Category Archives: political news

political news

Fox, CNN get it right on debate format

The Republican Party’s presidential field figures to be a thundering herd by the time summer rolls around.

Accordingly, two cable news networks have decided on a format that is going to exclude some of this potentially huge field.

Good for them. The networks, that is.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/20/fox_cnn_set_criteria_for_gop_debates.html

Fox News Channel is going to play host to the first GOP primary debate on Aug. 6 in Cleveland. Its plan is to limit the participants to the top 10 candidates, based on their standing in the polls at that time. There well might be at least double that number of candidates seeking the party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Fox says the candidates must be declared. Many observers are noting that the criteria are going to keep several high-powered candidates off the debate stage.

CNN is going to play host for the second debate, on Sept. 16, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Its format is a bit more convoluted. CNN is planning a two-tiered event: The top candidates will share one stage; the also-rans will share another one.

I prefer the Fox approach, to be honest.

There is no possible way that having 20 — or maybe more — candidates on the same stage is going to do a bit of good for the voters who might be undecided on who would get their vote in a Republican primary. Fox has taken a simpler approach to determining which candidates should participate in the first of what looks like a long series of joint appearances.

My only hope for the debate formats as the series unfolds is that the networks somehow restrict audience cheering. The 2012 GOP debates were annoying in the extreme as the candidates paraded onto debate stages, waving to their cheering fans in the crowd. It was weird and in my view detracted from the importance of the event, which was to ask these candidates for their views on critical issues of the day.

But for starters, I’m glad to know Fox and CNN are going to cull the herd of hopefuls from a debate stage with limited space.

national news, political news

Fibs = lies? Sometimes

Someone asked me the other day if I could explain the difference between a “fib” and a “lie.”

My quick answer to him was that I “like the word ‘fib’ better.”

“Fib” has a less-damaging ring to it than “lie.”

I’ve given some further thought to the question, which actually is a pretty good one.

Here’s my more thoughtful answer: A fib is meant to describe a false statement that doesn’t carry as much consequence as a lie.

I used the term “fib” to describe, in this latest instance, what NBC reporter/news anchor Brian Williams had said about being shot down in Iraq. He fibbed about it. He wasn’t shot down. He was riding in a helicopter that accompanied the ship that actually was shot down.

Why is that a “fib” and not a “lie”? Because all it means is that one man’s career is likely ruined. The rest of us will carry on.

What, then, constitutes a lie?

Let’s try this one: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” That came from President Bill Clinton as he wagged his finger at the American public and told a lie about what he did with the White House intern. All by itself, that shouldn’t constitute a lie. Except that the result of that untrue statement — which he also made to a federal grand jury — resulted in his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives.

I suppose I could go on with more actual lies, such as when the Bush administration kept telling us about Saddam Hussein’s alleged complicity in the 9/11 attacks. We all know where those lies led us.

It’s one thing to fib about a personal experience and another thing to lie when it involves the future of the country.

Awww, what the heck. I still like the sound of the word “fib” better.

 

political news

Yes, polls do matter to pols

Politicians are known to stretch the truth, fib a little and, yes, even lie through their teeth.

One of the greatest lies politicians tell us is that “Polls don’t matter.”

Uh, yes they do.

Obama’s favorability rating ticks higher

The Gallup Organization has released some new polling data that show President Obama’s approval rating among voters is at 53 percent. That’s not great, but it’s a lot better than where it was, say, a year or two ago.

His overall poll standing — taking averages of all the major surveys — is around 46 percent. Still not great, but not bad, either, for a second-term president heading toward the finish line.

Politicians who say “Polls don’t matter” usually say those things when they’re trailing in a campaign against the other individual. They make those statements as if to dismiss the bad news they’re getting from their hired guns. The other candidate, the one who’s leading? Why he or she thinks polls are great. They use those numbers as affirmation of the job they’re doing trying to sell whatever snake oil they’re peddling.

I’ve long ago dismissed the notion of politicians saying they “pay no attention to polls” when they’re pondering key policy decisions. My definition, politicians who want to keep doing their public service jobs, rely on voters’ views on the job they’re doing.

So, that means they must take note of what the polling data are showing.

I wish I could be a fly on the wall of the White House right now, listening to what Barack Obama is saying about the polling data. Sure, he’ll tell us he’s doing “what’s right for the country.”

He’s also doing what’s right for his standing in those polls.

 

national news, political news

Dr. Carson: I wouldn't have invaded Iraq

There you have it.

The growing field of Republican presidential candidates is being sprinkled with individuals who actually are breaking with a key policy of the most recent GOP president.

Dr. Ben Carson said this week he would not have “gone into Iraq.” He said the United States could have employed other means to get rid of the late Saddam Hussein. He said the nation lacked a clear long-term strategy once Saddam had been toppled.

Carson says Iraq invasion was a mistake

“When you go into a situation with so many factions and such a complex history, unless you know what you’re doing or have a long-term strategy, it just creates more problems,” Carson told The Hill in a telephone interview.

