national news, political news

Is all hell breaking loose in D.C.?

WASHINGTON — I had intended to post this blog as a comment about the political divisions that roil inside the building pictured here.

Those divisions seem to belie the calm and serenity we saw while strolling along Capitol Hill. We came up on the Capitol Building at sunset and just, oh, took it all in.

Then came the news this morning that five people were injured in a shooting at a park in Alexandria, Va. One of the victims is U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the Republican Party’s congressional whip, the No. 3-ranked member of the House of Representatives.

We have heard as well that Scalise’s injury is not life-threatening, which is good to hear.

In some manner or form, the picture here juxtaposed with the events this morning perhaps give even more credence to the notion that all hell appears to be breaking loose near the halls of power.

My goodness! This has to stop!

The shooting took place reportedly where Republican members of Congress were practicing for the annual baseball game that occurs between GOP members and their Democratic colleagues. It’s a good-time charity event. It is viewed as a bipartisan event that enables lawmakers to have some pure fun away from the rough and tumble of the political battles.

Now this event has been sullied by senseless violence.

I’m going to pray for the victims of this act. I believe I’ll also say a prayer or two for our great nation.

national news

Happy Trails, Part 25

The trail along this retirement journey isn’t entirely, um, happy.

I won’t throw up my hands, I won’t surrender, I won’t cease exploring new adventures across our vast continent. I’ll have to learn some patience as we continue to battle individual communities’ unique methods of controlling and directing traffic flow.

We recently found ourselves guided — mistakenly, I believe — onto an express lane of Interstate 95 between Washington, D.C., and our RV campsite in suburban Virginia. How in this world we got into that lane is a mystery to both of us.

Traffic was stalling terribly in the “regular lanes” of southbound traffic; meanwhile, we sailed along in the express lane with virtually no one else in our lanes.

We were able to exit at Woodbridge. I might get some form letter from the Virginia Department of Transportation. It might contain a traffic ticket for all I know.

I’m not sure how to handle a ticket. Do I pay the fine? Do I challenge it? I’m tempted to challenge a fine if it comes. I think it’s an easy case to win. I’ll await something to come in the mail.

We are learning that states have different methods of striping their highways. Some of them advise motorists in plenty of time about lane changes, or closure; others of them aren’t as careful.

My task now is to get ready for sudden changes in traffic flow.

It also is incumbent on me to stop whining about getting diverted by mistake along a route that takes us out of the way. Hey, we’re retired these days! Why worry if an unintended detour keeps us on the road a little longer?

environmental news, national news

Tillerson’s ‘loyalty’ has its limits on Paris accord

Donald John Trump’s version of loyalty seems to have gotten lost on the secretary of state.

To which I say to Rex Tillerson, you go, Mr. Secretary!

Tillerson told a U.S. Senate committee today that he respects the president’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change accord, but that he disagrees with him.

I disagree with Trump, too. That’s no surprise to those who read this blog. What does surprise me is that Tillerson, given his business background as CEO of ExxonMobil, would support the Paris accord.

It’s a pleasant surprise, to say the very least.

I also will give the president props as well for finding a secretary of state who would have the courage to challenge Trump’s infamous penchant for total loyalty among his senior administration officials.

I believe Tillerson qualifies as one of the president’s top hands.

Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he still supports the climate change accord hammered out and signed by more than 190 nations. Trump blathers about “lost American jobs” and regulations that force fossil fuel companies to reduce their payrolls. What he never discusses are the jobs created by alternative energy endeavors.

I don’t expect Tillerson’s testimony to persuade Trump to change his mind. It does give me hope that reasonable minds at least can have a voice in an administration that that seems to have too few of them.

national news, Uncategorized

Mueller’s job appears safe … for now

I am going to give Donald John Trump the benefit of the doubt on what’s being reported about special counsel Robert Mueller’s immediate future.

Mueller will continue his probe of the president’s campaign and its alleged contact with Russian government goons/hackers who sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has decided — as I understand it — that he won’t ask a deputy U.S. attorney general to fire Mueller.

Did sanity overcome the president? Has he been infected with the “sound judgment bug” required for those who occupy the highest office in America? Did someone tell him about the horrendous political consequences were he to engineer Mueller’s ouster?

Trump’s staff reportedly talked him out any cockamamie notion of firing Mueller. He’s already canned the FBI director, James Comey. The Justice Department picked Mueller to provide a semblance of integrity to an investigation that needs to be done thoroughly.

Mueller’s on the job

I continue to be utterly flabbergasted at the president’s inability to control the messages that pour out of the White House. What’s more, he cannot find capable, competent staff members to operate his White House communications department.

These reports get leaked out about the president considering a patently and profoundly stupid act … which would be firing the special counsel.

Democrats and Republicans all over Washington are highly complimentary of Mueller, his reputation, his record and his dedication to detail.

Let the man do his job, already!

business news, national news

‘Most of America’ first, eh Mr. President?

I need some time to digest this idea a bit more completely, but what I see initially gives me stomach pains.

Donald J. Trump has pitched a budget that takes away oil royalties the federal government shares with four Gulf Coast states that bear the bulk of the responsibility for responding to disasters related to the drilling of oil off their respective shores.

The result could cost the states of Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama billions of dollars in revenue.

Who gets the dough? The feds do!

Is this how the president plans to “put America first”?

This is another baffling proposal that has to pass congressional muster.

Here’s a thought for Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn — two Republicans who are among the president’s seemingly dwindling roster of congressional allies: Don’t stand still for a budget proposal that robs your state of valuable revenue.

According to CNBC: “The plan is part of the president’s effort to contain the growth of the U.S. federal deficit. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that ending the royalty-sharing program would save the federal government $3.6 billion over a decade.”

I’m a deficit hawk, too. I get the need to reduce the deficit — which the Obama administration had overseen during its eight years in office. Why, though, take money from states that also rely on this revenue stream to help them deal with pressure to fund valuable state programs?

My hope now is for Congress to step in and dispose of a presidential proposal that appears to punish four of our United States.

media news, national news

Why give Alex Jones a platform?

People such as Alex Jones give me heartburn.

I happen to be a First Amendment purist. I believe in the amendment’s guarantee of free speech and I do not want it watered down.

Then along comes people like Jones, the radio talk show blowhard who’s been thrust into the news yet again. Broadcast journalist Megyn Kelly has booked him on her NBC News show and snippets of her interview with Jones have enraged some survivors of one of the nation’s worst tragedies.

Jones has spoken infamously about how the 9/11 attacks against the United States were an “inside job” and then — and this goes way beyond anything resembling human decency — he has alleged that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut was staged; he says the children who were slain were “actors.”

Kelly is giving this guy’s moronic views a platform.

Should he be allowed to spout that trash? Should he be given air time on a major broadcast network? That pesky First Amendment says “yes.” Tenets of good judgment and basic humanity suggest that this guy shouldn’t be given a platform to spout the filth that pours out of his pie hole.

Kelly deserves the criticism she is getting from at least one of the Sandy Hook parents who lost a child in that hideous act of cruelty.

And that damn heartburn continues to churn in my gut.

national news

Where are all the tributes to Sen. Byrd?

We drove through a good bit of West Virginia and all along the way I kept looking for signs of a legendary U.S. senator’s penchant for pork-barrel legislation.

We saw barely a trace of it.

I refer to the late Robert Byrd, the king of pork barrel spending. You know, of course, that the term “pork barrel” defines money dumped into legislation that is meant to benefit a legislator’s district or state.

Byrd was the “best of the best” at funneling public money to his home state of West Virginia. I noted his pork-barrel proficiency in a previous blog post.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2010/06/robert-byrd-d-pork-barrel/

As we motored along Interstate I-64, I kept waiting to see evidence of this or that bridge or stretch of highway named after Sen. Byrd. I found a bridge with the Byrd name attached to it in Charleston — which also honors another famous native son, a guy named Gen. Chuck Yeager, the man of the “Right Stuff” and supersonic flight.

