We recently condemned, without using the word, the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons who hauled four people out of the nearby town of Holts Summit and took them somewhere for some reason, apparently without warrants and taking special care not to identify themselves, somehow scaring the county sheriff enough that he didn’t want to know anything about what they were doing with these people.

We got some pretty strong positive feedback (thank you) and some negative feedback that basically boiled down to, “But they were criminals when they came across the border to begin with.”

There’s no disagreement that they broke the law by crossing illegally.  But that hardly justifies what Trump’s goons are doing to large swaths of people.  And there are numbers that prove that our president has turned this agency into a bunch of thugs.

An example of that attitude came to light during the weekend, a story about a youth baseball coach who confronted ICE agents armed with guns and tasers who approached some high school kids at a youth baseball camp practice in New York City and started asking them about their nation of origin and other issues. Coach Houman Wilder, who has a master’s degree in law and who has coached the Harlem Baseball Academy for years, stepped in, told his players to go to a nearby batting cage, and told the agents their actions were inappropriate. He told a The West Side Rag, an online news site covering the Upper West Side of Manhattan, “They started to talk about cuffing me, and that if the kids were here legally, what do they have to lose by answering. I told them that they still have their fifth and fourth amendment rights, and that they don’t have to speak to you or help with any investigation.”

He told MSNBC an agent told him, “I don’t care what the law says,” and called him a “YouTube lawyer” before leaving.

Wilder says the ball players are all American-born although their parents are from Africa, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic and many don’t come to practice now because their parents are scared.

You can watch the interview at Bing Videos

Associated Press reporter Melissa Goldin’s recent story reiterated Trump’s pledge to deport “the worst of the worst”—rapists, murderers, and child predators. (As we recall, he referred to them during his campaign as “animals.”)

He promised the largest deportation program in history. He’s determined to be remembered for that. And he will be. We believe he would not like how he will be remembered, but he won’t be around to write inflammatory overnight internet ravings of protest.

He says he wants to protect law-abiding citizens from these terrible people.

The problem is that most of these people ARE law-abiding, other than with the way they came here.

In kind of a strange way, perhaps, we should be complimented that people would be so desperate to seek opportunities and freedoms they don’t have elsewhere that they will break our laws by coming to this country illegally.  Most of us cannot fathom what we have meant to so many people from throughout the world.

The growing question of concern is who is going to protect us from Trump’s protectors.

Reporter Goldin has seen “nonpublic data” collected by one of the world’s leading libertarian think tanks, The Cato Institute, that shows almost two-thirds of the people picked up by ICE in the first eight months of this fiscal year had NO CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS. Of those with convictions, fewer than seven percent did violent crimes.

A little more than half, 53%, had immigration, traffic, or vice crimes.

(One of the founders of the Cato Institute, by the way, was Charles Koch, one of the Koch brothers who have poured hundreds of millions of dollars, at least, into Republican campaigns. Charles Koch remains as Chairman of the Board of Koch Industries. His brother, David, died six years ago. The Kochs have been strong supporters of conservative Republicans but they want nothing to do with Donald Trump.)

In the first five months of the fiscal year, ICE was arresting about 650 people a day. Then, at the end of the May, the power behind the throne—Stephen Miller—demanded 3,000 arrests a day. And the agents appear to be doing their best to do his bidding.

The AP story quotes the Transactional Records Clearinghouse as calculating ICE arrests jumped by thirty percent in May, compared to April, and another 28 percent in June and that that Cato Institute figures for the fourth months from February to May, show that ICE fed 421-454 “non criminals” a day into the system. But in the last two weeks of May and the first half of June, the numbers were 678 for the first two weeks and 927 for the second two weeks.

The AP also reported the Bureau of Economic Review put out a working paper two years ago showing that for the last century and a half, the incarceration rate for immigrants has been lower than for people born in this country and the gap has widened in the last six decades with immigrants SIXTY PERCENT LESS LIKELY to be incarcerated than American-born people.

Trump and his crowd like to dehumanize all immigrants by citing specific killings or rapes done by illegal immigrants, never mentioning how much greater, by far, are incidents of lifelong legal citizens committing those same crimes.

So let’s be clear about our view from this quiet hill:  Demagogues and dictators rise to power and try to stay in power by turning a segment of a nation’s population into dangers to society. They achieve dominance by making us afraid of our neighbors and the strangers we pass on the streets, or those who live in lesser neighborhoods or ethnic communities.

We always have to hate somebody, to fear somebody when the people we most must fear are those who paint others with the broad brush of dehumanization.

Should we turn a blind eye to those who are here illegally?  No.

Should we not care about immigrants who do deal drugs and who do commit terrible personal crimes?  No. We should arrest them and hold them as we would hold regular Americans. But our government does not round up the few who are dangerous. It is rounding up thousands of us in random raids and carting people off to undisclosed locations.

Just as we were posting this entry, a truly unnecessary tragedy was reported that is off-topic but is not surprising for this heartless administration. We must include it because it cries out for the telling of a story that is our conclusion.

The Atlantic reported that today (Wednesday), the Trump administration is going to incinerate 500 tons of USAID food for children living in war and disaster zones. It is part of the destruction of the agency that for years has carried a message of American kindness around the world. The magazine says that’s enough food to feed 1.5 million children a week and that it’s enough to feed every starving child in Gaza. It’s part of the sixty-thousand tons of food originally targeted for Sudan, which is battling a famine.  But The Atlantic reports that food cannot be delivered because the USAID has been gutted and its logistics experts have been fired.

