Category Archives: Uncategorized

International news, Uncategorized

Russians able to declare victory?

If you assume — as I do — that Russian spooks intended to disrupt the American political system by their hacking and disseminating “fake news,” then isn’t it fair to presume that they can declare victory?

Or, to put it another way: Mission accomplished.

I mean, think of it.

The Russians interfered in our electoral system. U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that to be a fact. All of them concur that Russia sought to disrupt our electoral process.

It’s not yet clear just how they intended to swing the election to Donald J. Trump’s favor. Trump won. He hasn’t spoken angrily about Russia. Or about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, congressional investigators are turning themselves inside out trying to find out about the “Russia thing.” The Department of Justice has appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the FBI investigation. Our attorney general has had to recuse himself from anything to do with Russia.

Congressional Democrats are talking now openly about impeaching the president. The FBI is looking at whether the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russian government operatives.

And the president’s legislative agenda — health care overhaul, tax reform, building that damn wall — is stalled completely. None of it is likely to get advanced.

Do you get my drift? The Russians have succeeded, actually, in accomplishing what they intended when they got involved in our electoral process in the first place.

Now, let’s all wait for the president to possibly, potentially lessen those sanctions we leveled against the Russians for their aggression in Ukraine.

Is that a crazy notion? Not even …

International news, Uncategorized

Trump visits Yad Vashem, and then …

I cannot shake this feeling that the president of the United States cannot be moved by artifacts intended to stir the human soul.

Donald Trump has departed Israel. He made the usual stops at the Western Wall, called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then visited Yad Vashem, the Israelis’ memorial to the Holocaust.

He left a short note in the remembrance book at the museum on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/05/23/israels-holocaust-memorial-comparing-donald-trump-obama-and-bush-notes/102053636/

It was brief. He wrote of being there among “friends” and finished with “never forget.”

Yad Vashem is a stirring reminder of just how cruel human beings can be toward one another. I wrote about my own visit there in June 2009 and about the visit that the president’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, made there in 2013.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2013/03/yad-vashem-stands-as-testament-to-human-cruelty/

I don’t know what strikes Donald Trump’s heart, what makes it beat a little more quickly. I cannot pretend to understand this billionaire’s thinking and what moves him deeply. He once said famously that he’s never asked for God’s forgiveness. Goodness, gracious.

That is what sticks my craw today as I watch the president travel through and then exit the Holy Land en route to his next stop: a visit in the Vatican with the head of the Catholic Church.

I concluded my own blog post about President Obama’s visit to Yad Vashem this way: “Indeed, a tour of Yad Vashem ought to be required of every head of state who takes an oath to preserve the peace.”

At least Donald Trump went there. I hope — I pray — it moved him.

Uncategorized

President redefines ‘populism’

I would venture a guess that if one were to ask Donald J. Trump to define “populism” off the cuff that he would say something like: It’s the philosophy on which I campaigned successfully for the presidency of the United States.

Translation: He likely doesn’t understand a philosophy aimed at taking power away from big corporations and the rich folks who run them.

This billionaire real estate mogul and TV celebrity campaigned as a populist, declaring his intention to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement, pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and “work for you, the people.” He would surround himself with the “best people” to run the government and would “drain the swam” of the corporate corruption he said has infected American politics since the beginning of the Industrial Age.

He is governing, though, as anything but a populist.

The president did sign the executive order that took the United States out of TPP. NAFTA? Well, in the span of just a few days he said he would consider pulling out; then he said he wouldn’t after talking to the leaders of Mexico and Canada; then he said he would like to “renegotiate” the treaty. The “best people” surrounding him include a healthy cadre of executives from Goldman Sachs, the big-time investment outfit he criticized freely during the campaign. The “swamp”? It’s still full of muck.

I want to focus for a moment on NAFTA. Free trade is an example of orthodox Republican philosophy with which I agree. I dislike artificial barriers, such as import taxes and tariffs, that inhibit trade, particularly among bordering nations. NAFTA’s intent is to open markets throughout three major nations: the United States, Canada and Mexico. Is it perfect? No. Is it as flawed and “disastrous” as the president has contended? No to that, too.

