military news

Tragedy reveals tale of heroism

The word “hero” arguably is one of the most abused words in the English language. We hang that description on athletes and actors.

Word has come out about the truest form of heroism. It came in the actions of U.S. Navy Fire Controlman First Class Leo Rehm Jr., who saved the lives of 20 of his shipmates before drowning in a tragic collision in the Sea of Japan.

Rehm was one of seven sailors who died when their ship, the destroyer USS Fitzgerald, rammed a merchant ship near the Japanese coast.

The Fitzgerald was struck below the water line. It took on water rapidly. Rehm managed to get 20 of his mates out of danger, and then went back down — only to have the hatch closed behind him as the crew sought to prevent the ship from sinking.

That’s when Rehm died along with the six other sailors.

Rehm was slated to retire soon from the Navy. He would return to his home state of Ohio.

This information is heartbreaking in the extreme.

The Daily Beast wrote extensively about Rehm and his actions aboard the stricken warship. Read the full piece at The Daily Beast.

Heroes are among us. They serve in many capacities. They are first responders. They are Good Samaritans who run to aid others in need. They wear our nation’s military uniforms.

They are men like Leo Rehm Jr.

political news

Divine intervention in Georgia?

We’re going to know soon who will win the special election in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District.

Democrat Jon Ossoff reportedly won a significant majority of the ballots that were cast early. Republican Karen Handel is hoping for a big turnout today to win the seat once occupied by Tom Price, who’s now secretary of health and human services.

Then the rain came. Lots of rain. I watched video of the torrent. It looked, dare I say it, downright biblical in the volume. Flooding occurred. Cars were stranded.

If the turnout is depressed today because of the rain that inundated suburban Atlanta, are to presume something special is occurring?

Might someone out there suggest out loud that God wanted Ossoff to win this seat?

Just askin’, man.

medical news

Americans are numb to congressional hypocrisy

It’s no surprise to anyone that hypocrisy exists in the halls of federal government power.

What I think is a surprise is how we are now so numb to it, that it doesn’t bother us.

U.S. Senate Republicans are in the process of doing precisely what they criticized their Democratic colleagues of doing just eight years ago. They are meeting in secret to cobble together a health care overhaul they say will replace the Affordable Care Act. In 2009, Republicans were frothing at the mouth because of what they said was occurring when Democrats crafted the ACA.

Video recordings of Republican Senate and House leaders bear out their anger then. Eight years later, well, here we go again.

The weirdness of it, though, shows itself in the apparent tolerance among average Americans at what’s going on.

A newly elected president, Barack H. Obama, sought Republican help in crafting the ACA. He didn’t get it. They stiffed him. The ACA process did include public hearings and testimony from those who favored and opposed it.

Another president new to his office, Donald Trump, hasn’t extended his hand to Democrats. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are plowing ahead with an ACA replacement with no input from Democrats, no public hearings, no testimony.

Same song, different verse? Yes. The major difference appears to rest in the tacit acceptance that hypocrisy is now the norm in Washington, D.C.

I’ll go on record here to say that not all Americans accept this as business as usual. I believe it stinks to high heaven!

International news

When does the clock start on ISIS destruction?

Is it fair to wonder if the time is approaching to start holding Donald Trump accountable for his boasts about getting rid of the Islamic State?

The president told us during the 2016 campaign that he knows “more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me.” He vowed to destroy the hideous terrorist organization. He has declared the end of an era in which the United States is “losing” in the fight against its worldwide enemies.

So I’m wondering when we might start some sort of countdown clock. When does the president become fully responsible for any failure to make good on the bold boasts he made while seeking the office he now occupies?

If we are not going to formulate a countdown clock, then it well might be time to start pressing the commander in chief about whether he intends to make good on his campaign promise.

I was struck during the campaign by the ease with which these boasts poured forth. He made it sound as if all he had to do to rid the world of the Islamic State was to bomb the terrorists into oblivion. Didn’t he once say he’d “bomb the s***” out of them? Hey, we’ve got the ordnance. Let’s use it, he said.

