The Star Tribune & its slights of Nancy Pelosi

Was it necessary for the Star Tribune to deliver a broadside to Nancy Pelosi today (Friday)? Pelosi will go down as one of the most resilient political figures in U.S. history. Her intelligence and tenacity are such, the president has not offered a mocking nickname for her. Her effectiveness is such, the Republican Party attempted to tar her during the 2016 campaign as someone akin to a boogeyman.
Republicans trotted out her name as if this would be a smear against Democrats like Collin Peterson. Finally Bill Maher came forward for a monologue and asked a simple question: what's so terrible about Nancy Pelosi? I sense an air of sexism in the taunts made toward Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. Women have an instinctive nurturing quality that I would argue makes them best suited to be Democrats. Conservative Republican women seem rather a puzzle.
Such were the brickbats tossed at Pelosi leading up to the election, we got this impression she wouldn't have a prayer becoming Speaker of the House.
Then we slowly sensed the truth: all the vitriol dispensed toward Pelosi from the well-orchestrated political right was just a phantom veil. Or a smokescreen. Her Democratic colleagues came to realize the obvious, that this was no "ogre" at all in their midst. What she was, was a model for how Democratic Party advocates can get Democratic Party policies enacted.

Our Speaker of the House

With each passing day she in fact looks more and more like a white knight. She looks like the savior who can, we pray, pull us out of the morass that the president has led us into.
Nothing is guaranteed. All the comparisons with Watergate are cute. That was then, this is now. We can never be sure that good will win over evil. We sense that the vise is tightening with advances in the Mueller investigation, as this morning we heard of the arrest of Roger Stone, to be followed by a whole news cycle of histrionics and analysis.
We know something is amiss. And we know it goes to the very top. If we ever emerge from this nightmare and see blue skies again, we will surely wonder how we endured the storm for so long. There will follow a library's worth of books from former Trump insiders with the common theme of "hey, I could see this was a disaster all along!" The parade has begun or picked up steam with Chris Christie's new book, Ol' Fatso. He protests too much. He's a train wreck type of right winger himself, he of "Bridgegate" (on his watch).
So many principals out in D.C. clearly act like they are afraid of Trump and the coterie around him. Let's consider Lindsay Graham.
The media are cowed because of desperately wanting to avoid accusations of imbalance and bias. The moral equivalence thing gets trotted out. So today, Friday, Jan. 25, I open the Star Tribune and find an institutional statement, bottom of A6, that decries Nancy Pelosi. This is based on her decision to disallow the president from making his State of the Union speech, due to the horrible shutdown of government. Were you born yesterday? Does anyone think that Trump would not use this occasion to deliver a campaign rally type of speech with the expected sarcasm and insults (like toward the media)?
If you thought Trump would suddenly behave like a statesman, you're deluded. The act has gotten so old: Republicans are heroic, Democrats are ignorant and stupid and cowardly. What a dichotomy.
The Star Tribune argues "the office of the presidency deserves our respect." Thus it argues that Pelosi is unreasonable in disallowing the speech. If the presidency is to be respected, its occupant must be a reasonable and thoughtful human being, not with the stench of mob boss emanating from him.
 
Why no sanctions?
Witness intimidation. Imagine if Barack Obama had done a tiny fraction of the bull-in-a-China closet stuff Trump has done. First, it was posse comitatus not being enforced, when troops were sent to the Mexico border. Posse comitatus means the military cannot be used for domestic law enforcement. Trump gets a pass with the idea that "we can't let it get any worse than this."
What about the argument that the camel's head cannot be allowed in the tent?
The imoluments clause of the Constitution is not being enforced in connection to Trump. I believe there are attempts at legal remedy but no intervention has happened. Such legal provisions exist for a reason. And now we have witness intimidation by Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the latter being a most curious spectacle right now: a man willing to jettison his once-solid reputation in law enforcement, now destined to be remembered as a pathetic soul willing to do a fool's errand for the mob boss president.
All this ridiculousness has been allowed to go on for way too long. It's as if we have a subconscious voice, a rational one, telling us it all needs to end, on one hand, but impulses on the other like what we see in today's Star Tribune editorial, i.e. "Let's trot out moral equivalence." The Star Tribune feels compelled to argue that Pelosi's "unfortunate diss reflects the hyperpartisan dysfunction that plagues Washington." Pelosi's actions reflect the "acrimony of the moment," the editorial argues.
Meanwhile it asserts only that "Trump has routinely upset norms." The language seems almost more sharp against the Speaker. The Star Tribune wonders how the impasse "leaves America better off." We're better off, thank God, for having someone like Pelosi who is absolutely not cowed by Trump, who can stare him down. She needs support in large doses.
The Strib says "Pelosi disregarded tradition and decorum by rescinding her Jan. 3 invitation to Trump to give the address Jan. 29." Decorum? Isn't Trump the virtual antonym for that term? Haven't we learned this over and over?
The Mueller investigation is leading to something big and will consummate its activity if sinister forces like Devin Nunes aren't allowed to put up a roadblock. The media people with their savvy can see something big is coming which is why the Russia probe story is so dominant. Today it's Roger Stone. One by one the revelations come. We pray that Trump will no longer find sympathy from his pronouncements about "fake news" and how it's "the enemy of the people."
Why have so many of us put up with this for so long? David Halberstam once wrote a book called "The Best and the Brightest." Maybe we'll get a new one called "The Worst and the Stupidest."
I almost have to hesitate renewing my Strib subscription which I acquire for our Senior Community Center in Morris. But I'll likely continue so the card players there, among others, can enjoy. We can read the comic strip "F Minus." We'll just have to say a prayer to get through each day with Trump.
Aren't your average small town mayor and city manager more sharp than Giuliani? What gives?
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com