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Tag Archives: Alabama
On Trump and the Weather Back East
September 5, 2019 By The Central Standard Times in Politics Tags: " admitting a mistake, "tweet, Alabama, bullshitting, Carolinas, Hurricane Dorian, National Weather Service, Trump	Leave a comment
The good people of the great state of Alabama have been spared any effects from Hurricane Dorian, but there was no avoiding the fallout from another of President Donald Trump's "tweets."
Earlier this week Trump "tweeted" that Alabama was threatened by the hurricane, but shortly afterwards the National Weather Service "tweeted" that Alabama was well beyond any anticipated path of the storm and unlikely to suffer any nasty weather. Trump is loathe to ever admit any mistake, however, so on Wednesday he unveiled a weather map that had been clearly and quite clumsily altered to back up his "tweet."
By now Trump's die hard fans have come to accept his frequent "bullshit" — if you'll forgive a vulgarism that is now part of presidential rhetoric — but this is hard for anyone else to overlook. When a president takes to "twitter" to prognosticate about the weather he should be relying on the most reliable data available, and if it proves wrong, as it so often does, he should be willing to admit it. Clumsily altering an NWS weather map with what looks to be a felt-tipped pen, or a "Sharpie" as the youngsters call it, should be beyond the presidential pale.
The best available data suggests that the Carolinas and the east coast up to the Washington, D.C, are threatened by flooding rains and surge tides and battering winds from Hurricane Dorian. We surely hope not, as these are great states full of fine people, but we advise them to put more more trust in God than Trump.
Abortion Back in the News, Darn It
May 16, 2019 By The Central Standard Times in Politics Tags: abortion, Alabama, first trimester., partial birth, pro-choice. pro-life., Roe v. Wade, Vermont, Wichita	1 Comment
The abortion issue is lately back in the news, and we admit we hate to see it there. Even after so many decades of noisome debate we don't really know where we stand on the matter, and we notice that the more cocksurely opinionated people on both sides are further apart than ever, and at this point we figure that it will be left to far future generations of as-yet unborn babies to resolve it.
Emboldened by President Donald Trump's last two appointments to the Supreme Court, the Alabama legislature has passed and the Alabama governor has signed a law that would punish any doctor who preformed an abortion at any stage of a pregnancy with a life sentence except in the case where the life of the mother's life was threatened, and makes no exception for cases of rape or incest. The law is plainly unconstitutional according to the 1972 Roe v Wade decision, which has been a source of constant contention ever since, but Alabama is betting that a couple of Trump appointees on the Supreme Court will be able to overturn that hated decision.
Meanwhile, the other side seems to be digging into an equally extreme position. Self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders' state of Vermont has recently passed and signed into law that guarantees a right to abortion rights up to the moment of childbirth, and arguably makes allowances for infanticide, and although the rest of the Democratic party hasn't gone quite that far it's still far out on the pro-choice side of the debate.
According to all the opinion polls most of the American public is somewhere in the middle about all this, and as much as we hate to admit we're common so are we. Our beloved hometown of Wichita was the epicenter of the abortion debate back in the '90s, when we were working for the local newspaper and local abortionist Dr. George Tiller was performing very early and very late-term abortions, and a very angry anti-abortion movement in this very Christian town caused traffic jams and mass arrests and public nuisances by effectively shutting the practice down for a short while. We've never had a serious pregnancy scare — knock on wood — so both our pro-choice and pro-life friends can reasonably claim we have no standing to opine.
They're probably both right, of course, but we'll nonetheless stand by our centrist position. We've been fortunate to know some very fine women who have shared very personal stories about their first trimester abortions, and our Christin faith tells us not to stand in judgment of them. No matter how it was conceived a fetus is a potential sacred human life, on the other hand, and certainly by the time it could survive outside the womb it is entitled to the full protection of the law.
We'd like to think that America's political institutions and judicial systems will sort it all out, but we doubt it. The Republicans are currently led by Trump, a thrice-married and oft-bankrupt Casino-and-strip-club mogul who has publicly bragged about his extra-marital love life, and was a staunch pro-choice supporter until he decided to run for the Republican nomination. Meanwhile, the Democrats seem likely to nominate someone who's openly anti-life. and we hope that's also not a winning stance.
The matter is more likely to be settled in the courts, but we don't holda out hope it will end there. Even if those two Trump appointees overturn the Roe v Wade that guaranteed a right to first trimester abortions they won't dare declare a constitutional right to life from the moment of conception and ban abortions altogether, and if they did it would result in one hell of an uproar. The very best the pro-life Republicans can hope for is that the matter is returned to the states, with Vermont going one way and Alabama another, and all the rest of the states arguing about it endlessly, with at least half of the states sending its citizens to the next state for an abortion, and the Republican Party probably coming out on the losing end.
The Primary Concerns of a Convoluted Age
May 8, 2018 By The Central Standard Times in Politics Tags: accused child molester, Alabama, Arizona primary, coal miners, Don Blankenship, Donald Trump, Evan Jenkins, Indiana Primary, Patrick Morrisey, primary, prison, Sen. Jeff Flake, senate race, West Virginia	Leave a comment
West Virginia's Republican Party will choose its Senate nominee in a primary election today, and it makes for an interesting contest. The race features the state's Attorney General, Patrick Morrisey, and the state's current Third Congressional District Rep. Evan Jenkins, both of whom are by all accounts the sort of solid but boring conservative Republicans the Grand Old Party once prided itself on, as well as Don Blankenship, a brash and blunt-spoken business mogul and political neophyte who is self-funding a quixotic campaign despite the sorts of scandals that used to derail a Republican primary campaign.