It has fostered a freer flow of goods across the borders of all three nations and has been a significant net plus for their economies.

I am heartened to sense the president is beginning to understand that campaign rhetoric often must differ with the way one actually governs.

NAFTA is not the bogeyman that Trump called it while winning the presidency.

As for whether he can govern as the populist he portrayed himself as being, I only can point to the weekend lifestyle he still enjoys as he jets off to Mar-a-Lago, his glitzy, glamorous and posh resort in southern Florida.

His attachment to all the decadence associated with it suggests to me that the president is a populist in name only. Hey, maybe we can create a new acronym: PINO.

media news, Uncategorized

Students kick new life into gumshoe journalism

Pittsburg, Kan., has become the print journalism capital of America.

It’s because a group of high school students demonstrated to a local school board and the school system’s superintendent that they didn’t do their due diligence in hiring a school administrator.

Man, I love this story.

Six students at Pittsburg High School, who happen to serve on the staff of The Booster Redux — the school newspaper — managed to dig out the truth about the resume presented by the school’s new principal.

Amy Robertson was hired as the principal. Then the students begin sniffing around about the school Robertson had listed on her credentials. It turns out that Corllins University — which Robertson listed as where she earned her masters and doctoral degrees — is nothing more than a degree mill. It ain’t accredited, or legit, the students learned.

Students show up their elders

The students, though some vigorous gumshoe reporting — and the help of the Internet doing basic Google searches — managed to show up the school board and the superintendent, who should have vetted the principal properly before hiring her.

And what, in this instance, constitutes proper vetting? Nothing more than checking to determine the quality of the school that Robertson had listed as providing her education.

The students did the school board’s and superintendent’s job for them.

Get this from the Kansas City Star: “On Wednesday, Destry Brown, the Pittsburg schools superintendent, said the district was reposting the job and from now on will be doing a background check and vetting credentials before any candidate is hired.”

Background check and vetting credentials? No spit, folks.

What gives this story its additional legs is that the student  reporters employed basic journalism principles in rooting out an important story. It gives some of us old-school journalism dinosaurs hope that the profession is about to jump off its death bed before it is overcome by “click-bait journalism” preferred by too many publishers these days as they stagger away from traditional print journalism to something called “the digital product.”

The students didn’t expect this kind of attention. The national media have jumped on this story, I believe, because it speaks to old-school journalism values exhibited by a group of young people who — one might surmise — are more attuned to social media and other 21st-century technology.

Nice going, students. You have made many of your journalism elders — including yours truly — quite proud of you.

Uncategorized

Comey’s reticence shouldn’t jeopardize his job

FBI Director James Comey strode onto Capitol Hill this morning and proceeded to shake the federal government to its very core.

He debunked the notion that Barack Obama ordered any wiretaps of Donald J. Trump’s campaign office, despite what the president tweeted about two weeks ago, accusing the former president of committing a felony.

Then he said the FBI is conducting an investigation into the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. That’s it. There’s an investigation under way. He didn’t say much more beyond that, except that it will take time to finish.

What, oh what, does the president do now?

The FBI director reports directly to the attorney general, who reports directly to the president. The AG, Jeff Sessions, has recused himself from any direct participation in the Russia matter. He’s out of the picture as it regards this specific issue.

The question of the day: Is the FBI director’s job in peril?

I hope not. Sessions dare not fire him. As for the president, he’d better — for once in his still-young public life as a politician — exercise some restraint and judgment and resist the temptation to cut the FBI boss loose.

Then again, were the president to declare “You’re fired!” to Comey, I cannot even begin to fathom the outcry — and the outrage — that would ensue.

local news, Uncategorized

Getting ahead of ourselves in trip planning? Sure thing!

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

It has come to this.

We haven’t even embarked on our next road trip pulling our fifth wheel and we’re already thinking ahead to the next trip, or the next two — or maybe three — excursions.

The next one is mapped out: the Texas Hill Country, then over to Ruidoso, N.M. to meet up with sis and her husband.

