Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Don’t demean your foes

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Hillary Clinton committed a potentially fatal mistake during her 2016 race for president against Donald J. Trump.

She referred to the MAGA cultists as “deplorables,” a description that energized the Trump voter base down the home stretch of a highly competitive contest.

My hone boy, Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times, says it would be a terrible mistake to denigrate the 2024 version of the mob hangs on Trump’s every word.

Do not sell them short, Kristoff writes.

Good advice, Nick. The question always becomes, “Will the voting public buy into it? And will the Kamala Harris campaign staff treat the Trumpkins with the respect they deserve? Indeed, they deserve a lot.

Kristoff hails from the Yamhill Valley of Oregon, not far from my hometown of Portland. He writes for the New York Times these days and has earned his spurs for many years writing for the Old Gray Lady.

My fond hope is that Harris won’t commit the egregious rhetorical error that Clinton committed.

Kristoff writes: By all means denounce Trump, but don’t stereotype and belittle the nearly half of Americans who have sided with him.

Hillary Clinton learned that lesson the hard way. Kamala Harris no doubt is paying serious attention.

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Patience runs thin

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Patience is a virtue people tell me I possess and I am grateful for the kind words and, of course, for the quality they say I have.

I have to tell you, though, that some followers of this blog surely do test whatever patience I deploy.

One guy offers a good example. He is a critic of High Plains Blogger. He wails on me whenever I have something negative to say about Donald Trump or something positive I have to offer about Kamala Harris; my earlier support for Joe Biden also drew barbs.

FYI, this individual keeps insisting he isn’t a Trump cultist.

But … he is!

Sometimes this guy offers commentary that the Word Press platform approves automatically as a blog response. Others require me to approve them individually … which I generally do. I say “generally,” because I am beginning to axe some commentary that either is repetitive, or is patently false or provides criticism I might deem to be defamatory. Defaming someone exposes a lot of folks to litigation and as I have told critics over the years who insist that I publish such material: I don’t care if you get sued, but I damn sure care if I get sued. 

My blog also contains non-political material as well. I comment on goings-on in the community I call home and also speak to what I call “slice of life” matters of a more personal nature, Does my critic bother to respond to any of those commentaries? Hah! Which leads me to believe he is “trolling” me.

My patience has its limits. This guy — and some others as well — are testing it mightily. I shall remain strong.

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Where must city manager live?

It’s pretty cool to have sources who tell you things that you can check out with a simple internet search … such as what happened this very day.

A snitch told me that the Princeton city manager is not required to live in the city where he or she administers public policy. My eyes widened — or so I was told by another person in the room.

I blurted out “What? The city’s top administrator isn’t required per the city charter to live in Princeton, Texas?” My friend/snitch said, “That’s right.”

Wow! I couldn’t stop thinking about that jewel of information as we talked about other matters. So, what did I do when I got back to Princeton, where I live? I looked up the Princeton City Charter on the city’s website. I scoured through it and found the chapter and verses related to the city manager.

Section 5.04 states: It shall be the duty of the City Manager to submit an annual budget not later than thirty (30) days prior to the end of the current fiscal year to the City Council for its review, consideration and revision. 

You know what that means, right? It means the city manager must recommend how much of our tax money we must pay to fund the annual budget. Yet the manager isn’t required to share our pain as we are forced to pay it.

The current city manager is a young man named Mike Mashburn, who came to Princeton from Farmers Branch. The City Council hired him immediately after meeting him for the first time just this year. It then gave him a five-figure pay increase in base salary just a few weeks after hiring a fellow who hadn’t done anything yet.

And yet, nowhere in the City Charter, which Princeton voters endorsed just this past year, does it stipulate any residency requirements for the city manager.

I long have believed that cities should require chief administrators to live in the communities they serve., Those administrators, such as city managers, also should require their top deputies and other key departments heads — whom they hire — to do the same.

Police chiefs, fire chiefs, financial officers — and the city manager — should bear the burden that city councils demand of those of us who pay the bills. Hey … fair is fair!

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Looking ahead to key meeting

Every so often, events align in such a way that enable to get a first-hand look at what a governing authority intends to do about an issue I am discussing on this blog.

