Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

Now … it’s time for ‘Fire and Fury’

I am happy to report that my copy of “Fire and Fury” arrived in the mail today.

My original plan was to rush out to the bookstore to buy a book off the shelf. Then I realized I could buy the book for a lot less money if I purchased it online.

So I did. I bought the book from Amazon for about half of what I would have paid at the retail outlet.

Michael Wolff has taken some grief in recent days over the book that details a lot of what many of us have suspected about Donald John Trump Sr., and his presidency. It tells of the chaos, confusion and the narcissism that plagues the White House. There also are those notable observations about whether Don Trump Jr. engaged in a “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” meeting with Russians goons who had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Critics have wondered about his sources. They have accused him of fabricating quotes. Wolff didn’t acquit himself very well when he got quite testy with CNN talk show host Michael Smerconish, who asked him completely appropriate questions about how Wolff ingratiated himself with Trump’s inner circle.

Many pundits, though, have said the book is a serious page-turner. They couldn’t put it down.

I now intend to find out for myself.

I’ll get back to you.

national news, political news, State news

Thinking better of ‘W’ these days

You may count me as among those Americans who think better of former President George W. Bush than I did when he left office in January 2009.

A CNN poll shows that more than 60 percent of Americans currently think favorably of President Bush. CNN reports that “W” has turned his unfavorable ratings “upside down.” Bush’s favorable rating is nearly double where it was when he exited the White House.

I want to stipulate a couple of things here.

I didn’t vote for Bush when he ran twice for Texas governor. Nor did I vote for him when he ran for election and re-election as president.

However, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him, interviewing him at length and getting to know the man. Thus, I have a certain personal fondness for President Bush.

I met him the first time in the spring of 1995 not long after he took office as Texas governor; I don’t count an elevator encounter I had with him in New Orleans at the 1988 Republican National Presidential Convention.

I found the future president in 1995 to be fully engaged in Texas politics and government, even though he was new to the political game when he upset incumbent Gov. Ann Richards in 1994. He was well-informed, articulate, friendly and quite engaging.

We met in his office at the Texas Capitol Building. The interview was supposed to last for 30 minutes; we ended up chatting for an hour and a half. We would meet again in 1998 as he ran for re-election.

I look back now at his presidency with a certain wistfulness, given the fact that the nation elected a certifiably unfit individual to the office in 2016.

The juxtaposition of George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump suggests to me that it would be inevitable that “W”s standing would improve as dramatically as it has done in the past year.

President Bush made plenty of mistakes. The Iraq War was unnecessary, although the president’s leadership in the wake of the 9/11 attacks filled me with pride in the moment. I only wish the president would have kept his eye on the enemy he identified clearly and decisively while we sorted though our national grief.

Compared to the style of leadership we’re getting today? The 43rd president stands tall.

national news, political news

Is this the work of a ‘fraud’?

I wasn’t looking for proof of a political accusation, but one has presented itself anyway.

In 2016, former Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney peeled the bark off the party’s primary frontrunner when he called Donald John Trump Sr. a “fraud” and a “phony.”

I thought at the time that the 2012 GOP nominee was talking exclusively about Trump’s penchant for bellicosity and insults. However, in the past few days, some things have come into sharper focus.

The president campaigned for office proclaiming his immense skill as a deal maker. He promised time and time again on the stump that he’d make the “best deals” in the history of humankind … or words to that effect. He vowed that the nation no longer would be snookered into falling for “bad deals.”

Well, here we are. One year into Trump’s time in office, the nation’s government is shut down. The president has been unable to deliver on one of those fundamental promises of his winning presidential campaign. He hasn’t cut any deal at all, let alone any bad deals.

I guess I can presume that’s what Mitt meant when he called Trump a “fraud.”

The late, great heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali used to say about his predictions about when he’d knock his foes out that “It ain’t braggin’ if you do it.”

Donald Trump needs to quit braggin’ if he can’t deliver the goods.

national news, political news

By all means, it’s the ‘Trump Shutdown’

A headline on Politico.com sought to say how media outlets are “struggling” to assign blame for the current shutdown of the federal government.

