Predictions of things to come, aka wild guesses:
The (dis)Honorable Dennis Milligan, our less than esteemed state treasurer, will continue to do everything but what's right, which would be to resign in the disgrace he has earned on just about a daily basis. Wednesday, he agreed to a $400 fine payable to the Arkansas Ethics Commission and to accept a letter of warning--light treatment indeed for so notorious a repeat offender.
And get this--he dared accuse Jefferson County's local Republican committee of party disloyalty for demanding he resign way back in May, a demand truer to the party's ideals than Dennis Milligan ever has been. It would take two columns of close-set type to describe in any detail. (See Pages 1A and 7A of the Feb. 4 Democrat-Gazette for more details, and there are plenty of them.)
The race for the Republican presidential nomination continues to narrow as the jokers in this deck--like The Donald--are winnowed out and respectables like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio slug it out, not to mention New Joisey's Chris Christie, who can give even better than he takes on the campaign trail.
The real surprises continue to lurk on the Democratic side of the ticket, and that's not a reference to Bernie Sanders, the social-Democrat-independent agitator from Vermont who sounds more like a street-corner agitator out of Brooklyn than a candidate with staying power. As for Hillary Clinton, the establishment candidate in a year when the establishment is proving anything but popular, she could be fading fast.
The smart money at this ever-changing point is on Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire-plus who can well afford to finance his own campaign, thank you very much. Maybe he'll emerge from this fracas as unknown as he was before. But if fortune smiles, he'll prove a star on the shining level of James K. Polk, one of our most successful presidents.
But this much is already clear: Despite all the razzmatazz, fog and bluster obscuring our crystal ball, America remains America, God bless her.
Editorial on 02/08/2016