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West questions Duckworth's 'loyalty'

Allen West served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives before losing his bid for re-election in 2012.

Yet, the Republican keeps making waves. I wish he’d keep his trap shut.

West has implied that a decorated — and seriously wounded — Iraq War veteran might be more loyal to the “Democrat Party” than she is to her country by agreeing to serve on a House select committee charged with examining the Benghazi controversy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/22/allen-west-tammy-duckworth_n_5375138.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

He’s talking about Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who lost both of her legs while flying a helicopter for the Army during the Iraq War. Her ship was hit in 2004 by a rocket-propelled grenade. Duckworth received the Purple Heart as a result of her injuries.

“I just don’t know where her loyalties lie,” West said in a radio interview. “You know, for her to be a veteran, a wounded warrior for the United States Army, she should know this is not the right thing,” he said. “And hopefully … she’ll remember the oath of office she took as an Army officer and not the allegiance I guess she believes she has to the liberal progressives of the Democrat Party.”

Good grief.

Congressional Democrats have said the select committee hearings on Benghazi are a sham. Duckworth is one of five Democrats named to the panel. Her office pledges that she’ll take her responsibilities on the committee seriously, which all 12 committee members from both parties have vowed to do.

Allen West’s comments about Duckworth’s “loyalties” should be scorned and condemned.

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Why don't storm drains work?

This one creates a serious head-scratcher for me.

It’s been raining in Amarillo the past couple of days, with more steady rainfall expected through the weekend. The rain hasn’t exactly been in torrents, although it has rained harder in some locations than in others. Don’t get me wrong: I am among the many thousands of Texas Panhandle residents happy to see the moisture finally arrive.

However, what’s the story with the storm drains backing up?

I heard a city engineer say something today about “silt build-up” restricting the flow of rainwater into the storm drains. City officials were cautioning motorists to stay away from underpasses along Interstate 40 because of high water.

Good grief. We haven’t had any substantial rainfall since, oh, perhaps The Flood. At least it seems to have been that long. Where did the build-up of crud come from? Doesn’t the city monitor these drains to ensure that when the rain does arrive, that they’ll move the water efficiently to prevent large volumes of standing water that strands motorists — and puts them in jeopardy?

I saw social media pictures today of vehicles stalled out because of standing water. We have the usual suspect sites with which we have to contend. Fortunately, my wife and I have been able to avoid the trouble areas.

But they’re the same places that create havoc every time.

What in the world is up with that?

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R.I.P., my fellow soldier

This blog post is adapted from a column I wrote for the Beaumont Enterprise; it was published on Aug. 24, 1990. With the country set to commemorate Memorial Day, this essay pays tribute to one young man who died in service to his country.

It took me eight years to make a journey to The Wall and to learn for myself what so many Americans have been talking about since it went up in 1982: the sight of those 58,000-plus names identifying each of the men and women who died in the Vietnam War; the array of keepsakes and tributes lined up at the base of the stark monument; the looks in people’s faces as they touched the name of a loved one while etching it on a sheet of paper pressed against the black stone.

I took my family to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., to look for a name I remembered only as “De La Torre.” He wasn’t a buddy exactly. We weren’t close. He was an Army helicopter mechanic and a door gunner I knew in Vietnam. We did not serve in the same company; mine was a fixed-wing aircraft unit, his was a Huey company next to ours at a place called Marble Mountain, just south of Da Nang.

And yet, I saw him on his last day on Earth and the memory of his happiness at flying his final mission that day in June 1969 stayed with me long after the shock of his death had worn off.

De La Torre popped into my work area full of excitement. “Hey man,” he said to no one in particular, “I’m going home!” He had one more mission to fly — aboard a Huey on a troop lift into the mountains near Da Nang. De La Torre was a gung-ho guy, I guess, because he had extended his tour several times in Vietnam. I recall him saying he had been in-country for 32 months, well past his allotted one-year obligation.

Now he was going home, he declared quite proudly that day.

