It's the middle of August, which means that, here in Tucson, it's the sweaty armpit of the entire year's calendar. I pretty much hate it. I once jokingly wrote that "August is the cruelest month" and all the guys with Master's degrees in English who were working at Bentley's sent me these really well-written hate letters. (Their syntax was like music.)
But really, Guys, you don't think that I had to suffer through T.S. Eliot just like everybody else in high school?
I would rather suffer through two Junes, with 110-degree temperatures, than one August with 90 percent humidity. To be fair, the humidity does allow one to work up a serious sweat when working out. Unfortunately, it also has the same effect when you're sitting on the couch or standing still or sleeping.
One of my biggest beefs with August is that the intermittent rain doesn't allow me to hang my clothes out to dry. While we have a perfectly good dryer, I like to hang my clothes out on the line so that they'll remain springtime fresh. I work out every day and putting those nasty T-shirts in the dryer only serves to bake in the Fat Man Funk.
Today is just a little bit past the middle of August. In the old days, I would have used next week's column to look at the upcoming primary election here in Arizona. But my next column won't be for a couple of weeks and the primary will be over. It will be interesting to see how many votes crackpot Kelli Ward got in her bid to unseat longtime Senator John "Donald Trump's B-Word" McCain.
There really aren't a whole lot of exciting races statewide. I want to see who emerges as the Republican candidate in Congressional District 1 (the District that snakes from Saddlebrook north of Tucson all the way up to the Utah state line). I had thought that White Mountain rancher Gary Kiehne would win that primary, but now he has the endorsement of House Speaker David Gowan, who dropped out of the race last week when he finally realized that Barack Obama had a better chance of winning that GOP primary. That stamp of approval could actually help self-promoter extraordinaire and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu come out on top.
The scariest one in that race is Wendy Rogers. She has a radio commercial that says something to the effect of "Some crazy guy uses a gun to shoot and kill people and all liberals can think about is how to make it harder for some crazy guy to get hold of a gun so he can go shoot and kill people." Um, yeah.
There are a few other things that I have to get off my chest before the next column, because, by then, it will be September, which means football season. And during football season, everything is good. The heat and humidity that were so awful in August will, in September, mean that it's still way early in the football season, so we have a long, glorious way to go. I feel obligated to say:
• A lot of people got mad at my last column, saying (among other things) that I'm obsessed with race. I sincerely wish that race were not a factor in American politics anymore. Then we could talk about substantive matters, like why does the Ducey Administration hate on Indians. Oh wait.
• I really don't believe that all Southerners are racists. For one thing, there are a lot of black people in the South and I can't imagine that they are all racist. In all seriousness, I don't believe that all white Southerners are racist. Nor do I believe that all Trump supporters are racist. However, comedian Charlie Murphy (Eddie's brother) summed it up perfectly when he said, "Not all Trump supporters are racists. But all racists are Trump supporters."
• Trump's refusal to release his tax returns must mean that there is something really nasty in there. Most people think that he either doesn't pay taxes, he doesn't give to charity, or (the big one) that he's not nearly as rich as he says he is. I think that all media people—left and right—should start referring to Trump as "a millionaire (with an 'm') real-estate promoter." He'd probably sue somebody for slander and then all that would have to come out in court.
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who held many positions in his life, including U.S. Senator from New York, once famously said, "You are entitled to your own opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."
One of the saddest examples of this are the people who keep talking about Benghazi, even after nine different Congressional reports from seven different (Republican-controlled) Congressional committees failed to find anything that could be used to derail Hillary Clinton's campaign (even after a top Republican congressman candidly and publicly stated that such was their goal.
First of all, it was a CIA operation and therefore not entirely (or at all) under the purview of the State Department. But I keep hearing (from people who really should know better) that "Hillary Clinton slept through the attack on Benghazi." Folks, when the embassy in Benghazi, Libya was attacked, it was 3:40 in the afternoon in Washington, D.C. Maybe somebody her age could be found in line for the early-bird buffet at that time, but certainly not in bed for the night.
