Inspiration

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We need a break from the heavy and depressing things we have been addressing lately. We need some inspiration.  Unconventional inspiration.

Journalists sometimes seem to have a warped sense of humor. It’s a contrariness that good reporters have to have because we must deal with so much righteousness, often self-righteousness (especially when we deal with politics).  We also have to deal with some things that are so incredibly serious that, as Abraham Lincoln once remarked, “Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die.”

None of us often has a “fearful strain” upon us, although our times present great opportunities for it.  But all of us at some time have broken a dark scenario with a joke.

Think of the last memorial service or celebration of life you attended. The ones I have attended have been more light-hearted than mournful.

Your faithful correspondent has never been impressed by companies that post beautiful pictures on walls or in offices, the pictures accompanied by some drivel that is supposed to be uplifting.  That is why he had a series of counter-uplifting posters at his desk that did a different kind of uplifting.

This one is from a company called Despair Incorporated. Its website informs visitors:

“No industry has inflicted more suffering than the Motivational Industry. Motivational books, speakers and posters have made billions of dollars selling shortcuts to success and tools for unleashing our unlimited potential. At Despair, we know such products only raise hopes to dash them. That’s why our products go straight to the dashing.”

For many years, I secretly harbored but never carried out the ambition to steal into my company headquarters under the cover of darkness and replace motivational posters with Demotivational posters from the folks at Despair—such as this one which goes to the very heart of the issue:

One of the founders of this company is E. L Kirsten, who has a Ph.D., (which might stand for perverse humor director) and once was a professor of organizational communication. He got his degree from Southern Cal,

He has a book:

The book, like the company products, satirizes the motivational poster industry. A promotion for it says:

Motivation. The Futile Quest.

Motivation has become a multi-billion dollar industry, courtesy of the patronage of corporations and the noble intentions of Executives who lead them. At the heart of this colossal confederation of inspirational speakers, platitudinous posters, parable-filled management books, and increasingly complicated incentive programs lies an alluring promise: that with enough encouragement, empowerment, and esteem, employees will become productive and loyal, to the benefit of both their employers and themselves.

Yet, in spite of the staggering expenditures on packaged esteem, polls show that worker morale has reached critical lows, with a majority of employees even claiming to hate their jobs. How is this possible? And more importantly, what can Executives do about this crisis of employee dissatisfaction?

In this revolutionary new management book, Despair, Inc.® founder Dr. E. L. Kersten plumbs the depths of employee discontent to find its root cause. Though most live lackluster lives filled with wasted opportunities and trivial accomplishments, employees grow ever more certain of their enormous worth and glorious destinies. Why is this so? Because most are the products of a narcissistic age, the spiritual casualties of a grand social experiment gone terribly awry.

Ironically, managers attempting to motivate employees by increasing their self-esteem only compound the very problem they seek to solve. Reinforcing employee delusions of grandeur only increases their irrational sense of entitlement to the wealth, stature and privilege that justice dictates be reserved for the truly accomplished and inarguably worthy: namely, Executives.

With The Art of Demotivation former professor and current executive Kersten offers not only a comprehensive analysis of the problem but a prescriptive solution; one grounded not in the fantasies of infinite human potential so often advanced by the motivation industry, but in the grim realities of a broken world. Managers who seek a productive, loyal workforce must first liberate employees from the prison cells of their narcissism by forcing them to confront that which they expend enormous energy to avoid:
their true selves.

There are three editions of the book. One, the Chairman edition, goes for almost $1200—actually at the bargain price of $1,195, a price fully in keeping with the company, uh, philosophy.

We mention all of this NOT to be giving this company a lot of free advertising. We’re just doing it to keep from being hit with a copyright violation.

But we do think these posters perform a valuable service to some places that take themselves far too seriously. These are some of those days when, as a friend of mine once observed, “The people in Washington have it backwards.  They take themselves seriously but not their jobs.” These posters would make great billboards there.

It’s sold out.  Why are we not surprised?

And for those who like the Disney theme song—-the first three notes of which are a big part of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind:”

I love these things.

Let’s wrap this up with a couple of others that I don’t recall seeing among the Despair products. There are other internet sites that have their own offerings. They lack the sophistication of Despair but that doesn’t mean they can’t provoke a smile or a snort or even a laugh.

I think we have arrived there today.

