Quote of the Day -- On Trumpism

 

It is revealing how a political movement that claims to be dedicated to the recovery of national greatness has so readily and completely abandoned many defining national ideals. Donald Trump’s promise of American strength has involved the betrayal of American identity.

One of the most important strands of our founding ideology is civic republicanism. In this tradition, the common good is not automatically produced by a clash of competing interests. A just society must be consciously constructed by citizens possessing certain virtues. A democracy in particular depends on people who take responsibility for their communities, show an active concern for the welfare of their neighbors, demand integrity from public officials, defend the rule of law, and respect the rights and dignity of others. Without these moral commitments, a majority is merely a mob.

What type of citizen has Trump — and his supportive partisan media — produced? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) still holds her job in Congress because she is representative of ascendant MAGA radicalism. Those who reflect her overt racism, her unhinged conspiracy thinking and her endorsement of violence against public figures are now treated as a serious political constituency within the Republican Party. Trump has come down firmly on Greene’s side. One participant in the Jan. 6 attack sent a video to her children saying: “We broke into the Capitol. . . . We got inside, we did our part. We were looking for Nancy [Pelosi] to shoot her in the friggin’ brain, but we didn’t find her.” The detail that gets to me? She sent this to her children. She was living in a mental world where vile, shameful things are a parent’s boast. And she saw her actions as the expression of a public duty — an example of doing her part.

From the article:

Trumpism is American fascism

Links:

Michael Gerson - Wikipedia

Fascism | Definition of Fascism by Merriam-Webster

The Trumpster Takes More Unquestionable--and Deserved--Hits Today

There is an excellent and true and very fair op/ed piece in today's Sunday New York Times by Nicholas Kristof American voters should see.

America and the Virus: ‘A Colossal Failure of Leadership’

In its destruction of American lives, treasure and well-being, this pandemic marks the greatest failure of U.S. governance since Vietnam.

One of the most lethal leadership failures in modern times unfolded in South Africa in the early 2000s as AIDS spread there under President Thabo Mbeki.

Mbeki scorned science, embraced conspiracy theories, dithered as the disease spread and rejected lifesaving treatments. His denialism cost about 330,000 lives, a Harvard study found.

None of us who wrote scathingly about that debacle ever dreamed that something similar might unfold in the United States. But today, health experts regularly cite President Trump as an American Mbeki.

“We’re unfortunately in the same place,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at U.C.L.A. “Mbeki surrounded himself with sycophants and cost his country hundreds of thousands of lives by ignoring science, and we’re suffering the same fate.”

I can't recommend the piece enough.

Not done there, the Times added this.

R.I.P., G.O.P.

The Party of Lincoln had a good run. Then came Mr. Trump.

Of all the things President Trump has destroyed, the Republican Party is among the most dismaying.

“Destroyed” is perhaps too simplistic, though. It would be more precise to say that Mr. Trump accelerated his party’s demise, exposing the rot that has been eating at its core for decades and leaving it a hollowed-out shell devoid of ideas, values or integrity, committed solely to preserving its own power even at the expense of democratic norms, institutions and ideals...

The final op/ed piece I'll mention here today from the Times is this from Maureen Dowd.

King Kong Trump, Losing His Grip

A steaming mad president is running out of steam.

"Biden, the empath;

Trump, the sociopath."

You can only let King Kong, as Don McGahn, Trump’s first White House counsel, dubbed his former boss, smash up the metropolis for so long.

It seems this President, his White House and administration have all given up, too.

White House chief of staff: 'We are not going to control the pandemic'

Meanwhile, this news hit today.

Members of Pence’s Inner Circle Test Positive for Coronavirus

5 people of the Vice President's staff including his Chief of Staff have now tested positive for the coronavirus. Added to that, the Vice President is continuing to campaign across the nation, in spite of this development.

Pence Denounced for 'Grossly Negligent' Decision to Keep Campaigning Despite Exposure to Top Aide With Covid-19

Vote, folks.  In 9 days or sooner, vote.   And vote blue.

86 45

BYEDON

From Barack Obama---to Donald Trump??

Maureen Dowd poses a great question today in the New York Times:

"How could we possibly, in a brief stretch, have gone from the euphoria of our first black president to the desolation of racial strife ripping apart the country?"

It's from her column.

Bonfire of Trump’s Vanity

And the answer, of course, is racism.

And Donald J Trump.

Thanks, Republicans.

"'Twas the Eve of Impeachment..."

With kudos and many, many heartfelt thanks to Frank Bruni at our own New York Times.

’Twas the Eve of Impeachment

Finding verse in this curse.

’Twas the eve of impeachment, when all through the House

No Republicans wavered, each last one a louse.