Are you kidding me? I know who’s to blame. Someone just needed to ask me.

It’s Donald John “Deal Maker in Chief” Trump Sr.! He’s the man. He’s the one. He’s the guy who’s got to shoulder the blame.

How do I know that? Because the president of the United States laid the previous shutdown, which occurred in 2013, at the feet of Barack H. Obama, his presidential predecessor.

He said the president has to lead. He’s the one elected by the entire country. The president has to step up, take charge, bring members of Congress to the White House, clunk their heads together and tell ’em shape up, settle their differences and get the government running again.

Trump said all that. He was right.

But now that Trump is the man in charge, he has retreated into the background. Trump is pointing fingers at Democrats. He says they are to blame solely for the shutdown.

Give me a break!

A president is supposed to lead. We elect presidents to run the government. They stand head and shoulders above the 100 senators and 435 House members. When the government shudders and then closes its doors, we turn to the president to show us the way back to normal government functionality.

Donald Trump hasn’t yet shown up to lead the government out of its darkness.

Who’s to blame? It’s the guy who called it in 2013.

This is Trump’s Shutdown. Pure and simple.

If only he’d kept his trap shut when he was a mere commercial real estate mogul and reality TV host …

national news, political news

Politics can be so very poetic

I know I am not the only American who believes this, but the possible partial government shutdown seems to sum up quite nicely the first year of Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency.

Politics can be, oh, so poetic at times.

Such as right now.

It is quite possible that we’re going to wake up Saturday with the government shuttering some of its doors and windows. And think of it: This event might occur on the exact date one year after Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office.

No Drama Obama handed the White House keys over to All Chaos All the Time Trump.

Ain’t it cool? Well, no. It’s not.

The government shutdown, if it comes, will signify to me that Donald Trump’s time as president has come to a form of full circle.

He stood on the Capitol podium one year ago and delivered that dark, forbidding inaugural speech. Then right out of the chute, brand new press secretary Sean Spicer scolded the White House press corps with a scathing rebuke of its reporting of the size of the president’s inaugural crowd.

That, dear reader, set the tone for how this administration was going to conduct business.

So, here we are. One year later, we’re about the close many government offices, denying services to Americans who are entitled to partake of services they pay for with their tax money.

Trump, meanwhile, is chiding Democrats because they insist on a funding bill that takes care of so-called “Dreamers,” those U.S. residents brought here illegally when they were children. Democrats are chiding Republicans over their insistence that a funding bill include money to build a “big, beautiful wall” along our southern border.

The president’s “leadership” on this government funding madness has been missing in action.

I’ll just remind you all that of all the principals involved in this fight, only one of them represents the entire country: the president of the United States.

To borrow a phrase, Donald Trump “is leading from behind.”

Ah, yes. The political poetry of this chaos is so very telling.

As is its irony.

national news, political news

‘Not who I am’? Are you kidding?

I never will understand the dodge that public figures utter when they’re revealed making hideous statements.

The latest comes from Carl Higbie, the former external affairs director for the federal agency that runs AmeriCorps.

A CNN investigation discovered that Higbie had made anti-Muslim, anti-gay, racist and sexist remarks. He reportedly said all these things in 2013. He has quit his post effective immediately.

Now he has resigned and issued a statement that said the following, in part: “I’m sorry. I’m not sorry that my words were published, I am sorry that I said them in 2013,” he wrote. “Those words do not reflect who I am or what I stand for, I regret saying them. Last night I informed the WH that I was resigning so as not to distract from POTUS’ many success. #noexcuses”

Read what he said here.

CNN reports further: Higbie, a former Navy SEAL and conservative media personality, was a surrogate for (Donald) Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, appearing on cable news and serving as the spokesman for the Trump-aligned Great America PAC. He was appointed to the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) in 2017 to direct the public image and messaging of the federal department that manages millions of Americans in volunteer services like AmeriCorps and Senior Corps.

