Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

Duplicity snags another big-time pol

Eric Schneiderman is paying the price that so often is levied on politicians who say one thing, but then demonstrate their through their actions to be someone quite different.

The former Democratic New York attorney general quit suddenly this week after allegations surfaced that accused him of sexual assault. Yes, the “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” movements caught another one!

But here’s the thing. Schneiderman has been out front and quite vocal in criticizing others who’ve been caught doing the same things that the former New York AG has been accused of doing.

That only heightens the hypocrisy of it.

This reminds me at one level of the recent case involving Missouri Republican Gov. Eric Greitens, who has been accused of sexual misconduct. You see, what makes Greitens’s alleged transgression so ghastly is that he campaigned for election by proclaiming himself to be a “proud husband and father.” He was a “family values” candidate and he played on that theme while winning election to the Missouri statehouse. While he was bellowing his love for his his wife and children, he was messing around with a woman who isn’t his wife.

That makes what Greitens did all that much worse and it elevates it from a “private” matter to a “public” scandal.

Do you remember when former U.S. Sen. John Edwards was campaigning for vice president as part of the Democratic ticket led by U.S. Sen. John Kerry in 2004? Edwards was so proud to proclaim his love for his wife, Elizabeth, while keeping secret an affair he was having with someone else.

Eric Schneiderman managed to pop off quite vocally about how other men should be ashamed of behaving badly with women. It turns out he also was misbehaving — allegedly — in violent ways with women with whom he was having sex.

Shameful.

national news, political news

Is this guy the new Donald Trump?

I have no idea what West Virginia Republicans are going to do today when they have their primary election to nominate someone to run for the U.S. Senate.

The word out of that state is that Don Blankenship, the former coal mine owner who served jail time in connection with a mine tragedy that killed 29 of his employees, might win the primary. Whoever wins would face Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin this fall.

By all rights, Blankenship shouldn’t even be in the hunt. He should be a fourth- or fifth-tier candidate. He’s going after the Taiwan-born wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, accusing McConnell of relying on money from Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s “China family.”

The guy is a rube, pure and simple.

Oh, but let’s not count this clown out. Why not? I have two words for you to ponder: Donald Trump.

Trump got elected president of the United States in 2016 after defeating a large and eminently qualified field of GOP candidates. Trump’s qualifications for the presidency? He told it “like it is.” He entered the presidential race with absolutely zero public service experience, or any demonstrated commitment to it.

He blanketed his foes with insults and innuendo. He mocked some of them for their looks.

Republicans then nominated this guy to run for the presidency … against a former secretary of state, a former U.S. senator and a former first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Trump continued his insults. He led campaign chants of “Lock her up!” over a matter where there were no criminal charges brought.

Then he won the presidency.

This just goes to show that “anybody can be elected president.”

If that’s true for Donald Trump, who would dare say that Don Blankenship cannot follow the lead of the carnival barker who is serving as our head of state?

political news

‘Me Too’ snags another perp … allegedly

The “Me Too” movement has just landed another big fish … allegedly.

Eric Schneiderman is now the former New York attorney general who quit suddenly this week after allegations surfaced that he mistreated at least three women. One of them says Schneiderman slapped her hard across the face during a sexual encounter she said was “unwanted.”

Schneiderman, a Democrat, of course denied doing anything wrong, or “non-consensual,” but he resigned anyway.

One of the more hideous aspects of this latest big-time pol’s fall from power is how he was so public in criticizing the misbehavior of other public figures, such as the disgraced Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein.

There’s a lesson to be heeded here as many political observers ponder Schneiderman’s own disgrace.

  • Democrats need to be forceful in their condemnation of this man’s behavior, presuming it is true; I happen to believe the accounts that have surfaced.
  • Moreover, Republicans need to take great care to avoid politicizing this too heavily; I mean, they have their own high-profile pols who’ve been tarred by allegations by women who’ve come forward in this new era of “Me Too” and “Time’s Up.”

As for Eric Schneiderman, he needs to face the same level of scorn he heaped on others while defending the women who came forward to accuse them of ghastly behavior.

local news, political news

Partisan labels should not elect judges

My wife brought up a subject today that got me fired up. Her question played straight into my wheelhouse, hit me with an issue against which I have been ranting for, oh, many decades.