The Pious Silence

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“With gratitude and humility, we pray for President Trump. You assigned him, you appointed him, you anointed him for such a time as this. We ask You to cover him with the blood of Jesus, empowering him to advance an agenda of righteousness and justice, truth and love.

Protect him from all evil as he undergirds our nation with the firewall of our Judeo-Christian value system. Fulfill Your purpose in his life.”

—Prayer given in the oval office, March 23, 2025, by Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, one of several evangelical pastors who laid hands on President Trump, a repeat of a ceremony at the start of his first term. The President appeared to be earnestly participating.

Shortly after, podcaster Todd Starnes attacked those who question Trump’s Christianity and the motives of those who regard him as a national savior: “The ‘Christians’ complaining about Christians praying over President Trump in the Oval Office are not Christians.”

Last year, just before the Iowa caucuses, a television add proclaimed: “And on 14 June 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump,

“God said I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state. So God made Trump,”

When the similar group of Christian Nationalist preachers held a laying-on of hands ceremony in 2017, the Reverend Robert Jeffress, a Texas Southern Baptist preacher, told Trump, “Mr. President, we’re going to be your most loyal friends.”

Among all the voices protesting Medicaid Cuts, using government agencies to punish opponents, indiscriminate roundups of immigrants, the dismantling of government agencies and programs helping the poor with food and medicines, and—most recently—the burning of hundreds of thousands of pounds of food that could have kept thousands of African children alive, where are these preachers?

The silence of these pious ministers is thunderous.

Is THIS a President whose words and actions show he wants “to advance an agenda of righteousness and justice, truth and love?”

Is this President—who has jerked everybody around on the Epstein matter, who has deported people to nations far away from their own, who reportedly is jamming people into Florida cages, and who has cut Medicaid payments—undergirding the nation “with the firewall of our Judeo-Christian value system?”

Is he fulfilling God’s purpose?

Let’s hear it, preachers.  Tell us, God, that what we are seeing and getting—of which we have only scratched the surface in the lists above—fulfilling your purpose?

Tell us, most loyal friends, why you aren’t saying anything about all of this?  Do you believe a loving God is rooting for Trump to do all of the mean, cruel, unfeeling, un-loving things to others?

Can you watch what has happened since you prayed for him and still believe God “assigned him…appointed him (and) anointed him for such a time as this?”

Do you really believe his acts and statements truly represent our Judeo-Christian value system? Was Jesus a lying bully?

Is not Donald Trump exposing the falseness of the proclamations of pious faith leaders such as yourselves?

And what is it you have faith in?

Who’s not a Christian, Mr. Starnes—those who seek to serve others or those who seek power to serve themselves?

A lot of us are praying these days but not for Trump; for our country.

I lost a good friend this week, a gentle man who celebrated sixty years in the ministry just a few weeks ago with what became his last sermon. The Reverend John Bennett dedicated his life to social justice and told an interviewer a few years ago, “My guideposts as I move forward in my life and ministry are Micah, Chapter 6, verse 8.  ‘Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God,’ which is to walk in solidarity with all who hurt.”

And how did he hope others would remember him?

“He was a gentle and passionate man, on fire for social justice, rooted in his deep faith.”

I will take one John Bennett for 500 of those who would lay hands on Donald Trump.

(photo credit–Facebook)

A Follow-up on “They’re Disappearing…”

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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)

Sports:  All-Star Break; MLB Draft; and Speedy stuff

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(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 20th round, the 600th 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 14th round by the Yankees and Sam Horn—once considered a leading candidate as a football quarterback at Mizzou—went in the 16th 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 27th 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 100th 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 50th 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 26th. Power left with mechanical issues and finished 24th.  Newgarden led some laps but could only make it to 10th.

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 34th 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 16th 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)

 

 

6:30 a.m., Longmont, Colorado, July 5, 2025

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It was a beautiful, clear morning in this city of 120,000 just a half hour from Rocky Mountain National Park when I took my morning walk.

Sixty degrees headed for the mid-eighties, the morning after Nancy and I watched our granddaughters celebrate Independence Day with fireworks in the driveway and in the Cul de sac of the subdivision where our son and his family live.

I started the day reflecting on July 4 in Longmont deeply worried about the nation into which those girls will grow up. I was out and about quite a bit on Independence Day in this city where one in four people is Latino, beginning the long walk through his and the adjoining neighborhood, much of it along a shady sidewalk on a street called Mountain View.

