Positive vs. negative in MPEV debate

amarillo MPEV

Amarillo’s campaign on the multipurpose event venue is heading for the home stretch. Early voting ends Friday.

A week from today, the polls open and those who haven’t voted early will get a chance to vote on whether to build an MPEV that includes a ballpark, a place where a minor league baseball team can play a little ball for about 50 or 60 dates annually.

Have you heard about an alternative to the ballpark if voters nix the notion? Me neither.

Which brings to the point today: The Against Crowd hasn’t delivered an alternative. It has, as near as I can tell, relied on a purely negative message.

That’s expected. An “anti-anything” campaign by definition must be negative. You don’t like something? Say “no.”

On the other side of the divide is the pro-MPEV group. The leading advocates belong to something called Vote FOR Amarillo. The very name implies a positive message.

And that message is?

Well, as its leading spokesman, retired Amarillo College President Paul Matney, has stressed: The MPEV will put Amarillo on baseball’s “radar” by providing a first-rate sports venue; it will create several dozen permanent jobs and hundreds of temporary construction jobs; the bonds to pay for the $32 million construction will be retired using hotel/motel tax revenue; it will become an essential element in downtown Amarillo’s rebirth; and that rebirth will spur further economic expansion throughout the city; the MPEV could play host to a variety of activities throughout the year that have nothing to do with baseball.

That’s a positive message, yes?

Of course it is.

Those who oppose the MPEV say the Civic Center needs renovation first. How do we pay for that? With, um, public money. They contend the city shouldn’t acquire debt to build an MPEV, but don’t seem to mind acquiring such debt on the Civic Center, with a cost that will far exceed the price tag attached to the MPEV.

They keep bringing up things such as secrecy, nefarious motives, the failed master developer (who was nowhere in sight when the MPEV idea was first floated around 2006).

If only we could hear some options from those who oppose the MPEV — for whatever reason.

If there are alternatives on some hidden table, then let’s not talk among yourselves. Share them with the rest of us.

I’m planning on going with the positive message.

 

Faith should be off limits on the campaign trail

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I keep coming back to a simple phrase in the U.S. Constitution.

Article VI says there will be “no religious test” for anyone seeking public office.

Isn’t that clear? As in crystal clear?

Why, then, is Donald Trump injecting faith in the Republican Party’s presidential primary campaign by questioning whether one of his opponents, Ben Carson, worships outside the mainstream?

Trump proclaimed the other day he is a Presbyterian. “I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about.”

Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist.

How does this guy get away with saying these things about his political adversaries?

A candidate’s faith is supposed to be off the table. The Constitution — the document that politicians, Democrat and Republican and alike say they revere — lays it out there in stark terms. There must be “no religious test.”

Trump, though, flouts his professed respect for the Constitution while questioning whether another candidate’s faith is mainstream enough to suit the voters both men are courting as they fight for their party’s presidential nomination.

What’s more … the guy is getting away with it!

God help us …

 

We need more ‘quiet places’

Cell-Phone-Use-Sign-NHE-17873_300

Amtrak has a “quiet car”? Seriously?

I learned that bit of information this week when I heard about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie getting booted from the train’s quiet car after he began blabbing loudly on his cell phone.

He was en route from Washington to New Jersey after appearing on a Sunday morning news talk show to discuss his Republican presidential candidacy.

The governor whipped out his phone and began talking — apparently quite loudly — on his phone where such activity is prohibited.

The train operator asked him to leave the quiet car. He did. No problem.

I give Gov. Christie kudos for being compliant and for not raising a further ruckus.

But now comes the question: Why not have more of those quiet places?

Have you been annoyed, say, in the grocery store line? How about waiting at an airport terminal gate sitting next to some loudmouth businessman/woman talking about the biggest business deal ever struck?

I could go on. There are many place where I’d like to see cell phone use restricted.

Frankly, I’m proud of Amtrak for establishing the quiet car. Christie’s spokesperson acknowledged the governor’s mistake, but said he had talked inappropriately in Amtrak’s “notorious” quiet car. Notorious? Surely, that’s meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference.

Yes, I pack my cell phone with me everywhere. I feel oddly lost without it. (Man, it takes a lot for me to admit that.) I do cherish those moments when I do not have to listen to others gabbing, blabbing and yammering on their phones.

I think Amtrak is onto something. Maybe we can start a “quiet zone craze.”

 

But … all I wanted was a burger

burgers

Technology is driving me nuts.

Batty and bonkers, too.

Cell phones are doing more and more. Everyone is in touch 24/7 with everyone else on the planet. It all makes my head spin.

Then came a moment this morning when all I wanted was a fast-food hamburger at a well-known chain of burger joints. I busted out laughing.

I had finished a fascinating session this morning talking to high school juniors about whether they wanted to pursue a career in journalism. The event occurred at the Discovery Center in Amarillo and — just as in previous years — the kids were attentive, articulate and engaged in what my fellow panelists and I were telling them.