These are not immigrants we are told we must fear and hate. These are children who will die because of one man.

Let’s look back to the 1950s when we were supposed to be fearful that our federal government was filled with Communists.

On a day in early June, seventy-one years ago, Senator Joseph McCarthy in one of his sensational hearings accused young Boston lawyer Frederick G. Fisher of being a member of a group he considered “a legal arm of the Communist Party.” Fisher worked with Joseph Welch’s firm, Hale and Dore. Welch was the lawyer for the Army in those hearings and had recognized that Fisher’s association with a left-leaning student group while in law school could be a problem. So he replaced him during the hearings.

But that didn’t keep McCarthy from attacking him.

McCarthy’s reckless accusation was stunning. For some reason, I was watching those events on our 13-inch Admiral black and white television set that day. I had no understanding of what the hearings was all about but what happened in a few minutes created in me a strong memory as I watched as a seething Joseph Welch, his voice shaking with emotion, barely controlling his composure, look McCarthy in the eye and say:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us.… Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale and Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think I am a gentle man but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”

When McCarthy appeared to pay no attention to Welch’s remarks and began another rambling insinuation, Welch cut him off:

“Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild.… Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency??”

There they are.  Three words for our time.

Reckless.  Cruel.

Children will starve because this administration has eliminated the people who could deliver it and the solution is to burn it.

Joseph Welch’s third word echoes from his  last sentence. It must be repeated and repeated and repeated today.

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Decency is a word I have not heard lately, to our country’s shame. Nor, it seems, is it a word that is in any way familiar to our chief executive. He will shed no tears but all of us should.

(If you want to watch that dramatic moment that many believe turned the Senate against McCarthy, here it is from PBS:  Bing Videos)

(BASEBALL)—We hit the all-star break and take a look at where our teams are and who they have picked to shape their futures.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals  are five games above .500, third in the division, but 4½ games behind the Mariners in the fight for a playoff spot. Nobody on the team is dominating the squad. Sonny Gray and Steven Matz are a combined 14-5. Ryan Helsley has 19 saves in 33 appearances. Offensively, Wilson Contreras and Lars Nootbar each have a dozen home runs. Contreras is hitting .253 but Noot is only hitting .235.  Victor Scott II has 23 stolen bases but would have a whole lot more if he was hitting better than .235.  Jordan Walker is in at only .210.

(ROYALS)— The Kansas City Royals are three games under .500 at 47-50 with one of last year’s star pitchers dealing with a rotator cuff problem.  Cole Ragans is on the IL with a 2-3 record and a 5.18 ERA after having 21 quality starts last year and going 11-9.

An emerging star is rookie Noah Cameron who struck out eight in six and two-thirds innings Sunday to lower his ERA to 2.31. But he’s only 2-3, a record that underline how much the Royals struggle to score. He’s carving a place in the Royals record book, though.  He has tied Steve Busby’s record of five quality starts to begin a career—five. He and LA’s Fernando Valenzuela are the only pitchers in the history of the major leagues to pitch at least six innings and allow one or fewer runs in their first five starts.

Michael Wacha, after a solid year in ’24, is 4-9 despite a presentable 3.94 ERA and All-Star Kris Bubic is only 7-6 despite a 2.48 ERA. Seth Lugo is only 6-5 while giving up only 2.67 earned runs per nine innings.

Power is coming from three guys—Vinnie Pasquantino with 15 homers; Bobby Witt with 14, and Salvador Perez with 13. Rookie Joe Caglianone, brought up in hopes he’d add some offensive lightning, is hitting only .140 although he’s hit some tape-measure home runs.

(FUTURE)—In three or four or five years, we might be hearing some of these names in the starting lineups for our major league teams.

The Cardinals first draft pick was Tennessee’s lefty Liam Doyle who helped his team defend its college championship and led Division 1 in strikeouts for a lot of the season. He’s a fastballer (95-97 mph) who can get it as fast as 99-100. He averaged 15.4 strikeouts per nine innings.

The Cardinals reached down to a high school for their second choice, shortstop Ryan Mitchell from Houston, Texas. There are questions about his hitting style and it’s not clear whether he’s better at short or second.

The Redbirds returned to Tennessee for their third pick, right hander Tanner Franklin, who has a fast ball that can touch 102. He also has a low 90s cutter. Franklin is seen as a reliever.

Jack Gurevitch from the University of San Diego is a first baseman with a lot of raw power but scouts say he needs to improve his discipline at the plate.

One player from Missouri was picked by the Cardinals, catcher Chase Heath from the University of Central Missouri. He was picked in the 20^th round, the 600^th pick.

(ROYALS—The Royals had five picks on the first day, with outfielder Sean Gamble of  IMG Academy as their number one. He’s a Des Moines native, left handed contact hitter. Their second choice was infielder Josh Hammond, also in high school—at Wesleyan Christian Academy in North Carolina. He’s been drafted as a shortstop although he pitched for USA Baseball’s U18 team. His bat is what drew interest—.471, six homers and 29 RBIs in 19 game.s

The second round pick was Tulane relief pitcher Michael Lombardi who had 73 Ks in 42 innings.

Although Texas A&M lefty Justin Lamkin was 5-7 this year in 15 starts, the Royals liked his control and his three-pitch repertoire. He had 98 strikeouts and just 19 walks in 84.1 innings.

