Category Archives: national news

business news, national news, political news

Jobs report due; get ready for unfounded griping

The Labor Department reported today that claims for unemployment benefits fell to a 14-year low.

This comes on the eve of its monthly jobs report, due out Friday.

So, what will happen? Usually, when the jobless claims dip as they did this week, it means a glowing jobs report is sure to follow.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-jobless-claims-fall-to-14-year-low/ar-BBdiTRM

I’m not going to predict any numbers here, because I have no clue what they’ll be. I’m thinking, though, the job growth in the private sector will match the recent trend, which has been very good.

So, how will the Obama administration’s critics react to this latest bit of sparkling economic news?

They’ll say, “Oh well, the Christmas buying season is almost here and retailers are hiring temporary help to assist with the boost in business.” They’ll pooh-pooh the numbers as a seasonal aberration. Big deal. Where’s the beef? The economy is still in dire straits. Didn’t the mid-term elections just prove that Americans are uneasy about the economy and the direction the country is heading?

This goes to show what politics does to reality.

The reality is that the economy has come back. It’s getting even stronger.

I heard an oil-and-gas analyst today suggest that lower fuel prices are going to give consumers more disposable income to spend at shopping malls across the country, suggesting a booming holiday shopping season that commences with Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving.

Oh, but that’s all smoke and mirrors, the critics will say.

Fiddlesticks.

 

 

national news, political news

Here's a way to demonstrate diversity

New members of Congress proclaim a “new day” has dawned on Capitol Hill. You hear it after every election.

I get their enthusiasm and their interest in stirring the pot.

Here, though, is the surest way to actually prove a new day has arrived at the seat of federal government power.

The Congressional Black Caucus needs to invite two new members of Congress to its membership: U.S. Rep.-elect Mia Love of Utah and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

They are Republicans.

Traditionally, the CBC has been all-Democrat organization. It goes back to its founding in 1969. The Senate at the time had a black member, Edward Brooke, R-Mass., who didn’t join.

Since then, its membership has comprised Democrats only.

I see nothing in the title of the organization that says its members must be from one party. The very term “Congressional Black Caucus” states quite clearly that all African-Americans who take the oath to serve in Congress are eligible to join.

So, with a brand new African-American Republican from Utah coming on board in January, and with another freshly elected Republican senator from South Carolina (Scott had been appointed to the seat by Gov. Nikki Haley) among its members, the CBC can demonstrate its belief in ideological diversity.

No political organization necessarily needs to be a mere echo chamber, with members parroting each others’ point of view. All political organization need to hear varying points of view. It’s good for the soul and the mind.

The Values Voter Summit earlier this year is an example of an organization that shuts out liberals because, by golly, liberals just don’t appreciate good ol’ American values the way conservatives do. That, of course, is utter horse manure.

Let’s turn this notion on its ear. The CBC is a traditionally progressive organization. How about throwing tradition out the window and insist that two new members of Congress — both Republicans and both clearly conservative — join the CBC and infuse that caucus with some fresh perspective?

You want diversity? There you would have it.

 

national news, political news

The sun still rose in the morning

Those on the left are crying the blues.

Their “friends” on the right are jumping with joy.

Lefties are mourning the loss of the U.S. Senate, which after Tuesday night’s mid-term election flipped from Democratic to Republican control come Tuesday.

Righties are utterly gleeful that Sen. Harry Reid will turn over his majority leader gavel — figuratively — to Sen. Mitch McConnell.

My take?

Well, the sun rose the next morning like it always does. President Obama said he wants to “work with” Republicans in both congressional houses. McConnell said he intends to work with the president whenever it’s possible. Obama said he’d like to enjoy a glass of Kentucky bourbon with ol’ Mitch; no word yet on whether McConnell is going to invite the president over for a belt.

We’re going to learn in due course just how well the two sides will get along. I am not worried about things “getting worse” in Washington. From my standpoint, and looking at it through my own admittedly biased prism, it couldn’t get much worse than it’s been since Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

Don’t misunderstand. I continue to believe the country is in much better shape today than it was when he took over. The pasting Democrats took on Tuesday is because their foes on the right outshouted them over the course of the Obama administration. They have persuaded a large number of Americans that the economy remains in dire peril and that the federal government is doing a lousy job of protecting them against foreign enemies.

