It is 5 a.m. so at least there is a sense of peace around me. We can get a respite from some of the madness. DeToy's usually has a biscuits and gravy special on Wednesday morning. Nice to think about such things when so much that is worrisome is happening.
It's 5 a.m. so "Morning Joe" is getting started with some "relief" too. It's a story away from the really concerning stuff. They're talking about the death of Eddie Van Halen. I never got attracted to the music. I recognize the name and I'm happy for the success he had. I believe Linda Anderson of Morris was a fan.
All these pop music luminaries are proving to be as human as everyone else. They succumb to all the mortal limitations. "Pop music luminaries" is a reference to the modern era which in my mind extends back to the Beatles.
"Morning Joe" acts sometimes like we ought to drift toward some of the standard non-contentious subjects like the sad death of a music star. How wonderful if we could live our lives not preoccupied by one man who happens to occupy the White House. To not be distracted by his sheer outrageousness, hard-edged disrespect for so many thoughtful and well-intentioned people, his horrific lying and ignorance, on such glorious display all the time. The media could not have its feeding trough filled any better.
I am flabbergasted because true conservatives are not supposed to like a big, intrusive government. If we had their desired form of government at present, shows like "Morning Joe" could discuss more benign things, less threatening things, a greater share of the time, like they once did. Don't you remember?
I remember when "Morning Joe" and other such shows would get into "true crime" a lot, e.g. the Sandra Bland incident. We might get a full 20 minutes about such things, another example being one of those song-stealing lawsuits e.g. the one involving Katy Perry. At first there was a guilty verdict and then it was reversed. It was a fascinating subject. A panel on cable news might hash it over for 20 minutes with experts. Now? It's Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, the Supreme Court nomination and all sorts of horrible contentious things.
Trump pulls strings so he's at the top of the news cycle every day of the year. I thought pure conservatives disapproved of this sort of thing: politics being the prime mover in our lives all the time. Bitter disputes defining who we are. We have residences in Morris going absolutely nuts showing support for Trump and "all lives matter": flags, signs, displays that are garish, sort of kitschy. This is not consistent with pure ideological conservatism, as I remind Jim Morrison rather often.
It has gotten so bad, progressive people like me are revising our views of George W. Bush so that the guy is rather a hero.
Trump supporters today say they support Trump's stance against endless Mideast wars. But when "conservative" Bush was promoting such wars, he had the likes of "Fox and Friends" as complete cheerleaders, ad nauseam. What gives?
It appears to be an outright psychological affliction, this Trump loyalty. How far will these people go? Will we be seeing the "Proud Boys" patrolling around Morris polling places on election day? Trump has told these guys to "stand by." He wants "poll watchers" everywhere. To do what, exactly? Trump has said - you can look it up - that sheriffs (and presumably their deputies) will be stationed at polling places. To do what? Are these people really qualified to intervene when it comes to "voting irregularities?" What would they do?
I have suggested several times that Marshall at our local radio station ask our sheriff about this. A friend informed me yesterday that Marshall is evidently gone from the station. This friend who has good standing in the community also confirmed what I am increasingly hearing about the Morris water treatment plant being a problem. In fact the plant seems to be becoming a boondoggle.
I swear that when I made my first phone call on water matters in November, I knew nothing about any problem. I was just an innocent local citizen. I don't have the contacts like I once did when I was with the newspaper. Call me naive, then, at least on this one matter.
An "Indian summer" day (sorry)
I met my friend out along the bike trail on the north end of the UMM campus. What a beautiful day for being out for a walk. In my young days I'd refer to such a day as "Indian summer." Most likely that's un-P.C. now just like the old Land O' Lakes logo. We once had Del Holdgrafer as cartoonist with the paper and he did the un-P.C. thing with an "Indian maiden" alongside an old farmer. The caption: "She won't stay with him long." Yes, the idea being that Indian summers are fleeting.
