Friedman of the Plains

Here we go again. On Senator Mitch McConnell's decision to invoke the “nuclear option” to abolish the filibuster on presidential Supreme Court nominations so that Neil Gorsuch may be placed on SCOTUS, I give you John McCain, maverick, on the ramifications. “Idiot, whoever says that is a stupid idiot, who has not been here and seen what I’ve been through and how we were able to avoid that on several occasions,” McCain said Wednesday, recalling past efforts to defuse these judicial confirmation wars. “And they are stupid and they’ve deceived their voters because they are so stupid.” Even though there's some discussion over whether this really is the end of the Republic, good on ya, John! You believe this--country over party, institutional integrity over short-term gain, process over politics, sanity over stupidity-- Wait, what's this? Even so, McCain will support McConnell’s move to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for reaching a final vote on approving Supreme C...

Yesterday afternoon, an hour or so before closing, a man at Old School Bagel Cafe, here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, sat in a booth by himself. Late 20s, thin, stubble, great complexion, short black, shiny, thinning hair, he was calm, scribbling in a tiny notebook, the kind New York Review of Books gives out free with paid subscriptions, only instead of red, his was black. On the table, as well, one larger notebook, two Qur'ans, a plastic cup of water and a leather briefcase. His writing was smooth, almost robotic--purposeful, yet not rushed. One of the holy books was open. He didn't drink the water, but he must have at some point, for it was only a third full. Was I the only one who noticed? Was there anything to notice? I saw the owner of the shop, laughing with three others, at another booth near the window. We're friends. He looked in my direction. He smiled at me; I smiled back. We were all smiling. The man finished writing and stood up, walked to the briefcase--his ...

"Today’s chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world. These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing. We stand with our allies across the globe to condemn this intolerable attack."--Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "Today’s chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world. These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing. We stand with our allies across the globe to condemn this...

He spends his mornings, alone in a big house, watching television, playing with his phone. He surrounds himself with sycophants and crooks and disgraced incompetents and white supremacists.  When he bankrupts companies, he does so with equal parts aplomb and denial. He is to grammar what Jim Nantz is to Vin Scully. Tone deaf, he can be found playing golf and bringing back to life deceased American icons. To his followers he is a paragon of virtue, a voracious reader, and a top-notch negotiator. He looks at his detractors and says NYET.  He has the best ties, the best words, the best children. Once, at a military school, he dreamt of conquest, but settled instead for refurbishing the Commodore Hotel with a loan his father co-signed. He knows heroes when he sees one, and he hasn't seen one.  He has slept with more women than you, many more. He has cheated on all of them, but they deserved it. His hair is glorious and manly and as real as the America on his hats. He is clodd...

"In the case, a truck driver named Alphonse Maddin discovered on the highway that the brakes on his trailer had frozen. He pulled off the side of the road and called for help, which never came. The heater in his cab failed, and Maddin soon began exhibiting the symptoms of hypothermia. His bosses told him to wait with his crippled trailer which, even if Maddin were capable of driving safely, which he wasn't, would have been a hazard to his fellow motorists because the frozen b rakes on the trailer would have held his speed down to 15 miles per hour. The company fired Maddin. He sued, and won, but Gorsuch  dissented ." Surrounded  by business executives in the White House before he signed the order, Trump claimed "excessive regulation is killing jobs" and "driving companies out of our country like never before." He said the measure is "one of the many ways that we're going to get real results" in scaling back regulations. P...

Yevgeny A. Yevtushenko After the killings in Blacksburg, Virginia in 2007, I ran into Fran Ringold , Oklahoma's poet laureate (yeah, we have them), in a parking lot at the University of Tulsa. At the time, she was editing Nimrod International Journal, the university's literary magazine. Would I, she wanted to know, come to a campus-wide memorial later that night and read one of my public radio essays? There were poets, Indian drummers on blankets, musicians, interpretative dancers performing that night. I not only felt out of place, I was. A microphone was set up and I read a piece about walking around the TU campus and seeing promise and opportunity, entitlement, innocence, arguments, people breaking up, tears, and how we were all connected to all of that, to every conversation, every word, every action, every building, every moment, every tragedy, including Blacksburg (and, for that matter, Bergen-Belsen) and concluded with something David Letterman, of all people, ...