national news

Sen. McCain ‘tells it like it is’

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U.S. Sen. John McCain received a great and much-deserved award today and said this:

“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century,” the Arizona Republican said, “to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

Sen. McCain received the Liberty Medal by the National Constitution Center. The person who gave him the medal was former Vice President Joe Biden, a former Senate colleague and longtime McCain friend.

The Liberty Medal was given to McCain to honor him for his career in public service, which included heroic service as a Navy aviator and more than five years in captivity as a Vietnam War prisoner.

McCain speaks with profound knowledge and understanding of this nation’s role as the world’s remaining military superpower and the world’s leading economic power.

McCain stands tall

I saw the remarks and understood immediately to whom he was directing his remarks about “scapegoats” and “spurious nationalism.”

Listen up, Donald John Trump Sr. The senator, the man you disparaged disgracefully during your presidential campaign, is talking about you.

Biden paid tribute to McCain’s service during his remarks. According to CNN: “John, you have broken many times, physically and otherwise, and you have always grown stronger, but what you don’t really understand in my humble opinion is how much courage you give the rest of us looking at you,” Biden said. 

If only one prominent American, the president of the United States, could grasp the message this brave man is delivering.

national news

Happy Trails, Part 47

EUGENE, Ore. — Our retirement journey took us “home,” or a place we used call it such.

We aren’t spending much time here. Our drive from central California was spectacular in the extreme.

What made it so? I guess it was the topography.

I told my wife today en route to the Willamette Valley that “I think we’ve lived in Texas for too long. I have forgotten how tall those mountains and that timber are around here.”

Don’t misunderstand something. By “too long,” I don’t imply any regrets about moving to Texas. We left Oregon in 1984 so I could pursue a career that turned out all right. Our first Texas stop was along the Gulf Coast, in Beaumont. You don’t see any mountains anywhere near that part of the world.

I remember a conversation I had with one of my sisters, who asked me not long after we moved to Beaumont, “Can you see any mountains there?” My answer: “Yeah, maybe, but only if you get waaay up on your tiptoes.”

Our fifth wheel is a reliable traveling vehicle that we intend to take virtually everywhere in North America. On this leg of our extended retirement journey, we managed to cast our gaze on some of God’s most gorgeous creations.

Mount Shasta anyone? Fall foliage, too? The Sierra Nevada? Rivers with water rushing along them? Many miles of conifer-coated mountainsides? They’re all out there. We saw them up close.

Yes, there have been the fires in Santa Rosa, Calif., and close to where we parked our RV in Grass Valley, Calif.

Retirement has enabled us to load up and hit the road to some awesome locations already: Twin Cities, Mount Rushmore, Washington, D.C., Blue Ridge Parkway, Durango, Nashville.

And on and on it goes … and will go from here.

This return to a place we once called “home” has been quite special so far. The Pacific Northwest is a beautiful place, to be sure.

I’ve heard a few of my High Plains friends tell me they get “claustrophobic” driving among all those mountains and tall timber. I get it. I actually can understand why they might feel that way.

I am not there. I likely expect to never get bitten by the claustrophobia bug.

legal news

Court brings cause for concern

Oh, brother.

Donald J. Trump is predicting he could get to fill as many as four seats on the U.S. Supreme Court.

How does that grab you? I’ll tell you the unvarnished truth: It scares the ever-loving bejabbers out of me.

The president already has picked Justice Neil Gorsuch for the highest court in the land; he replaced another conservative, Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly a year ago in Texas. Justice Anthony Kennedy is reportedly considering retirement. Who’s next? Might it be Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Try this one on for size: Justice Sonya Sotomayor.

Trump could swing court balance

That’s four of them. Kennedy is considered a “swing vote” on the court; Ginsburg and Sotomayor are part of the so-called “liberal wing.” Ginsburg’s health reportedly has been getting more frail over the years. Sotomayor, one of the court’s younger members, suffers from Type 1 diabetes, which could inhibit her ability to continue.

What might occur? Trump will get to appoint justices who’ll swing the court so far to the right that it could scare a whole lot more Americans than just yours truly.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to send good-health vibes to Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg and Sotomayor. We need them on the highest court in the land to maintain some semblance of balance and reason.

national news

Trump declares a new culture war

Donald John Trump Sr. just cannot stop getting angry with institutions, people and anything or anyone else.

He’s now declaring a new culture war. He’s stirring up conflict where little — if any of it — exists in the moment.

The president went to the Values Voter Conference and declared his intention to get retail employees to say “Merry Christmas” to customers; he doesn’t like the “Happy Holidays” greeting that some retail outlets deliver to their customers.

Good ever-lovin’ grief, dude! Get a bleeping grip!

Trump unloads

As The Hill reports, Trump’s intent to persuade Americans that there exists some elite class that denigrates their values. He believes they care more about diversity and political correctness than anything else.

What utter crap!

He continues to play to the base that stands with him. He continues to divide Americans along more lines than many of us even knew existed. Now he’s seeking to divide Americans based on whether they insist on receiving Christmas greetings.

Ridiculous.

This angry message runs directly counter to the president’s pledge to unify the country. He won an Electoral College victory while garnering nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Rodham Clinton. He became president with zero political capital to spend. Trump needed to build up that capital by working with Democrats and moderate Republicans on a whole host of legislative priorities.

He chose instead to lob bombs at them.

He’s now heaving political ordnance at Americans while firing the initial shots of this culture war that, in my humble view, is a figment of this guy’s imagination.

It all leaves me wondering whether Donald Trump seems somehow angry that he won the election. How in the world can that be?

State news, Uncategorized

‘Real disaster’ struck Texas … no kidding!

Texas emergency officials have reported that Hurricane Harvey has killed 88 people.

Eight-eight families have lost loved ones. They are grieving to this day. Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas Gulf Coast twice, first as a Category 3 hurricane and then as a tropical storm.

Watching the storm’s savagery from afar, I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that it constitutes a “major disaster.” The hurricane blasted the Coastal Bend region with killer winds and storm surge. The tropical storm deluged Houston and the Golden Triangle with unprecedented rainfall: 50 inches in one 24-hour span of time, a record for the continental United States of America.

Harvey hit us real hard

I want to mention this because of something that Donald John Trump Sr. told our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico. He seemed to chide them because — at the time of his visit — “only” 16 people had been killed by Hurricane Maria, which destroyed the island’s power grid and its potable water supply.

Yet, the president seemed to suggest that Puerto Rico was “fortunate” to have suffered so little loss of life, unlike what happened to New Orleans in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina stormed ashore.

Well, I guess I ought to remind the president that the Texas coast didn’t suffer the amount of deaths that other storms have brought, but he dare not dismiss the damage from the Coastal Bend to the Golden Triangle as anything short of a major disaster.

national news

Settled: Rex T called Trump a ‘moron’

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been given more chances than he likely cares to count to take back a news report that he called Donald John Trump a “bleeping moron.”

Tillerson keeps clamming up. He did it again today on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He won’t engage in “petty” matters. Let’s move on, Tillerson said.

OK, then. The more he refuses to take back what NBC News reported he said the more it becomes clear: Tillerson called the president a “moron.”

The men reportedly have a testy relationship, which is a difficult circumstance, given the state of the world these days. North Korea is threatening to blow up South Korea; the Middle East remains a powder keg with several fuses lit; those pesky Russians keep hacking into other countries’ electoral systems, just as they did ours in 2016.

Tillerson made some appearances today on the news talk shows to say he’s still on the job, he’s still offering Trump his opinions on this and that, and that he intends to keep serving the president.

My question always arises when Donald Trump is involved: How much longer can someone like Tillerson, himself a big-time business mogul before entering public service, continue to work at the pleasure of someone who doesn’t have a clue about how to govern the world’s greatest nation?

Tillerson has exactly distinguished himself as secretary of state. Then again, he hasn’t been given a chance to put his stamp on the nation’s diplomatic strategy. The chaos continues within the Trump administration — and it’s all a direct reflection of the man who calls the shots.

As Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., points out so, um, graphically: You can’t “publicly castrate” a secretary of state. Tillerson insists that he remains “fully intact.”

We’ll see.

environmental news

Let’s call it ‘Environmental Destruction Agency’

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Scott Pruitt long has been known as a friend of the oil industry. He denies the existence of climate change. Pruitt is no friend of the environment.

So, what does Donald John Trump do? He puts this guy, the former Oklahoma attorney general, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now the EPA boss is showing his chops, as if there was any doubt. He is revoking protection of an Alaska salmon fishery, one of the most valuable in the world. He has met with a mining company executive who wants to start mining within the bounds of that fishery.

I hereby propose we rename the EPA. Let’s call it the Environmental Destruction Agency. Shall we?

The Bristol Bay Watershed was placed under federal protection by the Obama administration, which concluded that any mining or other industrial activity would destroy the fish habitat that is so valuable to fishing interests, sportsmen and women and consumers who enjoy the taste of salmon.

Barack Obama leaves office. Donald Trump takes over. Then the new president installs this guy Pruitt, who has met with Tom Collier, CEO of Pebble Limited Partnership, a mining outfit that wants to work within the watershed.

Pruitt continues to play footsie with interests that have little interest in environmental protection.

I’m quite sure Collier never would admit to wanting to destroy the fishery or the watershed. The Obama administration took three years of review to decide to set the watershed aside. It determined that any mining within the watershed would destroy permanently a resource upon which so many people rely.

Pruitt, though, appears to have decided that protecting the watershed isn’t in the national interest.

How about changing the name of the EPA to the Environmental Destruction Agency?

