Friday, July 21, 2017

And now for something completely different ...

I have long been a fan of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) who, decades ago, used to be on an NPR late-night talk show with Sen. Joe Biden. Biden would hog the mike until Grassley sputtered, "Now, my friend Joe's been saying a lotta things, and I wanna say something now." Then Biden would say, "Sure, Chuck, but let me make this one last point ..." And Uncle Joe would talk until the music for a break came up.

It's not that I agree with Sen. Grassley "about a lotta things," but I recognize a decent fellow Midwesterner when I see one. And what came across in those Chuck-and-Joe (but mostly Joe) chats were two regular guys with very different ideas and personalities who sincerely respected each other and often found common sympathies.

So here's my appreciation of Sen. Grassley.


Not long after the Chuck and Joe chats on the radio, Grassley committed his famous gaffe in which he suggested that crooked AIG execs "quit or go commit suicide." Grassley had to walk back the whole suicide thing, but he expressed the frustrations of decent, hardworking Americans with Wall Street.

Grassley also investigated televangelists who weren't paying their taxes and were living lavishly off their profits. In a radio interview Grassley rather irritably noted that "Jesus Christ didn't have golden faucets in his bathroom."  No, he undoubtedly did not.

At 80+, Grassley clearly still loves being in Congress, listens to his constituents, and his Twitter feed is an anodyne to President Trump's.

Some highlights:

Back in June, Grassley brought a birthday cake to Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-California). "She's someone I enjoy working with," Grassley wrote. There's a picture. She looks delighted. So does he.

Clearly bipartisanship is something Grassley embraces. He bragged yesterday:

Pres Trump nom 2be FBI Dir. Christopher Wray was unanimously voted out of my Judiciary Comm 2day. Bipartisan vote 4 top law enforcement post

Grassley meets anybody from Iowa who shows up in his office, and he posts their pictures on Instagram. Most of these folks are large, sunburnt Midwesterners in baggy shorts and caps: Elizabeth Dinschel and Anna Plank, the Ahrens family, the Campbell family, students from Southeast Community College, Jonah Moret, the Notebooms, and Aaron Van Beek. And that was just yesterday.

Grassley also meets with plenty of big wigs:

  • Met w Lars Lose, the Ambassador of Denmark to the US. We talked about wind energy and the Danish Museum in Elk Horn, Iowa.

Mr. Lose looks a lot like an Iowan.

Grassley gives the president good blunt advice on occasion:

dont mke mistake some past Pres made taking August off Barnstorm country 2tell ppl policy priorities comingup aftr LaborDay
read last paragraph of Peggy noonan wsj oped today

I'll save you looking it up; Noonan was calling for a bipartisan effort on health care. Her op ed piece ended this way:


But move now. Do the work, break Capitol Hill out of its shirts-and-skins stasis. Solve this thing. 

A happy 241st anniversary to America, the great and fabled nation that is still, this day, the hope of the world.

But the best thing about Grassley's tweets are when they are unintentionally humorous or just plain weird:

I hrd Sen Hatch was defending bacon on twitter Thx 4 supporting pork Iowa's # 1 meat industry + more pigs than any other state 
I shld not give up. Staff just notified me there is some history on History Channel So I'm watching Go there quickly 
Iowa Premium=1st Iowa company approved 2 export beef 2 China Quality Iowa beef deserves 2b enjoyed by all Good news 4 Iowa ag 
52 Republicazn senators shld be ashamed that we have not passed health reform by now WE WONT BE ASHAMED WE WILL GO FROM MAJORITY TO MINORITY 
Dems:Don't go berserk abtTrump Assoc talking w a Russian lawyer abt Russia adoption policy,I & a Dem Sen did same advocacy w Russ ForeignMin 
I'm eager to replace Obamacare and I'm the first one on the bus to the Whitehouse to find the magic to get to "yes"

I don't agree with everything Grassley believes. But I believe sincerely in his dedication and ability to listen. The man did dozens of town halls on his last break from the Senate, often separated from a couple dozen people by just a small table or lectern. You can watch these on YouTube. He let people make noise and clap, asking only that they wait for the applause to die down so he could hear them. He wrote down everything they said on a yellow pad. And then, when he had taken in their concerns, he told them what he thought in plain old Iowa English.

It's easy for Democrats to demonize Republicans these days. Grassley reminds us to take a more measured approach.





32 comments:

  1. I like what I know about Grassley. Like you, I don't agree with him about everything. But I think he is a decent person, and is hard-working on behalf of the people who sent him to Washington. Would that there were more like him.

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  2. Morning Consult provides monthly ratings of Senators.

    Bernie Sanders remained the most popular senator in the country, with 75 percent of Vermonters approving of his job performance and 21 percent disapproving.

    Three senators — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Flake & McCain — were viewed negatively by a plurality of voters in their states. McConnell is consistently America’s least popular senator in the Morning Consult rankings.

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    1. Looks like Grassley is doing better than Ernst. Respectable 53 percent approval rating.

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    2. Michigan's Senator Debbie isn't looking too good. She was high on Hillary, but she has also been good with the farmers, so maybe she can pull it out. She's up in '18. Senator Gary is pretty low, 38 percent. I honestly don't know what he does. He's new, really low profile. No Carl Levin, that's for sure.

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    3. Deb Fisher and Ben Sasse are hanging in at 49 and 52 respectively. I don't agree with Fisher on everything, but she's of the same mold as Grassley in a lot of ways. Sasse wants to be president so bad he can taste it. The only reason he is bothering with things at the state level is that it makes a good launch pad.

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    4. Deb Fisher and Ben Sasse are hanging in at 49 and 52 respectively. I don't agree with Fisher on everything, but she's of the same mold as Grassley in a lot of ways. Sasse wants to be president so bad he can taste it. The only reason he is bothering with things at the state level is that it makes a good launch pad.

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  3. And here is an article which makes the case that the governors are the new president.
    From the article: "The incredible irony is that Republicans in Washington have always preached about the imperative of “returning power to the states.” But only through sheer incompetence and failing to pass any meaningful part of their agenda have they achieved that goal. With so little leadership coming from Washington, 50 governors (give or take, Chris Christie) are now stepping up and acting like presidents."

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    1. That is really interesting. Repub governors are making noise, and not much of it is pro-Trump. Gov. Rick Snyder here in Michigan refused to endorse him. In fact, he tried to get the Legislature to start its own state marketplace before the ACA was passed. But they're all term-limited idiots who know nothing. If my statehouse rep comes knocking on my door again, I'm gonna turn the hose on him instead of inviting him in for coffee. Jaysus. I'd rather talk to the Mormons.

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  4. I don't really know much about many Republican politicians. With the health care bill debate, Susan Collins comes to mind as decent person, and I respect McCain. McConnell I detest.

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    1. I really like Susan Collins. And Capito and Murkowski seem to be thinking straight.

      Someone opined in the radio the other day that McConnell has always been less interested in governing as much as the game of political tactics. That seems more dangerous than someone with merely the "wrong" ideas. But I think Harry Reid was like that, too.

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    2. Someone is always opining that Addison Mitchell McConnell is a great legislative technician, but I've never seen much genius in getting a bunch of nay-sayers to say no. David Brooks suggested that it was an amazing feat of lining up votes for McConnell to get 48 votes (in theory) for that meatless stew of misery to replace Obamacare. But again, I don't think it is a sign of genius to create a losing coalition.

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    3. Jean, about someone who is more interested in "...the game of political tactics", McConnell reminds me of a character in my son's sci fi novels. His name is Corsis, and he got crossways of a wizard and got turned into a reptile. He's rather sensitive about that and doesn't respond well when people talk about his tail dragging on the floor. He's a master manipulator.

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    4. Well, Raber calls Sen. McConnell "Mr. Turtle Face." Was he the inspiration for Corsis? :-)

      (Haha, "got crossways of a wizard." Do you say "squeehawed"? Sometimes I gotta translate for our non- Midwestern friends.)

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    5. Never heard "squeehawed", but sounds like an expressive word!
      Off the subject, but saw a news item that the northern lights were visible in Michigan a few nights ago. Did you see them?

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    6. They were very low on the horizon, so we had to drive a ways out in the country. Sort of just looked like a white glow. We didn't stay long (cops would think we were kids out parking), so they may have got better later into the night.

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    7. That's all I've ever seen, too, just a white glow. Guess one has to be in the right place at the right time to see the really good displays.
      I've heard all the motels near the path of the total solar eclipse (Aug 21st?) are already booked solid. Don't know if we'll drive about 30 miles to see it; can't look directly at it without eye damage, anyway.

