Tag: Mitch McConnell

Categories
At Large Opinion

Age Before Duty

A striking resemblance. (Photo: Barol16 | Dreamstime.com)

Did you see the latest Mitch McConnell moment last week? For the second time in recent weeks, the minority leader of the Senate just “froze,” seemingly unable to move or speak for almost 30 seconds after hearing a reporter’s question. An aide came forward, grasped his arm, and asked if he heard the question. McConnell mumbled, “Yes,” but continued to stand motionless for a bit longer.

The 81-year-old McConnell fell and suffered a concussion in March, and was subsequently away from his job for several weeks. The reoccurrence of a freeze moment renewed questions about his ability to continue to lead the Republicans in the Senate.

The New York Times interviewed two neurologists who viewed video of the incident and said it could have been a “mini-stroke” or “partial seizure.” A spokesperson for McConnell’s office did not share any further details about the incident, including whether or not the senator had seen a doctor. McConnell has continued to insist that he will run for reelection. Ironically, that was the very question that sent the senator into his second freeze.

There have been similarly troubling incidents with Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. Now 89, the senator missed 91 votes over the course of several months last winter and spring due to medical issues with shingles, facial paralysis, and encephalitis. She returned to the Senate in April, but appeared confused when questioned by reporters. “I haven’t been gone,” she said. “I’ve been here and voting.” Nope, sorry, Dianne. You’ve been gone. Feinstein, like McConnell, is insistent that she will finish her term, which ends in 2025.

If you watched or read any right-wing media, you’d quickly get the impression that President Joe Biden is in worse shape than either McConnell or Feinstein. There are countless memes and deceptively edited videos on social media and conservative cable channels that show the 80-year-old Biden as a gibbering, dementia-ridden geezer. Fox News hosts ride this horse on a daily basis: Biden is too mentally incompetent to be president. We can expect this drumbeat to only get louder as we enter the election year of 2024.

Judging from the unedited videos I’ve watched of Biden speaking in impromptu situations in recent weeks, he does not appear to be mentally impaired. He talks in complete sentences and seems to have a grasp on the issues he’s discussing. He misspeaks occasionally, but the man does have a lifelong stuttering problem. His probable opponent for the presidency, Donald Trump, is only two-and-a-half years younger and is himself no stranger to verbal gaffes.

For the record, I don’t think we’re sending our best people for this job. It’s like we have two old guys climbing rickety ladders to a third-story window and voters are hoping their guy doesn’t fall off first. I think the Democrats’ old guy is by far the saner choice, but making long-term plans with people at these candidates’ ages is fraught with peril. Just ask Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Oops. Sorry. Maybe ask Feinstein or McConnell? Oh, wait, never mind.

And don’t talk to me about the supposed third-party candidates. Robert Kennedy Jr.? Loon. Cornel West? Loon. Who else you got? Tulsi Gabbard? Loon. None of them have a chance to do anything other than possibly throw the election into chaos. And we already have a pretty good shot at that happening with just two candidates. 

Trump polls as the most-disliked politician in America, blathers like a narcissistic fool, and is built like a pierogi — not exactly the picture of mental or physical health. But his base doesn’t care what he says or does or looks like. Trump could freeze in the middle of Fifth Avenue for an hour and it wouldn’t matter.

Biden has good cases to make on the economy, unemployment, prescription drugs, infrastructure, abortion rights, LGBTQ issues, and the environment. His policies are in line with the majority of voters, according to most polls. But even so, all it will take is one McConnell-like moment for the president and the hounds of hell will be unleashed, the news filled with “Is Joe Biden too old?” stories. At that point, the Democrats can release all the Bikin’ Biden videos in the world and it won’t dispel the fact that he’s 80 and looks his age. It’s going to be an interesting year, I’m afraid. 

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

A Witness to History

From left: Author Jonathan Martin and U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen. (Photo by Jackson Baker).

Journalism is, in a much-repeated phrase, the first draft of history. And Memphians had the opportunity last Friday to hear directly from one of the foremost active draftsmen when The New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen engaged in a dialogue at Novel bookstore.

The subject was This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, the best-selling volume co-written by Martin and fellow Times reporter Alexander Burns. (Simon & Schuster 455 pages, $29.99)

Acknowledging that a fair-sized library now exists of books written about the tumultuous rear-end of the Trump presidency, Martin explained: “We felt like we could do something that was more lasting, and that would have some more endurance, and perhaps even be looked back on by historians in the future, to get at what happened in this tumultuous period of American politics. But we had to do something bigger, too. Yes, 2020, but also 2021. And we didn’t just want to make January 6th a tacked-on epilogue, we wanted to make the 6th what it is — a central event in American history.”