We learned later that evening that our guys weren’t prepared for a “hot landing.” Intelligence reports said enemy soldiers were nowhere near the landing zone. It was to be a “routine mission”: Drop the troops off and leave. The reports betrayed De La Torre and the rest of the men on the mission. They were met with intense enemy fire. I then was left to ponder the death of someone I didn’t know well but whose ebullience at the prospect of going home remains burned into my memory.

What I learned at The Wall, quite simply, was De La Torre’s first name, which I knew once had forgotten. In truth, we were on a last-name basis.

I knew little about Jose Manuel De La Torre when our paths crossed briefly in Vietnam. I don’t know much about him now, except for his full name, that he was about five years older than me and that he came from Fullerton, Calif.

Still, De La Torre seems a bit more like a friend now than when we both served in Vietnam. Granted, I don’t know what he liked or disliked, his favorite sport, food or movie actor. I don’t know how he coped with the fear of flying all those missions or if he was just too crazy to be scared.

I will settle gladly for merely relearning this young soldier’s full name. It was a small, but significant moment of discovery at The Wall, a place of profound sadness. Yet I came away feeling happy and satisfied that I got to know, a little better, a soldier whose last words to me were that he was going home.

Rest in peace, Jose.

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Disgraceful dirty trick

U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is the tea party’s latest target for removal from public office.

But revelations from that campaign allege one of the most disgraceful dirty tricks imaginable against the veteran lawmaker.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/scandal-grows-over-photo-thad-cochran-wife

Tea party candidate Chris McDaniel is challenging Cochran. Several individuals who are supporting McDaniel, though, have charged with conspiring to take pictures of Cochran’s bedridden wife, Rose, at the nursing home where she’s lived since 2000.

To what end these pictures were being used has yet to be determined. However, the allegations suggest a despicable intent to somehow use the gravely stricken spouse of a political candidate for some political purpose.

The scandal has shaken the Mississippi political landscape to its core. Cochran had been thought to be facing a stout challenge from the extreme right wing of his party. My guess is that the allegations against those seeking to post pictures of Mrs. Cochran will all but scuttle the effort to toss the veteran senator out of office.

One guy was charged with breaking into the nursing home to photograph Mrs. Cochran to be used in an anti-Cochran political ad; at least two other tea party zealots have been charged with conspiracy.

If the allegations prove true, then we’ll have to set a new standard for dastardly political campaigning.

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Cuban speaks the truth … bluntly

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Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks pro basketball team, can be labeled many ways.

He is brash, loud, at times brusque, occasionally inarticulate.

He is not a racist.

Thus, he is getting hammered unfairly over some remarks he made recently in the wake of the Donald Sterling brouhaha over whether Sterling uttered racist remarks in that recorded phone conversation with his gold-digging girlfriend/aide/pal V. Stiviano. Sterling did show his racist colors and the Los Angeles Clippers owner has been banned from pro basketball for the rest of his life.

Cuban popped off this week about what he’d do if he saw a young African-American male wearing a hoodie and droopy pants. He said he’d walk to other side of the street. Cuban also said he’d precisely the same thing if he saw a tattoo-marked, white kid with a shaved head and pierced jewelry stuck in his ears, nose, lips and eyebrows.

http://www.realclearsports.com/2014/05/23/cuban039s_views_not_scary_censorship_is_120250.html

Does any of that make Cuban a racist? No.

I’m not the first to acknowledge this in print — although the thought occurred to me the moment I heard about the controversy over Cuban’s remarks — but the Rev. Jesse Jackson said virtually the same thing some years ago.

I don’t need to stipulate, but I will anyway, that Rev. Jackson is African-American and he was talking about the discomfort he feels when he encounters young black men on the street. Jackson said he doesn’t feel as safe as he does when he encounters young white men. No one in their right mind accused Jackson of being a racist then.

Mark Cuban deserves the same presumption now.

