairie begins under a wide-open sky not obscured by billboards (there are few of them).  But once again we were reminded when we cross the state line that there still is too much Kansas in Colorado.

Your observer has often felt that a new state should be carved from the area between Hays and Burlington, Colorado, extending south to include the Oklahoma Panhandle and north to include the Nebraska Panhandle

Stopped in Bennett to fuel up. We were a little, uh, stunned.

The cheapest stuff was 15% ethanol. The Subaru is accustomed to a diet of 10% but we were sure it wouldn’t cough and sputter on the strong stuff.   12.2 gallons.  55 dollars.

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This is St. James’ Church in the English village of Ormside, near Appleby (hope that helps you understand its location).  The BBC reports this church is getting something for the first time in its long history. A £10,000 gift from a private trust will pay for an indoor loo, which the church never has had.

A loo over there is a bathroom.

For centuries, people in Ormside carried buckets of water from the village well to operate the primitive indoor plumbing. The BBC reports that the church hopes the improvements “will make the site more welcoming and hospitable, after attendees at weddings and funerals had previously had to rely on nearby residents homes for bathroom access.

The new toilet won’t be in the church itself. A disused hearse house will be modified for people who have to go while sending someone on their way

When we traveled across the pond a couple of years ago we visited the community of Looe, which is the case with many towns and cities, has public bathrooms. Admission, we think, was 25 pence.

The town of Looe is pronounced without the “e.”   I took a picture of the public bathrooms. I refer to it as Looe’s Loos.

 

The Phrase Becomes Real: A Political Football 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

We usually offer a roundup of the week’s Missouri sports news on Tuesdays but before we do that, we want to observe how Donald Trump is not the only person in Washington who thinks history needs to be re-written.

(MIZTHEN)—I was there that day the Missouri Tigers lost to the Kansas Jayhawks 23-7 at Memorial Stadium (it was not then Faurot Field).

But that’s not the way Congress and the NCAA record it. Congress has done something the sportswriters and the coaches did not do in 1960 when Missouri lost a game it later won, later won a conference championship it had lost, and until recently a national championship it could not reclaim.

Kansas and Missouri fought for superiority in the Big Eight Conference that year. Kansas temporarily won its first outright conference championship in thirty years.  The Jayhawks finished ranked 11th in the AP Sportswriters poll, only the second time the Jayhawks were ranked (the first time was 1947).

However—-KU running back Bert Coan, who scored the only two Kansas touchdowns that day was found to have been ineligible in games against Colorado and Missouri and on December 8, the Big Eight declared that KU big-bucks recruiter Bud Adams had illegally recruited Coan while he was at TCU. The two Kansas victories had to be forfeited.  The Big Eight and MU consider the Tigers record to be 10-0 in the regular season. But KU and the NCAA still consider the record is 9-1.

Coan later played seven years in the American Football League, six of those years with (it seems appropriate) the Kansas City Chiefs, the team right between the two states. He caught a 19-yard touchdown pass and ran for 37 yard TD in the Missouri game.

Coan and most of the other players from both sides in that 23-7 Kansas victory are gone now.  The AP and the competing UPI (United Press International) did not do polls after the bowl season—which concluded on January 2 in those years before the national championship playoff system came along.  The last polls put Minnesota first and Missouri 4th and 5th.

But the Golden Gophers lost to Washington in the Rose Bowl. Ole Miss, which went 10-0-1 and Iowa (also with one loss) also got some championship votes.

Missouri went to the Orange Bowl to face a Navy team that was ranked 4 and 6,  and starred Heisman Trophy winner Joe Belino.  The opening minutes were electrifying with Navy picking a fumble out of the air and returning it 98 yards for a touchdown. Navy threatened again until the Tigers’ Norm Beal ran a pick-6 back 90 yards for the tie.

CBS television had the game that year with one of the greatest pairs in the booth at the time making the calls—Ray Scott and Paul Christman.  Christman was Missouri’s first great star as a pre-war quarterback who later played for the Chicago Cardinals which he led to the NFL championship in 1947, the franchise’s only championship (they now play in Arizona after stop in St. Louis for a while). You won’t hear Christman but you can catch the game highlights with Scott making the calls:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zKUfYF84h8

(QB Ron Taylor hands off to Donnie Smith–who led the conference with 13 touchdowns—with Ed Mehrer (35) and Norm Beal (21) with Gordon Smith (89) looking to take out the right side of Navy’s defensive line)

Missouri stuffed Navy’s run game in the 1961 Orange Bowl while Dan Devine’s “student body right,” and “student body left” running game that featuring pulling guards and blocking backs ground out more than 200 yards and ate up a lot of clock.

The Tiger rush was led by Norris Stevenson and Mel West, the first two African-American Tiger football players.

Coach Devine always thought Missouri would have finished the year with the national championship if there had been a post-season poll, but the University has never claimed the national title.  Missouri finished 11-0* with the asterisk noting the game on the last day of the regular season, that they actually lost.

Well, if the University of Missouri and the now-Big 12 Conference won’t claim the national championship, it’s time for the politicians to get all huffy and fluffy about it these 66 years later and say, “Ignore the asterisk.”

One of our intrepid United States Senators, Eric Schmitt, has stepped boldly forth and introduced a Senate resolution declaring the Tigers were undefeated national champions. Such resolutions have no force of law and certainly have no authority over the Big 12, the NCAA, or the history of the game (which Missouri played poorly, by the way).  But the Senate has had bigger things to do than take time with this resolution and there were no objections, not even from Kansas’ Senators, so it stands as passed.