The articles were drafted by Democrats with care

In hopes that a conscience would soon bloom there.

We pundits were tossing all steamed in our beds,

While Trump’s certain acquittal danced in our heads.

And I in frustration, feeling all solemn,

Wished I could capture my woe in a column,

When out on the web there arose such a clatter,

I signed in to Twitter to see what was the matter.

And there I beheld him, the master of lies,

Weaving fresh falsehoods, to no one’s surprise.

He savaged the Bidens, he smeared Adam Schiff,

And cycled through villains in a furious jiff,

Not to mention distractions, like the teeth of the Speaker.

Could a “leader” be cruder, could his morals be weaker?

So now he’s a dentist, in his all-knowing ways?

I prayed for deliverance one of these days.

When what to my cynical eyes did appear

But a raft of excuses pulled by mangy reindeer,

With a weasel-eyed driver, so meek and so zany,

I knew in a moment he must be Mulvaney.

More shameless than con men, the sycophants came,

And Trump gloated, so bloated, and called them by name:

“Now, Rudy! Now, Jared! Now, Lindsey and Mitch!

Please fly this democracy into a ditch!

It is how you will save me. It is how I prevail.

Or else I will join poor Paul in the jail.

That’s the toll of a presidency ended too soon,

So you must sing along to my favorite tune:

‘It’s a witch hunt! A hoax!’ Those are lyrics for me.

That’s the verse, that’s the chorus, for eternity.”

He was dressed in a necktie, from his jowls to his soles.

He had tanned beyond tanning. Imagine the moles.

His hair, how it swirled! His legs, how they splayed!

On such fishy foundations was his confidence laid.

And we couldn’t stop looking — not his fans, not his foes.

That was what he was after: the show of all shows.

Its plot strained belief. Its appeal tested reason.

Still it was soaring toward a second season.

The economy roared. The Democrats whimpered.

Vladimir chortled. Emmanuel simpered.

In the bag that Trump carried, he had goodies galore:

Lower taxes, the Dow, right-wing judges and more.

They weren’t for the many, they favored the few,

But that was obscured by the smoke that he blew.

All was fog, all was mist, all was boast, all was fiction,

As he hid his true airs with bad diet and diction.

He could do as he wanted and never know fear,

For an elf — and a savior! — named Barr hovered near.

And then there was Tucker and of course Hannity

To put an extra-fine gloss on insanity.

What great luck to discover a country so riven

You could smash it and rule it if suitably driven.

You could summon the Russians, you could bully Ukraine,

Just as long as you made “It’s fake news!” your refrain.

I cringed as I watched him and cried for us all,

Our values, our futures hijacked by his gall.

A last bid to preserve them was cause to impeach

But his party’s corruption put him beyond reach.

So then why all his thrashing? His howls of dejection?

It was just a performance for the next election.

It brought more donations. It rallied the base.

You could see, if you looked, a clear smirk on his face.

If you listened, you heard it: a lilt in his voice.

In drama like this, he would always rejoice.

So as history scarred him, he could nonetheless yell,

“Merry TrumpMas to all! I’m the king of this hell.”

Conservative, Right Wing Republicans on this President

Herewith, I give you, as said above in the title, two Right Wing, very Conservative Republicans and what they have to say about this Republican Party President. First up, George Will.

George Will: No Republican Who Supports Trump Should be Re-elected

It's an excellent, I think even important column with lots of good to great information and points but, following here, I'll only post this one paragraph from the end:

In 13 months, all congressional Republicans who have not defended Congress by exercising “the constitutional rights of the place” should be defeated. If congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trump’s altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severe — losing the House, the Senate and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and even Texas — that even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw.
Next up, as we go into the beginning of the public hearings from and in the House of Representatives on this President and possible impeachment this week, finally, keep this in mind, too.

Former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel Says White House Officials Defying Subpoenas Are Obstructing Justice

And now, from very deeply Right Wing, Conservative, Republican Bill "I Usually Support All Republicans Blindly" Kristol:

Republican Should Challenge Trump in 2020

From earlier this year:

Manchester, N.H. — For the good of the country and the Republican party, Donald Trump has to be challenged from the right in 2020, Weekly Standard editor-at-large Bill Kristol told a friendly crowd of business executives and political insiders here Wednesday morning.