My question whenever I hear public figures say that their words “do not reflect who I am or what I stand for,” I feel compelled to ask: Did someone put a gun to your head and make you say those things? Did someone drug you, hypnotize you and cast a post-hypnotic suggestion on you? Is that a ventriloquist standing behind you?

This is not reflective only of the current crop of federal government appointees. Left-leaning entertainment personalities caught saying hideous things and behaving badly offer the same dodge, as do politicians of all stripes.

I won’t engage in psychobabble, seeking to explain why people say the things they do. I merely cannot accept the excuse people in the public eye use to suggest that their thoughtlessness somehow doesn’t reflect who they are.

Actually, it does.

local news, political news, State news

Insurgents vs. Establishment … in Senate District 31?

West Texas might turn out to be something of a battleground during this spring’s Republican Party primary season.

The party is engaging in a battle among its members: Establishment Wing vs. the Insurgent Wing.

The Insurgents are being led in a fashion by the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. The Establishment is being called into battle by members of the congressional leadership.

The implications for West Texas’s sprawling Texas Senate District 31 contest? They might lie in the challenge awaiting incumbent state Sen. Kel Seliger, the Amarillo Republican and a stalwart of the Texas Establishment Wing. He chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee and serves as well on the Education Committee.

He is facing two challengers in the GOP primary. He knows them both well. One is former Midland Mayor Mike Canon, a TEA Party favorite who challenged Seliger four years ago; Canon lost the GOP primary by about 5 percentage points. The other is Victor Leal, an Amarillo restaurant owner who touts his Muleshoe mayorship as giving him the requisite government administrative experience.

It gets a bit complicated, however.

Seliger isn’t exactly a fan of the Senate’s presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Seliger declined to join the rest of the Senate Republican caucus in signing a letter of endorsement for Patrick’s own re-election bid. I don’t know this as fact, but my strong hunch is that Lt. Gov. Patrick is unhappy with Seliger over this snub.

Who, then, is he backing for the Senate District 31 seat? It’s likely not going to be Sen. Seliger. It might be Canon or Leal … or maybe both!

There’s some political chatter in the Panhandle that suggests that Leal, who ran unsuccessfully for the Texas House District 87 seat in 2010 that former GOP Rep. David Swinford vacated, is running as a spoiler. He intends to peel off enough Panhandle votes that normally would go to Seliger with the hope of forcing a runoff. Leal would say he’s in it to win it and would deny playing the spoiler role. I also can presume that Leal hopes to be one of the two men squaring off in a possible GOP runoff.

Seliger is intent on avoiding a runoff. He plans to pull out all the stops to ensure that his Panhandle base turns out in March to carry him to victory. Meanwhile, he vows to ratchet up his visibility in the southern reaches of the geographically huge Senate district. He maintains a district office in Midland and over the 13 years representing District 31 has become as fluent in Permian Basin-speak as he is in Panhandle-speak. The regions are part of the same district, but their issues are unique.

Canon, meanwhile, likely intends to seek to outflank Seliger on the right, which he sought to do in 2014. Seliger’s campaign material speaks openly, though, about how he is able to deliver “conservative values” to his Senate district constituents.

Will it be enough to stave off this two-headed challenge on his right, one from the Permian Basin and the other from within his own Panhandle base?

Readers of this blog know my own preference. It is that I want Seliger to win outright.

However, I am not going to predict any such outcome. I’ll just wait right along with the rest of the state to see how this internal partisan conflict plays out.

media news, national news, political news

Wolff squares off against CNN host … and loses

I intend fully to read “Fire and Fury” when it arrives in my mailbox in a few days.

My initial intention was to purchase it off the shelf at Barnes & Noble when it was released, then I decided to order it online, via Amazon. It will arrive soon.

There. That said, I watched “Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff make an ass of himself on CNN, when host Michael Smerconish sought to ask him what I considered to be a legitimate question.