In the age of President Donald Trump it shouldn't be surprising that Blankenship has a slight lead in the public opinion polls on Election Day, even though his scandals include the year he served in a federal prison for his coal mining company's violations of worker safety laws that resulted in a mine explosion and the death of 29 coal miners.
Republican majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell has directed his party's congressional campaign fund to sink some six-figure expenditures into advertisements opposing Blankenship's campaign, but Blankenship has doled out even more money for ads deriding McConnell as "Cocaine Mitch" and disparaging his Chinese-American wife and her "China person" relatives, claiming the year he served in prison on worker safety charges was a "deep state" conspiracy," and has relished the opprobrium of the party's hated Republican establishment. Meanwhile the Democrats have been spending their money attacking both of Blankenship's more solid but boring conservative Republican opponents, sensing an easier kill, and the opprobrium of the entire hated political establishment explains his slight lead in the polls.
By Monday even Trump had "tweeted" his advice that West Virginian Republicans vote for one of the other two solid but boring conservative Republicans. It wasn't because of Blankenship's business decisions that had resulted in the death of 29 coal miners, nor because of the blatantly racist slurs against McConnell's Chinese-American wife, who Trump had appointed as his Transportation Secretary despite his own crusades against McConnell and the rest of the rest of the hated Republican establishment, but because he'd concluded that Blankenship "can't win." Blankenship responded that he was even "Trumpier than Trump," and given the Republican party's current disdain for the entirety of the political order that might win him a nomination.
After a Republican primary in Alabama resulted in the nomination of an unapologetic theocrat and and convicted felon and credibly accused child molester, Trump had offered a full-throated endorsement of said nominee and suffered the embarrassment of eking out a win in that once-reliably Republican state, and he seems to have learned his lesson. Whoever wins the nomination in West Virginia will be up against unopposed Democratic incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin, who's as hellbent on coal-mining at whatever the costs as Trump or Blankenship or any other Republican, and has been Trumpy enough on all the rest of the Trump agenda to offend all the Democrats in the other 49 states, At this point, even those solid but boring conservative West Virginia Republicans who still have a shot at winning their party;s nomination seem unlikely to add to the Republicans' razor-thin majority in the upcoming mid-term elections.
Meanwhile, Indiana's Republicans have an almost as complicated choice in today's Senatorial primary, and the upcoming primary in Arizona to replace the admirably solid and boring conservative but not at all Trumpy and therefore retiring Sen. Jeff Flake features a former local Sheriff and current frontrunner who was pardoned by Trump for violating the Fourth and Ninth and 13th Amendment rights of that city's longstanding and largely Republican Latino population, and has recently been praised as a champion of law and order by the previously boring but solidly solidly Republican Vice President of the United States. Around the rest of the rest of the country, even here in our usually reliable Republican Fourth District of Kansas the solidly conservative but boring sorts of Republicans or even the more Trumpy types seem in for a tough general election fight.
The Democrats are as bad as ever, as far as we're still concerned, even that Manchin fellow in West Virginia. Despite and perhaps because of our longstanding Republicanism we'll advise both our Democratic and Republican friends in any old state to vote for the most boring and establishment type they find on their party's primary ballots, and hope the center holds despite all the craziness that has been unleashed in both parties in the age of Trump.
Pennsylvania and Pompeo and the Rest
March 14, 2018 By The Central Standard Times in Politics Tags: Alabama, Central Intelligence Agency, child molester, House election, mike pompeo, Pennsylvania, rallies, Rex Tillerson, Russia, Secretary of State, State Department	Leave a comment
The big story on Tuesday was supposed to be that portentous special House election in Pennsylvania, but of course President Donald Trump wound up grabbing all the headlines. He fired his Secretary of State, which would be newsworthy story in any administration, and given these peculiar circumstances there were enough subplots to fill countless side bar stories.
Although none of ever much liked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, some of us are sorry to see him go. He came into the job with no previous diplomatic experience, save for negotiation some big-money deals as the head of the giant Exxon corporation with the Russian government that were being hampered by American sanctions, so he started off on the wrong foot with the foreign policy establishment. He proved more of a hard-liner on Russia than Trump would prefer, so the establishment press came to regard him as a restraining influence on the president, but that only made him all the more unpopular with Trump and his hard-line supporters. Meanwhile Tillerson went ahead with his budget-cutting and downsizing plan for the State Department, which did not endear him to any of his employees, and in the end it didn't spare Tillerson from his own boss's wrath.
Trump's announced replacement is Central Intelligence Agency director Mike Pompeo, which is another interesting story. As much as we hate to name drop, we've actually schmoozed with the guy on a couple of occasions, which is one of the perks of being well-connected on the theatrical and political and social scenes here in Wichita, Kansas, which has somehow produced two CIA directors in our lifetimes, and we have to say we found him a friendly enough fellow. He's a formidable fellow, too, top of his class at West Point and editor of the Harvard Law Review and founder of a successful high-tech aviation business here in town, and as traditional Kansas Republicans we enthusiastically voted for him in all three of his successful runs in our Fourth Congressional District. Why, wee still have a red-white-and-blue "I Like Mike" button on our desk, which we proudly use to prick the pinholes on our pesky electronic devices.