The University of Missouri will take the resolution for whatever value it has and will celebrate the 1960 national championship during its September 19 game against the Troy Trojans.  The halftime event also will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Memorial Stadium.

It would be greater fun if the celebration could be done when MU plays KU this year, but that game will be in Lawrence and the Jayhawks are not just about to let Missouri do any whoopeeing that day.

Memorial Stadium’s original capacity was 25,000. We were one of the 41,000 who watched Kansas win that loss in 1960.

With the new quarter-billion addition intended for use by high-roller Tiger supporters, the stadium will hold almost 65,000, including those sitting in 2,280 new premium seats, 628 loge box seats, 270 mezzanine club seats and mingling in 71 suites.

And in a few weeks there will be a celebration of a game that truly has become a political football.

(MIZZNOW)—The season kicks off Thursday night shortly after Mizzou alumnae Sheryl Crow sings the national anthem. The game is a sellout. Arkansas-Pine Bluff will give the Tigers someone wearing a different uniform to hit.

Ahmad Hardy won’t play but ESPN’s Pete Thamel says the Tigers hope he can be ready my mid-September.  After the Thursday game, Missouri plays Kansas in Lawrence on September 11 and then is at home against Troy on the 19th.  SEC play starts with Mississippi State on the 26th.

(MIZCUTS)—Twenty-five former Tigers will start the season on NFL 53-man rosters.  On3.com lists:

  • Kris Abrams-Draine – CB, Denver Broncos
  • Tyler Badie – RB, Denver Broncos
  • Nick Bolton – LB, Kansas City Chiefs
  • Larry Borom – OL, Detroit Lions
  • Luther Burden III – WR, Chicago Bears
  • Jaylon Carlies – LB, Indianapolis Colts
  • Kevin Coleman Jr. – WR, Miami Dolphins
  • Brady Cook – QB, Miami Dolphins
  • Jordan Elliott – DL, Tennessee Titans
  • Akayleb Evans – CB, Carolina Panthers
  • Javon Foster – OL, Cincinnati Bengals
  • Ty’Ron Hopper – LB, Green Bay Packers
  • Khalil Jacobs – LB, New England Patriots
  • Drew Lock – QB, Seattle Seahawks
  • Chris McClellan – DL, Green Bay Packers
  • Isaiah McGuire – DL, Cleveland Browns
  • Armand Membou – OL, New York Jets
  • Harrison Mevis – K, Los Angeles Rams
  • Toriano Pride Jr. – CB, Cleveland Browns
  • Ennis Rakestraw Jr. – CB, Detroit Lions
  • Darius Robinson – DL, Arizona Cardinals
  • Keagen Trost – OL, Los Angeles Rams
  • Josiah Trotter – LB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
  • Zion Young – EDGE, Baltimore Ravens

Players Waived or Released

  • Marcus Bryant – OL, New England Patriots (injured reserve)
  • Joshuah Bledsoe – S, Washington Commanders
  • Stephen Hall – CB, Houston Texans
  • Xavier Loyd – WR, Kansas City Chiefs
  • Albert Okwuegbunam – TE, Las Vegas Raiders
  • Cody Schrader – RB, Denver Broncos
  • Theo Wease Jr. – WR, Miami Dolphins

Injured Reserve

  • Jaylon Carlies – LB, Indianapolis Colts
  • Yasir Durant – CB, New England Patriots
  • Johnny Walker – WR, Denver Broncos

(TRAGEDY)—A William Jewell College football player who had; just scored the first touchdown of the year for his team collapsed on the sidelines Saturday and was pronounced dead at a Liberty hospital a short time later. MicahJo Barnett. He was 20, a business administration major.  The game was suspended and later canceled.

Barnett was a home-town boy, the captain of the Liberty Eagles when they won their first state championship when he was a senior. He ran for 1,450 yards, scored 20 touchdowns and made the all-state team that year.

(MIZBB)—Former Tiger basketball star Mark Mitchell might be a Tiger basketball star again.  He’s enrolled at the University of Missouri.  The court system will decide if he can have a fifth year of eligibility.

Mitchell went undrafted by the NBA after his all-SEC year last year. He played for the Denver Nuggets Summer League team and appeared to be headed to the Nuggets training camp before he changed his mind.

He’s one of several players—more than 25—who were not grandfathered in by the NCAA’s “five for five”  rule. His future is in the hands of a federal district judge in Colorado, Charlotte Sweeney, who has granted fifth years of eligibility in other cases before her. In all of those cases, the players had not signed a professional contract. The NCAA opposes such rulings and the SEC doesn’t like it either.

Financially, returning to Mizzou is a better deal.  He made $45,000 playing in the G-league last season and would get as much as $85,000 if he goes to camp. Sources indicate he’ll make more at Mizzou under the NIL system.

(BASEBALL)—Baseball seems to be eternal during the summer months and it is something akin to a shock to realize there are only 25 games left for our two teams. One has a slight chance of making the playoffs but it’s going to have to get its act together in a significant way to do it.

Our two teams seem to be headed in different directions again. It’s the Royals that have been hot for the last couple of weeks. Although they were hammered by the Guardians on Sunday, they have won 11 of their last 13, 13 of their last 16,  and remain in the playoff picture, as unlikely as that might seem. But they are playing in the weakest division in baseball.

