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Bully for the Brits; shame on Congress

Two nations separated by an ocean are engaging the air war over Syria in entirely different manners.

The British Parliament came back into session at the behest of Prime Minister David Cameron to debate and vote on whether the United Kingdom should join the coalition fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Parliament voted to get into the fight.

On this side of the Atlantic, the U.S. Congress is, well, on recess.

http://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell/watch/congress-on-recess-as-airstrikes-continue-333908547996

Which legislative body is being more responsible and responsive to a burgeoning international crisis?

I doubt you should think it’s the Congress of the United States of America.

The Brits have this one down correctly.

Prime Minister Cameron was right to call his colleagues back into session. Parliament was right to debate the issue and then take a critical vote.

President Barack Obama operates in a different form of government, in which the legislative branch is co-equal with the executive branch. Lawmakers in both congressional chambers operate under their own sets of rules. Democrats set the rules for the Senate; Republicans do the same in the House of Representatives.

I get that these folks have to campaign for their offices. Still, why have they spread hither and yon across our vast country at this time — while our young servicemen and women are risking their lives while trying to put down a despicable terrorist organization?

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Democrats asking to unleash Michelle for campaign

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Not long after he was elected in 2008, I mentioned to friends and family that I thought Barack Obama’s secret weapon would be his wife, Michelle.

She had as much charisma, maybe more smarts and at least as much political skill as her husband. You can choose to believe I said as much, or you can choose to believe I’m making this up. Whatever. It’s true and I’m sticking to my guns on that one.

Why not put her to work?

http://online.wsj.com/articles/democrats-urge-michelle-obama-to-hit-the-trail-1411342576?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

It turns out Democrats around the country are beginning to clamor for the first lady to hit the campaign trail on behalf of beleaguered candidates. She’d be better at drumming up support than her husband, whose poll numbers continue to languish in the low to mid-40 percent range.

Michelle Obama’s poll numbers? They’re a lot higher than her husband’s. That’s for certain.

The Democrats are clinging to a thin hope of retaining control of the U.S. Senate. Recent polls in North Carolina and Alaska suggest the Democrats might be turning the tide. And the Democrats got an unexpected break in, of all places, Kansas, where the Democratic Senate candidate dropped out, paving the way for an independent who likely will side with Democrats to beat the Republican incumbent.

So, why unleash the first lady in those states where Democrats have a puncher’s chance of holding on?

“She just tells a different story, because she’s not a politician and she’s not an elected official,” said a Democratic official in New Hampshire, where Sen. Jean Shaheen is locked in a tough fight against former Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who recently moved to New Hampshire to run against the Democratic incumbent.

Bring it, Michelle.

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POTUS has more power than he thought

I don’t usually listen to talk radio. All of it around here is of the right-wing variety, so I’m going to tune it out.

But this little item showed up on my Facebook feed today. It’s a snippet of an item from Mark Levin’s show.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/09/19/mark-levin-theres-more-enslaving-of-women-rapin/200819

OK, I trust you’ve listened to it and gleaned from it what I did.

It is that abuse of women — including rape and enslavement — is more prevalent during the Obama administration than at any time in history.

Wow, dude!

And to think that the president of the United States, who cannot get Congress to enact any of his legislative agenda, has all that power.

I’ll concede I listened only to that clip. I didn’t hear the entire tirade. Maybe there is more “context” out there that would cast it in a more reasonable light.

However, I doubt I needed to hear all of it to get the gist of the garbage that Levin is tossing out there.

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Bipartisanship returns … for a time at least

President Obama got what he asked for from Congress: authorization to train and arm Syrian rebels.

The vote in both congressional chambers crossed party lines, with a majority of Democrats and Republicans supporting his request.

Does this mean Congress is going to set aside its partisan differences among its members and with the president and start actually governing? I’m not holding my breath.

But I was struck by a comment I heard in the wake of the Senate vote from a lawmaker who said that the fact that Congress actually passed something with a bipartisan vote ought to send chills up the spines of the bad guys we’re trying to destroy in Syria and Iraq.

Indeed, the vote is a tricky one.

U.S. national security officials say they’ve identified “moderate” foes of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Those are the people who’ll get the arms and the training to use them. The Islamic State will be isolated and wiped out eventually, they contend.

Obama also said that he’s lined up a coalition of about 40 nations. France is going to start flying sorties over targets in Iraq and aiding in our bombing campaign against the Islamic State.

Great. But what about the Sunni Arab states that have pledged to aid in this effort?

They need to get in the game — quickly.

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Alzheimer's disease: Enemy No. 1

Several hundred Amarillo residents are going for a walk Saturday.

It’s an annual event here, as it is in communities all across the country. They’ll walk to call attention to Alzheimer’s disease. I won’t be among them that day, as I’ll be working.

