The Most Underrated Part of Speech

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” All my life, I have said (as to myself, and at times, by way of sarcastic prescription for others) that I never . . . talk . . . any . . . faster . . . than . . . my . . . mind . . . can . . . think.”

—Judge Michael Luttig. June 16, 2022 before the January 6th Committee.

Nancy and I had the same reaction as we listened to Judge Luttig’s testimony.  We both recalled a routine by the comedy duo of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, Bob & Ray, in which Ray interviewed the President of the Slow Talkers of America.

Sometimes we talk too rapidly.  We are so accustomed to talking rapidly, even before we have understood a question or a discussion point, ignoring the admonition from the Gospel of James: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires”

The most underrated part of speech is the pause.

—-because pauses give listeners the chance to process what we say.

As we watched, it became apparent to us that Judge Luttig realized the gravity of his appearance before the committee, and wanted to so carefully respond to questions that there could be no lack of clarity in his responses or misunderstandings of what he said. His pauses made us listen more closely.

We were drawn into his answers not only by the pauses but by the exactness of his words.  And it was because his pauses caused us to listen so carefully that one line had an impact (at least to this listener) greater than all of the others. It came as the committee was discussing the erroneous advice given President Trump that history and law establish a precedent for the Vice-President to overturn a presidential election.  Judge Luttig, after refuting that claim, told the committee: “I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the Vice President overturn the 2020 election on the basis of that historical precedent.”

He didn’t say that as the written transcript preserves it. Without raising his voice, the pacing of his statement carried an unmistakable power and a passion as he carefully formed his thoughts, pausing as he did so, knowing that his words became history a soon as he spoke them.*

Near the end, his carefully-delivered words carried a warning:

Today, almost two years after that fateful day in January 2021, that still Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.

In the days since his testimony an unusual thing has happened.  The judge has explained why he spoke as he did.  Several organizations have reported his explanation.  It began with praise from a writer for Vanity Fair, Joe Hagan, who wrote on Twitter:

“I like how this guy treats every line of his testimony like he’s engraving it on a national monument. And frankly, he really *is* engraving it for history. And he seems to know it. I also respect, despite how halting he may sound, that Luttig is not setting himself up to be a mere soundbite maker. He’s speaking to history, not TV. His sobriety, his graveness, his hallowedness, is so foreign to our modern sensibilities — but that’s the point. That is the precise point.”

Judge Luttig saw what Hagan had written and responded that Hagan “almost presciently understood precisely what I was at least attempting to do…”

What you could not know, and did not know, but I will tell you now, is that I believed I had an obligation to the Select Committee and to the country, first to formulate . . . then to measure . . . and then . . . to meter out . . .every . . . single . . . word . . . that I spoke . . . , carefully . . . exactingly . . . and . . . deliberately, so that the words I spoke were pristine clear and would be heard, and therefore understood, as such.

I believed Thursday that I had that high responsibility and obligation — to myself, even if to no other. Also please bear in mind that Thursday was the first time in 68 years, to my knowledge, I had ever been on national television, let alone national television like that. And though not scared, I was concerned that I do my very best and not embarrass myself, as I think anyone who found themselves in that frightening circumstance would be.

I decided to respond to your at once astute and understanding tweet finally this afternoon, because I have been watching the tweets all day suggesting that I am recovering from a severe stroke, and my friends, out of their concern for me and my family, have been earnestly forwarding me these tweets, asking me if I am alright. Such is social media, I understand. But I profoundly believe in social media’s foundational, in fact revolutionary, value and contribution to Free Speech in our country, and for that reason I willingly accept the occasional bad that comes from social media, in return for the much more frequent good that comes from it — at least from the vastly more responsible, respectful speech on those media.

That is why, 16 years after my retirement from the Bench, even then as a very skeptical, curmudgeonly old federal judge, I created a Facebook account and then a Twitter account — slowly . . . very slowly . . . one account first . . . and then . . . followed . . . by the other. All of this said, I am not recovering from a stroke or any other malady, I promise…

I was more ready, prepared and intellectually focused (I had thought) during Thursday’s hearing than I have ever been for anything in my life. I gather my face appeared ‘too red’ for some on Twitter, betraying to them serious illness. The explanation was more innocent than that. At the last minute, I had been able during the weekend preceding my testimony to help my daughter get settled into her new home, where the temperatures were in the upper 90s, and where I was appreciatively, though unwittingly, to get just a little bit of needed suntan!

What I will say, though, is this. And I think it explains it all. All my life, I have said (as to myself, and at times, by way of sarcastic prescription for others) that I never . . . talk . . . any . . . faster . . . than . . . my . . . mind . . . can . . . think. I will proudly assure everyone on Twitter that I was riveted, laser-like as never before, on that promise to myself… beginning promptly at the hour of 1:00 pm Thursday afternoon.

What is more, as consciously as one can be aware of something subconsciously, I was…supremely conscious that, if I were chiseling words in stone that day, it was imperative that I chisel the exact words that I would want to be chiseled in stone, were I chiseling words in stone for history.

He concluded, “I can assure you that on last Thursday, June 16, I had never felt, or been, better in my life.”

Judge Luttig, in addition to contacting Politico to explain his careful presentation, shared with the political news site a reflection he wrote in February about those who were heroes on January 6.  He called the piece “the most important words to him that he has ever written” and said they are the words “that he wants remembered.”  You can find it at:

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000181-76c7-d970-af8d-f6cf735d0000

Writing has no pauses.  We, and many others, will remember Judge Luttig not for those words he wrote in February but the words and the pauses that he gave us on June 16, 2022.

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*National Public Radio (and others, probably) has been publishing transcripts of each day’s hearings.  We have edited the NPR transcript for that hearing to highlight Judge Luttig’s testimony.  For the full transcript, please go to https://www.npr.org/2022/06/16/1105683634/transcript-jan-6-committee

The transcript (excerpted)

LIZ CHENEY:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Judge Luttig, thank you as well for being here with us today. You issued a very important statement earlier today, which I urge all Americans to read. And I’d like to ask you, Judge, about one of the sentences in your statement and ask if you could explain to us the significance of it. You say, had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis.

Could you elaborate on that for us, Judge?

  1. MICHAEL LUTTIG:

Thank you, Madam Vice Chairman. That — that passage in my statement this morning referenced the — the most foundational concept in America, which is the rule of law. Thus, as I interpret your question, you are asking about that foundational truth of these United States, which we call America. The foundational truth is the rule of law.

That foundational truth is, for the United States of America, the profound truth, but it’s not merely the profound truth for the United States, it’s also the simple truth, the simple foundational truth of the American republic. Thus, in my view, the hearings being conducted by this select committee are examining that profound truth, namely the rule of law, in the United States of America.

The specific question of course before you and before the nation, not before me, is whether that foundational rule of law was supremely violated on January 6, 2021. Now, to the question specifically that you asked, Madam Vice Chair, I believe that had Vice President Pence obeyed the orders from his President and the President of the United States of America during the joint session of the Congress of the United States on January 6, 2021 and declared Donald Trump the next President of the United States, notwithstanding that then President Trump had lost the Electoral College vote as well as the popular vote in the 2020 Presidential election, that declaration of Donald Trump as the next President would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America, which in my view, and I’m only one man, would have been the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the republic.

LIZ CHENEY:

Judge Luttig, did the Trump electors in those seven states who were not certified by any state authority have any legal significance?

  1. MICHAEL LUTTIG:

Congresswoman, there — there was no support whatsoever and either the Constitution of the United States nor the laws of the United States for the Vice President frankly ever to count alternative electoral slates from the states that had not been officially certified by the designated state official in the Electoral Count Act of 1887. I did notice in the passage from Mr. Eastman’s memorandum and I took a note on it, and correct me if I’m wrong, but he said in that passage that there was both legal authority as well as historical precedent.

I do know what Mr. Eastman was referring to when he said that there was historical precedent for doing so. He was incorrect. There was no historical precedent from the beginning of the founding in 1789 that even as mere historical precedent as distinguished from legal precedent would support the possibility of the Vice President of the United States quote, “Counting alternative electoral slates that had not been officially certified to the Congress pursuant to the Electoral Count Act of 1887.” I would be glad to explain that historical precedent if the committee wanted, but it — it would be a digression.

JOHN WOOD:

Judge Luttig, I had the incredible honor of serving as one of your law clerks. Another person who did was John Eastman. And you’ve written that Dr. Eastman’s theory that the Vice President could determine who the next President of the United States is in your words incorrect at every turn.

Could you please explain briefly your analysis?

  1. MICHAEL LUTTIG:

It was my honor, Mr. Wood, to have you serve as my law clerk. I — I could answer that question perfectly if I had at my disposal either Mr. Eastman’s tweet or my own analytical tweet of September 21st. But I don’t. But that said, let me try to remember the analysis of — of Mr. Eastman’s analysis.

JOHN WOOD:

And — and Judge, I can read to you and to the audience I think what was a really key passage from your very insightful analysis when you wrote, “I believed that Professor Eastman was incorrect at every turn of the analysis in his January 2nd memorandum beginning with his claim that there were legitimate competing slate of electors presented from seven states.”

You’ve already addressed that issue. But your next sentence said, “Continuing to his conclusion that the Vice President could unilaterally decide not to count the votes from the seven states from which competing slates were allegedly presented.” So what was your basis for concluding that Dr. Eastman was incorrect in his conclusion that the Vice President could unilaterally decide not to count the votes from these disputed states?

  1. MICHAEL LUTTIG:

I understand. As I previously stated in response to Congresswoman Cheney, the — there was no basis in the Constitution or laws of the United States at all for the theory espoused by Mr. Eastman at all. None. With all respect to my co-panelist, he said I believe in partial response to one of the select committee questions that the single sentence in the 12th Amendment was he thought [unartfully] written.

That single sentence is not [unartfully] written. It was pristine clear that the President of the Senate on January 6th, the incumbent Vice President of the United States, had little substantive constitutional authority if any at all. The 12th Amendment, the single sentence that Mr. Jacob refers to, says in substance that following the transmission of the certificates to the Congress of the United States and under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the archivist of the United States that the presiding officer shall open the certificates in the presence of the Congress of the United States in joint session.

It then says unmistakably not even that the Vice President himself shall count the electoral votes. It clearly says merely that the electoral count votes shall then be counted. It was the Electoral Count Act of — of 1887 that — that filled in, if you will, the simple words of — of the 12th Amendment in order to construct for the country a process for the counting of the — the — the sacred process for the counting of the electoral votes from the states that neither our original Constitution nor even the 12th Amendment had done.

The irony, if you will, is that, from its founding until 1887 in — when Congress passed the Electoral Count Act, the nation had been in considerable turmoil during at least five of its presidential elections, beginning as soon thereafter from the founding as 1800. So, it wasn’t for — almost 100 years later until the Electoral Count Act was passed.

So, that’s why, in my view, that piece of legislation is not only a work in progress for the country, but at this moment in history an important work in progress that needs to take place. That was long winded. I understand.

JOHN WOOD:

Well, Judge Luttig, at the risk of oversimplifying for the non-lawyers who are watching, is it fair to say that the 12th Amendment basically says two things happen, the vice president opens the — the certificates and the electoral votes are counted. Is it that straightforward?

  1. MICHAEL LUTTIG:

I would not want that to be my testimony before the Congress of the United States. The language of the 12th Amendment is that simple.

JOHN WOOD:

Thank you, Judge.

PETE AGUILAR:

I appreciate that. In our investigation, the select committee has obtained evidence suggesting that Dr. Eastman never really believed his own theory. Let me explain. On the screen, you can see a draft letter to the President from October 2020. In this letter, an idea was proposed that the Vice President could determine which electors to count at the joint session of Congress.

But the person writing in blue eviscerates that argument. The person who wrote the comments in blue wrote, quote, “The 12th Amendment only says that the President of the Senate opens the ballots in the joint session. And then in the passive voice that the votes shall then be counted”. The comments in blue further state, “nowhere does it suggest that the President of the Senate gets to make the determination on his own”. Judge Luttig, does it surprise you that the author of those comments in blue was in fact John Eastman?

  1. MICHAEL LUTTIG:

Yes, it does Congressman. But let me — watching this unfold, let me try to unpack what was at the root of what I have called the blueprint to overturn the 2020 election. And it is this.

And I had foreshadowed this answer in my earlier testimony to Congresswoman Cheney.

Mr. Eastman, from the beginning, said to the President that there was both legal as well as historical precedent for the Vice President to overturn the election.

And what we’ve heard today, I believe is — is what happened within the White House and elsewhere as all of the players, led by Mr. Eastman, got wrapped around the axle by the historical evidence claim by Mr. Eastman. Let me explain very simply, this is what I said would require a digression, that I would be glad to undertake if you wished, in short, if I had been advising the Vice President of the United States on January 6th, and even if then Vice President Jefferson, and even then Vice President John Adams, and even then Vice President Richard Nixon had done exactly what the President of the United States wanted his Vice President to do, I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the Vice President overturn the 2020 election on the basis of that historical precedent.

But what this body needs to know, and now America needs to know, is that that was the centerpiece of the plan to overturn the 2020 election. It was the historical precedent in the years — and with the Vice Presidents that I named, as Congressman Raskin understands well, and the — the effort by Mr. Eastman and others was to — to drive that historical precedent up to and under that single sentence — single pristine sentence in the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Taking advantage of, if you will, what many have said is the inartful wording of that sentence in the 12th Amendment. Scholars before 2020 would have used that historical precedent to argue, not that Vice President Pence could overturn the 2020 election by accepting non-certified state electoral votes, but they would have made arguments as to some substantive, not merely procedural, authority possessed by the Vice President of the United States on — on the statutorily prescribed day for counting the Electoral College votes.

This is — this is constitutional mischief.

BENNIE THOMPSON:

The gentlelady yields back…

Judge Luttig, I want to give you an opportunity to share your thoughts on the ongoing threat. You’ve written the clear and present danger to our democracy now is that former President Donald Trump and other political allies appear prepared to seize the presidency in 2024 if Mr. Trump or one of his anointed candidates is not elected by the American people.

What do you mean by this?

  1. MICHAEL LUTTIG:

Mr. Chairman, I’m honored beyond words by your words. I was honored on January 6th, 2021, and also honored beyond words to have been able to come to the aid of Vice President Mike Pence. I prayed that day just like the vice president prayed that day. I believe we may have prayed the — the same prayer to the same God. I prayed that same prayer with my wife this morning before I came into these hearings.

I have written, as you said, Chairman Thompson, that today, almost two years after that fateful day in January 2021, that still Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy. That’s not because of what happened on January 6th. It’s because, to this very day, the former president, his allies, and supporters pledge that, in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party presidential candidate were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020. I don’t speak those words lightly.

I would have never spoken those words ever in my life, except that that’s what the former president and his allies are telling us. As I said in that New York Times op-ed, wherein I was speaking about the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the former president and his allies are executing that blueprint for 2024 in open, in plain view of the American public.

I repeat, I would have never uttered one single one of those words unless the former president and his allies were candidly and proudly speaking those exact words to America. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear here today for these proceedings.

 

 

Sports—Racing:  INDYCAR, NASCAR Stars to Race Each Other in Missouri

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(Pevely, Mo)—A rare opportunity for Missourians to see Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500 winners race each other comes up July 16 in Pevely, a small town south of St. Louis on I-55.

Winners of five Daytona 500s and two Indianapolis 500s will be racing in Tony Stewart’s SRX series at the Federated Auto Parts Raceway in Pevely. The field includes winners of five NASCAR championships and winners of four open-wheel championships for Indianapolis-type cars.

The Superstar Racing Experience, created by former NASCAR Champion Tony Stewart and championship crew chief Ray Evernham matches drivers from NASCAR and INDYCAR for a six-race summer series on paved and dirt oval tracks in identically-prepared cars.

Each race also includes a champion driver from the featured local track.

Scheduled to run at Pevely on July 16:

Matt Kenseth  2003 NASCAR Champion; 2009, 2012 Daytona 500 winner

Hallie Deegan, who drives in the NASCAR Truck Series

Tony Kanaan  2013 Indianapolis 500 winner; 2004 Indycar champion

Ken Schrader (guest)  1988 Talladega 500 winner; Started on pole for Daytona 500 three straight years.

Tony Stewart  2002, 2005, 2011 NASCAR champion; 1997 Indycar champion; 2005, 2007 Brickyard 400 winner;

Ryan Newman  2008 Daytona 500 winner; 2013 Brickyard 400 winner

Marco Andretti 2006 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year; 2020 Indianapolos 500 pole winner; four top-3 finishes

Bobby Labonte  2000 NASCAR champion; 2000 Brickyard 400 winner

Paul Tracy  2003 CART champion

Michael Waltrip  2001, 2003 Daytona 500 winner

Ryan Hunter-Reay  2010 Indycar Champion; 2012 Indianapolis 500 winner

Greg Biffle 2000 NASCAR truck series champion; 2002 NASCAR Busch Series champion; 2005, 2006 Southern 500 winner

Schrader, who owns the Pevely track, helped develop the cars used in the series. He raced in NASCAR’s top series for 29 years and still competes at age 67 in the ARCA series and also on local tracks throughout the country.

The SRX races are televised on Saturday nights by CBS.  This year’s first race, run at steaming hot Five Flags Raceway in Sarasota, Florida, was won by four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves, who had not been scheduled to compete until sponsorship for his car came through on Friday.

.Castroneves won the second of two heat races and finished ahead of local driver Bubba Pollard—who won the first heat race—with NASCAR’s Ryan Newman taking the remaining podium spot.

The second race of the series is next Saturday night at South Boston Speedway in Virginia.

The first four races of the season will be on paved speedways.  The last two races, beginning at Pevely, will be on dirt. The track at Pevely is one-third of a mile oval with nineteen-degree banked corners that usually features various classes of stock car racing.  The absolute lap record on the track was set by current NASCAR champion Kyle Larson in 2020 with a lap of 9.995 seconds (119.94 mph) in a winged sprint car.

(NASCAR.INDYCAR)—Neither of the big series was in action last weekend.  NASCAR is at Nashville next weekend. INDYCAR returns July 3 at the Mid-Ohio Road Course.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen held off Carlos Sainz in the Grand Prix of Canada, run in Montreal, to pick up his sixth win of the year and build his championship lead to an impressive 175 points.  Sainz, who could close on Verstappen but not get past him, finished less than one-second back.  Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, who has endured a year of struggle and pain, was third after his car—and other F1 manufacturers—got some modifications designed to reduce bounding, or “porpoising” on high-speed runs.

Photo Credits:  SRX Racing; Bob Priddy (Castoneves at indianapolis 2022)

 

 Notes from a Quiet Street: Equal Time

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Our ex-President has been raging on his personal social media platform about the January 6th Committee hearings and their discoveries.  Last Thursday, after the third hearing explored the physical danger faced by the Vice-President during the Trump-inspired riot, Trump took to his own personal platform to complain, “It is a one-sided, highly partisan Witch Hunt, the likes of which has never been seen in Congress before.  Therefore, I am demanding EQUAL TIME to spell out the massive Voter Fraud & Dem Security Breach!”

Your faithful correspondent suggests the ex-President make a minor change in his characterizations of the committee.  It’s a small thing but precision in language is important in times of great personal and national stress.   The committee hearings do not constitute a witch hunt.   Witches are females.   Males are Warlocks.   It would improve his credibility as an intelligent individual if he referred to the perceived attacks on him with the proper term.

It’s a Warlock Hunt.

Your faithful correspondent also agrees with the ex-President that he should be allowed equal time to respond to statements made by numerous associates and advisers and played back during the hearings.

We believe his most equal time should be spent under oath.

Before the committee.

And the committee should extend to him the privilege of speaking in an open, public, widely-broadcast hearing in which he could explain at great length his thoughts, actions, and words—unlike the way the committee has handled his associates, with closed hearings and excerpts of their testimony played in the public hearings.  After all he WAS the President of the United States and he deserves that special courtesy.

He’s correct in observing that these hearings are something “which has never been seen in Congress before.”  It would REALLY be something that has never been seen before if he would explain to the committee under penalty of perjury—-as so many of his associates have done—his justifications for his words and his actions or his lack of actions.

But maybe his request should be refused because—

actually, the hearings are Democracy’s equal time to lies he told at all of the rallies he held before and after the 2020 elections.

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There’s another observation we have, uh, observed in the months since those events.

Some members of Congress deny the events constituted a violent uprising or insurrection or riot or whatever.  The people who came into the Capitol that day, they say, were just peaceful tourists.

We were peaceful tourists at the Capitol once when we took our children to Washington, D.C.  So we know about these things.

We didn’t see any of the Congressmen who say the people on January 6 were like our family greet us at their offices, as ours did.  (Our Congressman even took the children down on the House floor with him during debate that day; our son wanted to go back the next day but we told him the only way he could ever do that would be to get elected).

One of our previous Congressmen once invited us to visit him in Washington and even told us he’d take us to the House cafeteria for some of the famous bean soup that’s served there.

We didn’t see any of those Congressmen go out on the front steps of the Capitol and get their pictures taken with their peaceful constituents that day.  Ours did.  He even signed the picture.

We’re sure the peaceful visitors would have enjoyed seeing their representatives and senators. They probably had worked up a pretty good appetite by then, too, and might have enjoyed some bean soup.

What a bummer of a day that was for those visitors.  They go to all the trouble they went to to travel to Washington, to gather at the Capitol, to make a special effort to get in to see their Congress people only to find there would be no family picture and no bean soup.

No wonder they were so angry that day.

Sports: Racing—A million-dollar win; a first win; a painful finish

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(INDYCAR)—Josef Newgarden has won three times this year on the INDYCAR circuit and those three times have produced a million-dollar bonus.

Because he’s the first driver to win an oval race, a street race, and a road course race this year, he has turned a normal win into a big windfall for his team and for his favorite charity.  PeopleReady, an employment services company, sponsors a car for Christian Lundgaard, another INDYCAR driver, offered the bonus to the first driver to win on all three types of courses on the circuit this year.

Half of the money goes to the Team Penske and the other half will be split between SeriousFun Children’s Network and Wags and Walks Nashville, a dog rescue nonprofit.

Newgarden finished about 3.4 seconds ahead of Marcus Ericsson, the Indianapolis 500 winner. Ericsson now has four straight top-seven finishes and has replaced Newgarden teammate Will Power atop the points list. Alexander Rossi, who started from the pole was third, his second podium finish this month and this third straight top-five finish.

Newgarden got the jump on the final re-start. He led 26 of the race’s 55 laps on the Road America course.

INDYCAR is off next week before running at Mid-Ohio on July 3.

(NASCAR)—In the entire 65-year history of NASCAR only five drivers born outside the United States have won a Cup race.  Daniel Suarez finally put it all together to get his first Cup win after 195 starts, pulling away from Chris Buescher to win on the road could win on the road course at Sonoma.

Suarez, native of Mexico, led 47 of the 110 laps and beat Buescher to the stripe by almost four seconds to become the first Mexican driver to win at NASCAR’s highest level. He led the last 26 laps.  Michael McDowell got the third podium position with Kevin Harvick, Austin Cindric, Ryan Blaney, Clay Chastain, Chase Elliott, William Byron and Brad Keselowski rounding out the top ten.

Defending series champion Kyle Larson, who started from the pole, finished 15th after losing a wheel late in the race.

It has been almost a decade since the last victory in the Cup series by a foreign-born driver—Australia’s Marcus Ambrose’s victory at Watkins Glen in August, 2012. It was his second win in NASCAR’s top series. He also won at The Glen a year earlier. Colombia’s Juan Pablo Montoya also was a two-time winner—Watkins Glen in 2010 and at Sonoma in 2007.

Italian Mario Andretti won the Daytona 500 in 1967 and Canadian Earl Ross won at Martinsville in 1974.

Suarez is the fourth first-time winner this year and the 12th different winner in this season. His win increases the pressure on drivers who are 17th and lower in the points.  Only the top sixteen winners and non-winners with enough points will qualify for the playoffs after 26 races. Sonoma was the 16th points race of 2022.

The four non-winners still within the top sixteen are Ryan Blaney, Martin Truex Jr., Christopher Bell, and Aric Almirola. Kevin Harvick is barely out of the top 16 with Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon next.

One other note: Teammates Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson combined to lead 52 laps, enough to give Hendrick-backed cars more than 100,000 miles led in NASCAR races, the first time in NASCAR’s 75-year history a team has reached that figure.

NASCAR is off next weekend, returning on the 26th at Nashville.

(FORMULA 1)—Defending F1 champion Max Verstappen won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with teammate Sergio Perez following him across the finish line but two issues competed with the Red Bull team for attention in and after the race.

Red Bull’s closest competitor this year, Ferrari, again had reliability issues with number two driver Carlos Sainz pulling out of the race on the ninth lap with hydraulic failure and the lead driver, Charles Leclerc, sideline by an engine failure eleven laps later.

And Mercedes continues to struggle with the “porpoising” problems that have besieged Lewis Hamilton and George Russell all season long.  Russell salvaged a third place and Hamilton finished fourth but both complained that their cars started bouncing at high speeds. Mercedes has tried to solve the problem of cars bouncing at high speed all season long but still have had no success.

Hamilton complained of bouncing so severe that he was suffering severe back pains on the rough track during the race, which he called “the worst race ever, probably the most painful race I have experienced and the toughest battle with the car I have ever experienced as well.”

(Photo credit: Bob Priddy, Indianapolis 2021)

 

T.A.L.K.

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It’s clear that too much of our political dialogue in this country has lost any semblance of courtesy.

I trace much of that loss to the medium that was my life for more than fifty years and to a slight degree still is. Radio.

Radio had been consigned to insignificance (again) by the early 1980s. But satellite-delivered content became more practical and with it voices that were no longer local and often no longer respective of listeners, guests or callers came into our radios. After all, the show was about them, not about the community and the residents radio stations lived with. Nationally-distributed talk radio is considered the savior of the AM band.

Now look at where we are.  Not just in radio but in our political circles and even in our daily verbal intercourse with one another, even among family members. And it’s less than two months before the August primary elections and—-Oh, Lord! The flood of thirty-seconds of irrationality that will assault our eyes and ears and insult our intelligences.

The other day we found a concert by Glen Campbell with the South Dakota Symphony on YouTube. It showcased his great voice, his incredible guitar-playing, and even a solo with bagpipes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iJahIKswWo

He closed the concert, as he often did, with a song by Bobby Austin and Carl Sapaugh: Try a Little Kindness—

If you see your brother standing by the road
With a heavy load from the seeds he sowed
And if you see your sister falling by the way
Just stop and say, “You’re going the wrong way”

You’ve got to try a little kindness
Yes, show a little kindness
Just shine your light for everyone to see
And if you try a little kindness
Then you’ll overlook the blindness
Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets

Don’t walk around the down and out
Lend a helping hand instead of doubt
And the kindness that you show every day
Will help someone along their way

You got to try a little kindness
Yes, show a little kindness
Just shine your light for everyone to see
And if you try a little kindness
Then you’ll overlook the blindness
Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets

You got to try a little kindness
Yes, show a little kindness
Just shine your light for everyone to see
And if you try a little kindness
Then you’ll overlook the blindness
Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets

T.A.L.K.   Kindly.  We really need it these days. It’s time we got smart enough to ignore the self-centered lousy examples we have all around us and rise above them.

They don’t want us to do that. They profit if we continue to dwell in blindness, narrow-mindedness and narrow-minded streets.  But we know we can be better than their examples.

We DO know that, don’t we?

It’s time we kicked the mud off our shoes.

 

Our Weimar Moment

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Weimar, Germany is the country’s celebrated cultural city, the home of writers Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Composer Franz Liszt lived there for a time, as did 16th century painter Lucas Cranach the Elder.  Walter Gropius founded the  Bauhaus movement and the Bahaus School of design there. It also was the home for a time of artists and architects such as Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, and Henry van de Velde. Composer Richard Strauss and philosopher Fredreich Nietzsche also lived there briefly. It is the city where Germany’s first democratic constitution was signed. It lasted from the end of World War I to 1933, when Hitler killed the Weimar Republic.

It also is four miles from the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp.

At various times in World War II and the years leading to it, 240,000 people were imprisoned and where an estimated 56,545 died or were murdered.

And the people of Weimar claimed they did not know of what was happening there—-although slave laborers from the camp worked in its munitions industry.  When American soldiers found the camp in early April, 1945, they were stunned by the human wreckage the Nazis had left behind.  General Patton ordered the soldiers to go to Weimar and round up thousands of the “unaware” citizens and force them to tour the camp to see the atrocities being conducted in the name of their country.  A reporter for The Guardian, a British newspaper wrote:

There in groups of 100 they were conducted on a tour of the crematorium with the blackened frames of bodies still in the ovens and two piles of emaciated dead in the yard outside, through huts where living skeletons too ill or weak to rise lay packed in three-tier bunks, through the riding stables where Thuelmann, the German Communist leader, and thousands of others were shot, through the research block where doctors tried new serums on human beings with fatal consequences in 90 per cent of the cases.

It was an experience they can never forget. Most of the women and some of the men were in tears as they moved from block to block. Many were crying bitterly. Some of the women fainted and could be taken no farther.

Legendary American journalist Edward R. Murrow toured the camp three days after the Army arrived.  He was so shaken by what he saw that he waited three days to broadcast his story by short-wave radio back to CBS in New York. I believe it is the greatest broadcast in radio and television history:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlhQvPfYSXk

A few days later, the Dean in Weimar, Richard Kade, speaking for the Protestant church in Germany said, “We carry no blame for these atrocities.”  In a memorial service many years later, one of Kade’s successors, Henrich Herbst, admitted Protestant Christians had not “courageously admitted and put a name” to the “unspeakable suffering of women and children, Jews, communists, Social Democrats and Christians” at Buchenwald.

I visited Weimar on a lovely June morning when the streets near the town square were filled with singing and music by college students whose year had ended, where merchants had set up their little booths on the square selling their wares.  I bought a gold gingko leaf pin for Nancy that day. The gingko is the official tree of Weimar.

We had lunch with the mayor and after that, as a cold front had moved through the area and the afternoon was chilly and misty, we visited Buchenwald.

And we saw the ovens.

And urns filled with ashes.

And we put little stones on the outlines of the barracks that Murrow described so graphically.

And we all thought of people living four miles away who chose not to know what was happening at Buchenwald.

We are living a Weimar moment in America today.

A special Congressional Committee is taking us on a graphic tour of January 6, 2021.  But there are those who want to ignore the brutal ghastliness of that day and its attack on our democratic-republic form of government.

Murrow began his historic broadcast, “Permit me to tell you what you would have seen and heard had you been with me on Thursday.  It will not be pleasant listening. If you are at lunch or if you have no appetite to hear what Germans have done, now is a good time to switch off the radio for I propose to tell you of Buchenwald.”

Last Thursday might, Congressman Bennie Thompson sounded a 21st Century equivalent to Murrow’s introduction: “We can’t sweep what happened under the rug… So, tonight and over the next few weeks, we’re going to remind you of the reality of what happened that day, but our work must do much more than just look backwards. The cause of our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over. There are those in this audience who thirst for power, but have no love or respect for what makes America great, devotion to the Constitution, allegiance to the rule of law, our shared journey to build a more perfect union. January 6th and the lies that led to insurrection have put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk.”

Twenty-million television viewers that night began the equivalent of the tour the citizens of Weimar were forced to take.  That night and in meetings to come, we will see what many of us have chosen not to see or to know. It will not be pleasant viewing.  If you have no appetite to hear what has been done, this is a good time to turn off the television for the committee is going to explain what happened on January 6.

Just as Wiemar residents in 1945 chose to turn away from what was right in front of them, there were many who chose to, and will choose in future hearings to, look away, to seek out channels where the work of the committee is ignored or downplayed or where they will be encouraged to think of other things. If you don’t think about what happened on January 6 and why, it didn’t happen.  You “carry no blame” for those events.

The Post-Dispatch reported the major Republican candidates for Roy Blunt’s Senate seat seem to have adopted the Weimar Defense.  They took to Twitter to attack the committee findings—even before the hearing Thursday night began.

Eric Greitens called the hearing a “show trial.” Mark McCloskey expanded on that idea by calling the hearing a “fraud show trial” and claimed it is “government abuse you expect from Soviet Russia, China or North Korea.”  Eric Schmitt called the committee “a joke.”  Vicky Hartzler wants her people to ignore what the leader of her party might have done (we’ll learn more specifically what his role in that dark day was in more detail later) and look at her perceived failures of President Biden and congressional Democrats. She called the hearing a “sham.” Billy Long said it was a “reality show” that avoided Democratic party failures on various issues.

McCloskey is dead wrong. There are no congressional hearings in Soviet Russia looking into Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, no hearings in China on that country’s repression in Hon Kong, and no investigations in North Korea about the impoverished population and the saber-rattling of the country’s leader.

A joke?

We wonder if those who think the hearings are a joke smiled as Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards recounted when the mob moved in while she and her fellow officers tried to hold them back with nothing more than bike racks. “I felt the bike rack come on top of my head and I was pushed backwards and my foot caught on the stair behind me and I—my chin hit the handrail. And then I—at that point I had blacked out. But my—the back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me.”

And were they chuckling when she described regaining consciousness and went to help those trying to hold back the mob on the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol and, “more and more people, you know, started coming on to the west front?”

The arrival of Metropolitan Police officers stopped the advance so, “for a while I started decontaminating people who had gotten sprayed and treating people medically who—who needed it.”

Did the joke get funnier as she described getting back behind the next line of bike racks and being sprayed in the eyes and another officer started to take her away to get decontaminated but they never made it because they were tear gassed? “I saw, I can just remember by—my breath catching in my throat because what I saw was just a—a war zone…I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground…they were bleeding. They were throwing up.”

And were those saying the hearing was a joke dissolve into side-holding laughter as Edwards told the committee, “I saw friends with blood all over their faces.  I was slipping in people’s blood…Never in my wildest dreams did I think that, as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle.”

That’s really hilarious.

There was nothing funny about what happened January 6. And those who suggest that these hearings are a show or a joke or a fraud or who suggest we become like the citizens of a city known for its culture who chose not to want to know about the hideous events on their doorsteps are beneath respect.

Jesus told his followers (John 8:31-32), “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Our freedom is at risk with those who think the search for the truth of what happened January 6 is a fake, a fraud, a show, or a laughing matter.

This is our Weimar moment.  If we are to be disciples of freedom, we must not be afraid to see the truth of what happened January 6 and how it came about. The committee will escort us through that camp.

If we love our country we must be unafraid of what we will see.

The difference one letter makes

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The regular consumers of these eloquent literary effusions might have noticed nothing was posted in its usual place on Monday.  That is because your loyal correspondent, in the springtime of his senility, posted the intended Monday meditation on Thursday.   He apparently was too eager to get to St. Louis for an automobile race later in the weekend that he mis-dated the time the material should be exposed to the waiting public.

The column that suggested no place is safe from a “loon with a gun and a grudge” and we should expect a mass shooting to happen wherever we are elicited two responses, nonetheless.  One suggested just doing away with the Second Amendment.

To be clear, for any who felt the column advocated such a thing:

If we did away with the Second Amendment I would have no right to own my Daisy BB gun!  Or my father’s J. C. Whitney .22 rifle or the antique 12-gauge shotgun with the crossover stock.   I’m not advocating eliminating the Second Amendment although some of the (to me) irrational defense of it might need to be dismissed—and polls indicate large numbers of Americans agree with the assessment that it is time for some social and legal parameters to be established within the amendment’s framework.

The problem is the difference made by one letter.  The letter is “L.”

Pols versus polls.

Sometimes our political figures love polls.  If they’re winning.

Sometimes our political figures hate polls.  If they’re losing.

But polls seem to mean nothing to our Pols who are deafened by an adequate number of dollar bills that they allow to be inserted into their ears.

It’s not just this issue, either.

While individual political leaders and/or candidates steadfastly deny that currency-filled campaign coffers affect their votes; that they only buy access—the additional “access” seems often to be convincing of the rightness of the donor’s position.

The dollar value of political courage has never been calculated, but in this issue there seems to be some kind of a threshold that tips the recipient away from the popular will. And there seems to be an organization among many organizations that has the biggest thumb on the scales because it has the greatest concentration of paper ear plugs. .

As long as courage is cheap and access is for sale, the polls on mass shootings will mean enough Pols will keep any significant parameters from being established within the Second Amendment.

So my BB gun is safe.

But the question is: When will things become so disastrous that “access” cannot be bought?

Underlining that rhetorical question is the results from this weekend.

People at a graduation party in Summerton, SC (a town that previously had never made any national headlines your correspondent has noticed) didn’t think it could happen there.  Nor did people at a bar in Chattanooga, TN. Or people living their lives in the moment on a busy street in Philadelphia. The 100 people at a party at a Phoenix strip mall probably hadn’t given a mass shooting a thought—until they were the middle of one. The same likely is true of a similar crowd at a graduation party at a private home in Socorro, TX.   Or the people at a bar in Mesa, AZ.  And a gas station parking lot fight in Macon, GA leaves one dead and three others hurt.

The news aggregation site AXIOS* calculates the total at 11 dead and 54 others hurt, just this weekend.

Just another weekend in America where, as The Onion has observed more than 20 times:

‘NO WAY TO PREVENT THIS,’

SAYS ONLY NATION WHERE

THIS REGUARLY HAPPENS

 

The Quick.

And the Dead.

The Pols.

The Polls.

And the dollars keep going into the ears of those who find it beneficial to be deaf.

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*The AXIOS weekend scorecard:

Summerton:  Two cars stop at a house where a graduation party is being held and shots are fired into the house. One dead. Seven wounded.

Chattanooga: Shooting near a bar. Fourteen wounded by gunshots. Three others hit by cars. Two dead by gunshot wounds. One dead when run over by a car fleeing the scene.

Philadelphia: Three dead and at least eleven others hurt when three shooters open fire on a busy street.

Phoenix: One dead, eight others hurt in altercation at a party led to shooting.  The dead person is a 14-year old girl.  Two of the wounded have life-threatening injuries.

Socorro: A fight at a high school graduation party turns into a shooting. Five teenagers wounded.

Macon: Argument in gas station parking lot leaves one dead and three hurt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sports—Racing: Penske Weekend Sweep

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by Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—Joey Logano has begun a new era for NASCAR in the St. Louis region by winning a last laps duel with Kyle Busch at Worldwide Technology Raceway.  The race with the Gateway Arch in view, at a track that almost disappeared eleven years ago after the apparent last NASCAR Cup race on October 23, 2010, marked the decade-long resurrection under owner Curtis Francois.

Francois bought the track two weeks before its grandstands were to be sold for scrap and its grounds cleared to make way for an industrial park for nearby Granite City and has turned it into a center for the major American auto racing series backed by the NHRA, INDYCAR, and now the NASCAR Cup series.

Logano did not get his first lead until the 208th lap of what turned into a 245-lap race, only to give it up to Kyle Busch twenty laps leader on a restart.  But he got another chance after one last yellow flag when he got a push on the restart from Penske teammate Ryan Blaney that put him back in front.  Busch got past him briefly on the backstretch before Logano got under Busch and back into the lead going into the final lap.

He finished 0.655 seconds ahead of Kyle Busch whose elder brother Kurt got between him and Blaney.

The race ended with some hard feelings, mostly caused by eighth-place finisher Ross Chastain, who confessed after the race that he had done a horrible job of driving and kept running into people.  The first one he hit was Denny Hamlin. Who went into the wall in turn two (that’s Hamlin at the wall and Chastain in car #1).  Hamlin’s car was never the same although he soldiered on going fast enough to meet minimum speed requirements. He finished 34th, eleven laps down.  He has indicated there will be retribution in some later race.

Chastain also caused a wreck when he tried to force his way between Chase Elliott (left) and Austin Dillon as they were running just outside the top 12 and forced Elliott to spin in front of the rest of the field.  Elliott got back underway but his day was spoiled. He finished 21st.

Chastain, who knows a racetrack woodshedding from Hamlin and Elliott will be administered in some future race told FOX Sports broadcaster Jamie Little, “I’m supposed to be better than that…I owe half the field an apology. I can’t continue to make the same mistakes. I’ll have to pay for it on the track.”

Logano joins Chastain, Hamlin, and William Byron as two-time winners of NASCAR Cup races this year. Elliott also has a victory this year.

The race was a sellout. Logano discussed events afterwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n406_Yz9gbk

(INDYCAR)—While the St. Louis area was celebrating a new beginning, Detroit was seeing an end to INDYCAR racing on the Belle Isle circuit. Penske driver Will Power, who suffered a heartbreaking loss last year, dominated this year’s race to win his 41st career INDYCAR victory.  But he had to hold off Alexander Rossi who launched a late race charge to the front for the second week in a row.

Pit strategy was a factor as Power stopped for tires and fuel only twice while Rossi made three stops. Power made his last stop with 19 laps left in the 70-lap race. He led by almost 16.1 seconds but was on tires that degraded faster than the tires Rossi was using.  He still led by 12.1 with ten to go.  But Power got behind slow-running Jack Harvey, the lead dropped to 7.7 seconds with five laps left, then to 6.5 with three laps left. It was only 2.8 seconds at the start of the final lap and when the checkered flag fell, Power was only 1.0027 seconds ahead.

“I think one more lap would have been really interesting,” Rossi said after the race. “But you’ve got to give credit to (Power’s pit crew) and Will.  That’s hard to do at the end, to hang on.”

Power’s win came a year after he dominated the Belle Isle circuit until the race was stopped because of a crash and his car would not restart before the race resumed.  He called his weekend victory “just redemption from last year.”

The win moves Power into the INDYCAR points lead by three points over Marcus Ericsson, who won the previous weekend’s Indianapolis 500.

INDYCAR is not leaving Detroit, just Belle Isle.  Next year, Power, Rossi and the others will race on a circuit through the streets of the city.

Rossi will be with a new team for next year’s race. He’s leaving Andretti Autosports and has signed with Arrows-McLaren for 2023.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 is getting ready for the Grand Prix of Azerbaijan in Baku. Azerbaijan is a former member of the Soviet Union. It declared its independence in 1991.

(Photo credits:  WWTR—Bob Priddy; Power—Rick Gevers at Indianapolis)

 

It’s Going to Happen Here

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Wherever you are when you read this you should resign yourself to the fact that somebody is going to kill a bunch of people in your town. Just pray you are not in the church, school, hospital, shopping mall, business, office—nowhere is safe from the loon with a gun and a grudge.

So just get ready to mourn.  Maybe you should get ready to die.

You just never know.

This is being written on Thursday, June 2, 2022.  Education Week calculates the Uvalde, Texas school shooting was the 27th school shooting this year, the 119th school shooting since 2018.

That’s just schools.

The Gun Violence Archive has counted 212 mass shootings in this country this year—incidents in which four or more people were killed or wounded, not counting the shooter.

Thoughts and prayers offered, or maybe somebody just thinks about thoughts and prayers because it’s easy to say.

But nothing seems likely to change.

We hear the same demands for SOMEBODY to do SOMETHING after every incident.  We hear the same claims that doing SOMETHING won’t solve ANYTHING—every time.

Truth is, our policy making system is paralyzed by fear that doing something will antagonize the most rabid supporters of gun rights, that elections might be lost, campaign funding might be switched to others, will violate the sacredness of the Second Amendment (and, by the way, spare me the BS about the First Amendment existing only because there is a Second Amendment, not after 19 children and two adults will no longer experience First Amendment rights because somebody decided to exercise his Second Amendment right.).

No part of the United States Constitution is immune from interpretation and no law is absolute. The Second Amendment is not above limits.

It is easy to be pessimistic about any kind of political effort to reduce these tragedies because there is a sickness within a political system that seems to think it proper for candidates to campaign by showing us their prowess with the kinds of weapons used to kill students and shoppers and hospital personnel, among others.

The irony of those who think they can show their defense of American values with commercials showing them shooting weapons of mass murder is that their commercials tacitly endorse phrase first uttered in 1927 by Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong: “Political Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

This kind of appeal for political support is abhorrent.

Unfortunately, it seems to work.

And that’s sick.

Is there a legitimate use for a weapon, or its replica, designed specifically to fire large quantities of bullets except in the military services the weapons were designed for in the first place?

Self-defense you say. Let’s see.  A character in Buffalo, NY was defending himself against dangerous shoppers at a mall.  Another character was defending himself against threatening fourth graders in Uvalde, Texas.  And a third was defending himself against his doctor.

And those are only the latest examples as we write this.

Do you feel safer knowing that dangerous shoppers, threatening fourth graders, and a doctor widely respected for his volunteer service are no longer threatening the peace and dignity of society?

THE ONION, a satirical newspaper that often looks at the absurdities of life, has published the same story 21 times after 21 mass shootings.  It re-published all 21 of them on its web page last week. The headline is always the same:

‘NO WAY TO PREVENT THIS,’

SAYS ONLY NATION WHERE

THIS REGUARLY HAPPENS

The text is always the same except for the dateline:

TULSA—In the days following a violent rampage in Oklahoma in which a lone attacker killed four individuals in addition to himself, and seriously injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said New Mexico resident Ellen Robinson, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

The shame of it is that the article is true.

And that’s why all of us need to be rehearsing our statements of shock and sorrow, or our survivors should be rehearsing statements of shock and sorrow, because these incidents will not stop on their own.

And as long as they go on, we might as well consider it inevitable that it’s going to happen here, wherever “here” is to you.

—-because there’s no way to prevent it.

And your town and my town are as likely candidates for this “distinction” as any place.

It is going to happen here.

Give up.  Expect it.

Nobody’s going to stop it.

Are they?

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The Streets of America

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I’m on the Missouri River Regional Library Board and we have a special social problem we’re trying to work out.

The public library is a place where homeless people (the current politically correct phrase for them seems to be “the unhoused”) can go to stay cool on hot days, warm on cold days, dry on wet days. There are public bathrooms, chairs to sit in, benches to sit on, newspapers and books to read.

Some folks drink. Some folks sleep.  Some folks have or cause problems.

They can’t fill their days hanging around in downtown businesses, including restaurants, shoe stores, clothing stores, offices, and the like.  So they gravitate to a public place (the courthouse and city hall don’t work) such as a library.

So the library staff is put in an awkward position.  These folks are the “public” and our building is a public place. But some of our “homed” (if you will) patrons aren’t comfortable when they come into the library and have to walk past these folks outside the front door or sitting with their bag of belongings inside. We have to respect their discomfort.

It’s a humanitarian issue and it’s a community issue and we’re working with some local groups to explore better options for these homeless citizens and for us and our patrons.

Some of our readers might recall the 70s duo of Brewer and Shipley—Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley.  They’re still around and they still perform together.  We had them a few years ago for our Community Concert series.

Some folks have never gotten over their big hit, “One Toke Over the Line,” about smoking marijuana.  But what once was radical music is becoming mainstream living.

One of the songs they did at our concert was “The Streets of America.”  It came to mind the other day when we were thinking about this special issue at the library.

In this era when political advantage is being sought by those who stoke fears that immigrants are inherently evil and a threat to American Values (a vague phrase that has had whatever blood is in it sucked out by whose own criteria for Americanism are not above question), or some people should just not be seen where other folks live and work, we were reminded of that song. We found a video of a Brewer and Shipley concert on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrzGpwvmoQ4

The song is about 50 minutes in.

They wrote the song in 1993. It’s copyrighted by Eye Forty Four Music (as in I-44, which goes through Tom Shipley’s town of Rolla—Michael lives in Branson). It’s on their “Shanghai” CD.

Leaving home, losing pride
Some suffer, some simply die
For a glance at the streets of America

I’m not sure why they call it the land of the free
But I know why they call it the home of the brave

I see sisters and brothers
Trading one heartache for another
And a shot at the streets of America

Those who have they ain’t givin’
Those who don’t are workin’ for a livin’
They’re forgotten on the streets of America

I’m not sure why they call it the land of the free
But I know why they call it the home of the brave

I hear so many voices
Telling me there ain’t many choices
When you sleep on the streets of America

I’m not sure why they call it the land of the free
But I know why they call it the home of the brave
I’m not sure why they call it the land of the free
But I know why they call it the home of the brave

“I hear so many voices telling me there ain’t many choices when you sleep on the streets of America,” they sing.

Reciting the Biblical adage that “the poor will always be with us” doesn’t solve the problem of those who sleep on our streets because it misinterprets the issue.

In a place defined by some as a “Christian nation,” the statement should not be used as a dismissive.  It should be seen as the obligation such a nation should assume if it truly believes in the words of the one who said, “Inasmuch as you do for the least of these…..”

It’s not often that we think of a library as a place where this obligation is played out.

But it is.