Royals reliever John Schreiber, put on waivers during the weekend, was quickly snapped up by the New York Yankees. He had been in 55 games this year and had put up a 3.65 ERA. He held right-handed batters to a .143 average but lefties were hitting .326.   Schreiber likely on his way out anyway. He was going to be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.

The Cardinals have dropped to two games under .500 again and now they’ve put J. J. Wetherholt on the IL.  He’s been dealing with tendinitis in his right wrist.  The Cardinals started the week 68-70.

One notable achievement, however—Alex Burleson, who was a much-discussed trade possibility in the offseason, has become the first left-handed Cardinals batter to drive in 100 runs since Jim Edmunds did it in 2004, with 111—a number Burlison has 23 games to beat.

He came into this week ranked number two among first basemen in all of baseball in batting , base hits, and doubles.

The Cardinals have decided during the weekend that Caleb Ferguson wasn’t such a good deal after all and cut him loose. He was designated for assignment three weeks after the Redbirds picked him up from Cincinnati. He pitched 8.1 innings in relief, gave up eight walks, 11 hits and eight earned runs in his short stint after doing pretty well for the Reds where he had 22Ks in 24.2 innings and a 4.01 ERA.

His roster spot will be taken by pitcher Hancel Rincon when rosters expand. Also coming up will be Leo Bernal. Rincon has spent eight years in the minors although he’s only 24. He’d been a starter but was moved to long relief this year. In 41 games this year in Memphis he has thrown 71.1 innings with a 4.04 ERA.

Bernal is a catcher prospect, a minor league gold glove winner last year and has been voted the best defensive catcher in the International League this year. He has hit .278 with 16 home runs and 77 runs batted in through 101 games. His callup leaves the Cardinals with some choices to make. Their roster already carries three catchers—Ivan Herrera, Padro Pages, and Jimmy Crooks.

—-Moving along, quickly:

TWO FOR PATO; FIVE FOR PALOU; AND A BIG ONE FOR PREECE

(NASCAR)—Somehow the NCAA Tournament phrase “Sweet Sixteen” isn’t appropriate for the field that will run for the NASCAR Cup Championship in the next ten races. But sixteen it is, the field established with a dramatic win Saturday night on the high banks of Daytona Saturday night with the sixteenth driver making it by winning while a big part of the field crashed behind him.

Ryan Preece had never won a Cup race until then. The win boosted him past Shane Van Gisbergen into the sixteenth and final playoff slot.  It’s his first win in 249 races covering eight seasons.

The race, run with a new aero package for the cars, was fairly sedate for a Daytona race until four laps from the finish when a crash and subsequent cleanup sent the race into overtime. Zane Smith led at the start but when he tried to block an oncoming Tyler Reddick, he was turned with the rest of the field bearing down upon him.  Preece got through the melee first and was leading when the caution flag was thrown, locking him into the position.

The sixteen drivers who will try to accumulate the most points in the next ten races to claim the cup are regular season champion Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Ty Gibbs, Chase Briscoe, Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, Chris Buescher, Daniel Suarez, Carson Hocevar, William Byron, Bubba Wallace, Austin Cindric, and Preece.

The field includes the winners of the last seven championships: Logano in 2018, 2022, and 2024; Larson in 2021 and 2025, Blaney in 2023 and Elliott in 2020.

The Chase begins at Darlington next weekend.

(INDYCAR)— Two for O’Ward; Four of Five for Palou

Pato O’Ward has won both weekend IndyCar races on the Milwaukee Mile but he had to do it on the same day.  Saturday’s race was stopped by rain before the halfway mark, with O’Ward in the lead, forcing the race to be completed Sunday, after the regularly-scheduled Sunday race also went his way.

The day was a historic one for O’Ward, who became the first IndyCar driver to win two races on the same day since Rick Mears did it 45 years ago.  Only six other drivers in the series have achieved that distinction—and they’re pretty big names.  Mears, Mario Andretti, Al and Bobby Unser, Dan Gurney, and Johnny Rutherford.

 

“Those are heavy names. Then you hear mine, you’re like, ‘What?'” he said in a post-race interview. “I’m just writing my own story. I really don’t know what’s in store for my IndyCar career. So far I’ve dedicated my whole life to this. I always really dedicate myself to everything that I do to the best of my ability. I’m one hungry competitor. I love to go out there and compete and to challenge.”

His double victory was overshadowed by Alex Palou, who did not win but accumulated enough points to guarantee his fourth championship in a row, his fifth in six years. Only Scott Dixon, with six, and A. J. Foyt with seven, have more series championships than Palou, who is by far the youngest driver to win five.

 

“I never thought I would be, first of all, an IndyCar driver. Never thought I could make it. Never thought that I would have the chance to be a professional race car driver. That was my dream,” Palou said after the race. “When I had the opportunity to be an IndyCar driver, that was already a huge achievement for me. I was living the dream. I remember also then Chip (Ganassi) giving me that chance to drive for a championship-winning team at that moment. They just won in 2020 with Scott. That was mind-blowing. Since then I feel like I’ve been on this incredible cloud where everything has been so good for me… It’s just super fun.”

The last driver to win four straight titles was Sebastien Bourdais, who took his fourth one in 2007.

One race is left on the IndyCar schedule. It’s next week at Laguna Seca.

(Photo credits: Student Body Left—1961 Savitar; Stadium—MLR Group; Preece—Bob Priddy at Brickyard ’26; Palou—Rick Gevers, WWTR;  O’Ward—Bob Priddy, Indy, 2026; NASCAR playoff field—Facebook)

The Carrier 

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There are no golf courses on aircraft carriers, no places where our military people can fly off to for a leisure weekend no matter that the world is falling apart.

