David Brooks, conservative pundit at the New York Times, captures the essential point when it comes to the nastiest issue swirling around Donald Trump, the use and practice of “white identity politics” by politicians on the right:

White identity politics as it plays out in the political arena is completely noxious. Trump … established his political identity through birtherism, he won the Republican nomination on the Muslim ban, he campaigned on the Mexican wall, he governed by being neutral on Charlottesville and pardoning the racialist Joe Arpaio. Each individual Republican is now compelled to embrace this garbage or not. The choice is unavoidable, and white resentment is bound to define Republicanism more and more in the months ahead.

Hold that in your mind, particularly the part about “completely noxious” – coming from a principled conservative yet – along with the part about “each individual Republican is now compelled to embrace this garbage or not.” And then read the unambiguous welcome GOP Senator Roy Blunt has extended to Donald Trump on the occasion of his visit to Missouri:

“I’m glad that President Trump will be in my hometown of Springfield to highlight the economic benefits that tax reductions and other pro-growth policies will have for Missouri families, farmers, and small businesses,” Blunt said. “The president and the Senate have taken important steps to roll back burdensome regulations and create a stronger foundation for economic growth. I look forward to continuing that effort by pursuing changes in our tax code that will increase U.S. competitiveness, boost wages, and expand opportunity for Americans.”

But Republican Trump Blunt wasn’t alone. Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill issued a statement “welcoming” Trump to Missouri and signaled that she is also more than willing to chill with a Putin-loving demagogue, whose true metier is spewing racist “garbage” intended to rile up an angry white base, as long as Missouri “moderates” will applaud her good manners – no matter how badly he disses her in the process.

Here’s what she had to say during her recent tour of the state when asked about an effort to censure Trump’s Charlottesville circus-of-the-damned performance:

“Listen, I’m disappointed and discouraged and worried about some of the things that president has said and the tone he’s taken on some issues. But my job out there is not to fight the president. My job is to fight for you,” McCaskill told the crowd about 100 gathered at the American Legion post. “My job is to work as hard as I can representing Missouri families and doing the things that I think will make a difference in your lives. I’m going to stay focused on that.”

Who’da thunk it. McCaskill and Blunt, siblings in political pragmatism. Or should that be cynicism. These responses amply illustrate the point David Brooks was trying to make about he dilemma facing Republicans – except in Missouri it seems to pose a problem for Democrats as well. It has to do with facing up to the fact that “fighting” the president is just exactly what is called for in order to fight for the full range of ones constituents, not just the white, old and angry segment.

What we got from Blunt is what we expected. Slick twaddle over a layer of corruption. So big whoop.

But what we got from McCaskill? A failed balancing act … so thumbs down. But only because we care.

I understand the need to keep the eye on the prize. The little one that comes after the next election, not the big one that has to do with the long-term survival of American democracy. I get the part about focusing political energies on the possible – and non-controversial – good one can actually do. But even from that point of view, would it have really hurt McCaskill too much to just have kept her mouth shut. Did she have to make with the cheery official welcome extended to a de trop sleaze-bag intent on destroying American political and civil norms?

*2nd and 3rd from last paragraph slightly edited; text added (5:51 pm. 8/29).

Springfield. That’s the city. And it’s true that Donald Trump will be there next week. Wednesday to be exact.

Trump’s gonna talk about his tax plan. Except that he doesn’t have a tax plan.

According to Trump’s Chief Economic Advisor, Gary Cohn, the Trumpies have a “great, I would say, skeleton. We need the Ways and Means Committee to put some muscle and skin on the skeleton and drive tax reform forward.” Which means that Trump and his not-such-wunderkinds are going to let congress – the same congress he’s been busy bad-mouthing – fill in the details and “solve the big questions that remain unanswered.”

Just like Trump’s recipe for “wonderful” healthcare. Remember the bang-up job congress and Trump did with that one?

So, if there’s no real plan, what exactly will Trump be selling when he comes to Springfield? Obviously, as the White House has said, there will be no specifics. Instead, according to an unnamed administration official, he’ll “advocate broad themes of middle-class tax cuts, simplifying the tax code and making businesses more competitive in a way that encourages job creation.”

In other words, he’s coming to Missouri to sell us a pig in a poke – and trying to persuade us, sight-unseen that, just like his healthcare plan, it’s the best ever. Certainly the best Pavlovian buzz-words ever.

