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So much for GOP minority outreach?

Republicans across the country had high hopes that Mitt Romney was their man, that they would take back the White House from those dreaded Democrats in the 2012 presidential election.

Then the minority vote came in overwhelmingly for the ticket led by President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. The GOP then vowed to institute its outreach to the minority community.

Oops! Then along comes a Nevada state assemblyman to say he’d vote to bring back slavery if his constituents told him they wanted it.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/nevada-republican-would-allow-slavery

End of outreach … maybe.

Assemblyman Jim Wheeler said he was being “facetious.” That means he didn’t actually mean it. He was joking. He meant it as, what, a put-on?

No one is laughing about it.

It is utterly astounding that someone would make such a statement, even if he or she is offering it as some kind of sick joke.

A Facebook friend shared with me a quote attributed to the great Irish statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke:

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

Assemblyman Wheeler has demonstrated that he possesses neither judgment nor an ability to serve.

He has delivered a terrible body blow to the Republican Party’s effort to re-brand itself.

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Why is the land line so hard to cut?

Someone needs to answer a question that is bugging me silly.

Why is it so hard to pull the plug on a telephone land line when I really and truly don’t need it?

My wife and I recently purchased two “smart phones,” you know, the kind that do almost everything for you. It’d probably sing us to sleep at night if we had the right “app.” We’re trying to learn how these gadgets work. We’re figuring them out a little at a time as we go through our lives. Our sons are fluent in cell phone speak. One of them, who works as a computer tech, promises to give us a complete tutorial next time we see him; that “next time” is coming up very soon.

I have programmed my phone number into the 2010 Toyota Prius we recently purchased and have gotten the hang of answering the thing when it rings while I’m at the wheel. It’s rather fun, actually, to talk and drive at the same time without fumbling with the damn device.

But this land line issue is driving me batty.

We’ve had the same phone number for the nearly 19 years we’ve lived in Amarillo. We acquired it when we moved into our one-bedroom apartment in early 1995. We built our house in late 1996 and transferred the number over to the new digs as we settled in — three days before Christmas. It’s published in the phone book. Anyone who wants to call us can look up the number in the book — if they still have one — and dial it on their phone, land line or cellular. We had the same phone number in Beaumont as well in the three dwellings we occupied during our 11 years on the Gulf Coast.

I hate admitting this, but I have developed some kind of emotional attachment to having the land line available. It’s inexplicable, yes? It’s also nonsensical. I get all that. However, I cannot yet pull the plug.

Is there something wrong with me?

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He’d vote for slavery if voters insisted

Nevada state Assemblyman Jim Wheeler has a funny way of speaking in jest.

He said he’d vote for a bill to bring back slavery if his constituents wanted him to do it.

http://www.rgj.com/viewint/article/20131028/NEWS19/131028025/Nevada-Assemblyman-Jim-Wheeler-stirs-firestorm-over-slavery-remark-watch-video-

When called on it, the freshman Republican lawmaker said he was joking. No one got the joke.

Then he offered one of those non-apology apologies. “If my comments were taken with offense by anyone, I sincerely apologize,” he said. If anyone took offense? Wow! I guess just about anyone who heard him say it took offense to them.

Some issues do not require constituents’ seal of approval. Slavery is one of them.

First of all, it is ridiculous on its face to believe that most constituents of this man’s state assembly district ever would condone just a hideous notion.

Second of all, Wheeler’s idiocy in even bringing the subject up betrays what must be some kind of dark instinct that has just now been discovered. Of course, he blamed the media for “having a good time with a clearly facetious statement I made at a town hall meeting earlier this year.”

Wheeler reportedly took the bait offered by someone who at that town hall meeting asked if he’d vote to restore slavery if voters demanded it of him. “Yeah, I would,” he said.

I’m waiting for someone to demonstrate the facetiousness of what the man said.

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Texas abortion law takes strange turn

Well, how about this: A federal judge nominated by a recent Republican president has overturned part of Texas’s controversial anti-abortion law.

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, picked for the federal bench in Austin by President George W. Bush in 2003, has tossed a serious wrench into the state’s effort to make abortion an illegal act in Texas.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/29/federal-court-rules-abortion-restriction-unconstit/

Yeakel has ruled that the portion of the law that requires abortion providers to be within 30 miles of hospital is unconstitutional. Here is how Texas Tribune reported the judge’s ruling: “Abortion providers would have been required to obtain hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the abortion facility and follow federal standards for the administration of abortion-inducing drugs. Yeakel ruled that the hospital privileges requirement was unconstitutional because it created an undue burden on women without serving a rational purpose. He also said drug-induced abortions could be performed following a common evidence-based regimen if the physician believed it was safer for the patient.”

The state has asked for a stay of the judge’s ruling. No word as I write this about whether the stay has been granted.

Here’s a case of a judge unencumbered by politics, ruling without threat of reprisal.

I do like the federal standard for judicial appointments. A lot of federal judges over many decades have disappointed their political sponsors by issuing rulings that run counter to the political leanings of the person who appoints them. Critics of these judges usually label them a “activist” or “out of the mainstream” or some other pejorative term.

My own view is that judges should be free to rule on the law as they interpret it without fearing for their political survival. State judges — such as those we elect in Texas — often are punished at the ballot box for delivering decisions that upset voters, regardless of the legal correctness of that decision.

Judge Yeakel has opened a big-time debate now in Texas over whether the anti-abortion law — which produced a legislative debate that propelled Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis onto the national stage with her wild filibuster — can pass constitutional muster.

Oh, the complexity of a democratic form of government.

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Ideological sameness can be so boring

I’ve vented already against a letter to the editor published in my local newspaper; the writer labeled a liberal columnist as a traitor for trying to push his lefty ideas on Texas Panhandle conservatives.

I’ll leave that topic alone in this post.

However, I do want to discuss another subject raised in the fellow’s note. It involves whether we should be subjected to differing points of view.

The gentleman doesn’t like reading liberals’ world view.

It reminds me somewhat of a letter I received from a Perryton resident, who wrote me to complain about all that liberal “crap” he was reading in the paper. He didn’t want any part of it. I answered the fellow in a column in which I extolled the virtues of diversity.

The world is big and varied and full of ideas that don’t comport with our own. Whether we lean left or right and tack right down the middle, we are exposed daily to points of view that are counter to our own set of values.

Does reading, hearing or watching someone extol those ideas change our mind? Are we so malleable that we cannot stand by our own beliefs without fear of being tempted beyond our ideological strength?

I think not.

That’s why it’s important for us to expose ourselves to others’ views. I do it all the time. Lord knows I hear from friends and acquaintances who have views that differ from my own. Many of them over the years have tried to persuade me to change my mind, to go over to their way of thinking. My answer usually goes something like this: “I’ll change my mind the moment you change yours.”

The U.S. Constitution spells out in its very first amendment that the press shall be free of government interference. That means the media are free to publish or broadcast points of view that cover a vast range of opinions. We should honor that. We should allow — if not encourage — our fellow Americans to speak their mind.

Narrow-mindedness is a nasty trait to possess.

What’s more, who among us wants to be fed the same slice of ideological baloney just because it fits our own view of the world?

We’d be bored to sleep. As I’ve always noted, reading thoughts that oppose your own gets your heart pumping. It is good for your health.

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Wrong to scrap ‘Obamacare’?

A great Native American philosopher — Tonto — once told Kemo Sabe that “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

The Lone Ranger’s sidekick was right. It also serves as a reminder of what’s happening today as congressional Republicans keep yammering for the end of the Affordable Care Act, citing the disastrous rollout as evidence of the law’s failure.

Dial back to 2006, therefore, and let’s remind ourselves what many of those Republicans were saying about another big-government unveiling, an amendment to Medicare benefits, that didn’t go so well. It came under the guidance of a Republican administration led by President George W. Bush.

Congressional Democrats were gleefully calling that rollout a disaster and were criticizing the Part D amendment to Medicare purely partisan grounds. That was the first wrong.

Republicans sought to remind their Democratic “friends” that they all needed patience and needed to tweak the changes. Let’s not toss it all out, they urged.

They tinkered with Medicare and today it’s working pretty well for the elderly Americans who rely on it.

The ACA has had trouble getting off the ground. Who’s doing the yammering now? Republicans — on what appears to be purely partisan grounds. There, folks, is the second wrong.

Democrats are now urging the same level of patience that the GOP sought seven years ago when President Bush sought to make changes to Medicare.

Republicans are having none of it. They want the ACA tossed aside. It’s no good. It doesn’t work.

Interesting, though, that they’ve made a judgment on a law that hasn’t been implemented fully.

Tonto’s advice to the Lone Ranger is as sound now as it was when he said it in the old days.

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Letter displays astonishing degree of ignorance

I am astounded at the level of ignorance and narrow-mindedness that exists in some people.

Yes, I know it’s not an uncommon trait. Ignorance has existed since the beginning of time. It becomes everyone’s business, though, when the media distribute people’s alleged “thoughts” for the rest of us to read.

I present to you one Eddie McMurray, an Amarillo resident and occasional contributor to the local newspaper in Amarillo. I’ve had a casual acquaintance with McMurray for many years, during my time as editorial page editor of the paper.

The newspaper published this letter today:

http://amarillo.com/opinion/letters-editor/2013-10-27/letter-columnist-should-stay-dc

Where do I start? McMurray disputes a column from Washington Post columnist Colbert King, whose column ran in the paper on Oct. 19. Seems that McMurray doesn’t much like Colbert’s liberal thinking. Then he hangs an exceedingly nasty label on him. “King is either a traitor or influenced by ignorance of this country,” McMurray writes. “I vote both.”

There, he did it. He hurled the traitor accusation at someone who simply has a different world view than his own.

This, I submit, is precisely what is wrong with the nature of what used to be called political debate in this country. Our fellow Americans on the far right fringe have taken to challenging the patriotism of those who disagree with them.

It is reprehensible on its face.

McMurray wonders why the paper is seeking “to find liberal media in an attempt to change thinking in the Panhandle. I would not trade the ground in my tomato garden for any liberal state in the country.”

Good for him. He is entitled to stand by what passes for his principles. But the media don’t seek to “change thinking” of a region. It’s not true of conservative media nestled in liberal bastions. It surely isn’t true of liberal media doing business in conservative enclaves.

What responsible media always should do is search for wide-ranging opinion to share with its readers. Let the readers be the judge. Readers can determine for themselves whether someone from the “other side” has a reasonable argument in defense of his or her position. Then we can argue the point intelligently — and with a civil tongue.

Calling someone a traitor merely because he or she is one of them stinkin’ liberals nullifies whatever point the name-caller is trying to make.

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What did POTUS know, and when?

Howard Baker was a young U.S. senator from Tennessee when he sat on a congressional committee back in 1973. He then posed a profound question of the witness sitting in front of him: What did the president know and when did he know it?

He was inquiring about President Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal, which would force the president to resign in disgrace the following year.

Sen. Baker’s inquiry is fitting today. What did President Obama know about the National Security Agency’s wiretap of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone — and when did he know it?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/28/us-germany-usa-spying-idUSBRE99Q09F20131028

The NSA tap doesn’t rise to the level of the Watergate scandal. It does, however, call into question the NSA’s involvement in trying to protect U.S. citizens against potential terror threats.

I’m still trying to fathom, however, why the NSA would tap into the phone calls of a trusted U.S. ally — Chancellor Merkel — and what the agency thought it would gain from this intrusion.

Merkel reportedly is fuming over it. Can anyone blame her? Can anyone blame our nation’s other allies who believe their own trust in the United States has been violated by these revelations.

Now comes a report that President Obama knew about the wiretap, which contradict directly his assertion that he knew nothing about it.

Which is it, Mr. President? What did you know and when did you know it?

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Back to Plan A* with the RV

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

Well, we had a Plan B worked out, but it changed back some version of Plan A … hence the asterisk next to the “A.”

You might recall my earlier post about all the recreational vehicle parks throughout the greater Dallas area being booked up. Seems that contractors working on pipeline construction in the area have called dibs on all the available sites. We were, shall we say, SOL.

We considered Plan B, which was to take our fifth wheel to the Davis Mountains region in the Trans-Pecos area of Texas. Then our daughter-in-law intervened on our behalf.

She petitioned their homeowners association in Allen to allow us to park our RV in front of their home. The association needed a picture of our rig. Our daughter-in-law sent it to them; the association board agreed. We got permission, for which we are eternally grateful.

As I’ve mentioned, we’re learning that retirement requires a certain degree of flexibility. We know that retired folks can come and go as they please. They don’t punch time clocks. Heck, many of them don’t even wear watches on their wrists.

Our ability to adapt, though, has been stretched to new extremes in the past few days. We sought in vain to find a suitable RV park near the kids in Allen. We punted and went for a visit in the West Texas wilderness, which sounded appealing when we made that decision.

Now this. We’re back to where we started as we planned our next excursion.

This one will be our longest yet in mileage terms: about 360 miles to our destination.

Plus, our little angel Emma Nicole awaits.

 

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Let us stumble now to next big issue

Immigration reform.

Does anyone remember that immigration reform used to be the most pressing issue facing Congress? Then the Syria crisis erupted. Then came the battle over funding the government and the debt crisis. Each set of crises eclipsed the earlier set.

OK, now we have settled — for the moment — the government shutdown and the debt ceiling matters and the Syria crisis appears to be settling at least temporarily, we can look back toward immigration reform as something that needs to be decided.

The U.S. Senate passed an immigration reform package by a substantial bipartisan margin. It then got stalled in the House of Representatives, which — given that Republicans control the place — isn’t a big surprise any longer. The GOP remains dedicated to the proposition that its mission is to deny Democrats any legislative victory. So the fight has continued.

Immigration reform concerns a lessening of the pressure to deport those who are here illegally. About 11 million — give or take a few thousand — residents are here without permission. Many of them have led constructive and productive lives here. It is true that many have not. I’m waiting for a study that reveals the comparative percentages of illegal residents and U.S. citizens who have run afoul of the law.

The Senate-passed immigration bill creates a “pathway to citizenship” for those who are here illegally. It gives them a chance to become citizens if they choose to do so. Those who don’t then can seek legal resident status.

Foes of this bill call it “amnesty” and say it forgives those who have broken U.S. laws. The more ardent foes of immigration reform want to round them up and send them back to their native lands. Remember when eventual 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney vowed to make life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they would “self-deport” themselves back to their homeland?

Well, the budget battles are done. President Obama says immigration reform needs to return to the front burner. The House needs to finish the job begun in the Senate.

Get that one done, ladies and gentlemen, before returning to the budget squabbles that are sure to re-erupt right after the first of the year.

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