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Butt out, Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz needs to shut his pie hole.

The junior Republican senator from Texas is calling for an investigation into possible voter fraud in Mississippi. His colleague, veteran GOP Sen. Thad Cochran won the runoff there despite signals he’d lose to tea party challenger Chris McDaniel.

Cruz, the loudmouth freshman senator from way out here, thinks some fraud took place. He wanted McDaniel to win the race and he just can’t believe Cochran pulled off a victory.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/ted-cruz-mississippi-gop-primary-thad-cochran-108643.html?hp=l9

Here’s what happened, Ted.

African-American Democrats in Mississippi became alarmed that McDaniel actually might win. So they crossed over — which is as legal in Mississippi as it is in Texas — to vote for Cochran. These crossover voters aren’t exactly enamored of Cochran, but they saw him as far more palatable than the fiery McDaniel, who’s been known to utter racially tinged comments on his radio show.

Those voters put Cochran over the top and positioned him to win a seventh term as senator from the Magnolia State.

Was there actual fraud? I doubt it seriously. There instead was a concerted effort by the Cochran campaign to recruit support where no one expected to find it.

It was a brilliant strategy.

Now, Sen. Cruz, tend to business back home.

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'Dog pound' gets a new name

Remember when we used to refer animal control shelters as the “dog pound”?

It’s an unflattering nickname for what’s supposed to be a place where unwanted pets — dogs, cats and whatever else — are housed until fate comes calling.

Well, the Amarillo animal control department has a new name. It’s now called Animal Management & Welfare.

The “welfare” name perhaps is most important given the controversy that has enveloped the department in recent weeks.

A Randall County grand jury investigation looked into whether animals were being subjected to cruel treatment as they were being euthanized. The grand jury declined to indict anyone over the allegations of mistreatment. The two top animal control staffers — Mike McGee and Shannon Barlow — “retired” as a consequence of the investigation.

What is known is that staffers violated state law by failing to weigh the animals prior to administering the lethal drugs. The result reportedly was that animals indeed did suffer needlessly as they died.

The city has enacted several new policies as a result. They include: promoting transparency and compassion; using an online service to report lost and impounded animals; a new identification system for animals; improvements in customer service; improvements to the physical surroundings at the shelter.

The media reports about the manner in which the animals were being treated hit many Amarillo residents hard. That happens when animals are involved. Human beings have this inherent soft spot as it regards domestic pets.

The city also ought to be much more proactive as well in promoting spaying, neutering and vaccinating of pets. That, too, would help stem the problem of euthanizing so many animals every year.

For now the name has changed at what’s now called Amarillo’s Animal Management & Welfare Department. Let’s hope what happens inside those walls is in keeping with the new name on the building.

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Why not act on your own, Mr. President?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry reportedly posed an interesting notion to President Obama when the men met this week in Dallas to discuss the illegal immigrant/refugee border crisis on the Texas border with Mexico.

Why not take action on your own, Mr. President? Perry asked.

Interesting, yes? Obama said he responded that such executive decisiveness has produced the real threat of a lawsuit by House Speaker John Boehner, who contends Obama does too much of that kind of thing already.

No can do, governor.

Obama is pushing Congress now to act on his request for a $3.7 billion emergency spending bill to deal with the crisis that involves the flood of young immigrants coming into the United States from Central America. Congress insists the president do something about it. He has asked Congress to give him the money to do what it asks. It’s now up to Congress to, um, do what it has insisted on doing all along.

Can the president act alone? I suppose there are ways he can do a little of this and that administratively.

It’s interesting nonetheless that Gov. Perry would have made such a suggestion at a time when his Republican colleagues in Congress are considering legal action to prevent that very thing.

The ball has been kicked back to Congress. What are you going to do with it, ladies and gentlemen?

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Impeachment talk makes me crazy

All this impeachment poppycock is making me nuts.

Some goofball right-wing members of Congress — not to mention a few bystanders perched in the political peanut gallery — are saying the House of Representatives needs to impeach President Barack Obama.

For what, you say? I don’t know exactly. For issuing executive orders in keeping with his constitutional authority? For the flood of illegal immigrants who are coming into the country, as if the president himself could order it stopped? For tweaking the Affordable Care Act after it became law?

The right-wing loons contend he’s broken laws. They haven’t cited specific laws — because he hasn’t broken any law.

Many of us have lived through two impeachable events involving presidents.

* The first one occurred in the early 1970s. President Nixon’s re-election campaign hired a team of goons to break into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex. When word got out that they were captured, Nixon then ordered the FBI to block the investigation. Then that became known and all hell broke loose.

The House Judiciary Committee and a select committee of senators conducted hearings. The Judiciary Committee then approved articles of impeachment. Nixon resigned in August 1974 rather than face certain impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.

* Then came the episode involving President Clinton. A special prosecutor was hired by Congress to examine the Whitewater real estate dealings allegedly involving President and Mrs. Clinton. The prosecutor then began snooping around allegations that Clinton fooled around with a young White House intern. A federal grand jury asked Clinton about it. He lied when he denied any involvement with the woman. Oops. You can’t perjure yourself. The House impeached him on those grounds, but the Senate acquitted him.

Two specific incidents resulted in a near impeachment and the real thing.

The stuff involving President Obama? It’s all political hucksterism, meant to inflame the Republican base, get ’em riled up.

Sure, the president has made mistakes. Has any president skated through office without blundering here and there? Of course not.

Do these blunders require an impeachment? No.

To his credit, House Speaker John Boehner says he disagrees with the impeachment yammering.

Good. Now he needs to take the tea party yahoos within his caucus who keep fomenting this nonsense to the woodshed.

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Obama to GOP: Pass the supplemental

Here is where we stand on the border crisis erupting in Texas and elsewhere on the southern border.

President Barack Obama has met with Texas Gov. Rick Perry to discuss ways to solve the problem. Obama asked Congress for $3.7 billion in supplemental aid to provide greater border security and enhance detention and repatriation efforts. The president and the governor have reached broad agreement on what to do. The next move now belongs to Congress.

Will it approve the request or will it stall?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/barack-obama-texas-immigration-108738.html?hp=t1_3

The president has called Congress out and asked lawmakers to do as he has asked and as they have insisted. Gov. Perry agrees with him — in what might one of the rarest political alignments in recent memory.

So get it done.

The president and the governor had what Obama called a “constructive” meeting. That’s a start. It’s good the men had a chance to talk things over and to settle on areas of agreement.

The border crisis didn’t just erupt overnight. It’s been years in the making. Obama now wants Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform, which includes more border officers, greater enforcement tools, and streamlining of wait times for immigrants to have their cases resolved.

Politics, of course, gets in the way of everything.

First things first. The supplemental request needs to become law. Send it to the Oval Office and let the president sign it. Now.

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Impeachment talk is ridiculous

Put a sock in it, Sarah “Barracuda” Palin.

You too, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Loony Bin. Same for the rest of the clowns on the far right wing of the Republican Party who believe Barack Obama has committed an impeachable offense.

At least one leading Republican, the speaker of the House of Representatives, is sounding a note of sanity.

Boehner says no to impeachment

John Boehner knows better. He was there when the House commenced impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton and then watched as Republicans took it on the chin in the 1998 mid-term election.

Palin, the ex-half-term Alaska governor, says Obama should be impeached because of the immigration crisis on our southern border. Someone needs to ask the former GOP vice-presidential nominee: What “high crime” and “misdemeanor” has the president committed?

I think I know the answer: none.

She wrote in an op-ed: “The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”

Let’s allow the grownups to run the country. Speaker Boehner said simply to the impeachment calls, “I disagree.”

Enough said.

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Israel preps for needed response

Imagine this scenario playing out.

A terrorist cell in, say, Toronto starts firing rockets and mortars across Lake Ontario into Buffalo, N.Y. The president calls on the Canadian government to stop the attacks. The government in Ottawa refuses to do anything.

The president issues an ultimatum: Stop the missiles or else. The ordnance keeps falling on your city. The president is forced to act. He or she sends in troops to put down the violence being reined on our cities.

Justified or not? I’d say we would support such an action.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/09/world/meast/mideast-tensions/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

That’s what is happening in Israel, which has been fighting for decades against forces bent on the country’s destruction. The missiles are coming from Gaza, which is governed by the Palestinian Authority … which has made a pact with the evil terror group Hamas.

I must add here that Hamas has declared its intention to exterminate Israel.

Israel’s response has been to launch air strikes against military targets in Gaza. Hamas has responded with attacks on Tel Aviv, the commercial and financial capital of Israel.

The Israelis say they now plan to send ground troops into Gaza to put down the violence. The PA has done nothing to stop these attacks.

Are the Israelis justified in applying this muscular response? Absolutely.

Just five years ago, I was given the privilege of visiting some cities near Gaza that had been struck by earlier rocket attacks from terrorists. The damage was frightening in the extreme. The Israelis managed to put that uprising down.

They should be given the world’s blessing to do so again.

“We warned them. We asked them to stop it,” Israeli President Shimon Peres told CNN. “We waited one day, two days, three days and they continued, and they spread their fire on more areas in Israel.”

No country should be forced to exist with this kind of terror lurking so closely.

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Brazilians show class in defeat

Just when I thought the world had spun off its axis and that a great Latin American country had suffered from collective apoplexy over the defeat of its national soccer team, I came across this story on CNN.com.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/09/opinion/bass-brazil-germany-rout/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

It turns out the Brazilian soccer fans — stunned beyond their ability to comprehend — cheered the German team that beat their beloved men in the World Cup semifinal match.

The Germans won that game 7-1 in what’s being described as the most astonishing performance in the World Cup … ever! That they beat the host team in that fashion gives extra punch to the Germans now as they get ready to play the winner of The Netherlands-Argentina match for the World Cup championship.

I’ve also been wondering about this passionate love of the sport that seems to transcend anything with which I’m familiar in the U.S. of A. When the Denver Broncos lost the Super Bowl this year to the Seattle Seahawks, did the Mile High City’s fans go into the kind of collective funk that has fallen over Brazil. What happened in Miami when the Heat got blown out by the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA finals? I think folks in South Florida went about their business.

Granted, the U.S. doesn’t have a national soccer team that’s able to compete — at least not yet — on a consistent level with Brazil or Germany.

But the craziness is beyond anything I can quite grasp.

Still, I was heartened to know that despite their grief, the Brazilians had it within them to pay proper tribute to the young men who gave their guys a good, old-fashioned whuppin’.

And yes, the sun rose this morning over Brazil.

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The Texas/Mexico border awaits, Mr. President

One more thought about the president’s upcoming visit to Texas … and then I hope to move on.

The White House says President Obama has no plans to visit the southern Texas border when he comes to the state today to raise money for Democratic candidates.

White House staffers believe it wouldn’t produce anything positive for the president. They are wrong.

Recall the time Obama went to New Jersey near the end of the 2012 campaign to view the damage brought by Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy. He won high praise from Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for showing up.

Also, recall what happened when President George W. Bush was photographed flying over New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He was pilloried for failing to put his own boots on the soggy ground to view the damage.

Was Obama more caring about New Jersey than Bush was about New Orleans? No.

There is value, however, in seeing these crises up close.

The Texas border is being inundated with illegal immigrants coming into this country from Central America. Most of them appear to be unaccompanied children sent here by those notorious “coyotes” who prey on illegal immigrants. We have a refugee crisis on the border.

The president needs to see what’s happening so he can assess better how to deal directly with it.

He’ll meet with Gov. Rick Perry. The two men likely will have a “frank” discussion — which, in diplomatic language means they might cuss at each other. That’s fine. The meeting is a good idea, too.

The visit to Texas will be complete, though, with a tour of the crisis on our state’s southern border. Take a look, Mr. President.

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Dynasties not that rare

Hillary Clinton says the nation has had more than one Adams sitting in the White House.

She defends the Bushes as well, contending that the nation has had dynasties during its entire life.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/hillary-clinton-political-dynasty-der-spiegel-interview-108652.html?hp=r3

There’s more.

We’ve had two Harrisons — William Henry and grandson Benjamin.

We’ve elected two Roosevelts — cousins Teddy and Franklin Delano.

Of course, fathers and sons John and John Quincy Adams, and George H.W. and George W. Bush.

If Hillary Clinton runs in two years and wins, she’ll be the first spouse of a president to win the office. So that changes the equation a good bit.

Let’s not get too worked up over this dynasty business. We’ve had ’em before.

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