Category Archives: national news

national news, political news

Sen. Franken’s ‘joke’ gets a fresh look

Fifteen years ago, before he was a United States senator, Al Franken was a comedian.

And a pretty funny one at that.

He also hosted a radio talk show on the progressive Air America network.

In 2000, he wrote an essay in which he said this about Sen. John McCain: “I have tremendous respect for McCain but I don’t buy the war hero thing. Anybody can be captured. I thought the idea was to capture them. As far as I’m concerned he sat out the war.”

The statement is getting some added attention these days in light of what Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said of his fellow Republican’s service record.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/al-franken-criticize-jon-mccain-captured-donald-trump-120359.html?cmpid=sf#ixzz3gS3qJiW9

Franken was elected to the Senate in 2008 in a razor-thin margin. He has become a leading progressive Democrat in that body. According to his spokesman, he made the statement about McCain as a joke. He told McCain that very thing when McCain was a guest on Franken’s Air America radio show.

Well, whatever Franken’s motives were in his pre-Senate days, I don’t find a single thing funny about what John McCain endured for five-plus years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

Yes, he’s saluted his Senate colleague since then. I’m sure the tributes have been sincere.

But here’s an example of how one’s words never disappear.

national news, political news

Most entertaining campaign in history is on tap

So help me, I didn’t think it was possible for any campaign to be more entertaining than the 2012 campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

Thank you, Donald Trump, for smashing my expectations for the 2016 campaign.

The Donald has managed to do what I thought was impossible: He’s managed to make the likes of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain look and sound almost reasonable, rational and mainstream.

He’s shot off his mouth about Mexican immigrants who come here illegally, stereotyping them as murderers, rapists, drug dealers — along with “some good people.” He’s called Mitt Romney a “loser” because he got beat in a campaign that he should have won; he’s challenged whether Ted Cruz of Texas is a legitimate candidate for the presidency, given that he was born in Canada.

And now he’s said John McCain isn’t really a war hero, even though he was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, while saying in the next breath that he likes “those who weren’t captured.”

Other Republicans have condemned Trump’s buffoonery. So have Democratic candidates.

It’s been an amazing campaign to date and we’re still months away from those Iowa caucuses and the lead-off New Hampshire primary.

Trump has managed to suck all the air out of every room he enters. The other candidates? They can’t be heard above all the ruckus created by Trump’s amazing ability to call attention to himself.

Four years ago, Bachmann and Cain — along with Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and even Rick Santorum — tried to raise a stink about this and/or that. They all were “frontrunners” for a time. Then came Romney, with all of his money and political connections, to win the GOP nomination.

Now we have Trump, who reportedly has much more wealth than Romney — and who brags about his portfolio incessantly — making a lot of racket.

But here’s the deal. He won’t be nominated. He’s going out with his guns blazing (figuratively, of course). Someone else will be nominated. If I had to bet on the next GOP nominee, I’d put my money today on either former Florida Gov. John Ellis (Jeb) Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. But they’re so boring.

Trump has turned this campaign into a circus.

Way to go, Donald. You’ve made the preceding cast of GOP contenders/pretenders look like statespersons.

medical news, military news, national news

Shooter was a drugged-up nut case?

The man who killed those five U.S. servicemen in Chattanooga, Tenn., now appears to have been a disturbed fellow who might have had a drug problem.

Police killed Mohammad Abdulazeez after he gunned down four Marines and a sailor.

CHATTANOOGA SHOOTER: ON ANTIDEPRESSANTS, SLEEPING PILLS, MUSCLE RELAXANTS

He was a Muslim, which of course brought out the usual calls for doing such things as banning all Muslims from entering the United States.

However, the FBI has not yet found a single terrorist link to the young man. What’s been learned instead is that he was a deeply troubled fellow with a history of emotional trauma and drug abuse.

Indeed, his medical condition sounded like it could be anyone capable of doing what he did.

It’s depressing enough that someone would kill five American servicemen in cold blood. It’s made even worse when we start jumping to conclusions that seek to intensify an already-intense worldwide situation involving international terrorists.

Abdulazeez likely wasn’t a terrorist. Yes, he committed a despicable act. However, until we find evidence that he was involved with terrorist organizations, we ought to stop the demagoguery until we collect all the facts.

national news

Lower the flag, Mr. President

Readers of this blog know that I tilt left, and that I generally support the policies put forth by the Obama administration.

However, the president has made a mistake — so far, at least — by not ordering a simple act of tribute to five brave men.

These are the individuals who were killed in the massacre in Chattanooga, Tenn. Four of them were Marines, one was a sailor.

A gunman shot them to death. All five were on active duty. All of them essentially died in service to their country.

The White House flag should be lowered to half-staff to honor their memory. And unlike the situation in South Carolina, where that state’s legislature had to approve a bill to remove the rebel flag from the statehouse grounds, the president of the United States — the commander in chief — sole authority to act.

President Obama has erred by not ordering the White House flag to fly at half-staff.

http://m.snopes.com/2015/07/19/chattanooga-flags-half-staff/

national news

‘The Eagle has landed’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E96EPhqT-ds

I might be the only person in America who did not watch Apollo 11 land on the moon via CBS News’s legendary coverage of the event.

I was tuned in that day to NBC News. I heard the late Frank McGee intone, simply: “Man … is on the moon.”

But the link here is of the CBS coverage of the event, which occurred 46 years ago today.

It brings to mind this simple truth: We grew complacent about space travel over the years.

We launched a space race to the moon with the then-Soviet Union. President Kennedy had declared in 1961 that the goal would to be to “put a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth” by the end of the 1960s. We got there in the seventh month of the final year of that decade.

It was an exciting time. It was fraught with peril. But we knew that and at some level accepted the risk as part of the grand strategy, the goal. We had to beat those dreaded Soviets and by golly, we did!

The lunar program would end in 1972. NASA couldn’t justify spending so much money on missions that had grown — this is he word they used — “routine.”

There could be nothing routine about putting human beings atop a flaming rocket carrying thousands of pounds of fuel and sending them into outer space.

Tragedy would strike later. We’d go through the Skylab program. Then came the shuttle missions. Challenger blew apart on Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members. On Feb. 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated on its return from space, killing seven more crew members.

Routine? Hardly.

But on that glorious summer day in 1969, two men — the late Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin — had us holding our breath as they walked into history.

military news, national news, political news

Politics of ‘personal destruction’ bites the GOP

1 Comment

This comes from Bill Press, a noted Democratic Party loyalist, TV commentator, author, pundit and partisan gadfly.

He posted this on his Facebook feed today.

“You might say: ‘What goes around, comes around.’

“In 2004, it was OK for Republicans to attack war hero John Kerry. But suddenly in 2015, it’s not OK for another Republican to attack war hero John McCain. I’m sorry. That doesn’t work. To murder yet another aphorism: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

“Don’t get me wrong. I think Donald Trump’s comments about John McCain are disgusting. I like McCain. I believe he’s the real thing: a genuine American war hero, who deserves the respect and gratitude of every American, no matter what you think of his politics.

“But Republicans can’t have it both ways. They can’t practice one kind of politics – and then whine and moan when somebody plays the same kind of politics against them.

“Two lessons to be learned here. First, the Republican Party should do what I suggested a month ago: Disown Donald Trump and throw him out of the party.

“Two, Republicans should stick to the issues and stop playing the politics of personal destruction. Because, eventually, it’ll turn around and bite you in the ass. It just did.”

I’ll add only this.

John Kerry and John McCain happen to be close friends. Their Vietnam War combat experience is their common bond. They worked together in the U.S. Senate to help establish diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam.

And Kerry, who’s now secretary of state, has strongly condemned the comments that Trump made about his friend.

national news, political news

McCain doesn’t need apology, but he deserves one

John McCain says he doesn’t “need an apology” from Donald Trump, who’s inflamed the political rhetoric by suggesting that McCain isn’t a “war hero.”

The Arizona U.S. senator, though, said family members of others who have served and sacrificed for their country need the apology from the flame-throwing Republican presidential candidate.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/donald-trump-john-mccain-feud-veterans-usa-today-op-ed-120347.html?hp=t3_r

Well, if you’ll excuse me for butting in, senator … but you certainly deserve an apology from the bombastic blowhard, Trump.

McCain’s story is about as well-known as any political story out there. His Navy fighter jet was shot down during McCain’s 23rd combat mission during the Vietnam War. He suffered a broken leg and two broken arms when he ejected from his airplane over Hanoi. McCain was taken captive and imprisoned for more than five years. He was tortured, held in solitary confinement, tortured some more. His injuries never were treated properly. He resisted his captors the best he could.

If that doesn’t define heroism, then perhaps nothing does.

McCain told “Morning Joe”: “I’m not a hero, but those who were my senior ranking officers, people like Col. Bud Day, a congressional Medal of Honor winner, and those that have inspired us to do things that we otherwise wouldn’t have been capable of doing. Those are the people that I think he owes an apology to.”

Trump — who obtained multiple student and medical deferments during the war and never served — has bloviated quite badly over McCain’s service.