It’s all baloney.

The country will rock along. The two sides will continue to fight, squabble, bitch at each other — just as it’s always been done.

I’m trying to look at the big picture. We’ve done all right for the past two-plus centuries.

I’ll accept the election results for what they are. Then I’ll just need to get ready for the next election cycle, which has just begun.

 

national news, political news

GOP readies for internal fight

One of the many forms of conventional wisdom in the wake of the 2014 mid-term election goes something like this: Republicans, flush with victory at taking over the Senate and expanding their hold in the House, now face a fight between the tea party extremists and the mainstream wing of their party.

Let’s go with that one for a moment, maybe two.

I relish the thought, to be brutally candid.

The likely Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, may be looking over his shoulder at one of the tea party upstarts within his Republican caucus, a fellow named Ted Cruz of Texas.

Cruz wants to lead the party to the extreme right. McConnell is more of a dealmaker, someone who’s been known to actually seek advice and counsel from his old friend and former colleague, Vice President Joe Biden. Cruz, who’s still green to the ways of Washington, wants to shake the place up, seeking to govern in a scorched-Earth kind of way. He wouldn’t mind shutting down the government again if the right issue arises. McConnell won’t have any of that.

So, will the battle commence soon after the next Congress takes over in 2015.

Lessons unlearned doom those who ignore them.

Republicans have been through this kind of intraparty strife before. In 1964, conservatives took control of the GOP after fighting with the establishment. The party nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate and then Goldwater got thumped like a drum by President Lyndon Johnson.

They did it again in 1976, with conservative former California Gov. Ronald Reagan challenging President Ford for his party’s nomination. Ford beat back the challenge, but then lost his bid for election to Jimmy Carter.

To be fair, Democrats have fallen victim to the same kind of political cannibalism.

In 1968 and again in 1972, Democrats fought with each over how, or whether, to end the Vietnam War. Sens. Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy challenged LBJ for the nomination in 1968. Johnson dropped out of the race, RFK was assassinated, McCarthy soldiered on to the convention, which erupted in violence and Democrats then nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who then went on to lose to GOP nominee Richard Nixon.

Four years later, the Democratic insurgents nominated Sen. George McGovern after fighting with the party “hawks.” McGovern then lost to President Nixon in a landslide.

So, what’s the lesson?

History has shown — and it goes back a lot farther than just 1964 — that intraparty squabbles quite often don’t make for a stronger party, but a weaker one.

Bring it on, Republicans!

 

 

medical news, national news, political news

Two decades since Ronald Reagan said 'good bye'

This video is worth sharing today for a couple of reasons.

President Ronald Reagan spoke in his final major political appearance on Aug. 17, 1992 at the Republican National Convention in Houston’s Astrodome. I had the high honor to hear it while sitting in the press gallery.

Now, was I a huge fan of the former president? No. I never voted for him. But two decades-plus since this speech, I continue to marvel at how disarming he could be while calling down his political foes. He did so without the overt rancor we hear so much of today.

It’s instructive to listen to how he is able to make his points with strength and conviction, but without the open hostility his political heirs seems to delight in using — even while they invoke his name, as if it somehow legitimizes their vitriol.

The second reason I want to share this video is because precisely 20 years ago today President Reagan said farewell to a nation that elected him twice to the presidency. He did so in an open letter in which he proclaimed he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a terminal brain disorder that robs people of their cognitive skill.

He would live another decade before dying of the disease. His letter is as poignant as any I’ve ever read. Its eloquence is simple but profound.

It touched me deeply when I read it for the first time, as my own family struggled with saying goodbye to one of our loved ones, my mother, who died a decade earlier of this killer disease.

The letters is attached here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/reagan-alzheimers/

My affection for Ronald Reagan has nothing to do with his policies. It does have to do with the courage he showed in telling the world of his affliction and, yes, the good humor he exhibited as he took his final bow on the national political stage.

I wish we had more of both — courage and self-deprecating humor — in today’s political world.

 

national news, political news

GOP scores sweep; now let's govern … actually

The deed is done.