The volume he and Burns ended up with, said Martin, “captures the totality of the American political system — president, congress, but also governors and mayors, too. We have a lot in there about politics beyond Washington, as well.”

Jested Cohen: “The title of the book captures that. When I first saw it, I thought it you were talking about all of the House bills. They shall not pass, either. But it’s about the fact that this is going to keep going.”

Confirming that last point, Martin said, I think that the larger thrust is that we’re still living this permanent campaign, that it’s not just Trump, it’s sort of the polarization in American politics that defines everything today in government. And that certainly didn’t end in November of 2020. That’s alive and well —  that sort of tribal tug between red and blue.”

The book begins in March of 2020, said Martin, “because two big things happen [then]. Biden gets the nomination and COVID hits America. I think those two events kick off more or less the 2020 campaign cycle.”

Martin noted, “There’s nothing in the Constitution about a losing candidate for President calling the winner or conceding defeat. It’s taken place over the years and we assume it will happen, but like a lot with Trump, you can’t make any assumptions about what is or is not going to happen.”

Cohen, playing the part of interlocutor, said, “I knew that he wouldn’t. He probably wouldn’t concede, he said in 2016. If he lost, he wasn’t  going to concede. It would depend on whether he won or not. But nobody really thought that he would go on for months and months and years and continue with this, the Big Lie. You did a lot early on in the book about Kevin McCarthy when he found out.”

Martin, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the House Republican leader, said, “Yeah, your good friend and colleague, Kevin McCarthy.”

Cohen expanded: “Let me tell you, for those of you who don’t know much about Kevin McCarthy. Most of  y’all are old enough probably to know of a guy in Memphis named Clair VanderSchaaf. Clair VanderSchaaf was sharper than Kevin McCarthy.” (VanderSchaaf was a Republican member of the Shelby County Commission back in the early ’80s when Cohen was a Democratic member of that body.)

Martin described McCarthy as a onetime back-bencher from California, who, as a state senator there, had “loved the celebrity aura around [Governor Arnold] Schwarzenegger. That was a sort of magnetic thing for him serving with Schwarzenegger, and he gets to Washington in 2006.” Years later, in Donald Trump’s time in the White House, McCarthy had worked his way into the Republican leadership. “And here’s Kevin McCarthy. He’s flying on Air Force One. He’s at Mar-a-Lago. He’s at Camp David, he’s in the West Wing, and that is heavy stuff for Kevin McCarthy, because [he was] unlike a lot of senior lawmakers who’ve seen all the trappings. He really enjoyed that. So McCarthy realized that he had, in pretty short order, to get close to Trump and stay close to Trump. That was, for four years, the name of the game for Kevin, up until January 6th.”

One of the Martin-Burns book’s news-making disclosures involved excerpts from tapes that Martin got access to, making  it clear that McCarthy was aghast at Trump’s role in fueling the January 6th insurrection and was casting about for the best way of getting the defeated president out of office as quickly as possible — whether by the 25th Amendment or by persuading Trump to leave voluntarily. “He’s desperate to get Trump out of office,” Martin said. Finally, the GOP House leader decided “the Democrats are going to impeach him anyway.”

As we know, however, the impeachment by the House failed to get a conviction in the Senate, and McCarthy found it expedient to cozy back up with Trump.

Then there was the case of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, also repulsed by Trump’s role in the crisis. Said Martin: “I see McConnell late on the night of January 6, walking out of the Capitol, [about] one in the morning. He sees me, and beckons me, and says, ‘What do you hear about the 25th?’ And what he means by that is, what are you hearing among your sources, both in Congress and in the cabinet, about getting Trump out of office with the 25th Amendment? That’s a pretty extraordinary thing to even consider, but he’s looking for intelligence at one in the morning about how we get Trump out of office, the 25th Amendment, and I told him what I’d heard, which was mostly speculation. And then I turned to McConnell and said, ‘Well, how are you feeling right now?’ That’s not a question I would typically ask — how he’s feeling about things. He’s not the Barbara Walters type of guy.”

Martin said that McConnell told him he felt exhilarated. “How could he feel exhilarated? Given the last two days — including a Georgia Senate election that would cost McConnell his Senate majority? He said Trump put a gun to his head, ‘and he pulled the trigger. And he’s totally discredited now.’ Because the thought process then was, you know, this is [McConnell’s] Liberation Day. He got everything out of Trump that he could: Three justices,  a tax cut, and now this guy has gone and he’s discredited himself so he could wash his hands of the guy entirely. This is a win-win, right?”

