The Morning Dispatch: Spiking Greitens

As the disgraced former Missouri governor aims for political resurrection, outside groups are pouring in money to remind voters of his alleged past behavior.

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Happy Monday! On Friday morning, 53-year-old Bob Salem became the fourth person to push a peanut to the top of Pikes Peak with his nose. It took seven days—mostly at night to avoid distracting questions and requests for selfies from passersby—and the peanut in question was actually about a dozen peanuts, as he lost and ate a few along the way.

There’s a lot we could say about this, but our first question is: fourth!?

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • President Joe Biden’s Middle East trip ended this weekend with several announcements: Saudi Arabia will open its airspace to civilian flights from Israel, a group of Arab financial development institutions will spend $10 billion to relieve regional food insecurity alongside a $1 billion commitment from the U.S., and the U.S. will withdraw peacekeeping forces from a Red Sea island it’s occupied for decades—allowing Saudi Arabia to develop the land. Saudi Arabia also agreed to support extending the ceasefire in Yemen. And after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Biden announced $100 million in aid for Palestinian hospitals and stated his support for a two-state solution with agreed-upon land swaps, returning the U.S. to an Obama-era stance.

  • But Biden did not secure a concrete commitment from the Saudis to increase oil production, a major goal of the trip. And he garnered criticism for his meeting—and awkward fist bump—with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the U.S. holds responsible for human rights violations including the 2018 dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden said he raised Khashoggi’s killing to the prince, but he had promised on the campaign trail to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah.”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Steve

    As a City of St Louis resident, and centrist right philosophically, I strongly endorsed (made calls, donated some $) Greitens' run for Governor based on a number of outstanding characteristics and policy positions I largely agreed with. Unfortunately, he governed in too top-down a style (military chain of command?) and offended even his supporters. His subsequent moral failures, refusal to apologize and unwillingness to start fresh, and incredible doubling down on MAGA stuff in my mind render him dangerous and unsuited for office.

    The other Republican primary candidates are also not palatable, and the Democrat Party candidates have virtually no chancier this state.

    A potentially viable independent candidate, John Wood, has emerged with strong support from
    John Danforth. His effort my be Quixotic, but is worth following. You might write about him and his campaign. I'll be in his camp!

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  2. Avatar photo
    DougAz

    QOTD: Memorable road trip was Mom and Dad taking us 5 kids in 1963, to Gettysburg. 100 years after the battle. We were there in early August. Then on to Antietam, DC...the old Smithsonian, Iwo Jima, and all the memorials. On out to Manassas, Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Richmond, Chancellorsville. Back around to Lexington, VMI and home back thru the WV mountains.

    Heightened before the trip by Grandads 1st hand retelling of his Grandfather's battles with the Union.

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  3. Brook

    I love the opening Pike’s Peat bit. Thanks.

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    Brian

    I worry that the atrocity in Ukraine is losing it’s place in our consciousness as we wring our hands about gas prices and the latest on the Jan 6 commission. I found this thought provoking: https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/the-war-has-happened/

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    Andrea Leane

    QOTD: my favorite road trip memory is the one my father and I took 9 months after my mother died. We set off from the most northestern corner of East Texas and went West, visiting Royal Gorge, Pike's Peak, and Garden of the Gods in Colorado, Fort Sumner/Bosque Redondo Memorial and the site of Billy the Kid's grave in New Mexico (all quite close to one another), Carlsbad Caverns, NM, the Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest in Arizona, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, Joshua Tree and Sequoia National Park in California, and visited old friends in Indio and Palm Springs. It was a healing visit, tracing old paths my parents took when they were young and making new memories. I got to know my father in a new light, and I had fun making him stop at places like Roswell, NM, which I think he enjoyed more than I did. The wonders and beauties of this country amaze me, and I will never forget this trip or finish going through the thousands of photos I took. Probably because I was so fascinated by the West that I took many photos of the same sets of rock formations. LOL

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  6. Avatar photo
    Dr. Livesey

    QotD: Driving through extreme western New York state (surprisingly, the most beautiful state in the country that I've seen. It's just pretty in so many different ways in so many different spots. Variety of pretty things is its own beauty.

    Riding on Rt. 302 in northern New Hampshire from I-91 toward Franconia, NH. You look down on a little village that looks like a little model village for a model train set. Surprise is its own beauty.

    Jonah Goldberg mentioned the beauty of Utah as a great state to drive through. It is. It's also got the weirdest landscapes I've ever experienced: The red, red, red rocks and soil (and hardly any plant life) in that southeast desert expanse not far from the Monument Valley. The Monument Valley's mesas and geographic features are so enormous that as you drive past you feel like an ant crawling in a living room of coffee tables, sofas and chairs meant for giants. Bryce Canyon to the west is beautiful in its own alien-world-like way. The Great Salt Lake is also alien-world weird. It also stinks, but what do you expect from alien landscapes? (Although the rest of Utah doesn't have a stench. Hmmm.) The Badlands in South Dakota is pretty weird. Weird can be its own beauty.