We can only hope that there are at least a few Missourians who are on to this game by now.

We’ve heard Trump’s faux populist palaver about cutting middle-class taxes for a long time. It’s faux populism because it’s not really true.

The broad-stroke proposals released during the election campaign last year along with the similar outlines that were shared in April and July of this year, very emphatically were not designed to benefit the middle class – although they offered Trump’s homies, that is, the very wealthy, a super-sweet deal. Buzz is that this latest stinker’s just more of the same – and that the wealthy and super-wealthy will do just fine, as usual, on the backs of the middle class.

The devil, of course, is in the details, and the fact that we have no details – even though these bozos have had seven months to fill in the blanks – suggests a very unpleasant product is in the offing although the perpetrators of the proposed reform will be doing all that they can do to disguise its shortcomings. The fact that Paul Ryan will have a hand in crafting the details is not reassuring. We’ve seen his budget proposals in the past and they are not, to put it mildly, friendly to the less than wealthy.

Anne Kim at The Washington Monthly argues that, while there is plenty of room for real tax reform, given the inability of the White House to provide serious direction when it comes to the hard decisions – and I would add, because of the ideological bent of the GOP-dominated Congress – we’ll probably get nothing more than tax cuts with the potential to do lasting harm:

Given all this, it’s highly doubtful that anything the GOP Congress puts forward this fall will truly count as “reform.” Rather, the likeliest scenario is a modest—or not so modest—set of corporate tax cuts aimed at placating the president and his base and, of course, squeezing vulnerable swing-state Democrats into making difficult pre-election choices. As Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway signaled as early as January, Trump would be just as happy with tax “relief” as he would be with “reform.”

A tax cut package disguised as reform could do serious damage—such as by blowing a mile-high hole in the federal deficit while aggravating the blatant inequities of the current system. More significantly, it would be an enormous missed opportunity for genuine discussion about the kinds of reforms that could grow the economy and make it fairer for working-class Americans.

(A word to the wise: Keep in mind the part about “squeezing vulnerable swing-state Democrats into making difficult pre-election choices” when you hear  Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill try to make nice with tax-cutting Trump.)

It has been suggested that Trump is coming to Missouri rather than to Kansas because Kansas has been reduced to near financial ruin through the implementation of the type of tax cuts he wants to see enacted on the national level. And although Missouri is now experiencing the consequences of similar, if not as extreme, ideologically motivated tax-cuts, there are plenty of true-believers here intent on not learning the lesson of Kansas – and plenty of self-interested money-men – e.g., billionaire Rex Sinquefield and his ilk – who encourage their wilful blindness with plentiful dollops of campaign cash.

Nevertheless, it’ll be interesting to see how Trump’s sales spiel will be received by Missourians other than the hard-core, ever- salivating base. John Danforth, the Dean of traditional Missouri Republican circles, recently attempted to exorcise Trump from the GOP body politic when he declared in a WaPo op-ed that the GOP “cannot allow Donald Trump to redefine the Republican Party.” I’m gonna go out on a limb here and predict that Danforth will have to sit on a similar limb all by himself.

It already looks like lots of Missouri GOP good ol’ boy and gal pols will be more than willing to let The Donald redefine the party any old way he wants to as long as they get the tax “reform” for which their financial supporters have been clamoring. The question is, though, how will the rest of us welcome Trump and his bloviations to Missouri? Are Missourians still as susceptible to the empty blandishments of the conman-in-chief as they were in fall 2016?

Yesterday President Bill Clinton spoke on behalf of Hillary Clinton at a noon event in Kansas City and an afternoon event in Springfield. The Springfield event took place at the Teamsters Local 245 hall. The venue was packed.

Bill Clinton in Springfield, Missouri – March 11, 2016.

At the back of the hall.

President Bill Clinton:….I’m glad to be back in the Ozarks. A lot of you know that, that, a, Hillary and I were married in Fayetteville and that we taught in the law school there and I felt right at home when I saw the Democrats and the protesters out there together. [laughter]….

….One of the things I like about being a Democrat in this election season is at least our side is debating the issues. [cheers, applause]. Both of our candidates agree that income inequality is way too great and we need to do something about it. And both agree that we need to get affordable health care for everybody. And both agree that everybody ought to be able to go to college and get out without debt. They have differences about how to do it. And some differences about how the economy works and how best to maintain it. And they’re very important. But at least it’s real. You can listen to this debate and figure out who you agree with….