Yes, he should apologize to McCain — and to all others who have served.

 

national news

Klansman statement is soaked in irony

Time for a pop quiz, ladies and gentlemen.

You ready? Here goes: What comes into your mind — immediately — when you hear the term “Ku Klux Klan”?

Time’s up.

The answer should be: hatred, bigotry, violence, virulent and vicious racism and anti-Semitism.

It is with that context established that I must offer a brief comment on a statement offered this weekend at a clash between supporters of the KKK and the Black Panthers, who gathered in front of the South Carolina state capitol to protest the taking down of the Confederate flag. The flag came down as a response to the heinous murders of nine African-Americans at a church in Charleston, S.C., by a white gunman. A young man is accused of the crime.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/19/us/south-carolina-kkk-black-panther-rally/index.html

The KKK and the Panthers rallied today to express different points of view of the flag.

One comment stands out, at least to me. It came from a Klansman, who told CNN: “The Confederate flag does not represent hate. A lot of Americans died for that flag,”

Ah, yes. It “does not represent hate.”

Back to my question about the Klan: What words come to mind when you hear the term?

I’ve actually covered a couple of Klan rallies. Both were in Texas; one in Orange and one in Amarillo. They took place to protest government policies that helped African-Americans. What was the predominant symbol seen at both rallies? The Confederate battle flag.

Let’s recall — if we need reminding — that the Klan has a long and infamous history of violence toward blacks and Jews. Lynching? Shootings? Arson? Cross-burnings?

And they have performed these acts while standing next to or under the Confederate battle flag. They’ve wrapped themselves in that banner. They proclaimed proudly that they stand for what the flag stands for. And that would be … ?

The Klansman is right about one element of his statement. A “lot of Americans” did die for the flag. He didn’t say, apparently, that they fought on the side that sought to tear the country apart. Why was that? Because they fought that that euphemistic principle of “states’ rights,” which was to allow states to continue the practice of slavery.

So, let’s quit slinging the horse manure around on this issue.

national news, political news, State news

Get rid of gun free zones? Really?

Back in 1995, when the Texas Legislature was debating whether to allow Texans to carry concealed handguns, the publisher for whom I worked posed an interesting question to our state senator.

“Why don’t you just allow folks to carry guns on their hips and walk around the State Capitol?” he asked the late Teel Bivins, a Republican and an avid proponent of gun-owners rights.

I cannot recall Bivins’s response. Perhaps he thought it was a rhetorical question.

But it comes to mind now as I read this essay about gun free zones in the wake of the Chattanooga murders of four Marines and a sailor.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/gun-control-us-capitol-120310.html?hp=t2_r#.VapPCbnbKt8

Why not allow guns into the U.S. Capitol?

Joel Zeitz, the author of the essay, noted that Donald Trump sounded like a mainstream Republican when he said we need to “get rid of gun free zones.” According to Trump, the men who died at the hands of the shooter didn’t have a chance because they were in a zone where gun are prohibited, which of course didn’t stop the shooter from sneaking a gun into the place.

The U.S. Capitol has seen gun violence erupt. People have gotten past security systems with weapons. They have harmed individuals and damaged the structure.

Would guns inside the Capitol stopped the incidents? I have trouble believing they would have worked.

Texas’ concealed handgun carry law, by the way, hasn’t been the disaster some of us thought it would be when the Legislature enacted it two decades ago.

However, this argument that more guns makes us a safer society has yet to be proven — at least to me.

national news

Shooting ignites knee-jerk reaction

Here come the knee-jerk activists.

Someone twists off, goes on a shooting spree, kills four U.S. Marines and, oh yes, he happens to be Muslim.

How do some of us react: Curtail immigration from Muslim countries. Why, shoot, let’s just ban them altogether.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chattanooga-shooter-came-from-middle-class-muslim-family/2015/07/16/815c39c2-2c04-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html

Mohammad Abdulazeez grew up in Chattanooga, Tenn., the son of a conservative Muslim couple who came here when the young man was infant. He now is accused of killing four people in a shooting rampage.

What fueled the gunman’s anger? Was he determined to carry out a jihad against the “infidels”?

Who in the world knows what triggered the outburst?

I do believe, though, that we must not react to this tragedy as if it somehow fits some still-unknown pattern.

Abdulazeez might embody all the things many Americans fear the most: a mass attack on Americans by people who are intent on killing all of us.

Then again, he might just be a disturbed young man who had a beef with someone and then snapped.

Those things happen with people of all faiths, ethnic origins or socio-economic backgrounds.