Republicans got their “wave” to sweep them into control of the Senate, with an eight-, maybe nine-seat pickup in the U.S. Senate. What’s more, they picked up a dozen more seats in the House to cement control of that body.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-control-at-stake-in-todays-midterm-elections/2014/11/04/e882353e-642c-11e4-bb14-4cfea1e742d5_story.html

The only undecided race will be in Louisiana, which is going to a runoff. Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu appears to be in trouble there. Big surprise, huh?

What happens now?

Despite all the good economic news, there appears to be rampant discontent out there with a Democratic administration and its friends in Congress. So the voters spoke, tossing out Democratic incumbents and turning seats over where Democrats had retired.

Republicans say they want to work with the president where possible. I’m not yet ready to swill that drink.

Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting Mitch McConnell had declared his primary goal in 2009 was to make Barack Obama a one-term president. It didn’t work out that way. So now he wants to actually govern — he says.

We’ve got this immigration thing hanging over the Congress; that oil pipeline known as “Keystone” needs to be decided; the president has an attorney general appointment to make; and, oh yeah, the Affordable Care Act still is on the table, even though it’s working and insuring Americans.

How is Congress going to get past all those differences? And how is the White House going to reconcile itself with the change in power in the upper legislative chamber?

My friends on the right are crowing this morning that Democrat Harry Reid no longer will run the Senate. They now believe Hillary Clinton’s presidential “inevitability” in 2016 has been damaged by this shifting power base. They think the president has been made irrelevant as he finishes out his tenure in the White House.

I shall now remind my right-leaning friends of something critical.

The 2016 political roadmap looks a bit different than the 2014 map. Democrats will be positioned to take over some key Republican Senate seats in a presidential election year, which historically bodes quite well for Democrats.

This was the Republicans’ year and their time. Nice going, folks.

It’s time now to actually govern and to show that we can actually keep moving this country forward — which it has been doing for the past six years.

 

 

medical news, national news

Assisted suicide causes serious conflict

1 Comment

Some social, moral and theological issues are clear to me.

Women have the right to choose whether to end a pregnancy; homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice, but is predetermined by one’s genetic code; God created the world, but didn’t do it in six calendar days. Those are my views, for better or worse.

Assisted suicide? Oh, brother. Someone pass the Pepto.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/terminally-ill-brittany-maynard-takes-her-own-life/ar-BBcEQgq

Brittany Maynard took her own life over the weekend in Oregon, my home state, which also allows for assisted suicide. She had suffered from terminal brain cancer. Doctors said she had no hope of surviving. She was left with two choices: die a slow, agonizing death and subject her loved ones to untold misery or take her life peacefully, quickly and clinically.

She’s now gone.

The debate rages on.

I’ve long struggled with whether human beings should be entrusted to do God’s work, to determine whether someone should live or die. The issue confuses and confounds me.

I get Brittany’s struggle. I understand fully her desire to spare her family such untold agony. I also try to understand the family’s desire to spare her the pain and agony that surely awaited her.

Then I ask myself: Would I want (a) to end my life or (b) allow a member of my family to make that decision?

The answer is “no” to both parts of that question.

But then I come back to what Brittany Maynard and her family wanted. Is it up to me or anyone else to make that decision for them? No. It’s their call exclusively.

Come to think of it, I might have persuaded myself that assisted suicide is one of those issues that only can be decided by those affected directly by it. The rest of us have no business determining someone’s fate.

The issue, however, still upsets my stomach.

 

local news, national news

Back to Standard Time

Now that we’ve turned the clocks back and we’ve all gotten that hour’s sleep we lost in the spring, it’s fair to ask: Why do we “spring forward” in the first place?

My old pal Jon Talton, an Arizona native and blogger who writes about issues in his home state, says Arizona was right to forgo the switch to Daylight Savings Time when it was introduced back in the old days.

You know, I’m beginning to agree with that notion.

Why switch?

Well, the modern version of DST had its origin in the 1970s energy crisis. U.S. politicians thought that turning the clocks ahead in the spring would give us more late-afternoon and evening daylight, thus reducing demand for electricity in the form of street lights and such.

I guess it just stuck. People in most of the states got used to the switch to DST and then back to Standard Time in the fall.

Perhaps the older I get the less I care about having to change every clock in the house or in my vehicles.