….It’s are very well to blame somebody for the fix we’re in….but I can tell you this, I’ve had that job. You take the oath of office and whatever blaming you did in the campaign, it lasts about fifteen seconds, then you gotta stand and deliver. You own it. And when you quit people are either better off than they were when you started or they’re not. Children and young people have brighter future, or not. We’re coming together or still being torn apart, or not….

….If you want shared prosperity and everybody rising again, if you want a society where we’re coming together again we have to have a politics for the president who will, number one, stand her grand where it’s important, and number two, never ever, ever close the door to finding common ground. Now there’s a big difference of opinion about this….And you have to decide who you agree with. But I like her campaign. I like the fact that she holds it up to here’s how we can get more and better jobs, here’s how we can live together, and here’s how I’m gonna pay for it, don’t forget arithmetic.[laughter] People ask me all the time, how’d we create all those jobs and have three balanced budgets and surpluses? What great new idea did you bring to Washington? And I always say, arithmetic. [laughter, applause]. But, look, there’s so much anxiety here in spite of the fact that we had fourteen million jobs in five years, we’re growing faster than any other big country [inaudible], that’s the largest job growth we’ve had since that other Democrat, whatever his name was, was president. [laughter]. [inaudible] For the first time in our history as a nation we have over ninety percent of our people with health insurance. And [applause, cheers] … and we’re in better condition for the future because we’ve got a younger, more diverse workforce, because we rank first or second in the world according to all scientific surveys and our crowd still believes in science. [applause, laughter] And the ability to generate electricity from the sun and the wind, three of our states, Minnesota, Iowa, and Texas, already get more than a third of their electricity from wind. Iowa has the cheapest power costs in the United States….

….So, basically we got all this anxiety because most people still haven’t gotten a raise. ‘Cause you got all these young people who can’t move out of their parents’ house, ‘cause they can’t pay rent and pay their college debt. Because too many of the jobs that have been created pay lower than average wages. And what we’ve got to do is rise together again. And what I want to say first of all that we are in a position to rise together again because the jobs are coming back, because were outperforming the rest of the world. But it won’t happen by accident. We’ve gotta build ladders of opportunity and tear down barriers that keep everybody from climbing the ladders. [applause] Hillary is running for president because she wants us to all rise together. [applause, cheers]….

[….]

So, we are in a race. And I need your help and Hillary needs your help. And this is the last thing I want to say. I want you to vote for her…It’d be a good thing to have someone on day one that understood the national security issues as well as the domestic issues. [applause] Most importantly, is that she’s the best change maker that I ever met. And you want somebody that actually gets something done. Let me, she graduated from law school. She could have gone into any law firm, she went to work for the Children’s Defense Fund. She went to South Carolina to see why African-American teenagers were being jailed with adults for years and having their lives ruined. And they had juvenile justice reform because of the work she and the Children’s Defense Fund did. She went to Alabama where there were desegregated academies pretending to be eligible for federal tax credits. Which they weren’t. She posed as a housewife that just moved to town trying to find a school for her son. And they had all this little polite conversation. She looked at this guy, said, look, just give me a straight answer. [inaudible] Is my She came to Arkansas with me and in the Ozarks established our first ever legal aid clinic. And poor people in the mountains got access to the justice system for the first time. [applause] She started…a preschool program in the mountain and in the Mississippi delta ‘cause we had six of the poorest counties in America. You had all these people starting school, there was no preschool back then, there was no kindergarten, and she said, Bill, these kids don’t have a chance. Their parents can’t read, write, and count….

….Go out and talk to your friends and neighbors, bring home the vote. We need you. We need you. And she will be there for you. For places like Springfield and all the counties in between the cities as well as the people who live in the cities. We can all rise together….

Sometimes television reporting is like a selfie, except with more expensive equipment:

A television reporter doing a standup in front of the main press riser while Bill Clinton is speaking.

On the rope line.

There was a handful of protesters outside the event. They need to work on their graphic design skills.

Protesters on the street outside the campaign rally. The individual in the background is holding a sign “Hitlary for Prison 2016″.” The flyer in the back pocket of the individual leaning over – “Is it a Rising or Setting Sun over America?”

It depends on the time of day.

