International news, national news, political news

Bush ethics lawyer: Why not give Putin clearance, too?

Richard Painter teaches law at the University of Minnesota.

He once served as ethics adviser to President George W. Bush, so his Republican credentials are well-known. However, he’s demonstrating that ethical conduct ought to ignore partisan consideration.

Professor Painter is furious, fuming, outraged over what he believes is a lack of ethical decorum permeating Donald J. Trump’s administration. Exhibit A: the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Painter believes Kushner should surrender his top-secret White House security clearance because of his numerous contacts with Russian government officials who might have been involved in that Russian hacking and their efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

Painter said via Twitter that Kushner’s clearance needs to be revoked, but if the government is going to allow the young man to keep it, then it should just give one to Russian President Vladimir Putin, too.

Check out The Hill report.

Painter has been making the rounds for several months commenting on Donald J. Trump. He isn’t a fan. Perhaps he owes his antagonism to the president’s vocal criticism of President Bush’s handling of the Iraq War. It might have something to do with the insults that Trump hurled at the former president’s brother, Jeb, during the 2016 GOP presidential primary campaign.

Whatever. Professor Painter isn’t holding back.

I cannot blame him for demanding that Donald Trump seek to develop some understanding that “government ethics” need not be an oxymoron.

medical news, national news, political news

What part of ‘representative democracy’ doesn’t GOP get?

Seventeen percent!

That, dear reader, is the apparent standing of the Senate Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

The 17 percent figure represents the latest public opinion polling of the GOP plan. Fewer than one in five Americans favor the GOP plan. Health insurers don’t like it; the medical profession opposes it; GOP conservatives opposes, right along with Republican moderates; and, oh yeah, Democrats — who also comprise a big part of the voting block — hate it.

Senate Republican leaders, though, keep insisting that the replacement plan is moving forward.

I keep coming back to the fundamental question: Why can’t the congressional GOP leadership try to mend what they believe is wrong with the ACA instead of tossing it out altogether?

I’ve heard about the flaws contained within the ACA. Premiums are too great; health insurers are bailing out of some states.

But the ACA isn’t “failing” or “collapsing,” according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. It is stabilizing in many states.

I know that the ACA is far from perfect. It needs work to improve it. Why not start there?

A 17-percent approval rating on a plan that guts Medicare and Medicaid protection and tosses Americans off the rolls of the insured would suggest a different approach than the train wreck that awaits this GOP abomination.

That’s the view of a significant majority of Americans. Do these folks in Congress represent their views … or don’t they?

national news

Wishing for a return to full-fledged space travel

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It was 48 years ago. A giant rocket sat on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Fla.. Perched atop that beastly Saturn rocket was a space ship carrying three men.

They would make history a few days later on that Apollo 11 mission. But on July 16, 1969, they launched into the sky, took off into orbit, then fired those on-board rockets to propel them to the moon.

The late Neil Armstrong set foot first on the moon. A little while later, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin hopped off the ladder onto the sandy lunar soil. Meanwhile, their crewmate Michael Collins circled above, orbiting moon.

The world — the entire planet — held its breath as Armstrong proclaimed he was taking “one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.” We cheered, cried and prayed for their safe return.

Space travel hadn’t yet become “routine,” as if it ever should have been thought of in that light. The Apollo missions would put several more men on the moon. Then we would have Skylab and then the shuttle program.

They’re all gone now. All those missions are history. Yes, Americans are still flying into space, but they’re doing so aboard Russian rockets. Try to imagine how President Kennedy would feel about that!

I am old enough to remember the old days. I also am young enough at heart to wish for the day we can return yet again to full-fledged space travel — even though it’s never routine.

media news

Fox host makes ridiculous assertion … surprise!

Good grief. Just after I offered a word of praise about Fox News anchor Shepard Smith — extolling the virtue of his speaking the truth on the “unfair and unbalanced” network — one of his colleagues spews some idiotic tripe.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2017/07/this-guy-speaks-the-truth-at-fox/

Lisa Boothe is a co-host on the Fox show “The Five.” What did this person say? She called Hillary Rodham Clinton the “most soulless woman on the planet” and asserted she would “sell” her only child to become president.

Classy, yes? Actually, no!

Boothe’s idiocy drew a sharp rebuke from Hillary Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, who stood foursquare behind her mother. Chelsea responded via Twitter: “No, she wouldn’t. I’ve never doubted & always known I was the most important part of her life,” Chelsea Clinton said. “Now as a mom I’m even more grateful to my mom.”

Why won’t these talking heads ever learn to keep family out of political debates?

national news, political news, religious news

Evangelicals’ support of Trump: as perplexing as ever

An article that was published slightly more than a year ago remains relevant today.

It comes from Esquire magazine. The noted documentary filmmaker Ken Burns asks: What is it about Donald Trump that reminds evangelical voters of Jesus Christ?