But after a first-blush excoriation of Trump on the Senate floor, McConnell, too, would fall silent.

Asked by Cohen who had fared well in the crisis, Martin named, among others, the U.S. military (for steering clear of any complicity with the abortive presidential coup), Vice President Mike Pence, who resisted Trump and did his constitutional duty in certifying the electoral votes on January 6th, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Martin was one of the few reporters (“maybe the only one,” he said), who had first-hand experience of the forced removal of senators from the chamber during the insurrection. “All  those moments that you see in [the book] are what I witnessed, including [South Carolina Republican] Lindsey Graham, famously shouting as Capitol police officers were briefing the senators. When they were in seclusion, the Capitol police officers were trying to keep the senators apprised of what was happening. But they didn’t really have a ton of information, because they didn’t know if the Capitol was secure yet. And so this poor Capitol police officer is saying, ‘you know, we’re trying to figure out what’s happening over there, and we’re doing our best. Please remain calm here.’ He’s just biding time. And Graham shouts him down and says, ‘You do whatever is necessary. Use any force necessary. Retake the hill, but that’s the seat of American government!’ in a demanding sort of tone. And [Democrat] Sherrod Brown from Ohio is in the back of the room and says ‘Shut up, Lindsey!’ And then somebody else says, ‘There’s no cameras on, Lindsey!’ ” 

As in the book itself, there was more to talk about on Friday, much more, including the unhappy current predicament of Trump’s successor in the presidency, Joe Biden.

Will Biden run again? Martin: “The great question now that every Democrat is talking about privately at least is, what’s Biden going to do? And when’s he gonna do it? And I think if this midterm really turns out Democrats, and effectively it becomes a vote of no confidence in the current government, like you’d have in a parliamentary system, I think the pressure on Biden really increases to make up his mind. And I think that clock starts ticking on midnight of Election Day this year, that he’s got to start giving some guidance as well.”

Cohen’s response: “I don’t think he’ll run. Yeah, he’s got to say he’s gonna run because otherwise he’s a lame duck. Right. But I think the realities are it’s not going to be. The polls are atrocious and he’s getting older every day.”

The conversation was well worth a listen, and the book wholly deserving of a read.

Guilty disclosure: Martin, who passes through Memphis fairly often, credited the Memphis Flyer with being an important source of local information for him, political and otherwise. “I never fail to pick up a copy when I’m here.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

White Tears and ‘Current Voters’

Mitch McConnell (Photo: Wikipedia)

“The concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell at a recent press conference.

Even if Mitch McConnell’s viral gaffe last week is as innocent as he claims it to be, the stench of something deep — the unexamined racist fear and shame at the core of GOP policy — is unavoidably noticeable: There’s “them” and there’s “us” and never the twain shall meet. And we’ll make sure of that. (Shhhh … don’t tell anyone.)

What’s fascinating to me is the fact that blatant racism — manifested in voter-suppression laws over the years, gerrymandering, and, more recently, hysteria over the teaching of actual history in the public schools — can no longer be put forth publicly and unapologetically as The Truth, as it was for most of American history. Politicians and public figures can no longer declare things like “This country must be ruled by white people. … Negro suffrage is an evil,” as a Mississippi judge named Solomon Calhoon wrote in 1890. Nowadays, racism has to be covered up with clichés and political correctness and, in particular, white victimhood.

The prevailing right-wing dogma, at least on the surface, is not that white people are no longer just plain better than Black people; white people are victimized by people of color. “Come on,” they cry, “judge us by the content of our character, not the color of our skin.”

Here’s Tucker Carlson, for instance, quoted by The New York Times columnist Charles Blow, explaining “white replacement theory” on his Fox News show last year as a Democratic plot “to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters, from the third world. … Every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.”

Not a white voter, simply a “current” voter. This is the impact the Civil Rights Movement has had on right-wing Republicanism.

And then there’s critical race theory (CRT). In the past year, according to Education Week, 36 states have scapegoated this otherwise unknown academic concept, introducing legislation or taking other steps to ban whatever-it-is from being taught in public schools. The state of Virginia has even established a special tip line that parents can call to report that their kids’ school has been feeding them CRT — which means, of course, teaching actual American racial history. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to go even further, giving parents the power to sue the school if it has the nerve to teach CRT.

As I say, whatever that means. Education Week points out that there’s almost no clarity about what this might mean, and “leaders in states where these laws have passed have reported widespread confusion about what kind of instruction is and is not allowed.” Many teachers fear the rules can be broadly interpreted and amount to banning “any discussion about the nation’s complicated past or the ongoing effects of racism in the present day.”

“This isn’t an idle fear,” the report goes on. Last June, for instance, “a parents’ group in one Tennessee district challenged the use of an autobiography of Ruby Bridges, who in 1960 was one of the first Black children to integrate an elementary school after Brown v. Board of Education. The parents complained that in depicting the white backlash to school desegregation, the book violated the state’s new law in sending the message that all white people were bad and oppressed Black people.”

This is now the national divide, apparently. Jim Crow suddenly wails in anguish. As a bill in the Florida Senate puts it, a student “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” Note: Such a bill wasn’t introduced in 1890 or 1930. I wonder why?

For me, this opens a deep sense of wonderment. Mostly it opens up some profound questions about how the country can and should face not just its past but also its future. While there may be a lot of blame and guilt to spread around regarding the nation’s pre-civil rights era, addressing the future requires a larger, more complex perspective. It’s not about blaming, but healing … and changing.

The anti-CRT crowd wants to keep the clichés in place, as though “one nation, under God, yada, yada” is all that’s needed to guide us into the future. Of course, the military-industrial complex knows there’s more to it than that. Waging war, staying dominant, staying wealthy — these are not simple tasks! It’s not about saluting the flag and revering the Founding Fathers. It’s about passing gargantuan military budgets. And it’s also about keeping as much of the public as possible (in the words of Tucker C.) “obedient” — that is, patriotic, believing that the USA is the greatest country in the world and only kills evil terrorists plus occasional collateral bystanders.

If CRT were actually taught in schools — not in order to spew shame on some, but to open everyone’s minds, to grasp the nature of hatred, dehumanization, and dominance, and create a future that transcends our past — a lot more would be put at risk than some people’s psychological distress.

The meaning of nationalism itself would have to change. And suddenly everyone becomes a participant in creating the future.
Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.

Categories
At Large Opinion

The Quiet Part

The Ninth District: Note phallic incursion from 2010 redistricting. (Photo: courtesy Congressman Steve Cohen)

Maybe you saw this quote last week, when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the quiet part out loud while defending the defeat of the Voting Rights Act in the Senate: “African-American voters,” he warbled, “are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”

Never mind that McConnell apparently believes African Americans aren’t actual Americans, like, you know, white people. And never mind that the bills his party is passing in GOP-controlled states around the country are intended to change that pesky situation before the next election rolls around. McConnell is intentionally glossing over the fact that the Voting Rights Act would have outlawed the implementation of these undemocratic new laws, and that every Republican Senator voted against it — as did two hypocrites calling themselves Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

Since the 2020 election, dozens of restrictive voting laws have been enacted in 19 states, laws that supposedly remedy “voter fraud” (which didn’t happen) but that have the actual purpose of making voting more difficult for poor people and people of color — who just coincidentally tend to vote for Democrats.

You don’t have to look any further than Nashville for a perfect example of how far the GOP is willing to go to establish a permanent and overwhelming majority. Last week, the Tennessee Senate Judiciary and House State Government committees approved three redistricting plans for new state House, state Senate, and Congressional maps, which are drawn every decade after the federal census to reshape state and federal districts, if necessary, to ensure equity at the polls.

The new Republican-created Tennessee maps are a joke at all three levels, a mugging of democracy in plain sight. Newly configured districts in and around Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville are designed to break up neighborhoods and Democratic voting strongholds in urban areas, especially Black communities. The new maps pit Black and Democratic incumbents against each other in four instances at the state representative level and give Republicans a huge numerical advantage in eight out of nine of Tennessee’s Congressional districts. That’s an 11 percent representation in Congress for Democrats, who made up 41 percent of the vote in the most recent statewide election.

The lone outlier is Tennessee’s Ninth District, represented by Congressman Steve Cohen, but it’s not for lack of trying. After the 2010 census (in what was widely seen as a direct skewering of Cohen), the GOP took a literally phallic-shaped piece out of the Ninth that just so happened to include Cohen’s place of worship in East Memphis and a large surrounding Jewish neighborhood. To balance the population math, the GOP added a large chunk of Tipton County to the Ninth, meaning Cohen now represents a disparate melange of rural, inner-city, and suburban voters. This isn’t just unfair to Cohen (or whoever the Ninth District representative may be in the future); it’s unfair to all the residents of the district, who deserve to be represented by someone who reflects their concerns and values. The Republicans, it appears, would prefer it if Memphis residents found themselves being represented by a Republican turd farmer from Atoka.

But compared to Nashville, Memphis got off easy. The Fifth District — represented by Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper, and which currently encompasses most of Nashville and Davidson County — will now encompass parts of five (count ’em!) counties. The city’s vote will be split and allocated to three rural-majority districts. Meaning Nashville’s urban residents will soon more than likely be represented by three Republican turd farmers.

This isn’t how democracy is supposed to work. Our elected representatives shouldn’t be allowed to create districts specifically designed to keep them — and their party — in office. Geographic political districts — at every level — should be created by bipartisan commissions, not party hacks. And yes, I know gerrymandering has been done by Democrats as well. The point is that it’s wrong, no matter who does it, and that we had in our hands a bill that would have eliminated all this cheating, that would have kept states from arbitrarily reducing the number of polling places in certain districts or shortening voting periods or, for god’s sake, banning the dispensing of water to voters in line.

In our system, unfettered democracy is supposed to be a feature, not a bug. But unfortunately, that’s not how the Republicans see it these days.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Farewell to the “Risk-Takers”

The big, bald, white guy standing in line at Midtown Home Depot is laughing loudly, sharing a joke with a couple of co-workers, or maybe employees. They look Hispanic and they are wearing masks, so I can’t tell if they’re laughing. In fact, everyone within eyesight in Home Depot is wearing a mask except the big, loud guy.

Maybe he’s one of the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Department deputies who don’t wear masks because, as their boss says, “they’re risk-takers.” Yeah, that’s probably it. The guy in Home Depot is a risk-taker, a macho dude who needs to let everyone know that he don’t need no stinking mask, ’cause he ain’t skeered of the ‘rona.

What can you do when you encounter selfish idiots like that? Not much, except stay away, move to another line, let him check out before moving forward. You can’t expect Home Depot workers to put their own health and safety at risk confronting someone who is probably hoping someone confronts him, so he can proclaim masks don’t help and they infringe on his freedom and what are you gonna do about it, punk?

There were some similar sentiments vociferously offered at Monday’s Shelby County Commission meeting, mostly coming from folks in the restaurant community, which has arguably suffered more damage from the pandemic than almost any other business sector. One Germantown restaurant owner proclaimed that in regards to actual deaths from COVID, “There are no hard numbers showing anything.” I know of 260,000 dead Americans who might differ with that assessment. And the numbers showing that masks, social distancing, and other health measures save lives are very hard, and undeniable.

But I get it: COVID is not just killing individuals; it’s killing jobs and businesses; it’s getting people evicted; it’s putting millions of Americans in food lines and on unemployment rolls. The entire economy is devastated. Movie theaters, music venues, bars, brick-and-mortar retail stores, and yes, restaurants are dying every day. In Memphis this week we learned that two of our cultural icons are in trouble: The P&H Cafe (The Beer Joint of Your Dreams) and Earnestine & Hazel’s (Home of the Soul Burger) are both precariously near extinction.

Here’s the deal, as President-elect Joe Biden might say: Health regulations aren’t what’s killing businesses. That’s like blaming seat belts for car accidents. COVID is killing businesses. And nothing gets better until we get this pandemic under control. And it doesn’t get under control until we have a coordinated national strategy to flatten the curve all over the country, one that gets masks on as many sentient beings as will wear them, that gets adequate amounts of PPE and other vital supplies to hospitals and healthcare workers, and that ramps up a strategy to deliver vaccines and cutting-edge remediation meds to those who need them most. And yes, one that will probably require continued social distancing in certain indoor spaces.

The U.S. is like a tornado-ravaged village. The damage is everywhere. Except maybe on certain golf courses. It’s time to begin to start the recovery process. We need a domestic Marshall Plan, including a comprehensive COVID relief package that puts real money in the hands of struggling business owners and real Americans — and soon.

And we need to accept reality.

A few shell-shocked Republicans are climbing out of their bunkers and finally, sorta, kinda saying maybe we ought to possibly consider — I mean, just spit-balling here — that Joe Biden may have, you know, theoretically speaking, won the presidency … Pleasedon’thurtmeMr.Trump!

This is what passes for political courage in the GOP these days. Lord knows they don’t want to rush to judgment and contradict the very plausible theory that millions of votes in several states were changed by a sneaky voting-machine program created by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013!) and used by Democrats and certain RINOs to steal the election from Fearless Leader.