Partisan election of judges. That’s the issue.

“Isn’t it just wrong to say ‘Wade Overstreet, Republican for judge'”? she asked as we drove past an Overstreet for judge lawn sign.

Yes, it’s wrong. It’s also legal in Texas.

I have not a single thing against Wade Overstreet, who’s running for a judgeship in Potter County. My wife and I are unable to vote in that runoff election, given that we’re registered to vote in Randall County.

I do have plenty of things against the way we elect judges in Texas. My first option would be to go to an appointment process, followed by a retention election. It’s a voting policy used in several other states. The governor appoints a judge, who then stands for retention after a term; voters then get to decide whether to retain the judge or demand that the governor finds someone else.

My second option would be to elect judges on non-partisan ballots. Get rid of Republican and Democratic judges.

I have asked judicial candidates for many years — back in the day when I worked as an opinion journalist in Beaumont and Amarillo — a fundamental question: Can you explain to me the difference between Democratic and Republican justice?

My wife noted with her usual intuitiveness that judges’ jobs are to follow the law, interpret it without regard to politics.

Indeed, one can assess a judge’s judicial philosophy — whether he or she is too harsh or too lenient in bench rulings — without the crutch of a partisan label.

There once was a time when competent Republican judges got the voters’ boot because they were of the “wrong” party in a state that once leaned heavily Democratic. The state flipped from Democrat to Republican about two decades ago. Now we see competent Democratic judges and judicial candidates getting the same treatment from voters who punish them for being members of the wrong party.

It’s wrong. Sadly, it won’t change likely within my lifetime.

political news

GOP might produce another election-year goofball

Don Blankenship well might become the new Roy Moore.

It must be “fun” to be a Republican these days. Alabama Republicans nominated Moore, an alleged pedophile, in 2017 as their party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate. Moore ended up losing a special election to Democratic Sen. Doug Jones — and the Republican Party nationally breathed a sigh of relief.

Ahh, but the fun may be starting all over again, in West Virginia.

Don Blankenship, who served time in prison after a mine he owns exploded and killed 29 mine workers, is reportedly surging just ahead of the GOP Senate primary that occurs on Tuesday.

Mainstream Republicans in West Virginia are concerned that a Blankenship primary victory will guarantee the re-election of Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin.

Hey, it gets better. Blankenship is not standing still letting the GOP attacks on him go unanswered. He has referred to “Cocaine Mitch” McConnell in describing the Senate majority leader.

Or, as Politico reports: This week, Blankenship began airing a TV commercial labeling McConnell “Cocaine Mitch,” an apparent reference to a 2014 report that drugs were once found aboard a shipping vessel owned by the family of McConnell’s wife, Taiwan-born Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Then, a few days later, Blankenship began airing another spot declaring that McConnell’s “China family has given him tens of millions of dollars.”

Yep! That’s the guy who West Virginia Republicans just might nominate to run for the U.S. Senate this fall.

Ain’t this just a blast?

national news, political news

What has become of the GOP?

What would Honest Abe, Teddy Roosevelt and Ike think of what’s become of the Republican Party? If only we could ask ’em.

Above is a tweet I posted two years ago wondering about the state of today’s GOP and how it was abducted by a form of “populism” that has no real resemblance to the movement that I had grown to understand.

Donald J. Trump got elected president on a pledge to do certain things, all of which he said at the time would be “easy.”

Build a wall along our southern border? Piece of cake.

Make Mexico pay for it? No sweat.

Negotiate the “best trade deals” in U.S. history? Done deal.

Craft a new health care program? Got it.

Cut taxes for everyone? Perfecto.

And so it went. How has he done? Not too well, by my way of looking at it.

As for the “populist” angle he pursued while running for office, the president hasn’t fulfilled that promise either. He continues to hobnob at his extravagant resorts. I haven’t seen him visiting housing projects, or tour squalid neighborhoods in Appalachia.

Indeed, Housing Secretary Ben Carson recently announced a desire to triple the rent paid by low-income residents of government housing. Dr. Carson then said his idea would “incentivize” residents to improve their lot in life and get them out of housing projects.