Pompeo gave an eloquent endorsement of Sen. Marco Rubio during the Kansas Republican party's primary caucus down at Century II, and was among the Republican resisting Trump right up until the nomination, but since then he's been more accommodating to Trump. Early on in his is CIA role he reaffirmed the agency's conclusion that the Russian government had indeed meddled in the past presidential election, and that the "Wikileaks" operation leaking all the hacked Democratic e-mails was acting on Russia's behalf, but he was careful not to implicate Trump. Over time he reportedly won Trump over with his schmoozing and his educational and military and business and Kansas conservative credentials, along with his increasing willingness to insulate Trump from any of that "Russia thing," and we're not surprised by Pompeo's latest promotion.
Trump was reportedly considering firing Tillerson months ago, although dismissed it as "fake news" at the time, so there was naturally some speculation about why it happened on Tuesday. Tillerson had survived the reports that he'd called Trump a certain profane sort of "Moron," which he neither confirmed nor denied, and Trump's "tweets" about challenging his Secretary of State to an I.Q. test competition, and all the times that Tillerson had distanced himself on whatever story was dominating the day's news cycle, from the Paris Climate Accord to the neo-Nazi rally in Virginia to the wisdom of negotiating with the North Korean dictatorship, so one can't help wondering what straw at long last broke the metaphorical camel's back.
The British government is currently indignant about a couple of political assassinations that were quite apparently committed on their sovereign soil by agents of the Russian government, and Tillerson expressed his shared indignation shortly after the White House press secretary had stressed that maybe the Russians had nothing to do with it, so naturally there was some speculation about that. Trump has since said that yeah the Russians probably did it, although he didn't seem the least big indignant about it, and he's previously expressed his opinion that hey what the hell we do lots of extra-terrritorial killings here in the good ol' USA, so there's some expected speculation about that.
If we were the type to indulge in conspiracy theories, we'd chalk Tillerson's firing up to that portentous special House election in Pennsylvania. We stayed up all night to the results but it was still too close too call, but the Democrat was clinging to a slim over the Republican, and no matter how the lawyers work it out we're sure Trump would rather not talk about that.
Trump won the district by 20 points in the election landslide, even better than the 15 or more point victories that Republicans had long expected, but since then things have changed. The Republicans have won most of the special congressional elections since Trump's inaugural, but that's mostly because they've been in districts or states where Trump promoted a popular Republican to a cabinet position, and all of the races have been conspicuously closer than the last time around. The Republicans even managed to lose a Senate seat in Alabama, of all places, for crying out loud, and a loss in northern Pennsylvania would bode ill for a lot of Republicans next November.
That Republican down in Alabama was credibly accused of all sorts creepy and criminal behavior, while that Republican up in Pennsylvania is more frequently criticized for being boring, unlike the pro-life and family values Republican incumbent who'd resigned the seat after his mistress told the press about he'd pressed to get an abortion. In both elections Trump held well-attended and raucous rallies in support of his fellow Republicans, and although in both in cases he talked mostly about himself they wound up well short of his victory margins, even the Republican lawyers somehow eke out a victory. which does not portend well for Trump or the rest of the Republicans in fall's mid-term elections.
All politics really is local, though, even in the age of Trump. The Democrat in Pennsylvania was just as supportive of Trump's crazy-ass steel tariffs as the Republican, and he was a handsome ex-Marine and former prosecutor who'd killed or locked up all sorts of sinister types, and was centrist on guns and such, and had the endorsement of the remaining steelmaking unions. The Republican down in Alabama was credibly accused of all sorts of creepiness, and the opposing Democratic took his own boring and centrist position, which eventually won the day.
Maybe Pompeo's appointment as Secretary of State will turn it all around, but we doubt it. He strikes us as a nice enough and serious enough fellow, but these are trying times.
Feminism, Trumpism, and Political Reality
January 29, 2018 By The Central Standard Times in Culture, Politics Tags: " slavery, "Apprentice", abortion, Alabama, dinner on the table, feminism, male chauvinist pig, man-hating, missouri, Piers Morgan, rape, Sen. Claire McCaskill, Trump, women's suffrage	Leave a comment
During his recent trip abroad President Donald Trump gave an interview to the British broadcaster Piers Morgan, a former winner of Trump's "Apprentice" game show, and although it doesn't air until tonight the good stuff has already leaked out. So far, the least surprising news is that Trump does not consider himself a feminist.
"No, I wouldn't say I'm a feminist," Trump told Morgan. "I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I'm for men, I'm for women, I'm for everyone."
That's not so shockingly sexist as what Trump said when he was yukking it up with Billy Bush on the "Access Hollywood" bus, and we suppose he deserves some credit for not boasting that he's the least sexist person you ever met, but it's likely to further infuriate a lot of his female critics. The fans will love it, of course.
Feminism has a reputation in some circles as a man-hating and abortion-loving philosophy that is as hectoring as it is humorless, due in some part to that small but significantly pesky number of undeniably hectoring and humorless feminists who actually hate men and have a slightly morbid enthusiasm for abortion. Most people simply nod silently and walk away from those sorts, and have happy and mutually respectful encounters with the far greater number of feminist women who simply hold to the belief that they're entitled to equal civil rights and fair treatment in the workplace and mutually respectful interactions with they men they have to deal with.