Previously:

Hillary Clinton – Harlem, New York – February 16, 2016 (February 16, 2016)

Hillary Clinton Campaign Headquarters Open In Kansas City – February 17, 2016 (February 18, 2016)

On occasion we’ll notice something intriguing at the Missouri Ethics Commission that makes us ask, “I wonder what that’s all about?”:

C121226 05/03/2012 ONE AIR ALLIANCE American Cancer Society 3322 S. Campbell Ave, Ste. G Springfield MO 65807 5/3/2012 $6,000.00

C121226 05/17/2012 ONE AIR ALLIANCE American Heart Association 2446 E. Madrid Springfield MO 65804 5/16/2012 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

On June 5th voters in Springfield, Missouri will vote on Question 1 which would repeal the city’s smoke free ordinance.

The One Air Alliance, opposing that repeal, has a web site up and running. It includes some interesting and very effective videos:

A set of sobering images.

Via Dregs of the Future:

Foreclosures maps

….Select Real Estate -> Foreclosures

Google Maps search feature can show houses in foreclosure or default (missed at least one 1st mortgage payment).

* Go to maps.google.com.

* Click on the “More” box (located on the map itself in the top right of the Google map).

* A pull down menu will appear.  Click on “Real Estate”.

* Now, in the selection box on the left, check “Foreclosure” to select it, and remove the check in “For sale” to unselect it (just click on the check box).

* Now, the map will show foreclosures. Search for any city or zip code in the search box, or zoom in on any area of interest….

So, we thought we’d take a look at Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield.

Foreclosures and defaults in Kansas City.

Foreclosures and defaults in St. Louis.

Foreclosures and defaults in Springfield.

There are a number of clusters across the state.

My husband and I just returned from a few days in Branson.  We were hoping for some nice fall colors, but that part of the state is even duller this year than the St. Louis area.  At the last minute I decided not to take my car which is a moving advertisement for all things Democratic because, I’m sorry to admit, I was afraid.  SW Missouri has a well-earned reputation for keeping the local folks pretty much in the Dark Ages.  I lived in Springfield during the 1970’s and part of the 80’s, so I know whereof I speak.

My mood was probably influenced by something that happened last week as I was coming home after dark on I-44.  Even though we were virtually alone on the highway, the driver of a semi pulled up close behind me and then began blinking his lights.  I know that rude drivers do that when someone is poking along in the passing lane, but I was in the middle lane.  He could pass me on either side easily.  He continued tailgating and flashing his lights for a few more miles while I tried to stay in my lane hoping he would pass me.  Finally he did pass, on the right, and laid on his horn as he went by.  I don’t know if he was trying to tell me to move into the right lane or if he didn’t like my bumper stickers.  My husband thinks it was the latter.  He’s probably right.

So we took my husband’s very conventional Chevy Malibu, sans bumper stickers, to Branson.  Springfield is Roy Blunt’s home base, so it was no surprise to see hundreds of big “ROY” signs. There were also many “Vote No on Prop B” and “Vote YES on Prop A” signs as well.  SW Missouri is teeming with puppy mills as well as voters who believe “Let Voters Decide” is a good idea.  The Branson area is hosting a huge veterans  celebration next week which is a natural extension of many of the year round shows there.  During the height of the Iraq war hysteria, we attended a patriotic music show  (only because we had out-of-state guests who wanted to go) where the grand finale brought the flag and cross together as one huge symbol of love of country.  

The subtle blending of religion and patriotism blankets the hill country like morning fog.  Busloads of senior citizens come from all over the country to revel in it and to go home “saved” once again.   I thought I was beyond being shocked by all the appeals to emotional servitude, but one gigantic billboard caught my attention.  It was a double size sign – enormous and hard to miss – along hwy 76 just outside the actual City of Branson.  The letters that spelled out “Book of Revelations” were in the shape of a question mark.   Next to that it said, “What Does it Mean?”  and “Who is the Anti-Christ?”

I didn’t catch the details about where this “show” was being presented, but I certainly caught the message.  And I can guess who the anti-Christ is.   This is what rational people are up against.  Wingnuts like the tea partiers come and go over time, but this foundation of nativism provides the bedrock for the type of fanaticism that always was and always will be a part of our American character.

The good news is that, according to the executive director of the Greene County (Springfield) Democrats, Springfield now votes close to 50% Democratic.  So maybe there is still hope.