“I don’t know if a challenger would succeed. In my view, I think it’s important to have one just to force the debate,” Kristol said. “I think if Trump were to lose in 2020 it would allow for someone to step up and say, ‘Well, here’s a different way forward than just kind of trying to redo Trump over the next several years.’”
Kristol was the second prominent Never Trumper in as many months to appear at the Politics & Eggs event series, which puts political speakers in front of an audience of New England business leaders who tend to show up in charcoal suits, wearing name tags that flash impressive job titles. Senator Jeff Flake’s anti-Trump speech here at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics drew a standing ovation in April. Attacking Trump from the conservatarian right, Flake flirted with the idea of challenging Trump for the nomination in 2020. (Kristol, who rejects speculation that he might run himself, says he prefers to help find the right challenger, and thinks John Kasich is the most obvious and potentially formidable one.)

After that, let's please, please all keep in mind that it was this President, Donald J "The John" Trump who, this week, was penalized by a judge for--get this--taking 2 million dollars from a charity. And not just any charity, either. This was a charity for American Veterans.

The man given 493 million dollars from his father felt he needed to also take 2 million dollars from a charity for our Veterans.

To date, Republicans have expressed zero regret or remorse for this man.

Zero.

Finally today, I have to ask, in what bizarro world could or would it possibly be okay if a President of the United States were to ask the head of another, foreign nation to investigate any private U.S. citizen, let alone the son of one of his foremost political rivals in the coming national election?

Additional links:

FBI investigated how Trump's actions seemed to benefit Russia

Putin's Payout: 12 Ways Trump Has Supported Putin’s Foreign Policy Agenda

Supreme Court Lawyer Says Trump Will Be Impeached, Won't Even Be On 2020 Ballot

Trump makes history — First President to Never Reach 50% Approval Rating

Trump has More Than 2,500 Conflicts of Interest and Counting, Live Tracker by Watchdog Finds

A Scathing New Pentagon Report Blames Trump for the Return of ISIS in Syria and Iraq

Former Federal Prosecutors Call for Giuliani to Be Disbarred, Possibly Indicted

Sprint, and Their Proposed Merger, Take a Hit Today

The Sprint company and the idea of its merger with T-Mobile takes a hit today in the New York Times.

Stop Creating Corporate Goliaths

A little of what they have to say.

Letting T-Mobile merge with Sprint would hurt consumers, workers and the economy

For years, T-Mobile’s chief executive, John Legere, has gleefully bad-mouthed his much larger mobile phone competitors, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, for their high prices and profit margins, and their low-quality service. Decked out in magenta sneakers and T-shirts, sporting long hair like an aging rocker, Mr. Legere promoted T-Mobile and himself to his 6.2 million Twitter followers as renegades — telephonic cool kids.

T-Mobile wooed customers by offering service plans with no long-term commitments, and by paying to free those customers from their old service plans. Rolling your unused data and minutes into the next month? T-Mobile did that, and AT&T and Verizon had no choice but to follow. More recently, T-Mobile vowed to match any discounts offered by competitors.

The fierce competition, and the march of technology, has rapidly reduced the cost of mobile phone service. Since 2009, the average cost of mobile service has fallen by roughly 28 percent, according to the Labor Department’s calculations. In 2017, at the peak of the mobile phone price wars, the Federal Reserve said prices were falling fast enough to meaningfully reduce inflation across the entire American economy.

That’s the beauty of competition. It’s been good for T-Mobile, too. Over the past five years, the company has added more subscribers than its larger rivals.

Now T-Mobile, the nation’s third-largest wireless company, wants to merge with Sprint, the No. 4 wireless carrier in the United States. The combined company would be in the same weight class as the two largest, AT&T and Verizon, with the three companies each controlling roughly a third of the market. Mr. Legere, who scorned the big guys, now wants to be one of them.

The Justice Department’s antitrust division staff has recommended that the federal government go to court to block the merger. That is good advice.

The proposed merger would harm American consumers. It would reduce the choice of service plans, and, over time, it is likely to result in higher prices and less innovation. It would also harm workers in the mobile phone industry, reducing competition for their labor. And it would increase the political power of the combined corporation...

On the one hand, this is coming from none other than The New York Times so it's going to carry some weight. It's certainly going to be on everyone's "radar", so to speak. 

On the other hand, boys will be boys and money buys all, especially in our current national government. This may be a conversation for a while--a few days?--but when all is said and done, the FCC and this administration will do what they will, customers and nation be damned.

Look for the Sprint-T-Mobile merger to go through. We hope not but these things usually don't go for the people.

But thanks, anyway, New York Times, for trying.

What We're Getting With and From This President

Columnist Leonard Pitts puts it very well today.

So here we are, six months later. How time has trudged.

But the calendar does not lie. On Thursday, we will be half a year through the Trump Era. And, contrary to his signature promise, America seems less great by the day. Nor are his other promises faring particularly well.

There is no sign of progress on that border wall, much less any idea how he is going to make Mexico pay for the thing. His promise to preserve Medicaid and provide healthcare for everyone has dissolved into a GOP bill that would gut Medicaid and rob millions of their access to healthcare.