However, my heart is with them. All of them. I want them to raise money and to keep raising money to fight a killer disease with which my family and I have intimate knowledge.

***

Thirty years ago this week, my dear mother died quietly in her sleep. Her death certificate lists pneumonia as the cause of her death.

Alzheimer’s disease was the real culprit.

Mom was 61. She’d been in failing health for several years. A doctor diagnosed her officially with Alzheimer’s disease only four years earlier but in reality she’d been exhibiting symptoms for years prior to that diagnosis.

Her behavior was changing. She was losing her cognitive skill. She lost them one at a time. The ability to sign her own name. The ability to drive a car. She couldn’t cook meals. Eventually she couldn’t bathe herself. She couldn’t dress herself. Near the end she couldn’t speak and was reduced to making strange murmuring noises.

Those who have witnessed their loved ones vanish in this manner before their eyes understand this fundamental truth about Alzheimer’s disease: It afflicts the caregiver far more than the patient. Mom was unaware of her surroundings, of those who loved her. She didn’t know when she lapsed in and out of lucidity. But we knew it. It broke our hearts.

Alzheimer’s disease hasn’t captured the public’s imagination the way, say, AIDS or various forms of cancer have gobbled up so much of the world’s attention. Why? I guess it’s because its victims generally are older and that its not the result of unhealthy behavior. It strikes people without warning or cause.

It struck Mom that way, just as it strikes those who’ve been diagnosed with this merciless, cruel disease.

Our nation is aging. That means more Americans will suffer from this terrible affliction.

My wish — as always — is that modern medicine can find a cure, a vaccine to eradicate Alzheimer’s disease.

The Saturday walk at Sam Houston Park will raise money toward that end.

My prayer today is that the money raised will put researchers over the top in their hunt for a cure that ends the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Sponsors will get NFL's attention

Leave it to the sponsors to get through to the dim bulbs who run professional football teams, some of which are populated by criminals.

They are the entities that will get to the owners, the general managers, the sports agents and perhaps even to the athletes.

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson is now suspended indefinitely while Texas courts seek to resolve the indictment charging him with child abuse in the whipping of his 4-year-old son. What made the Vikings switch so dramatically? The Radisson hotel chain pulled its sponsorship.

Former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice is under indefinite suspension for knocking his then-fiancée unconscious in a gambling casino elevator. Rice would marry the woman he knocked out cold and now the NFL Players Association is appealing his suspension.

What is driving all of this? The corporate sponsors who give big money to the NFL, to its teams and who pay players big money to endorse their products.

They’re going to yank those endorsements and those sponsorships.

That’s when the owners will get the message. Indeed, many of them are getting it already.

There likely will be more cases of domestic violence reported. Perhaps it’s a function of the violent sport. Hey, it might even be a consequence of the concussions these athletes are suffering.

Whatever the cause, domestic violence — and let’s include child abuse in that broad category of grotesque misbehavior — cannot be allowed to stand.

If the owners and team officials — along with the league — cannot muster up the guts to the right thing by themselves, then the sponsors will make the call for them.

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Oh, how I miss Molly Ivins

Watching the unfolding Texas political campaign for statewide office — and seeing how it mirrors the intense partisanship that divides the nation — I keep thinking of Molly Ivins.

I wish she were around to see and hear the things coming out of politicians’ mouths.

Ivins died in 2007. She was just 62. She could skewer a politician — usually conservative and Republican — with the kind of skill that hasn’t yet been found since her death.

She coined the term “Gov. Goodhair” when referring to our lame-duck governor, Rick Perry. She wrote with flash, panache and she packed a tremendous rhetorical wallop.

I found this link from Mother Jones looking back on Miss Molly’s career. The folks at Mother Jones were anticipating the presidential campaign of Gov. Goodhair and thought they’d share some of Ivins’s pearls with their readers.

Must-Reads: The Late, Great Molly Ivins on Rick Perry

With Texas politics leaning ever more rightward, Lone Star State pols needed someone who could hold them accountable for their silliness and outright frightening policies. Ivins was the one to do it.

In all the years I worked in daily journalism in Texas I was proud to publish Ivins’s work in the two Texas papers where I worked. One was in Beaumont, the other in Amarillo.

You know what I learned about readers in both communities, even with their disparate political leanings and demographic composition? Her fans loved her and her foes loved to hate her.

It’s that latter category of readers that fascinates me.

If she didn’t appear in either paper — for whatever reason — on a given day, my phone would ring. The conversation would go something like this:

Me: Hello?

Caller: Yeah, where’s Molly today? I missed her column in the paper. I don’t agree with her, but I sure like reading her work. She makes me laugh.