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    8. There are sources for ecclipse safety glasses. They have an optical density of 5 which means they reduce the light by 100,000. They also block 100% of the ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. The only time it us safe to look at an ecclipse is when all the Bailey Beads, last light shining through valleys on the moon, are all completely gone. I figure if I travel somewhere to see the ecclipse, it'll rain.

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    9. that is, safe to look at with the naked eye. with special glasses, you can look directly at sun until ecclipse is complete, no beads.

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    10. I'll have to think about the safety glasses, Stanley. I wonder if it's really worse to look at an eclipse with naked eyes than normal sun? I guess we would have a tendency to stare longer because it is less intense.

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    11. Katherine,
      the latest guidelines of the American Astronomical Society for eclipse watching are at

      https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety

      I thought that looking at the eclipse even during a TOTAL eclipse was dangerous due to ultraviolet from the coronasphere visible around the sun. But apparently, as long as NO part of the SURFACE of the sun is visible, which lasts around two minutes, it is safe to look with the naked eye. There must be NO bright beads visible and this is only in the 70 mile wide path of the total eclipse.

      The special filter glasses must be used otherwise, whether before and after TOTALITY or always when outside the path of totality.

      If using certified filter glasses, the instructions should be read carefully and followed to the letter.

      Wish I could go see it. i think we will be in a loser partial eclipse area here in PA but I plan to build a totally safe projective viewer using my spotting scope to project an image onto some frosted glass. But partial eclipses are no comparison to a total one.

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    12. Thanks Stanley. We will probably at least make an attempt to see it, since we are only about a half an hour away from the path of totality. Will be our luck that is the day we get the rain we've been praying for!

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    13. I like Collins, too. Was just thinking she would make a good candidate for President

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  5. Sen. Grassley has been playing Mr. Crusty for as long as I remember. I can only conclude that he turned 65 on his 35th birthday.

    There is no surfeit of gravitas in the current Senate. I am represented there by the one identified by the current White House occupant as "Little Marco." He ran for president saying there was nothing to be done in the Senate (which is why he seldom showed up), and after the Mountebank beat him, he ran for the Senate again. My idiot neighbors re-elected him. To understand that, you have to realize that our governor is Scott Walker without the charisma. He -- Gov. Wassisname -- plans to challenge our other senator next year. That would be Bill Nelson, a decent human being whose heart is in the right place and who has been in space for real (as opposed to the alternate universe inhabited by Rubio and Gov. Wassisname). But Nelson is never going to put together a grand coalition in the Senate.

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    1. Mr. Crusty! Constituents have long pointed put to Grassley the irony of his opposition to socialism while taking farm subsidies and working in government, what he calls "living off the public tit" criticisms. Here's a clip: https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=vQM8SRwchyo

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  7. n the news - Grassley has decided Trump Jr. doesn't have to testify in public before the Senate Judiciary Committee after all,. Instead Grassley wants to question the firm responsible for the notorious dossier on Trump in Russia with prostitutes. Grassley sounds like a Trump facilitator.

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    1. Yes, he's a Trump enabler. Most Republicans are right now because Trump will sign whatever they send him.

      He also went quacking on and on about Gramma and death panels under the ACA, but shut up about that when people explained what it was.

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    2. Jean: what is the different between a whore and a prostitute? The $$$ involved. Republicwhores know that.

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  8. I was prompted to offer this appreciation of Grassley, not because I think like him, but because he tries to find common ground occasionally.

    Our school librarian told me she can't be friends with anyone who voted for Trump and comes into the tutoring office stage-whispering new names on her fecal roster as she finds out how they voted.

    Some of the people on the list are decent. They include my boss, who has fought to maintain pay for meetings and who picked up a class for me when my mom was sick so I didn't lose pay. The Hillary voters in admin just handed down a rule that we have to have virtual class on holidays like Labor Day. In other words, we not only don't get paid for holidays, we have to work on them.

    Both Democrats and Republicans need to reject reductionist views of each other and devolving into sloganeering.

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  9. One Republican who doesn't get along with Trump is Arnold. He wasn't completely awful as governor here either, for a Republican.

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    1. Yeah, Ahnold is a pretty progressive thinker.

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