Later I did a brief prowl in the business district, checked on a bookstore I like, visited a big strip mall, got a hot dog at Sam’s Club and lunched on a bowl of chili at Wendy’s.

Not once did any of the Latino people I mingled with, did business with, or bought food from offer to sell me any Fentanyl.  I saw no tattoos signifying gang membership. None of them appeared to be former mental patients, killers, rapists or other criminals supposedly released from jails so they could “invade” our country and practice their hobbies on us.

All I saw were ordinary people, and I wondered how they feel in today’s American political climate that indiscriminately lumps them in with the few criminals who cross the border. Could I have been mistaken?  Shouldn’t I realize that people such as them are lesser people in the eyes of the country’s leader who is advocating a form of ethnic cleansing?

I started wondering about those who subscribe to the idea that citizenship is arbitrary and can be taken away at the whim of a leader who acknowledges no limits on his authority, typified by obsessively targeting one man jailed and tortured in a strange land by mistake—his tortures described in contemporary news accounts—who, having finally been returned to this country is targeted again on suspicious charges that only now will involve due process denied him earlier and still denied to many others caught up in a cruel system.

It has become a country where its leader speaks with pride of a detention camp called “Alligator Alcatraz,” where five thousand people of Latin origin can be imprisoned without due process.

He thinks it is funny to say, “We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, OK? If they escape prison, how to run away. Don’t run in a straight line…And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.”

His press secretary amplified the tragic absurdity of the whole idea, saying,  “When you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape.” Neither of them wants to address how they know all of these people are “illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals.”  (Illegal murderers?)

The Republican Party in Florida adds an additional flair to “appalling” by selling Alligator Alcatraz merchandise.  Imagine seeing a baby in an Alligator Alcatraz onesie. The Florida GOP will sell you one. They come in several colors and only cost twenty-five dollars.

Hilarious.

The President has caused some serious whiplash by calling for expulsion of migrant farm workers (without indicating how his zealous ICE agents will differentiate the legal ones from the illegal ones when they swoop down on agriculture facilities) then saying he’ll give them a pass, then his Secretary of Agriculture say there will “no amnesty” for those workers—-

—-and then Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins brushed aside industry concerns that mass deportations would have severe consequences on American farming by making the completely bonkers suggestion that 34-million able-bodied people on Medicaid could replace those migrant workers “quickly” because of the work requirements for Medicaid recipients in the Big Ugly Bill.

He also recently said he’s looking into taking over Washington, D. C. and New York. And his obsession with punishing Harvard University because it has resisted his intimidating demand to shape education in his image further confirms his limited toleration of “freedom.”

The idea that Trump would want to “take a look” at denaturalizing Elon Musk because Musk dared criticize his proposed big policy legislation, or that he would consider denaturalizing the legally-elected Democratic candidate for Mayor of New York on specious, if not spurious, reasons is an indication that this president is even more dangerous to all of us in one way or another.

Today’s children and grandchildren are going to inherit from this generation that which it refuses to reject. It will not be a good legacy that we give them.

I felt pretty good when I started that walk.  By the end of the day, after watching innocent youngsters celebrate the founding of this now deeply-troubled country, I feared for them.

And I remembered that on that morning stroll, that I walked past a young brown girl sitting on a shady curb and talking to a friend, in Spanish, on her cell phone. A block later, I passed a house with a July 4th yard decoration.

God, Guns, and Trump.

A lady saw me take the picture and shouted out her window, “Happy July 4th.”  I wished her the same as I continued the walk.  And I wondered if she would have said the same thing to the brown girl I had seen a block away if she walked past that sign.

Independence Day isn’t as much fun as it should be anymore.

(photo credits:  onesie—markayshop.com; Lake and Mountains—shutterstock; Mountain View and the yard decoration: Bob Priddy.)

Sports: Missouri-Illinois Gridiron Reduction; Blues Notes;

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(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 11th.

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 45th 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 26th place at the end, one spot better than Newgarden. The best that Scott McLaughlin could do was a 23rd.

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 20th 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 11th driver to claim a playoff spot in the field of 16. Atlanta was the 18th 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 16th 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 12th driver in the playoffs. The race also saw a tightening of the points race for the sixteen playoff positions.  Bubba Wallace’s 28th place finish and Ryan Preece’s run the seventh put Preece just two points behind Wallace for the 16th playoff slot.