He becomes the second major Republican figure to put daylight between himself and former President George W. Bush. The other one, more or less, was the former president’s younger brother, Jeb, who took a more awkward approach to trying to take back what he said initially in a clumsy response to a TV reporter’s direct question.

There well might be others GOP candidates who will realize the folly of going to war on what is now known to have been faulty intelligence regarding Iraq’s supposed possession of chemical weapons.

The Iraq War was a mistake. It’s good to hear Dr. Carson acknowledge as much.

I’m now waiting for former Vice President Dick Cheney — who’s been blasting Democratic officials’ criticism of the war — to weigh in against his fellow Republicans.

Well, Mr. Vice President?

 

media news, political news

Clinton needs to do more of this: answer questions

Hillary Clinton has been keeping a low profile of late, steering clear of nosy reporters whose job is to inform the public about the men and women who seek to lead the powerful nation in the world.

But she relented — finally — to reporters’ curiosity about a number of issues that have dogged the presidential candidate of late.

She spent time answering questions, jousting on occasion.

There must be much more of this as Clinton’s campaign continues to develop.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/20/reporters_press_clinton_on_25m_speaker_fees_emails.html

Clinton’s Republican foes have chided her for her absence in front of reporters. They have needled her because she’s answered so few questions relating to private emails, her enormous speaking fees, her participation in the Clinton Foundation — all these matters that speak to a number of questions people have about the Democratic Party candidate.

It goes with the territory, which Clinton surely knows already.

She spent eight years as first lady, six years as a U.S. senator and four years as secretary of state. Every one of those posts requires accessibility for the media, which act as the agents for the public.

Alex Semindinger writes for RealClearPolitics: “The former secretary of state is a practiced communicator. Most of what she told the scrum of national media echoed what she’s said before. Nevertheless, her words ricocheted through social media and cable television in an instant, revisiting subjects she’s strained to bury.”

Clinton needs to toss the shovel aside and stop seeking to bury these issues. They’re out there and she needs to explain herself.

 

national news, political news

Christie attacks Obama … on economy? Wow!

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new-jersey-governor-chris-christie

Chris Christie needs to read more.

The New Jersey governor, and a probable Republican candidate for president next year, thinks the economy has tanked under President Obama’s administration.

Interesting.

http://wegoted.com/2015/05/chrsitie-goes-after-president-obamas-economic-policies/

The stock market is at record highs. Unemployment is at its lowest level in about a decade. Jobs are being created at a rate not seen since the Clinton administration, when everyone — even Republicans — say the economy was booming. The banking and auto industries have recovered. Automakers have paid back the funds they borrowed when the government bailed it out shortly after Barack Obama took office as president.

“This president is failing because he cares more about redistributing wealth than he cares about creating and growing new wealth in our economy,” Christie said on a radio talk show.

Here’s a flash: The president may be criticized for a lot of things, but the economy is in full recovery mode. Even the New Jersey governor ought to understand that.

Has the president done everything he said he’d do? No. We haven’t stabilized Middle East politics. We haven’t brought a world of peace and plenty to places that have neither. It can be argued that the war on terror hasn’t progressed as the president promised it would when he took office.

The nation’s economy — while it isn’t perfect — is in far better shape than when the 44th president moved into the White House.

Then again, when has the economy ever been in perfect condition?

media news, national news, political news

Now it's Stephanopoulos on the block

What gives with media superstars who keep making serious professional “mistakes”?

Brian Williams fibs about being shot down during the Iraq War and he gets suspended by NBC News.

Bill O’Reilly fibs about “covering” the Falklands War while reporting from a safe distance … but he’s still on the job at Fox.

Now it’s George Stephanopoulos giving 75 grand to the Clinton Foundation and then failing to report it to his employers or to his ABC News viewers.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/the-great-stephanopoulos-mess-117971.html?ml=po&cmpid=sf#.VVjyylLbKt9

ABC calls it an honest mistake. It’s standing by the “Good Morning America” co-host and moderator of “This Week.”

It’s been known for 20 years that Stephanopoulos was an avid supporter of Bill and Hillary Clinton. He worked in the Clinton White House as a senior political adviser. Then he made the switch to broadcast journalism and by most accounts — yes, some conservatives haven’t been so charitable — he’s done a credible job.

Why did he give to the Clinton Foundation — with one of its principals, Hillary Clinton, running for president? He said he’s deeply interested in two issues the foundation supports: the fight against deforestation and HIV/AIDS.

OK, fine. Has he not heard of, say, Greenpeace and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who fund efforts to fight those very causes? If he was interested more in the causes and less in the people who champion them, then he could have given to any number of reputable foundations to carry on those battles.

He didn’t. Now his reputation as a journalist has been called into serious — and legitimate — question.

Stephanopoulos isn’t the first political hired hand to make the transition to TV news. Diane Sawyer once wrote speeches for President Nixon and the late Tim Russert once was a key aide to New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. They made the switch. Others have gone into political commentary after working for partisan pols — or themselves been politicians — on both sides of the aisle.