Meantime, the guy who once said he would be working so hard he would seldom leave the White House spends more time on golf courses than a groundskeeper.

But for all that Trump has not achieved, there is, I think, one thing he indisputably has. He has taught us to live in a state of perpetual chaos and continuous crisis. Six months later, the White House commands the same horrified attention as a car wreck or a house fire.

In that sense, last week’s revelation that the Trump campaign, in the person of Donald Trump Jr., did in fact collude with a hostile foreign power to influence the 2016 election was just another Tuesday. Sure, it might have been shocking from the Bush or Obama campaigns. But under Trump, we live in a state of routine calamity.

Besides which, a few days from now, there will be something else. With Trump, there inevitably is. Things can always get worse — and usually do.

And when they can do, we can count on the GOP, that inexhaustible fount of righteous outrage, to stand tall and courageously look the other way. For almost 20 years,the party has never seen a minor episode (“Travelgate”), a sheer nothing (Whitewater) or even an international tragedy (Benghazi) it could not turn into Watergate II. Yet, as credible accusations of treason, obstruction, collusion, and corruption swirl about this White House, the GOP has been conspicuous in its acquiescent silence. It seems the elephant has laryngitis.

But the rest of us can’t stop talking.

Indeed, from the studios of CNN to the bar stools of your neighborhood watering hole, amateur psychoanalysis has become America’s favorite pastime in the last six months. Dozens of theories have been floated, all aimed at answering one question:

What is wrong with him?

But I have come to believe that question misses the point. Sixty-three million people voted for this. And make no mistake, they knew what they were getting. It was always obvious that Trump was a not-ready-for-prime-time candidate, but they chose him anyway. And the rest of us need to finally come to grips with the reason why.

It wasn’t economic anxiety. As a study co-sponsored by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic reported in May, people who were worried for their jobs voted for Hillary Clinton. But people who dislike Mexicans and Muslims, people who oppose same-sex marriage, people mortally offended at a White House occupied by a black guy with a funny name, they voted for Trump.

That’s the reality, and it’s time we quit dancing around it.

This has been said a million times: Donald Trump is a lying, narcissistic, manifestly incompetent child man who is as dumb as a sack of mackerel. But he is the president of the United States because 63 million people preferred that to facing inevitable cultural change. So I am done asking — or caring — what’s wrong with him. Six months in, it’s time we grappled a far more important question.

What in the world is wrong with us?


Links to more of Mr. Pitts columns:

Republican Party has ‘flat out lost its mind’

Mr. President: ‘Just who the hell do you think you are?’

No, Donald Trump isn’t crazy, but he’s not very smart, either

President Trump is an 'F' student

The Complete, Total, Even Outrageous Hypocrisy of This Donald J. Trump

You can't really comprehend the really complete and total, utter hypocrisy and even stupidity of Trump's "Muslim ban"--because that's what it is, let's face it--until you see this very brief (3 minutes, 36 seconds) video from Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times.



And besides his grandfather, think, too, of Mr. Trump's wife.

Besides being a nearly unimaginable hypocrite, the man doesn't know America's own history.

"Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free..."

An Open Letter To Those Who Voted For Trump (Guest Post)

From the Los Angeles Times.

Dear Person Whose Voice Was Heard:

Well, you got your way. The people have spoken. And your guy won. I mean, he won by attracting support from well below half of those who actually voted — long live the electoral college — but still. A win is a win. No shutting down of a freeway in protest is gonna change that. So congratulations.

I have never been more wrong in my life than I was in predicting this election. I didn't think there was a chance in holy heck that Donald Trump could actually become president of the United States. Life will surprise you, though rarely like this.

It will probably come as little shock that I'm pretty upset about this whole thing. Actually, crushingly depressed is a better way to describe it. You know, I'm one of those arrogant liberal elites blinded inside my blue bubble who likes my presidents classy and competent. Crazy, right?

But I digress.

My purpose of this letter is merely to give you a heads up as to what exactly you have voted for here in going with your gut rather than your rational mind. To my mind, you have sided with unvarnished stupidity and hatred.

You've chosen a man who applied for a demanding job he knew nothing about and had never served in political office. Go back to when you were 16 working your first gig at Carl's Jr. and recall all of the mistakes you made. Now magnify that times 50 million in terms of pressure and difficulty and with the entire world watching. It's on-the-job training with the country serving as your shake machine.

Another thing you did is vote into office a person who flaunts without an ounce of self-awareness or irony the most buffoonish, disgusting trappings of American consumption and conspicuous wealth, a man who believes everything can be made exquisite if encrusted in solid gold. The world's enduring image of America is now Richie Rich.

