Category Archives: Politics

Be Prepared To Stop

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World's Largest Cross, Effingham IL

World’s Largest Cross, Effingham IL

Today in Politico, Claire McCaskill (D), senior Senator from Missouri has just published an excerpt from her new memoir, “Plenty Ladylike”. The article entitled, “How I Helped Todd Akin Win — So I Could Beat Him Later” carries the McCaskill byline. In this article’s lead paragraph, she boldly brags about manipulating the Republican primary and engineering her own reelection. She did this by aiding the GOP nomination of Todd Akin of eventual ‘legitimate rape’ fame. He was nominated and was actually leading McCaskill until his televised comments about rape on August 19, 2012. This is an example of down and dirty Missouri politics at its best. I’d like to believe that my $100 contribution to her 2012 campaign became part of the monies that she used to support the Akin primary campaign. Harry Truman would have been proud. Ballsy!

It was August 7, 2012, and I was standing in my hotel room in Kansas City about to shotgun a beer for the first time in my life. I had just made the biggest gamble of my political career—a $1.7 million gamble—and it had paid off. Running for reelection to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Missouri, I had successfully manipulated the Republican primary so that in the general election I would face the candidate I was most likely to beat. And this is how I had promised my daughters we would celebrate.

Go Greyhound!

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Bus Drivers Chilling, All Back of the Bus

Bus Drivers Chilling, All Back of the Bus

Anne came home last night. She took the Greyhound bus from Ann Arbor to the Lou, via Toledo, Fort Wayne, Indy, Terre Haute and Effingham. The trip took about as long as it would to drive, with more generous stops than we usually take. Her review of the bus ride was kind of meh though, not too bad, but not that great either. I picked her up at the relatively new downtown combination bus and train station, which at least on its exterior is a step up from its two predecessors. The photo with this post is from last August. Greyhound was celebrating its hundredth anniversary that year with a PR tour that included many of the coaches that had seen service over that century. This one is their latest design. It was a hot day when we visited their tour, but the interior of this bus was nice and cool. Some of the drivers were chilling in the back.

Ferguson is making the headlines in town again this week, on the first anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white policeman. There have been quite a few protests around town, mostly peaceful, many law-abiding. Of course it is the exceptions that get all the media attention. On Sunday night, there were three shootings in Ferguson, one involving the police. There was also looting and arrests. Monday was punctuated by multiple protests around town that precipitated many arrests, but all remained peaceful. The county had declared a state of emergency on Monday and taken over policing from the Ferguson police. The other development last night was the reappearance of the Oath Keepers, a group of white vigilantes that were heavily armed. They had appeared last year too, but for only one night. Let’s hope that this was their second one night stand.

GOP Idiocracy

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Tattered American Flag

Tattered American Flag

I wish to go on record now that I will not be watching tonight’s GOP presidential debate. Not having cable makes this decision easier than you would think. I had gathered several debate-themed bingo cards in the unlikely event that I did decide to watch the debate, but I’ve already pitched them. Likewise, I won’t be playing the GOP debate drinking game. Especially, since learning that the surgeon general has warned people who if they consumed an alcoholic beverage every time one of these candidates says something stupid, then this behavior would lead to consuming life threatening amounts of booze. Instead, I’ll just wait until tomorrow and settle for the highlight reel. To my mind the pictured American flag is more symbolic of the tattered mess that is the modern Republican Party than any commentary on the state of the nation as a whole. I personally think that our country is way better off now then it was the last time there was a Bush in the Whitehouse.

We Shall Over Comb

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Hibiscus Close-up

Hibiscus Close-up

Yes dear friends this post is yet another treatise on the Donald, but before I launch into it and probably turn you all off, let me give you my news. I went to a concert last night at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. As part of its annual summer time Whitaker Festival, this concert was free to attend. I went to the gardens in response to a Team Kaldi’s invite, from Stew and Nancy. I was sitting on the fence about going and when I finally did decide to go, I had let too much time slip away. The event was billed as a potluck, so I decided to bring the only thing that I had in the house, beer. I figured that beer would be a big hit with a bunch of thirsty bikers. As it turned out Stew, Nancy and their friend Linda were the only other people there and they were all drinking wine. Still, as Nancy pointed out it was a rare, at least in Saint Louis, beautiful summer’s evening. I had a good time speaking with them. The music was somewhat forgettable, in part because we continued to talk over it throughout the concert.

Trump 2016! Lisa Simpson 2020!!

I don’t know when exactly the Donald’s presidential campaign story first exploded upon the news cycle, because it was already going great guns, when I first emerged from my vacation inspired, self-enforced news blackout. I guess that the story hit a crescendo when Trump captured the #1 spot in presidential polls among GOP hopefuls, making him truly the face of the Republican Party and its hair too. If the Donald is a viable candidate then the movie, “Idiocracy”, is now a documentary. Now God forbid that the Donald ever gets elected, but in a show of its prescient power, the long running TV cartoon show “The Simpsons” once aired an episode entitled “Bart to the Future” that had Lisa become the first female president. She became president after Trump had bankrupted the country. Brother Bart became her secretary of Keeping It Real.

Now the candidacy of Lisa Simpson is not without a few constitutional hurdles. On first inspection, she is only an eight-year-old girl and the minimum age for the US Presidency is 35, but she has been eight since the show’s inception in 1989, making her actually old enough to be president in time for the 2016 election. I’m sure that she would make a great president and I might even support her over Hillary, but there is just one minor problem, Lisa is a fictional character. I don’t know of any particular clause in the constitution that specifically forbids fictional characters from holding elective office. Plenty have made it on the ballots before. Some of our best presidents have been fictional characters. There is Michael Douglas’ role in “American President” and Harrison Ford’s “Air Force One”, for example. We here in Missouri have proudly elected a dead man and Lisa is way more animated than he was, but I’m sure that Scalia would have no trouble garnering five votes to disqualify her. So, what we need is the passage of the 28th Amendment, allowing fictional characters to hold public office, which would have no trouble passing amidst the convulsions of a Trump Presidency. That would then make Matt Groening the Master of the Universe, a job that he is already way overqualified for and the country could begin to heal…

Hooray for SCOTUScare!

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Recreational Dentistry

Recreational Dentistry

The Supremes dashed GOP hopes again on Obamacare today, when they ruled not to uphold King vs. Burwell. The crux of this suit boiled down to four little words. This suit argued that if an exchange that is not ‘established by a State’, as the law is written, then an exchange ‘established by the State’, meaning the Federal government, then these second exchanges are not entitled to handout Federal subsidies. Which is really a stupid argument. Why would the Feds not allow themselves to also spend money? Isn’t it easier to believe that this wording is just an unfortunate typo in an 800 page document? This would have wreaked the Affordable Care Act, which was the lawsuit’s intent all along. Justice Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion, in which he pined that “Words no longer have meaning…” and then went on to criticize the “interpretive jiggery-pokery” of the majority’s opinion, but I think that Scalia is onto something here and the import of this ruling goes far beyond the fight over healthcare.

If as was ruled today, my words have the meaning that I meant them to have and not the meaning that I wrote, then this is of tremendous importance to people like me, who are in the blogging business. Really, it is more of a hobby for me. I may be able to speak English as a first language speaker, but if you saw what I write as it first comes out all raw and unrefined, then you would hardly believe that I am able to write English as a first language writer. Before you read my prose, they are filtered through multiple spelling and grammar checkers, both human and machine, and still I routinely churn out garbage, but not anymore. From now on, if a little typo or two should slip through my editing process then it is not a typo after all. You are just not reading it right. After today, you should intuit my meaning in all things blog worthy and if I’m having a particularly bad day, then you should imagine the most perfect alternative writings, as mine. The onus is all on you, the reader. Don’t let us down now. Oh, and Obamacare should be extended for dental coverage too, IMHO. Applesauce!

Time for a Good Blowhard

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Wind from the Sea, Andrew Wyeth, 1947

Wind from the Sea, Andrew Wyeth, 1947

Here I sit tonight in my scriptoria wondering what to write about. I’m wrestling with a bit of writer’s block you see. Read on and see what I came up with.

I declared my portion of Anne’s central hallway painting project done tonight, even if she does not concur. We rehung the doors, which went easier than I thought that it would and reinstalled the ceiling light fixture. Unfortunately, working with the doors created some additional touch-up work for Anne. Sorry about that babes. I put a new extra bright LED bulb in the ceiling fixture and now the central hallway looks very white and very bright, think whiteout conditions. The two-tone wood-paneled doors helps to alleviate this phenomenon a little bit, but not enough. At least Anne will be able to see the little dings that I created, if she wears her sunglasses that is.

I’m sure that you all have noticed the following phenomenon too, whenever you Google something that you might want to buy, because you want to find out more about it that something follows you around the Internet, wherever you may go. We are talking wetsuits and slippers here, a fashion combination that is sure to make a statement no matter where you go. It feels like an invasion of privacy. For Father’s Day, Anne got me a solar cell gizmo for charging cell phones and the like and she was mortified to find ads for such solar cell devices popping up everywhere. She was sure that I would notice them and guess the surprise. What she didn’t know was that I had also Googled these devices and didn’t think twice about seeing the ads. Now that it is after Father’s Day, I just wish that those ads would go away. They are no longer helpful and they make me feel like I’m being spied upon, which I am, but I don’t need the reminder.

Speaking of reminders, I am now getting regular reminders from the Spacely Sprockets law office that my personal information may have been hacked as part of the Office of Personal Management hack. I might have been hacked, but I might not have been hacked, but I probably was hacked and should be extra vigilant and on guard for almost anything, at all times. Maybe they should revisit the terrorist threat levels color wheel of yore and I could forever hover between tangerine and watermelon? Even my beloved Redbirds are getting into the hack act. Heck, according to some LA Times sports writer they are probably responsible for all of this hacking going around.