In some circles even that reasonable sort of feminism is resented, though, and we can't blame any woman for thinking that Trump travels in those in circles. He did once boast during a Republican primary debate that nobody has more respect for women than he does, but that got a big laugh out of even a Republican primary debate audience, and the claim that he's not an out right old-fashioned male chauvinist pig, as the man-hating and humorless sorts of feminists used to call them back in '70s, is by now laughable. All the networks have endlessly replayed that "Access Hollywood" boast about grabbing women by their "wherevers," as Trump more politely put it on that endlessly replayed tape of an interview where he sure seemed to imply that Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly had asked him a question about his past derogatory comments about women's looks because she was menstruating. There's a rich trove of audio from Howard Stern's shock-jock radio show, too, with Trump opining unfavorably on small-breasted women and bragging about letting all three of his wives do the diaper-changing and other child-rearing chores and giddily recalling the times he invaded the dressing rooms at his teenage beauty pageants.
There are also all the women who have put their reputations on the line to publicly allege that Trump grabbed them by their wherevers or invaded their teenage beauty pageant dressing rooms, too, and the column inches of Archie Bunker-era male chauvinist piggish quotes in press interviews and his own ghost-written memoirs would stretch from Trump Tower in New York City to the White House in Washington, D.C., and the audio and video clips could fill a couple of 24-hour news cycles.
Some very reasonable and perfectly respectable Republican friends of ours freely acknowledge the fact of Trump's male chauvinist piggishness but have somehow reconciled themselves to it. They'll argue that Trump is merely critiquing the man-hating and abortion-loving style of feminism, and taking the very reasonable and respectable pro-everybody stand, which will quickly lead to talk about how the "Black Lives Matter" movement's moniker seems to imply that other lives don't matter or at least matter less, and they'll have their points. When reminded of the freely admitted fact that Trump is pretty much a male chauvinist pig as well as pretty much a racist, stone cold and old school, as the kids the used to say, they'll note the currently low unemployment rates for women and black people. On each point, we'll admit they have a valid point.
The friendly sorts of feminists and black empowerment types we've befriended over the years have some valid points, too, and we'll not argue with them for the sake of the likes of Trump. As much as we wish the "Black Lives Matter" movement would heed our advice to stress that of course all lives matter, and find that middle ground between preventing cops from using unnecessary force and prohibiting the necessary force to deter all the criminals who would otherwise take a far greater toll of black lives, we don't worry that making black lives better need result in making our own white lives any worse. Despite those admittedly annoying man-hating and abortion-loving sorts of feminists, neither do we worry that to whatever extent feminism is pro-woman it is necessarily anti-man.
Our reasonable and respectable yet Trump-supporting friends have convinced themselves that Trump gets that, but we think he's playing to those circles who still expect the little woman to have dinner on the table when the man comes home and do all the diaper-changing and other women's work. In our experience they're a dwindling population, as most guys have by now reconciled themselves to the fact that they have to go along with most of the the past 50 years or so feminism if they're going to get any, but they're still out there and make up an important chunk of Trump's fan base.
There's that Republican candidate for the Senate in Missouri who was caught on tape opining that he expected the little woman to have dinner on the table when he got home and do all the rest of the women's work around the house, and that Republican nominee for an Alabama Senate seat who thought that constitutional amendments abolishing slavery and giving women the right to vote were bad ideas, and was also quite credibly accused of once being the creepy thirty-something guy hanging around the local mall hitting on teenage girls. Both had significant support, too, and although some of bearded-yet-sensitive "Bernie Bros" who backed the self stand accused by the sisterhood of failing to support that harridan Democratic nominee and presumptive First Woman President Hillary Clinton we have to admit that most of the remaining troglodytes are Republicans and Trump voters.
Despite Trump's full-throated support for that pro-slavery and anti-women's suffrage and credibly accused child molester of a Republican nominee somehow lost a race in Alabama, of all places, to a Democrat, of all people. The Missouri race will be against Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, who is considered vulnerable because Trump won the state in the last election, but the last time she ran the Republican nominee had also carried the state in the most recent president election and she won because the Republicans had nominated a nut job who went off on audio tape about how the victims of "real rape" could not become pregnant and therefore the complete ban on abortions he wanted should make no exceptions for rape. If the Missouri Republicans go with the make-me-a-sandwich-damnit candidate this time around, we think that even with Trump's full-throated support the more reasonable and respectable sorts of Republicans will have blown another opportunity.
Happy New Year, All Things Considered
December 29, 2017 By The Central Standard Times in Politics Tags: Alabama, alarmists, climate change, cold snap, Crooked H, Economy, global warming, golf, Hillary Clinton, Roy Moore, senate race, skeptics, Trump, tweets, Vanity Fair	Leave a comment
This is our last essay of 2017, and the way things have gone this year we're glad of it. Journalistic tradition and the traditional slowness of the news cycle dictates that end-of-the-year essays be a look back at the past 12 months, a prognostication about the next 12, or a top ten list of the past 12 month's something or another, but traditions don't matter lately and we're taking the news one day at a time.
The big story of the year's last days, appropriately enough, is that it's cold out there. Here in Kansas the daytime highs are lately struggling to get past freezing and rapidly dropping into single digit lows after the early sundowns, and when you add in the Kansas winds that are blowing down from the North Pole it feels far worse than that. To the northwest and the northeast it looks even worse on the weather maps, and it looks like a very long drive to the southwest or the southeast to get warm enough for our tastes.