I do like the extended periods of sunlight in the evenings in the Texas Panhandle. Given our location, just about 70 miles or so from the Mountain Time Zone, the sun sits in our huge sky for a very long time when the Summer Solstice arrives in June. It doesn’t get seriously dark until well after 9 p.m.

Now that we’ve flipped our clocks back and gained that hour of sleep, the sun goes down a whole lot earlier.

I’m still asking why the need to keep switching our clocks in the first place.

 

medical news, national news

Breakthrough in Alzheimer's research? Yes … maybe

For more than three decades I’ve had this intensely personal fascination with Alzheimer’s disease.

My mother died of complications from this horrific affliction. I’ve seen friends waste away and succumb to it, just as Mom did.

And just recently I learned that another member of my family has been diagnosed with it.

I am dreading what lies ahead on the road for this beloved family member.

Then I saw an item out of Florida that suggests a breakthrough might be at hand.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/30/blood-pressure-drug-alzheimers-disease/18186177/

USA Today reports that scientists believe a common blood pressure medication might hold the key to treating a “trigger” that causes the disease to begin destroying a person’s brain.

Here’s how the newspaper reported it: “Scientists at the Roskamp Institute in Sarasota, Fla., have discovered a common enzyme in all three known triggers of the disease. The enzyme is shut off by the key chemical in Nilvadipine, a blood pressure medication used overseas for the last 20 years.”

It sounds rather complicated. It’s not a cure, per se. It’s not even the discovery of a drug that arrests the advance of the disease. The findings suggest that scientists have found a way to stop one of those so-called “triggers” through the use of a common drug to treat high blood pressure.

The disease affects more than 5 million Americans. The number is going to accelerate as the Baby Boom generation — that includes my wife and me — continues to age.

One doesn’t see telethons or lots of celebrities lining up to proclaim their desire to stop this killer. It just does its dirty work and people die quietly. Yes, plenty of famous folks have been taken from us by this monstrous disease.

The news out of Sarasota, though, heartens me and I’ll continue to raise awareness of findings as they occur.

I’ll also say prayers for the researchers to stay on the hunt for more potential miracles. I can tell you that millions upon millions of American families — not to mention others around the world — are cheering them on.

 

local news, national news

Strong mayor? Not for Amarillo

A friend and former colleague shared a story out of Sacramento, Calif., that he thought might pique my interest.

He’s right. It did.

The story concerns a ballot referendum that calls for a strong mayor form of government in California’s capital city.

It asks voters if they want the mayor to have appointment powers and to wield serious power over city government, which now runs on a council/city manager system.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/city-beat/article3189903.html

My hometown of Portland, Ore., is run that way, with the mayor having the power to appoint city commissioners to oversee various city departments. Portland has no city manager; the mayor and the council do all the heavy lifting.

However, in my current hometown of Amarillo, we’ve got something quite different.

We have a council/manager government. What’s more, the council is a volunteer outfit, with five members — including the mayor — serving the city essentially for free. They get $10 every time they meet, which is weekly. The manager does all the grunt work. The only hire the council makes is, that’s right, the city manager, who then hires all the department heads.

I don’t know what would work for Sacramento. That’s the voters’ call.

Amarillo? It’s not in the cards.

***

Having said that, though, I have been entertaining second thoughts about whether the city should retain its at-large system of electing all council members.

Amarillo’s population is closing in on 200,000 residents; heck, it might even be there by now. With that population growth comes an increasingly diverse population. There’s a growing ethnic diversity, with residents of various ethnicities and races seeking City Hall’s attention on all manner of issues.

The argument here has been that each of the city council members represents the entire city. If someone has a concern, he or she can call any one of the five council members. But do they listen as intently to someone of, say, a different ethnic or racial background than they do one of their own? They all say they do, but not everyone believes what they hear.

The all-for-one approach, furthermore, reduces the mayor’s actual power. The city mayor’s main job, therefore, is just to preside over those weekly council meetings. Beyond that, the mayor has as much stroke as the other four council members.

One day — maybe soon — the winds of change will arrive at City Hall. It’s going to spark an interesting fight over whether to upset the norm that makes a lot of folks comfortable.

Continued growth, which the city fathers and mothers say they want, is going to change it.

Guaranteed.