While you can feel secure in the knowledge that you voted in lock-step with the evangelical community, it seems the purportedly devout have profoundly lowered their standards in backing a xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, fear-mongering, hate-spewing serial violator of women. But hey, nobody's perfect, right?

The thing is, you too knew all of this stuff and voted for Trump anyway. You rationalized it with every fiber of your being. You figured the media had it out for him and did everything it could to make him look bad. Plus, all of those women who accused him of sexual harassment and worse were making it up, weren't they?

Your guy may have said he could grab females by the you-know-where, but come on, can't a guy joke around? Anyone who objected was just being politically correct, which in this case meant overly supportive of diplomacy and decency.

You voted for a guy who promised to build walls rather than bridges and launch immigration squads to cleanse the United States of imaginary Muslim terrorists. Because there are already too many foreigners here anyhow, right? And they're taking our jobs, dammit!

So let's again just be clear about what you've elected: A middle-school bully with no respect for humanity or tolerance for anyone who isn't white. You chose to conveniently, willfully ignore — or perhaps applaud — Trump's belief that it's virtuous to use loopholes to avoid paying taxes and even more righteous to entirely shield your returns from public view.

Your choice for president was transparent in his embrace of a fascist dictator named Vladimir Putin and supportive of Putin's influence on the election through hacking and leaks. And here is another news flash: If you're working class, your hero has no use for you. In fact, he thinks you're a sucker.

You know what you've done? You've rolled the dice and endangered all of the social progress we've made in this country over the past 50 years. Congratulations.

Sore loser? Oh you bet I'm a sore loser. The sorest loser ever. So let's get a few things straight:

I'm not interested in unifying for the good of the country any more than you were for President Obama.

I don't want to hear your complaints when your revolution flops on arrival, given how you've chosen the worst imaginable man to lead it.

Don't ask me to heal, accept, embrace, reassess or chill. It's you who screwed up. It isn't my responsibility to cushion the blow.

Good luck. We're all going to need it.

Ray

--------

RAY RICHMOND has covered Hollywood and the entertainment business since 1984. He can be reached via email at ray@rayrichco.com and Twitter at @MeGoodWriter.

Copyright © 2016, Glendale News-Press

The Star comes out wrong on the airport

The Kansas City Star published an editorial piece yesterday on our airport and why a single, new terminal is a good idea.

They only made 2 claims and as it turns out, they were wrong on both counts.

Their first contention is that a new airport, however expensive and wasteful it would be, is good for travelers because it would improve security and so, be more convenient for us.

This, after all, is the only reason the airline companies came up with this idea of a new, single terminal anyway. They want to cut their costs for security so the Airport Authority agreed we need a single terminal. They want to keep those airline companies happy.

They also make the point that lines will be shorter, somehow, at a single terminal.

Right. We're all going through one building, especially for security and somehow, magically, the lines will be shorter?

Doesn't that defy logic?

Okay, so if we need one building for security, let me propose here yet again the idea of making terminal B the "Security terminal", still using some of B's gates for flights, if and as needed, and then having walkways to the other two terminals, B and C, for all the other flights?  That would totally work and we wouldn't have to tear any buildings down. We would still not have to go as far to catch our flights as you have to go at, for example, Atlanta's or Denver's airports so it can't be said it's too far to have to trek.

Their second claim is that a new, single terminal would be more evironmentally-friendly because the drainage of cleaning the jets would all be at that one terminal and it could be drained away to treat it better with the new building.

Well, okay, let's totally ignore that you have to tear down and throw away--in a dump--an entire building in order to build this new, single terminal, let's ignore that evironmental nightmare and fact and analyze this idea.

How about, again, instead of tearing down a terminal and throwing it away, additionally, hugely expensive as that is, why don't we go in and do this new drainage to the existing buildings so the chemical runoff from the jets goes where we need it to go anyway? That would surely cost far, far less, at 1.2 billion dollars, than an entire new terminal.

That's got to be far and away more environmentally intelligent and far less expensive than--sorry, one more time--tearing down an entire building, throwing it away, hauling it off to a dump and building a new terminal.

That only makes clear sense.

Sorry, Star. You blew it on this. You're mistaken. You're wrong. A new terminal makes no sense, especially financially but environmentally, too.

Links:   A KCI good for travelers and the environment

 Save KCI!
  
Save KCI | Facebook

The Aiport people go to the Star

According to Yael T. Abouhalkah at the Kansas City Star, Mayor James and other proponents of a new, single building airport went to the Star's editorial board this last week and came up with 3 main reasons we should buy off on their very expensive boondoggle. They were/are:

• The new terminal would improve the image of Kansas City.
• It would help attract more businesses to the region.
• It would provide a better experience for airline passengers

Let's address each. (As in, apply logic and tear these things apart).