This evil cabal was so fiendishly clever that its conspirators decided to allow Senator Mitch McConnell to be re-elected, as well as pushing several toss-up Senate and House races to the Republicans.

This is pretty much the actual theory being pushed by the president’s crack legal team of Slapdash, Dipshit, and RunnyDye, because it makes perfect sense in the Bizarro World of QAnon, OAN, Breitbart, Newsmax, and Parler.

So yeah, it’s been a fun four years, America. But damn, it’s time to move on, time to take the bowl of nuts off the coffee table, time to say enough to the “risk-takers.” There’s a real mess to clean up.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Senator Alexander Favors Immediate Vote on Supreme Court Nominee

Senator Lamar Alexander

Pre-empting the expectations of many that he might have reservations about an immediate Senate vote on replacing the just-deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander announced Sunday that taking such a vote would be fine with him.

Said the Senator: “No one should be surprised that a Republican Senate majority would vote on a Republican President’s Supreme Court nomination, even during a presidential election year. The Constitution gives senators the power to do it. The voters who elected them expect it. Going back to George Washington, the Senate has confirmed many nominees to the Supreme Court during a presidential election year. It has refused to confirm several when the president and Senate majority were of different parties. Senator McConnell is only doing what Democrat leaders have said they would do if the shoe were on the other foot. I have voted to confirm Justices Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh based upon their intelligence, character and temperament. I will apply the same standard when I consider President Trump’s nomination to replace Justice Ginsburg.”

Thus, for the second time within a year, Alexander deflated the hopes of those independents and Democrats who thought that the Senator, on the basis of his reputation as a Republican moderate, might part the ways with President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on a major issue. (The other time was on the occasion of the impeachment of Trump, when Alexander voted with other GOP regulars to acquit the president without hearing witnesses.)

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

I Dreamed I Was Flying …

I’ve gotten lots of emails in the past few days. Many are gloating, “told you so, liberal scum” type deals. Others are from my fellow liberal scum suggesting that we “accept the findings of the Mueller Report and move on.” Only one problem with either of these suggestions: We haven’t seen the Mueller Report. In fact, Senator Mitch McConnell just blocked Senator Chuck Schumer’s proposal to replicate the House of Representatives’ unanimous vote to release the report.

Listen, people, it’s too early gloat, and it’s too early to lament. We have no idea what’s really in that report. Just chill. And bear in mind, if the report was really a good thing for Trump, the GOP would be passing it out on street corners and using it to sell MAGA hats, not trying to keep it under wraps. Don’t buy the “Trump is exonerated” line until we get to see the actual report and not a brief, butt-covering summation by Trump’s hand-picked attorney general. Stay woke.

And for the record, if the actual report proves that Trump was nothing more than an innocent but useful idiot in the (very real) Russian interference in the 2016 election, and not a knowing collaborator, I will say so in this column. Then you can gloat.

In the meantime, savor these words from Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” written during the darkest days of the Watergate era. Even better, go listen to it. Turn it up.

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I’m all right, I’m all right
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it’s all right, it’s all right
We’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we’re traveling on,
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all, I’m trying to get some rest.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Spooky Times: Helpful Halloween Costume Ideas for 2018

CREDIT: Tony Posnanski via Twitter

Halloween is only a couple of weeks away. Hard to believe, right? With temperatures still hovering in the 80s, coffee shops might as well serve their pumpkin spice lattés in hollowed-out coconuts. Festively arranged seasonal gourds look out of place when the outdoor pool at the YMCA is still open.

For some, the past 22 months or so have felt like an endless haunted house of confusion and outrage. Behind every door awaits a new “Oh, what now?” Some are merely head-scratchers, like the unexplained and unnecessary deregulations gifted to niche interest groups. Others, true oh-my-God-how-is-this-happening nightmare fuel, like the enduring detention of immigrant children, deteriorating relationships with allies — Canada? Really? — and the shameful display of victim-shaming and mockery that recently took place a few miles south of us at a Southaven campaign rally.

As for the aforementioned unseasonal heat, according to UN scientists we have until 2030 to stem the rapidly escalating damage wrought by climate change. How about that Paris Agreement?

Tony Posnanski via Twitter

Beer-Lovin’ Brett

Yeah, spooky times have indeed arrived. I can’t blame you if you haven’t started thinking about your Halloween costume yet. So here are a few ideas to help you stand out among all the Sexy Handmaids and save you from the line to buy the Halloween store’s last raggedy wig on October 30th.

This first one is easy and timely — then again, who knows what will happen between now and the end of the month to bury those contentious Senate hearings in our collective consciousness? You might not be the only Beer-Lovin’ Brett at your Halloween shindig, but you’ll be comfortable and you’re guaranteed to have a good time even if you don’t remember it. Snag a black robe (pants optional for the Justice of the Party, woo!) and behave like the overprivileged jerk in an ’80s college movie. A beer helmet is not required, but drinking beer and talking about how much you like beer are. Sneer and rant about left-wing conspiracies and cry about your high school bros in the same sentence. You’ll get a lifetime appointment to a roaring good time.

Next, this unconventional couple costume might look like a dinosaur and a unicorn, but tuned-in Tennesseans know who you really are: former governor/Senate hopeful Phil Bredesen and a Moderate Republican! The Moderate Republican doesn’t have to be a unicorn, of course. It can be any made-up or extinct creature or a visual manifestation of wishful thinking. Let that imagination run wild! And let your dino — “Democrat In Name Only” — date chase you around all night. Bonus points if he arrives with another group of friends and ditches them to buy a round for the guy in the Brett Kavanaugh costume. What are they going to do? Hang out with Marsha — the woman whose positions are so toxic, even human vanilla scoop Taylor Swift had no choice but to speak out? He’s their ride home so they have no choice. What an exciting time for our state.

If you’re as exhausted by politics as I am, you’ll enjoy these next two. This is Memphis, after all, where “Everything sucks, let’s basketball” is a cherished coping mechanism. After a disappointing year in Hoop City, we needed a little hope. FedExForum was packed to the rafters for Memphis Madness, with thousands of fans eager to catch a glimpse of two people. Not Penny Hardaway and coveted recruit James Wiseman, silly. According to a few sports-talk dudes, the true men of the hour were Justin Timberlake and Drake, two Real Memphians who totally rep the city all the time and not just when it’s convenient. If you plan on staying in this Halloween, have a friend start a rumor that you’re attending a party as Drake or JT. Don’t actually commit yourself. If anybody asks, say nothing. Don’t show up. See how ridiculous that sounds, Tiger fans?

Finally, sticking with the theme of ridiculous Tiger fans, one of my favorite sports phenomena. Inspired by the timeless catchphrase of chatty fans, I call this last costume “I’ll Hang Up and Listen.” If you have any University of Memphis or Memphis State gear, all you need is a cell phone and an arsenal of terrible sports opinions. Yell things like “I been follerin’ the Tigers since Moe Iba and I never seen defense this bad! Go Tigers” and “Penny needs to play [insert walk-on here] more; that kid’s got a cannon! Go Tigers” into the phone. The less coherent, the better. If you can’t think of anything clever, call for someone’s job and name-drop a coach or obscure player from 40 years ago. Sure, this isn’t unique to Memphis, but I like to keep it local.

I hope these ideas help you create a memorable Halloween look. If not, you can always bring back Sexy Mitch McConnell. Happy Halloween!

Jen Clarke is an unabashed Memphian and a digital marketing specialist.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Tennessee’s Healthcare System: Forced Into a Corner

Imagine the predicament on Tuesday of Wendy Long, director of Health Care Finance and Administration for the state of Tennessee, as well as, crucially, director of the state’s TennCare program, Tennessee’s version of Medicaid. Long, also a physician, was the scheduled luncheon speaker of the Rotary Club of Memphis at the Universitry Club, and, if she was late in taking her seat, it was, she would explain, because she was tuned into various news sources to get the latest news coming from Capitol Hill in Washington.

As it happened, Tuesday was also the day that Mitch McConnell (R-KY), majority leader of the U.S. Senate, had indicated he would require a vote in that august deliberative body relative to pending legislation regarding a possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and/or a possible replacement measure to govern the nation’s national health-care policy.

If that has a vague sound to it, it’s because McConnell’s intentions were indeed vague, as would be whatever mechanism he trotted forth for the unsuspecting Senators to deal with. McConnell’s legislative gambit on health care this week was even more a mystery than the one he laid before the Senate two weeks ago after clearing it in advance with only 12 fellow Republicans, members of an ad hoc committee appointed by the Majority Leader.

That bill, which polls showed only 11 percent of the nation’s population favoring, would have ultimately knocked some 22 percent of current insured Americans out of coverage. The bill got nowhere, as a fair number of Senate Republicans refused to go lock-step with it. (Democrats were universally opposed to both it and any other arbitrary measure repealing the A.C.A.)

On Tuesday, no one knew what McConnell had in mind at the time of Long’s scheduled Rotary appearance in Memphis. It was thought that he might seek a vote merely to forward in discussion of an as-yet-unknown health-care measure, or perhaps he had a specific bill in mind to seek a vote for, or …

Long had to wing it in her luncheon remarks, although she made it clear that any of several possible directions that the Senate (and later the whole Congress) might take on health care were crucial to Tennessee’s medical future — and especially to TennCare, a jointly funded federal/state program that administers to fully 50 percent of the state’s population, including, as she put it, “pregnant women, children, parents of children, the elderly, and the disabled.” Several of the pending Congressional possibilities under consideration by the GOP-dominated Congress — including a bill already passed by the House of Representatives and whatever has thus far been proposed in the Senate — would effectively either scuttle Medicaid at some point in the not-too-far-off future or impose unsustainable costs on Tennessee’s TennCare version.

Asked what outcome her department sought from Tennessee Republican Senators Lamar Alexander (one of McConnell’s erstwhile ad hoc group) and Bob Corker, Long answered: “Flexibilty,” (a word with numerous implications under the circumstances, some of them ironic). In her competent, detailed way, she had managed to suggest that otherwise the state — and its large population dependent on TennCare  — would shortly be forced into a corner.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Testing Trump

This week marks President Trump’s 100th day in office. On day one, after listening to Trump’s inaugural address, former President George W. Bush reportedly said: “That was some weird s—t.” The GOP establishment still holds that view after 100 days of President Trump.

Juan Williams

Democrats are offering “we told you so” looks. Trump’s most striking achievement in his first three months is being the least popular new president in modern history.

A majority of Americans — 52 percent — disapprove of his job performance as president, according to the most recent Gallup tracking poll. Even Trump’s supporters have to admit these first three months have been defined by the administration’s failure to deliver on campaign promises. For all of Trump’s talk about being a great dealmaker, the flashing lights on the political scoreboard read as follows:

No repeal of Obamacare. No tax reform. No Muslim travel ban — the attempt to enact one is bogged down in the courts — and no evidence to support the incredible claim that President Obama had Trump wiretapped.

There is also no wall on the southern border and no indication that Mexico will pay for it. And in the last few weeks, the reversals on campaign promises have come thick and fast.

Now, Trump approves of the Export-Import Bank. Now, Trump is no longer a fan of the border adjustment tax. Now, he believes in NATO. Now, China will not be listed as a currency manipulator. Now, Janet Yellen is a good chairwoman of the Federal Reserve.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) put all the flip-flops in delicate terms so as not to offend the Trump faithful: “I think President Trump is learning the job, and some of the things that were said during the campaign, I think he now knows — that’s simply not the way things ought to be.”

Trump’s singular success was getting Neil Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court. But the credit for that win should properly go to the Heritage Foundation and the conservative legal minds at the Federalist Society. They compiled a list of their favorite conservative judges and handed it to Trump.

Now, let’s look ahead to Trump’s next 100 days. The biggest threat to Trump is the split between him and Republicans in Congress. FiveThirtyEight.com forecaster Harry Enten tweeted earlier this month that the House GOP caucus is in the worst position of any party holding the House majority since 1954, when voters were first asked their preference for which party rules the House. That ballot question was simply, “If the election were held today, would you vote for the Republican or the Democratic candidate?” Enten’s average of polls has the Republicans down by six points.

There is more than a year for the Republicans to dig out from there, but it is a big hole. That gives Republicans every reason to start distancing themselves from the Trump White House. Democrats are already standing far away. Yet Trump needs Congress’s help right now to avoid a government shutdown.

After a two-week Easter recess, Congress returns to work with just four days left until funding for current government operations is set to expire on April 29th.
The top two Senate Republicans, McConnell and Majority Whip John Cornyn (Texas), are calling for a bipartisan, stop-gap funding measure to stave off a shutdown.

So, now we have leading Republicans calling on President Trump to work with the Democrats. But Democrats know that Trump’s plans for future budgets anger their base. So why would they help him?

The Trump blueprint for future budgets, released last month, outlined draconian cuts to funds that support popular education, social welfare, and economic development programs. Meals on wheels for the elderly and after school programs for disadvantaged youths were two that invited public outcry.

Trump recently said he remains focused on health reform and is threatening to withhold subsidies to insurance companies to force Democrats to help him pass a bill to replace Obamacare.

If you are a Democrat who enjoyed the disastrous GOP civil war over their health-care bill, then you are going to love the upcoming GOP slugfest over spending and taxes.

Juan Williams is an author and a
political analyst for Fox News Channel.