There are no gold-plated ballrooms where admiring throngs can gather to pat the Commander in Chief on the back while thousands of Americans are stuck on Navy ships, at Air Force bases, and in Army compounds where weekend is mostly just a word and the world is dangerous.

Some of those young people have died and might die and others have been wounded and more will be wounded while their commander in chief plays golf and suggests that nine months of isolation on a boat isn’t long enough.

He putters while miliary families pray; they are Charlie Browns and he is a petty, vindictive, uncaring Lucy with a football.

There is something he can’t feel, has never written, and shows no capacity for: empathy.

I am not, a veteran and I have no family members who are in the active military so my feelings of outrage at the cavalier attitude the President and his Secretary of Defense toady have shown toward our service people in this needless war on Iran must be small compared to the feeling of friends and families of those who prosecute Trump’s game of playing soldiers with the real thing.

Several years ago I was privileged to be a guest for 24 hours on the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier and of spending a day on the USS Jefferson City submarine, so I have had a taste of the small and a taste of the huge in our arsenal. A miniscule taste which is far more than their biggest commander has had.

A man whose greatest personal link to the military is his obligatory presence when the coffins come home is incapable of respecting those unfortunate enough to be carrying out his irrational orders.

My experiences left me incredibly impressed with the deep commitment and the high-level of professionalism of the young people who crew these vessels. When we visited the bridge of the Roosevelt about 120 miles out in the Atlantic, we saw a 24-year-old woman driving the ship.  Down on the deck, a large number of her generation was efficiently and safely launching and landing F-16 fighter/bombers.

On the submarine we watched young sailors running a boat that was more than 400 feet underwater.  We peered through a periscope and lined up possible shot, knowing that someone in their 20s might someday be responsible for programming the torpedoes and determining if the target is an enemy or a friend before a commander far younger than we were makes the firing decision, .

These are people who not only are on duty for weeks at a time; some are underwater for weeks while their commander in chief plays golf, spends his overnights writing insults, and who cannot wait for each weekend so he can get aboard a luxurious jet to take him away from whatever cares he has, has no appreciation for the people who live on highest alert 24 hours a day while he thinks up new ways to honor himself and denigrate others.. Stories that an aircraft carrier is short of everything from food to feminine hygiene products cause him no sleep loss.

And now might be the greatest insult to those on the front lines:

The Navy, cleansed by the administration of Navy loyalists and largely run by Trump amateur appointee-loyalists, reportedly wants to name a new aircraft carrier for Donald Trump.  Of course, he who recently posted an AI generated image of himself as a highly decorated Army General despite his personal record of avoiding the draft, and who suggested the Abraham Lincoln had not been on alert in a war zone long enough, has no objections at all to removing the name of a Pearl Harbor hero and replacing it with his own—despite the custom of naming the current class of carriers after dead Presidents.

The racial overtone of this case cannot be overlooked, given President Trump’s track record. The planned name had honored Cook Petty Officer First Class Doris “Dorie” Miller.  It was going to be the first carrier named after a black person—who also was the first African-American to be awarded the Navy Cross and to be nominated for a Medal of Honor.

WKTR-TV in Newport News, Virginia talked to Miller’s great-nephew, Thomas Bledsoe, who said he was shocked by the reports.  He told the station, “One of the things about Doris Miller’s story is not only about him being the hero that he was on that day at Pearl Harbor but it was also about an individual stepping beyond the means of what they were assigned to do and going above and beyond. That ‘why not me’ moment was very significant, not only for the African American community but for Americans overall.”

The Navy says the suggested change has not been made official.

Miller helped wounded crew members to safety during the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and even operated a machine gun—although he had no training—and shot down two of the attacking airplanes. In 1943, Miller was assigned to the escort carrier Liscombe Bay that was torpedoed in November and sank within 23 minutes, taking Miller with it.

Some have suggested his name would be better applied to a destroyer or to a cruiser.  A frigate was christened with his name in 1973.

The keel of the new carrier is to be laide later this year. At the 2023 ceremony announcing the naming of the carrier, President Trump lamented that he hasn’t had a ship named for him.

As for the Abraham Lincoln, 

It finally is headed to port.  Ship spotters on Saturday saw it passing through the Singapore Strait apparently headed to a port in Thailand where at last the crew can step onto dry land and have some time to unwind—-

—while their well-fed commander in chief lines up his next putt on the soft green grass of a Florida golf course, having taken time away from his stressful thinking about invading Greenland, Cuba and maybe the Falkland Islands, making Canada the 51st state among other adventures both foreign and domestic, and what the next memorial to himself should be.

(Photo Credit: Miller—WTKR; Lincoln—U. S. Navy)

It Must Be Hard

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It must be hard as you contemplate

Your political and uour personal fate

To realize you are a duck increasingly lame

And the power is diminishing of your name.

That you have less and less control

Of those whose loyalty to you has taken a toll.

It must be hard.

It must be hard to see

That your supporters have begun to flee;

When those counted as your tools

Begin to realize they have been your fools;

When those to whom your voice filled their ear

Let it be known they no longer hear

Or fear

You.

It must be hard.

 

It must be hard

To see those you called your friends

Have used you for their own ends;

Your friends Xi and Putin and Un

Think you’ve been just a little bit of fun.

When bluster and bullying and lying fall flat—

It must be hard to admit that

No one believes in the significance

Of You.

