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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.

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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.

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Do fundraisers count?

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This just in: State Sen. Dan Patrick, the Republican candidate for Texas lieutenant governor, attended a fundraiser at the home of state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo.

I blogged earlier today wondering whether Seliger would stand with Patrick as he sought to become the next presiding officer of the Texas Senate.

Still waiting for Seliger and Patrick to share a dais

According to someone who was there, Seliger did in fact play host to a fundraiser for Patrick.

I’ve noted a time or two that Seliger and Patrick aren’t exactly close. I’ll stand by that assessment. I’ll also stand by my view that Seliger is a loyal enough Republican to want to see a fellow GOP official win his election against a Democrat.

I’m still not clear as to whether this fundraiser was common public knowledge. Many times politicians “sneak” into communities under the media radar to attend these fundraisers. The events are known to (a) the candidate (b) the host, obviously and (c) potential deep-pocketed donors who want to see the candidate elected.

They have dinner, a few cocktails, the candidate makes his pitch off the record to the donors who either write a check on the spot or pledge to do so later.

That’s my understanding.

The question, though, remains: Are we going to see these two loyal Republicans arm-in-arm in public?

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Still waiting for Seliger and Patrick to share a dais

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The November election is now just a few weeks away.

It’s more or less a given that Republican Greg Abbott will be elected governor over Democrat Wendy Davis.

It’s less of a given — but still somewhat likely — that Republican Dan Patrick defeat Democrat Leticia Van de Putte in the race for lieutenant governor.

The lieutenant governor’s race arguably is more important, given that the lieutenant governor presides over the Texas Senate and controls legislative flow from the upper chamber. So I’m watching this one with a keen sense of anticipation.

That said, I’m still waiting for an announcement that Patrick is coming to the Texas Panhandle to look for votes. It’s not that he needs the Panhandle, the most reliably Republican region in a most reliably Republican state.

My taste for political drama also is wondering whether state Sen. Kel Seliger will join Patrick on a dais at, say, the Tri-State Fair. Seliger is an Amarillo Republican who serves with Patrick in the Senate, as he does with Van de Putte.

Here’s what I know about Seliger’s relationship with Patrick: It’s not good. Patrick is being counseled heavily by Michael Quinn Sullivan, who Seliger more or less detests. He’s said so openly. His very own primary challenger, Mike Canon of Midland, is a Sullivan disciple who touted the tea party rhetoric that has become so popular among Texas Republicans. Seliger would have none of it.

Seliger is enough of a loyal Republican that he wouldn’t dare endorse Van de Putte openly, in public. There’s no telling how he’s going to vote once he gets the chance to cast his ballot.

He also is enough of a so-called “establishment Republican” to loathe many of the tea party faithful’s unwillingness to work with Democrats. Indeed, Patrick himself has laid down that marker by suggesting that if he’s elected lieutenant governor he’ll steer away from picking Senate Democrats to chair committees, which David Dewhurst has done while he’s been lieutenant governor.

The prospect of a Lt. Gov. Patrick taking office in January is going to make serving in the Senate a lot less fun for Seliger than it has been to date.

And for that reason, I remain fairly certain we aren’t going to see the two men slapping each other on the back when Patrick comes calling on the Panhandle for voters’ support.

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Bad guys at the gate? Hardly

The Washington Times, a leading conservative-leaning newspaper, splashed a large headline Wednesday proclaiming that Islamic State terrorists are “planning to infiltrate” our southern border.

There you have it. Panic has set in.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/10/us-confirms-islamic-state-planning-infiltration-bo/

Social media is starting to churn up some dire stories about Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant getting ready to invade the United States. The Washington Times story suggests, if you parse the language with just a bit of care, that ISIL is merely “making plans” to do some bad things to us.

Does that mean ISIL is at the gate? Does it mean an attack is imminent? Does it mean ISIL is all set to start exploding bombs, capturing Americans and doing terrible things to their captives?

It means nothing of the kind.

All the story really means is that ISIL wants to do all those things. Well, duh? Who doesn’t know that already?

We should do well to take a deep breath and place just a bit of trust in the national security professionals’ ability to do the job for which they are highly trained.

I’m less willing at this point to listen to politicians looking to get their names in the news by making dire assertions that to date cannot be proven.

Do we dismiss the suggestions that ISIL is “planning” to attack the United States of America? Of course not.

We shouldn’t interpret such expressions of intent as anything more than that. I’m going to continue to place my trust on the men and women who are trained to keep us safe. I’ll start to worry when they sound the alarm.

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'Residual force' in Iraq? No thanks

At the risk of sounding as if I’m blaming George W. Bush for today’s difficulties in Iraq, I want to offer this notion of how we got to this point.

President Bush took us to war in Iraq in March 2003 intending to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein and install a government friendly to this country. He succeeded in the first part and succeed partly in the second.

What never has been accomplished is ensuring that the new government and its military infrastructure can defend itself against evil forces.

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-and-jay-carney-have-a-heated-showdown-on-isis-2014-9

We’re now dealing with a government that is trying to fend off the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Remember that this is the government we wanted in power. President Bush left office in January 2009 and President Barack Obama has taken up the fight.

All this blustering and posturing about who’s responsible for the chaos in Iraq seems to ignore what we did more than a decade ago to bring this about.

Sen. John McCain and former White House spokesman Jay Carney went toe to toe on CNN, arguing over whether Obama’s latest strategy against ISIL is sufficient. McCain keeps arguing about whether the president should have kept a “residual force” in Iraq to prevent ISIL’s surge. Residual force? How many men and women should constitute such a force?

McCain knows full well that American public opinion remains in no mood to keep American forces planted squarely in harm’s way if the Iraqi government is incapable of defending itself, which has been the goal of two U.S. administrations.

Barack Obama has announced his strategy in destroying ISIL. He wants to use air power and wants to enlist regional allies to provide intelligence, technical support and arms to assist “moderate” opposition forces in Iraq and Syria.

This idea of returning to a combat role in Iraq is a non-starter. We are learning the hard way that building a democratic society from scratch is virtually impossible — especially when the people who you intend to run that society have zero knowledge of what democracy looks like.

That’s what we got when we invaded Iraq.