Man, that’s just so damn populist of him. Don’t you think?

Back to my Twitter message of two years ago. What, precisely, does the Republican Party stand for these days? Does it go along merely with what the president desires, even though this president had no history of political activism — let alone political experience of any kind — before he ran for the highest office in the land?

The party of Abe, TR and Ike is now the party of Trump.

President Lincoln stood for unifying the nation; President Theodore Roosevelt was an environmental champion; President Eisenhower sought to return the nation to a peace footing after so many years of open warfare in Europe, the Pacific and in Korea.

What does Trump believe? He touts his hatred of the media, he stiffs the opposing party at every turn, he is ravaged by an endless series of controversies — and a scandal or three — and he promises to “make America great again” by bullying our allies.

I’ll give him props for one potentially huge achievement, if he can pull it off: getting North Korea to back off its nuclear program.

However, a success there doesn’t erase the rest of the nastiness that has pervaded this man’s presidency.

Abe, TR and Ike are spinning in their graves.

political news

No one knows how much ‘time they have left’

U.S. Sen. John S. McCain said the following regarding his struggle against brain cancer: “Maybe I’ll have another five years, maybe with the advances in oncology they’ll find new treatments for my cancer that will extend my life. Maybe I’ll be gone before you hear this, my predicament is, well, rather unpredictable.”

The Arizona Republican made that assessment on an audio recording relating to his new book, which is to be published later this month.

I want to offer a bit of perspective that I hope, dear reader, you take in the spirit I offer it. I offer this to give Sen. McCain more than a glimmer of hope in his valiant fight.

It is merely that no one knows “how much longer” they’ll be here.

I enjoy good health. I don’t expect to die in the next 30 minutes. No one — except those intent on purposely ending their life — should know when their time is up.

I surely want Sen. McCain to beat the disease he is battling. I want him to return to the Senate, where he has served for more than three decades. I want him to continue to speak out, to lend his voice to the issues of the day. Will I agree with him always? Oh, probably not. Indeed, I’m likely to disagree him more than agree with the senator.

I get the fatalism he is expressing in his memoir, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations,” but let’s seek to keep it in some semblance of perspective. It well might be that McCain believes he has been living on borrowed time as it is, given what he endured from 1967 to 1973 as a Vietnam War prisoner who suffered unbearable and unspeakable torture at the hands of his captors.

I want him to draw a bit of strength from the belief that no one can know when the end will come. No one!

political news, State news

Rep. O’Rourke proposes debate-a-thon with Sen. Cruz

Six debates? Really? Does Beto O’Rourke really think Ted Cruz is going to agree to that?

Well, the Democratic challenger has pitched a serious offer to the Republican incumbent as the race for Cruz’s U.S. Senate seat starts to heat up.

The most fascinating aspect of O’Rourke’s challenge is that he wants two of those debates to be in Spanish, a language in which O’Rourke is fluent, but which Cruz reportedly is not.

O’Rourke wants to succeed Cruz in the Senate. He wants to take his case across Texas. My hope would be that one of those six debates would occur in the Texas Panhandle. Hey, Amarillo has plenty of suitable venues for such an event: Amarillo Little Theater; Amarillo College; Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts; Civic Center Grand Plaza Ballroom.

The reality is that the Cruz Missile isn’t likely to agree to six debates, even though he is known as a master debater. He once served as Texas solicitor general, which enabled him to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court; I consider that a pretty impressive venue.

O’Rourke’s challenge seems to indicate the seriousness of his effort to unseat Cruz, who is ready for the fight that lies ahead, according to the Texas Tribune: “Sen. Cruz has said he’s looking forward to debates,” Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said in a statement. “We are considering all possibilities in front of us and will be working with potential hosts and the O’Rourke campaign to determine the best platforms available so that Texans from all corners of the state can hear from the candidates directly about their views for Texas’ future.”

The Tribune also reports that a Spanish-language debate is unlikely: Regardless of what the campaigns ultimately agree to, debates in Spanish between the candidates seem unlikely. While O’Rourke is fluent in the language, Cruz is not known as a proficient speaker. 

