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Gas prices zoom up … why?

Oil speculators have become the bane of many Americans’ existence.

They’re the folks who push panic buttons every time a crisis flares in a region of the world that produces oil.

Iraq. Oil. Crisis. Price spikes. Boom!

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/iraq-gas-prices-107841.html?hp=l5

The price of gasoline jumped a dime per gallon today across Amarillo because, I guess, speculators have determined that the Iraq crisis is going to result in a major disruption of oil from that region to the rest of the world.

Politico.com reports that the Midwest region of the United States is the first to feel the hit. I guess that would include the Texas Panhandle.

President Obama said the crisis in Iraq hadn’t created “major disruptions of oil supplies.”

I’ll take him at his word.

Back to oil speculators. I continue to be amazed that gas prices are subject to these dramatic increases. Decreases — if they come — usually arrive in dribs and drabs. A penny here and there. Maybe two cents a gallon.

Frankly, it remains a mystery to me that the price of oil has to move at all even when these crises erupt.

This country imports a tiny fraction of its oil from Iraq in the first place. The bulk of our imported oil — which now comprises a minority of all the petroleum consumed by Americans — comes from friendlier sources, such as Canada and Mexico.

But it’s those speculators that drive me more than just a tad nuts as the price of gasoline zooms upward.

I don’t believe I’m the only person who shares this view.

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Listen carefully to Fox News

Living in the World That Fox News Built

The above link is a short essay posted on Mother Jones, a left-wing political website.

The blog posted here is from a guy named Kevin Drum, who invites viewers to watch Fox News for an extended period to fully understand how the network has helped redefine the American political conservative movement.

Drum writes: “Over the years, the more that I’ve thought about the evolution of conservative politics over the past few decades, the more I become convinced that Fox News is really at the center of it. Sure, it all started with a base of Reagan and the Christian Right and talk radio and the Republican takeover of the South. But Newt Gingrich was the game changer. He’s the one who brought conservative politics to a truly new, truly unprecedented level of toxic rancor.”

I don’t watch Fox News much any longer. I used to tune in to a few news shows. Then I, too, became disinterested in the Fox bias, which of course ran counter to my own bias — which I admit to freely and without apology.

This notion of watching a media outlet with which one disagrees takes me back to a time, back in Beaumont, when I did the same thing.

I was talking at the time to the then-mayor of Beaumont, Maury Meyers, a fine gentleman with whom I had a nice relationship. I complained to Meyers about Rush Limbaugh’s TV show, which aired briefly in the early 1990s. Maury invited me to watch more than a single episode before passing judgment on Limbaugh’s show.

I did as Meyers suggested — and concluded after a week of watching Rush’s rants that he was worse than I imagined.

I wrote in a column, after subjecting myself to the ordeal, that Limbaugh was to political commentary what Willard Scott was to weather forecasting. Neither man really knew anything about the subjects with which they dealt. “Willard Scott makes me laugh,” I wrote at the time, “Rush Limbaugh makes me sick.”

Fox News is a major player these days in the on-going American political drama. Drum concludes:

“Yes, the tea party has won. But it won because of support from Fox News. In reality, it’s Fox News that won. And for all that Fox gets a lot of attention, I still wonder how many non-conservatives really watch it. Not just the occasional clip on Jon Stewart or Media Matters that’s good for a laugh or an eye roll. How many really sit down occasionally and take in a full evening? Or a whole day? Because that’s the only way you’ll really understand.”

Yep. I do understand.

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No troops to Iraq? Good news

Imagine for a moment a situation in the White House, around April 1975.

North Vietnam is sending thousands of troops into South Vietnam. The United States has ended its role in that country by pulling its troops out. The South Vietnamese are left to defend themselves. They’re doing a lousy job of it.

NVA forces are storming toward Saigon and other key cities in the south. Gerald Ford’s national security team comes to him and says, “Mr. President, we have to send our troops back into South Vietnam to save that country from being conquered by the North. What’s your call, sir?”

Do you think the president ever would have given a moment of serious thought to such an idea? Hardly. President Ford didn’t do any of that. Heck, I seriously doubt that option ever was on the table.

It shouldn’t be now as Iraq fights to preserve its hard-won transition from ham-handed dictatorship to some form of democratic rule.

And that is why President Obama is correct to assert that our future involvement will not involve sending troops back to the battlefield.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/obama-we-will-do-our-part-iraq-wont-send-troops-n130536

The president today laid down an important marker for Iraq. “Over the past decade, American troops have made extraordinary sacrifices,” he said. “Any actions that we may take to provide assistance to Iraqi security forces have to be joined by a serious and sincere effort by Iraq.

The chaos “should be a wakeup call to Iraq’s leaders,” he said, and “could pose a threat eventually to American interests as well.”

Are there some military options available? Perhaps, but they should involve air power only and perhaps only in the form of unmanned aircraft, drones, that could be deployed to fire heavy ordnance at the bad guys who are seeking to take control of the country.

Americans’ “extraordinary sacrifices” included thousands of dead and wounded. The country has no appetite for more war. However, we must do “our part,” as the president said, in trying to secure a country that may be headed for the brink.

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Here's lookin' at ya, Gov. Perry

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry has opened the can a little more widely as it regards homosexuality.

Oh, boy. Here we go again.

Perry went to San Francisco this week, where he attended the Commonwealth Club of California. He was asked: Is homosexuality a disorder?

His answer reportedly drew some gasps from the audience. He said that “whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that.”

He went on: “I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.”

http://news.msn.com/us/perry-discusses-view-of-homosexuality#tscptme

As I read those comments, I am surmising that Perry believes someone’s sexual orientation is a “lifestyle choice.” He believes people choose to be intimate with others of the same sex.

Interesting, eh?

His comments came after the Texas Republican Party went around the bend by approving a platform plank that endorses “reparative therapy” for gay people, meaning they can be counseled into becoming straight.

Oh my.

Now the governor of a major U.S. state equates sexual orientation with alcoholism.

I don’t want to repeat myself here, as I’ve covered much of this already in a previous blog post.

Allow me to just say it once more, with feeling: I do not believe one makes a conscious choice on their sexual orientation. It is part of their DNA. They are born straight or gay. There is no correlation between one’s sexual orientation and one’s affliction with drinking too much.

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Cool it with 'We told you so'

Congressional Republicans, quite predictably, are now declaring “We told you so!” while insurgents storm Iraqi cities and threaten to launch an all-out civil war in a country once occupied and governed by the United States of America.

Let’s cool it a bit, ladies and gents.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/john-mccain-iraq-criticize-barack-obama-107780.html?hp=t3_3

Sunni Muslims — from the very same sect that gave us Saddam Hussein — have launched full-scale attacks on key Iraq cities. They’ve taken Mosul and Tikrit and are believed to be headed toward Baghdad. The Iraqi armed forces are trying to defend the cities, but so far with little success.

The Iraqis are asking President Obama to supply air power to strike hard at the insurgents. Republicans are demanding it, too. That might be a good option for the president to employ if we can bring enough air power to bear.

Republicans opposed the president’s withdrawal from Iraq, contending that the country wasn’t yet ready to defend itself fully against terrorists and insurgents.

Thus, they’re yelling it loudly that they were right and Obama was wrong.

Sen. John McCain — who never met a war he didn’t want the United States to fight — has demanded the resignation of the president’s entire national security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Let’s look back, though.

* Was it prudent to launch a war against Iraq in the first place back in March 2003, when President Bush declared to the world that Saddam had chemical weapons and was going to develop nukes to launch against Israel? It turned out he had neither.

* Did the Republican president misread more than a decade ago the Iraqis’ ability to transition from totalitarianism to democratic rule when they had no history ever of living in freedom and liberty?

* Remember when Vice President Cheney said we’d be greeted as “liberators” and not “occupiers” when we invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein? It didn’t happen. The war continued for years afterward, costing us more than 4,000 young American lives.

* And aren’t Americans just sick and tired of war? Don’t public opinion surveys tell us over and over that we no longer have the stomach for wars with no end?

The Iraq War went bad from the get-go. President Bush made a colossal mistake in linking Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks and that, I submit, is what we are reaping today.

So … the current president ought to order air strikes at the insurgents and try to put down the attacks without the use of ground forces. We’ve got plenty of ordnance we can drop on the bad guys.

As for the carping and chest-thumping on Capitol Hill, how about speaking with one voice and letting that voice belong to the commander in chief, who’s got to make the tough calls?

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Take care of the home folks

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Memo to congressional incumbents all across this great land: You’d better pay careful attention to the people you represent in Washington, D.C.

That might be the most significant takeaway from U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning, Earth-shaking defeat this week in his race for Congress from Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/06/cantors-defeat-is-all-about-frustration-with-washingtons-old-ways.html/

I still haven’t grasped fully what happened back in Virginia this week, when political novice David Brat smoked Cantor by 11 percentage points in a low-turnout Republican primary election.

Still, I keep reading from those close to the situation that Cantor had become too much a Man of Washington and less of a Man of the People Back Home. Perhaps they grew tired of him standing in front of those banks of microphones among House GOP leaders. Maybe they didn’t think it mattered to them that their guy was part of the GOP caucus elite in the House and that he was in line to become the next speaker of the House when John Boehner decided he’d had enough fun.

OK, now pay attention here, House Armed Services Committee Chairman-to-be Mac Thornberry.

You’re going to win re-election this November from the 13th Congressional District of Texas. You’re also likely to become chairman of a powerful House committee when the next Congress convenes in January.

This is just me talking, Mac, but you’d better start scheduling a lot of town hall meetings and photo ops back home in your district well in advance of the next congressional election, which occurs in 2016.

If Eric Cantor — one of the House’s more conservative members — can get outflanked on the right by a novice, then it can happen to anyone, it seems to me.

It well might be that in this political climate, no member of Congress — no matter how powerful and media savvy they are — is immune from the kind of political earthquake that swallowed Eric Cantor whole.

Yep, that means you, too, Rep. Thornberry.

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Texas GOP's madness is catching on

It now appears that the Texas Republican Party’s insanity is a communicable disease.

The madness has taken hold of the Virginia GOP, which this week booted a tea party congressional heavyweight out of office in favor of someone who’s even more in the tea party camp.

Go figure that one out.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/opinion/brazile-eric-cantor-gop/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

Donna Brazile, a noted Democratic strategist and talking head for CNN and other media outlets, believes the tea party wing of the Republican Party can declare victory in its civil war with the establishment. The battle’s over, at least for now, says Brazile.

U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had his head handed to him by political novice David Brat. Cantor outspent Brat by a lot and still lost. Brat now is the favorite to win the House seat that Cantor occupied for seven terms.

If the tea party can knock Cantor off his feet, well, the Republican Party that many of us have grown to know and respect — at some level, at least — is a goner.

Texas Republicans met this past week and passed a party platform that includes a lot of extreme right-wing planks, one of which is to endorse something called “reparative therapy” that is supposed to persuade gay people to become, well, no longer gay.

By my way of thinking, that is a sure sign that the Texas GOP had gone around the bend.

What I guess I didn’t realize — until this week’s returns came in from Virginia — is that other state Republicans have been similarly afflicted. I had thought the tea party had talked itself out of business.

It’s ba-a-a-ck.

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Grand jury no bills animal control

A Randall County grand jury has returned what could be seen as an unsatisfactory decision on Amarillo Animal Control’s controversial treatment of animals in its possession.

The grand jury decided against indicting anyone for criminal wrongdoing in what has been a major embarrassment for the city.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=1056604#.U5kLwFJOWt8

District Attorney James Farren expressed surprise at the no-bill decision.

I guess we have to live with the grand jury decision, given the system we have of investigating these kinds of activities.

The good news for the animals under the care of the city, however, is that (a) the two people at the top of the Animal Control Department chain of command are gone and (b) changes have been implemented to stop the kind of abuse inflicted on the unwanted pets.

Former director Mike McGee and assistant director Shannon Barlow both have “retired” from the city. They should have been canned after it was revealed that animals had been euthanized improperly. They were being administered the wrong drugs and there had been reports of considerable suffering by the animals during the process.

Changes were made almost immediately, while McGee and Barlow were put on “administrative leave,” which meant they were getting paid while being ordered off the job.

The city issued a press release that stated: “Operations at Animal Control move forward under the guidance of interim director Scott McDonald, as the search for a permanent animal control director takes place. The City continues to look at areas for improvement at the animal shelter with the goal of increasing adoptions and making the shelter a sanitary, comfortable place for animals. Improvements include operational changes and improvements to facilities, animal intake and care procedures, and employee training practices. An internal management review will be undertaken immediately to determine if there have been noncriminal violations of policies or procedures and to further assist in improving shelter operations.”

The city should proceed with that “internal management review.” Meantime, look long and hard for an administrator who will take better care of these animals. After all, a “shelter” by definition is a place where unwanted animals at least can be granted temporary sanctuary for the time they have left.

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Sandy Hook didn't stop anything

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Hey, wait a minute. Wasn’t that mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., supposed to be the Mother of All Wakeup Calls to end gun violence in America?

Weren’t we supposed to have been shaken to our core, energized in an unprecedented way to seek an end to this madness?

I thought so, too.

Silly me.

Check out the map here and ask yourself: Why has this violence continued?

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/10/5797306/map-school-shooting-sandy-hook

Seventy-four.

That’s the number of school shootings that have occurred since Sandy Hook, where 20 first-graders and six teachers were killed by that single madman, who then shot himself to death.

The latest incident occurred near my hometown of Portland, Ore., where a 15-year-old Reynolds High School student walked into a locker room and killed a 14-year-old freshman instantly with a single bullet. The shooter then took his own life.

We’re outraged yet again. President Obama said after the Portland tragedy that “we’re the only industrialized nation” where this kind of violence occurs with such regularity.

I don’t have the answer. Nor do I know where to find it.

The Second Amendment says we have the right to keep and bear arms. I don’t believe it says everyone in America — regardless of their mental condition — has the same rights to a firearm as most of the rest of us.

There must be a way to prevent them from putting their hands on deadly weapons — and putting our children at such horrifying risk.

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Cantor loss leaves mixed feelings

Eric Cantor’s stunning loss Tuesday almost seems like a punch line in one of those “good news, bad news” gags.

You walk up to a Democrat and say, “Hey, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. What’s the good news? Well, the good news is that Eric Cantor was defeated in the Republican Party primary race for Congress; that means he won’t be around much longer to obstruct legislation at every turn.

“The bad news is that the guy who beat him will be even more of an obstructionist.”

That’s how I’m feeling just a few hours after Cantor got drummed out of office by a college professor, Dave Brat, who was running for political office for the very first time — and who got outspent a zillion-to-one by the well-heeled incumbent.

Cantor’s never been my favorite member of Congress. I always thought the tea party wing of the GOP loved the guy. Didn’t he boast about being one of them? Wasn’t he proud of the votes he cast to oppose initiatives proposed by his Democratic colleagues?

Well, it turned out that immigration was the deal breaker for tea party zealots. Cantor signed on to a version of the Dream Act pushed by President Obama. That did it as far as the tea party faithful went. They would have none of that.

Dave Brat seized on it and won by 11 percentage points.

I would be glad to see Cantor go except that the guy who’s now favored to win the House seat is even more extreme than the guy he beat.

And that, I submit, is really and truly saying something.