national news

Here comes the ‘holiday’; let’s enjoy it

I cannot let this time of the year pass without commenting on a typically ridiculous rant offered by the former half-term Alaska governor, Sarah Palin.

The 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee just had to go off on the Obama family because it sent out “Happy Holiday” cards during this season. The card features a Christmas-like image of a fireplace and Bo, the Obamas’ dog sitting in front of the crackling fire.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/12/sarah-palin-fox-news-attack-white-house-holiday-card-design.html

Palin ventured onto her favorite — and friendliest — venue, the Fox News Channel to spew her nonsense. As the Los Angeles Times reported: Palin told Fox News that she found it “odd” that the card emphasizes the dog instead of traditions like “family, faith and freedom.” She also said that Americans are able to appreciate “American foundational values illustrated and displayed on Christmas cards and on a Christmas tree.”

Sigh …

C’mon, Sarah! Didn’t you see the poinsettias in the picture? They’re universal symbols of Christmas, aren’t they?

As someone who grew up in the Christian faith — I was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church and became a Presbyterian after I got married more than 45 years ago — I’ve never had a problem with someone wishing “holiday” greetings during this time of year.

And I have grown weary of those who keep getting their hackles raised when they see others do so.

As I keep noting on this blog, the Constitution declares that there shall be “no religious test” for anyone seeking public office. The Obama family, therefore, need not prove to anyone that they believe in the same God as most Americans.

But the “Happy Holidays” greeting is a simple reminder that the nation’s head of state recognizes that not every American celebrates Christmas. Yes, this remains a festive time of the year. So, the first family has chosen this year — as it has during their time in the White House — to celebrate the holiday in a more ecumenical manner.

Some first families have chosen to emphasize the religious aspect of the season. I honor that desire, too.

In this joyous season, though, I have to take mild umbrage — it’s not all that severe, given that it’s Christmas — at a politician yapping about the first family’s choice of message to send out during this holiday season.

Put another way: Zip it, Sarah!

***

This will conclude my snarkiness during the holiday season. I’ll be commenting on this blog throughout Christmas Eve and I might even add a comment or two after we see what Santa brought us during the night.

I’ll get back at it, though, after Christmas. The new year awaits and there will be so-o-o-o much fodder for us to ponder.

national news, political news

Once ‘noble’ pursuit getting more vengeful

The late Robert F. Kennedy used to proclaim that politics could be a “noble” pursuit if its practitioners kept their eye on the public service aspect of their craft.

It’s gotten a lot less noble in the years since RFK’s time in the public arena.

Politics has become a contact sport. A blood sport in the eyes of many. We are about to witness it become even bloodier as the next president of the United States takes his oath and begins the work of leading the country.

Donald J. Trump is headed for the roughest ride imaginable. More than half of those who voted in this year’s election voted for someone else. There are myriad questions surrounding the president-elect’s fitness for office, about his business dealings and about the quality of the team he is assembling.

It’s been said there might be an impeachment in Trump’s future if he doesn’t take care of some of those business dealings that could run him smack into the “emoluments clause” in the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits presidents from receiving income from foreign governments.

Is all this to be expected? Sure it is.

Is it unreasonable to ask these probing questions? Of course not!

Vengeance can be most troubling. Trump will take over from a president who’s himself felt the wrath of those who opposed him at every turn. There was talk of impeaching Barack H. Obama, too.

President Obama sought to do some bold things, such as get medical insurance for millions of Americans; he sought to rescue the failing economy early in his presidency with a costly stimulus package; he continued to pursue terrorists abroad using aggressive military action; he sought to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

All along the way, his foes sought to stymie him. There were a couple of shameful incidents, such as when a Republican member of Congress shouted “liar!” at Obama as he was delivering a speech to a joint congressional session; there also was the declaration from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell who said his “No. 1 priority” would be to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

The Democrats now are on the outside looking in at Republicans’ efforts to reshape the federal government.