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

 

 

 

 

They’re Disappearing Our People

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It is rare that we post something on Fridays and even more rare that we do it well into the day.  But over breakfast this morning the morning, I read the number one article in the local newspaper headlined, “Local immigration detainees likely held in Phelps County.”

LIKELY held.

Nobody knows where they are.  Nobody knows who they are.  Nobody knows which of Trump’s “heinous crimes” any of these folks committed before coming here, supposedly, illegally.  And ICE won’t say what the charges are that brought their arrests or whether they had committed any crimes, serious or otherwise, in Holts Summit.

Nobody knows whether others like them in our immediate area might be disappeared by nameless ICE agents in the near future.  Nobody knows if any of these four had families including children who suddenly are lost in their loss. Nobody knows who employed them and what their disappearance means to the employers or the people who benefitted from their work, whatever it was.

They lived in Holts Summit, a community just across the river from Jefferson City.  The newspaper tells us that the Callaway County Sheriff’s staff and officers from the Holts Summit Police Department were included in the arrests carried out by ICE agents in unmarked vehicles.

Phelps County jail officials have told the newspaper that six people with Latino names were booked into their jail yesterday but those officials would not say which of those six were from Holts Summit, if any of them were.

And here is a chilling paragraph from the News-Tribune account:

“The Callaway County Sheriff’s Office would not confirm if the individuals were transported to Phelps County out of concern of repisals from the federal agency.”

The newspaper says it has made “repeated requests” for information about the arrests but there has been only silence.

Supposedly, ICE is seeking out criminals from south of the border who came here illegally, with those who commit crimes on this side of the border getting special attention.

Why were these four singled out?  Trump’s ICE isn’t talking.

It’s just snatching people from our midst and carting them off to who knows where—-maybe Rolla, sixty miles away from possible families, sixty miles away from local legal help, sixty miles away from any communication with employers, friends, pastors or priests—from US.

For those who voted for the creature behind this kind of inhumane treatment of some of our neighbors, I hope you’re celebrating. Maybe you should treat yourself to dinner.

At a Mexican restaurant—

—where you can play a game of guessing if your waiter will disappear before you come back.

Here We Go Again

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We’ve seen this scenario played out before. Republicans cut some taxes and the economy goes into the toilet soon after with the state having reduced its ability to fund programs that people rely on during economic downturns, especially lower-income Missourians.

The national economy isn’t in the toilet (yet, perhaps), but Congress has approved President Trump’s budget that will harm thousands of Missourians.  At the same time, Governor Kehoe is thinking about signing the bill eliminating some taxes that will produce revenues.

He already has vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget approved by the legislature, citing concerns about state finances in the fiscal year that is  newly underway.

We must be missing something. This doesn’t seem to add up to us. On one hand, there is concern that the state can afford the things the legislature approved and on the other hand there’s—

Wait a minute.

Aren’t we on the same hand?

Finger one: Cut the budget because of uncertainty of state finances, much of it caused by federal cuts in some important programs.

Finger two: Cut Missouri taxes to reduce total revenues even more?

One estimate is that the tax cuts reduce program funding by about a half-billion dollars at a time when not-so-beautiful bill in Washington eliminates a lot of federal money coming here.

To be sure, there are some good things in the bill he plans to sign.  A capital gains tax reduction will be welcomed by many who have capital gains but that’s one reason the liberal-leaning Missouri Budget Project isn’t a fan of the bill.   The MBP says five percent of Missouri taxpayers will get eighty percent of the benefits.

But it’s not all for the high-rollers. The Circuit Breaker property tax program will increase the income levels of people eligible for it, a change that will affect almost 200,000 households. The state sales tax is being lifted for diapers and women’s hygiene products. And there are some other things the MBP admits are badly-needed.

The conventional Republican wisdom is that if you reduce taxes, the infusion of those moneys into the general economy will generate more revenues to offset the taxes. We can’t say that we have noticed significant improvements in the economy when the legislature reduces Missourians’ taxes.

We are in sympathy with the stated reasons for lowering these taxes but we wonder if freezes are more protective of the overall well-being of state services than cuts at this time.

For more than fifty years we have listened to all kinds of people complain about the lack of money for schools, health and mental health, prisons, law enforcement, housing, nutrition and a host of other issues.  This scenario is kind of like the old saying, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it” except the talk about taxes also includes doing something about them.

Sometimes though, it is best to heed the phrase-altered advice, “Don’t just do something. Sit there.”

To be honest, we admit having no grasp of the subtlety of economics that one probably needs to understand the rationale for these cuts.  We only took one economics course in college. Everything else we know about the economy is reflected in our utility bills and grocery prices. And in our taxes.

Jim Mathewson, who served in the legislature from Sedalia and was the President Pro Tem of the Senate for eight years, a record that will never be broken in this unfortunate era of term limits, said several times, “People don’t remember that you cut their taxes. But they sure remember when you raise them.”

It’s a nice bill today but the people who remember it are the ones who won’t benefit, especially those hit with the federal cuts.  One thing we’ll watch is to see whether there’s a political fallout in state politics that will be anywhere the fallout being predicted at the national level.

 

American Values

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A Trumpist friend who I think quaffs from the carafe of Trump Kool-Aid more than a reasonable person should nonetheless seems to retain a bit of a sense of humor, which is more than his president has.  A few days ago, he sent me this, knowing that I would be amused. Sometimes truth IS really funny.  Truth Social never is, which is one of the virtues of this observation.

Let’s call this Social Truth.

We don’t know who put this poster together but it could be suitable for framing.

I was amused.  Trump wouldn’t be. Polls, however, indicate a growing number Americans also would agree with this;

Well, There Goes the Nobel Peace Prize 

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Hours after President Trump proclaimed on Truth Social that he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize several times, he guaranteed he will never get it.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee never has and never will give the prize to someone who bombs another country.  Or rounds up thousands of people he stereotypes with his lies and ships them off to prisons in strange places to face indefinite futures.  Or refuses to support a small country that has fought off the aggression by a supposedly overpowering enemy.

Trump claims he deserves it because of his administration’s work in getting a cease fire between Pakistan and India.

He also claims to have brought about a cease fire between Iran and Israel.

Cease fires are not peace treaties. And they have a bad habit of not lasting.  In fact, Israel and Iran have already have accused each other of firing missiles after the cease fire.

Who invited him and his B-2s to the Iran-Israel party anyway?  It’s one thing to work out a cease fire with diplomacy. It’s something else to unilaterally send in the bombers.

Trump’s claim that the attacks obliterated Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons has been disputed by the New York Times, citing a preliminary U.S. damage assessment report saying the bombs only collapsed a few tunnels but not the main underground production rooms. The newspaper says the truth is that production could resume in a matter of months or just weeks. Perhaps Trump was exaggerating which is not uncommon. Regardless, his attacks did not end the nuclear threat from Iran. Instead the attacks seem to have guaranteed that Iran WILL HAVE nuclear weapons if it wants them.

Former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev wasted no time making that point. He posted on social media, “What have the Americans accomplished with their nighttime strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran? The enrichment of nuclear material — and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons — will continue. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.”

While Trump might want the bombings to lead to regime change in Iran, Medvedev says the regime might have survived “even stronger.”

One of the countries with nukes that says it will supply Iran with nuclear warheads, if it wants them, is Pakistan, which called the attacks “deeply disturbing and an “unprecedented escalation of tension and violence, owing to ongoing aggression against Iran.”

China said it “stands ready to work with the international community to pool efforts together and uphold justice, and work for restoring peace and stability in the Middle East.”

That’s the kind of language the United States used to use.  Iran has asked for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to condemn the United States.  That’s the kind of thing the United States used to seek in times such as this.

People win the Nobel Peace Prize for doing good without thinking they deserve honor.

Then there’s Trump, who says he should have received the prize “four or five times.”  However, he complains,  “No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!”

No. That’s not all that matters to him. He wants a prize he cannot buy, cannot bully anyone into giving him, and cannot primary.

The prize for Russia/Ukraine?

The prize for giving his good friend Putin an excuse to ship ready-made atomic weapons to Iran?

Adolph Hitler didn’t win the prize for pacifying Poland and Czechoslovakia and rounding up stereotyped undesirables and shipping them off to uncertain and certainly undesirable futures.  Mussolini didn’t win the prize for bombing and gassing Ethiopia into submission.  Stalin didn’t win the prize for establishing gulags where he sent undesirables by the tens of thousands and creating persecutions and killings behind the Iron Curtain.

At least they didn’t complain about not winning the prize.