national news

Reunion No. 50: much better, thank you

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PORTLAND, Ore. — I owe one of my sons a debt of thanks for steering me this direction, at this time, to attend a particular event.

I have regaled (or bored) you already with my tale of woe regarding my 30-year high school reunion. I had some serious trepidation about coming to the 50-year event. My son talked me into going.

I’m glad he did.

Yes, the event exceeded my expectation. Who knew? Perhaps it was because I set the bar so low that it was next to impossible to not clear it with ease. It was quite  unlike No. 30, for which I set an impossibly high bar; there was no way to meet the expectation I had set for that one.

And wouldn’t you know it, as I gravitated around the room schmoozing, back-slapping the guys, hugging the girls and getting caught up, I heard from three — maybe four — of my Parkrose High School classmates that they thought No. 30 was a downer, too.

Imagine that, will ya?

My son had advised me that this one would be better because his mother — my wife — would be there with me. She had a good time, too. She met some of my classmates, a couple of whom shared stories about me back in The Day that bore a semblance of truth, although one of my old runnin’ buddies seemed to embellish his recollection more than just a little.

My best friend from high school, Dennis — along with his wife, Linda — attended the event, which all by itself made it worth the trip from Texas. Dennis’s friendship is the longest sustained relationship I have with anyone on Earth who is not a member of my family; we go back 55 years, to the seventh grade.

My biggest takeaway is this: The 110 or so classmates who attended seemed to go out of their way to circulate and to talk to those they might not have known all that well in the old days. My comfort level was enhanced many times over what I felt two decades ago when I ventured here from Portland to attend the high school reunion I swore would be the last one I’d ever attend.

Silly me. I must have forgotten how time has this way of making most of us grow up.

I am glad I came.

national news, political news

Imagine seeing Trump with his five living predecessors

Try as hard as I do, I cannot wrap my arms around a certain scenario involving Donald J. Trump and five of the men who preceded him as president of the United States.

History has provided opportunities for the living for presidents to gather along with the current POTUS. They have appeared at ribbon-cuttings, at funerals, at various and sundry public functions.

Try to imagine Trump sharing a stage with Presidents Carter, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama. Imagine these men all setting aside the humiliating insults that Trump has hurled at them collectively and individually. Let’s not forget the insults and name-calling he has hurled at the wife of one of those men, referring to the 2016 Democratic nominee as “Crooked Hillary” Clinton.

Of all of the former presidents I could imagine possibly showing up at a Trump event I can think only of President Carter taking that leap. I guess it’s because of the former president’s deep Christian faith and the grace he embodies even where it involves those who have sought to humiliate him.

I won’t bet the farm, though, on President Carter doing it.

Still, the current president has demonstrated a seemingly limitless capacity to re-litigate the 2016 election. He keeps seeking to rub in the faces of his political foes the fact that he won an election. C’mon, Mr. President! We get it, dude!

His defamation of President Obama sticks in the craw of millions of Americans. He perpetuated the lie that Obama was born abroad and was somehow unqualified to serve as president.

The idiotic insults he hurled at President George W. Bush and his family members cannot possibly have gone down well with the 43rd president.

Trump’s overblown insults at Bill Clinton — not to mention his wife — have been shameful in the extreme.

The only thing that has kept Trump, in my view, from tossing barbs at Bush 41 has been the former president’s health … although I would put nothing past Trump if he chose to offer a snarky comment about the 90-something former commander in chief.

The presidency occasionally offers these individuals opportunities to gather for ceremonial functions. I encourage you to picture any or all of them agreeing to speak publicly about the clown in chief who occupies this venerated office.

Uncategorized

‘Atmospheric river’? Huh? Eh?

PORTLAND. Ore. — We are being swept up in something I never knew existed.

The TV weathermen and women here are referring to something called an “atmospheric river.” You might ask, “What the bleep is that?”

I have deduced it describes a long band of rain clouds that is tracking over a region. We are RV-parked along the Columbia River in Portland. It’s been raining like the dickens almost since the day of our arrival. Weather conditions are producing more of it, which is welcome around here, given the Eagle Creek fire that incinerated much of the forest land around the Columbia Gorge.

But I am amused/bemused at this new meteorological term of art: atmospheric river.

The last time I heard weather people glom on to a particular term I guess was that “polar vortex.” I laughed when I heard that one.

Whenever I hear the term “vortex,” I flash back to 1970. They had a music festival here then. It took place at McIver State Park near Estacada, which is southeast of Portland in the foothills of the Cascade Range. I recall it was meant to protest the Vietnam War.

They called it “Vortex.” The most interesting part of it was how then-Gov. Tom McCall decriminalized marijuana use during the run of the festival. I believe the late governor wanted to give those rascally kids a pass on getting stoned while they “protested” whatever it was they were protesting. No need to hassle them and assign lots of cops to round ’em up, McCall thought.

Just so you know: I didn’t attend Vortex.

I digress.