It must be hard.

 

It must be hard

To know the people you throw

Out of the country know

Better than most

The narrowness beyond your oft-heard boast

That you’re really just helping Americans most;

They know, because they watch and they wait

For your next explosion of vengeance and hate

Of people you don’t know or about whom you don’t care.

But you know no matter what,

They’ll always be there.

Despite you.

 

It must be hard

To see those you cooose

lose.

To know you have less power

That you no longer tower

Over those loyalist

who have flown

And no longer are your own.

It must be hard for you to seek

The power you once had,

But know that now you now are weak.

It must be terribly hard.

 

It must be hard

While playing pasture pool in your big back yard

That few people care about the score

That you might approve on your personal card

A few strokes less, maybe one more

It’s not golf that will determine your most final score.

Others are scoring you, you see

As you stumble from hole to tee

While the world around you falls to ruin and rack

You only care about the nine holes coming back.

Soon you will be gone, that is a fact

And nobody will care anymore for your act.

It must be hard.

It’s got to be hard to know how few will mourn

When you go. Few hearts will be torn

While so many will be eternally glad

And not at all sad

That you are gone.

And the places you named

To prove you were great

Will soon be returned

To their original state

 

It must be hard to know

What will happen when you go—

For go you will,

Your overnight rage

Will at last be gone from the stage

And we will never forget

The damage you did

But at last we will be rid

Of you.

And that won’t be hard.

(copyright 2026 by Bob Priddy)

A Little Politics We’d Like to Forget 

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Saturday nights when Liz and Rob were not taller than we are, Saturday nights had kind of a ritual to them.

At 5 p.m., I’d turn on KBIA, the National Public Radio Station at the University of Missouri, and wait for A Prairie Home Companion to come on.  I had my reel-to-reel SONY recorder wired into the radio and set at the slowest recording speed to record the two-hour program based around a mythical Minnesota town called Lake Wobegone (“a little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve, where all of the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”) and the stories told by one of its former residents, Garrison Keillor.

I left the speakers off because we were still doing stuff at 5.  Dinner was usually about 6.  At 7 we’d gather in the living room where I rewound the tape and we’d listen back to the recording. Popcorn was part of the evening.  While the playback was underway, I’d turn on my cassette recorder and dub the program onto the smaller format.  There also in our house were some LP recordings of old radio programs—Jack Benny, Fibber and Molly, Suspense, Mr. Kean—Tracer of Lost Persons, Gangbusters, the Shadow, the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, Straight Arrow, Escape, etc.—some of which I dubbed onto cassettes before we went on long trips.

SiriusXm now has a channel for those old programs (the PHC is on Keillor’s webpage) but in those days, cars had cassette players and those programs came in handy when World War III broke out in the back seat.  I’d just slide a cassette of Garrison or Jack or Fibber or Molly or one of the creepy shows into the player and peace would immediately break out behind us.

The kids’ imaginations were immediately seized by those radio shows.  The “theatre of the mind” took over and for an hour or two the miles slipped by easily and quietly.

We are not alone in thinking children today are missing that important element in their development—-imagination.  Oh, they can imagine they are great dragon fighters or world-saving soldiers on their computers.  But it’s not the same, by far.

Radio could then, and still can today if we ignore the local stations that aren’t local anymore and aren’t imaginative anymore, and are mostly forums for people whose egos are their greatest asset, expand the mind far beyond anything we can see, even on a 100=inch flat screen screwed to the wall.

(In 1965, the great radio humorist Stan Freberg did a series of public service announcements for the Radio Advertising Bureau promoting radio.  They’re all priceless but the fourth one, “Stretching the Imagination” is considered the classic:

(bing.com/search?q=Stan+freberg+who+listens+to+radio&form=ANNTH1&refig=6a8601c200594754ba45e2583e91c5c7&pc=HCTS)

The Singer is Sarah Vaughan.

Garrison Keillor is no longer doing his radio program but he does do stage shows recreating the program. He’s 84 now, writes books, lives in New York instead of Minnesota, and writes with his familiar droll humor a daily column.

A few days ago on the 17th, he offered this observation that we decided to pass along:

(7) Another modest proposal, but a good one

Yes, It is obvious that he’s a Democrat. In fact one of his books is called Home Grown Democrat. But he seems to capture the contradictory, confusing, infuriating political mess we are living through.

Saturday nights at our house aren’t so interesting anymore. The kids are all grown up and have their own families.  Sometimes, though, we do have some popcorn.  And in our cars, we can listen to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Gunsmoke (with William Conrad as Matt Dillon, Boston Blackie, Tales of the Texas Rangers, the creaking door of the Inner Sanctum and many more.

And the miles just slip away.

We The People

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Many years ago during a meeting in Washington D.C., a friend of mine from Maine insisted I go along with him to the Birchmere Music Hall across the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia to listen to a folk music trio from his state, Maine.   Schooner Faire’s harmonies on music focusing on northeastern culture has stayed with me to this day.  One is especially appropriate for our times.

One of the three men I watched that night has died but the other two, brothers Steve and Chuck Romanoff continue to perform. The third member, Tom Rowe, died in 2004. .

One of the songs they sang is one of their most popular. It’s called “We the People,” and although they’ve been singing it for decades it seems appropriate today.