They’re still out there, Mr. President. ISIS is still fomenting terror. It’s still taking responsibility for terrorist activities. It’s still causing American service personnel considerable grief.

It’s time to get busy, Mr. President.

media news

No more ‘Fair and Balanced’

Fox News Channel is dropping its long-standing mantra of being the “fair and balanced” news network.

I don’t quite know whether to cheer loudly or to sigh out of exasperation.

Fox is going to adopt a new slogan eventually, according to reports. For now it’s dropping the “fair and balanced” label, which was the creation of ousted Fox president Roger Ailes, who lost his job in 2016 after being accused of sexual harassment.

I’ve long believed the network is neither “fair” or “balanced” in its presentation of the news. I also have long acknowledged the impressive audience it has created out here in TV Viewer Land with its decidedly conservative slant.

Go to any public location in the Texas Panhandle where you’ll see TV sets — doctor’s office, dentist’s office, restaurants, banks or other financial institutions — and you see Fox News anchors giving you their version of the news. That is the power of the network that Ailes founded as an antidote to what he believed was a liberal tilt to the presentation of news.

Fox has done a number of things well. For instance, it spiced up its news programming with a bit of pizzazz, bringing other cable news outlets along to do the same for their presentation.

Fair and balanced? It never was any of that. At least not to my eyes and ears.

national news

Still cannot connect two words directly to each other

I am in the midst of a deepening dilemma.

Donald J. Trump has been president of the United States for 150-plus days and I still cannot connect the words “President” and “Trump” consecutively when I refer to this individual.

It troubles me a little bit. A part of me wants to do it. A bigger part of me refuses to allow it.

I’ve written already that I accept that Trump won the 2016 presidential election. He pulled in the requisite number of Electoral College votes to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton, who won just a shade less than 3 million more popular votes than the guy who beat her.

The electoral disparity isn’t what keeps me from total recognition of Trump as president. Heck, if that had been the driver, then I wouldn’t have referred to George W. Bush as “President Bush” during his two terms in the White House. The difference is that President Bush stepped into the role to which he was elected. The 9/11 attacks barely nine months into his presidency defined him and he rose to the challenge.

Trump is different. Trump continues to demonstrate — through all sorts of actions and utterances — that he remains unfit for the office. His Twitter tirades provide more than ample evidence of his unfitness.

I’ve been scolded by critics of this blog for declining to attach the president’s title directly to his name. They’re entitled to their view. I am entitled to mine.

With that, I’ll continue to resist giving the president his full measure of respect until he can demonstrate — to my satisfaction — that he has earned it.

International news, national news, political news

Where is the outrage?

Back in 1996, when he was running for president of the United States, Republican nominee Bob Dole shouted at campaign rallies “Where’s the outrage!” over alleged indiscretions about President Clinton.

He would go on to lose the election bigly, but the question persists to this day.

Where is the outrage — from the current president of the United States — over allegations that Russian government officials sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election?

Donald John Trump has said nary a disparaging word about Russia’s efforts to cast Hillary Rodham Clinton in a negative light and whether those efforts played a role in the election outcome.

Oh, no. The president has instead lashed out at special counsel Robert Mueller, calling his investigation the “biggest political witch hunt” in American political history. He has ripped into what he calls “fake news” media outlets. He has dismissed openly the analysis of several U.S. intelligence agencies’ view that, yes, the Russians did hack into our electoral system.

Rather than expressing anger, fear and outrage that the Russians meddled in our electoral system, the president instead has questioned the need to determine the truth and the motives of those who are seeking to find it.

He’s hired a team of lawyers to represent him, which is a tacit acknowledgment that he is under investigation by Mueller over his campaign’s possible role in that election-meddling. Then one of them goes on television over the weekend and says — in the same interview — that Trump is being investigated by Mueller and that he is not being investigated.

All the while, the president remains stone-cold silent about Russian hanky-panky.