I was driving down Soncy Road to one of my part-time jobs. I peeled off the street and stopped at McDonald’s.

I needed a quick bite to eat before I went to work. I walked in. A nice lady greeted me with a “Good morning, sweetheart,” and then pointed me to this enormous electronic touch-screen board where I could order my meal.

Did I want to build my own burger? Did I want small or large fries? Did I want a drink to go with it? Was I going to pay with cash or with a credit card?

I touched the screen to answer all those questions.

My head was spinning. I just wanted to walk to the counter, order my lunch, pay the person and wolf it down before heading off to work.

The high-tech wizardry made me recall when I worked at McDonald’s back in the day. That would be in the mid-1960s, an era before minimum wage; I earned one whole dollar an hour.

Burgers cost 19 cents; cheeseburger cost 29 cents; milk shakes cost a quarter; a fish sandwich cost 29 cents, too;  big burger was the double-meat burger … and I forget how much it cost (might have been 49 cents). We had a short array of soft drinks — Coke, root beer, orange drink — and coffee. That was it.

These days you have to learn a whole new skill set … just to order a burger!

Hey, I like technology as much as the next guy — most of the time.

I just don’t expect to get headaches while ordering a hamburger.

 

Blair apologizes for Iraq War … more or less

<> on April 7, 2015 in Sedgefield, England.

Tony Blair had me going there for a little while.

I thought the former British prime minister actually was going to say he was sorry for joining the parade into war with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Then he backed away.

Blair tempered his apology by saying it was not a mistake to get rid of Saddam, but then said he regrets following the faulty intelligence that persuaded his country and the United States that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

You know how it turned out. We invaded Iraq, tossed Saddam out, captured him, tried him, hanged him … all the while scouring Iraq for those WMD.

They weren’t there.

Am I glad Saddam Hussein is gone? Of course I am! The price we paid in thousands of American lives lost, however, was too great.

Blair’s almost-apology, though, does go a lot farther than President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ever have done — or likely ever will do.

If only the U.S. brass would acknowledge the mistake. If only it acknowledge the war’s impact on the enabling of the Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that is waging war against the Shia government in Iraq.

That won’t happen. Instead, we hear from Cheney (mostly) about how they were right and how others, namely the Obama administration, have squandered all the progress we made in Iraq.

Well, the Iraq War was a war of choice.

Saddam Hussein was being contained within Iraq. He posed barely a fraction of the threat that he was said to pose.

And, oh yes. Let’s not forget that Saddam Hussein and his Baath party had nothing — zero — to do with the 9/11 attacks, which was another pretext that the Bush administration used to justify our invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

I don’t expect an apology from the Bush administration. I was hoping one might be forthcoming from our allies across The Pond.

It came. Sort of …

 

Will local election serve as bellwether?

Old fashionet American Constitution with USA  Flag.

This won’t take long.

The upcoming Amarillo election on the multipurpose event venue well could determine whether the wackiness that’s driving the national political debate has found its way to the Caprock.

The pro-MPEV forces in Amarillo are well-funded and well-organized.

The anti-MPEV forces are neither of the two.

The pro-MPEV side is seen as the “establishment.”

The anti-MPEV folks are seen as “anti-establishment.”

Nationally, the anti-establishment side is winning the argument, particularly as it relates to who should become the Republicans’ presidential nominee.

Locally, well … the jury is still out.

I’m pulling for the establishment — in both instances.

Memo to Marco: Quit your day job

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., presides over Senate Foreign Relations Committee, subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, And Global Women's Issues hearing on overview of U.S. policy towards Haiti prior to the elections, Wednesday, July 15, 2015, on Capitol Hill in Washington.   (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Marco Rubio doesn’t like his day job.

Too bad. He ought to quit and concentrate on the other job he is seeking.

He’s a United States senator from Florida seeking to become president of the United States.

Rubio told the Washington Post that the Senate frustrates him. His friends and close associates say he “hates” the Senate. It’s too slow. Too bound by procedure. Too this and too that. Rubio is a young man on the move and he wants a job that will enable him to get things done in a hurry.

Rubio wants out of a job that pays him a pretty handsome salary, about 175 grand annually. But now that he’s seeking the presidency, he’s been off the Senate grid for most of the year.

His Senate absenteeism has drawn fire from the home folks. According to the Post: “On the campaign trail, Rubio comes under attack from rivals who say he’s become an absentee federal employee. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, in a less-than-subtle knock on his former homestate ally, has said senators who miss work should have their pay docked.

“’It’s just, kind of, like, dude, you know, either drop out or do something,’ Bush’s son, Jeb Bush Jr., told New York University College Republicans earlier this month, in comments first reported by Politico Florida. The junior Bush, a Floridian, cast himself as an aggrieved constituent. ‘We’re paying you to do something, it ain’t run for president.’”