It won’t be a cakewalk for the new guy any more than it was for the fellow he will succeed.

Memories are long in Washington, D.C., even if politicians who say spiteful things to and about each other can make up and join the same team — which happens all the time in the nation’s capital.

Trump’s team must know that political nobility is long gone. They’d better get ready to be roughed up.

As they say: Payback is a bitch.

International news, military news

More nukes for U.S.? Sure thing, Mr. President-elect

Let’s go back a few decades.

Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama had many differences of opinion on a whole range of issues.

They all agreed, though, on one key matter: They all wanted to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world.

Then along comes Donald J. Trump to announce to the world — via Twitter, of course — that he wants more nukes, not fewer of them.

The response from his pal, Russian President Vladimir, was equally disconcerting. Hey, no prob, said the Russian strongman.

http://thehill.com/policy/international/russia/311618-putin-trumps-nuke-talk-nothing-special

Putin takes no great concern over Trump’s assertion that we need to boost our nuclear arsenal, apparently disregarding the notion that we already can destroy the world with what we have.

Trump already has let it be known that a new nuclear arms race with the Russians is no big deal, that the United States can outlast ’em in Moscow.

Trump’s new press secretary, Sean Spicer, said the president-elect’s tweet was meant to warn the world against nuclear proliferation.

Oh, boy. Conducting foreign policy discussions via Twitter is truly for the birds.

International news, national news, political news

Bolton’s mustache becomes an issue? Wow, man!

It turns out that women aren’t the only human beings who are being measured according to Donald J. Trump’s physical appearance yardstick.

Am I allowed to laugh out loud at this one?

John Bolton reportedly was nixed as a secretary of state candidate because the president-elect doesn’t like Bolton’s distinctive white mustache.

Political philosophy? World view? Some nutty notions about wanting to go to war with Iran? Bolton’s cavalier attitude about the use of nuclear weapons?

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/311567-bolton-i-will-not-be-shaving-my-mustache

Pffttt! BFD. It’s the facial hair, dude.

I am shocked — shocked, I tell ya — to hear that Trump would be displeased at Bolton’s mustache.

According to the Washington Post: “Donald was not going to like that mustache,” an anonymous Trump associate told the Post about Bolton’s facial hair. “I can’t think of anyone that’s really close to Donald that has a beard that he likes.”

For his part, Bolton says he’s keeping the mustache. Good for him.

Good for the country, too, that Trump has decided that appearances matter as they relate to this guy Bolton.

Now, what about the buddy-buddy friendship that the fellow Trump did pick as secretary of state — Rex Tillerson — has with the Russian tyrant, Vladimir Putin?

national news, political news

Go with a brand new face, Democrats

A poll offers some clear instructions for Democrats interested in coming back from the shock of watching Donald J. Trump elected president of the United States.

Go with someone shiny and brand new to the national scene, Democrats.

No more Clintons should run for high office, namely the presidency.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/theres-a-clear-democratic-front-runner-for-2020/ar-BBxq70O?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

USA Today/Suffolk University has released a poll that says Democrats need someone new. It doesn’t specify an individual. Just go with someone new to the national scene.

If you think about it, Republicans might have had the right idea by going with someone “new” as their presidential nominee in 2016. Donald J. Trump wasn’t exactly new to the limelight. He’s been basking in it for 30-plus years.

He burst onto the political scene when he rode down that escalator at Trump Tower and then made his first presidential campaign promise: he’ll “build a wall” to keep those illegal immigrants from coming in.

Trump was a familiar entertainment face, but was new to politics.

He’s not so new to politics these days as he prepares to become president.

Democrats are facing a serious quandary as they ponder their choices for 2020 and, believe it, they are pondering them at this very moment.

One individual did fare pretty well in this poll of Democrats. It is Joe Biden, the current vice president who’ll be 78 years of age on Jan. 20, 2021 when we inaugurate someone after the 2020 election. Personally, I wanted Vice President Biden to run this time around. He didn’t go for it. I fear it’s too late for him next time.