Where is the outrage, Mr. President?

International news

Young man dies; how do we get to the truth?

Otto Warmbier went to North Korea 17 months ago and was taken captive.

The North Koreans released the young student just the other day. Warmbier, though, came home in a coma. He was non-responsive. We have no clue how he became comatose.

Then he died. It’s a tragedy of enormous proportions for the young man’s family.

Warmbier’s death also should present the rest of his countrymen and women with a terrible quandary. Just how does the United States respond to this? How do U.S. spooks get to the truth in a nation infamous for its secrecy, its cultish leadership and the kooks who call the shots?

Otto Warmbier’s death requires some answers. How we get those answers from a hyper-secretive government is going to bedevil U.S. intelligence officials for well past the immediate future.

Donald J. Trump calls the North Koreans “brutal.” No kidding, Mr. President.

The doctors who examined Warmbier after he returned home to Ohio said he suffered from significant brain damage. How in the world did that damage occur?

medical news, national news

GOP changes tune on health care bill accountability

I must have dreamt it in 2009.

We had a new president of the United States, Barack Obama. He wanted to enact a health care reform bill that would help provide “affordable health insurance” for millions of Americans. Obama and congressional Democrats couldn’t get any help from Republicans.

So they went alone. Republicans howled like horny hounds. They condemned Democrats for the way they pushed the Affordable Care Act to a vote. It passed. The president signed it into law.

Republicans haven’t stopped yowling ever since.

So, what’s their answer? Senate Republicans now are locking Senate Democrats out of negotiations for their so-called replacement of the ACA. They aren’t going to release any details of what they hope will replace the ACA until it comes to a vote in the Senate.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer challenged Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to produce the details of the bill to give every senator ample time to debate it. Ten hours is what they’re getting to talk about legislation affecting one-sixth of the nation’s economy. Ten hours!

McConnell insists that’s enough time. Umm, no, Mr. Leader, it’s nearly enough time.

What do these GOP senators hope to do here? I believe they are seeking to foist a bill onto Americans in an even more egregious manner that Democrats sought to do at the beginning of Barack Obama’s term as president.

The Affordable Care Act is not the “failure” Republicans have described it as being. The Congressional Budget Office has “scored” the GOP alternative to the ACA and said 23 million Americans will lose health insurance if it becomes law.

The House of Representatives approved an ACA replacement with zero Democratic votes; it now rests in the Senate.

Transparency? Accountability? We can have neither of those things when the lawmakers in charge cobble a massive bill together in private, talking only to those of like minds.

That is not how you legislate.

local news, Sports news

More downtown construction at hand?

Amarillo’s brand new City Council is going to make an announcement Wednesday.

I am waiting with bated breath.

The council members might have some big news to share regarding the future of the city’s effort to remake, reshape, revive and re-create its downtown business/entertainment district.

That long-awaited multipurpose event venue might be coming closer to reality.

The city’s Local Government Corporation has been negotiating with San Antonio business officials about how to relocate that city’s Double A baseball franchise to Amarillo. The LGC has made it clear that it wouldn’t proceed with MPEV construction until it strikes a deal with some franchise to occupy the venue.

I am acutely aware that a number of soreheads are going to gripe about it. They complain about the escalating cost of the ballpark. Amarillo voters approved a non-binding referendum in November 2015; the MPEV cost was listed at $32 million on the ballot measure. The price tag has escalated to around $45 million.

My own hope is that the price of the ballpark doesn’t go much greater than its current level.

The council, though, has taken great strides already in the redevelopment of the downtown district. That five-star hotel is nearing completion; we’ve seen that parking garage go up.

Amarillo doesn’t have any kind of organized baseball activity occurring this spring and summer, which I am sure upsets the city’s baseball fan base. The MPEV, though, would play host to a number of other activities, which would jazz up the nightlife in the city’s long-slumbering central district.

My hopes have gone up, slumped, gone up again and then receded. As of this moment, I am once again cautiously optimistic we are going to get some good news.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience