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Tribute to Maya Angelou

Confession time yet again.

I am not a lover of fine poetry. I cannot comment intelligently about a poem, or about the body of a poet’s work.

I do know a bad poem when I see it. It’s the good ones that often go beyond my meager understanding of some things.

When I heard about Maya Angelou’s death this week, I wasn’t saddened because we’d never get a fresh work of poetry from her.

Indeed, it’s interesting to me that I haven’t heard too many tributes about her poetic skills. And I guess that’s the fundamental point here. Maya Angelou was far more than someone who could craft poetry.

She was a trailblazer, a champion, a woman of immense courage.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/05/maya-angelou-a-woman-for-all-seasons.html/

She didn’t just write poems. She wrote autobiographical prose, such as “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” as Dallas Morning News blogger Jim Mitchell notes.

Mitchell writes of that work: “But its greatest contribution was that it was almost a modern slave narrative, reflecting experiences shared by many of her contemporaries — African-American women who came of age in the years of the Great Depression, before World War II and before Civil Rights became a movement. Her voice expressed the never-ending challenges of being black in America, mixing struggles for acceptance and respect with messages of communal and personal responsibility. She was part of a spectacular black literary era that included Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks and James Baldwin among others who made possible Alice Walker, Rita Dove and Nikki Giovanni.”

She wrote the autobiography in 1969. She was an established literary giant by that time. She would go on to become a famed civil rights champion, sought out by presidents and other national and world leaders.

Maya Angelou’s work transcended the sometimes-esoteric world of poetry.

It’s that transcendence that gives me a measure of personal comfort in believing one didn’t have to know the nuts and bolts of great poetry to honor the memory of a great American.

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Shinseki has to go

It pains me to say this about a decorated, heroic veteran of the U.S. Army, but it’s time for him to leave the office he holds.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki’s watch is now scarred indelibly by a scathing inspector general’s report that chronicles horrible health care services being provided for veterans.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/will-shinseki-go-its-when-not-if-n117341

The IG report confirms that Veterans Administration health officials cooked up fabricated wait times for veterans, who were found to be waiting about 115 days for health care — far longer than VA standards. The result has been the deaths of veterans at the Phoenix, Ariz., veterans hospital.

All this happened under Gen. Shinseki’s watch. He’s supposed to manage a monstrous federal agency. He hasn’t done it. Veterans have suffered. This shoddy performance has angered Democratic and Republican members of Congress alike. The calls for his resignation are mounting.

It’s time for him to step aside.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is in a shambles and there is no way possible for Shinseki to clean up the wreckage.

Who should get the call?

I heard an interesting name mentioned Wednesday. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., received the Medal of Honor for heroism during the Vietnam War. He lost a leg while fighting enemy soldiers as a Navy SEAL. Could someone with Sen. Kerrey’s credentials do the job? I believe he could.

President Obama has said two things about the mess at the VA: He stands by Shinseki and he vows to make changes if they’re deemed necessary. The IG report has been given credence by those who believe change is necessary at the top of the VA chain of command.

The president no longer can stand by his man.

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Texas tea party stands tall

I always thought “Texas tea” referred to oil.

It now has a political connotation, as in “Texas tea party.” Ladies and gents, the tea party has taken the Texas Republican Party hostage. It has swallowed it whole and has produced a slate of statewide candidates that’ll make the hair stand up on some of us Texas residents.

Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka is one who is very afraid of what the future might hold.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/tea-party-takes-charge

I concur with his assessment.

He seems to be conceding the November election already to one tea party candidate in particular: state Sen. Dan Patrick, the Republican/tea party candidate for lieutenant governor.

I’m not yet ready to go there.

Democratic nominee, fellow state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, well could turn out to be the most formidable Democratic candidate on the statewide ballot. She’s Patrick’s opponent this fall. I’m going to wait until all the ballots are counted before declaring him the all-but-certain lieutenant governor.

Of all the assertions Burka makes, the most interesting is this: “One thing I believe with absolute certainty: Dan Patrick as lieutenant governor will hasten the day Texas turns purple. His personal history is one of recklessness and carelessness. There are going to be train wrecks along the way. I have serious doubts about whether the tea party can govern or whether Patrick can get along with his peers without having a meltdown along the way.”

Meltdown? I keep thinking of the release late in the campaign of Patrick’s medical records, which included some time with a shrink who counseled him about his depression. It was a low blow at the end of a tough campaign to bring that stuff up … but is this part of Burka’s calculation about how the Texas Senate might be run under the leadership of a Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick?

Tea party candidates have bitten the dust all over the country. Not in Texas, though. They’re riding high.

One bit of cheer is worth passing on: At least Republicans had the good sense to toss aside Steve Stockman’s challenge to John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate primary.

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Thornberry preps for center stage

In what might be the least surprising critique of President Obama’s decision to accelerate the drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry has begun taking the first baby steps from the back bench to the center stage of American foreign policy debate.

Thornberry, the 13th Congressional District representative since 1995, said the president’s decision is too much too quickly. Imagine my surprise: a Republican congressional committee chairman in waiting second-guessing the Democratic commander in chief.

Lawmaker: Obama’s ‘heart really isn’t in it’

Thornberry made his remarks to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank full of Obama critics. He was preaching the choir, of course, which is what Democratic and Republican politicians always do. They look for friendly audiences where their applause lines will get the loudest response.

I am left to wonder whether Thornberry — the likely next chairman of the House Armed Services Committee — thinks it’s always prudent to deploy American forces into every battlefield that erupts. Barack Obama reiterated this week that the U.S. military remains the strongest in world history, but that it need not be deployed as the “hammer” to pound down every crisis “nail.”

As the president said today in his commencement speech to West Point cadets, the United States stands ready to use force only when it is in our national interest. Of course, that won’t satisfy the armchair hawks on Capitol Hill who cannot quite grasp the idea that sometimes diplomacy and seeking to build international coalitions is more suitable than charging in all alone.

The Iraq War? Remember how we were told we’d be greeted as “liberators” when we plowed across the border in March 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein? It didn’t quite work out that way.

Well, Thornberry likely will cruise to re-election this November against a token Democratic foe. He’s been in the Capitol Hill background for his entire congressional career. When Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., retires at the end of the year, he’ll likely hand the gavel over to Thornberry, the panel’s vice chairman.

I’m hoping for a bit more bipartisanship from the new chairman. We’ll likely not get it.

Still, I’ll await with interest Chairman Thornberry’s entrance onto center stage.

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Texas Democrats still floundering

David Alameel.

Say that name a few times. Have you heard it before? Probably not.

Alameel stumbled out of the tall grass some time ago to run for the U.S. Senate. He’s now the Democratic Party nominee who will challenge Republican incumbent John Cornyn this fall.

To get that nomination, though, Alameel had to defeat someone named Keesha Rogers in the Democratic runoff. Rogers had called for — get this — the impeachment of President Obama.

Therein, boys and girls, lies an answer as to why the Texas Democratic Party is in such a shambles.

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/democrat-david-alameel-handily-defeats-kesha-roger/nf8Gd/

There exists no Democratic statewide officeholder to challenge the Republicans. The party is still looking for candidates to run against powerful GOP incumbents.

Democrats are trying to talk bravely about turning the state from Republican red to swing state purple. Some folks have actually said with a straight face that this is the year the transition begins.

I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Yes, the party has two quite credible candidates running at the top of the state ballot: Wendy Davis for governor and Leticia Van de Putte for lieutenant governor. Both are state senators, both are articulate and fearless. Their chances of winning remain dicey.

I keep coming back to David Alameel, wondering: Who is this guy?

I don’t know much about him, other than he’s a multi-gazillionaire businessman who’ll likely pour a lot of his own money into the Senate campaign. Other mega-rich guys have won in Texas, the latest of whom, Lt. David Dewhurst, got his head handed to him in the GOP runoff by Dan Patrick in the race for lieutenant governor; but before Tuesday’s vote, Dewhurst had been a successful self-funded politician.

It’s instructive, to me at least, that the state of Texas Democratic Party can be summed up in the fact that its nominee for the U.S. Senate had to endure a runoff against a fellow Democrat who wants to impeach the president of the same party.

Setting aside the races for governor and lieutenant governor, Texas Democrats have a ways to go before finding their way out of the wilderness.

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Time to end the Afghan War

President Barack Obama said it succinctly today: It is harder to end a war than to start one.

With that, the nation’s longest war now appears to be drawing to a close.

I’m glad about that.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/obama-afghanistan-troops-stay-9800-stay-2014-west-point-107115.html?hp=l2

The president’s critics were quick — as they have been all along — to blast him for setting a well-chronicled timetable for withdrawal. The United States, Obama said, will leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan in an “advisory” capacity by the end of this year; we’ll draw down to that level from the current level of 30,000-plus.

Our combat role will end. Afghans will be responsible for their own country’s security. Our war effort will be over.

The critics say the timetable gives the Taliban time to plan, strategize and hit back hard at the Afghan government that seeks to cement its control.

That’s an interesting view, to which I have a single-word response: Vietnam.

President Nixon did not set a timetable for the “Vietnamization” effort he began shortly after taking office in 1969. But by the time he left office in August 1974, our combat role had diminished to near zero. Fewer than nine months later, in April 1975, the North Vietnamese communists had mustered enough firepower to overrun South Vietnam.

My point is this: With our without a timetable, the other side is going to keep fighting. The task, then, is to prepare our allies in power to defend themselves adequately against an enemy that’s been degraded significantly over the course of the past dozen years.

As the president noted, al-Qaida isn’t extinct. Its leadership has been decimated, Osama bin Laden has been eliminated, its organization has been scattered. Is it still operational? To a large degree, yes. Our forces, though, continue to hunt down and kill bad guys when and where we find them. That effort will — and should — continue.

It’s time to end this war.

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Dewhurst taken down

They’re still counting votes in 254 Texas counties as I write this post, but Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has been declared a lame duck.

He’s been defeated in the bitterly fought Texas Republican runoff by state Sen. Dan Patrick, a tea party favorite, hardline conservative, former sportscaster and all-around tough cookie.

Tea Party topples Texas lt. gov.

Bring on Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, who knows Patrick well and is figured by many observers to be the Democrats’ best chance this year to crack the GOP’s vise-grip on every statewide elected office.

As I noted in an earlier blog post, I am curiously sorry to see Dewhurst’s political career end like this. I am pretty sure he won’t run again. He’s in his mid-60s and figured to be sitting in the U.S. Senate next to John Cornyn — until he got beat in 2012 by another tea party golden boy, Ted Cruz.

Dewhurst’s defeat suggests the tea party wing of the Texas Republican Party is a lot healthier than it appears to be in many other states. Then again, the tea partiers have pulled mainstream Republicans — such as Dewhurst — so far to the right that there appears to be little difference between the two branches of the once-Grand Old Party.

Van de Putte won’t roll over in the upcoming fall campaign. She’s tough, smart and is no one’s fool. Patrick is all of those things, too. This could be on fiery campaign.

I hope it brings as much light onto the issues as it’s sure to bring heat on the two candidates.

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MH 370 data might be wrong

The cluster flip — formerly known as the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 — has taken yet another bizarre turn.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/27/world/asia/mh370-is-inmarsat-right-quest-analysis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The data that came from a satellite, Inmarsat, might be wrong — meaning that all those ships, planes, submersibles and people might have been looking in the wrong place for a missing Boeing 777 jetliner.

Holy mackerel! Can it get any worse?

Hang on. I’m thinking it might.

At issue is the data released from Inmarsat, which transmitted to searchers the possible whereabouts of MH 370, which disappeared March 8 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia en route to Beijing.

The flight reportedly made a sharp left turn, flew back south over the Indian Ocean and then vanished with 239 passengers and crew aboard. They’re presumed dead. The search area has been modified, re-modified and re-re-modified.

A major piece of aviation hardware has vanished and no one seems able to locate it. I understand the difficulty of finding a place at the bottom of a large ocean, which is where I believe MH 370 ended up. What is harder to understand is why the information flow from the Malaysian government has been so, um, erratic.

I’m no beginning to believe the view of some “experts” — and I use the term with caution — that the discovery of the plane might take many more months, or even years.

No surprise there, given that the supposedly high-tech data taken from supposedly sophisticated satellite equipment might have been bogus.

Meanwhile, many loved ones’ anguish continues.

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Dewhurst a goner?

It’s looking like today is going to signal the end of a once-promising political career in Texas.

I’m still trying to figure out how it got to this point.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has been locked in a form of political mud wrestling with state Sen. Dan Patrick for, yes, Dewhurst’s job as presiding officer of the Texas Senate. The Republican runoff is today and it appears — from my vantage point — that Patrick is going to win this thing.

That means Dewhurst likely is finished as an elected political figure.

This leaves me with terribly mixed feelings.

For starters, I grew to respect Dewhurst immensely in all the years I’d reported and commented on his activities first as Texas land commissioner and then as lieutenant governor.

He came out of virtual nowhere to be elected as land commissioner, taking office in 1999. He hadn’t held any political office. He was a big-time political money man in Houston, where he developed his power base. He ran for lieutenant governor in 2002 and won that race too. He was re-elected twice and then ran for the U.S. Senate in 2012 for the seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison.

That’s where the trouble began. He got outmaneuvered on the right by Ted Cruz, whose extreme views forced Dewhurst to seek to outflank Cruz on the right — which was virtually impossible. Cruz won the GOP nomination, while Dewhurst went back to work as lieutenant governor.

Now he’s in another likely futile battle.

My respect for Dewhurst grew as I watched him work the Senate. No one could out-detail this guy when it came to the nuts and bolts of legislation. He could talk both of your ears off with legislative minutiae. Indeed, he did that to me on numerous occasions.

However, in this political climate, intimate knowledge of legislation — and an ability to work with members of both political parties — no longer is good enough to stay in public office. You need to be a quick-tongued, fire-breathing sloganeer. That’s what Ted Cruz proved to be in 2012 and what Dan Patrick has demonstrated this year.

Dewhurst has tried to fire back at Patrick — just as he tried against Cruz — but he has appeared clumsy and unsure of himself. That’s not his style.

Patrick won the March GOP primary, but didn’t get enough votes to avoid a runoff. He’s only pushed the pedal harder against the metal in the runoff.

A part of me wants Dewhurst to win, only to demonstrate that there really is value in experience and knowledge. Another part of me is disappointed in the extreme tone he has taken in this campaign to try to counter the relentless attacks by his runoff opponent.

Therein is the source of my mixed feelings about this race.

I’m afraid David Dewhurst’s time on the stage is about to end. Turn out the lights.

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