The last draftee for KC is righty Cameron Millar, a high schooler from Martinez, California. He’s 6-2, fastball-changeup guy.  He has signed to play college ball at Arizona.

(MIZ—DRAFT)—Two Missouri Tigers were taken in late rounds of the baseball draft. Infielder Jason Lovich was picked in the 14^th round by the Yankees and Sam Horn—once considered a leading candidate as a football quarterback at Mizzou—went in the 16^th round to the Dodgers. Horn is a redshirt sophomore at MU.

Lovich, in three years at Mizzou, hit .311 in 108 games and ranked sixth in the SEC with a .357 average this year.

Horn, who came to Missouri as a two-sport athlete, only played five games for the Tigers this year after missing all of 2024 after Tommy John surgery. This year he struck out 14 batters in 10.2 innings.

If he stays at Mizzou, he will be one of four competitors for quarterback. Drew Pyne, who filled in for a couple of games last year, is back. Beau Pribula has been brought in at a good price to be the leading contender. Freshman Matt Zellers also is listed in the depth chart.

Moving along—very fast

(INDYCAR)—Pato O’Ward and Alex Palou picked up wins at the Iowa Speedway last weekend and Penske Racing saw a weekend of promise turn to ashes.

In Saturday’s race, Penske’s Josef Newgarden started from pole and led the first 232 of the race’s 275 laps only to see O’Ward seize the lead because of a pit stop bobble by Newgarden’s crew and hold on for the win.

But the race was the best of the year for the Penske team as its driver finished 2-3-4.Will Power joined Newgarden on the podium and Scott McLaughlin, who started 27^th after wrecking in qualifying, worked his way to fourth.  Points leader Alex Palou came home fifth.

O’Ward, who has three second place finishes this year,  became the sixth driver in Indycar history to win in his 100^th career race. The last driver to do that in the series was Patrick Carpenter in 2002. The first four are Indycar Legends—Rodger Ward, A. J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, and Bobby Unser.  O’Ward also won his 50^th start.

His win is the first for a Chevrolet-powered car this year.

Things fell apart early for Penske cars on Sunday.  McLaughlin was knocked out on the fifth lap in a tangle with Devlin  DeFrancesco and finished 26^th. Power left with mechanical issues and finished 24^th.  Newgarden led some laps but could only make it to 10^th.

The Sunday race produced a seventh winner’s trophy for the year for Alex Palou, who saw his points lead build.  Palou had a dominant day, running in front for 192 laps and finished just ahead of Scott Dixon. Marcus Armstrong tied his best career finish by crossing the line third.

Saturday’s winner, Pato O’Ward, could only muster a fifth-place finish.

Palou has a 129-point lead on O’Ward as the Indycar season heads into the last third of its schedule.  Kyle Kirkwood, who has three wins this year, and went into the weekend in second place, had disappointing results and dropped to fourth in the points behind Dixon.

The series moves to the streets of Toronto next weekend.

(NASCAR)—-Another road course. Another dominating win for Shane von Gisbergen. His win at Sonoma is his third of the year and puts him as the number four seed for the playoffs. Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, and Christopher Bell won their third races earlier.

Van Ginsbergen started from the pole and established solid leads throughout in a record-setting or tying performance, leading a record 97 of the 110 laps around the 1.99-mile course and finishing more than 1.1 seconds ahead of Chase Briscoe.

It is his third straight win from the pole on a road course, equaling Jeff Gordon’s string stretching over the 1998 and 1999 seasons. The win in his 34^th start is the fourth of his Cup career, the fastest a driver has won four to start his career since Parnelli Jones did it in  1967 in start number 31. He broke Jeff Gordon’s record of 92 laps led set in 2004.

Nobody else led more than four laps.

Only six races are left before the 16-driver playoffs. Competition for the 16^th spot is fierce after twenty races. A. J. Allmendinger has it but five drivers are within twenty points, three within ten.

Next up for NASCAR is the short track at Dover.

(photo credits: O’Ward and Palou—Bob Priddy; von Ginsbergen—NASCAR (Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)

(It is always interesting when one has been away for a while, even for a week or so, that things haven’t changed—they’ve only occurred—during the absence. We’ll try to catch up on sports today).

(BASEBALL)—This is the last week before the All-Star game Monday night in Atlanta. Brendan Donovan of the Cardinals will be a National League reserve. Bobby Witt Jr., will be a reserve shortstop for the American League. Kris Bubic has made the AL pitching roster.

Neither team has a player in the home run derby.

The Royals are going to take a look at 2015 Cy Young Award winner Dallas Keuchel, now 37, and under a minor league contract. He was cut by the Brewers a year ago and hasn’t thrown a major league pitch since. He finished last year in Japan with the Chiba Lotte Pirates where he pitched 40 innings and had a 3.60 ERA.

Since his big year with the Astros, Keuchel has bounced around with the Braves, White Sox, Diamondbacks, Rangers, and the Twins. He’s 103-92 in his career with a 4.04 ERA. He’ll begin his attempted return in Omaha and could make two-million dollars if he climbs back to the major league roster.

The Cardinals roster is standing pat for now but there’s all kinds of speculation about what will happen between now and the trade deadline.  Noland Arenado says his shoulder is feeling better and he hopes he can come off the IL this week. He’s still the talk of the speculators when it comes to being trade bait.