The one after that is a little less firm, but it’s taking shape: heading east to D.C., to see our niece and her husband, then to Roanoke to see good friends; after that it’s still up in the air. We’re awaiting to hear firm travel plans from some friends in Israel who are coming Stateside to attend a Rotary International conference.

The one after that one is even less set up: Metroplex to see family and then head for points south and east. Details will be worked out later.

That’s what it’s come to. We cannot avoid planning far beyond our next journey.

We plan much more of this as a change in our lives overtakes us. You’ll be kept apprised of that change as it occurs. Rest assured that it involves spending more time with our precious granddaughter.

More to come on that part of our lives, too.

 

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Response to Trump … it’s about what we should expect

Donald J. Trump’s supporters are pushing back on the intense criticism coming from the portion of the country — most of which voted against him in 2016 — of the man’s presidency.

I feel the need to flash back for a moment to 2009.

Let’s remember what a leading Senate Republican said at the time about the previous president of the United States, Barack H. Obama.

Mitch McConnell then was the minority leader in the Senate and I presume he was speaking on behalf of the GOP Senate caucus when he made a straightforward and ominous declaration.

He said his “No. 1 priority” as the Senate GOP leader was to “make Barack Obama a one-term president.”

Yep. That’s what he said. He laid down his marker early in the Obama administration. He didn’t stress enactment of landmark legislation, or working with the president to rescue the economy — which was collapsing when Obama took office. He didn’t propose any reforms of his own or suggest ways Republicans and Democrats could find common ground.

He said he intended to make Obama a one-term president. That translated into “obstruct everything he intends to do.”

Hmmm. It didn’t quite work out that way. Obama got re-elected in 2012 and finished his time in the White House with soaring approval ratings in every single leading public opinion poll.

Is it right and proper for Democrats now to follow the Republicans’ lead? Mostly “no.”

I’ve noted here before that I don’t wish for the president to fail. A presidential failure means the country fails and we all pay the price for that.

However, as the new president seeks to form a government — and he still has quite a way to go — my hope is that Democrats can find some common ground with the Republican president whenever possible.

The problem, though, is that Donald Trump has begun harping about the media being the “enemy of the people” while continuing to boast about his Electoral College victory. Enough, already!

Some positive proposals ought to be formulated and presented for Congress to ponder.

Until then, my Republican friends ought to just swallow the swill they offered eight years ago when Barack Obama was elected … with, I feel compelled to note, a far more robust majority than his successor earned.

Uncategorized

‘Do you miss what you did?’ Yes … and no!

People who know me through the work I did for nearly four decades ask me the same question, albeit a bit differently, all the time.

“Do you miss it?” they ask. “It” is my career in print journalism. It was my craft for nearly 37 years. It was my identity in three communities where I worked: first in Oregon City, Ore., and then in Beaumont and Amarillo, both in Texas. People who said they “knew” me actually only knew my work. My picture appeared in newspapers alongside my columns; my name appeared on editorial page mastheads.

Did they “know” me? Not really.

But the craft I enjoyed so much is changing rapidly. Newspapers no longer distribute as many copies each day. Publishers say they’re committed to what they call “the print product,” but many of us believe differently.

The changing times have claimed many talented print journalists. One of them recently called it a career. He walked away from a job at a major metro daily newspaper to take a job with a public television station.

The bad news is that the newspaper has lost an astonishing talent. The good news is that this young man is going to continue a new form of journalism, which he will meld into TV production.

His story will end up well, no matter where his life’s journey takes him. He’s got a long way to go before it’s finished.

But as I grow older and am farther removed from the career I enjoyed for so many years, the less connected I feel toward those who still practice this noble craft. Sure, they remain friends. I have many of them scattered throughout the country.

However, as I count the number of people with whom I have shared this craft — and this includes men and women who are much younger than I am — the list of former print journalists is outpacing those who are still hard at it.

I remain proud of the career I pursued. I also am proud of those who continue to fight through the amazing change that is occurring within the craft.