Monday night, the Princeton City Council is convening to discuss the fate of a hideous eyesore that occupies a parcel next to Wal-Mart along US Highway 380. It’s that apartment complex that has gone seriously to seed over the past many months.

The city has declared that it suffers from several code violations. It’s unsafe. It is in fact rotting before our eyes.

A contractor started work on the massive luxury apartment complex. Then he got into a beef with the developer and walked away.

The city council, acting as a housing standards authority, must decide what to do about. For me, the session occurs at 5 p.m. Monday and I am going to be there as a Princeton resident/blogger.

The Princeton Herald will assign a reporter to cover it. Me? I get to watch it unfold in real time.

The city, I suppose, could decide Monday on the fate of the project. It could take it all under advisement and reconvene later for a decision. The decision might be to knock it down. Or … they could decide the site is worth rehabilitating.

I’ve stated already I believe the project needs to vanish. It’s not my call. It belongs to the city. I’m just an interested observer with a lot to say on what the city council decides.

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Harris needs to keep climbing

Kamala Harris, to state the obvious, has a huge mountain to climb as she campaigns for the presidency of the United States.

It is easy to fall into a public relations trap being laid by those who are enamored of the huge push the vice president has received since President Biden handed her the frontrunner’s torch the other day. Biden surrendered his re-election campaign, endorsed Harris to succeed him as the Democratic nominee and as POTUS. Thousands of other endorsements have poured in, giving Democrats a gigantic emotional boost as Harris prepares to accept her party nomination.

The mountain she must climb rests in the person of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Trump continues to cling to a razor-thin polling lead, despite all the missteps, gaffes, the lies, the disjointed campaign blunders … you name, Trump has done it.

Yet — for the life of me — he remains strong politically. I am holding out the greatest hope I can muster that Trump will not hold up under the intense scrutiny that awaits him.

Let’s remember a key point. Trump and his MAGA cultists were fond of reminding us that Joe Biden, at 81 years of age, would be the oldest party nominee ever. Biden didn’t get that far. “The oldest ever nominee” tag now falls on Trump, who’s 78 years old and is showing every one of those years each time he takes the stump and flies off the rails with his nonsense.

I will encourage the vice president to never surrender as she continues to carry her message forward. She has energized millions of Americans just by agreeing to carry the Democrats’ banner into the next great political battle.

I happen to be just one newly engaged American patriot who wants to see her make history once more. All she has to do is win this election.

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Politics on hold … for now

Let there be no mistake that I likely will bristle, gnash my teeth, mutter a bad word or three as Republicans seek to make political hay over the event that unfolded shockingly in Butler, Pa.

But out of respect for the political process that is underway and the noble goal of choosing a presidential nominee, I will do all of that quietly.

I won’t take my frustrations out with posts on High Plains Blogger. I am going to declare a very brief moratorium on assassination-attempt political commentary. I won’t predict when it will resume. I merely want the FBI, Secret Service, Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and local police to complete their investigation into what happened over the weekend.

I am quite certain that Trump and his family as well as his cadre of cultists will test my good will with their statements about the political ramifications of those events.

I will add only this, which is my complete endorsement of the way the Secret Service acted in killing the shooter. Sharpshooters arrayed around Trump’s podium drew a bead immediately on the gunman and wasted him, These men and women are the best at what they do and in that instant, they reacted the only way that made sense, given the chaos of the moment.

I will await the right moment to shuck the gloves with regard to Donald J. Trump. Don’t ask when that moment will arrive. I’ll just have to tell you that I’ll know when it does.

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Watergate rears its head

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The specter of Watergate is beginning to make its presence felt in President Biden’s fight to retain his status as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president.

His staff is meeting with prominent Democrats in the House and Senate, all of whom are expressing concern about Biden’s chances of winning re-election against Donald J. Trump, They want him to relinquish the nomination and hand it to a stronger candidate who can defeat Trump in the fall election.

The president, bedeviled by his shocking debate performance the other night, is standing firm. “I am not going anywhere!” he has bellowed.

OK, got it, Mr. President.