If you want to follow along, or join in the signing, here are the lyrics by Steve Romanoff

We the people, hand in hand
We, the people, understand
That there’s an answer, there’s a way
We, the people, have to say
So, send the orders to prepare
We, the people, do declare
Send the good news, send the word
We, the people, will be heard
We, the people, everywhere

There’s a message in the air
And it’s a’movin’ across the land
If you listen you can hear it well, my friend
We know the time has come
To take our heads out of the sand
‘Cause if we don’t the chance might never come again
The future is in reason
Not in building ways of war
And the time has come for reason to be heard
The purpose of the people
Is what this declaration’s for
And it’s why our fathers told us word for word…

We the people, hand in hand
We, the people, understand
That there’s an answer, there’s a way
We, the people, have to say
So, send the orders to prepare
We, the people, do declare
Send the good news, send the word
We, the people, will be heard
We, the people, everywhere

We won’t accept excuses
And we won’t accept the lies
Of those who’d lead our nations into hell
It’s time to call their bluff
To say to them, enough’s enough
It’s time we all could hear the tolling of the bell

It’s time to feed the hungry
And it’s time to heal the pain
And it’s time to beat our weapons into plows

It’s time to hear the voices that have risen once again
It’s the wisdom of the people clear and loud
Singing proud…

We the people, hand in hand
We, the people, understand
That there’s an answer, there’s a way
We, the people, have to say
So, send the orders to prepare
We, the people, do declare
Send the good news, send the word
We, the people, will be heard
We, the people, everywhere

We the people, hand in hand
We, the people, understand
That there’s an answer, there’s a way
We, the people, have to say

So, send the orders to prepare
(That) We, the people, do declare
Send the good news, send the word
We, the people, will be heard
We, the people (Oooh)
We, the people (Oooh)
We, the people (Oh, Yes Oooh)
We, the people (Oooh)
We the people everywhere

Schooner Fare still performs after more than fifty years of concerts although you have to go to Maine at this time of year to hear them.

(The song can be heard on an album with the song’s title. Find it on Amazon at: https://music.amazon.com/albums/B00IIVZUGM?do=play&trackAsin=B00IIVZUOO&ts=1787150255&ref=dm_sh_zsaULICOxXOjIqQEaRmXCxqAz

There also are several Schooner Faire songs on YouTube and a complete 1992 concert from the Chocolate Church Arts Center in Bath, Maine. The song starts about 98 minutes in the concert if you would like to sing along with them:  youtube.com/watch?v=oJXtbDLHMl0&t=6234s.youtube.com/watch?v=oJXtbDLHMl0&t=6234s)

When you go to the polling place in November, perhaps this song will be in your mind along with Edmund Burke’s comment, “Governments who ignore the natural wisdom of the eople willd o so at their own peril.”

(photo credit: YouTube)

Smithsonian Museum of Un-American History 

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If Donald Trump thought he could get away with naming the Smithsonian Museum of American History something such as a Museum of Un-American History, he would already have signed an executive order doing it.

While most of us were paying attention to celebrating Independence Day, Trump’s White House Domestic Policy Council was issuing its latest accusations targeting that museum. For months his administration has been busy “reforming” our national parks, monuments, and museums to get rid of “anti-Americanism.”  He prefers to pretend that slavery was a friendly relationship between master and slave, that the Confederacy and its key figures who repudiated the United States Constitution and fought with a breakaway segment of our country openly based on protecting slavery were just advocating for state’s rights, that nothing serious happened to Native American nations, and that his White Christians are the only important religious policy setters of our society.

Last year, Trump ordered the Smithsonian to remove anti-American ideology from the 21 museums and galleries (and the National Zoo) that fall under the Smithsonian system.

The Trump Domestic Policy Council’s 162-page report refers to “thinly veiled anti-Americanism” at the history museum and accuses it of showing this country is “a fundamentally oppressive nation.”  The council accuses the museum of moving “toward an extreme political activism.”

Then it breaks down that activism as “anti-white activism,” and “illegal alien activism,” and “transgender activism.”  It is also critical of the museum for having exhibits and programs depicting slavery, race, and systemic inequality, as ABC News put it in one of its reports.

I have been to many of those 21 museums, some of them—including American history—many times.  I am a white Christian with an ancestor who settled in Virginia on a land grant given him by the first Queen Elizabeth and I can tell you the council report, as is the case with the majority of Trump’s appraisals of the general history of our nation, is pure BS.

Perhaps Trump doesn’t like to see (as if he has ever visited the place) the whites-only Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where four black college students sat down on February 1, 1960 and politely asked for service.  They refused to leave when asked to leave, setting off demonstrations that led to eventual integration of the lunch counter and helped trigger the civil rights movement in the south and its large student base. Four years later, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

One of the museum’s directors, Anthea Hartig, has called the exhibit in question, “central to our mission to explore, preserve and share the complexity of our past (that would be part of the America 250 celebration)…a bold and immersive experience across all three exhibition floors of the National Museum of American History. Suggestions that the Smithsonian had planned or intended to remove the lunch counter and stools are false. Daily, thousands of visitors view and learn from these cherished objects in the national collection.”

The Organization of American Historians charged the Trump administration with trying to “coerce Smithsonian leadership to shape ​its presentation of ⁠U.S. history so that it serves the administration’s political agenda – part of an ongoing and multi-pronged assault by the Trump administration against accurate and evidence-based history in American public life.”

Trump has issued an executive order directing notices be put at the entrances to the history museum with a warning that “the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.”

It is precisely love of country that makes Trump’s signs and his attacks on this and other Smithsonian museums so putrid.