Burns was troubled a year ago over why evangelical Christian voters glommed onto Trump’s candidacy. I remain puzzled in the extreme as to why they remain loyal to this guy a year later, and six months into his presidency.

Burns said, for example: “The Republican Party has been extraordinarily successful at getting many groups of people to vote against their self-interest. Evangelicals are voting for Donald Trump. What part of Donald Trump reminds you of Jesus Christ? Trump lusts after his own daughter on national radio, talks about women’s bodies and breasts in such a disparaging way, and mocks them. How is this in any way Christian? When you make the ‘other’ the enemy, how is that Christian?”

Check out the Esquire link.

Burns noted a year ago that Trump once lusted after his own daughter, Ivanka. He carried on highly publicized extramarital affairs on his first two wives. Of course, we have that infamous “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump is overheard boasting about how he grabbed women by their genitals.

He routinely denigrates women and there is zero evidence anywhere in his professional or personal history of any commitment to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

But he remains on evangelicals’ A-list. He’s their guy. Their “dream come true,” in the words of Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.

Someone has to explain it to me. I’m all eyes and ears.

political news, State news

Gov. Abbott seeks to nationalize governor’s race

There he goes again.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has launched his re-election bid by nationalizing a fundamentally internal contest. Texans need no reminder from the first-term governor that Nancy Pelosi or George Soros have little in common with rank-and-file voters here.

Abbott said in San Antonio: “Every far-left liberal from George Soros to Nancy Pelosi are trying to undo the Texas brand of liberty and prosperity,” Abbott said, referring to the Democratic mega donor and U.S. House minority leader, respectively. “I have news for those liberals: Texas values are not up for grabs.”

Read the Texas Tribune story here.

Fine, governor. I get that. Many of us in Texas get it right along with you.

The question, though, will be as it is with any public official seeking re-election: What are you going to do during the next four years in office and why should Texans cast their vote for you?

Truth be told, Abbott inherited a state economy that was in good shape four years ago. It continues to rock along, even with a dramatic reduction in the price of oil.

But I found it fascinating to hear about the progress made by the state during his first four years. The end of sanctuary cities? Business tax cuts? Abortion restrictions? Road construction?

Hmmm. Who made all that possible? I believe I’d heap the responsibility on the Legislature, which sent these bills to Abbott’s desk, which he then signed into law.

Well, I understand how pols take credit for others’ work. It’s part of the political process, I suppose.

Abbott is likely facing an easy ride toward re-election. I’m not expecting a major Republican Party primary contender … although I do believe House Speaker Joe Straus would provide a serious challenge for the governor — if he doesn’t run for lieutenant governor.

The Democrats? Pfftt! The state remains as Republican Red as any in the country.

But I’ll await Gov. Abbott’s myriad pledges for how he intends to govern for the next four years. Just keep Nancy Pelosi and George Soros out of it.

business news, media news, national news, political news

This guy speaks the truth … at Fox!

It’s become a cliché of sorts that “only Nixon could go to China.”

The communist-hating U.S. president was the man in 1972 to open the door to the People’s Republic of China and that remains one of President Nixon’s everlasting legacies.

So, then, it might be said that “only Shepard Smith at Fox can speak the truth” about Donald J. Trump’s “mind-boggling deception.”

I single out Smith because of the network he works for. Fox News Channel is known far and wide — and beyond — as being quite friendly to the president of the United States. Trump is a frequent guest on “Fox and Friends,” and Fox commentator Sean Hannity is quite fond of extolling the president’s virtues while overlooking some of the other, um, non-virtuous qualities of the man and the team with which he has surrounded himself.

Smith isn’t part of that cadre of Trump acolytes.

He took aim at the controversy swirling around Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with that Russian lawyer and the ever-changing reasons/excuses/dodges he keeps offering for why he accepted a meeting he thought would produce some dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

“If there’s nothing there, and that’s what they tell us, why all these lies?” Smith told fellow Fox anchor Chris Wallace. “The deception is mind-boggling and there are still people out there who think we’re making it up. And one day they are going to realize we are not.”

You all know that I don’t watch Fox News regularly. My own bias forces me to wrestle with the notion that the network that once called itself “fair and balanced” has been neither “fair” or “balanced” in its coverage of U.S. politics.

Read The Hill’s report here.

Every now and then, one of the on-air folks at Fox shows us that journalistic integrity presents itself in a media organization well-known for the policies that come from the top of its chain of command.

Shepard Smith, I suppose, has become an “enemy of the American people” because he dares offer us a view that doesn’t comport with the president’s way events should be reported.

Welcome to the club, Shep.

local news, State news

It’s kind of like returning to previous haunts

LAKE BOB SANDLIN STATE PARK, Texas — The author Thomas Wolfe once wrote that “you can’t go home again.”

That may be true, but you can return to places that remind you of where you used to live.