Smerconish, who told Wolff he “tore through” the book, wanted to know if Wolff misrepresented his intentions to the Trump administration when he gained access to the White House and was allowed freedom to talk to many key aides to Donald J. Trump.

I did not hear any inherent bias in Smerconish’s question. Wolff, though, took extreme offense at the question and the questioner. He ended up saying that Smerconish was “doing the White House’s job” by impugning his integrity.

Actually, Smerconish did nothing of the sort. He asked a perfectly appropriate question in his search for complete context in how Wolff was able to report in his book the statements attributed to the likes of former Trump political strategist Stephen Bannon.

So … Wolff finished the interview. Smerconish has become a sort of media Celebrity of the Moment with his questions and the confrontation they produced with the author of a much-discussed book about the president of the United States.

My advice to Wolff: Settle down, dude. And if you’re going to bristle at questions posed by a middle-of-the-roader like Michael Smerconish, you probably ought to stay away from Sean Hannity and his cohorts at Fox News.

Here’s the relevant portion of the interview. It’s worth your time:

Smerconish vs. Wolff

national news, political news

Eric Greitens: latest casualty in ‘family values’ war

Don’t sit down, Gov. Eric Greitens. I’m going to talk about you for a moment.

This fellow is a Republican governor from Missouri. He’s been in office for only about a year. He also is making quite a name for himself.

He ran for office as a “family values” candidate. He once proclaimed his love for his wife and children and the happiness he feels at being a married man and father.

The former Navy SEAL — who was a Democrat until he switched parties in 2015 — was even discussed as a possible presidential candidate in 2020 or 2024.

Then came this: He fooled around with a woman other than his wife before he was elected governor. What’s even more troubling is that he allegedly threatened her if she blabbed about it.

The woman, who was married at the time, is now divorced from her husband. Greitens remains married to his wife. He admits to the affair, but denies threatening the woman with whom he took the tumble.

Family values …

Wow. What are we to make of political candidates who make such a big show of their marriage? How are we supposed to react when they get caught in the big lie? I take this kind of thing quite badly. It doesn’t go down well. Why? Because of the show politicians such as Greitens make when they actually boast about their marital fidelity on the campaign stump — as if someone keeping a vow he makes before God is worth a boast.

This clown reminds me of so many politicians who’ve proclaimed their love for the spouse only to be revealed to be philanderers.

Does the name John Edwards ring a bell? Edwards was the 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee who campaigned across the land declaring his devotion to his late wife, Elizabeth — while he was messing around with a woman who later gave birth to a baby, courtesy of that relationship with Edwards.

This kind of revelation sickens me in the extreme. Gov. Greitens makes me sick, too, given that he made such a phony show of his marital devotion.

Politicians who lie about their faithfulness then deserve all the scorn they receive.

Now … you may sit down, Gov. Greitens. And may you disappear from the national political scene.

political news

Birtherism: It’s back!

Political nut jobs have this annoying way of getting attention they don’t deserve.

The newest Exhibit A of this phenomenon happens to be the new Republican candidate for the U.S. senator from Arizona, the former Maricopa County sheriff and convicted (and later pardoned) felon Joe Arpaio.

The ex-sheriff says former President Obama’s birth certificate is a phony document. He doesn’t believe the 44th president was born in Hawaii. He said he has “evidence” that the president served two terms illegally. Will he produce the “evidence”? No, he said on CNN last night.

He had this exchange with Chris Cuomo:

“We have the evidence, nobody will talk about it, nobody will look at it, and anytime you want to come down or anybody we’ll be glad to show you the evidence,” Arpaio said.
Cuomo pressed Arpaio again on the topic: “So you believe that President Obama’s birth certificate is a phony?”
“No doubt about it,” Arpaio said.
Ugghh! No, double, maybe triple ugghh!
This is the guy, lest we forget, who was convicted of disobeying a federal court order that mandated he stop profiling Hispanics in his quest to find illegal immigrants. He then was pardoned by the president of the United States, the nation’s “birther in chief,” Donald John Trump Sr.
Now he wants to serve in the U.S. Senate?
Please. No!