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Natalie Maines asks: Where’s the outrage now?

chicks

Natalie Maines became the voice, the face and the symbol of something that had little to do with the music she and her bandmates, the Dixie Chicks, were making about a dozen years ago.

She had the audacity, the temerity, the unmitigated gall to grab a microphone during a concert in London and declare that she was “ashamed” that President George W. Bush was from Texas. Maines, a native of Lubbock, thought little of the Iraq War, so she decided to protest it.

For that she and the other Chicks were scorned. Country radio stations all around the nation banned them. How dare they speak ill of the president and condemn his war policy?

She poses an interesting question today, though.

She wonders: How is it that Donald J. Trump — the Republican presidential nominee — can all but order a hit on Hillary Rodham Clinton and still be revered by those who condemned her for speaking her mind?

Trump has said as well that Barack Obama “founded” the Islamic State and has continued to question whether Obama is constitutionally eligible to serve as president of the United States.

Does that bother those on the right?

Not in the least … apparently.

Why is that?

http://www.upworthy.com/natalie-maines-of-the-dixie-chicks-has-an-important-question-about-donald-trump?c=ufb1

Man, oh man. There’s so much about this current political climate that is very ugly.

local news, Sports news

Amarillo’s baseball quest has gotten complicated

baseball

I thought for an instant — that’s all it was — that I was hallucinating.

The headline on the front page of the Amarillo Globe-News said something about Lubbock making a bid to land a Double A baseball team: the San Antonio Missions.

They did pull plans to build a stadium, but then they might dangle some other incentives and seek to lure the team from the Alamo City to the Hub City.

Hold it!

Isn’t that the goal of the Amarillo City Council, too? Are we now competing head to head with our major municipal rival for the same prize?

I don’t know the particulars of the Lubbock initiative and I know only some of what Amarillo has up its governmental sleeve as it seeks to land the baseball franchise.

Here’s what I do fear, though. I fear that Amarillo’s recent spate of in-fighting, back-biting, name-calling and otherwise  uncivil behavior among members of its City Council might not play well in the Missions’ board room as it ponders where to relocate its baseball franchise.

It’s not as though San Antonio — the second-largest city in Texas — is going to lose anything. The plan there is to bring in a Triple A franchise to replace the Double A team that’s departing.

I’m not going to get into which city is the West Texas top dog. Lubbock has more residents than we do. It does have a Division I public university. Amarillo has its charms, too. We’ve got more scenic splendor nearby with Caprock Canyons and Palo Duro Canyon state parks. And, hey, we’ve got Cadillac Ranch, too!

We also have had our share of recent tumult at the center of our municipal government.

We’re going to start clearing the land to make room for that multipurpose event venue. The MPEV is slated to be home for a lot of activities, anchored — it is hoped — by a baseball franchise.

I won’t predict how this will turn out. The Lubbock entry into the baseball sweepstakes, though, does complicate matters.

Do you think it’s time Amarillo starts pulling together?

As a friend of mine noted in a message to me this morning, “Amarillo’s council members should now be incentivized to forget pettiness and unite to get the Missions to Amarillo, because the longer it drags out, the greater the chances other suitors will emerge.”

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Olympics provide welcome relief

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Michael Phelps is such a refreshing respite from the vitriol and trash talk of Drumpf  …

Right there, I believe, lies the key to why the Rio de Janeiro Olympics have me so damn spell-bound.

It comes from a friend of mine’s social media post. You go, Jim!

It’s not just Michael Phelps’s quest for more Olympic swimming history, as if he hasn’t made enough of it already while splashing through the water for the United States of America.

And it’s not just Donald J. Trump’s trash talk that’s infuriated me as I watch this miserable presidential campaign unfold … although I admit that the GOP nominee has played the major role in that element of disgust.

Watching these young people compete has been quite joyful for me.

I didn’t expect it.

I instead expected most of the TV coverage to center on the dirty water, the Zika-virus-bearing bugs flying around Rio, the corruption of the Brazilian government and the crime that plagues one of the world’s great cities.

We keep hearing these great stories about Phelps conquering demons, about our U.S. female gymnasts living up to their huge hype and winning all that gold, about friendly rivalries that span the globe.

OK, so not all of it has been warm and fuzzy.

We’ve had the smack-down between a U.S. swimmer and her Russian rival over doping and the controversy associated with the entire Russian team’s participation in the Games; we’ve heard some criticism of one of our gymnasts for failing to put her hand over heart while the National Anthem was played during the medal ceremony; there’s been this and that on the sidelines seeking to distract us from the athletic competition.

It’s all diversionary material.

The presidential campaign awaits us after Labor Day.

Donald Trump will keep talking trash. Hillary Rodham Clinton will respond with her own brand of smack. Our disgust will mount. I am not looking forward to the final days of this campaign, as I’m sure they will bring out the worst in the candidates — not to mention the worst in voters who will work themselves into an all-out lather over what the “other” party’s candidate is saying.