Poll respondents apparently think so, too.

Democrats had better start beating the bushes for their next presidential nominee. The poll results suggest they need to find a fresh face.

I mean, if Hillary Rodham Clinton — a former U.S. first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state — can lose to someone as unqualified and unfit for the presidency as the guy who beat her, then it’s time to start with a clean slate.

Get busy, Democrats.

business news, national news, political news

What? The U.S. economy is stronger than we thought

There goes — maybe — another argument that Donald J. Trump used so effectively to be elected president of the United States.

He griped for months that the U.S. economy was growing at an anemic pace. We had to do better and, by golly, he was going to bring jobs back; he is going to return those jobs that had fled to China and Mexico.

Then the U.S. Commerce Department shoots a hole in that argument. It said today the U.S. economy grew at a fairly robust 3.5 percent annual growth rate in the third quarter of 2016.

Hmmm. Interesting, if you ask me.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has tripled in value during the Obama administration; joblessness has been cut in half; we’ve had 81 consecutive months of non-farm job growth; the annual federal budget deficit has been cut by two-thirds.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/22/news/economy/us-gdp-third-quarter-last-revision/index.html?iid=surge-stack-dom

OK, it won’t mean the entire year that’s about to pass into history has been pulled out of the economic ditch. The first half of 2016 produced pretty slim growth.

But the third quarter is demonstrating the distinct possibility that the economy is in better shape than Trump and his legions of doom had been saying.

Might the president-elect and his team been spouting just more campaign rhetoric?

business news, national news

Trump looks more like a RINO

True-blue Republicans are fond of calling so-called GOP imposters as RINOs … or Republicans in Name Only.

Guess what. It appears that the president-elect of the United States is one of those RINOs.

Check this out: Donald J. Trump is kicking around an idea that would result in a 5 percent tariff on all goods imported into the United States of America.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/12/22/donald-trumps-seriously-bad-idea-a-5-tax-or-tariff-on-all-imports/#4c9ff2357216

Forbes.com calls it a “seriously bad idea.” Forbes, after all, is considered to be a mainstream Republican financial organ, yes?

It doesn’t like the notion of applying what’s historically been called “protectionist economic policy.” This is the kind of policy espoused by union movement leaders who seek artificial ways to protect U.S. jobs. Union workers historically have sided with, oh, Democratic politicians.

Now we hear that the president-elect, who ran for the nation’s highest office as a Republican Party nominee, considering a tariff on imported goods.

As Forbes writes: “To put it mildly this is not a good idea. For two rather important reasons. The first being that it’s not obvious that this would not be legal. The United States has a number of trade treaties in place and many of them will state that no such universal tariff will be possible. The second is that the idea itself is just not a good one. Why do we want to tax Americans more for the things they wish to purchase?”

That’s not a very free-market philosophy.

The president-elect — an apparently hard-core RINO — is making my head spin.

local news

Go ahead, City Council, and pick a city manager

The question has been raised publicly in Amarillo: Should the current City Council select the next city manager or should it hold off until after the May 2017 municipal election?

The city’s daily newspaper, the Globe-News, editorialized today that the council needs to wait for the election and let the next council make the call. Its reason is that the council has dragged its feet for more than a year in finding a permanent successor to Jarrett Atkinson, who resigned and who since has been hired as city manager in Lubbock. So what’s the rush now?

http://amarillo.com/editorial/2016-12-21/editorial-new-council-should-select-city-manager

I’ll take issue with my former employer on this one.

The current council has the authority to act under the city charter. Why not, then, go ahead and make the call?

The council recently announced plans to cull the list of applicants down to 10 or so semi-finalists. From that shortened list, it will select a crop of finalists and then present them to the public. Then it will make the only direct hiring decision the charter allows the council to deliver.