    Speaking of gigantism, the Kennicott Copper Mine southwest of Salt Lake City shocked me by how huge it is. I stood next to a truck the size of a cottage, maybe about two stories high. I looked down into the open pit that's 2.5 miles across and half a mile deep. The numbers don't convey that kind of size for this man-made hole. Looking down near the bottom and seeing these insect-like trucks crawling their way back up (and realizing that those trucks are like the monster I was standing next to) did the conveying quite well, and you won't know what that feels like until you go there and stand there yourself. It's like the Grand Canyon: Nothing can prepare you for it — not pictures, video, even scale models, not anything in writing, not someone telling you about it. You just need to be there. Immensity can be its own beauty.

    Indian ruins in the Southwest — the best two seem to be Mesa Verde in SW Colorado and Chaco Canyon in NW New Mexico. See some Pueblos when you go and you'll see the more modern versions. It's amazing how native Americans created them centuries upon centuries ago. The history/prehistory of American Indians is fascinating, both for the surprises of what we know and the mysteries of what we don't. If you're driving in eastern Connecticut, visit the Pequot Museum north of New London and you'll find surprise after surprise. Now I want to see the Indian mounds in the Midwest. Ancient things and mysteries have their own beauty.

    Disappointments: Mount Rushmore and Niagara Falls didn't move me one bit, which surprised me.

    I'm sorry, were you looking for the National Doughnut Museum and experiences with fellow college students driving across country? Sorry.

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  7. Charley

    Just came across a vision for the kind of "progressive" economic agenda I would support: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-wreck-of-bidenomics (summary here: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1548883459967311873).

    This is apropos of nothing in today's TMD, and it's probably too late in the day to generate any discussion, but it's the kind of thing I often end up discussing here, and I thought some folks may be interested if they happen to see it.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      The author here feels himself very smug that he's able to see the future that Biden nor anybody else could--now that it's the future.

      The various stimulus packages were meant to avert DEflation, which is what we'd be experiencing now had the stimulus not happened. Deflation is about a thousand times worse than inflation--as in, we would very much *have* a depression had they not done this.

      Blaming today's inflation on the stimulus packages is like blaming the painful nasty burns on your chest from emergency defibrillators they used on you to **keep you from dying**.

      So yes, in a sense, the stimulus packages "caused" today's inflation in the sense that they kept our economy from complete collapse.

      Meanwhile, we have a world-wide pandemic that has upended supply chains globally, a major war in Europe for the first time in 70 years that has driven commodity prices through the roof, and reduced immigration in the USA has robbed us of two million low-paid workers in the last five years. All of *those* factors are *far* bigger than some fiscal stimulus.


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      1. Charley

        I don't think the author would disagree with any of that?

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  8. AS Upstate

    My wife and I got married in 2009, right as we both left jobs to start new careers - and took advantage of that to go on a 2 month road trip around the West. We drove from NYC to Albuquerque in about 4 days, staying with friends in underrated cities like Lexington, KY, Indy, Tulsa, and.... Amarillo? I'm not sure Amarillo is underrated, but it's definitely interesting.

    We then spent 8 weeks exploring national and state parks and forests, camping most nights. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life - particularly fun sharing it with my English wife. Connecting with the landscape of this country, and its wildly complicated history, sure makes contemporary political debates seem transient and trivial.

    Campgrounds are actually a great place to meet people from wildly different backgrounds - it seems like everyone likes camping - people of all social classes, ethnic and geographic backgrounds, mostly united by a shared love of the outdoors. My wife is coffee-obsessed and always travels, hipster-style, with a Bialetti stovetop espresso maker, and some fancy coffee. Many debates were smoothed over by a cup of strong coffee brewed over a little camp stove. I think we need more of that right now.

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  9. Belinda French

    Regarding road trips, one summer when our children were little, we left Nashville, Tn with our destination being Corvallis, OR camping the entire way. We rented an apt. for the summer while my husband worked irrigating beans. The reason for this adventure? A big decision needed to be made, and that seemed to be the best way at the time to resolve it. At the end of the summer we trekked back a different way, and TN looked good to us on our return. But the decision was made, and as a result we moved a couple more times. Sounds crazy, but it was for the best.

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    Citizen60

    I spent the bulk of my long career quickly hopping from one city to another in large and small airplanes, and occasionally having to drive for a while from the airport to the location. I flew over wonderful sights, heard of great places, almost cracked up my car looking at a gorgeous lake I was driving over. Always in a hurry, so I could get home to my kids.

    My bucket list--which I better get to shortly--is to have a very comfortable car or small (small!) mobile camper van, and the luxury of time of Mosey all over this great nation and see all I want to see; spend time where I want to; visit friends and relatives in several states. Visit as many National Parks as possible--I want to wear out my Senior Pass. #2 on that bucket list is to stay at all the Great Lodges in the National Parks; which dovetails nicely to spending time in National Parks.
    We have the most wonderful nation in so many ways, incredible geography, and I've found nice people everywhere I landed. I was lucky to experience so much of it; now I want to Mosey through it.

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    1. Pohl

      National Parks are great. I still want to visit Glacier.

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