I’m going to focus my attention for the next week on Rio.

The rest of it will be waiting when the Olympic flame goes out.

national news, political news

GOP’s ‘unifier’ needs to start, um, unifying the party

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I believe I’ve heard Donald J. Trump say — many times — that he is the great unifier among Republicans.

The GOP presidential nominee is going to bring the party together to rally behind his candidacy as he seeks to trounce the Democrats’ Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Didn’t he say that?

What’s going on with that?

Fifty senior Republican foreign-policy experts have signed a letter saying that Trump is a danger to the country. They say he’s unstable, and oh yes, “unfit” to become president.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/us/politics/national-security-gop-donald-trump.html?_r=3&referer=

How does a unifying presidential candidate bring the party together when former GOP Cabinet members, advisers, senior counsels and various top guns among the GOP foreign-policy intelligentsia all say the candidate doesn’t know what he’s doing?

The letter is a scathing indictment of the nominee. It speaks quite directly and forcefully to his lack of understanding — of anything!

Trump’s answer? The signatories all got us into the trouble we’re in, he said. Think about that for a moment. The man who insists he can unify the party responds to the criticism by telling Republicans that these wise men and women are partly responsible for creating the dangers that Trump says threaten the United States.

From my perch, it looks as though the Republican Party’s rupture is widening, not closing.

national news, political news

Clinton and the foundation require serious answers

hillary

I’ve long believed the Clinton Global Initiative was founded to do good work around the world.

My faith in CGI’s intended mission, though, has been shaken with reports of favors being done for political allies of the former president and the current Democratic presidential nominee.

Hillary Clinton? You have some answering to do.

Some more of those pesky e-mails are surfacing to suggest that Hillary Clinton’s motives aren’t all that pure. She signed an ethics pledge when she became secretary of state in 2009. There are now suggestions that she has violated the spirit — if not the letter — of that pledge.

Is this a deal breaker? Does it suddenly swing yours truly into Republican nominee Donald Trump’s corner? Does the GOP now get my vote for president of the United States of America?

Not even close! Never!

It does, though, cause me serious heartburn.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/hillary-clinton-emails-state-foundation-226897

The e-mails suggest that CGI catered to donors to the foundation. What, though, does all this suggest were she to become president of the United States?

It’s been my understanding that Bill and Hillary Clinton well might disband the CGI or put it into some sort of blind trust if Hillary Clinton wins the election. Remember what President Carter did after he was elected in 1976? He put his peanut business into a blind trust, meaning that he couldn’t derive any income from it while he served as president.

Clinton pledged to stay away from the foundation for the time she served as secretary of state. It’s looking as though she didn’t make good on that promise.

As Politico reports: “Meredith McGehee, policy director for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said that the actual language of the pledge is ‘not surprisingly, very lawyerly … [and] there is an argument to be made that Clinton herself has not violated what was in the pledge.’

“’Whether she or her aides have violated the spirit of the pledge … yeah, of course they have,’ McGehee said. ‘The notion of continuing contact between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department — that was not supposed to happen.’”

We need answers, Mme. Secretary.

national news, political news

Trump is every bit the politician

Donald Trump speaks during the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee April 10, 2015. REUTERS/Harrison McClary - RTR4WVBQ

Donald J. Trump’s surrogates and fans keep repeating the same inaccurate mantra about the Republican presidential nominee.

One of them repeated it this morning to MSNBC anchor Kate Snow.

They say he “is not a politician.”

I beg to differ. Vehemently.

Here’s why.

Trump became a politician the moment a year ago when he announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. Was he a politician before that moment? Well, no. You know his story: real estate mogul, business owner, reality TV celebrity, beauty pageant operator … and some other stuff that has nothing to do with running a country.

But the dictionary defines politicians as those individuals who seek or hold political office.

There. That settles it for me.

Trump is a politician.

Now, will the Trumpkins stop repeating an untruth about their candidate?

Oh, wait …

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Rhetorical license? It’s worse than that

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Hollywood often is accused of taking too much “artistic license” while portraying historical events.

We all get that.

Can a politician, therefore, be accused of uttering statements with more than just a tad “rhetorical license”? Do they say things for effect? Well, sure they do.

But then you get Donald J. Trump saying things that are utterly astonishing in the extreme.

Such as when he said yesterday that President Barack H. Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton are the “founder” and “co-founder,” respectively, of the Islamic State.

I’ve just recently reassembled my noggin after it exploded when I heard that ridiculous assertion.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/11/politics/trump-obama-isis/index.html?sr=fbCNN081116/trump-obama-isis1042AMStoryLink&linkId=27549373

If the GOP nominee had been watching “the shows” to study up on foreign policy — which he has said he has done — he would have known what the rest of us know. It is that we are killing ISIS soldiers daily; we are targeting and killing ISIS leaders; we are in the midst of destroying the monstrous terrorist organization.

Gosh, why do you suppose the “founder” of ISIS would want to kill his very creation?

I understand fully that we can expect more of this from Trump. We’re going to hear some rhetorical flourishes as well from Clinton — and perhaps even from the president himself — as this campaign lurches toward Election Day on Nov. 8.

It’s just important to understand that just as filmmakers occasionally stretch the truth to make an artistic truth, politicians are known to much the same the thing.

Only in Trump’s case, his lying has dangerous consequences.

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Debate on anthem etiquette expands

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flag

Now that we’re discussing — at least for the moment — how one should stand while singing the National Anthem, allow me this observation.

It’s been brought to my attention that as of 2009, it’s OK for military veterans to deliver a salute while the anthem is being played.

This issue came to light after U.S. gymnast Gabby Douglas didn’t place her hand over her heart while the anthem was playing as she and her teammates accepted the Olympic gold medal in Rio.

Douglas apologized for offending those who were offended. She didn’t need to do so, in my view.

Then someone reminded me of a change in anthem etiquette that now allows vets to snap a salute while the song is played.

I guess my friend was telling me that because he knows I’m a veteran.

Well, that’s nice of him to do so.

I remember how to salute properly. I just don’t like doing it while standing in civilian attire.

Why? It looks pretentious to me.

Several months ago I watched a fellow stand and salute a television while the anthem was being played during a televised athletic event. I guess the gentleman thought he was making an appropriate statement about how much he loves our country by rendering a hand salute in a public area.

That’s all fine.

I love our country, too. I can’t help but wonder: Would I have to produce my Veterans Administration card to prove I’m eligible to salute?

national news, political news

Memo to GOP: Let your nominee finish his race

Campaign_2016_Trump-6e9c2.wdp

More and more Republicans are saying it: get rid of our presidential nominee.

Dump Trump. Ditch Donald.

The latest Republican to speak out is talk-show host — and former GOP congressman — Joe Scarborough. He says Donald J. Trump has disqualified himself as a presidential candidate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/08/09/the-gop-must-dump-trump/?utm_term=.e3ce0dbe3fe2

I believe I must remind Scarborough of the following: Republican Party primary voters had the opportunity all along the way to look to someone else when given the chance.

They chose to go with Donald Trump.

He won the GOP nomination fair and square. He scored a first-ballot win at the Cleveland convention.

Sure, Trump has made a hash of his campaign. His statements have boggled our minds. He is demonstrating time and time again his total unfitness for the job.

How, though, does the party ditch a nominee now?

My own sense is that the party ought to let the man finish what he’s begun. Let him complete the race. Let him continue to embarrass himself.

The party can recover. Political parties have ways to do it. The Republicans rebuilt their conservative coalition after the 1964 disaster when Barry Goldwater got trampled by Lyndon Johnson. Democrats did the same thing after getting battered by Richard Nixon’s landslide win over George McGovern in 1972.

It’s a bit late in the game for the Republican Party to change nominees now.

What’s more, as someone who has no intention of voting for Donald Trump — and who cannot stand the idea of his ever getting anywhere near the Oval Office — I plan to enjoy this supreme narcissist getting his noggin thumped.

national news, political news

Birtherism will live forever

obama

I thought I was done writing about birthers, those individuals who keep insisting that President Barack Obama was born in a country other than the United States of America.

Silly me.

A new poll is out. It says that more than 70 percent of Republicans believe the president was not born in the United States, that he was born in a foreign country, that he’s somehow not a legitimate president.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll-persistent-partisan-divide-over-birther-question-n627446?cid=sm_tw

This might be the last time I’ll ever write about it. Then again, it might not be.

Allow me to make a couple of points.

First, the president produced a long-firm birth certificate that declares he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in August 1961, two years after Hawaii became one of the 50 states. He showed it to all of us .

That doesn’t seem to satisfy Republicans who continue to insist that he’s a foreigner.

Second, we also had this discussion with former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who actually was born in another country. He was born in Canada — to an American mother and a Cuban father. Cruz, though, said he was a U.S. citizen by virtue of his mother’s citizenship.

Which brings me back to the point about Obama’s citizenship. His mother was a U.S. citizen, too; his father — who he barely knew — was Kenyan.

And that brings us to the final point.

If Barack H. Obama had been born on, oh, Mars to an American mother and a foreign-born father, he still would be eligible to run — and serve — as president of the United States.

But that partisan divide keeps this non-story alive and kicking.

The Constitution doesn’t stipulate precisely that a presidential candidate must be born within the nation’s borders. It says only that a “natural-born” citizen is eligible to run and serve.

In both instances, Sen. Cruz and President Obama are eligible to run for and serve as president.

However, in the matter involving the current president, he’s produced a U.S. birth certificate. It’s too bad, though, that most Republicans still seem to refuse to believe their lying eyes.

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