Recent political polling puts the race as being too close to call. O’Rourke has spent a great deal of time stumping in rural Texas, far from the state’s pockets of progressive voter blocs. Cruz no doubt is gathering up his own war chest of campaign cash and will take the challenger on, face to face.

That all said, I am pulling for O’Rourke to win. I want him to represent this state in the U.S. Senate. He appears at first blush to be far more interested in our needs than in his own ambition.

Six debates between O’Rourke and Cruz? I hope they all occur. I will not bet the mortgage that they will.

national news, political news

McCain is now liberated to speak from his gut

There’s no need to pussyfoot around this.

John McCain is seriously ill. Accordingly, serious — life-threatening — illness has a way of liberating anyone. The Republican U.S. senator is fighting for his life against a virulent form of brain cancer.

He is about to have a book published in which he speaks from the deepest recesses of his gut about a man — Donald J. Trump — who once disparaged his valiant and heroic service to the nation he loves.

The book is titled, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations.” In it, the senator says this about the president: “He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones.” He adds: “The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values.”

There’s more, of course, such as: “I’m freer than colleagues who will face the voters again. I can speak my mind without fearing the consequences much. And I can vote my conscience without worry,” McCain writes.

“I don’t think I’m free to disregard my constituents’ wishes, far from it. I don’t feel excused from keeping pledges I made. Nor do I wish to harm my party’s prospects. But I do feel a pressing responsibility to give Americans my best judgment.”

McCain is a brave warrior. Of that there can be no doubt. There can be no question or equivocation.

He fought for his country during the Vietnam War. He was shot down over Hanoi and taken captive. He endured unspeakable torture on top of the grievous injuries he suffered when he bailed out of his jet fighter and splashed into a lake in the middle of Hanoi.

Sen. McCain is one of those politicians one can admire even when you disagree with his politics. I am one of those Americans who holds this man in the highest regard possible, even though I did not cast my vote for him for president when he ran in 2008 against his “friend and colleague,” U.S. Sen. Barack H. Obama.

The nation he fought so valiantly to defend wishes him well. I hope for a miracle that he can beat the cancer that is ravaging him.

I’m glad he has found his voice, although I am saddened in the extreme over the circumstances that have led him to that discovery.

I want him to speak out for as long as he is able.

national news, political news

Wolf crossed an important line of criticism

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I’ll admit readily that I did not know who Michelle Wolf was … until Saturday night.

The comedian took the podium at the White House Correspondents Dinner and proceeded to offend a lot of Americans with her crude, profane and tasteless remarks.

I am one of those who found her to be (a) not funny and (b) oblivious to the bounds of good taste.

I addressed the unfunniness of her shtick with a blog post I published last night. I got some pushback from my social media network of friends who think Wolf merely dished out a sample of what has come from Donald J. Trump since the moment he entered the 2016 presidential campaign.

With that, I want to address briefly the serious line that Wolf crossed with her comments at the correspondents dinner.

She went where serious comics shouldn’t go. She criticized the appearance, for example, the appearance of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had the intestinal fortitude to sit through the entire evening of inappropriate ridicule.

Wolf also was shockingly profane, dropping at least one F-bomb that I heard (before I changed the channel). She also used a term to describe the female anatomy that used to be forbidden on national TV; see the late comic George Carlin’s legendary routine on “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.”

The pushback from my social media network misses, in my view, another fundamental point. It is the tendency to go low when others go low. Why in the world couldn’t Michelle Wolf stay somewhere near the high road in criticizing presidential policies? She didn’t. She decided instead to slither straight into the gutter where Trump and many of his cronies continue to wallow.

Wolf’s comments told me plenty about her and not a damn thing new about the objects of her scorn.

Am I a “suck up” to Trump, as one of my social media friends suggests of those who are critical of Michelle Wolf’s routine? Not for an instant. I am not defending the president’s policies, or the lies that his allies tell on his behalf.

I will, however, stand behind my own view that there really are certain boundaries one shouldn’t cross when delivering political criticism. Sure, Donald Trump crosses them all the time. That doesn’t give anyone license to respond in kind.

I guess now, though, we’ll get to watch Michelle Wolf bask in her 15 minutes of fame.