Mission: to see downtown for myself

PORTLAND, Ore. — I came here to visit a family member, to see some dear friends … and to take a gander for myself at the condition of the resurgent downtown district in the city of birth.

I keep hearing from visitors and even from those who’ve never been to Portland that downtown has become ravaged by the homeless crisis and by the riots that ensued after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police.

Businesses are fleeing downtown Portland, the chatter has revealed. The once vibrant downtown entertainment district is a mere imitation of what it used to embody, many have told me. Indeed, Portland has become a model for urban renewal and revitalization.

I tend to withhold judgment on these matters until I can lay own set of eyes on them. I am staying with my sis in La Center, about 12 miles north of Vancouver, Wash. I am hoping to venture downtown to take a peek at what is happening there. I’ll report back on what I see … if I am able to see it.

My hope is that the reports are overcooked. My fear is that they might be selling it all far too short.

I’ll get back to you.

Pet relief centers?

PORTLAND, Ore — I need to get out more, but I have known that for a long time as it is.

I arrived this afternoon at Portland International Airport, a newly redesigned, expanded and vastly improved airport, I should add.

On my way from the jetliner to where I would pick up my rental car, I noticed signs I hadn’t seen before. They pointed passengers to “pet relief stations.”

I have been noticing more air travelers boarding jetliners with dogs and cats. Mostly dogs, however. What I had never seen before today were these stations where Fido can “relieve himself or herself” after spending hours on a jetliner.

Wow! Have we come a long way in this country to elevating the status of our pets … or what?

Hey, I am totally OK with it … given that I consider my new puppy, Sabol, to be part of my family.

Biden guilty of loving his son

Joe Biden should plead guilty only to a single “charge,” which would be that he loves his son so much that he is willing to take flak for issuing a pardon to possibly keep him out of federal prison.

President Biden this weekend issued a broad pardon for his son, Hunter, who was convicted by a federal jury of purchasing a handgun illegally and for some assorted tax charges.

Hunter Biden faced the possibility of prison time. I doubt he would have gotten it. Then again, I am a terrible predictor of such things.

The president had declared he would let the system do its job and he wouldn’t pardon his son. Then he changed his mind.

Here is what is most maddening about the criticism that has erupted. The MAGA crowd is attaching some false equivalency to what Hunter Biden and the actions of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol Building aiming to overturn the2020 election results. To equate Hunter Biden’s lying about drug use with the machinations of the traitorous mob is ridiculous on its face.

Donald Trump might pardon some of the mobsters when he takes office and the MAGA goons will applaud him for it.

Joe Biden’s pardoning of Hunter Biden is a demonstration only of a father’s love of his son. This story will disappear once Donald Trump takes office… and you can take that to the bank.

Biden pardons son … yawn!

Joe Biden said he wouldn’t pardon his son Hunter on a federal conviction related to an illegal purchase of a firearm.

Then the president had second thoughts and issued the pardon. I know what some of you must be thinking. How dare the president renege on his promise. The son needs to do time!

My thought? So … what!

Hunter Biden likely wouldn’t go to the slammer for a piss ante conviction that was brought for political reasons in the first place. He lied about his drug addiction when purchasing a gun; it’s a crime and a jury convicted him of it.

His father vowed he wouldn’t issue a pardon for his son. Then a lot of things changed for Daddy Biden. He dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign, making him a lame duck the moment he pulled out. Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss on Nov. 5 sealed the end of Joe Biden’s influence on national policy.

So, he pardoned his son. Big fu***** deal, man!

The pardon will give conservative talking heads some chatter grist for a while, then it will fade away … just like Joe Biden and his family.

The president served the nation with distinction for more than 50 years. This act of compassion for a son he loves beyond measure speaks only to his devotion as a father and family man.

Progress comes with price

Progress, I am learning in real time, almost always comes with a price.

That price is particularly evident in fast-growing communities such as the one where I have lived for the past nearly six years.

Princeton is a city on the move. The city council recently enacted a building moratorium on new home construction. It’s a four-month ban that likely will need to be extended. The council’s decision was based on lack of infrastructure to accommodate the thousands of new residents who have moved here since the 2020 Census.

Get this: The 2020 Census pegged Princeton’s population at 17,027. This year, the population is estimated to be more than 28,000 residents. It continues to skyrocket.

The needs greater water capacity, more emergency services personnel — such as police officers and firefighters. Princeton won’t get all that done in four months.

In addition, Collin County recently closed County Road 398 just south of my house all the way to FM 546. CR 398 has been serving as an alternate route to take motorists off of U.S. Highway 380, the main drag that runs through a number of Collin County cities. My GPS system does guide me a bit farther south to CR 447, which then loops around to pick up FM 546. CR 398 needs lots of work, as it is full of dips and crevices for the mile between Beauchamp Boulevard and FM 546.

Oh, one more thing. The Texas Department of Transportation has finalized the findings of the environmental impact study it has conducted that precedes a major highway development project designed to bypass traffic around Princeton and other cities along U.S. 380. I might not live long enough to see that project finished, but it’s going to be huge.

Yes, we are paying the progress of being such a desirable place for folks to live, to work and to raise families. I welcome them.

But the price we’re all paying is going to become a major pain in the rear … until it gets finished.

Holiday gives me the willies

Why in the name of cheap-seat punditry have I gotten so queasy about skewering Donald J. Trump during this holiday season?

I mean, it’s not as if I have found anything at all to respect or admire about him. I still detest the notion of this fraud and con man returning to the White House. I am trying to imagine how in the world this clown is going to deliver anything resembling a heartfelt holiday greeting to the nation that doesn’t include something gratuitously self-serving or contains attack verbiage on the “fake news” or against all of those who feel as I do about him.

Maybe I am being overtaken by a universal sense of good cheer. It might be filling me with a touch of guilt about saying something negative when we’re supposed to be honoring a uniquely American holiday such as Thanksgiving. We’re giving thanks these days, right? I am for sure. I give thanks I live in a country that allows me to vent openly and even angrily about my government and those who run it.

Christmas is coming up. So is Hannukah. They are joyful holidays.

I have said so much about Trump during his nearly a decade in political life that I start repeating myself. I don’t want to do that. You don’t want to read it, either.

The season will pass eventually. Then I can return to the normal flow of commentary on High Plains Blogger. It will remain a largely political forum. I intend to continue sprinkling it with human interest comment, It will be about me, my ongoing journey, my family and my puppy.

Hey, it’s the season!

No mandate here, Donald

Donald Trump and his collection of MAGA goons/cultists keep yapping about a “mandate” that the Nov. 5 presidential election delivered to the GOP ticket.

Mandates are born from electoral landslides. Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris, while significant, doesn’t constitute a mandate.

To wit:

  • 1952, Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower scored a landslide win over Adlai Stevenson. His mandate was to build an interstate highway system that revolutionized motor vehicle travel in this nation.
  • 1964, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson won election huge over Barry Goldwater and then embarked on the Great Society effort that produced landmark voting rights and civil rights legislation.
  • 1972, Republican President Richard Nixon swept to re-election over George McGovern and then managed the following year to end our combat involvement in the Vietnam War.
  • 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan capitalized on President Carter’s bad luck with the Iranian hostage crisis and high inflation. His mandate enabled him to restore national confidence in our government. Same for the mandate he secured with his 49-state landslide in 1984 over Walter Mondale.

So, if Donald Trump is going to boast about mandates in the 2024 election, I must remind y’all that all the examples I cited came from campaigns that produced enormous popular vote margins, not to mention Electoral College wipeouts of historic proportions.

At last count, Kamala Harris is continuing to whittle Trump’s vote margin down to less than a majority and a plurality that stands at 1.55%.

Will the new president heed those numbers as he continues to assemble his executive team? Hardly.

Trump’s list of vows sends chills

Donald Trump’s return to the White House sends more chilling signals than I can possibly count, but surely a few of them stand out.

The mass deportation and separation of illegally documented immigrants is one; the desire to let Ukraine fall to the Russian invaders is another.

The one Trump promise that well could keep awake at night is the one that pledges that grant blanket pardons for the traitors who stormed the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 intending to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

I don’t know about you, but seeking those hideous videos of the mob smashing windows, beating cops with poles, yelling “where’s Mike Pence” while brandishing gallows from which they threatened to hang the vice president continue to make my skin crawl.

And for Trump to declare that the assault was full of “love” simply goes too far beyond the pale to even elicit an intelligent response.

He vows to fight crime, and yet he’s a convicted felon. Go figure that one for me … if you dare try. Trump’s anti-immigrant screeds only will increase once he is sworn in as POTUS. Yet two of his three wives were immigrants. Have they “poisoned the blood” of the nation? Trump cannot tell the truth about anything, no matter how significant or trivial the issue.

These all are points to ponder as we prepare for the second Trump administration.

I will circle back, though, to this idea of pardoning the frothing criminals who followed this man’s instruction to “fight like hell” to “take back the government” on Jan. 6.

If we have learned anything about the ex- and future POTUS, when he vows to do the outrageous, we should believe him.

Changing perspective with age

This will come as no great flash to most — if not all — of you, but it is something I want to share anyway as the Thanksgiving holiday draws to a close.

It is that age allows us all to change our perspective on life, on living and on our surroundings.

When I was about 15 years or so of age, I once complained to Mom and Dad that I didn’t like being called “Johnny” by my relatives. I preferred “John,” I protested. “That’s what my friends call me,” I said. I don’t recall Mom and Dad’s response, other than they must have realized I was just a smart-ass teenager.

Sixty years later, on the eve of my 75th birthday, I know relish being called Johnny by those family members who are still around and who called me that name back in the old days. Now I realize why they did that. You see, I am my paternal grandfather’s namesake. I now realize my Papou was the original John Peter Kanelis and I was “Johnny” to avoid any confusion at family get-togethers.

Also around that time in my still-young life, I recall deciding that I didn’t want to live past the age of 55. I must have bought into the rock singers’ notion that “we shouldn’t trust anyone older than 30.”

Fifty-five seemed ancient to the 15-year-old who at the time didn’t realize he could still squeeze a lot of quality of life at that ripe old age. I barely remember 55 these days and, yes, I have enjoyed a fruitful life built on a family I helped produce with the woman I married when I was 21 and she was a 19-year-old hottie.

I have seen many wonderful places in my life, done some remarkable things in pursuit of the craft I enjoyed for nearly four decades as a print journalist.

Yes, age has brought it all home to me.

Welcome back, rivals

Most of us who live in Texas realize that our state has some unusual cultural quirks, many of which revolve around football.

The term “Friday night lights,” for instance, was born in West Texas, in the city of Odessa, where Friday night has become a rite for all Texans to enjoy while cheering on their local high school football teams.

Accordingly, rivalries take on special meaning at the college level. To that end, a longtime college FB rivalry is being renewed this weekend, when Texas A&M University lines up on the same field as the University of Texas in a game to be played in College Station.

Trust me on this: the Kyle Field crowd, aka The 12th Man, will have cleared its collective throat and will be bellowing in ear-piercing fashion cheering on the Aggies as they seek to upset the Longhorns.

Hey, this is a big deal to ex-Longhorns and Aggies. I attend neither school, but I surely know my share of ‘Horns and Aggies. They revere their schools and root hard against the other guys when they suit up to play tackle football.

They used to play this game on Thanksgiving Day. This year, with both schools now competing in the Southeastern Conference — as the Southwest Conference no longer exists and as A&M bolted 13 years ago to the SEC — the game will take place on Thanksgiving weekend.

Hey, it’s all right. The game still will be a big … deal.

Welcome back to the way it used to be.

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