They still are answering a noble calling, which is to report the news fairly and without bias. Whether they report for a newspaper, or for a public TV station, or for an online “publication,” they are performing a priceless public service to a public that still relies on them for information in its purest form.

Do I miss working in that environment? Yes — even though I spent the bulk of my career writing opinion. Do I miss the media tumult that broke out just a few years before my career came to its sudden end? Not in the least.

Those who are still hitting it hard have earned my respect and admiration.

Those who have gone on to — as they say on occasion — “pursue other interest” have my best wishes.

My own future lies with this blog.

military news, Uncategorized

President demotes Joint Chiefs chairman … elevates Bannon

“I know more about ISIS than the generals. Believe me.”

Donald J. Trump on the 2016 presidential campaign trail

The president must actually believe what he said while campaigning for the office way back when.

How else does one explain his decision to scale back the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — his top military officer — while elevating the role of senior policy adviser Steve Bannon on the National Security Council?

This is yet another mind-boggling, head-scratching move from the president as he settles into the only public service job he’s ever sought, let alone occupied.

The NSC is the panel of experts on which the president relies to give him all the details on national security threats. The Islamic State, along with the myriad other foes around the world, comprise a potential and potent threat to our security.

What’s more, the director of national intelligence also has seen his role diminished under the Trump administration’s new way of doing things.

You might be wondering — as I have been wondering — what kind of unique expertise does Bannon bring to the discussion? Well, he served in the Navy once. That must count for something.

He earned his political spurs, though, while running the right-wing website Breitbart.com — the organization that has spewed some white nationalist rhetoric.

The NSC comprises something called the “Principals Committee.” It will include the following individuals, according to CNN:

“Regular members of the Principals Committee will include the secretary of state, the treasury secretary, the defense secretary, the attorney general, the secretary of Homeland Security, the assistant to the President and chief of staff, the assistant to the President and chief strategist, the national security adviser and the Homeland Security adviser.”

Sen. John McCain calls the Joint Chiefs chairman the individual who is supposedly “indispensable” to the president on these national security issues.

Yes, one would think. Not the president.

Then you have Susan Rice, national security adviser during the Obama administration, who calls Trump’s decision “stone cold crazy.”

Oh, brother!

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Two men, same issue, different debate

I want to revisit — I hope for the final time — this issue of presidential citizenship and eligibility.

It has returned to the public discussion yet again. U.S. Rep. John Lewis questioned the “legitimacy” of Donald Trump’s presidency; Trump fired back a nasty response. Lewis’s friends and allies say he is justified to question Trump’s standing as a legitimate president because Trump made such an issue for so many years about whether Barack Obama’s presidency was legit.

The issue with the president’s legitimacy stemmed from bogus allegations that he was born outside the United States. His father was a black Kenyan; his mother was a white American. Trump demanded for years that the president produce a birth certificate to show he was born in Hawaii, as he has said all along. Still, Trump didn’t let up … until late in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Another prominent politician also faced questions from Trump. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas ran for the Republican presidential nomination this past year. Trump questioned whether he was eligible to run because Cruz, in fact, was born in Canada. His father is a Cuban native; his mother is an American.

Cruz’s answer to the equally bogus claim about his eligibility? He said his mother’s U.S. citizenship made him a U.S. citizen the moment he was born. U.S. law grants citizenship by birth status to anyone who’s born to U.S. citizens, no matter where the birth occurs. Cruz said his mother’s citizenship answers the question about whether he is a “natural born citizen,” as required under the U.S. Constitution for anyone seeking to run for president.

Problem solved. Yes? Not exactly.

I am puzzled about how it was that Cruz was able to settle this “birther” matter with an explanation that stuck while Obama’s assertion that he was born in Hawaii never was quite accepted by everyone.

Barack Obama and Ted Cruz both were born to American mothers. Both men were U.S. citizens the instant they came into this world. Why, then, would it even matter about Barack Obama’s place of birth if U.S. law grants him citizenship at the moment of his birth?

Would any of this disparity have anything at all to do with President Obama’s race? Hmmm?