Which kept us inside most of the day, and reading the rest of the desultory news. We noted that President Donald Trump "tweeted" about all the cold weather from the fabulous Florida resort where he was playing some holiday golf while a shifting truck block the news crews from filming, and he gloated about being vindicated for his controversial decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. Being climate change skeptics ourselves we've also taken advantage of these annual cold snaps to kid our global warming alarmist friends, but we mean it as a joke rather than a serious scientific argument, and the "tweet" struck us as unpersuasive and un-presidential.
He also "tweeted" about a very minor flap between Vanity Fair magazine and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, with the former standing accused of making a slightly sexist joke about the latter in a little-seen video, and of course Trump ridiculed the magazine — "which looks like it's on it's last legs" — for "apologizing for the minor hit they took at Crooked H." We're skeptical about Vanity Fair and Clinton, as well, but that also struck us as something a president with some sense of dignity should be far too busy to do.
Meanwhile, down in Alabama, which still looks too cold for our tastes on those weather maps, the Republican Secretary of State of certified the upset election of Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, which was another big story of the day despite its inevitably since last month's election night. Republican candidate Roy Moore was contesting the election results right up to the last minute, filing a court challenge alleging just enough voter fraud to reverse the outcome, but but after a Republican judge dismissed the suit the fait accompli was at long accomplished. It was a fitting end for one of the sorrier stories of the year.
Moore was arguably the worst nominee the Republican party ever nominated, the present competition notwithstanding. His inglorious career of public service and private enrichment and antebellum views about slavery and women's rendered him upset prone even before several middle-aged women came forward to describe how he had pursued them when they were teenaged girls and he was a 30-something prosecutor. He was so awful he lost in Alabama, off all places, to a Democrat, of all people, and he never did concede that fact. His last-minute filing had a statistical analysis proving massive voter fraud in one particular mostly-black county, but one of the experts had also previously proved by statistical analysis that were was a massive conspiracy to kill President John Kennedy, and in the end the Republican Secretary of State and the Republican judge and the Republican sheriffs who had checked out some other claims included in the lawsuit all signed off on a Democratic senator.
Former Moore supporter Trump didn't "tweet" anything about it, so far as we can tell, so Moore's confederate cause seems at long last truly lost. What with that Vanity Fair versus Clinton flap and the ongoing "Russia thing" and another round of golf he had more important things to worry about, we suppose. The stock market was slightly up, the unemployment rate is still low, and the economy seems to be generally progressing along its pre-Trump trajectory, so Trump did find time to "tweet" about that.
All the meteorologists are telling us this dying year will come to a frigid end and the next year will start off just as bad, and all the political prognosticators are sounding just as dispiriting, but we'll just take it day by day with a reasonable exception for better days. By late June the temperatures will be comfortably in the mid-90s around here, we'll not gripe about the 100s of July and August, and the springs and autumns are always delightful except for the occasional severe storms. The economy has a good chance of surviving all the politics, and we hold out hope that rest of us will also survive the politics.
Our Wichita State University Wheatshockers head into their inaugural basketball season in the American Athletic Conference as the eight-ranked team in the country, by the time they finish what we hope will be a long run in the national championship tournament the pitchers and catchers will be reporting for spring training, with our New York Yankees looking very promising after some hot-stove season acquisitions for an already potent team, and that's something far better to worry about that some flap involving Vanity Fair and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
All things considered, we can wish all our readers a very Happy New Year.
The Rhetoric of a Rigged System
December 11, 2017 By The Central Standard Times in Politics Tags: " freedom of the press, Alabama, apologize, corrections, Florida, Judge Roy Moore, Mobile, Pensacola, rigged system, sexual misbehavior, Trump, unprecedented	1 Comment
President Donald Trump gave another one of his continuing campaign speeches on Friday in Pensacola, Florida, and it was a doozy even by his standards. In the hour-plus extemporaneous oration he warned that his critics are "very, very bad and evil people," and that "We have a rigged system in this country," which is pretty unprecedented rhetorical rhetoric, but there was so much to object even before he got to those slanders.
There were the usual exaggerated boasts about his electoral-vote victory and popular-vote loss more than a year ago, and he also boasted that he's been the most de-regulating president since Abraham Lincoln. Trump always refers to his revered predecessor as the "late, great Abe Lincoln," just in case you weren't aware of his greatness and hadn't yet heard the bad news about him, and early in his term he seemed pleasantly surprised that Lincoln was a Republican, insisting that most people were unaware of the fact, and he seems similarly unaware of the fact that there weren't a whole lot of regulations to de-regulate back in the 1860s and that Lincoln had more urgent matters. He also took credit for people saying "Merry Christmas,"
Of course there were all the usual attacks on media who persist in reporting news he'd rather not have to hear. He urged any stockholders in his audience to hire a lawyer and sue the American Broadcast Network for a quickly corrected error that resulted in the reporter's suspension and briefly sent the stock market indices down, and noting other corrections various media have made he said "They're saying sorry — they've been doing that all year," and in the very next sentence added "They never apologize." Trump gets things wrong far more frequently, prides himself on never apologizing for anything, but the crowd seemed to love it.
Pensacola is home to the Navy's "Top Gun" aviation training program and its elite Blue Angels flight team, so of course Trump also boasted about his devotion to America's veterans, although in the middle of it he wound up riffing about the low ratings that Arnold Schwarzenegger had as Trump's successor on "The Apprentice."
The very lovely town of Pensacola is also a mere twenty miles or so away from Mobile, Alabama, and shares a media market with about 20 percent of the neighboring state, so of course Trump also put in a plug for the Republican candidate in that crazy special senatorial election. The Republican candidate is twice-removed Judge Roy Moore, who stands quite credibly accused by numerous women of sexual misbehavior, just as Trump does, but Trump made the argument that Moore is opposed by one of those very bad and evil who criticize his agenda. Of course the crowd cheered lustily, but it's hard to say how it played elsewhere.
At the mention of vanquished Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton the crowd went into its usual chant of "lock her up," which is also pretty much unprecedented in the history of presidential politics, and that was prompted the remarks about how the rigged system that somehow prevails in America despite Trump's landslide victory and his appointees at the agencies he warns are out to get him. That's pretty much unprecedented, too, and despite the crowd's raucous response it troubles our old-fashioned Republican souls.
The conservatism we so long ago signed up for sought to conserve the institutions and norms that have been so assiduously built up over the course of America's imperfect but otherwise glorious history, despite the occasional demagogues on the right and left who have popped up now and then, and we won't concede it has culminated in a rigged system. Freedom of the press and an independent judiciary are both pillars of what made America great long before Trump came along, as far as we're concerned, and by now we trust them both far more than we do Trump or that Moore guy.
Trump also said "We need some love in the country. I would love to bring both sides together, if that's possible. There's a lot of hatred out," but that came just seconds after the remark about the very, very bad and evil people who criticize him. All in all, we doubt any of it played well except to sorts of people who show up at these ongoing campaign speeches. The latest polls suggest that's a shrinking number, but Trump is insisting that's "fake news."
From Thanksgiving to the Secular World
November 27, 2017 By The Central Standard Times in Politics Tags: Alabama, child molestation, Democratic sex scandals, Doug Jones, Roy Moore, senate race	Leave a comment
The extended Thanksgiving weekend went well for us, with plenty of exhilarating gratitude for God's blessings, but today is another Monday and the secular world seems as sorry as ever. Over the weekend President Donald Trump "tweeted" his apparent endorsement of that very credibly accused child molester of a Republican candidate who's running for a Senate seat in Alabama, while the Democrats are awkwardly dealing with some unseemly accusations of sexual misconduct of their own against some beloved figures, and all the rest of our politics are just as messy.
We'll further thank God that at least we're not in the same tight spot Trump is regarding that Alabama senate race. Republican candidate Roy Moore was twice elected to the Alabama Supreme Court and twice removed from that bench for defying federal authority on a stand of Christian principle, but now stands quite credibly accused of once being the 30-something local prosecutor who creepily preyed on teenaged girls in at the local malls and high school. Trump himself has been caught on audiotape bragging about he he can grab women by their wherever and talking about invading teenaged beauty pageants' dressings rooms, and has since been credibly accused by numerous woman about doing exactly that, so he's caught between the metaphorical Scylla of admitting that so many women's allegations should be taken serious or the metaphorical Charybdis of arguing that it's no big deal even if true.
Trump split the difference by ignoring the charges against Moore and instead noting that his Democratic opponent Doug Jones is a Democrat, which many an Alabama Republican will agree, perhaps plausibly enough, is way worse than being an credibly accused child molester. This also avoids the messy inference that the numerous and very credible women accusing men of sexual misconduct be believed, so it seems a shrewd move on Trump's part. The Republicans' senate majority leader and House Speaker and the party's congressional committees have also demurred from supporting Moore, as have such grass-roots sorts of old-fashioned Kansas Republicans such as ourselves, but by now that that only bolsters Trump's and Moore's case that the establishment is out to get them.
Meanwhile the Democrats have to deal with the now undeniable facts that many of their members stand credibly accused of being quite creepy, including a Senator beloved for his antagonistic rhetoric and a longstanding Representative who once took a beating down in Alabama for his righteous civil rights stands, along with with all those Hollywood allies who so generously donated to the cause, so it remains to be seen if they'll benefit from any of this. So far the Democrats seem willing to defenestrate any politicians who get in the way of their condemnation of sexual misbehavior, even if that means the once-beloved President Bill Clinton or his long-suffering wife, but by now it might be too late.
By now we're not on either side, and stand instead with the old-fashioned notion that there's a right way and a wrong way to treat women. By now we're hoping that by the end of the Christmas season things will be somewhat better.
A Taxing Situation for the GOP
November 21, 2017 By The Central Standard Times in Politics Tags: "tweet, Alabama, corporate tax rate, Flake(y), Jeff Flake, McConnell, Ronald Reagan, Roy Moore, tax cuts, tax cuts for the rich, tax reform, Trump	Leave a comment
There's a good chance that the Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress will sooner or later pass some tax bill or another, and a certainty that President Donald Trump will make a big show of signing whatever they might come up with, but at the the moment it seems likely to prove a pyrrhic victory. All of the tax bills that are under consideration are currently polling even worse than all the repeal-and-replace-Obamacare bills that never got passed, the inevitable devils in the details spell trouble for those Republican representatives in the Democratic states, and they way that Trump and the rest of the Republicans are going about it are also problematic.
Despite all the desperate Republican attempts to deny it, there's really no denying that all of the potential bills really do amount to that hated huge tax cut for the rich that Democrats are always accusing of them of seeking, which largely explains the bad poll numbers. As old-fashioned Republicans we're sympathetic to the case that the rich shoulder an unfair share of tax burden and that allowing them to spend some greater amount of of their mostly hard-earned money on private sector investments, but these newfangled sorts of Republicans are ill-suited to making that case. Trump claims he's going to take a huge hit on his taxes with any of the Republican bills, but he's the first president in decades who hasn't made his tax returns publicly available to prove such claims, and according to all the polls most Americans don't believe him when he says "believe me."
