Friedman of the Plains

This article cites a 2002 interview with Vice President Pence — who has called himself an “evangelical Catholic” — saying that he “never eats alone with a woman other than his wife,” and that he doesn’t attend events serving alcohol unless she is with him as well.  Sheik Hilali was quoted as saying: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab [the headdress worn by some Muslim women], no problem would have occurred."

"I'm a huge baseball fan, huge. I knew George Steinbrenner, so I'm very much appreciated in all sports worlds. I owned the New Jersey Generals, a great franchise, ahead of its time, and I knew Ali very well, so, believe me when I say, I am Mr. Sports, love the players, the athletes, the front office people, the people in the cheap seats, the games, including baseball, where I used to watch The Mets, even when they played in that horrendous stadium, near LaGuardia, a disgusting airport, which I told them to destroy and eventually they did and they're hugely successful now after listening to me. A great city like New York deserves a great ballpark--look at Alabama U. and the Astrodome--and I'm going to encourage more cities to build them.  I loved the Mets, too, even though I knew Madoff was a crook, knew it before anyone and warned against letting him buy into the team. They would have been smarter if they listened to me. So, #FakeMedia is wrong, as usual, ab...

Scott Pruitt, EPA Administrator  Back in 2015, Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma's former attorney general and chief dictation officer for the energy industry, sued Colorado because ... "The fact remains — Colorado marijuana continues to flow into Oklahoma, in direct violation of federal and state law. Colorado should do the right thing and stop refusing to take reasonable steps to prevent the flow of marijuana outside of its border. And the Obama administration should do its job under the Constitution and enforce the Controlled Substances Act. Until they do, Oklahoma will continue to utilize every law enforcement tool available to it to ensure that the flow of illegal drugs into our state is stopped.” Yes, because three Alpha Phi Deltas at the University of Colorado cutting their Freshman Writing Seminar to get high back at the frat house presents a clear and present danger to the good people of Oklahoma City. Pruitt, though, is a states' rights kind of guy, but apparentl...

Now that 36-year-old Jared Kushner has been asked by his father-in-law to be his closest presidential advisor, to  broker a Mideast Peace, to cure the opioid crisis, reform care to veterans, and  overhaul the very workings of government (none of those jobs, incidentally, for which he is even remotely qualified), you have to wonder about poor Fredo, uh Eric. JARED I've always taken care of you Eric ERIC Taken care of me. You're my brother-in-law and you take care of me. Did you ever think about that -- did you ever once think about that? Send Eric off to play golf during the inauguration . Send Eric off to pick up some award for drinking wine ! Let Eric to take care of some Mickey Mouse property in Uruguay !  Send Eric out to take a picture of his ballot . I'm his real son, Jared, and I was stepped over. I should be advising him and meeting with Russian bankers and Netanyahu and hanging with Bannon and lying in bed all day on Saturday (or whatever it is y...

Right after the election, this annoying meme started showing up about how wanting Trump to fail was like wanting the pilot of your plane to fail. It was nothing like that, of course, for if your pilot had a momentary lapse in judgement, your plane would be equipped with the latest technology and (you hope anyway) an equally experienced and trained co-pilot who would say, as Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger said about US Airways Flight 1549 moments before landing it smoothly on top of the Hudson River, "My aircraft." If Trump fails, we have Steve Bannon and a twitter feed.  More to the point, Trump failing is the best thing that could happen to and for us. For ... If he fails to place Jeanine Ferris Pirro or Andrew Peter Napolitano on SCOTUS, America wins. If he fails to gut the NIH and PBS and handcuff NASA in its study of climate change, America wins. If he fails to gum up the Affordable Care Act, America wins. If he fails to pass a tax cut w...

In December 1950, Woody Guthrie and his family rented an apartment in the Beach Haven apartment complex in Brooklyn, New York, a property developed and managed by Fred C. Trump, father of Donald J. Trump. They moved out of “Bitch Heaven,” as Guthrie called it, in 1954, due to his illness, around the time he wrote “Old Man Trump.”  What follows is mostly fictional. Mr. Guthry, I have to tell you, I don’t send a lot of letters, but they’re great when I do. The best words, punctuation, typed on the most expensive typewriter—it’s an IBM Selectric. You probably can’t afford the one I have. It’s a special model—and you probably still use a manual, like an Underwood—but I can assure you they’re superstar letters. Great thoughts, sentences, they look fantastic. People notice. And I care about people, very much, but I’m taking the gloves off—no more Mr. Nice Guy—though I’m always nice, extremely nice, ask anyone, but you don’t deserve nice because you’re not nice. I know you’re in...

Oklahoma First District Representative Jim Bridenstine, who once stood by like a blob of Play-Doh while a constituent talked of executing President Obama, had a really bad week. A proud member of the Freedom Caucus, but one who also wants the NASA gig, Bridenstine came out for AHCA earlier this week, thinking, no doubt, he'd curry favor with Trump and because someone somewhere might still get a free condom from a large fishbowl at Planned Parenthood under the Affordable Care Act. Most important to me, this bill prohibits funds from going to the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, and redirects federal funding to Community Health Centers. Most important? Really? There was more. In my judgment though, this is the opening legislative salvo of the Trump Presidency, and we cannot let it fail when we do not have a shot at a better option.  Oops. So AHCA lost spectacularly and the president to whom Bridenstine was transparently sucking up for a better ...

The worst part of today was AHCA failed not because Republicans in the House thought the bill too draconian, but because they thought it wasn't draconian enough. The Freedom Caucus --and for the love of Christ, we should demand back that name--thinks insurance guidelines that require health coverage for people with pre-existing conditions (and those, you know, with vaginas) and provide minimum standards for all Americans must be derailed; otherwise, it would be the banana peel on which the country slips and summersaults into socialism and decay. Donald Trump, the president, and the GOP, the majority party in America, were humiliated today and revealed, once again (if such a notice were necessary), to have no balls, no heart and no conscience; so, yeah, it was a good day, but considering he and it are not going anywhere (Trump, in facts, wants ACA to fail, to blow up, for Americans to suffer), it was also a lousy one. America won and they're not happy about it.

Legislative Insanity,  Part the Infinity It keeps getting worse I have argued on these pages for years the GOP in Oklahoma throws cash to the luxury boxes and sanctimony to the cheap seats, and as someone who usually sits on the third base side, in general admission, I have found this to be a maddening, deplorable, cynical, and sycophantic spectacle.  To watch how easily these two groups are played and duped, to see the legislative sops—alternately hilarious and heartless—being thrown to each of them is to know that much of the GOP in Oklahoma is unmoored and, just as troubling (if not more so), the party’s base is largely unconcerned about the unmooring.  Let’s begin with Governor Mary Fallin’s  State of the State address  last month and the lowering of the bar of effective governance to subterranean levels. A thriving, prosperous economy must have a skilled, educated workforce. That starts with good teachers in the classrooms pr...

The GOP will now slink back to Mordor, tear off the heads of innocent cockatoos, and craft a health bill even more pernicious than before.

‘I’ll Criticize Judges,’ Trump Says, Hours After a Scolding for Doing Just That "Somebody said I should not criticize judges. O.K. I’ll criticize judges." This from the man who also said, “Somebody said I should not criticize prisoners of war, the intelligence community, Mexicans, Jews, ex-wives, Muslims, African Americans, disabled reporters, spouses of GOP presidential candidates, Native Americans, menstruating women, and the Constitution. O.K. I’ll criticize prisoners of war, the intelligence community, Mexicans, Jews, ex-wives, Muslims, African Americans, disabled reporters, spouses of GOP presidential candidates, Native Americans, menstruating women, and the Constitution."