First, a new terminal would "improve the image of Kansas City."

Really?

And why would that be?

Because we built one? Because we built another one? Seriously?

Heads up, guys, we have one. We have an international airport. And you know what? We like it. It works.  It's handsome. It's attractive. It's convenient. You can get in and get to your plane quickly, easily and conveniently. Why would we want to throw it away, walk away from it and only to--expensively--buy another new one?

Second argument:  A new, single building facility would "help attract more businesses to the region."

Again, seriously?  They're claiming that?

How is it more businesses would come to the region?

Again, WE HAVE AN AIRPORT. How is paying for and building a new one going to bring more businesses to the region? What company or companies is going to say or think "Gosh, Kansas City has a new, expensive airport. That's going to be good for us so we should take our business and company there"?

Here's the thinking, folks:  "Kansas City has had an international airport for, what? Decades. A new airport, single-building or no, changes nothing. It doesn't change our business or markets in any way. We don't need to move there, suddenly."

Third and final point of theirs: "It would provide a better experience for airline passengers."

Again, how is that?

Maybe, maybe, just because it's a "shiny new building"? That's about the most you can say for this idea.

But again, here's a thought, the thought that makes far more sense--instead of walking away from the existing facility that a) works very well, thanks very much and that b) the people like very much, again, thanks, WHY NOT UPDATE THE EXISTING FACILITY IN ALL ASPECTS? That could include lighting (LED to cut costs), heating, cooling, even energy-generating with solar photovoltaic energy cells, all of it, and make the most of all that updating and innovation. It would still be FAR less expensive than building new, some miles away, and starting all over again.

Then, you're just as likely, if not far more so, to provide that better experience for airline passengers. It only makes sense.

You'd have this cool, retro-fitted facility YOU DIDN'T WALK AWAY FROM AND THROW AWAY, it would have all the latest, modern amenities, including, possibly and even likely, new restaurants and shopping options.

It would be a total win for all--the airline passengers, the airlines themselves, the city and region, all of us.

We have to stop throwing away whole buildings. In this case, it would not just be a few buildings we threw away, either. It would be many.

A Star article this past week stated that the Airport Authority is going to close Terminal A later this year. This fits in with just what I've proposed. Instead of closing terminal A, close terminal B. Then revamp it and make it the facility for security and check-in. Then, add ramps out to Terminals A and C for going to the gates and our waiting planes.  All problems solved. It totally works, all the way around.  We save the existing airport, we save money, we get the improvements and updates and changes we need, everything.

This is very much like our Interstate 70 issue.

It needs updating and modernizing and widening, all of it.

At one point, the Missouri Department of Transportation floated the idea of abandoning it and building a new I-70, in effect, a few miles north of the existing. 

It was roundly criticized and shown to be the absurd, wasteful idea it was.

Same here.

We cannot walk away from and throw away our existing airport, just so we can be seduced by the "sexy and new."

That works for shirts and pants but not airports and buildings.

It's stupid. It's irresponsible. It's wasteful.  No, strike that, it's horribly wasteful.

And it's obscenely expensive and in a lot of ways, money and sheer cost being the biggest one.

Original article:  New KCI terminal’s biggest challenge: Will it be convenient?

Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/yael-abouhalkah/#storylink=cpy

The Wacko, Wacked-Out Kansas and Missouri Legislatures (guest post)

What I've been saying, time and again, but Barb Shelley of The Kansas City Star says so well:

Strange fixations of Kansas, Missouri legislators

Hey, Missouri citizen. When you woke up this morning and gulped your orange juice, did you obsess about United Nations resolution Agenda 21?

No? Well, you’d better believe your Missouri legislators did. Committees in the House and Senate have OK’d bills that forbid state and local governments from making any land use decisions that might be traced back to the non-binding 1992 environmental resolution.

It may look like a harmless list of suggested ways for communities to conserve natural resources, but none other than Glenn Beck has pronounced it a “global scheme that has the potential to wipe out freedoms of all U.S. citizens.”

Whew! How did a threat like this travel under the radar for 20 years? Fortunately for Kansans, their Legislature passed a proactive resolution aimed at foiling Agenda 21 domination last session.

Increasingly, this is what state lawmakers in these parts do best. They seize a cause from some out-of-state think tank or interest group or nut case movement and impose it on their constituents.

The fixation by tea party legislators with Agenda 21 mostly just wastes time. It’s rather unlikely that any Missouri communities are eyeing “policy recommendations that infringe on private property rights without due process and are traceable to Agenda 21,” as the proposed legislation describes.

But other agendas are much more harmful.