“Atmospheric river” is a descriptive term used to define a lot of rain. That “river” has become a rapids.

And aren’t you just relieved that climate change is just a giant, cooked-up “hoax”?

local news, State news

Seliger won’t ‘endorse’ Lt. Gov. Patrick; imagine that

I just know in my bones that I am not the only observer who saw this one coming.

Texas state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, has decided he won’t endorse fellow Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in 2018. Seliger said he won’t endorse anyone else; he said he intends to “support” Patrick — whatever the hell that means.

He just won’t “endorse” him, preferring to concentrate on his own re-election bid for the Senate District 31 seat he’s held since 2004.

Not a single aspect of this surprises me.

Seliger hasn’t been one of Patrick’s guys in the Senate. Sure, he’s backed much of Patrick’s agenda during the 2017 legislative session. He bolted on a couple of key issues:  a bill that restricts local property tax increases and a bill that sought to subsidize the cost of private schools.

Patrick announced that 19 of 20 state GOP senators were endorsing his re-election. Seliger’s name was absent from the list of Republican lawmakers. Is the Amarillo Republican worried? Hardly.

Seliger faces stern test for re-election

Indeed, Seliger already is getting set for a rough-and-tumble GOP primary battle in Senate District 31. Seliger will run against former Midland Mayor Mike Canon — who lost to Seliger in 2014 — and Amarillo businessman Victor Leal.

I’ll stipulate once again that I want Seliger to be renominated. I also will stipulate that I am no fan of Lt. Gov. Patrick, who I consider to be a ideological blowhard. Seliger is not. He is a serious legislative technician who I believe works hard at understanding the issues pertinent to the vast Senate district he represents.

I am going to presume that Seliger understands that he works for West Texas voters, not the guy who presides over the Texas Senate.

national news, political news

Hillary didn’t want to attend inaugural? No kiddin’!

Hillary Rodham Clinton has revealed to the BBC what many of us already suspected, if not knew: She didn’t want to attend the inaugural of Donald John Trump.

As The Hill reported: “I really tried to get out of going,” Clinton said in an appearance on BBC One’s “The Graham Norton Show.” “We thought ‘OK, maybe others aren’t going.’ “

Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee who lost to Trump in 2016, told BBC she sought out the family of President Bush 43; they would attend. She sought advice from President and Mrs. Carter; they were going, too. President and Mrs. Obama, of course, had to be there. President and Mrs. Bush 41 couldn’t attend because of the former president’s poor health.

In many ways I can understand Hillary’s reluctance. Trump had insulted her for months prior to Election Day. He didn’t just dispute policy differences with his opponent. Trump chose to belittle her just as he did his Republican primary opponents prior to winning the GOP nomination; some of those GOP foes chose to boycott the party’s nominating convention. I didn’t blame them, either.

According to BBC: Clinton also said she wanted Trump to “rise to the occasion of being our president” during his inaugural address, but said “that didn’t happen” because of Trump’s “dark, divisive speech.”

Yes, it was dark. It was angry. The new president didn’t strike any kind of unifying tone. He spoke only to the base of voters who carried him to victory. He didn’t speak to the rest of us, seeking to tell us he would do all he could be president of all Americans.

I’m glad Hillary accompanied her husband, the former president, to the inaugural. However, if she’d have stayed away, I surely would have accepted that decision, too.

local news

Renaming buildings and streets? Follow a simple formula

Amarillo city officials are considering some ordinances related to building and street renaming.

There’s been a bit of controversy about that in recent times, with Amarillo public school officials considering whether to rename an elementary school that currently is named after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, whose participation in the Civil War has come under scrutiny of late.

Hey, I have one recommendation for Amarillo City Hall: Whatever you decide, be sure to avoid naming a building or street after a living individual.

No living honorees

The city named its administration building in 2014 after the late City Commissioner Jim Simms; it named its international airport after Rick Husband, the astronaut who died aboard the shuttle Columbia in 2003; Amarillo has named part of a street after Justin Scherlen, a police officer who died in the line of duty.

Cities that name structures or streets after living individuals run the risk of being embarrassed by the “honored” individual. The most prominent example that comes to my mind involves Pete Rose, the former Cincinnati Reds baseball great who got a street named in his honor in Cincy; then Rose got ensnared in a gambling scandal that resulted in his being banned for life from induction in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. The city took Rose’s name off the street.

So, go ahead, City Hall, with considering this ordinance. I have no problem with the city having a policy for this process — as long as it involves individuals who have left this world.

Good luck, City Council.

national news

Hoping a lower bar allows for satisfaction

PORTLAND, Ore. — A big day awaits my wife and me.

We ventured to the city of my birth to attend a high school reunion, an event I once swore I’d never attend again for the rest of my life. Not ever. Not in a million, billion, gazillion years!

Here we are.

The 50-year reunion for my high school class will commence in a little more than 24 hours and I am expecting it to produce a significantly different emotional result than the 30-year reunion I attended.