Sad.

education news

‘Paid leave’ while investigating wrongdoing?

I’ve only worked one public service job in my entire life — if you don’t count the two years I served in the U.S. Army: six months as a juvenile corrections officer in Randall County; the job didn’t work out for me.

Public service employment does have its quirks that are unique to it and not usually found in the private sector. Take the issue of “paid administrative leave.”

The Perryton (Texas) Independent School District superintendent is on paid leave after someone filed a sexual harassment complaint against him; the assistant superintendent also has taken paid leave. The school board is considering what to do about Superintendent Robert Hall and Assistant Superintendent Keith Langfitt.

I don’t know about the nature of the complaint that’s been filed against these fellows. I won’t comment at all on that.

Pay now or pay later

I do find it curious that a public institution would continue to pay someone a hefty salary while he awaits his fate at the hands of his employer, in this case the Perryton ISD board of trustees.

If these fellows worked for a private company, they likely would be suspended without pay. Done deal. Don’t ask questions. We’ll get back to you when we decide.

Suppose the Perryton school board had decided to withhold payments to Hall and Langfitt. Suppose, too, that a careful investigation clears them of the complaint. Couldn’t the school board then reimburse them for back pay when they returned to work? Paying them while they are on “administrative leave” exposes the school district to being stuck with the salary tab if the complaints are shown to have merit.

Legalities sometimes get in the way of common sense.

national news

Firefighters earn their heroes’ chops

GRASS VALLEY, Calif. — I didn’t want to be a fireman when I was a kid. My dream was to be a professional baseball player. I had a couple of issues, though, that prevented me from fulfilling that dream.

One is that I lacked the natural talent needed to play hardball for a living; the other is that I was too lazy to work hard enough to improve on the talent that I did possess.

Fighting fires wasn’t on my radar.

It took me a good while to understand and appreciate the firefighters’ ability, their courage and their instincts. I certainly get it now.

First responders are my heroes. Police officers, firefighters, paramedics/emergency medical techs all have earned exalted status in my book.

I’ve been able to use this blog to proclaim my admiration for those who run toward danger. I will do so again with this post.

We came to the Sierra Nevada to spend time with family members and to relax in the woods. We didn’t realize when we made our plans that our Nevada County Fairgrounds RV park would become a staging area for firefighters struggling against forest fires that — according to one of the approximately 1,100 firefighters on duty here — has burned about 14,000 acres.

We have spared no expression of thanks and gratitude to the young men and women we’ve seen moving through our RV park. I’m delighted that some of them have expressed their own appreciation in return for getting a good word.

I extend those expressions of gratitude just to get a thank-you in return. I do so because I mean it with all sincerity.

My police officer friends know how much I appreciate their work. I know many more cops than I do firefighters. My work as a journalist in Oregon and Texas exposed me more to police officers than firefighters.

Now that I am a “civilian,” having retired from journalism, I have been able to watch firefighters up close as they do their dangerous work. Our travels across the country have given my wife and me the opportunity to tell these young heroes how much we appreciate all they do.

They’ve got their work cut out for them here in Grass Valley. What’s more, they damn sure have a huge fight on their hands over yonder in Santa Rosa, which has been incinerated by the flames.

These young heroes deserve all our thanks.

entertainment news

Hillary is right: We’ve got serious sexual conduct issues to answer

Harvey Weinstein, the film producer and mentor to the stars, apparently has a serious problem  on his hands. He stands accused of sexually molesting women. He is seeking help for his problem, but his career likely is toast — as it should be.

Then we have another notable individual, the president of the United States of America, who’s actually acknowledged groping women and, in effect, committing sexual assault.

Hillary Clinton addressed both men’s issues in a United Kingdom television interview.

As The Hill reported: “Look, we just elected someone who admitted sexual assault to the presidency. So there’s a lot of other issues that are swirling around these kinds of behaviors that need to be addressed,” Clinton said when asked if she had heard rumors of Weinstein’s behavior before the bombshell reports. “I think it’s important that we stay focused, and shine a bright spotlight, and try to get people to understand how damaging this is,” she continued.

No one should dismiss what Weinstein has been accused of doing. That he would check himself into a rehab clinic is an acknowledgment that he has done what many women have accused him of doing.

The astonishing aspect of this is that while the media are zeroing in on Weinstein we seem to have looked askance at what the leader of the free world has admitted doing. The “Access Hollywood” recording of Trump admitting in 2005 to hideous behavior with women raised a ruckus for only a brief period before this fellow was elected president of the United States.

Do values matter?

Many of us talk all the time about “values” and their impact on contemporary culture. We expect our elected leaders to be paragons of virtue. We bristle — or at least we used to bristle — when they don’t measure up.

Donald Trump has defied every conventional norm one can name in his quest for the presidency.

Should we be alarmed at what Harvey Weinstein is alleged to have done? Certainly. But what about the president?

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