Take the push to lower the state income tax, which is in full throttle in Kansas and picking up steam in Missouri. This drive didn’t come from local business communities. Many local chambers of commerce have publicly opposed income tax cuts, which decimate state services and will likely have to be offset with sales tax increases.

The income tax abolition movement started with the flamboyant Arthur Laffer, who is one-third economist and two-thirds salesman. He found a home for his controversial theories in the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, a group funded by corporate interests and free-market advocates. It holds great sway over Republican legislators around the country.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, whose political career has been entwined with small-government, free-market believers like the Koch brothers of Wichita, is a believer in Laffer and his no-income-tax gospel. Huge Republican majorities in both the Kansas and Missouri legislatures mean there are plenty of lawmakers to crusade for the cause, even though the supposed gains in job growth are hypothetical.

Another example: Legislators in Missouri and Kansas have spent hours debating bills intended to weaken unions.

Why? Most public- and-private sector unions in these states aren’t known for making trouble. In both states, many public-sector employees represented by unions barely earn liveable wages.

There’s been no outcry from businesses begging the legislatures to clip the wings of unions. No, the pressure comes from outside groups. Republican legislators are willing to poison relationships and demean their states’ teachers, public safety workers and others in order to please their out-of-state bosses.

These include the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and National Tax Limitation Committee, both of which sent operatives to Jefferson City this session to fire up Republican lawmakers. Some of the language in the anti-union bills in Missouri and Kansas is strikingly similar to model bills drafted by ALEC.

There are still plenty of serious lawmakers in Missouri and Kansas who work hard to promote the interests of their constituents and their communities. I’m always relieved to see that a newly elected legislator has served on a school board or city council; they are more apt to realize that ideology must sometimes yield to reality.

Increasingly, though, hard-working public servants are being shoved aside in favor of candidates with the right tea party and tax-hating credentials. Their loyalty is to causes, not constituents. But their causes will pay handsomely to see that they remain in office.

U.N. resolution Agenda 21 poses no threat to the people of Missouri and Kansas. The same cannot be said of the anti-tax, anti-worker, anti-government agendas being pursued by malleable legislators.

Original post:  

Strange fixations of Kansas, Missouri legislators | Midwest Voices

Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/strange-fixations-kansas-missouri-legislators/#storylink=cpy

The Pitch points out that the King--E. Thomas McClanahan--has no clothes

God, I love this:

E. Thomas McClanahan confused by language, science, the world

Kudos to the writer, Scott Wilson and all at The Pitch.

Keep it coming, y'all.

 

 

St. Louis Post-Dispatch endorses President Obama

This past Sunday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch endorsed President Barack Obama for President in this Fall's election. A little bit of it:

Editorial: Obama for president: A second term for a serious man

"Four years ago, in endorsing Democrat Barack Obama for president, we noted his intellect, his temperament and equanimity under pressure. He was unproven, but we found him to be presidential, in all that that word implies.

In that, we have not been disappointed. This is a serious man. And now he is a proven leader. He has earned a second term.

Mr. Obama sees an America where the common good is as important as the individual good. That is the vision on which the nation was founded. It is the vision that has seen America through its darkest days and illuminated its best days. It is the vision that underlies the president’s greatest achievement, the Affordable Care Act. Twenty years from now, it will be hard to find anyone who remembers being opposed to Obamacare.

He continues to steer the nation through the most perilous economic challenges since the Great Depression. Those who complain that unemployment remains high, or that economic growth is too slow, either do not understand the scope of the catastrophe imposed upon the nation by Wall Street and its enablers, or they are lying about it.

To expect Barack Obama to have repaired, in four years, what took 30 years to undermine, is simply absurd. He might have gotten further had he not been saddled with an opposition party, funded by plutocrats, that sneers at the word compromise. But even if Mr. Obama had had Franklin Roosevelt’s majorities, the economy would still be in peril.

They go on to point out Mitt Romney's inconsistencies, at least.

The fact is, he--President Obama--is the right man for the job for the next four years.

Links: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-obama-for-president-a-second-term-for-a-serious/article_c5371a41-ab43-5724-96e2-2d23eaa56589.html

http://www.eclectablog.com/2012/10/st-louis-post-dispatch-endorsement-of-barack-obama-hits-the-nail-squarely-on-the-head.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/06/1140995/-St-Louis-Post-Dispatch-Endorses-Mr-Obama-A-second-term-for-a-serious-man

Surprising intelligence from a letter to the editor in the Star yesterday

One John Segale of Shawnee had a letter to the editor in the Star today that made reading the letters to the editor worthwhile yesterday, Sunday, which is so, so very rare.