He was speaking a blunt truth about human beings. “While we all have our prejudices and bigotries, we have to learn that it’s an issue that we have to control … not just kick the problem down the road,” Cuban said.

Mark Cuban is not in the same league as Donald Sterling as it relates to racism.

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Democrats to play needed role in Benghazi hearings

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi did exactly the right thing by deciding against boycotting the select committee hearings on the Benghazi controversy.

She has named five Democratic lawmakers to sit with seven Republicans on the panel chaired by Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.

I am, quite honestly, dubious about the hearings. I would be among those who are shocked if they produce any new revelations about what happened on Sept. 11, 2012, when terrorist torched the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

There have been endless hearings already. Congressional Republicans have spent much energy bashing then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s agency for its alleged mishandling of the incident. There have been hearings already. News reports have gone into exhaustive detail about the incident.

Speaker John Boehner, though, believes it is necessary to convene a select committee to look some more.

To what end? My strong hunch is that the GOP lawmakers want to find enough dirt on Clinton to torpedo her expected 2016 presidential campaign. That’s the motive.

House GOP leaders already have the facts. They know about the firefight, about the confusion, about the talking points uttered repeatedly by then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. The administration bungled the information flow.

Was there an attempt to cover up what happened to protect Clinton, President Obama — or both? All the rhetoric coming from Congress should have revealed that by now. It hasn’t.

Here we are, getting set to convene more hearings.

Democrats need to be at the table to serve as a counterbalance to what everyone in the know believes will be a Republican onslaught.

Now, when all is said and all the bluster has died down, let us hope the select committee comes up with a set constructive recommendations the State Department and the intelligence community can take forward.

If it cannot, then all this will be a waste of time.

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Texas GOP spoils it

Just about the time I express faith that the Republican Party may be coming to its senses, along comes a veteran Texas political observer to remind me that the Texas GOP operates in a parallel universe.

Paul Burka’s most recent blog for Texas Monthly laments the “Triumph of the Know-Nothings” in this mid-term election season.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/triumph-know-nothings

He points to the “Republican civil war” raging along many fronts. GOP candidates are trying to outflank each other on the right, as if the mainstream Texas Republican Party — such as it is — isn’t conservative enough.

I’ve already noted that the GOP runoff for railroad commissioner illustrates the nastiness within the party, with foes Ryan Sitton and Wayne Christian battling to see which one of them can be seen in more photo-op shots with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. Political action groups have accused Christian of being a “greenie” as it regards energy policy — as if that’s somehow a negative.

Burka writes: “This is the worst election campaign season in my memory. Everything has been organized to elect the most radical candidates on the ballot, those who are the farthest to the right. The result will be the triumph of the know-nothings.”

With tea party candidates getting the boot in states like Kentucky, Georgia, Idaho and Oregon, I had thought that perhaps the GOP had realized the only way it could compete for the soul of the national electorate would be to nominate candidates with a modicum of sense. In Texas, according to Burka, the opposite appears to be playing out.

“Vast sums of dark money are pouring into the state to influence the election. Michael Quinn Sullivan and the tea parties are running the show.” Burka writes.

Now I’m getting scared.

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Rain becomes talking point

We’ve been mired here along the Texas Panhandle Caprock in this hideous drought.

Dry land farmers can’t grow crops, given that they depend on rainfall to irrigate their land.

It’s been tough around here for, oh, about four years.

So, when the weather forecasters keep harping on the prospects for rain, well, we want to believe them. Heaven knows they keep saying it’ll change, that moisture will return eventually. We want to believe them, but the longer we went without any relief, the harder it has become to put faith in their words.

That has changed in the past day or two.

Wednesday produced the first actual thunderstorm I can remember in a good while in our Amarillo neighborhood. More of it came today. The rain gauge hasn’t moved much yet, but it’s gotten pretty wet out there.

I ran some errands today, visited with folks and overheard others talking about, that’s right, the rain. Nothing else. No politics. I didn’t hear much about the VA scandal, or the upcoming Texas elections, or whether Hillary Clinton will run for president in two years.

Rain. That was the topic.

I ventured out this morning and so help me I thought the birds were chattering with more gusto than I’ve heard them for as long as I can remember.

Do we want the kind of rain that has flooded other parts of the state or the country? No thanks, of course. But some more of this moisture surely gives us something more pleasant to discuss with our friends and neighbors than what we’re getting out of Austin or Washington.

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Russian oil dependence? Here? In Texas?

This tidbit just popped in over the transom from a conservative friend of mine who lives in up yonder in Gray County, Texas.

He received an invitation from Ryan Sitton, a Republican candidate for Texas railroad commissioner, to attend an event in which Sitton was going to extol his efforts to wean the nation of its “dependence on Russian oil.”

My friend is perplexed. So am I.

Neither of us was aware that Texas and the United States had a “dependence” on Russian crude.

He flashed the invitation to me electronically. Sure enough, that’s what Sitton said.

I looked at the list of Sitton endorsements and saw some familiar names. Former Amarillo oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is on it; so is Railroad Commission Chairman Barry Smitherman and former RRC chair Elizabeth Ames Jones.

Do they know something the rest of the world doesn’t know, that we have grown dependent on Russian oil?

I looked it up. The information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration is a bit dated, but in 2007, 3.4 percent of U.S. oil imports came from Russia. Our biggest supplier then was Canada, with whom we share the world’s longest unprotected border.

I’ve been pondering this for a bit. Since 2007, our oil imports have declined. The United States is now consuming more domestic oil than it is importing. The oil boom that exploded in West Texas has reignited here. Try getting a hotel room in the Permian Basin. You’ll be paying through the news for a room at a Motel 6. Why is that? Drilling contractors have gobbled up lodging space.

I haven’t even mentioned the shale oil boom in North Dakota, which is remaking life as they’ve known in that rural part of America.

So, what’s Ryan Sitton talking about? Russian oil dependence? The young man needs some counseling.

Thanks, my friend in Gray County, for bringing this to light.

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Texas right wing at war with itself

If you think the conservative wing of the Texas Republican Party — which is pretty conservative from top to bottom as it is — is locking arms in a unified battle … think again.

Some mail I received yesterday and today suggests a serious civil war within the party. Now I will explain.

Four campaign fliers have come to our house in the past two days. They involve Ryan Sitton and Wayne Christian, two men running for the GOP nomination for Texas railroad commissioner.

Sitton and Christian both proclaim themselves to be proud conservatives, one of whom will be nominated next Tuesday when the statewide runoff election occurs.

They both feature themselves standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the current conservative pooh bah of Texas political officeholders, Sen. Ted Cruz. Sitton’s material implies a Cruz endorsement. But wait. Christian’s card today implied more or less the same thing. “Wayne Christian stood with Ted Cruz when others would not,” Christian’s campaign card declares right over a picture with Christian and Cruz standing closely together while grinning for the camera.

Another flier today came from the Young Conservatives of Texas, which listed its preferred candidates for the May 27 GOP runoff. Who’s name is listed under railroad commissioner? Wayne Christian.

OK, that settles it. Right? Wrong.

Another flier also arrived today from … Conservative Republicans of Texas.

That group, based out of Houston, says Christian is “wrong on energy and wrong for Texas.” The flier also notes that Christian is “under fire for pushing green energy mandates and Solyndra-like subsidies.” The text on the flier says that “Christian’s mandate effort received support from liberal tree huggers.”

Green energy mandates? Oh … my … goodness. We can’t have that. We simply cannot have a railroad commissioner advocating for environmentally friendly energy sources to, um, protect the planet.

Whatever.

Christian still is buddies with Ted Cruz. So is Sitton.

Both of these candidates proclaim themselves ready to out-conservative the other guy.

Hurry up and get here, Runoff Election Day. I’m ready for some real knock-downs between actual conservatives and actual liberals.

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