Trump also likes to brag about how well the American economy is doing since his inauguration, which undercuts the argument President Ronald Reagan persuasively used to sell the even bigger tax cut for the rich that rescued the economy from the stagflation of the '70s, and he doesn't seem to have the same Reagan-esque understanding of the complex theory to explain it to the American public. Even such old-fashioned Republicans as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell seem incapable of making the time-honored arguments for a low-taxed and lightly-regulated economy, and seem to prefer desperate arguments denying that there really is a big tax cut for the rich involved. The Republicans still have a strong case for a significant cut in the world's highest corporate tax rate, which still figures prominently in all the still viable bills, but the Democrats can rightly note that the only corporations who actually pay that rate have very bad accountants, and what with all those corporations doing so well under Trump's leadership it's a harder sell to the general public.
Almost all of those still-viable Republican bills would also eliminate a longstanding federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, which will wind up meaning a tax increase for many middle-and-upper-class Republican voters who find themselves residing in a high-tax Democratic state, and since those voters tend to reside in certain upper-crust Republican districts in those Democratic states that can't help the Grand Old Party's chances of keeping its narrow majorities in Congress. Upper-crust Republicans are already uncomfortable with the party's recent populist turn, and if they're going to be betrayed by their party even on such hard-core convictions as tax cuts that's bound to a problem.
There are valid Republican arguments to be made against all of those still-viable bills, too, and Republicans being such cussedly hard-to-herd contrarians many of them are making those arguments. Some of the last die-hard deficit hawks are objecting the to projected and pretty much undeniable increases in the national debt, God bless 'em, those Republican members from those upper-crust districts in otherwise Democratic states are of course speaking out. in the Senate that nice lady from Maine has her usual liberal-leaning objections and that staunch fellow from Kentucky is suggesting none of the still-viable alternatives are nearly conservative enough, and the Republicans might yet snatch defeat from the jaws of a pyrrhic victory.
The House has already passed a badly-polling bill but has some sticking points with each of the remaining viable Senate bills, and the Senate majority is razor-thin, so of course Trump re-started a "twitter" feud with a Republican senator whose vote is badly needed. Arizona's Sen. Jeff Flake has been a reliable vote for consensus Republican causes during his first term, but he also wrote a book critical of Trump's combative rhetoric and more populist tendencies, and was recently caught on a live microphone saying that if the Republicans become the party of Trump and Alabama senate candidate Ray Moore it is "toast," so Trump promptly "tweeted" that Flake — or "Flake(y)" as Trump put it — was therefore a "no vote" on any Republican bill. Our guess is that Flake will vote as usual with the consensus of Republican opinion, and since he's already announced he won't run for reelection given the current climate we're sure he'll cast his vote with concern for the political consequences, so we won't blame him whether he hands Trump yet another legislative defeat or allows Trump a pyrrhic victory.
If the process drags out long enough it might come to down a special Senate race down in Alabama, where the aforementioned Moore seems in danger of losing that reliably Republican state's Senate seat to a Democrat, of all people. Moore stands credibly accused by numerous woman of being that creepy guy who preys on teenaged girls, and by now many of the old-fashioned Republicans have renounced his campaign, but Trump has preferred to "tweet" about a Democratic senator's sexual misconduct while White House spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway was on television urging Alabamans to vote for the credibly accused child molester in order to pass whatever tax bill the Republicans come up with. This might work for no, but in the long run it strikes us as an especially pyrrhic victory.
The economy will probably chug along in any case, and the national debt will just as surely swell, the inevitable reckoning will hopefully occur after we do, and as far as we're concerned both parties deserve whatever they get.
Things Go Further South Down South
November 16, 2017 By The Central Standard Times in Politics Tags: access hollywood, Alabama, beauty pageants, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, dressing rooms, Roy Moore, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, senate race, sexual harassment	Leave a comment
That awful Senate race down in Alabama somehow got more awful yet on Wednesday, and by now it's hard to see how it ends well for the Republican party. Two more women came forward to the Washington Post alleging Republican candidate Roy Moore acted quite creepily toward them when they were teenagers working at the mall Moore was said to hang out at, yet another woman told a similar but even creepier story to the Alabama-based and widely read AL.com site, which brings the running total to eight accusers.
None of the women have any apparent reason to risk their reputations among their mostly Republican Alabama neighbors by telling a lie, all have named and unnamed women who recall them telling the very same stories from time the incidents allegedly happened, and the national and state media have found co-workers of Moore who recall his well known predilection for teenaged girls, along with workers at the mall who recall that Moore was not welcome there because of frequent complaints about his behavior there. Already it adds up a compelling case, with more sure to come, and so far the rebuttal hasn't been at all convincing.
Moore himself went on Sean Hannity's exceedingly friendly radio show before the latest accusations, and wound up answering questions about whether he'd ever dated teenage girls while a 30-something assistant district attorney by saying "not generally, no," and "it would be out of my customary behavior," and regarding one of his specific accusers he replied that "If we did go out on dates, then we did, but I don't recall that," and offered assurances that "I don't remember dating any girl without permission from her mother." The former state Supreme Court justice's lawyer has proved just as inept, trying to ingratiate himself to the dark-skinned and funny-sounding-named host on a liberal network by noting that different cultures have rules regarding courtship, which prompted his co-host to note that "He's from Canada," and he kept referring to an even-darker skinned host on another liberal network by constantly calling him by a chummy nickname, which prompted his host to say "That's what not what my mother named me, and I'd never call you by anything other than your given name," and the rest of it went as badly.
Moore still has his defenders in the most die-hard redoubts of the conservative media, but they're also having a hard time of it. Even Hannity expressed doubts after some advertisers threatened to pull out, although he's gone back to his presumption of innocence after winning one back. On Wednesday he led his Fox News show with decades-old news about Presidents Bill Clinton's hound dog ways, rightly recalling how many Democrats who are now offended by Moore's behavior were willing to give their a man pass for purely partisan reasons, and so far as we can discern the argument is that Hannity and other Moore apologists are therefore entitled to do the same for their man. Right-wing talk radio king Rush Limbaugh reminded his audience that Moore was a registered Democrat at the time he was alleged to have been the creepy 30-something guy hanging out at the mall, and as far we can discern the argument is that whatever Moore might have done it should be held against his Democratic opponent, then went on a longer rant about how it's all being cooked up by Republican majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and the rest of the rascally Republican establishment, which fears the populist insurgency that President Donald Trump has unleashed.
That's a popular theory among all the talk radio show callers and the commenters on every conservative web site, too, but it's a hard sell to the rest of the country. McConnell has indeed clearly stated that he believes the women who have accused Moore, the official national Republican party has withdrawn its financial and logistical support for Moore's campaign, and several other prominent officials have taken the same stand, but so have such grass roots old-fashioned heartland Republican conservatives such as ourselves. Those establishment Republicans have also let us down more than a few times over the past years, but they've a won a few battles along the way, and we have to figure that if they were smart to enough to come up with eight ordinary Alabama women and former district attorney office employees and mall workers with corroborating witnesses and documentary evidence in their devious plots they probably would have been able to repeal and replace Obamacare and pass a massive tax cut by now.
Those establishment Democrats are by now admitting that Clinton was an indefensible hound dog, as Hannity and Limbaugh and the rest of die-hard insurgents gleefully note, but the only ones who have consistently maintained an anti-hound dog stand up to now are those establishment Republicans and such grass roots types as ourselves. Way back before the biggest Clinton scandals McConnell led the effort to expel Republican Sen. Robert Packwood from Congress for sexual harassment, he voted to impeach Clinton for lying under oath about his well-documented hound behavior, he's applying the same standards of proof during the current imbroglio, so we're pleased to see he's earning some begrudging respect from his die-hard Democratic critics.
There's a big chunk of the party that hates him and the rest of the Republican establishment all the more for it, though, and it's not clear where the party is heading. Putatively Republican President Donald Trump has only warily waded into the controversy so far, citing his preoccupation with a trip to Asia, and upon his return he pretended not to hear any of the reporters' shouted questions about Moore, so it's not at all clear what he'll do. Trump supported McConnell's choice in the Republican primary, which mightily annoyed his supporters in the die-hard redoubts of the right wing, and although he did so half-heartedly and with open reservations he's not tied to Moore, but he did endorse Moore after the primary, and fully cutting ties will be troublesome.
Trump is politically savvy enough to know that he doesn't want to associated with a candidate who is credibly accused by numerous women of creepy behavior, but he can't join with his party's Senate majority leader or his own Attorney General in saying "I believe the women" without the next question asked by those pesky reporters being why the public shouldn't also believe the larger number of credible women who accuse him of creepy behavior. After an audiotape of Trump boasting to an "Access Hollywood" host that he grabbed women by their wherevers several witnesses went on the record about how he had done just that. A short time later the media dug up an old tape of Trump yukking it up with shock jock Howard Stern about how he liked to invade the dressing rooms at the teenaged beauty pageants he produced, which was followed by by interviews with several former pageant contestants who recalled Trump doing exactly about what he'd bragged about.
Trump won anyway with the Hannity defense that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's hound dog husband had gotten away with worse, because of course none of those women were lying, and therefore Republicans are entitled to a pass, but these days even the Democrats aren't defending the formerly lovable rascal and most of the American seems fed up with such behavior no matter the hound dog's party affiliation. The official statement from Moore's campaign about the latest accusations says that "If you are a liberal and hate Judge Moore, apparently he groped you. If you are a conservative and love Judge Moore, you know these allegations are a political farce." It's true enough that if you're the sort of conservative who loves Moore you probably somehow know these allegations are untrue, and might eke out a win in Alabama, but around the rest of the country and even in the establishment sort of Republican households that's not a winning electoral majority.
Which seems to leave Trump and the rest of party he putatively leads in a no-win situation. They can enrage a vocal and energetic and significantly sized part of the conservative coalition by jettisoning Moore, or embrace a candidate who was the Democrats' dream caricature of a Bible-thumping and gay-bashing and law-defying theocrat even before he started looking a lot like the creepy 30-something guy who used to hang out at the mall. The Republicans were already stereotyped as the party of old white men, and as much as it would pain us all to lose a Senate seat in Alabama of all places it might be worth it to avoid the reputation as the party of dirty old white men.


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Papa plays djembe during the Echassier (stiltwalker) dance for the Senin show, University of Reno, NV, 2009.
Playing the balafon at the Lalea show 2010.
Adama, Aboulaye and Papa perform at Reno High School in November 2009.