He pointed out, so rightly, that the Republicans have a lot of nerve trying to de-fund NPR, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting when, in fact, it was only NPR and PBS on radio and TV, respectively, that broadcast their national convention last week, almost completely in its entirety.

It seems that, besides the hypocrisy they're so capable of, they're also extremely capable of producing a goodly amount of irony, too.

God bless they're pointy little heads.

And great thanks to Mr. Segale. You built back up a little of my faith in humankind.

Link: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/02/3791269/letters-google-fiber-republicans.html

KC International: We're screwed

Well, that's it, folks.

We've all been sold down the river.

Regarding our beloved, well-designed, convenient Kansas City International Airport with its 3 terminals that is so easy to access, it's apparently over the masses' collective heads and that, combined with the expense for the airlines for security, means they're going to tear the whole thing down, throw it away like so much 8-1/2" x 11" paper and build a brand new, bright, shiny terminal nearby.

We lose.

We lost.

Forget convenience.

Forget the monumental waste of bulldozing and throwing away at least 3 large buildings which will then go into a dump--a "landfill"--we don't have any say on this.

The Kansas City Airport Authority has made up its mind, the business community agrees and now, even Barb Shelley, columnist for the Star sides with them.

We're getting a new airport, however much it was decided without our input.

Your opinion means nothing.

Only in America do we throw away whole buildings.

If they simply don't entertain us enough (see Ms. Shelley's column in The Star), they must be bulldozed and replaced. The problem is not us--it's the building.

We are the only people I know on the planet who does this, too.

Then we wonder why we don't have any history or enough great architecture but we do things like this.

So to Barb Shelley I say you and I usually agree on things civic, social and political but on this we don't agree. You're wrong.

But you win.

This stinks.

Link: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/21/3670104/delayed-conclusion-get-working.html

Right wing ignorance on Sunday's op/ed page in The Star

I can't imagine two more Right Wing cases (outside of the Tea Party) than George Will, nationally, and Thomas McClanahan, locally. And each of them, yesterday, on the op/ed page had two of the most either wrong or ignorant columns I could imagine. Mr. Will came down squarely against campaign finance reform laws while Mr. McClanahan's headline spoke for itself: "IS PRESIDENT OBAMA TO THE LEFT OF DENG XIAOPING?" To Mr. Will's column, I have to ask, how else are we to get corporate and wealthy people's money (bribes) out of our legislator's pockets and out of legislation and so, out of our government, unless and until we kill these "campaign contributions." The answer is, of course, we won't. We need stringent campaign finance reform and we need it badly and as soon as possible. As for Mr. McClanahan's column, it's just too plainly ignorant to spend (waste?) time or energy on. Links: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/24/3164591/is-president-obama-to-the-left.html; http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/24/3164592/rigging-the-process-via-curbs.html

The Star's website fail

Go to the Star's website--www.kansascity.com--click on the "search" space and type in Thomas McLanahan. You get nothing. It says "0 results for 'Thomas Mclanahan.'" Good site. Not. Apparently it only responds if you type in his entire, official name E. Thomas McLanahan. Way to "get it", Star.

Local columnist so wrong on defense spending

A few days ago, columnist for the Star E. Thomas McLanahan wrote a piece warning that we--the US--need to absolutely keep our defense spending where it is or, as so many Right Wingers do, he warned we'd lose our strength and power and some such rot. Nonsense. He's wrong on so many levels, it's nearly obscene. First of all, we spend so far much more on defense than any nation on the planet, it's already nearly insanity, by itself. We spend approximately 698 billion dollars, annually, on defense and no other nation remotely comes close to spending that much. And that's just what's on the books. It's fairly common knowledge that, actually, we spend far more than that. China, for instance, if they're our next big threat, only spends $114 billion annually, by comparison. I won't tear Mr. McLanahan's article completely apart here (see link below) but will point out that a) if Europe would pick up the tab for their own defense and b) we stop trying to fight WWII, what with outposts still in Italy, Germany and other spots across the world we don't need and finally, c) if we cut the waste and fraud in the defense budget (see link below), we could easily, easily cut the amount we spend by half--as we should--and so, actually strengthen the country. We could apply that amount to both our debt and our infrastructure (health care, roads, highways, education, etc.) We didn't learn France's lessons on Vietnam and we went in. Big mistake. We didn't learn the Soviet Union's lessons on Afghanistan and we went in. Same thing. Now we don't seem to be able to learn the Soviet Union's lessons, again, on huge defense spending, which actually ended up breaking their nation. Could we please learn from history? And soon? >Links: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/27/3104282/defense-cuts-and-the-achilles.html; http://news.yahoo.com/panel-widespread-waste-fraud-war-spending-053533054.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures