national news

Take a bow, Toya Graham

One of the many curious aspects of social media is that it produces stars literally in an instant.

Someone snaps a picture or shoots a video on a cell phone, posts it on Twitter or Facebook, and the subject of the image becomes a star.

The latest national social media star is a young mother of a teenager who she spotted doing something quite wrong.

Toya Graham saw her son throwing objects at Baltimore police officers and then proceeded to smack her son upside his head. Repeatedly. She chased him, scolding him with some pretty rough language.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mom-talks-about-smacking-son-around-during-baltimore-riot/ar-BBiNB11

She’s received lots of praise on social media from those who believe she should speak for a lot of angry parents.

I happen to be one of her admirers.

Toya Graham called herself a “no-tolerant mother.” She added, “Everybody that knows me knows I don’t play that.” She’s a single mother of six. She was captured on video reacting the way — I believe — most self-respecting parents would react if they saw their child committing a destructive act.

Graham’s son was taking part in a disturbance that erupted in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, a young African-American man who died in police custody of a severed spine. The cops have yet to explain how that happened. They’d better step up — and soon — to account for this terrible incident.

None of that, though, justifies the mayhem that exploded in Baltimore. I am struck by what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. might say to all of this. He would be horrified. As someone noted, also on social media, Dr. King “changed the world without ever lighting a fire.”

Today, though, a single mom stands tall as a symbol for parents who need to get angry — as she did — when she witnessed one of her children doing something shameful.

 

political news

Sanders to fight for Democratic left

Pundits all across the land have been talking about the Republican base and the core values it seeks for its party.

Meanwhile, the Democratic base has been relatively quiet … until now.

On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, is going to announce his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/report-sen-bernie-sanders-to-announce-2016-bid-thursday/ar-BBiN6mJ

Hillary Rodham Clinton will get her first real challenger in her campaign for the same nomination.

Sanders will run from the far left wing of his party, kind of like the way Ted Cruz is running from the far right wing of his Republican Party.

Wow! Think about this: What if Sanders and Cruz win their parties’ presidential nomination next year?

Sanders is a hard-core socialist. He favors wealth distribution, wage equality, marriage equality, universal health care and massive cuts in defense spending.

He thinks Hillary Clinton is too cozy with Wall Street and likely is going to hold her Senate vote in 2003 in favor of going to war with Iraq against her.

Does the maverick independent stand a chance at winning the Democratic nomination? You have to say “no.”

Then again …

International news, military news, Uncategorized

We 'lost' the war … 40 years ago

In a couple of days, many Americans are going to look back four decades at the end of a chapter that turned terribly tragic, not just for the United States, but also for an ally with whom we fought side by side for seemingly forever.

Saigon fell to North Vietnamese Army troops on April 30, 1975. They rolled into the capital city of South Vietnam, took down the defeated nation’s flag at the presidential palace and raised the flag of North Vietnam.

Twenty-five years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Bui Tin in Hanoi, the man who accepted the surrender of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. He was in the tank that had smashed through the gate at the presidential palace and accepted the surrender of South Vietnamese president Duong Van “Big” Minh.

I was among a group of journalists touring the country and Bui Tin was among the dignitaries we got to meet. He told us his memories of the end of the Vietnam War.

Bui Tin, of course, was on the winning side.

His memory is different from that of some of the journalists who questioned him that day. A handful of us had served in Vietnam during the war. But what a marvelous encounter it was to talk candidly with a key player in that long and tragic struggle.

I wrote a blog for Panhandle PBS, which tonight broadcast a special, “The Last Days in Vietnam.” It tells the story of the end of that war. It was inglorious for our side.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/blogs/public-view-john-kanelis/last-days-in-vietnam-recalls-true-heroism/

For our former enemy, well, it meant something quite different. The “American war” had ended. The enemy outlasted us, even though military historians have noted for decades that we actually prevailed on the battlefield. We inflicted far more casualties on them than they did on us. We scored military victory after military victory against the NVA and the Viet Cong.

Talk about losing the battles but winning the war.

They had the patience we didn’t have.

I ran across this quote, from North Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, who in December 1966 said this to New York Times reporter Harrison E. Salisbury:

“How long do you Americans want to fight? … One year? Two years? Three years? Five years? Ten years? Twenty years? We will be glad to accommodate you.”

Yes, they were glad.

It was being fought on their ground, in their homes … and on their terms.

And we haven’t gotten over it yet.

national news

Media get undeserved 'blame' in Baltimore

Blame the media for covering it.

That’s a line being tossed out by the president of the Baltimore City Council in response to the rioting that has erupted in the city in the wake of the Freddie Gray death and funeral.

Gray died of a severed spine while he was being arrested by police. Rioters exploded in a violence reaction to the death of another African-American man at the hands of police.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/04/28/anderson_cooper_baltimore_mayor_has_worrying_lack_of_control_yet_she_blames_the_media_for_filming_it.html

CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked a pertinent question: What are the media supposed to do when police cars are burned, when police officers are injured and when people’s property is destroyed by rioters?

The media are not to blame for the violence in Baltimore. The blame rests squarely — and exclusively — on the shoulders of the thugs who fomented the rioting and who have taken zero responsibility to behave as responsible citizens.

News, by definition, are those events that run counter to what’s considered normal. By my way of thinking, torching buildings and injuring innocent people in response to a man’s death qualifies as “news.”

The media must cover these events.

Do not blame media outlets for doing their job.

national news

Baltimore becomes new face of urban insanity

Now it’s Baltimore’s turn in infamy’s spotlight.

A young man, Freddie Gray, died in police custody after suffering a severed spine. He was African-American.

Two weeks later, while the young man was saying good bye to him at his funeral, Baltimore erupted.

Thugs tore into innocent bystanders. Police were assaulted, some of them were injured seriously. Property has been damaged and destroyed.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/baltimore-devolves-into-chaos-violence-looting/ar-BBiKXpR

This is how one responds to tragedy? This is how you seek to make political allies to whatever cause you seek to promote?

The nation is witnessing a shameful act of willful destruction.

The violence and destruction defies my understanding of what goes through people’s minds at times like this.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said this: “Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs who, in a very senseless way, are trying to tear down what so many have fought for, tearing down businesses, tearing down or destroying property. It’s idiotic to think that by destroying your city, you’re going to make life better for anybody.”

How, then, do you deal with idiocy?

political news

Huck needs to cool the rhetoric

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“We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.”

That was the Rev. Mike Huckabee in a conference call to conservative activists. The one-time Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor is going to announce soon his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination and this is going to be a theme of his second White House campaign.

Honestly, he needs to settle down.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/27/republican-candidates-evangelicals_n_7148310.html?ir=Politics&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

Huckabee and a host of other GOP candidates are roiling the party’s base by using scary rhetoric, declaring that there’s a phony war against Christians in the United States. Rick Santorum says it. So does Bobby Jindal. Same for Scott Walker. They all oppose same-sex marriage and suggest that this issue is pretext for the war against Christian belief in this country.

I once considered Huck to be a fairly reasonable man. He ran for president in 2008 and acquitted himself fairly well during much of the GOP primary. He’s gotten a bit overheated in recent years. His statement now about the threat of “criminalizing” Christianity goes beyond what’s reasonable discourse.

He knows that’s not going to happen. Ever.

In this supercharged political climate, it plays well among the party’s base, which seems to believe anything that its political leaders say out loud.

 

legal news

Conservatives show quick trigger fingers

You have to hand it to conservative political leaders, who demonstrate time and again how quick they are to seize an initiative and outflank their liberal foes.

Take the call by religious leaders for liberal U.S. Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse themselves from an upcoming hearing on same-sex marriage.

http://thehill.com/regulation/240163-religious-leaders-want-justices-restrained-from-ruling-on-same-sex-marriage

They contend that Kagan and Ginsburg have put their personal views on the subject above the U.S. Constitution and thus have surrendered their moral authority to decide on this issue.

Is there a more impractical demand than this?

It wouldn’t fly any more than some liberal political interest — say, the American Civil Liberties Union — demanding that conservative justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas recuse themselves because of their often-stated bias against same-sex marriage.

The court is going to hear a case, Obergefell v. Hodges, involving same-sex marriage bans in four states — Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan and Kentucky. The justices might rule that states cannot supersede the U.S. Constitution that guarantees citizens the right to equal protection under the law; or, they might rule that states have that authority.

It should be decided, quite naturally, by the full court comprising liberals, conservatives and swing justices, such as Anthony Kennedy and, possibly, Chief Justice John Roberts.

Still, the hair-trigger response by faith leaders demanding the recusal by liberal justices offers a lesson in how to make a quick-strike political demand.

They’ve honed the strategy almost to an art form.

 

International news

Bush needs refresher on his own blunders

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George W. Bush had followed his father’s doctrine upon leaving the presidency in January 2009.

Do not criticize the man in the office now. Be quiet and go about the business of doing other pertinent activities.

Then the 43rd president spoke to a group of Republican donors over the weekend and proceeded to rip into Barack Obama’s handling of crises in the Middle East.

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/27/the_swaggering_idiot_returns_george_w_bush_emerges_from_artistic_exile_to_rehab_his_disastrous_legacy/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

From what is known about President Bush’s remarks — they weren’t recorded visually or audibly — he apparently spoke without a hint of understanding about his own foreign policy blunders in the region and the mess he created and left for his successor.

Iraq? The war he started against Saddam Hussein because he was “certain” that the dictator possessed weapons of mass destruction? The former president made no mention, of course, of the fierce resistance our forces encountered in a country that his defense secretary and vice president said would greet us as “liberators.”

Instead, the ex-president chose to criticize the current president for seeking to negotiate a deal that rids Iran of its capability to develop a nuclear weapon. He talked about the chaos that has developed since the United States went to war against the Islamic State.

Think about this for a moment. The Islamic State has risen in Iraq because it wants to restore a Sunni government that U.S. forces evicted from power. Yes, ISIL is an evil organization, but the ex-president is showing no inclination for taking a shred of responsibility for what has developed because of what this country did on his watch in the White House.

Chaos? President Bush created enough chaos to go around when he launched the Iraq War in March 2003.

I much prefer the George W. Bush who once understood what his father still understands: He’s had his time in the hot seat, which now is occupied by someone who’s doing the best he can to protect the nation all presidents profess to love.

 

medical news, national news, political news, Uncategorized

Repeal 'Obamacare'? Are conservatives nuts?

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Congressional conservatives have rocks in their heads. They’ve gone ’round the bend. They need some smelling salts.

They’re angry with House Speaker John Boehner who they believe is stalling their effort to get a bill that repeals the Affordable Care Act to the desk of the president of the United States — who hails the ACA as his signature domestic legislative achievement.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/conservatives-obamacare-repeal-republicans-117364.html?hp=t1_r

Gosh, what do you suppose President Obama is going to do when he receives a bill repealing the ACA?

Sign it into law? Guess again.

Put it on ice? Hardly.

Veto it outright? Yes.

The ACA happens to be working. It’s gaining popularity among millions of rank-and-file Americans — particularly those who now can afford health insurance whereas before they couldn’t.

Their effort is doomed to fail. As Politico reports: “House Republicans have already voted more than 50 times to try to defund, alter or overturn the health care law that conservatives despise. The latest effort, if it happens, would no doubt fail, too — and there are some indications that GOP leaders are ready to move on. But getting a bill to President Barack Obama’s desk and forcing him to veto it would send a powerful symbolic message to the Republican base that House conservatives haven’t given up on scuttling the law.”

That’s the point, I guess: make the base happy.

They want the law repealed, no matter what. The rest of the country? Well, the tide appears to be pulling in the opposite direction.

local news

Teachers: an underappreciated profession

Public school teachers — especially the good ones — need our appreciation and an expression of thanks for all they do to help our children find their way into the world.

One of them today received a high honor, indeed, from her peers. She happens to teach English right here in Amarillo. Many of her students are refugees, whose families have fled repression and deprivation.

Take a bow, Shanna Peeples.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/texas-english-teacher-named-national-teacher-year-30609349

The Council of Chief State School Officers today named Peeples — who teaches at Palo Duro High School — its National Teacher of the Year. She was one of four finalists competing for the job. She’s the first Texan so honored since the late 1950s.

Shanna is a former colleague of mine who’s gone on to enrich many lives along the way. It’s an amazing story, when you consider that becoming an educator was not her first choice of professions. She’s done a lot of things in her life — and working as a journalist was one of them.

She gave up that career several years ago to pursue her real calling, which is to make a serious difference in young people’s lives.

Shanna was asked this morning why she loves teaching and she replied because teaching gives her the chance to “write the last chapter” in young people’s stories.

Public school teachers receive criticism all the time. Too little effort is made to offer high praise to the great work that many teachers do in our communities.

One of them stands as a symbol of educational excellence. She has brought great honor to her state and to her profession.

We’re all proud of Shanna Peeples.

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