The Royals continue to muddle along with a sub-.500 record. The Cardinals continue to be the surprise team of the year despite some embarrassing performances in the last week or so—three straight shutouts at the hands of the Pirates, and Miles Mikolas’s tendency to throw home run balls (21 so far), becoming the first Cardinals pitcher to give up six in a single game (among the ten hits and eight earned runs the Cubs got in the first six  innings of their blowout of the ‘Birds., six of the homers came in the first three innings, a Chicago record, off Mikolas).  MLB.com’s John Denton calculated the home runs totaled 2,441 feet, almost a half-mile.

(RIVALRY)—-Missouri and Illinois in this case, and in football.  The Tigers and the Fighting Illini had agreed to an eight-game series stretched though ten years.  But Illinois AD Josh Whitman has announced that series has been cut to six games.

The games will be played in Columbia and in Champaign-Urbana, not on a neutral St. Louis field. The first one will be in 2027, seventeen years after the most recent of their 24 games. Missouri has won seventeen of them including the 2010 game,  23-13. Missouri has won the last six games against Illinois.

(UF/NFL)—-Another former Missouri Tiger has performed well enough in the recently-concluded United Football League season to be given a shot at playing in the NFL. In this case its Yasir Durant, a former tackle for the Tigers, who has signed with the New England Patriots.

He was a starting offensive lineman for the DC Defenders, the UFL champions.

He’s joining Marcus Bryant, who was picked by the Patriots in the seventh rough of this year’s draft. Bryant played his final year at MU.  Both will try to make the team at left tackle.

Durant played 34 games for the Tigers from 2017-2019 and has been in and out of the NFL several times since. He made the Kansas City Chiefs roster in 2020 as an undrafted free agent and played in eleven games, mostly on special teams. He was traded to the Patriots and played seven games for them in ’21 before he was waived. He also made the rosters of the Broncos and the Saints but only saw action in two of their games.

Durant has made brief stops at the Denver Broncos and New Orleans Saints since then, but only played two NFL snaps between those two teams. In the UFL, he played every offensive line position except center for the Defenders. The center was another ex-Tiger, Michael Maietti.

Durant is the second former Tiger who played in the UFL this year to get an invite to move up. Place kicker Harrison Mevis, who played for the Birmingham Stallions this year, has been signed by the New York Jets.

(BLUES)–The St. Louis Blues will look similar, but not the same, next season as they did in the one just finished.  They’ll be sporting new duds, easily recognizable but more modern, or as Marketing Officer Steve Chapman put it, “We want to honor everything that has taken place to get us to where we are today. But we want to focus on what we’re doing next.”

The new blue home jersey looks something like the jersey worn for the 2017 Winter Classic that was held at Busch Stadium.

The white jersey for road games is reminiscent of the jersey worn for the 2022 Winter Classic in Minnesota.

The change in four years in the making. It started in 2021 when the Blues hired Mississippi-based Rare Design to come up with the new schemes:

You’ll have to wait until September.  You could have bought one a lot sooner but the National Hockey League was busy ending its contract with Adidas and signing on with Fanatics.

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(PORTER)—Michael Porter Jr., who was never healthy enough to recognize his potential at Mizzou, has been traded from the Denver Nuggets to the Brooklyn Nets. Denver gets Cam Johnson and a gives up a first-round draft pick in 2032. Denver also frees up some salary space because Porter’s $179.3 million contract signed in 2021 pays him $79 million in the next two seasons while Johnson will get only $44 million.

Porter was highly-regarded in Denver as one of the key players in the Nuggets’ NBA title year in 2023. This year he averaged 18.2 points, seven rebounds and two assists per game. He was a 50% shooter from the field, almost 40% from three.

(BOOKER)—Another big NBA contract involves  Devin Booker, who did not play for Missouri but his father, Melvin, did in the Norm Stewart Era.  The Phoenix Sun have decided to built the team around him and will pay dearly for it. Reports say Melvin’s kid has agreed to a two-year, $150 million contract extension that will keep him with the team until he’s 33. In the next five years, he’ll make $321 million.

Booker averaged 25.6 ppg, seven assists and four rebounds a game last season.  He’s a four-time all-star and holds the team’s scoring record.

Dad Melvin played pro basketball for fifteen years but only a couple of years in the NBA, 32 games with the Houston Rockets, Denver Nuggets and the Golden State Warriors on callups from the development league before going abroad with teams in Asia and Europe.

Catching up to the speedsters:

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou beat the heat at Road America to race into the Indycar history books, taking his sixth win in the first nine races of the year, equaling A. J. Foyt’s start of the 1975 season.

Palou took the lead when Scott Dixon had to pit for a splash-and-go with three laps left and finished ahead of Felix Rosenqvist and Santino Ferrucci, who continues to elevate A. J. Foyt’s team in the series. David Malukis, who spun into the gravel on the first lap, rallied back to finish seventh in the other Foyt Car.  Dixon dropped to ninth because of his late fuel stop.

Louis Foster, had had his first pole start of his Indycar career, wound up 11^th.

The air temperature of 96 degrees and a track temperature of 131 degrees challenged the field and left some drivers getting water bottles thrown over the fence to them at the end of the race.

o-o

At Mid-Ohio last weekend, Dixon proved once again he’s a master at stretching a gallon, held off Palou by about four-tenths of a second to pick up his first win of the year, extending his streak to 21 years with at least one win.

Dixon had help from Palou, who appeared to be on the way to his seventh win when he made a mistake with just over five laps to go that let Dixon slip past.  The win is number 59 for Dixon, who now trails  only A. J. Foyt, who had 67 Indycar wins.

Especially significant, however, is that he has won a race in 23 seasons and is still a contender as he nears his 45^th birthday for a seventh series title, which would tie Foyt’s record.

The win is the tenth of the year for Honda. The only other engine manufacturer in Indycar, Chevrolet, has yet to put a car in victory lane. However, it does provide the Corvette pace cars, who it runs ahead of the field for a while.

The race was another major disappointment for the sport’s leading team—Penske Racing. Josef  Newgarden’s rear wheels locked up just after the start that caused a spin that also took out Graham Rahal. Will Power’s car caught fire on pit road early in the race, putting him in 26^th place at the end, one spot better than Newgarden. The best that Scott McLaughlin could do was a 23^rd.

The team known for its dominance of the sport has started P1 in only two of the ten races, has only eight top five finishes combined, and a dozen top tens. The three Penske cars have led only 133 laps this  year (only one by Power and 27 by Newgarden).

Missourians wanting to catch an Indycar race have another good opportunity next weekend when Palou, et al, run at Iowa.

(NASCAR)—Georgia native Chase Elliott’s 44-race non-winning streak ended at Atlanta with a last lap pass of Brad Keselowski.  It’s his 20^th career win in a race red-flagged for fifteen minutes because of rain in the first stage and stopped again for nine minutes after a crash that involved more than half of the cars.

The win locks Elliott into the ten-race run for the NASCAR Cup and moves him to fifth in the points standings. He’s the 11^th driver to claim a playoff spot in the field of 16. Atlanta was the 18^th race of the year. The playoff field will be set after 26 races.  Non-winners filling out the field will be determined by points. Bubba Wallace has the 16^th spot after Atlanta, but he has a little cushion over Ryan Preece, who is 23 points behind him. Others hoping they can rally to get in are Erik Jones (49 points back), A. J. Almendinger (minus 59), and Carson Hocevar, 62 points out.

Chicago belonged the SVG—Shane van Gisbergen, the Australian race driver who made his NASCAR Cup debut two years ago by winning a race on the streets of downtown  Chicago in a drenching rain picked up his second win in the last three races by running off at the end of this year’s event, also run under increasingly threatening skies.  In fact, he swept both the Cup race but the Xfinity race the day before. He started on the pole in both.  He had a two second lead on the last lap when the caution came out and froze the field because a broken brake rotor sent Cody Ware’s car head-on into the tire barrier at more than 90 mph.

Ware radioed his crew that he “needs help,” but it took more than 30 seconds for NASCAR to thrown the yellow flag and for a rescue crew to get to his car.   He was able to climb out and was released from the track medical center after a checkup.

NASCAR says there was no television camera that captured the severe impact of the crash, which led to the delay in showing the caution flag.

Van Gisbergen’s win makes him the 12^th driver in the playoffs. The race also saw a tightening of the points race for the sixteen playoff positions.  Bubba Wallace’s 28^th place finish and Ryan Preece’s run the seventh put Preece just two points behind Wallace for the 16^th playoff slot.

(Photo credits:  Blues jerseys–Steve Roberts-Imagn Images; Dixon—Bob Priddy; Penske Logo—team Penske; All Star Game logo—sportslogos.net)

(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals have opened the week with four two-run homers by four different players to beat the Cubs and pull to within a half-game of first. Place.  The 8-2 win is the Redbirds’ sixth in their last seven games.  Matthew Liberatore pitched seven strong innings and had plenty of over-the-wall support from  Alex Burlison, Brendan Donovan, Lars Nootbar, and Nolan Gorman.

Reliever Andre Granillo, just called up from Memphis, got his first strikeout, his first save, and his first win in a Chicago doubleheader.  He picked up his first major league win by throwing four pitches in the first game of a doubleheader as the Cardinals got a run in their next at-bat.

(ROYALS)—The Royals dropped to 38-40 with a loss Sunday to the Padres.  They next face Tampa Bay, a team that is 43-35.

Rookie Jac is still adjusting to major league pitching but he has ripped two considerable home runs and has made a sparking grab over the wall to keep a home run from being a home run.

Although he’s only hitting .203, there’s another statistic that is important for Royals fans to recognize.  He had yet to record his first strikeout.

Last week, Salvador Perez continued his outstanding June with his 282^nd career home run. His season batting average is .235 but he’s catching up to respectable levels, hitting .280 in the first nineteen games in June. He already has 41 RBI.

(MIZFB)—The recruiting never stops in college football and Missouri is up to five pledges for the class of 2026. The latest signee is Chicago three-star running back Maxwell Warner, the 26^th best player and number one running back in Illinois.

(MIZZBB)—Missouri’s basketball team is looking at a pretty tough schedule for the 2025-26 season. Nineteen of their 31 scheduled games will be against schools that made the NCAA tournament last year. Ten of their opponents were in the big tournament earlier this year.

The first game is November 3 against Howard University.

Now for the horsepower set:

(Indycar)—The Indycar prime time Sunday night race at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis a few days ago was such a hit with television viewers that more oval races might be scheduled in the future.  The primetime broadcast of this year’s race, won by Kyle Kirkwood, drew 96 percent more viewers than watched the race in 2024 and for the first time in nine years, more than one-million viewer tuned in to the first two races after the Indianapolis 500.

Penske vice-president Bud Denker says the audience numbers for younger viewers was encouraging. He told RACER magazine. “The other thing that was so terrific was the 18- to 34-year-old trend we’re seeing, We’re up 56 percent now for the season in the 18- to 34-year-old category. So that’s mega for us with new viewership.”

Alex Palou won his sixth race of the year at Road America last weekend, leaving the series with only two winning driver through the first nine races.  Three-time winner Kyle Kirkwood finished fourth. Felix Rosenqvist and Santino Ferrucci joined Palou on the podium.

The last time and Indycar driver won six of the first nine races of the year was 1975 when A. J. Foyt did it.

Rosenqvist finished two seconds back but nobody had anything to challenge Palou after him. Ferrucci was 17 seconds behind.

Rosenqvist had the fastest lap of the race.  You can ride along with him at:

Felix Rosenqvist Sets Fastest Lap at XPEL Grand Prix

Indycar moves on to the road course at Mid-Ohio in two weeks.

(NASCAR)—Chase Briscoe withstood the intense pressure of teammate Denny Hamlin and last years series champion, Ryan Blaney for the last 34 laps of the NASCAR race at  Pocono. All three drivers with trying to stretch their fuel to the end.

Briscoe won his first race for his new team—Joe Gibbs Racing—by about seven-tenths of a second over Denny Hamlin. Blaney held on for third.

He beat the master of the Pocono Raceway; Hamlin has a record seven wins on that track and his finished first or second ten times. His win makes him the 11^th driver to qualify for the 16-driver competition in the season’s last ten races that will decide the NASCAR Cup champion.

(Photo credit: World Wide Technology Raceway; Bob Priddy—Palou at WWTR)

Today, we offer a graduation speech that contrasts the President’s remarks at West Point that we published last week. It is the speech to Wake Forest University graduates by Scott Pelley, the former anchor of the CBS Evening News and lead correspondent for Sixty Minutes.  Without mentioning the speaker at West Point, Pelley did address the challenges he has created to American ideals and principles. Pelley did not intentionally pause, expecting applause. His speech was a little short of 22 minutes.

He was introduced by Susan Rae Wente, the President of Wake Forest.

“Mr. Pelley is a gifted storyteller who can humanize any event, and some of his most riveting narratives are about everyday people. According to Mr. Pelley, the people are the story. In his 2019 book, Truth Worth Telling, he profiles famous and not-so-famous individuals who discover meaning in their lives when they experience a historical event. Mr. Pelley shares his own pivotal moment when he reported from the World Trade Center on 9/11 as the North Tower collapsed. Truth Worth Telling is an insightful memoir that explores the impact of values and courage, reminding us of the importance of free speech and free press in a democratic society, for modeling pro-humanitate values in his intentional efforts to humanize historic events, for inspiring future generations of journalists to adopt an uncompromising approach to broadcast journalism, and for tirelessly defending democracy’s need for free press and free speech in challenging times, Mr. Scott Cameron Pelley is recommended for the degree of doctor of humane letters.”

SCOTT PELLEY: You know, if we were in London, walking past Portland Place on a beautiful spring day. We would encounter the headquarters of the British Broadcasting Corporation, nearly 100-year-old building from which Edward R. Murrow, the original CBS News correspondent stood on the roof and broadcast back to America, the falling bombs of fascism that fell on that free city month after month. And if we walk a little bit further past the BBC, we will encounter another hero in the fight against fascism, George Orwell. He’ll be standing right there, frozen in bronze with his words carved in the side of the building. “If liberty means anything at all, it means telling someone something that they don’t want to hear.” I fear there may be some people in the audience who don’t want to hear what I have to say today. But I appreciate your forbearance in this small act of liberty. I’m a reporter, so I won’t bury the lead.

Your country needs you. The country that has given you so much is calling you, the class of 2025, your country needs you and it needs you today. As a reporter, I’ve learned to respect opinions. Reasonable people differ about the life of our country and America works well. When we listen to those that we disagree with where we listen to those and we disagree with and have common ground and compromise and one thing we can all agree on — one thing at least — America is at her best when everyone is included to move forward. We debate, not demonize.

I like this crowd. To move forward, we debate, not demonize. We discuss, not destroy. But in this moment, This moment, this morning, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack, universities are under attack, freedom of speech is under attack. An insidious fear is reaching through our school, our businesses, our homes and into our private thoughts. The fear to speak in America. If our government, in Lincoln’s phrase, of the people. By the people, for the people, then why are we afraid to speak? The Wake Forest class of 1861 — they did not choose their time of calling. The class of 1941 did not choose. The class of 1968 did not choose. History chose them. And now, history is calling you, the class of 2025. You may not feel prepared, but you are. You are not descended of fearful people. You brought your values to school with you and now wait for us has trained you to seek the truth to find the meaning of life.

Let me tell you about three people, briefly, who I’ve met recently who discovered the meaning of their lives in a moment of crisis, not unlike what we have today. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, spent his entire career as an entertainer on television. His first elected office was president of Ukraine, and three years ago, the Russian army came at him from three directions. He had a decision to make. So, he reached for the most lethal weapon in the Ukrainian arsenal: his cell phone. And he walked out in front of the presidential offices in Kyiv and made a video selfie. And told his people, I’m still here. Your army is still here and we are going to fight, galvanized 44 million people instantly. And today, three years later. He is all that stands between a murderous dictator in Russia and the rest of free Europe. I asked — [APPLAUSE] I asked Zelenskyy: Where did that come from? And he said, Well, You look in the mirror. And you ask who are you? Nadia Murad, a young woman that we at 60 Minutes found in a refugee camp in Iraq. Her family had been murdered by ISIS. And she had been sold for money into slavery. We convinced her to tell her story on 60 Minutes, which she did, and she found her voice and after that interview, she began to write, and then she began to speak about the crimes that women suffer in war and, a few years later, this young woman that we found in a refugee camp, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Who are you?