I don’t begrudge the Republican senator for wanting to seek higher office. I’ve noted already that other senators have done the same thing.

But the way I see it, if Rubio dislikes the job he has so much that he’s willing to admit it publicly, then perhaps it’s time for him to quit that job., let the governor of his state appoint a suitable successor — who’ll do the job and actually earn that six-figure salary — and then devote all his waking-hours energy to seeking that White House gig.

Rubio already has declared he won’t seek re-election to the Senate next year. He’s decided one term is enough.

Here, though, is a bit of history that Rubio should consider.

In the event he gets elected president next year, he’s likely to find that the presidency is hamstrung as well by certain processes. An anecdotal story has been bandied about Washington for the past 50-plus year about how another young, go-go senator got elected president and became frustrated that he couldn’t snap his fingers to get things done instantaneously.

President John F. Kennedy learned that his new job tied his hands on occasion and that he had to learn to work through the process. Then again, he hated the Senate, too.

Give up your day job, Marco.

Now it’s Dr. Carson’s faith drawing Trump barbs

donald

You might have heard Donald Trump score another one for the tasteless, tactless and thoughtless.

Will this latest insult doom his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination? I doubt it.

The object of Trump’s latest bit of scorn happened to be Dr. Ben Carson … specifically his faith.

Trump was rambling over the weekend about his being a Presbyterian. Then he launched into a brief riff wondering about Carson’s Seventh-day Adventist faith.

It was as if Trump didn’t think much of Carson’s belief.

Let’s see, Trump has gone after:

John McCain’s war record; Carly Fiorina’s appearance; broadcast journalist Megyn Kelly’s line of questioning; Jeb Bush’s “lack of energy”; the media in general; talk-show host Hugh Hewitt’s so-called “gotcha” journalism; Hispanic immigrants.

Anyone else? Oh, probably. I just can’t think of them.

Will any of it doom him. One would think. But wait! This isn’t a normal election year.

Goofiness is what many of the GOP faithful seem to want.

Heaven help them … and the rest of us.

 

These charges seem so very appropriate

crash

A woman plowed her car into a Stillwater, Okla., crowd over the weekend.

Four people are dead, including a 2-year-old toddler.

The woman reportedly was drunk at the wheel, although the suspect’s lawyer contends there “absolutely” was no alcohol involved. We’ll have to wait for the tests to come back on that one, counselor.

She is now facing at least four counts of second-degree murder over the carnage she created at an Oklahoma State University homecoming parade.

My initial reaction to the charges being filed? Good!

The rage is palpable in Stillwater toward Adacia Chambers, a 25-year-old resident of the city.

These kinds of tragedies hit us all quite hard. The very idea that a crowd of people enjoying a day of celebration for a college football team could be victimized in this manner by someone who might have been impaired by drugs and/or alcohol simply boggles the mind.

It’s not a “mere” drunk- or reckless-driving case here. If Chambers gets convicted of the murder charges, she’s going away for a very long time. What’s more, several of the people who were injured are in critical condition; if any of them loses the fight for survival, the counts against Chambers could add up to even more prison time in the event of a conviction.

One of the witnesses to the mayhem said, “I’ve lived here my whole life and this blows my mind. This is something that doesn’t happen in Stillwater.”

Tragically, yes it does.

 

Big storm makes me think: climate change

climate-change

Hurricane Patricia roared ashore on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.

It brought immense wind and an enormous amount of rain. The rain has swept across much of Texas, flooding areas of the southern and eastern parts of the state.

One of my thoughts as I looked from afar at this unfolding misery? Climate change.

I do not know if this storm by itself is a result of the changing climate across Planet Earth. I am quite certain, though, that its ferocity is going to spark more discussion — and yes, even angry debate — about whether the planet’s climate is changing and whether humankind has played a major role in that event.

We’ll let the debate commence.

I just want to weigh in, though, with this thought.

The climate change deniers in public office and even those out here among us unwashed masses keep seeking to debunk the theories put forth by those who believe the planet is warming up and that human activity has played a role.  Their argument? Those who believe such things “aren’t scientists,” they say. They ridicule esteemed individuals, such as Pope Francis, in that category.

Actually, the Holy Father is a scientist, with a background in chemistry. Aww, that’s not a relevant area of expertise, the deniers keep saying. Well, OK. But the pope and others have based their arguments with findings and data compiled by actual scientists who have concluded that human activity is related directly to the changing climate on our planet.

My best response to all of that, though, is that the deniers to whom I refer aren’t scientists, either. Yes, they too present data from scientists who agree with their view that human beings’ abuse of Earth hasn’t contributed to the changing climate.

So, which non-expert do you choose to believe?

I tend to side with those who fear that Earth’s climate is changing and that we human beings have played a significant role in bringing it about.

 

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