Me: She’s taking a break. She’ll be back.

Caller: Good. She’d better be or else I’m cancelling my subscription.

There aren’t many journalists who can count “fans” among those who disagree with their commentary.

Former Sen. Phil Gramm visited us in Amarillo once years ago and we asked him to comment on a biting criticism Ivins had made about him. Gramm laughed and said, “Oh, Molly probably cried when the Berlin Wall came down.”

Well, she wasn’t a godless communist. She was as patriotic as any American I’ve ever met.

Her brand of patriotism doesn’t wear well in some circles these days. Her biting humor, though, would go a long way in the midst of what passes for political discourse these days.

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The older I get, the more I sound like Dad

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

“I keep opening my mouth and my mother keeps coming out.”

I saw that saying once and laughed when I heard it. I never thought I’d be living it.

What do I mean? Well, my father had this habit of adding years to his life. It seems that whenever he celebrated a birthday he would start referencing his next birthday whenever the question of his age came up. The next-year reference wouldn’t start on the day of his birthday, but it would commence about a week or two, maybe a month later.

I’m not making this up.

Dad died just a bit past his 59th birthday, on Sept. 7, 1980.

I’ve since gone a good bit past that point in my own life. I’m 64, about to turn 65.

And what I’ve discovered myself doing is referencing my next birthday.

I don’t say that I’m 65. Instead, I usually say, “I am going to be 65 in December.” I’ve been saying that since, oh, this past June.

Why am I sounding a bit like my father? It might have something to do with the anticipation I’m feeling toward retirement.

I become eligible for Medicare benefits when I turn 65. I’ll start collecting a small pension from a previous employer effective on my 65th birthday. I’ll become fully vested in Social Security when I turn 66, so that date is looming quite large as well.

As for Medicare, I learned some time ago that my Veteran Administration health care enrollment makes it unnecessary for me to sign up for any of the supplemental coverage that Medicare offers — and I had that notion reaffirmed by a friend of mine who works extensively with elderly medical patients.

It’s not a bad thing that I’m sounding more like my father. He was a good man with a fairly compelling and outsized personality.

Perhaps I should take some advice that my mother offered many years ago. I’d say “I can’t wait” for something to happen, or “I wish it was the weekend.”

Her response: Don’t wish your life away.

The older I get and the closer I get to retirement, Mom’s advice is coming in loud and clear.

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Rand Paul: unfit for presidency

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Sen. Rand Paul has demonstrated the kooky trait that seems to endear him to some Republicans but demonstrates why he is unfit to sit in the Oval Office of the White House.

The Kentucky Republican said this week that if he’s elected president — fat chance — that the first executive order he’d issue would be to undo all previous executive orders.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/217599-rand-paul-says-as-president-he-would-repeal-all-executive-orders

Oh, but wait. His spokesman said he’s more or less kidding. His statement, which he made to Breitbart News, was meant to illustrate that President Obama’s overuse of unconstitutional executive authority is the real target.

OK, then. When he made that statement, did he wink at the reporter? Did he qualify what he said by alluding to what President Obama has done?

Umm. No. He said “all” and I presume he meant “all.”

Such action would repeal a lot of U.S. standing policy, such as the one that prohibits the United States from assassinating foreign leaders. That one was signed by President Gerald R. Ford — in 1975!

Sen. Paul is likely to run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. Good. I hope he does. The political debate needs a laugh or two. Lord knows too much seriousness can get a nation down.

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'Silver lining' showing up in Islamic State fight

President Obama sees a potential “silver lining” in the fight to eradicate the Islamic State.

It lies in capitals of Arab states that are joining the fight with the United States of America.

Obama sees ‘silver lining’ in ISIS fight

It’s time for those nations to declare war — or take hostile action of some sort — against terrorists who are perverting Islam into something that doesn’t resemble one of the world’s great religions.

The president spoke to a group of Democratic donors at a fundraiser and said, “We’re going to be able to build the kind of coalition that allows us to lead but also isn’t entirely dependent on what we do.”

Therein lies the potential silver lining.

For far too long these Islamic extremists have been declaring some kind of “holy war” against the “infidels” of the world. They have embarked on a campaign of terror in the name of Islam. Meanwhile, Sunni Arab states have been relatively quiet. They haven’t joined the fight in an active sense.

Today, just a few days after Obama announced his administration’s strategy to fight ISIL, a coalition is beginning to form and it is including Middle East nations with actual skin in this so-called game.

Yes, the United States can lead the coalition, but it cannot carry this fight all alone.

Let’s hope, therefore, that this coalition of Muslim nations not only holds up, but strengthens in its resolve to destroy terrorist groups that are harming them as much as they seek to harm The Great Satan.