This statue in the history museum by Horatio Greenough might be the symbol of Trump’s America.  Washington, all-victorious and all-virtuous, a symbol of American courage, a legendary figure whose human shortcomings are overlooked—including owning 317 slaves at the time of his death and dispatching the Army to punish Native Americans in the new Northwest Territory objecting to white settlers taking their lands (resulting in an ignominious defeat), a man who refused a $48,000 salary to lead the army and asked only to be reimbursed for his expenses that turned out to be about $450,000.

Next thing you know, the man who thinks Mount Rushmore is incomplete without him will decide this museum needs a Trumpian figure like the one of George Washington. I’m afraid a marble image of Donald Trump without his shirt might make the museum for adults-only because the statue would be too frightening for children.

One wonders if Trump ever saw The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the great western film about a man credited with killing a dangerous outlaw who actually was killed by another man.  After telling the truth to a newspaper editor near the end of the film, James Stewart’s character asked, “You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?”  And editor Maxwell Scott (played by Carleton Young) responds, “This is the West, sir.  When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

That’s Trump’s preferred history. Ignore the truth. Ignore the reality. Believe a legend—and he’ll tell you what the legend will be.

But this isn’t the West.  It’s America. Our history has had its troublesome times (including this seemingly endless period). How we overcome those troubles is a part of history that says we can always do and be better, a concept he has trouble grasping for himself as well as for the nation.

In this time of heightened awareness of our nation’s history, we cannot let the bigotry of our historically-illiterate President prevail. We cannot become a better people if we ignore the times when we were at our worst and a President who desires a return to that era should be resisted strongly by an unafraid nation.

We are likely to have more about Trump’s desire to make us as historically ignorant as he prefers to be.

(Photo credits: Smithsonian)

Secretary of Censorship 

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Let’s be clear about what I am about to discuss.  As a journalist, a writer, an author, a parent, grandparent and great-grandparent, and a long-time library board member, I will not let someone else, particularly a government official, dictate what is appropriate for me to read, to think, or to speak. Nor will I allow someone else, government official or private citizen, to tell me I do not have the right to decide what is appropriate reading material for my family.

It appears our latest Secretary of State has assumed the odious role his predecessor took on as a censor for our libraries.

Denny Hoskins has decided he has the authority to take state funding away from the Columbia Public Library because it has books in it that he doesn’t like and furthermore tells people it has them, taking it upon himself to decide that some members of the public who want to go to the public library should not make their own decisions about what they or their children can read.

Hoskkins had a fit recently when he learned the Columbia Public Library was going to have a “rainbow story time” for families who wanted to participate.  Josh Hancock of The Missouri independent reported library staff read books called “Rainbowsaurus” and “Big Wig” to the children and their parents. The first book is about a rainbow-dinosaur. The other book is, says Josh, “about a child who wins a costume contest in drag.”

The library spent all of $26 for a wig and contact paper for the event. Eighteen dollars went for the wig. Hoskins wants to withhold thousands of dollars in state library aid because the event was held.

Hoskins heard about it before the event and warned the library that it would lose all of its state and federal aid if it held the $26 event for people to willingly attend.

Then when the library, where like all libraries the freedom to read, to  think, to learn, and to form one of the most dangerous things allowed in a Democracy—ideas—are cherished held the event anyway, Hoskins and State Senator Rick Brattin threw together a news conference to announce punishment for the library’s refusal to follow their dictates.

Brattin is hoping to be a Congressman in one of the gerrymandered districts he and other legislative Trumpians drew up to protect the political interests of a president who is only interested in libraries in terms of a potential library that will preserve his greatness, and his surplus Qatar 747 that is costing a billion dollars to convert to presidential transportation.

“Unconscionable if not criminal,” Hoskins called the event. It was, he said, an effort to groom children.

Groom children? It’s a pejorative that has become popular on the Right, defined by the Cleveland Clinic as the “process of manipulation and abuse {that} can stem from what may initially seem to be an innocent relationship with a stranger or adult authority figure.”

A story time at a public library designed to foster “manipulation and abuse of children?”

These two justified their outburst with a letter from Attorney General Catherine Hanaway.  But the Independent story said that Hanaway “acknowledged the library’s right to determine its own programming and said she was prepared to act only if a program broke the law.”

It doesn’t break the law, which talks about giving pornography to minors or making a public display of sexually explicit material in public.

It’s quite a leap for these self-righteous officials to declare a rainbow-colored dinosaur is pornographic or a cheap wig as sexually explicit material.

Apparently Hoskins and Brattin have superior thoughts of such evaluations. Brattin complained the books had “a message that’s meant to sexualize” and advocated a “lifestyle” that would weaken the defenses of the children.

We wonder how the parents feel about being categorized as enablers of such behavior..

Boone County Prosecutor Roger Johnson told Columbia TV station KOMU that talking about LGBTQ+ issues is not a crime. Hoskins admitted at the ;press conference that “pornography is OK to be talked about because it’s a First Amendment right.”

The Independent says neither he nor Brattin could identify any laws that had been broken but Hoskins vowed that he would ask future legislatures “to ensure that this is illegal in the future.”

First Amendment to the contrary, of course.

One of the all-time great science fiction books is Ray Bradury’s dystopian novel about book-burning, Fahrenheit 451. Midway through story, one of those who burn books is confronted by one of those who memorizes them before they can be destroyed—

The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.

—Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Sometimes books do  indeed “remind us what asses and fools we are.”

Just for the Record

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There have been few times Missourians have so revolted against legislative proposals for new constitutional amendments as they did Tuesday.

