national news, political news

Can it be? Mitt is getting back in the game?

I do hope this story pans out.

Sources have revealed that U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Senate’s longest-tenured Republican, is calling it quits and that his good friend Mitt Romney is going to run for his seat in Utah.

Why is my heart palpitating? Well, Mitt is no friend of Donald John Trump Sr. Neither, it might be noted, is Sen. Hatch. However, Hatch is facing a near-certain GOP primary challenge. He’s decided — allegedly — that he’s had enough of the fun and games in Washington. He’s now 83 years of age. He must lack the staying power and/or the stomach for another political fight.

But how about that Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who’s made three stabs at higher office? He lost to U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, then came up short in two tries for the presidency, losing the 2012 general election to President Obama.

He might have made an even bigger impact on the current political environment, though, with that stunning speech he delivered in 2016 that tore the GOP presidential nominee, Trump, a new one. He called Trump a “fraud,” a “phony” and a whole lot of other pejorative terms.

Then after Trump got elected Romney supposedly was on the president-elect’s short list for secretary of state. He interviewed with Trump in private, came out in front of the cameras, smiled and said all the right things.

But … my gut tells me Mitt isn’t in Trump’s camp.

I’m not at all sure about Mitt’s residency. Does he still live in Massachusetts? Does he maintain a residence in Utah? I guess it doesn’t matter too terribly, given that these residency laws at times can be quite lax and open to broad interpretation. Do you remember the time the late Robert F. Kennedy (in 1964) and then Hillary Rodham Clinton (in 2000) ran for the U.S. Senate from New York, even though neither of them actually lived there at the time they ran for the office?

Whatever. I am glad to see Mitt Romney possibly getting back into the public service game. I just hope he can muster up the guts to keep “telling it like it is” as it regards the president of the United States.

local news

Recalling a Texas Panhandle giant

Every now and then, I like scrolling back through my blog posts to re-examine thoughts I had way back when.

I did so again tonight and found a short post I wrote about the death of a Texas Panhandle political titan: former state Sen. Teel Bivins.

Here is what I wrote:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2009/10/panhandle-loses-a-legislative-giant/

Bivins would leave Amarillo and the Panhandle to become U.S. ambassador to Sweden. His good friend, President George W. Bush, thought to reward Bivins for the work he did to get the president elected in 2000.

My thoughts turn to Sen. Bivins today in light of the current political climate. I wonder how he might fare in the harsh environment that seems to be overcoming people in events in Austin, let alone in Washington. He was a true-blue, rock-ribbed “establishment Republican.” He was conservative to the core, a staunch defender of private property owners’ rights — which makes sense, given his own extensive ranch holdings in the rural Panhandle.

I also want to share a brief memory about Bivins, which I think speaks well of the man’s character as well as his media savvy.

***

I was new to the Panhandle in early 1995. I didn’t yet know Bivins; I only knew of him. I had heard one of the Senate colleagues, Democrat Carl Parker of Port Arthur, describe Bivins as one of those “silk-stocking Republicans” who was more interested in helping rich people than fighting for the working stiff.

Bivins’ office called me one day about a month after I arrived at the Amarillo Globe-News. Bivins wanted to get acquainted. I went to his office in downtown Amarillo. We shook hands and started chatting. Bivins told me of his friendship with Parker and gave him kudos for his immense debating skills.

Then we talked about our families. He asked me about mine. I told him I was married and that my wife and I had two sons in college.

Then he launched into an amazing soliloquy about his own family and his troubled marriage. He told me about the struggles his then-wife was having with substance abuse. He said he wasn’t sure how much longer he could cope with it, how much more help he could give to her.

As I listened to this strange method of getting acquainted with a member of the media, I was struck by the extraordinary candor he was expressing to someone he barely knew.

We finished our visit. I went back to the office. Bivins went back to Austin to continue working as a legislator.

No more than few days later, I told one of Bivins’ top aides about what he revealed. She smiled and said he had an ulterior motive. Bivins wanted me to hear it from him, rather than hearing it from someone else, who might put a different sort of spin on it.

I thought, “ah hah!” I got played. More or less. However, it was for the right reason.

Eight years after this good man’s death, I am not bashful about telling you that I still miss him.

local news, State news

Speaker Price? Sure, why not? But only if …

Four Price is a friend of mine who I’ve known for about two decades.

Having gotten that disclosure out of the way, you may take my endorsement of the Amarillo Republican lawmaker’s potential candidacy for speaker of the Texas House of Representatives for what it’s worth.

I believe he would make a smashing speaker.

But here’s the important caveat I want to attach to it: I want him to follow the lead set by his good buddy, the current speaker who’s leaving the Legislature after the 2018 election.

Joe Straus, a San Antonio Republican, is quitting politics. He calls the atmosphere too “divisive” and too “partisan.” He sought to run the House of Representatives with a bipartisan touch. He worked with Democrats as well as Republicans.

That sense of political comity cost Straus support among the hard-core Republicans who believe he had become a Republican In Name Only, a dreaded RINO.

I don’t sense that Price, also a Republican, believes that of his friend and colleague. I believe it would be pure folly for Price to buckle under the pressure that some of the right-wingnuts are going to exert.

One of them happens to run the Texas Senate. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick locked horns with Speaker Straus over that damn Bathroom Bill that died a well-deserved death in this summer’s special legislative session. The bill would have required transgender people to use public restrooms in accordance to their birth certificate gender. Patrick wanted the bill passed into law; Straus resisted, earning him the scorn of county GOP organizations, including the Randall County Republican Party, which resolved to support someone else for speaker in the 2019 session.

So, to my friend Four Price, I ask only this: If you’re going to run for speaker, please resist the temptation to tilt too far to the right. Do not forsake the millions of Texans — such as yours truly — who believe that moderation is critical to effective governing.

national news

First thought on JFK murder? The Soviets did it!

I was a mere pup of nearly 14 years of age on Nov. 22, 1963.

I was home that day, nursing a bad cold. Mom and Dad had gone to work. My sisters were at school. I was watching TV when the news bulletin flashed on the screen: “Shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas, Texas; no word on whether the president was injured.”

The “word” came quickly. The president was rushed to a hospital. Doctors worked to save his life. They failed. Then came the announcement: “President Kennedy is dead.”

My first thought in the moment was clear and simple: The Soviet Union did it. Not only that, they were going to invade us immediately. The United States was without a president. We had no leadership.

Remember that I wasn’t yet 14. My mind ran wild.

I remember those initial thoughts today as Donald Trump has released many thousands of previously classified documents related to the Kennedy assassination. I’m hearing lots of talk that conspiracy theorists are going to run wild with this stuff. It’s going to substantiate their already-loony belief that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald was involved. It was the Mob, the Cubans, the CIA, the FBI, LBJ, men from Mars, the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I settled down over the years about what I truly believe happened that terrible day.

My 13-year-old concern about the Soviets was ill-founded, to state the obvious. I didn’t realize in the moment that Vice President Lyndon Johnson took the presidential oath of office in Dallas. He took command immediately. And the Big Bad Bear didn’t attack us.

I have grown up since then and have come to believe that Oswald did it. He acted alone. He snuck into the Book Depository Building. He waited for the president’s motorcade to pass under the sixth-floor window where he was perched. He squeezed off three rounds and fled. He got caught in the theater, shot the Dallas police officer and was arrested.

He wanted notoriety and, oh brother, he got it.

I also believe Jack Ruby wanted to be remembered, too, which fueled his desire to kill Oswald in the Dallas PD basement.

I’m glad the documents are out. I hope to read many of them over time. The myriad conspiracy theories they are likely to rekindle are the work of people with too damn much time on their hands.

They need to find work. They need to get and stay busy.

local news, State news

All hell is about to break loose in Austin

You want to hear the rumble of thunder under your feet?

Put your ear to the ground and get a load of the racket emanating from a Texas legislator’s announcement that he won’t seek re-election in 2018.

That would be House Speaker Joe Straus, a San Antonio Republican, who stood firm, tall and steady against the onslaught of the far right within his party. Straus is calling it quits.

The Texas Tribune is reporting that a political earthquake is under way in Austin. A Rice University political scientist says the “political center in Texas” has just collapsed.

That might be the truth.

Straus fought against the TEA Party and other fringe elements within the Republican Party. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick sought to shove the Bathroom Bill down our throats. Straus was having none of it; a bill that would require people to use public restrooms according to the gender noted on their birth certificate. The Bathroom Bill discriminates against transgendered individuals and Straus wouldn’t stand for it.

His stubborn refusal to let the bill get a vote in the House has drawn the outrage from those on the right. So the speaker is out of there.

And the successors are starting the line up. One of them might be a friend of mine, Rep. Four Price, an Amarillo Republican first elected to the House in 2010. I asked Price about the speaker’s future a few weeks ago, but he said he was standing behind his guy, Straus.

Now that the speaker is on his way out, there exists an opportunity for one of Straus’s key lieutenants — that would be Price — to step in and maintain the moderate tone that the House ought to keep.

As the Texas Tribune reports: More than any other Texas Republican with real power, Straus was seen as a voice of moderation. On issue after issue, he and his team alone stood in the way of the kind of runaway populism that Donald Trump championed and major statewide Republicans endorsed.

Here’s the Tribune article

Will another moderate step up? Might it be Four Price? And would a Speaker Price resist the pressure that’s sure to come hard from the far right?

Meanwhile, the ground continues to rumble.

national news

POTUS does the impossible

Donald John Trump has done the seemingly impossible.

He has turned yours truly into a fan of Republicans who — prior to Trump’s ascendance into the presidency — likely wouldn’t get a good word from this blog.

Who … knew?

I’m going to single out three GOP senators briefly.

* John McCain. This man is a hero. He fought bravely during the Vietnam War. He served heroically as a prisoner of war after being shot down. McCain’s valor is beyond dispute. His commitment and love of country cannot possibly be questioned. He’s now fighting for his life against brain cancer.

* Bob Corker. I am less familiar with this fellow. He’s ending his Senate career after just two terms. He’s a conservative. He is a mainstream fellow. He seems intelligent, measured, reasonable.

* Jeff Flake. He, too, is ending his Senate run at the end of next year. He’s another conservative. He’s also a true-blue Republican.

All three of these men have another thing in common. They detest the president of the United States. So do I. Wow! Imagine that. I agree with them — and other lawmakers in both houses of Congress — in their assessment of Trump’s competence.

Donald Trump is not competent enough to do the job to which he was elected. What’s more, he’s not even a real Republican. He is no Democrat, either. He’s a man without a party, or a man with a party he is seeking to craft in his own image.

What an image that would be, yes?

A fellow inherits a stake from his wealthy father; he invests it in real estate development; he makes a ton of money. Then he ventures into beauty pageant management/ownership. Then he becomes host of a reality TV show.

Oh, then he marries three women, produces five children with all three of them. He cheats on his first two wives — and brags about it! He admits to groping women and grabbing them by their, um … oh, you know. He mimics a disabled reporter. He disparages a Gold Star family. He hides his tax returns from public review.

Trump doesn’t know how to govern. His “fellow Republicans” do understand how run the government. They are frustrated, angry and mortified at the so-called “leadership” coming from the White House.

I am on their side in this growing dispute.

The common denominator who has brought me to the Republicans’ side? He sits in the Oval Office.

national news

Happy Trails, Part 51

WINNEMUCCA, Nev. — We might have discovered the nicest stretch of highway in the continental United States of America.

It’s not necessarily the most scenic. The quality of the highway, though, is unmatched by any other prolonged stretch of blacktop on which we have traveled in our retirement life.

I want to give a shout out to U.S. Highway 20 from Bend, Ore. to Burns, Ore.; then to Oregon Highway 78 from Burns to Burns Junction, Ore.; then on to U.S. 95 from Burns Junction to Winnemucca, Nev.

The stretch of highway(s) runs 354 miles.

I want to mention this briefly because the road was pothole/chuckhole free. We didn’t see a single blemish on the roadway from Bend to Winnemucca.

Our latest sojourn in our RV hasn’t been this smooth. Not by a long shot. We encountered a bit of rough riding along California Highway 99 through the middle of that great — smoke-clogged — state. I will not toss out any blame here; I merely am stating a fact.

Those who like to travel as my wife and I do will appreciate the observation, I hope, that the country does have some highly drivable rights-of-way.

The entire journey from Bend to Winnemucca was scenic as well. It was desolate, particularly the stretch from Burns southwest along Oregon 78. Even that has its form of beauty.

With all the talk we’ve heard in recent years about “crumbling infrastructure” and the need to rebuild our nation’s highway grid and bridges, I want to proclaim that a 354-mile stretch of highway way out West is in fine shape … thank you very much.

political news

POTUS seeks to reaffirm his smartness

Why in the name of Mensa membership does Donald John “Smart Person” Trump Sr. keep doing this?

He keeps telling us how he got an Ivy League education. He keeps insisting he’s a smart guy. He insists as well that he’s fabulously rich, that he’s the best negotiator and deal maker since the beginning of Planet Earth.

The president was responding to the attack that came from retiring U.S. Sens. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., both of whom have peeled the bark off of Trump in recent weeks.

So we hear — yet again! — from the Leader of the Free World that he really is the smartest guy in the proverbial room.

My experience over many decades of living — while working with other really smart people — has told me this fundamental truth: Those who really possess serious intellectual wattage never have to say how smart they are. They are not compelled to assert what should be obvious to those who know them.

I have members of my family along with a few friends who are bona fide geniuses. None of them has expressed — at least in my presence — that they are loaded with intellectual firepower.

My life’s experience has taught me another key lesson. It is that those who insist on telling you how smart and rich they are usually are neither.

national news, political news

Has the GOP gone on to its great reward?

I fear the time may have arrived to say goodbye, farewell, adieu to a once-great American political party.

The Republican Party may be drawing its last breath in the Age of Donald John Trump Sr.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake has announced he is leaving public office at the end of next year. So is Sen. Bob Corker. They are two standup up guys. They represent the traditional Republican Party. They have sought during their Senate careers to work within a political system that includes Democrats. I don’t recall hearing them use the kind of language that’s become the apparent norm these days during the Trump Era.

Sen. John McCain is no friend or political ally of the president. And no matter how many smiley faces they make in Trump’s company in front of the camera, I do not believe Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Sen. Lindsey Graham, or Sen. John Cornyn are actual Trumpkins.

And the members of the Trump brigade need to stop denigrating their service by referring to them as RINOs, Republicans in Name Only. The RINO in chief, Trump, fits that description to a T.

We’re seeing more and more “establishment type” Republicans facing primary challenges, which is what drove Flake to the sideline.

As the Politico article attached to this post indicates, Trump is driving these people away and turning the GOP into a party in his image.

What an image it is, too.

Trump “tells it like it is,” his fans say. No, he tells it like he wants it to be. And for the life of me I cannot understand how a once-great party tolerates someone speaking of others in the manner that he does.

Donald Trump has defied every norm not just of political convention but of personal human decency since announcing his presidential campaign in June 2015.

A man with no public service experience ascended to the most exalted public office on Earth and nearly a year into his term has next to zero to show for it. His response has been to blame others time and again for his failure.

So here we are. The Republican Party — which once prided itself on being the Party of Abraham Lincoln — has become the Party of Donald John Trump.

Rest in ever-loving peace, GOP.

national news

Idiot in chief now goes after Denali?

The nation’s idiot in chief, Donald John Trump, reportedly is demonstrating even more his loathing of his immediate predecessor.

For the life of me I cannot grasp this clown’s anti-Barack Obama fetish.

The former president signed an executive order that changed the name of Mount McKinley to Denali. The latter name is the ancient name used by indigenous people in Alaska.

It’s being reported that the current president some months ago asked Alaska’s two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, whether he should reverse President Obama’s executive order. The senators reportedly said “no.”

This is the kind of ridiculous game-playing that the president seems to enjoy. He monkeys around with threats to repeal this and/or that Obama executive order.

What’s Trump up to?

I am in no position to predict what Trump will do as it regards Denali. The majestic peak’s former name honored the memory of the late President William McKinley, who was murdered in 1901. McKinley hailed from Ohio, which Trump won in the 2016 presidential election.

Is it just me or is Trump listening to the howls from a state he carried? Is the president truly considering an action merely on that basis?

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