This East Texas state park has a curious way of reminding me of a place where my family and I spent more than a decade of our life together just straight south of here.

It’s hot here. And damn humid, too! This state park is near Mount Pleasant, about a two-hour drive east of Dallas. If you drive about four hours straight south, you end up in Beaumont, where my wife, sons and I moved in the spring of 1984.

We weren’t used to the sticky air that shrouds this part of the world when we got to the Golden Triangle. We grew to accept it every late spring and through the summer.

My sons went off to college in the early 1990s and my wife and I moved to Amarillo in early 1995. We moved away from the stifling humidity and into the wind of the Texas Panhandle.

I mentioned to my wife as we walked through the woods at Bob Sandlin State Park, “You know, I am looking at billions of leaves on all these trees and I don’t see a single one of them moving. Nothing is fluttering in anything approaching a breeze.”

We remained holed up in our RV. The air conditioner was running full blast. Our windows got wet with moisture collecting on the outside of them.

We’re likely going to need to get used to this kind of weather all over again. Our plan is to move from the Panhandle to a location in the vicinity of the Metroplex, where our granddaughter, Emma, awaits.

Until then, a lot more travel is on tap for us. A good bit of it will take us back toward this part of Texas, where we’ll be reminded of our prior life when constant perspiration became the norm.

I get that you can’t really “go home again.” We do plan to relearn how to live with what we used to know.

business news, International news

Trudeau offers advice: Knock off the protectionism, U.S.

Protectionist trade policies make good politics at certain times, but they tend to stand directly in the way of allied nations and friendly neighbors.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made a rare appearance before the U.S. National Governors Association meeting and offered a stern bit of advice: Fix what you think is wrong with the North American Free Trade Agreement instead of throwing it over.

Donald J. Trump has vowed to toss NAFTA into the crapper. He threatened to do it immediately after becoming president, then backed off.

Trudeau doesn’t think tossing out NAFTA is a good idea. I agree with him.

The United States about 4,000 miles of common border with Canada, our leading trading partner.

Trudeau said this, in part, to the governors, according to BBC News: President Donald Trump has made “America First” his mantra, shaping his policies on trade and immigration.

But Mr. Trudeau, who is a fierce advocate of free trade, told the governors protectionist policies “kill growth.”

“And that hurts the very workers these measures are nominally intended to protect. Once we travel down that road, it can quickly become a cycle of tit-for-tat, a race to the bottom, where all sides lose,” Mr. Trudeau said.

Is that so hard to understand? The U.S. president donned the so-called populist cape and campaigned on pledges to get rid of NAFTA, to scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to remove the United States from the Paris climate accord. He made good on the pledges regarding the latter two agreements.

NAFTA does have its critics. As with the Affordable Care Act — which Republicans want to scrap altogether — NAFTA can be repaired with improvements. Why not embrace the notion of free and fair trade with Canada and Mexico?

Prime Minister Trudeau has offered some sound counsel to U.S. governors. He wants to create what he called a “thinner border” between the two giant neighboring nations. Donald Trump is seeking to wall off the nation he governs from the rest of North America.

How is that going to benefit this great nation?

medical news, national news, political news

Trump tweets … but only in generalities

Donald J. Trump fired up his Twitter gun in Paris and declared he has “pen in hand” and will sign the U.S. Senate Republican health care bill when it reaches his desk.

OK. That’s it.

Others have commented on this, but I’ll weigh in, too. Have you noticed that the president never — not a single time — discusses the guts of the GOP plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act? He doesn’t ever discuss the Medicaid cuts, or the Congressional Budget Office assessment, or precisely how — in his view — the ACA is failing. He just says it is and then goes on to the next thing, whatever that may be.

The notion that the president operates in a detail-free zone on legislation is no surprise or any big scoop. I get that.

Read the bill, Mr. President

One might think, though, that the titular head of a major political party would at least have a working knowledge of his party’s legislative priorities. Repealing the ACA and replacing it with whatever the Republican majorities in Congress come up with seems to fall into the category of “major legislative priority.”

Donald Trump doesn’t bother to acquaint himself with the nuts and bolts. Nor does he exhibit a scintilla of interest in obtaining any particular knowledge of anything.

Have you noticed how often he inserts the words “I think … ” into his pronouncements? If he thinks it, then that’s all we need to know or hear from the president.

Senate Republican leaders are trying to amend the abomination they have presented to their members. They’re maintaining some taxes that the ACA contains to deal with opioid addiction. The replacement bill still reduces Medicaid allotments by about $800 billion over the next decade, leaving about 15 million American uninsured by 2026.

Does the president endorse those specific elements? If so, could he explain to Americans why he endorses it?

Probably not. That will require some study and analysis. Donald Trump is a big-picture kind of guy. He’s too busy “making America great again.”

Sigh …

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