Worst losses:

1912 Am 6  Authorizes land inheritance and utility taxes, excepts personal property, abolishes poll and occupational taxes, removes tax limits.  86,647-508,137    85.43% no

2026 Am 5  Phase out of Income Tax  233,309-1,165,085   83.31% no

1914  Am 14  Fifty million dollar bond issue  build and maintain state highways, authorizes a tax levy to pay off bonds (10 cents a gallon of gas)  76,542=378,530   83.17%  no

1918 Am 8  Restructures state tax system to derive public revenue form improved value of land 80,725-373,220   82.21% no

1914  Am 15 Allow petitions to authorize bond issue for road construction and maintenance. 80,935-373,202  82.18% no

2026 Am 4  Constitutional Amendments proposed by petition must be approved by votes in all congressional districts   275,040-1,122,748  80.32% no

1910 Am 8  Increase per diem for legislators  95,045-385,765    80.23% no

1914  Am 4  Establishes annual salary of $1,000 for member of legislature  89,629-355,326  79.85% no (rounded up to 80%)

November is a whole lot more interesting now—-and one question will be whether the Republicans can retain their two-thirds membership in the House and in the Senate.

And then there is 2028.——The offices of Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of Sate, Attorney General, and State Treasurer—all are held by Republicans—and all are up for decisions by voters.

 

Massive Repudiation

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(This post has been updated to correct an error.  Amendment five failed in every county, not in all but one. We relied on erroneous information for the original post.)

It was not just a historic election—

It was an epic defeat for two constitutional amendments proposed by a legislature that is two-thirds Republican.

Missouri voters rejected amendments four and five by rates unseen in more than a century. The results for the income tax elimination amendment failed in every county and according to the New York Times just before midnight last night failed in one county, Shannon, 92-8 percent and failed in Maries County 90-10.

Here’s a simple explanation for the failure of Amendment 5—the income tax destruction amendment—and some observations about a flawed state fiscal policy:

The people who can’t afford more sales taxes defeated the people who don’t want to pay income taxes.

For folks to whom an income tax cut would be of relatively minor value while increased sales taxes would be a major blow, the defeat of the effort to excuse those to whom sales taxes are a minor thing from paying income taxes is a major victory, a crushing rejection of the legislature’s proposals.

We hope our lawmakers and/or the candidates to become lawmakers understand a sorry message:

The people at large do not trust them, at least not in matters of tax policy.

How will it play out in candidate elections in November? Incumbent Republicans might face intense demands to explain why they supported both of these amendment, especially Amendment 5.

Here’s a different approach that supporters of Amendment 5 might think about next:

Eliminate the sales tax.  Restructure the income tax so it spreads the fiscal responsibility for state finances more equitably across income levels but gives the folks on the margins some breathing room.

Governor Kehoe said one reason Amendment 5 was justified was because, “We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.”

No.

We have both. And we’ve had them for a long time. And the thinking of the legislative majority has been for two decades that the state needs to lower its capabilities to raise money for programs and services for the people who put them in power.

Our spending problem will only increase by reducing our revenues. It would be the equivalent of solving a breathing problem through strangulation.  Fortunately, Missourians didn’t buy that irresponsible cure.

Our politics are filled with cliches, two of which are:

Government needs to be operated like a business.

You can’t cut your way to prosperity.

The Managing Editor of the Illinois Business Journal, Alan J. Ortbals observed in 2015:

Many people advocate government living within its means. Government needs to operate like a business, they say. Those who say that, however, apparently don’t know much about business…

Cost cutting alone creates a downward spiral — cuts diminish your product which reduces your sales which lead to more cuts that diminish your product and further reduce sales until you hang the “Going Out of Business” sign in the window.

Good government — like good business — requires stable revenue. Grover Norquist’s “No New Taxes” pledge is a mindless way to operate…Imagine running your business on a “No New Revenues” pledge. 

Ortbals called for a “balanced approach to government funding with a combination of revenue and cuts. You can’t do it all one way.”

He concluded, “Yes, government does need to operate like a business, which means working on both sides of the ledger to build a stable organization that can grow and prosper.”

Here is a question voters need to ask their candidates in November:  How are you going to build a stable state financial plan that encourages the state to grow and prosper?  What is your plan?

Jeremy Corbyn, a member of the House of Commons in England, put it most simply: “You grow your way to prosperity; you don’t cut your way to it.” It’s probably not an original statement because so many others have said it.

Shannon Power, a member of the Forbes Finance Council wrote in 2024, “The harsh reality is that you can’t cost-cut your way to sustainable growth.”

“The key to growth lies…in the strategic allocation of resources to areas that promise a return on investment. This requires a thorough analysis of where the company can generate growth. A go-to-market analysis of which industries are projected to grow in the coming years and/or which customers or potential customers are projected to increase spending next year is a good place to start.”

She was talking about business growth but in this case, running a government like a business has some applicability:

“The temptation to resort to short-term cost-cutting measures during uncertain times is commonplace. However, companies must recognize that sustainable growth requires strategic investments in areas that drive revenue…The key lies not in cutting costs—but in investing wisely for a prosperous future.”

Gut-touching political slogans won’t do the job. Simplistic steps that do not lift both ends of the boat are not steps toward greatness.  Only by broadening our views, and recognizing that growth begats growth can we lift Missouri from being a state ranked in the 30s and 40s to one other states can point to.

Let us hope that someday the kind of leadership emerges that makes us want to be such a state