Editorials: Knucklehead and a liar

JD Vance has a Yale Law degree. Good thing Tim Walz coached football and not debate at Mankato West. Vance was polite and skillful. He was not loathsome as he can be. Walz had to admit that he can be a “knucklehead” and embellishes his biography. The Minnesota governor is not a liar but a BS artist. Gee, who coulda guessed? He probably really doesn’t know how to fix a snowmobile. Vance is a liar. He insists that Haitian immigrants are hunting cats in Springfield, Ohio.

It was all unremarkable and inconsequential, this most-hyped television event.

Walz was selected not for his ability to debate but to help pin down electoral wins in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Vance was selected because he would defend Trump’s actions that gave rise to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, and he would keep the money flowing from vulture capitalists.

How you can be undecided in the contest of Kamala Harris v. Donald Trump is hard to fathom. Trump has been bankrupted multiple times, convicted of 34 felonies and was found by a jury to have committed sexual assault. Harris convicted 34 felons and rapists, and many more, as a district attorney and attorney general. She knows his type. So should we.

A new Mexican leader

If we truly are interested in securing our border with Mexico, we should take note of the landslide election of Claudia Sheinbaum as the new president. Sheinbaum succeeds her mentor, President Manual Lopez Obrador of the left-wing Morena party. Mexico has been crucial in stemming the flow of refugees from Central and South America, and Lopez Obrador proved himself an ally of the Biden Administration as a key mediator among Latin leaders.

Sheinbaum, daughter of Jewish immigrants from Europe, promises to enhance cooperation with the United States. She studied in California. Her sister lives in the USA. Sheinbaum is a respected energy scientist who is committed to battling climate change, which has had huge impacts on Latin America and refugee flows. As Mexico City mayor, she took on organized crime and cut the murder rate in half. She has a mandate, winning by a 32-percent margin.

Sheinbaum has her differences with Lopez Obrador. She believes in investing more in police and intelligence than military in combating cartels. She is open to criticism that direct election of judges will compromise judicial integrity.

It’s important to Storm Lake. What happens in Mexico has immediate ramifications here. Sheinbaum has the ability to help secure the border, secure the future for immigrants to the US, and secure a sustainable path forward for North American allies. Mexico is our biggest trading partner. This is an opportunity to build friendship and cooperation that will pay off in security and stability.

Paving paradise

The city recently put in another concrete pad with a picnic table, near the Sunset Park playground. We have immovable benches every stone’s throw along the lake, each on its own pad of concrete. Several years ago the city hired a landscape architect as part of the Project Awaysis planning. One of his top recommendations was to quit building things in the parks. We kept on pouring concrete.

Occasionally people sit on the benches. They would if they were the old wooden ones that you can move. Wooden picnic tables used to suffice, but we suppose they pose a liability threat, and an invitation to picnic-table and bench thieves. The wind won’t blow this table on its side, no sir. No vandal can carve his initials into it. A little more green space is lost, as if you can’t find a place to sit. We prefer the concrete on our streets.