Remember the term "Indian giver?"
My friend along the bike path said the water treatment plant "isn't doing what they said it was going to do." He said he didn't feel troubled at all buying just a few sacks of salt each year.
I heard from another source that the original plan was for the new city water to be 2-5 grains of hardness, and it has now fallen all the way down to 7-10 due to intervention by the state. Still another contact of mine in recent days sent an email saying in part that "the engineers sold the city a bill of goods and now Blaine (Hill, city manager) is having to defend it."
And, sigh, "having to defend it" will probably result in misrepresentations in order for the person in question to protect his own butt. I didn't come into town on a turnip truck. I am highly upset by this. I can only pray that my own household doesn't get hurt. It's hard to rule that out now, but what can I do? I can't trust anyone in an official position to give me the honest goods now. These people "punt" to private-based interests - the water quality companies - and that's a whole other issue, hoo boy. If Morris citizens are forced to turn to lawyers for advocacy, well, that costs money too. What a mess.
I should have been suspicious right away when the city passed its highly offensive "law" re. softeners. It was suspicious because, couldn't we all be given a grace period? Shouldn't the older softeners be "grandfathered in?" You can't just get rid of a big, bulky, heavy softener, what once cost you a fair amount, on a quick whim. And getting rid of it costs money. We were to assume that this was a law the city didn't intend to enforce? How do we know when to take certain laws serious, others not?
Has anyone been prosecuted yet for having been found to have an "old" softener? Such imprecision in wording has been disseminated publicly. What the heck is wrong with having a few old things, things that still work?
My friend along the bike trail was concerned about the higher water bills. And then he mentioned the softball fields project out by UMM, what I guess involves several government entities. Did we really need that? It doesn't look that impressive to me. Was this just another vacuum cleaner source for sucking up public money? I don't wish to sound like a crusty old skeptic on such things - remember I vote Democrat. The water bills should be brought back down and the city could find somewhere to cut. I think the library should be totally closed until the pandemic thing is over. But what if it's never over?
Are fall high school sports supposed to start later this week? Where the heck can I find schedule info? If football and volleyball were going to play a viable schedule, then it should have been according to the original schedule. Either that, or just keep it canceled.
I think public education institutions are just so desperate to present something equating to a normal routine, they are making ill-advised decisions. Here's what they are afraid of: the more that normal school activity is curtailed, the more the public will realize we don't need a lot of this stuff in the first place. We have legacy education systems that were built in pre-digital, pre-Internet times when learning and getting refined meant going to formal classes in brick buildings. And, it simply might not be necessary anymore.
The people who run the legacy systems are scared for their own jobs, their own sense of legitimacy.
The water treatment plant? Heavens, I meant no harm when I began commenting on this, when I began to sense that something didn't smell right. Why the imbroglio? I didn't seek this state of affairs. Really I am just John Q. Citizen. We need to trust our leaders better than this.
But turn on the news, and all you hear about is Donald J. Trump, the most dangerous man in the world. Do not rule out his winning re-election. I don't care what the polls say. Michael Dukakis was up 17 points in the polls. Republicans then "peeled the bark off" and they're getting ready to do that again.
Addendum: So the president's physician/spokesman outside of Walter Reed said certain information could not be disclosed because of the "hippa" thing. Are we all stupid to digest this? If the physician was really being sensitive to hippa, he wouldn't be conducting a news conference. He would not even be at liberty to say the president was a patient.
We all must be thinking: Why can't we all be put out of our misery now, get Trump out of the presidency and Biden/Harris in immediately?
My podcast for today, 10/7
We wonder about the long-term stability of various churches. I guess I'm hinting at the "mainstream" churches rather than the oddball ones of the political right wing. Could as many as three mainstream churches consolidate in Morris? One council member of First Lutheran envisions such a scenario possibly happening. So put on your spiritual hat, and I invite you to visit my "Morris Mojo" podcast:
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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