Finally, Dr. Sam Attar, he’s an orthopedic surgeon in Chicago. professor of surgery at Northwestern, who volunteers to do surgery in war zones in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Syria to try to save the lives of innocent people wounded by war, using whatever meager supplies that he has at hand. I asked him: Where does this come from? And Sam Matar told me, it’s not much. But it beats barry — but it beats burying your head in fear and ignorance. Who are you? What is the meaning of life?

Today — today, great universities are threatened with ruin. So what did President Wente and Provost Gillespie do? They spoke out. They joined other institutions signing The Call for Constructive Engagement: A Declaration of the Relationship Between Government and Higher Education. It reads in part: “Institutions of higher education share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear — without fear of retribution, censorship or deportation.” Who are you? What does this make Wake Forest in this moment? Well, I think we know. Did you hear that phrase in the declaration? Pursuit of the truth. Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power. First, make the truth seekers live in fear. Sue the journalists and their companies for nothing. Then send masked agents to abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana, charged with nothing. Then move to destroy the law firms that stand up for the rights of others. With that done, power can rewrite history with grotesque, false narratives. They can make criminals heroes and heroes, criminals. Power can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. Diversity is now described as illegal. Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion — it is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends. There’s nothing new in this. George Orwell, who we met on the street in London 1949, he warned us about what he called news speak. He understood that ignorance works for power, but then it is ignorance, isn’t it? That you have repudiated every single day here at Wake Forest University. Who are you?

I think we know. Can just speaking the truth actually work? Well, consider this day. May 19, this day, May 19, 1963. And Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from a Birmingham jail was published for the first time. In that letter, Dr. King says that the first thing that has to be done in the pursuit of justice is collecting the facts. Power was telling him in a jail cell. Do not speak the truth because power will crush you, but consider just months before that letter was published, Wake Forest University became the first major private institution of higher education in the South to integrate. 1962. The year after King’s letter, 1964, the Civil Rights Act is passed. The year after that, 1965, the Voting Rights Act is passed. Now, today, both of those are under attack. But can the truth win? My friends, nothing else does. It may be a long road, but the truth is coming. Did you hear the other phrase in the declaration that was signed. By President Wente and Provost Gillespie? Without fear. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s an affirmation that you know who you are. You know what you stand for and you know that, in the end — in the long end, the Constitution. will defend you even in the face of fearsome times. In the words of one of your former Wake Forest professors: “You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust. I’ll rise. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear. I rise, bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave I rise, I rise, I rise.” The poet Maya Angelou taught at Wake Forest. She saw the fear that power sought to impose and yet, in her famous phrase, she still knew why the caged bird sings.

Oh, this university, old and wise, has seen worse. It is overcome existential threats before to our country. You are not alone. A legion has gone before you, but now, it is the class of 2025 that is called in another extraordinary time. Will you permit me a word of advice? I think this is how I created at least one astronomer.

Do not settle. You only get one pass at this. This world is going to tell you no, 1000 times, but listen to the song in your heart. If they can’t hear it, that’s on them, not on you. In the 1980s I was rejected by CBS News over and over and over again, over years. They told me at one point, please stop applying. They did and at the time, I thought, what’s wrong with these people? They couldn’t hear the song in my heart. Eh, maybe they were smarter. Every time I was rejected, I got better. Maybe that was the plan. But I finally made them hear the music in my heart. You only lose if you quit. Do not settle. What is the meaning of life? Who are you? You are the educated. You are the compassionate. You are the fierce defenders of democracy, the seekers of truth, the vanguard against ignorance. You are millions strong across our land. I might be sorry that you were picked by history for this role, but maybe that was the plan. Hard times are going to make you better and going to make you stronger. In a few minutes, when that diploma hits your hand, it’s not a piece of paper we’re giving you, we’re handing you the baton. Run with it.

Why am I here? I’m here today because I’m 50 years farther down the trail than you are and I have doubled back this morning to tell you the one thing that I have learned from Volodymyr Zelinsky, Nadia Murad, Sam Attar, and 1,000 others: In a moment like this, when our country is in peril, don’t ask the meaning of life. Life is asking, “What’s the meaning of you?” With great admiration for your achievement, with confidence that you will rise to this occasion. I thank you very humbly for the honor of being with you. Thank you very much.

—-The MAGA folks attacked Pelley’s remarks, of course.

We have published these two speeches to record examples of the divisions of our times.  We don’t believe they could be more clear.

A nice guy from the telephone company was still at work well past 5 o’clock yesterday plugging in our land line.

We’d call the phone company and say, “thanks.

But we don’t have its number.

But we now have a number to the Public Service Commission, thanks to a loyal reader.

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Unless he can make a buck off of it.

It couldn’t be seen on the television screen as we were watching the swearing-in of President Trump Monday, but First Lady Melania Trum was holding two Bibles, as she did in 2017.  This time, however, he didn’t put his hand on them, as he did in 2017.

One was Abraham Lincoln’s Bible used in 1861.  The other had been given to him by his mother when he was a child.  He raised his right hand but his left hand stayed by his side.

We briefly wondered at the time if he was using one of his personal “God Bless the USA” Bibles that he was hawking as the only Bible endorsed by Donald J. Trump and singer Lee Greenwood whose song was frequently heard at campaign rallies. His  special Bible originally was published at the order of English King James VI in 1611—long before there was a Constitution, a Declaration, and a Pledge—and has been replaced in many denominations worship services by modern translations and interpretations, although it remains popular among many evangelicals—and evangelicals are his people.

But he didn’t even use that one.

Before anybody gets TOO critical of this situation, here are some things to remember:

It doesn’t mean that his oath of office is invalid.  A Bible is not required for swearings-in at any level. Article Six of the Constitution might be taken by some as an argument against using a Bible to swear an oath: “All executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

But it is interesting that a man who a year ago was thumping the tub for his Bible by saying in a promotional video, “”Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country, and I truly believe that we need to bring them back and we have to bring them back fast” did not touch either of the ones Melania was holding for him to use.

“It’s my favorite book. It’s a lot of people’s favorite book,” he said in his sales pitch.

Trump was raised a Presbyterian but claims today to be “non-denominational,” a convenient position to make sure he doesn’t offend any of the faithful.

Other than going to funerals, there’s no record that identifies the President as being any kind of a church-goer (maybe being non-denominational means you don’t have to go to any church) although he did attend a pre-inauguration service at the St. John’s Episcopal Church, which is close enough to the White House that numerous Presidents have attended worship services there and was a convenient place, you might remember, for him to stand in front of the parish house holding a non-Official Trump Bible for a 2020 photo opportunity, signifying—

—we don’t know what he was signifying, actually. He did not appear to be happy about being there in the photos we’ve seen of the occasion.

Later accounts said daughter Ivanka came up with the idea  that he walk to the church, go inside, and say a prayer. Hope Hicks, the presidential counselor, suggested he read some scripture or visit with church leaders. But Trump reportedly said all he wanted to do was hold up a Bible for photographs.  He spent all of six minutes on the scene.

Numerous church leaders of several denominations, including officials at St. Johns wasted no time accused him of using the church as a “political prop.”

It is interesting that this man who has claimed in his commercials that the  Bible is his favorite book did not have one he could carry with him to the church.  Ivanka pulled one form her purse, and she gave it to him on the walk to the scene. When a reporter asked, “Is that your Bible,” Trump responded, “It’s a Bible.”

The Bible he used that day is not the official Trump Bible, the KJV as it’s called by many.  It was the RSV, the Revised Standard Version.  He did not even know that the Bible he so proudly displayed that day is not the one endorsed by  man evangelical Christians who make up a big part of his political support.

There were several reports that he held it upside down.  Later investigations refuted that.

In June 2020, Emily Singer of the American Independent Foundation tracked Trump’s church-going since he took office in 2017. “Trump’s stunt at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., marked the 14th time that he’s attended a church since he took office in January 2017,” she wrote.

One visit was the pre-inaugural service in 2017.

He attended Easter and Christmas services at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church in Palm Beach while he was at Mar-a-Lago resort five times. Once he attended a Christmas service at Baptist-affiliated church in West Palm Beach after a Christian magazine wrote an op-ed criticizing Trump’s “grossly immoral character.”

Other church visits chronicled by Singer:

Sept. 2, 2017: During a visit to Texas to survey the destruction from Hurricane Harvey, Trump went to First Church of Pearland. He didn’t attend services there, but rather gave remarks to volunteers who were giving out supplies to those impacted by the storm.

Dec. 5, 2018: Trump attended the funeral service of former President George H.W. Bush at the Washington National Cathedral, along with his five living predecessors. But Trump caused a stir when he did not say the Apostle’s Creed, which according to the Washington Post is “one of the prayers most core to Christianity.”

Dec. 24, 2018: Trump attended Christmas Eve services at the Washington National Cathedral because he couldn’t travel to Mar-a-Lago thanks to the government shutdown.

March 17, 2019: After a monthslong church-going drought, Trump attended Lenten Services at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square. Prior to his church attendance, Trump was airing his grievances on Twitter, including frustration about his portrayal on “Saturday Night Live.”

June 2, 2019: After playing a round at his golf property in Virginia, Trump went to a conservative evangelical church for 11 minutes so the church’s pastor could pray over him. Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, had designated the day as a “Special Day of Prayer” for Trump.

Jan. 3, 2010: Trump held a campaign rally at an evangelical megachurch in Miami, Florida, in his effort to court the evangelical vote. The event raised questions about the church’s tax-exempt status.

June 2, 2020: Trump visited the Saint John Paul II National Shrine ahead of an executive order signing on “religious freedom” but was condemned by the Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory for using the shrine as a political prop. Gregory called Trump’s visit “baffling and reprehensible” and that Trump “egregiously misused and manipulated” the shrine.

Now, look folks, a lot of people are Easter and Christmas Christians. So his church behavior is not unusual.  But we don’t know of any of the other people going around selling self-promoting Bibles, and none other than the President who has proclaimed that God saved him from an assassin’s bullet so he could be re-elected President of the United States.

“God Bless the USA,” he and his promotional Bible say.

Millions of Americans have a different sentiment.

“God help us.”

(Photo Credit: Church: Official White House Photo; inauguraiton: Morrie Gash/AFP via Getty Images)

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