Oh, I’m sure there must be many myriad public buildings, parks, city streets and rural roads with Sen. Byrd’s name attached to them.

He wasn’t bashful about his lust for luring money to his home state. What the heck. Why should he care? His constituents kept sending back to Washington to do precisely what he did.

Term limits? I look at it this way: If West Virginians were dismayed at how Byrd represented them in Congress, they had the option of removing him from office. They call them “elections.”

national news

McCain showing his fickle side

John McCain once called Barack Obama a “feckless” foreign policy president.

He nagged the president continually over this and that foreign policy matter. Obama wasn’t tough enough; he wasn’t stern enough; he failed to deliver on his myriad threats against bad guys around the world.

Now, though, the Arizona Republican U.S. senator — and President Obama’s 2008 rival for the presidency — says the 44th president exhibited more international leadership than his successor, Donald John Trump.

Hey, what gives? President Obama’s “fecklessness” looks good now to the fickle senator.

Trump mistakes prove maddening

American “leadership” around the world has suffered under the Trump administration’s missteps, misstatements and mistakes, according to McCain.

I’ll concede a couple of points about McCain. One is that I didn’t support his presidential candidacy in 2008. Two is that he has served his country with rare honor and distinction, owing to his years as a Vietnam prisoner of war and the brutal treatment he suffered at the hands of his captors. Those years as a prisoner give him credibility that most other politicians cannot claim for themselves.

I believe he takes a stark view of American leadership and assesses it in bold strokes.

It might be now that McCain has come to appreciate — as many millions of other Americans — that the presidency requires a level of understanding and knowledge of the complex relationships this country has built with nations around the world.

Trump doesn’t get it. Sen. McCain has acknowledged as much, albeit begrudgingly. Is he being fickle? Maybe. I also believe he is correct.

entertainment news

Happy Trails, Part 24

Retirement has allowed us to become reacquainted with elements of our individual and collective upbringing.

That’s not as strange as it might sound.

We travel in a 28-foot fifth wheel. We hook up at RV campgrounds usually looking at least for water and electric hookups; if we get sewer connections, that’s all the better.

Television reception depends on a couple of variables: Do we have cable or do we rely on our antenna? Most of the time, it’s antenna use.

Here is where the past meets the present.

We extend our antenna, program our “auto channel tuner” setting. Bingo! We get a plethora of channels. Many of them feature old-time TV.

We get to watch some of the programs we grew up watching. These old-timer networks broadcast programs such as “The Lone Ranger,” “Lassie,” “My Three Sons,” “Have Gun Will Travel,” “Perry Mason,” well … you get the idea. Then we get the cheesy game shows with those whopping $500 payouts to the winners.

The most entertaining aspect of watching this television programming is its innocence. The Lone Ranger, for instance, knows how to solve every situation that he and Tonto encounter. I find myself feeling a bit sorry for Tonto, who is portrayed as a know-nothing who has to ask Kemo Sabe for advice on how to solve every single crisis they encounter.

There’s a certain irony, if you think about it, in watching this flashback television. The older we have become, more exposure we get to the experiences of our youth.

national news

Moment of truth approaching? Tapes or no tapes?

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to testify behind closed doors in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He might have plenty to tell his former Senate colleagues.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans finally are beginning to turn up the heat on the president of the United States regarding a reckless tweet he posted some time back about the potential existence of White House tape recordings.

Show ’em if you got ’em, Mr. President.

Donald Trump made some snarky reference to tape recordings after he fired FBI Director James Comey. It was that “Russia thing” that produced the dismissal. Comey and Trump reportedly had some conversations about Russia and the FBI”s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian government hackers who sought to influence the 2016 presidential election outcome.

Tapes, Mr. President?

There are so many “Big Questions,” it’s becoming difficult to keep track of them. One of them is this: Did the president record the conversations or is he bluffing about their existence?

Now comes the heat from the president’s side of the partisan divide. Republicans want him to clear the air.

Of course, the president hasn’t shown much proclivity to listen to anyone, let alone act on the torrent of advice he’s getting.

So, I suppose we should expect the mystery to deepen and the chaos to continue.

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