In the summer of 1974, the House was getting ready to impeach President Nixon over his role in covering up the Watergate scandal. A group of Republican senators — led by Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania — went to the White House to tell Nixon the following: The House is going to impeach you and the Senate is going to convict you. You should resign now.

Nixon took his friends’ advice and quit the presidency.

Do you see the symmetry between then and now?

It falls on the president to make his decision on what to do. It’s just feeling a bit to me as if a Watergate-era outcome might be in store.

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Rebrand this reprobate!

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There must be a fundamental — top to bottom — rebranding underway regarding the pending Republican Party presidential nominee.

In truth, it’s not much of a rebranding as it is a reawakening to what millions of Americans already know about Donald John Trump.

Who carries out this message delivery is anyone guess. What do we know about this slug?

He’s admitted groping women; admitted cheating on all his wives; been convicted of 34 felonies; found liable for the rape of a journalist; has run every business venture with his name on it into the ground; calls ruthless dictators around the world paragons of leadership and strength.

Oh … there’s more.

He has denigrated the memory of a known Vietnam War hero who was captured by the enemy and held captive for more than five years; ridiculed a Gold Star family whose son died defending the country in Iraq; mocked a disabled New York Times reporter.

These issues deal with character and competence. He lacks both of these elements completely and fully.

This individual must not be allowed anywhere near the nuclear launch codes. Are we clear?

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Stiffen the rules to run

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The next amendment to the Constitution should involve updating requirements to run for president. There are only 3 requirements, and at the time of its writing, that seemed logical. We no longer live in a world full of logical people; and it is illogical that a convicted felon should be allowed to run for office. We need people of good virtue and character. Donny boy offers neither, nor do his adamant supporters, as they have lost their once good character and virtues to a cult leader. But the founders never expected the country would face such a ridiculous crisis.

What you have just read didn’t come from my laptop. It came from an individual who reads this blog and who, by and large, endorses whatever point of view I manage to spew out there. I appreciate his support.

What this gentleman proposes is to stiffen the requirements for seeking high public office. He’s right that there is nothing in the Constitution that requires a candidate for POTUS to be free of criminal charges … let alone convictions.

This guy might be onto something, the more I think about it.

Indeed, the only thing that could keep Donald Trump from serving — God forbid — would be if he is sent to prison.

It’s not too much to ask to reserve the presidency and other high offices only for the best among us to run for them. When you think for just a moment about it, does the “best of us” include just those who haven’t been convicted of a felony?

I believe we could cast our net even farther than a felony conviction. I get that such a change might impinge on the notion that “anybody can be elected president.” Well, eliminating convicted felons from the candidate pool still leaves us with a huge field of hopefuls.

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Thank you, firefighters

Perhaps you can join me in making this admission: We don’t offer our thanks often enough to the men and women who serve in our fire service.

What brings this up? Well, today I went on a photo assignment for the Princeton Herald. My boss asked me to take some pictures of Princeton firefighters reading to children at the Lois Nelson Public Library. It was scheduled for mid-morning. Just a few minutes before the firefighters were to begin reading to the kids, the library filled up rapidly with children and their parents.

I mean it was chock full of kids. They were sitting in a reading room. I guess there might have been about 150 Princeton-area kids and their parents gathered to learn about fire trucks, which a young fireman, Joe Vega, explained as he read the text.

To be sure, many of the kids were too young to even know what they were hearing. That is not the point. The men and women who serve in our fire service are ambassadors for the city they represent. They are present to do things such as what I watched today. They spoke to the kids who wanted to know about what they do … and to the parents whose taxes pay for the firefighting infrastructure that is so valuable an asset that protects the community.

I have a bit of personal experience with the professionalism these individuals display. I had a medical emergency in my home in January 2023. I called 9-1-1 and told the dispatcher of my need for someone to arrive immediately. They sent a fire crew to my home and it was there within, oh, two minutes of the call. The men who burst into my home to tend to my wife could not possibly have been more courteous … even as they went to work immediately tending to Kathy Anne’s emergency.

That’s only one part of the job they do. They rush into burning buildings. They respond to motor vehicle crashes. And they read to children, telling them about what they do to protect our community.

I feel the need to thank them publicly for all they do to keep us safe.