None of them, though, gave large sums of money to overtly political foundations while working as journalists or pundits or commentators.

George Stephanopoulos has created a huge mess for himself — and for his colleagues.

legal news, political news, State news

Restrict judges' fundraising

Restricting Texas judges’ ability to raise money from campaign contributors is a smashing, capital idea.

Let’s do it.

Oh, I almost forgot. Texas is the place that doesn’t like restricting political activity even among judges who are supposed to remain impartial and fair to all who appear before them in court. The big-donor lawyer isn’t supposed to be treated differently than, say, the lawyer who gives to another candidate who happened to run against the judge before whom he or she is appearing.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/15/analysis-distance-between-judges-and-politics/

Ross Ramsey’s analysis in the Texas Tribune speaks to possible changes, though, in state law that might mimic a Florida restriction. Florida elects its judges, too, but judges cannot go around asking for money; that’s left to campaign committees.

It’s not nearly a perfect solution. My preferred reform would be to appoint judges initially and then have them stand for retention; if they’ve done a good job, voters can keep them in office, but if they mess up, voters have the option of kicking them out.

That won’t happen in my lifetime in Texas.

According to the Texas Tribune: “If you are an incumbent judge and you call a lawyer and ask for money, what is that lawyer going to say? No?” asks Wallace Jefferson, a former chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court who now practices law in Austin. “That incumbent judge is going to raise more money. But no one should feel pressured to contribute.”

Jefferson is one of my favorite Texas judges. He always makes sense and I wish he still sat on the state’s highest civil appeals court. But … I digress.

One interesting ploy that many well-heeled lawyers use is to contribute to both candidates running for the same judgeship. Walter Umphrey is a high-octane plaintiff’s mega-lawyer in Beaumont, where I used to live and work. He is known as a Yellow Dog Democrat, but he would give big money to Republicans, just to cover his bets in case the Republican won a seat in Jefferson County, which at one time — but no longer — was one of the state’s last bastions of Democratic Party loyalty.

The whole notion of judges collecting campaign money from lawyers who might represent clients before those very judges is anathema to me.

Ramsey writes that a lot of Texas lawyers and judges feel the same way. They want to change the system.

The problem, as I see it, lies with the many other lawyers and judges who like the system just the way it is.

 

political news, State news

Can HRC carry Texas in '16? Not a chance

I’m enjoying reading the stories about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s many friends in Texas organizing her presidential campaign, some of whom are deluding themselves into thinking she actually has a chance of winning the state’s 38 electoral votes in November 2016.

Do not hold your breath.

The Texas Tribune article attached here looks back when she and her boyfriend, William J. Clinton, worked diligently to register Democratic voters who, they hoped, would make the 1972 party nominee, George McGovern, president of the United States.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/16/clintons-take-texas-1972/

One of their better friends was a young man named Garry Mauro, who went on to serve as Texas land commissioner from 1983 until 1999. Mauro said he knew McGovern was going to lose Texas in 1972. I’m guessing the young couple — Clinton and Hillary Rodham — knew as well.

I figure these days, Hillary Clinton’s best hope is to make Texas competitive. Even that’s a long shot.

The last Democrat to win the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976. It’s been downhill for Democrats ever since. Two years later, Texans would elect the first Republican governor since Reconstruction — and that’s when the tide began to turn from solid Democrat to even more solid Republican.

I figure, though, if Clinton — who I will presume will be the Democratic nominee — can make any inroads with her party’s natural constituency, African-Americans and Hispanics, then the Republican nominee will have to spend more time and money on Texas than he otherwise would spend.

Democrats keep talking about their hopes for turning the state into a political battleground.

So far, though, it’s just talk.

 

local news, political news

Don't presume anything, Mr. Rogers

“Dear John,” the form letter that arrived today started.

“Thank you for your support during the recent general election. Judy and I can’t express to you enough how much your encouragement and prayers kept us moving forward. We are proud of our positive campaign and thankful for every vote that came our way.”

The writer went on some more … blah, blah, blah.

He signed it “Steve,” as in Steve Rogers, candidate for Amarillo City Council, Place 4.

I wonder why I got the letter. I didn’t vote for him in the May 9 municipal election. I don’t know if I’ll vote for him in the June 13 runoff between him and Mark Nair, who finished at the top of a crowded field of candidates running for the fourth place on the City Council. Just so you know, my vote went to one of the other candidates.

I’m inclined to vote against him just because he seems to presume so much about the “encouragement and prayers” I allegedly sent his way.

This note reminds me of another note I got some years ago. A member of my family got married. He’s the son of one of my first cousins. I met him once — I think — when he was a very young boy. So, he married this girl on the East Coast and several weeks later, my wife and I receive a note thanking us for the “very special gift” we sent them.

We didn’t send them a gift. My wife and I laugh about it to this day.

So, candidates, please take to avoid presuming too much about the constituents you seek to serve.

Some of us might tattle on you.