I graduated from Parkrose High School in the Summer of Love; that would be 1967. I took a stab at college, but didn’t make the grade. The U.S. Army beckoned the following year and it sent me to Vietnam, which placed me on the fast track to becoming an actual grownup.

I returned home in August 1970, got married a year after that. My wife and I went to my 10-year reunion in 1977. I skipped No. 20, but flew back to Portland from Amarillo to attend No. 30.

I hated it. I had set the bar far too high. I placed too great an expectation on what I would discover about the people next to whom I sat in class or goofed off with in the hallway or the cafeteria.

One of my sons blamed my disappointment on the absence of my wife at No. 30. He’s a wise man and he’s likely correct that my trip back alone contributed to my lack of satisfaction in the 30-year reunion.

I got invited to No. 40. I chose to skip it for reasons relating directly to the event I attended a decade earlier. I heard from one of my pals who did attend No. 40; he told my wife and me that everyone had a blast. Good deal.

So, my wife and I have ventured here together in our RV.

I will walk into the hotel banquet room with next to zero expectations. My wife and I will catch up with a couple of good friends of mine with whom I’ve stayed in touch over the years. I’ll seek to catch up the best I can with the others. I won’t expect anyone to recall what a great guy I was back in those Glory Days.

I’ll slap a few backs, shake a few hands and perhaps swap a lie or two. Then my wife and I will be on our way.

But you know … these low expectations just might be exceeded by what we encounter. I’m not expecting it. Then again …

International news

Why can’t POTUS speak with this kind of clarity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps5ttDzWBaY

John Kelly works for a guy who seems genetically incapable of speaking with moral certitude and clarity.

When the president speaks about slain soldiers “knowing what they were getting into … but I guess it still hurts,” he comes off sounding like a heartless buffoon.

When the White House chief of staff offers the same explanation over what his “best friend” told him after his son was killed in Afghanistan, he sounds dignified, heartfelt and sincere.

Donald J. Trump has opened the door yet again to a pointless and needless controversy. This time it centers on how the president sought to console a grieving widow whose husband died in a firefight in Niger several days ago.

The president might have been motivated to do the right thing. Perhaps he intended to sound compassionate. My reading of what’s been reported about what he told Myeshia Johnson, whose husband Sgt. La David Johnson, died in Niger, tells me the president just isn’t good at fulfilling that role.

And yet, Gen. Kelly manages to sound the right tone, despite his criticism of Rep. Frederica Wilson, who reported the content of the president’s phone conversation with Mrs. Johnson.

Weird.

education news, local news

Sexual harassment hits all communities

Sexual harassment is in the air. Maybe it’s in the water.

A one-time major-league Hollywood mogul’s career has been destroyed by allegations of his untoward behavior against women.

A “Me Too” movement has emerged, with women coming forward to reveal their own exposure to sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Now a school district at the very top of the Texas Panhandle is dealing with a potentially burgeoning controversy involving sexual harassment. Two top Perryton Independent School District administrators — Superintendent Robert Hall and Assistant Superintendent Keith Langfitt — have resigned. Both men had been accused of sexual harassment. They both were on paid administrative leave.

I am going to take a leap here and suggest that their resignations likely mean there had to be merit to the allegations that had been leveled against them.

The details of the complaints remain sketchy. I hope the school district will reveal the nature of the allegations leveled against these two men. I am not suggesting that Perryton ISD officials reveal the names of the victims of the activity that’s being alleged.

The community, though, would be well-served if it learns about what was going on in secret in a publicly funded institution that has such a direct impact on the lives of taxpayers — and their children.

national news

For ‘W’ to speak out, you know it’s bad

Two former presidents of the United States have spoken out about the state of contemporary politics.

Both men’s comments were thinly veiled broadsides fired at Donald John Trump, the guy who succeeded one of them. You would expect such criticism of a Republican president to come from Democratic former President Barack H. Obama, who today campaigned on behalf of fellow Democratic candidates.

It’s the criticism that came from a Republican ex-president, George W. Bush, that deserves a brief comment here.

President Bush has been mostly quiet since leaving the White House in January 2009. Today he broke his silence in dramatic fashion.

Speaking at a George W. Bush Institute event in New York, the former president said this, according to the Washington Post:

* “Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

* “We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism.”

* “We’ve seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. . . . Argument turns too easily into animosity.”

* “It means that bigotry and white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed, and it means the very identity of our nation depends on passing along civic ideals.”

* “Bullying and prejudice in our public life … provides permission for cruelty and bigotry.”

* “The only way to pass along civic values is to live up to them.”

Read the Post article here.

Can there be any question about whom the former president is referring? Can you possibly mistake the references to anyone other than Donald J. Trump?

President Bush spoke out forcefully during his time in the White House against bigotry and hatred. For example, he sought to declare that our war against international radical Islamic terrorists is not a war against Islam.

That is not the message we’re getting from the current president and the 43rd president of the United States is correct to bring these issues to our attention.

Welcome back to the political stage, Mr. President.

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