Look at it this way: The council’s authority to make the decision doesn’t diminish just because an election is just six months away. The council’s power to select a city manager is as valid as, say, the power vested in the president of the United States to make an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Recall that Barack Obama recommended Merrick Garland to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put the brakes on that process by declaring the president is a “lame duck” and that the next president needs to make the appointment. McConnell played pure partisan politics by stonewalling this appointment process.

A City Council delay in naming a city manager could smell just as rank.

The city needs a permanent hand at the municipal till. Yes, the city has a competent interim manager in Bob Cowell, who well might be among the finalists selected by the council when it makes that critical decision.

If the city was to wait until after the May election, then it would just be another two years before the next election, in 2019. One might argue that a two-year window between elections is too brief as it is.

The current council well might face a stout challenge at the ballot box this spring. There are rumblings all over the city that Mayor Paul Harpole is going to step aside. What about the rest of them?

So, my own feeling is that the current council ought to proceed and do what it should have done months ago. It should pick a competent, strong and fair-minded chief city administrator who exhibits the potential to work well with whomever takes office after the next municipal election.

There is no compelling reason to wait. The city charter gives the current council the authority to act.

And it should.

national news, political news

Yes, Trump’s presidency will be legit, unless …

I want to get something off my chest about Donald J. Trump’s pending presidency.

He will be the duly elected, legitimate president of the United States of America. The popular vote totals don’t matter. It won’t matter one damn bit to me — really and truly — that he got 46.1 percent of the vote compared to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s  total of 48 percent.

He will be as legit as Bill Clinton’s presidency was in 1992, when he won with 43 percent of the popular vote in that three-way race against George H.W. Bush and H. Ross Perot. His presidency will be as legit as Richard Nixon’s was in 1968, when he won also with 43 percent in another three-way contest with Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace.

I get that many on the left will say otherwise, just as many on the right tried to dismiss President Clinton’s 1992 victory as a fluke, given the presence of Perot on the ballot. It wasn’t. Nor was Trump’s victory.

The popular vote is not the issue that threatens Trump’s presidential legitimacy. It’s the other stuff involving the Russian hackers and whether they actually had a tangible impact on the election result.

Congress needs to get to the root of what happened there. The CIA needs to reveal — to the extent that it can without compromising its own intelligence-gathering capability — what it knows about Russian involvement.

I hope for the sake of the country that we learn the Russians did not actually affect the outcome. I have a serious fear, though, that we might learn something sinister.

But let’s steer away from this vote-total argument.

Trump won where it counted, in accordance with how the U.S. Constitution sets forth the election of presidents.

entertainment news

Tragic and uplifting story comes to an end

Millions of Americans knew how this story would end.

A brilliant young woman competed on a popular TV game show while suffering from terminal cancer. She competed for nearly a week on the show, piling up winnings exceeding $100,000.

Then was dethroned as champion. Then she died on Dec. 5, a bit more than week before the taped episodes were aired. Her family, adhering to her wishes, donated her winnings to researching cures for the cancer that would take her life.

Her name was Cindy Stowell, a 41-year-old computer genius from Austin, Texas. She competed on “Jeopardy!” My wife and I were among the Americans who watched her compete and cheered for her every step of the way.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/%e2%80%98jeopardy%e2%80%99-host-alex-trebek-pays-tribute-to-contestant-who-died-of-cancer/ar-BBxr35v?li=BBnb7Kz

We were filled with terribly mixed emotions Wednesday afternoon while watching Cindy’s final appearance.  We wanted her to win. We also waited to see how the show’s host, Alex Trebek, would pay tribute to her after her run had concluded.

Trebek did so beautifully at the end of the show. I welled up listening him talk about Cindy’s “lifelong desire” to be a “Jeopardy!” contestant. Her story broke my heart and lifted my spirits, as I’m sure it did all those who followed her brief journey in the national limelight.

She was able to fulfill her dream and died a champion.

Godspeed, Cindy Stowell.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience